Title: The Catholic World. Volume II; Numbers 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. - A Monthly Eclectic Magazine
Author: Rameur, E.
Language: English
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  This text includes Volume II;
    Number 7--October 1865
    Number 8--November 1865
    Number 9--December 1865
    Number 10--January 1866
    Number 11--February 1866
    Number 12--March 1866
[End Transcriber's notes]


THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


A

_A Monthly Eclectic Magazine_

OF

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.



VOL. II.

OCTOBER, 1865, TO MARCH, 1866.



NEW YORK:

LAWRENCE KEHOE, PUBLISHER,
7 Beekman Street.

1866.



CONTENTS.


Adventure, The, 843.
Anglican and Greek Church, Attempt at Union between the, 65.
All-Hallow Eve; or, The Test of Futurity, 71, 199, 377, 507, 697, 813.
Ancient Laws of Ireland, The, 129.
Anglicanism and the Greek Schism, 429.
Ancient Faculty of Paris, The, 496, 681.

Bell Gossip, 32.
Birds, Migration of, 57.
Bruges, The Capuchin of, 237.
Bossuet and Leibnitz, 433.

Catholic Congresses at Malines and Würzburg, 1, 221, 331, 519
Constance Sherwood, 37, 160, 304, 444, 614, 759.
Chinese Characteristics, 102.
Catholic Settlements In Pennsylvania, 145.
Capuchin of Bruges. The, 237.
Christmas Carols, A Bundle of, 349.
Christendom, Formation of, 856.
Calcutta and its Vicinity, A Ride through, 386.
Christmas Eve: or, The Bible, 397.
Charles II. and his Son, Father James Stuart, 577.
Canton, Up and Down, 656.
California and the Church, 790.
Charles II.'s Last Attempt to Emancipate The Catholics, 827.

Duc d'Ayen, The Daughters of the, 252.

Epidemics, Past and Present, 420.

Formation of Christendom, The, 356.

Gallitzin, Rev. Demetrius Augustin, 145.
Gertrude, Saint, Thoughts on, 406.
Genzano, The Inflorata of, 608.
Glastonbury Abbey, Past and Present, 662.

Handwriting, 695.

Inside the Eye, 119.
Ireland before Christianity, 541.

Kingdom without a King, 705.

Leibnitz and Bossuet, 433.
Law and Literature, 560.

Malines and Würzburg, Catholic Congresses in, 1, 221, 332, 519.
Marie Louise, Napoleon's Marriage with, 12.
Migrations of European Birds, 57.
Miscellany, 136, 276, 563, 714, 853.
Moricière, General De La, 289.
Malta, Siege of, 483.
Mistaken Identity, 707.
Mary, Queen of Scots, The Two Friends of, 813.

Natural History of the Tropics, Gleanings from, 178
Novel Ticket-of-leave, A, 707.

Pierre Prévost's Story, 110.
Pen, Slips of the, 272.
Paris, The Ancient Faculty of, 496, 681.
Pusey, Dr., on the Church of England, 530.
Positivism, 791.
Plain-Work, 740.
Procter, Adelaide Anne, Poems of, 837.

Récamier, Madame, and her Friends, 79.
Rome, Facts and Fictions about, 325.
Religious Statistics of the World, 491.
Rhodes, The Colossus of, 544.

Steam Engine, The Inventor of, 211.
Saturnine Observations, A Few, 266.
Slips of the Pen, 272.
Saints of the Desert, 275, 476, 453, 655, 835.
Saint Catharine of Siena, Public Life of, 547.
Saint Patrick, The Birth place of, 744.

True to the Last, 110.
The Eye, Inside of, 119.
Tropics, Gleanings from the Natural History of, 178
The Clouds and the Poor, 213
The Bible; or, Christmas Eve, 397.
The Adventure, 848.

World, Religious Statistics of the, 491.

------

POETRY.


An English Maiden's Love, 27.

Better Late than Never, 454.
Books, 495.

Children, The, 70.
Christmas Carol, A, 419, 559.
City Aspirations, 680.

"Dum  Spiro Spero," 159.

Falling Stars, 348.

Inquietus, 704

Kirkstall Abbey, 36.
Keviaar, Pilgrimage to, 127.

Little Things, 836.

Properzia Rossi, 235.
Patience, 812.

Resigned, 654.

Song of the Year, 490.
Saint Elizabeth, 529.

Tender and True and Tried, 385.
The Round of the Waters, 396.
The Better Part, 757.

Unshed Tears, 789.

Winter Signs, 198.

------

{iv}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.


Archbishop Hughes's Complete Works, 282.
American Republic, The, 714.
Andrew Johnson, Life of, 856.

Banim's Works, 286.
Baker, Rev. F. A., Memoir and Sermons of, 566.
Brownson's American Republic, 714.
Brincker, Hans, 719.

Catholic Anecdotes, 287.
Cobden, Richard, Career of, 860.
Complete Works of Archbishop Hughes, 282.
Croppy, The, 859.

Darras' History of the Church, 143.
De Guérin, Eugénie, Journal of, 716.
Draper's Civil Policy of America, 858.

England, Froude's History of, 676.

Faith, the Victory, Bishop McGill's, 575.

Hedge's Reason in Religion, 430.
Holmes, Oliver W., Humorous Poems, 576.

Lives of the Popes, 288.

Mother Juliana's Sixteen Revelations, 281.
Metropolites, The, 287.
Memoir and Sermons of Rev. F. A. Baker, 566.
Manning's Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, 568.
Merry Christmas, A Cantata, 719.
Monthly, The, 719.
Mozart, Letters of, 856.

Newman's, Rev. Dr., History of Religious Opinions, 139.
Nicholas of the Flue, 718.

Remy St. Remy, 287.
Reason in Religion, 430.

Sixteen Revelations of Mother Juliana, 281.
Sherman's Great March, Story of, 283.
Saint John of the Cross, Works of, 432.
Spelling Book, The Practical Dictation, 576.
Spare Hours, 718.
St. Teresa, Life of, 855.

Thoreau's Cape Cod, 283.
The Old House by the Boyne, 26.
The Christian Examiner, 573, 717.

United States Cavalry, History of, 858.

Vade Mecum, The Catholic's, 859.

------

{1}

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 7.--OCTOBER, 1865.

------

Translated from the German.

MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

A SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC CONGRESSES
HELD AT MALINES AND WÜRZBURG

BY ANDREW NIEDERMASSER.



CHAPTER I.



The Catholic Congresses in Belgium are of more recent date than the
general conventions of all Catholic societies in Germany. The
political commotions of 1848 burst the chains which had fettered the
German Church, and ushered in a period of renewed religious life and
activity. This new and glorious era was inaugurated by the council of
twenty-six German bishops at Würzburg, which lasted from Oct 22 to
Nov. 16, 1848. There it was that our prelates boldly seized the
serpent of German revolution, and in their hands the serpent was
turned into a budding rod, the stay alike of Church and state.

Since then sixteen years have rolled by; sixteen general conventions
have been held, each of which gained for its participants the respect
of the public. Powerful was the influence exerted by these meetings on
the religious life of the laity, as is shown both by the numerous and
active associations that arose everywhere, and by the general spirit
of enterprise which they fostered. By their means, the spirit and
principles of the Church were made known to the Catholic laity, whose
actions they were not slow to influence.

To these meetings may be traced, directly or indirectly, whatever good
was accomplished within the past sixteen years in Catholic Germany;
every part of Germany has felt their beneficial effects; they were
well suited to perform the task allotted them; and have thus far at
least attained the end for which they were called into existence.

These meetings were associations of laymen; of laymen penetrated with
the spirit of faith, devoted to the Church, and fully convinced that
in matters relating to the government of the Church, to the
realization of the liberty and independence due to the Church, their
only duty was to listen to the voice of their pastors, and to follow
devotedly the lead of a {2} hierarchy they respected and revered.
Though for the most part but one third of the members of the annual
conventions were laymen, the lay character of the conventions is still
theoretically asserted, and appears to some extent at least in
practice, inasmuch as the president of the convention is always a
layman, and the principal committee is mainly composed of laymen. The
preference is also given to lay orators. The society of laymen
submitted the constitution drafted and adopted at its first meeting,
held at Mayence in 1848, not only to the Holy Father, but to all the
bishops of Germany, who joyfully approved its sentiment, and expressed
their interest in the welfare of the society. The same course is
pursued to the present day; each of the sixteen general conventions
maintained the most intimate relations with the German bishops and the
Holy See.

In honor of the present pontiff, Pius IX., these associations at first
adopted the name of _Piusvereine,_ thus paying a just tribute of
respect to the Holy Father. For Pius IX., during his long pontificate
of almost twenty years, has become the leading spirit of the age; _we
live in the age of Pius IX._ It was he who brought into vogue modern
ideas, and he was the first to do justice to the wants of the age. As
the historian now speaks of the age of Gregory VII. and Innocent III.,
so will the future historian write of the age of Pius IX. The true
sons of the nineteenth century are gathered to fight under the banners
of the many Catholic associations which, founded for the purpose of
putting to flight the threatening assaults of infidelity, have spread
during the pontificate of Pius IX. over every portion of the globe. In
Switzerland the original name of these societies is retained; in
Germany, owing to their branching out into numerous similar
associations, it has disappeared, and we now speak of a "general
convention of the Catholic associations in Germany."

The first general convention took place toward the beginning of
October, 1848, in the ancient electoral palace at Mayence. Hundreds of
noble spirits from every quarter of Germany met here, as if by magic;
the Spirit of God had convened them. Meeting for the first time, they
felt at once that they were friends and brothers. There was no
discord, no embarrassment, for on all hearts rested a deep
consciousness of the unity, the power, and the charity of their common
faith. Whoever was present at this first gathering of the Catholics of
Germany, owned to himself that by no scene which he had previously
witnessed had he been so profoundly impressed. Opposite the stand from
which the speakers were to address the meeting sat Bishop Kaiser, of
Mayence, whilst most prominent among the orators of the occasion
appeared his destined successor, Baron Emmanuel von Ketteler, who was
at that time pastor of the poor and insignificant parish of Hopsten.
Writing of him, Beda Weber said: "His determined character is a fresh
and living type of the German nation, of its universality, its
history, and its Catholic spirit. In his heart he bears the great and
brave German race with all its countless virtues, and hence springs
the peculiar boldness of his words, asserting that the revolution is
but a means to rear the edifice of the German Church, an edifice
destined to be far statelier than the cathedral of Cologne. His form
was tall and powerful, his features marked, expressing at once his
fearlessness, his energy, and his Westphalian devotion to God and the
Church, to the emperor and the nation. The words of Baron von Ketteler
acted irresistibly on all present, for they were but the echo of their
own sentiments." Such was the impression then produced by the man who
is now looked upon by the Catholics of Germany as their
standard-bearer.

The voice of Beda Weber too was heard on that occasion. Frankfort had
not as yet become the scene of his {3} labors as pastor, for he was
still professor at Meran. He was a member of the German parliament,
then holding its sessions at Frankfort, and like many other Catholic
fellow members had come to Mayence for the purpose of assisting at the
first general reunion of the Catholic societies. His eloquence
likewise called forth immense enthusiasm. Strong and energetic,
sometimes pointed and unsparing, a vigorous son of the mountains,
manly, noble, and respected, he came forth at a most opportune moment
from the solitude of his mountains and his cell, in order to take part
in the struggles of his age and become their historian. A master at
painting characters, he has written unrivalled sketches of the German
parliament and clergy. Equally successful as an orator, a poet, a
historian, and a contributor to periodical literature, Beda Weber was
distinguished no less by a childlike heart and a nice appreciation of
the beautiful in nature and art, than by manly force and an untiring
zeal for what is true and good. His deep and extensive learning has
proved a useful weapon at all times. His writings were read throughout
Germany, and to the rising generation Beda Weber has been an efficient
instructor and director.

_Döllinger_ of Munich was also present; he spoke for the twenty-three
members of the German parliament, maintaining that the concessions
granted to Catholics by that body would necessarily lead to the entire
independence of the Church and the liberty of education. At a meeting
of the Rhenish-Westphalian societies, held at Cologne in May, 1849,
the learned provost delivered another speech, which was at that time
considered one of the best, most timely, and most telling efforts of
German eloquence. Döllinger's speech at the third general convention,
which took place at Regensburg in October, 1849, was hailed as one of
the few consoling signs of that gloomy period. It was a masterpiece of
oratory, that brought conviction to all minds, and which will prove a
lasting monument of German eloquence. The interest Döllinger displayed
in these conventions should not be forgotten. He is entitled to our
respect and gratitude for his aid in laying the foundations of the
edifice; its completion he might well leave to others.

The other members of the parliament that spoke at Mayence were
_Osterrath_, of Dantzic; _von Bally_, a Silesian; A. Reichensperger,
of Cologne; Prof. Sepp, of Munich; and Prof. Knoodt, of Bonn. One of
the most impressive speakers was Forster of Breslau, at that time
canon of the Metropolitan church of Silesia, now prince-bishop of one
of the seven principal sees in the world. Germany looks upon him as
her best pulpit orator. Listen to the words of one who heard Forster
at Mayence: "The chords of his soul are so delicate that every breath
calls forth a sound, and as he must frequently encounter the storms of
the world, we may readily pardon the deep melancholy which tinges his
words. As he spoke, his heart was weighed down by the troubles of the
times, and grief was pictured in his countenance, for he saw no
prospect of reconciliation between the conflicting elements. He has no
faith in a speedy settlement of the relations between Church and
state, such a settlement as will allow freedom of action to the
former. To him the revolution appears to be a divine judgment,
punishing the clergy for their negligence, and chastising the laity
for their crimes. His voice possesses a rich melody, which speaks in
powerful accents to the heart. It sounds like the solemn chimes of a
bell, waking every mind to the convictions which burst forth from the
depth of his soul. He is an orator whose words seem like drops of
honey, and whose faith and devotion call forth our love and our
gratitude."

The best known of the Frankfort representatives were, Arndts, of
Munich; Aulicke, of Berlin; Flir, of {4} Landeck; Kutzen, of Breslau;
von Linde, of Darmstadt; Herman Müller, of Würtzburg; Stülz of St.
Florian; Thinnes, of Eichstädt; and Vogel, of Dillingen.

The noble Baron Henry von Andlaw also assisted at the convention in
Mayence. For sixteen years this chivalric and devoted defender of the
Church has furthered by every means in his power the success of the
Catholic conventions, and his name will often appear in these pages.
Chevalier Francis Joseph von Buss, of Freiburg, was president of the
meeting at Mayence. Buss is the founder of the Catholic associations
in Germany; to him above all others was due the success of the
convention at Mayence, and he it was who laid down the principles on
which are based the Catholic societies throughout Germany, and which
are the chief source of their efficacy. In 1848 Buss was in the flower
of his age, fresh and vigorous in body and mind. All Germany was
acquainted with his writings, his exertions, his sufferings, and his
struggles. He was no novice on the battle-field, for he had passed
through a fiery ordeal, and bore the marks of wounds inflicted both by
his own passions and by the broken lances of his enemies. Naturally an
agitator, and an enthusiast for ideas, bold, quick, and intrepid, he
united restless activity and unquenchable ardor with the most
self-sacrificing devotion. He is distinguished for extensive learning,
a powerful imagination, and for the force and flow of his language. So
constant and untiring have been his exertions for the liberty and
independence of the Church, that one who is no mean painter of men and
character has lately styled him the Bayard of the Church in the
nineteenth century. The last time I saw and heard the Chevalier von
Buss was in the convention held at Frankfort in 1862. His imposing
figure, his bold commanding eye, his fiery patriotic heart, his
glowing fancy, his powerful ringing voice, all were unchanged. His
speeches exert the magic influence which belongs to an enthusiastic,
powerful, and penetrating mind. Age has whitened his hair, wrinkles
furrow his noble features, his life is on the wane. A glance at
Catholic Germany and the growth of the Church during the past sixteen
years, will reflect a bright consoling radiance on the evening of his
life.

We must still mention one of the founders and chief stays of the
Catholic general conventions, and one who, alas, is no more. I refer
to Dr. Maurice Lieber, attorney and counsellor at Camberg in Nassau,
one of the most active members at Mayence in 1848; he was elected
president of the second general convention at Breslau in 1849. He was
present at the first seven general meetings, and at Salzburg in 1857
filled the chair a second time. At Cologne, in 1858, this honor would
again have been conferred on him had he not declined. Maurice Lieber
seems by nature to have been designed to preside at these assemblies.
Of a noble appearance, he combined dignity with gentleness, force and
decision with moderation; his remarks were always to the point. An
able and spirited writer and journalist, he contributed in a great
measure to make the public acquainted with the aim and object of the
newly founded association. He never grew weary of scattering good and
fruitful seed, and his writings as well as his speeches were
life-inspiring, strengthening, purifying productions. The name of
Maurice Lieber will ever be honored.

Beside the eminent men above mentioned, those whose exertions aided in
calling into existence the Catholic general conventions in Germany are
Lennig, vicar-general at Mayence, Prof. Riffel, Himioben, now dead,
and lastly, Heinrich and Moufang, who have been present at almost
every meeting.


So many illustrious names are connected with the foundation of the {5}
Catholic congress in Belgium that to do all justice will be extremely
difficult.

The political and religions status of Belgium is sufficiently well
known. In Belgium there are but two parties; the one espouses the
cause of God, the other supports that of Antichrist. These parties are
on the point of laying aside entirely their political character and of
opposing each other on religious grounds. War is inevitable, war to
the knife; either party must perish. "To be or not to be, that is the
question."

Outnumbering the Catholics in parliament, the followers of Antichrist
eagerly use their superiority to trample their opponents in the dust
and, if possible, annihilate them. The people is the stronghold of the
latter; for the great majority of the Belgians are Catholics, sincere,
fervent, self-sacrificing Catholics. They yield support neither to the
rationalists nor to the solidaires and affranchis. Day by day the
influence of the Catholic leaders increases; they are whetting their
swords, and gathering recruits to fight for Christ and his Church. The
congress at Malines is their rendezvous, as it were. Even the first
congress, that of 1863, exerted a magic influence; the drowsy were
aroused from their lethargy, and the faint-hearted were inspired with
confidence; they saw their strength and felt it. In that congress we
see the beginning of a new epoch in the religious history of Belgium.

The Belgium congresses are imitations of the Catholic conventions in
Germany. A number of men used their best endeavors to bring about the
congress of 1863, and for this they deserve our respect and gratitude.
We shall mention but a few of the many.

_Dumortier_ will head our list. He is one of the most powerful
speakers in Belgium, a ready debater, a valiant champion of the
Catholic cause, whose delight it is to fight for his principles.
Dumortier has the power of kindling in his hearers his own enthusiasm,
as he proved in 1863 at Aix-la-chapelle. He has all the qualities of
an agitator, and these qualities were the cause of his success in
bringing about the congress of 1863. When indignant, Dumortier
inspires awe; his brow is clouded, and like a hurricane he sweeps
everything before him. It is the anger of none but noble spirits that
increases our affection for them. Once only I saw Dumortier swell with
just indignation, and I seldom witnessed a spectacle more sublime.

_Ducpetiaux_ was the soul of the congresses at Malines. To singular
talent for organization he joins a burning zeal for the interests of
Catholicity, and to them he devotes every day and hour of his life. No
sacrifice is too great, no labor too exhausting, if it is needed to
further the Catholic cause. As general secretary, he is in
communication with the leading men of Catholic Europe. At his call
Catholics from every country flocked to Malines. Ducpetiaux was the
ruling mind of the congress, for the president had intrusted him, to a
great extent, with its management. Cautious, subtle, and quick, he is
prompt in action, though no great speaker. The most numerous assembly
would be obedient to his nod. Ducpetiaux is no stranger to Germany,
for he was among us at Aix-la-chapelle in 1862, and at Würzburg in
1864, and the whole-souled remarks made by him on the latter occasion
will long ring in our memory. He is an international character, a type
of the nineteenth century. By the interest a man takes in the
movements and ideas of his age, and by his intercourse with prominent
characters, we may easily estimate his influence. To Germany a general
secretary like Ducpetiaux would be of inestimable advantage.

Viscount _de Kuckhove_ must not be passed over in silence. A thorough
well bred gentleman, he is familiar with the nations and languages of
{6} Europe. He is a man of mind, energy, and prudence, and of a
dazzling appearance. He seems the embodiment of elegance. His speeches
sparkle with delicate touches and are distinguished for refinement.
His voice is somewhat shrill and sharp, but melodious withal. In
Belgium the viscount ranks as an orator equal to Dechamps and
Dumortier. His favorite scheme, to the promotion of which he gives his
entire energies, is the closest union among Catholics of all
countries. At times he expresses this idea so forcibly that he is
misunderstood, but in itself the scheme is praiseworthy, and has been
more or less realized in the age of Pius IX.

Baron _von Gerlache_ now demands our attention. He was president of
the congress both in 1863 and in 1864. If I were writing his
biography, how eventful a life would it be my lot to portray! Baron
Gerlache is identified with Belgian history since 1830; for more than
forty years he has been acknowledged by the Catholics in Belgium as
their head. In 1831 he had no mean share in forming the Belgian
constitution, a constitution based on political eclecticism, which at
that time satisfied all parties, and which promised even-handed
justice to all. Gerlache has ever been the loyal defender of this
constitution; Belgium has not a more devoted son. He is a historian
and a statesman. But the Church too claims his affection, the great
and holy Catholic Church. All Belgium listens to his voice, and his
words sometimes become decrees. He speaks with dignity and moderation,
with caution and prudence; he is always guided by reason, and never
loses sight of facts. His energies spent in the course of a life of
seventy-two years, he is no longer understood as well as formerly; his
voice has become too weak to address an assemblage of six thousand
persons; but there is in it something so solemn, so moving, that his
hearers seem spell-bound. His language is appropriate, and at times
approaches sublimity. Baron Gerlache is as much the idol of the
Catholics of Belgium as O'Connell was of the Irish; he is as respected
as Joseph von Grörres was in Germany; he is the Godfrey de Bouillon of
the great Belgian crusade of the nineteenth century. Great men seldom
appear alone; around them are grouped many minor characters, well
worthy of a niche in the temple of fame. The most prominent of those
who have fought side by side with Baron von Gerlache are the Count de
Theux, a veteran in political warfare, generous, able, and experienced
in the art of governing; the Baron della Faille, a man distinguished
for the dignity of his demeanor and the nobility of his character; his
manners are captivating, and his features bear the impress of
calmness, moderation, and judgment; the Viscount Bethune of Ghent, a
venerable old man, whose countenance beams with piety, and who in the
course of a long career has gathered a store of wisdom and experience;
General Capiaumont, a man immovable as a rock, and full of chivalrous
sentiments. These venerable men were seated on each side of the
President von Gerlache. But the other members are no less worthy of
notice. To hear and see such men produces a profound impression.

_Dechamps_, the mighty Dechamps, the lion of Flanders and Brabant,
must not be forgotten. He stands at the head of the Belgian statesmen,
brave as Achilles, the terror of the so-called liberals. Dechamps was
one of the pearls of the last congress; his mere appearance had a
magic effect; the few words he addressed to the assembly before its
organization called forth a storm of applause; he electrifies his
hearers by his bold and sparkling ideas.

We must next call attention to Joseph _de Hemptinne_. The owner of
immense factories, he employs thousands of laborers, and freely
devotes his fortune to the cause of the Church. _He_ also contributed
to the success of {7} the congress of Malines. His employés owe him a
debt of gratitude. Like a father, he cares for their corporal and
spiritual welfare, accompanies them when going to assist at mass, and
with them he says the beads and receives the sacrament. De Hemptinne
is entirely devoted to his country and his faith; his countenance is a
mirror that reflects a pure and guileless soul, deeply imbued with
religious feeling. It has seldom been my good fortune to meet as
amiable a man as Joseph de Hemptinne.

_Perin_ next demands our notice. He fills a professorship at Louvain,
and is well known to the public by his writings. In the congress be
was noted as an adroit business man. Possessing a refined mind, stored
with manifold attainments, he exerts a peculiar, I might almost say
magic, influence on those with whom he deals. His fine piercing eye
beams with knowledge, not mere book learning, but the knowledge of
men, whilst his noble forehead is stamped with the seal of uncommon
intellectual power. In his language as well as in his actions Perin is
extremely graceful; he might not inaptly be styled the _doctor
elegantissimus_. Count _Villermont_ of Brussels is well known in
Germany, and respected for his historical researches. At Malines he
displayed extraordinarily activity. True, he seems to be no favorite
of the graces--the warrior appears in all his actions. On seeing him,
I imagined I beheld the colonel of one of Tilly's Walloon regiments.
This circumstance must surprise us all the more, as the count is not
only a diligent student of history and a generous supporter of the
Catholic press in Belgium, but also a man who takes a lively interest
in every charitable undertaking and in the social amelioration of his
country. Would to God that Germany had many Counts Villermont!
Monsignor de _Ram_ the rector magnificus of the university of Louvain,
was the representative of Belgian science at Malines. Ever since its
establishment, he has been at the head of that institution, which he
has governed with a firm and steady hand. He is the pride of Belgium,
eminent, perhaps the most eminent, among all her sons. His authority
is most ample, and to it we must probably trace the majestic calmness
that distinguishes his whole being, for to me de Ram appears to be the
personification of dignity. At the proper moment, however, he knows
how to display the volubility and affable manners of the Roman
prelate.

Many illustrious Belgian names might still be mentioned, but we will
speak of them in a more appropriate place.

The Belgian congresses differ in some respects from the Catholic
conventions in Germany, for the latter are by no means so well
attended as the former. At the German meetings, the number of members
never exceeded fifteen hundred; only six hundred representatives were
present at the convention of Frankfort in 1863, whilst that of Breslau
in 1849 mustered scarcely two hundred members. In 1863 four thousand,
and in 1864 no less than five thousand, were present at the Malines
congress. The sight of this army, full of fervor and of zeal to do
battle for the faith, involuntarily reminds us of the warriors who
were marshalled under the banners of Godfrey for the purpose of
achieving the conquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Or it recalls
to our mind the great council of Clermont (Nov., 1095), at which the
entire assembly, hurried away by the eloquent appeals of Urban II.,
shouted with one accord "_Deus lo volt_," "God wills it," and swore to
deliver Jerusalem from the tyranny of the Moslems. The members of the
Catholic congresses are the crusaders of the nineteenth century, for
in their own way they too battle for Christendom against its enemies,
falsehood and malice.

Belgium is a small kingdom, Malines the central point where all its
railroads converge; it is a Catholic {8} country, boasting of a
numerous clergy both secular and regular; it is an international
country, the Lombardy of the north. Its position has made it the
connecting link between the Romanic and Teutonic races, between the
continent and England. Thus situated, Belgium is a rendezvous equally
convenient for the German, the Frenchman, and the Briton. Moreover,
Belgium has ever been the battle ground of Germany and France: where
can be found a more suitable spot on which to decide the great
struggle for the freedom of the Church? This explains sufficiently the
numerous attendance of the Belgium congress. In addition to the
foreign element, the congress at Malines calls forth the entire
intellectual strength of Belgium, both lay and clerical No one remains
at home; all are brethren fighting for the same cause; all wish to
imbibe new vigor, to gather new courage for the struggle, for the
congress acts like the spiritual exercises of a mission.

Very different is the situation of Germany. Much larger than Belgium,
its most central point is at a considerable distance from its
extremities. Beside, the conventions do not even meet at the most
convenient point, but change their place of meeting every year.
Suppose, therefore, the convention is held in some city on the French
border, say Freiburg, or Treves, or Aix-la-chapelle, this arrangement
will render it very difficult for the delegates from the opposite
extremity of the empire to attend, the more so since it is not likely
that the German railroad companies will reduce their fares to half
price, as was done by the Belgium government roads. Lastly, our
language, difficult in itself, and especially so to the Romanic races,
who are not distinguished for extensive philological learning, will
prevent many from attending our meetings.

For these reasons, the German reunions are hardly an adequate
representation of the Church militant; comparatively few can attend,
the majority must remain at home. For the most part, our conventions
are chiefly composed of delegates from the district or diocese in
which they are held. Nevertheless, every German tribe has its
representative, and Germany, with its many tribes and states, is by no
means an inappropriate emblem of the European family of nations.

The hall of the _Petit Seminaire_ at Malines, where the Belgian
congress meets, is spacious and well fitted for its purpose; it will
seat six thousand persons. Nevertheless, only such as have admission
tickets, which cannot be obtained except at extravagant prices, can
assist at the sessions. The public in general are excluded, and but
few seats are reserved for ladies. On the other hand, the German
convention, which meets now in one city, then in another, desires and
encourages, above all things, the attendance of the inhabitants of the
city where it meets. In every city it has scattered fruit-producing
seed. At one place, the convention called into existence a society for
the promotion of Christian art; at another, an altar society, a
conference of St. Vincent de Paul, or a social club; and in many
cities it inspired new religious life and activity. In fact, if the
city for some reason cannot assist at the meetings, as was the case in
Würzburg, one of the most important ends of the convention is
defeated. The congress at Malines is too numerous to travel from place
to place; moreover, its meetings are not annual, as are those of the
German conventions.

The congress of Malines, like the German convention, claims to be a
congress of laymen. But though here, too, the principal committee is
mainly composed of laymen, the assembly has almost lost its lay
character. Among the laymen, however, who attend the Belgian congress,
there are many excellent speakers, in fact these are more numerous
than in Germany.

{9}

All the Belgian bishops were present at Malines. Whilst in Germany but
one or two bishops assist at the convention, the daily meetings of the
Malines congress were attended by the primate of Belgium, Cardinal
Sterex, and the bishops of Bruges, Namur, Ghent, Liege, and Doornik.
The bishops took part in the debates, and in 1864 the speech of
Monseigneur Dupanloup was the event of the day, whilst the congress of
1863 had been distinguished by the presence of the illustrious
archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Wiseman. Whenever the bishops
appeared, they were welcomed with bursts of enthusiasm. For a full
week might be witnessed the most friendly intercourse between the
bishops and the other members of the congress, and thus the bonds of
affectionate love already existing between the hierarchy, the clergy,
and the laity were drawn still closer.

The nobility too of Flanders and Brabant, nay of all Belgium, was well
and worthily represented. On the rolls of the Malines congress we meet
the most illustrious Belgian names, names pregnant with historic
interest. The German nobles, on the contrary, have thus far paid
little attention to what is nearest and dearest to mankind, the
interests of humanity and religion. True, the Rhenish-Westphalian
nobility appeared in considerable numbers and displayed praiseworthy
zeal at the conventions of Aix-la-chapelle, Frankfort, and Würzburg,
nevertheless there is still room for improvement. Thus far the
Bavarian and Franconian nobles have taken no part in furthering the
restoration of the Church in Germany, and of the same indifference the
Austrian nobility were accused by Count Frederick von Thun, of Vienna.
Still, what a blessing for the nobility if they devoted their
influence to the service of the Church! The consequence would be the
regeneration of the German nobility. May God grant that the German
nobles, like those of Belgium, will join in cordially promoting our
great and sacred cause. Leaders are not wanting, men of talent,
energy, and devotion, such as the Prince Charles of Löwenstein,
Werthheim, and Prince Charles of Isenburg-Birstein.

The professors of the university at Louvain were not only present at
Malines, but worked with their usual energy and ability in the
different sections of the congress. They presented to the world the
noble spectacle of laymen uniting learning with zeal for religion and
devotion to the Church, a spectacle seldom witnessed in Germany. Of
the two thousand professors and fellows of the twenty-two German
universities, how many are there who, untainted by pride and
self-sufficiency, call the Church their mother? It is the union of
knowledge and piety that produces genuine men, worthy of admiration,
and at Malines such men were not scarce.

At Malines the foreigners were well represented; in the German
conventions but few make their appearance. Twice did France send her
chosen warriors to the congress--the first time in 1863, led by
Montalembert, at present the most brilliant defender of the Church,
and again in 1864, under the Bishop of Orleans, called by some the
Bossuet of our day. In August, 1863, the Tuileries were anxiously
occupied with the speeches held in the Petit Seminaire at Malines, for
in France despotism has gagged free speech, and there a congress of
Catholic Europe is an impossibility; the Caesar's minions would
tolerate no such assembly.

Next to the French delegation, the German, led by A. Reichensperger,
of Cologne, was the most numerous. There might also be seen a noble
band of Englishmen, and their speaker, Father Herman the convert,
seemed another St Bernard preaching the crusade. Spain, Italy,
Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, the United States, Palestine, the
Cape of Good Hope, almost every country on the globe, were represented
at Malines. True, the assembly was by no means {10} as large as the
multitude that met in Rome on June 8, 1862, when Pius IX. saw gathered
around him in St. Peter's church three hundred prelates, thousands of
priests, and forty to fifty thousand laymen, representing every nation
of the earth. Still, the congress at Malines brings to recollection
those immense gatherings of bygone times, where princes and bishops,
nobles and priests, met to provide for the welfare of the nations
committed to their charge.

The Malines congress is in its infancy, still the general committee
has displayed rare ability. All business matters are intrusted to a
few, whilst in Germany there is a great want of order, owing partly to
the inexperience of the local committees, and partly to the scarcity
of men versed in parliamentary proceedings. At the Mayence convention
in 1848, want of preparation might be excused; the subsequent meeting
had not the same claims on our indulgence. The Frankfort reunion in
1863 attempted to remedy the evil and partly succeeded, but until an
efficient general committee be established, many irregularities must
be expected. At Malines the delegates are furnished with a programme
of the questions to be discussed in the different sections; at
Würzburg, on the contrary, the convention seemed at first scarcely to
know the purpose for which it had been convened. In Germany, the
bureau of direction is composed of three presidents and sundry
honorary members and secretaries; at Malines it consists of fifty to
sixty officers of the congress, and the list of honorary
vice-presidents is at times very formidable. In Belgium secret
sessions are unknown, whilst in Germany it often happens that the most
important proceedings are decided upon in secret session, whereas the
public meetings are mainly devoted to the delivery of brilliant
speeches. At Malines the resolutions adopted by the different sections
are passed upon in a short session, seldom attended by more than
one-fifth of all the delegates. One evil at the Belgium congress is
the imperfect knowledge of the German character and of the religious
status of Germany. As the Romanic nations will never learn our
language, it remains for us to supply the deficiency. We must go to
Malines, and expound our views in French both in the sections and
before the full congress. A. Reichensperger pursued the proper course
in the section of Christian art. With surpassing ability he defended
the principles of the Church, triumphantly he came forth from the
contest, and many were prevailed upon to adopt his views. No doubt men
like Reichensperger are not found every day, nevertheless we might
easily send one or two able representatives to every section of the
congress. If some one were to do for Germany what Cardinal Wiseman did
for England in 1863, when he set forth in clear and forcible language
the state of Catholicity in that country, he would deserve the
everlasting gratitude of the Romanic races.

Leaving these considerations aside for the present, one thing is
certain, we must profit by each other's wisdom and experience.
Whatever may be the defects of the Belgian congresses or of the German
conventions, they mark the beginning of a new era for Belgium and
Germany. For when in the spring of 1848 the storm of revolution swept
away dynasties built on diplomacy and police regulations, the
Catholics, quick to take advantage of the liberty granted them, made
use of the freedom of assembly, of speech, and of the press to defend
the interests of religion and of the Church. To Germany the liberty
thus acquired for the Church has proved a blessing. This liberty,
attained after so many years of Babylonian captivity, acted so
forcibly, that many called the day on which the first general
convention met a "second Pentecost, revealing the spirit, the force,
and the charity of Catholicism." We Catholics have learned the
language of freedom, we {11} know the power of free speech. Next to
the liberty of speech, it is their publicity that gives a charm to
these conventions. Whoever addresses these assemblies speaks before
the whole Church, and his words are re-echoed in every country. There
the prince and the mechanic, the master and the journeyman, the
refined gentleman and the child of nature, all alike have the right to
express their opinions. They afford a general insight into the social
and religions condition of our times, disclosing at once their defects
and their fair side. How inspiring it is to see men, thorough men,
with sound principles, full of vital energy, and of experience
acquired in public life, men of intellectual vigor and mental
refinement! Hence arise great and manifold activity, unity of
sentiment, and zeal for the weal of all, in short, feelings of true
brotherly love. Great events arouse deep feelings, and the glory of
one casts its radiance over many. There is something beautiful and
grand in these Catholic reunions. They tend to awaken society to a
consciousness of its nobler feelings and to spread Catholic ideas;
they give strength and unity to the exertions of all who endeavor
seriously to promote the interests of Catholicity; they are, as it
were, a mirror that reflects an exact image of the life of the Church.
Before their influence narrow-mindedness withers; we take an interest
in men and things that had never before come within the scope of our
mental vision, and on our return from the congress to the ordinary
pursuits of life, we forget fossil notions and take up new ideas. As
we feel the heat of the sun after it has set, so long after the
adjournment of each convention do we feel its influence. The eloquent
words of the champion of their faith kindle in the hearts of Catholic
youth a glowing ardor which promises a bright and glorious future. All
are impressed with the conviction that it is only by unflinching
bravery that victories are won.

  "As in nature," says Hergenröther, "individuals are subordinate to
  species, species to genera, and these again to a general unity of
  design, thus in the Catholic Church all submit freely to the triple
  unity of faith, of the sacraments, and of government. Whether they
  come from the north or the south, from beyond the Channel or from
  the banks of the Rhine, from the Scheldt or the Danube, from the
  March or the Leitha, all Catholics of every country and every clime
  are brethren, members of the same family, all speak but one
  language, the lips of all pronounce the same Catholic prayer, and
  all offer to their Heavenly Father the same august sacrifice. Every
  Catholic convention is a symbol of this great, this universal
  society. And as in nature we admire the most astonishing variety,
  and the wonderful display of thousands of hues and tints, so in the
  Church we behold a gathering of countless tribes and nations,
  differing in their institutions, their customs, and in their
  application of the arts and sciences."


Some of my readers, perhaps, are impatient of the praise here lavished
on contemporaries. Fame, it is true, has ever dazzled mortal eyes, but
I am not now dealing with the miserable characters who consider fame
as merchandise that can be bought and sold, who are always panting for
honied words, and who never lose sight of themselves. No; I am in the
presence of Catholic men, purified by Catholic doctrine and
discipline, who hold fame to be vain trumpery. Claiming to be no
infallible judge of men, my aim has been to note down what I have seen
and heard, for I have been at no special pains to study the characters
of those here mentioned.

--------

{12}

From The Month.

NAPOLEON'S MARRIAGE WITH MARIE-LOUISE.


There are many circumstances where even an excess of caution may not
be injudicious, and few things can be more important than to ascertain
the veracity of historical facts. Therefore we would fain preface this
second episode drawn from the memoirs of Cardinal Consalvi, by
pointing out the grounds on which their authenticity rests. We pass
over the editor himself, Monsieur Crétineau-Joly, to arrive at the
account he gives of the manner in which these papers fell into his
possession. Written for the most part by the cardinal during his exile
at Rheims, they were hastily penned, and carefully concealed from the
French officials that surrounded him. When dying, Cardinal Consalvi
intrusted these important documents to friends on whom he could rely.
They have since been transmitted as a sacred deposit from one
fiduciary executor to another. The last clause of his will relates to
this matter, and runs thus:

  "My fiduciary heir (and those who shall succeed him in the
  administration of my property) will take particular care of my
  writings: on the conclave held at Venice in 1799 and 1800; on the
  concordat of 1801; on the marriage of the Emperor Napoleon with the
  Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria; on the different epochs of my
  life and ministry. These five papers (of which some are far
  advanced, and I shall set about the others) are not to be published
  till after the death of the principal personages named therein. As
  the memoirs upon the conclave, the concordat, the marriage, and my
  ministry relate more especially to the Holy See and the pontifical
  government, my fiduciary heir will be solicitous to present them to
  the reigning pontiff; and he will beg the Holy Father to have these
  writings carefully preserved in the archives of the Vatican. They
  may serve the Holy See more than once; especially if the history of
  events therein related comes to be written, or if there were some
  false account to refute. As to the memoirs concerning the different
  epochs of my life, the extinction of my family leaving no one whom
  they may interest, these writings can remain in the hands of my
  fiduciary heir and his successors in the administration of my
  property (or they might go with the others to the archives of the
  Vatican if they are thought worth preserving). My only desire is,
  that if hereafter, as will probably be the case, the lives of the
  cardinals are continued, these pages written by me may then be made
  known. For I wish that nothing contrary to truth should be published
  concerning me; being desirous to preserve a good reputation, as is
  recommended by holy Scripture. With regard to the truth of the facts
  contained in my writings, it suffices me to say: _'Deus scit quia
  non mentior.'_

    "(Signed) E. Card. Consalvi."
    "_Rome, 1st August_, 1822."


In 1858 it was deemed that the time for publication had come. Monsieur
Crétineau-Joly was then staying at Rome; and the papers were confided
to him for that purpose by "those eminent personages who, through
gratitude or respect, had accepted the deposit of Consalvi's
manuscripts." Accordingly, a part did come out the following year, and
the remainder is now before the public. The part which appeared first,
embodied in "_L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Révolution,_" won for M.
Crétineau-Joly in 1861 a flattering brief from Pope Pius IX., which
heads the third edition of the work.

{13}

Nine years had rolled on since the concordat. Ten months after the
Pope's presence had given solemnity to his coronation, Napoleon caused
the French troops to occupy Ancona; Pius VII., having refused to
become virtually a French prefect, was deprived of his temporal
sovereignty, and then at last dragged from his capital to be
transferred a prisoner to Florence, Grenoble, and finally Savona.
Excommunication had been pronounced against those who perpetrated
these deeds of violence. Meanwhile, Napoleon, at the summit of earthly
grandeur, longed for an heir to whom he might transmit his vast
dominions. The repudiation of Josephine offered some difficulty to his
heart, we believe; but his strong will soon triumphed over that and
every other obstacle. Proud Austria stooped to court his preference.
Napoleon, disappointed in his wish for a Russian alliance, but in too
much haste to wait negotiations, let his choice fall with equal
pleasure on a daughter of the house of Hapsburg; Marie-Louise, just
then eighteen, came a willing bride to share the splendors of the
imperial throne. To prepare for her reception, a state comedy had been
enacted at the Tuileries, when Napoleon, holding his good and
well-beloved Josephine by the hand, read from a written paper his
heroic determination to renounce her for the public weal. Poor
Josephine could not get on so well; sobs choked her utterance when she
essayed to read her paper in turn. Convulsive fainting-fits had
followed when Napoleon first broached in private the resolve he had
taken, and called upon her to aid it by consenting to become, instead
of his wife, his best and dearest friend. But all that was over now.

One only difficulty had arisen, which even the imperious will of
Napoleon failed wholly to break. It was the same that had ever
thwarted him. He could destroy all temporal barriers to his ambition;
but the spiritual element would rise up and protest. How cut asunder
the religious tie that linked him to Josephine? For the Church's
blessing had been given to their union ere the Pope would consent to
perform the ceremony of the coronation. Full well Napoleon knew that
he could with an iron hand put down clamor for the present; but would
that dispel the feeling in men's consciences? would that suffice to
establish the legitimacy of a future heir to the throne?

M. Thiers gives a curious account of the whole transaction. Cardinal
Fesch, usually so pliant to all his nephew's wishes, appears to have
been the first to start the difficulty; M. Cambaérès, the chancellor,
transmitted his observations to Napoleon. The latter was highly
indignant, declaring that a ceremony which had taken place privately,
in the chapel of the Tuileries, without any witnesses, and with the
sole view of quieting Josephine's scruples and those of the Pope,
could not be binding. Finally, however, it was agreed to look at the
marriage religiously as well as civilly, and to dissolve both ties.
For both, annulment was preferred to the ordinary form of divorce, as
more honorable for Josephine; and a defect in procedure or a great
state reason were to constitute the grounds of dissolution. It was
resolved that no reference should be made to the Pope in any way, as
his feelings toward Napoleon under present circumstances could not be
friendly. The civil marriage had been easily dissolved by mutual
consent of the parties and for public reasons, as seen above, when
Napoleon and Josephine read their respective papers before the
assembled council. With the views just stated, a committee of seven
bishops was formed to pronounce on the religious tie. They declared
the marriage irregular; as having taken place without witnesses, and
without sufficient consent of the parties concerned. With regard to
the absence of witnesses, M. Thiers puts in a note: "It was through a
false indication given {14} by a contemporary manuscript that I before
mentioned MM. de Talleyrand and Berthier as having been present at the
religious marriage privately celebrated at the Tuileries on the eve of
Napoleon's coronation. The author of this manuscript held the facts
from the lips of the Empress Josephine, and had been led into error.
Official documents which I have since procured enable me to rectify
this assertion."

What more likely than that Josephine told the simple truth, and that
official papers were made to meet future contingencies? If it had not
been intended to annul the marriage by any means, why was the
certificate of it wrested from Josephine?

Agreeably to the decision of the bishops, it was resolved to pursue
the annulment of the marriage as defective in form before the diocesan
officialty in the first instance, and afterward before the
metropolitan authority. Canonical proceedings were quietly instituted,
and witnesses summoned. These witnesses were Cardinal Fesch, MM. de
Talleyrand, Berthier, and Duroc. The first was to testify as to the
forms observed; and the three others as to the nature of the consent
given by both parties concerned. Cardinal Fesch declared he had
received dispensations from the Pope authorizing the omission of
certain forms, and thus justified the absence of witnesses and of the
parish curé. MM. de Talleyrand, Berthier, and Duroc affirmed having
heard from Napoleon several times that he only intended to allow a
mere ceremony for the purpose of reassuring the Pope's conscience and
that of Josephine; but that his formal determination had ever been not
to complete his union with the empress, being unhappily convinced that
he must one day renounce her for the good of his empire.

A strange conscience is here manifested by Napoleon. Josephine does
not appear to have been summoned to tell her tale.

After this inquiry, the ecclesiastical authority recognized that there
had not been sufficient consent; but out of respect to the parties
this ground of nullity was not specially insisted on. The causes
assigned for dissolving the marriage rested on the absence of all
witnesses, and of the parish curé. The general dispensations granted
to Cardinal Fesch were not considered to have superseded these
necessities. M. Thiers says on this point, "En conséquence, le mariage
fut cassé devant les deux jurisdictions diocésaine et métropolitaine,
c'est à dire, en première et en seconde instances, avec le décence
convenable, et la _pleine observance du droit canonique!_ Napoleon
était donc` libre."

M. Thiers makes no reference to the Pope, who surely must be supposed
to have known whether the ceremony performed for the sole purpose of
allaying his and Josephine's scruples were perfectly valid by canon
law. It is not possible to admit that he could have insisted on the
same, and being present on the spot could yet have failed to ascertain
beyond doubt the religious legality of the marriage; more especially
as he could have at once removed the obstacle by a dispensation.

This topic must have been mentioned between the Pope and Cardinal
Consalvi; it is evident from the conduct of the latter that he and
many other cardinals considered the marriage with Josephine as binding
in a religious point of view. The character of Consalvi precludes the
possibility of supposing any petty motives for his opposition;
conscience alone could have dictated it. Evidently he yielded as far
as he could; and what he withheld from duty was with manifest peril to
himself, and, humanly speaking, even to the Church, whose interests
were so dear to him. As to the number of cardinals holding opposite
views, or at least acting as if they did, the weakness of human
nature, alas, and the selfishness of human interests, too well explain
that {15} circumstance. Grave historians and writers of genius do not
always take sufficient account of _conscience_ in their estimate of
men and things, and thence flow many errors. Those who are politicians
also, from their wide knowledge of human vices, fall still more
readily into this mistake. Thus Napoleon probably never believed the
Pope to be in earnest, of at least his mind could not hold such an
idea long together. To himself state policy was all, or nearly all.
His negotiations with the Holy See, his appreciations of Consalvi, all
bear the stamp of that starting-point; to him it was a trial of
strength in will, or of skill in diplomacy: he ignored conscience. In
the same way, a mind eminently lucid as that of M. Thiers judges facts
in a very different manner than he would do if he could see that with
some minds conscience is the spring of action. If this were not the
case, he could not, while speaking of the Pope with due respect, pass
over his motives so slightly; nor would he construe as he does
Consalvi's conduct with regard to the marriage and that of the other
_black cardinals_. The opinions of such men deserved to raise a doubt
in the mind of the historian, and to lead to investigation that might
have had other results. We purposely lay stress on this matter because
M. Thiers is popular with a large class of readers, who justly admire
his talent, but who erroneously consider him a fair exponent on
ecclesiastical affairs. He does respect religion; but evidently fails
to apprehend the idea of men constantly swayed by duty and conscience;
whose judgments may err, as all things human do, but whose
supernatural principle of action ever lives.

Toward the close of January, 1810, the conclusion of a matrimonial
alliance to take place between Napoleon and the Archduchess
Marie-Louise was made public in Paris. The ceremony was to be
performed by proxy at Vienna in the early part of March; the Archduke
Charles being chosen to represent Napoleon on this occasion, and
Berthier was the ambassador extraordinary named to ask formally the
hand of the princess. The subsequent fêtes at Paris were to vie in
splendor with those given at Vienna. Napoleon wished to surround
himself with all the members of the Sacred College; a large number had
already been summoned to Paris soon after the Pope's captivity; they
had been ordered to partake in the festivities of the capital, and we
regret to say that they complied. Rome, it must not be forgotten, was
now called a French provincial town; Napoleon was progressing on to
become the emperor of the West, with the Pope, the spiritual father of
Christendom, as his satellite. The other cardinals in Rome were called
to Paris. Some found pretexts for delaying obedience; Cardinals
Consalvi and di Pietro replied that they could not think of leaving
without the Pope's permission, but would immediately refer to him, at
the same time declining the pension offered in Paris. After the lapse
of a few days an express order enjoined them to quit Rome within
twenty-four hours. They alleged that no answer had yet arrived from
the Pope. But at the expiration of the period fixed, French soldiers
visited their houses to carry them off by force. Yielding to violence
they departed, and reached Paris together on the 20th January, 1810.

Twenty-nine cardinals, including Fesch, were then assembled in the
French capital. How they should act with regard to the new marriage
became soon a subject of grave consultation for them. Consalvi and di
Pietro had not long arrived when it was publicly announced. Napoleon
seemed disposed to treat them with courtesy. Consalvi had his audience
six days after his arrival. Five other cardinals, new comers also,
were presented at the same time. They were ranged together on one
side, while the other cardinals remained opposite. Further on were the
nobles, ministers, kings. {16} queens, princes, and princesses. When
the emperor appeared, Cardinal Fesch stepped forward and began
presenting the five. "Cardinal Pignatelli," said he. "Neapolitan,"
replied the emperor, and passed on. "Cardinal di Pietro," continued
Fesch. The emperor stopped a moment, and said, "You have grown fat; I
remember having seen you here with the Pope at my coronation."
"Cardinal Saluzzo," said Fesch, presenting the third. "Neapolitan,"
replied the emperor, and walked on. "Cardinal Desping," said Fesch, as
the fourth saluted. "Spanish," replied the emperor. "From Majorca,"
cried Desping, in alarm. But Napoleon had already reached Consalvi,
and ere Cardinal Fesch could say the name, he exclaimed, in the
kindest tone, and standing still, "Oh, Cardinal Consalvi; how thin you
have become! I should hardly have recognized you." "Sire," replied
Consalvi, "years accumulate. Ten have passed since I had the honor of
saluting your majesty." "That is true," resumed Napoleon; "it is now
almost ten years since you came for the concordat. We made that treaty
in this very hall; but what purpose has it served? All has vanished in
smoke. Rome would lose all. It must be owned, I was wrong to displace
you from the ministry. If you had continued in that post, things would
not have been carried so far."

Listening only to the fear of having his actions misconstrued by the
public, Consalvi instantly replied with energy, "Sire, if I had
remained in that post, I should have done my duty." Napoleon looked at
him fixedly, made no answer, and then going backward and forward
through the half-circle formed by the cardinals, began a long
monologue, enumerating a number of grievances against the Pope and
against Rome for not having adhered to his will by refusing to adopt
the system offered. At length, being near Consalvi, he stopped, and
said a second time, "No, if you had remained at your post, things
would not have gone so far." Again Consalvi replied, "Your majesty may
believe that I should have done my duty." Napoleon gave the cardinal
another fixed glance, and then without reply recommenced his walks,
continuing his former discourse. At last he stopped near Cardinal di
Pietro, and said for the third time, "If Cardinal Consalvi had
remained secretary of state, things would not have gone so far."
Consalvi was at the other end of the little group of five, and need
not have answered; but earnest to exonerate himself from all
suspicion, he advanced toward Napoleon, and seizing his arm,
exclaimed, "Sire, I have already assured your majesty that had I
remained in that post, I should certainly have done my duty." The
emperor no longer containing himself, and with eyes steadily bent on
Consalvi, burst forth into these words, "Oh! I repeat it, your duty
would not have allowed you to sacrifice spiritual to temporal things."
After this he turned his back on Consalvi, and going over to the
cardinals opposite, asked if they had heard his words. Then returning
to the five, he observed that the College of Cardinals was now nearly
complete in Paris, and that they would do well to see among themselves
if there was anything to propose or regulate concerning Church
affairs. "Let Cardinal Consalvi be of the committee," added Napoleon;
"for if, as I suppose, he is ignorant of theology, he knows well the
science of politics."

At a second and third audience, Napoleon showed similar kindness to
Consalvi, always asking after his health, and remarking that he was
getting fatter now. The cardinal only answered by deep salutations.

Principally through Consalvi's influence, the cardinals, in a
collective letter addressed to the emperor, declined acting in any way
while separated from their head, the Pope. Napoleon had angrily torn
their letter to pieces; but even this opposition to his will had not
changed his courtesy {17} toward Consalvi, as seen above. He was bent
on creating a schism between them and the Pope. Fesch, his ready
instrument, proposed several steps as beneficial to religion, but the
majority of cardinals refused to do anything. Unlike many of his
colleagues, Consalvi held aloof from all society. Beside the
prohibition of the Pope, who at Rome had forbidden the members of the
Sacred College to assist at festivities while the Church was in
mourning, he considered it unworthy conduct for them to take part in
amusements while their head remained in captivity, or to seem to court
one who had brought such calamities on the Holy See.

While invited to discuss ecclesiastical matters in committee for
presentation to the emperor, the cardinals were not by any means
requested to give an opinion on the new marriage. But it became very
necessary that they should have one as the time approached for the
arrival of Marie-Louise, and for the celebration of the marriage
ceremonies in Paris.

She reached Compiègne on the 27th of March. Napoleon, to spare her the
embarrassment of a public meeting, had surprised her on the road, and
they entered the little town together. A few days after they proceeded
to St. Cloud. Four ceremonies were to take place. First there was to
be a grand presentation on the 31st of March, at St. Cloud, of all the
bodies in the state, the nobles and other dignitaries. The next
morning the civil marriage was to be celebrated also at St Cloud. The
2d of April was fixed for the grand entrance of the sovereigns into
Paris, and for the solemnity of the religious marriage in the chapel
of the Tuileries; the following morning another presentation of the
state bodies and the court was to take place before the emperor and
the new empress seated on their thrones.

Twenty-seven cardinals had taken counsel together; for Fesch, as
grand-almoner to the emperor, was out of the question, and Caprara was
dying. They had decided, after deliberate research, that matrimonial
cases between sovereigns belong exclusively to the cognizance of the
Holy See, which either itself pronounces sentence at Rome, or else
through the medium of the legates names local judges for instituting
the affair.

According to Consalvi's account, the diocesan officialty of Paris on
this occasion refused at first to intervene, on the ground of
incompetency; but the emperor caused competency to be declared by a
committee of bishops assembled at Paris, and presided over by Cardinal
Fesch. The words, however, "_declared competent,_" were not eventually
inserted in the documents drawn up of the meeting; it was pretended
instead that access could not be had to the Pope. But this pretended
impossibility could of course arise only from the will of Napoleon.

Consalvi assures us that the preamble used by the committee in the
first instance ran thus:

"The officialty, being declared competent, and without derogating from
the right of the sovereign pontiff, to whom access is for the moment
forbidden, proclaims null and void the marriage contracted with the
Empress Josephine, the reasons for such decision being stated in the
sentence." But when it was remarked how prejudicial this avowal would
be, the government made it disappear from among the acts of the
ecclesiastical curia. For it had been previously arranged that all
papers relative to this affair should be submitted to government.
According to general report in Paris, some of the papers were burnt,
and others changed. A person belonging to the officialty succeeded,
however, in secretly saving a part, and especially the beginning of
the sentence, which was as given above.

Consalvi does not so much as name the validity or invalidity of the
marriage; the point to establish for him was that the right of
cognizance {18} belonged solely to the Holy See. The incident he
mentions of the papers destroyed has no other importance than as
showing how conscience at first pronounced and how a strong hand
silenced its expression.

Thirteen cardinals resolved to brave any consequences rather than
consent to a dereliction of duty; for their oath, when raised to the
purple, binds them to maintain at all hazards the rights of the
Church. The names of these thirteen were: Cardinals Mattei,
Pignatelli, della Somaglia, di Pietro, Litta, Saluzzo, Ruffo Scilla,
Brancadoro, Galeffi, Scotti, Gabrielli, Opizzoni, and Consalvi. The
other fourteen held different shades of opinion, and only agreed in
deciding not to oppose the emperor.

The sole means by which the thirteen could protest, under the
circumstances, was not to sanction the new marriage by appearing at
the ceremonies. This resolve was accordingly taken, and the fourteen
were apprised. Mattei, the oldest cardinal among the thirteen, called
upon most of the fourteen to acquaint them with the resolution; other
members of the thirteen likewise spoke of it to their colleagues; but
no result was produced on the minds of the fourteen. To the shame of
the latter it must be said that they afterward untruly declared
themselves ignorant of the line of conduct which the thirteen had
intended to adopt. Consalvi positively asserts that such was not the
case. The thirteen spoke with the caution commanded by prudence on so
delicate a matter, not seeking ostensibly to prevent the others from
following their own opinions, and anxious to avoid giving any pretext
for the accusation of exciting a feeling against the government. But
this reserve did not prevent them from clearly expressing their
intention to uphold the rights of the Pope and of the Holy See by
abstaining from all participation in the marriage ceremonies.

Though called upon by duty to act in the way mentioned, the thirteen
cardinals naturally wished to avoid, as much as possible, wounding
Napoleon. With this view Mattei was deputed to seek an interview with
Fesch, for the purpose of informing him what course they felt obliged
to pursue. At the same time Mattei gave him to understand that all
publicity might be avoided, or any bad effect on the public obviated,
by addressing partial, instead of general, invitations to the
cardinals. This was to be done with regard to the senate and the
legislative body, and, indeed, the smallness of the enceinte offered a
plausible pretext; for it was impossible that all entitled to appear
on the occasion could be present. Cardinal Fesch evinced great
surprise and anger, endeavoring to reason Mattei out of this view; but
finding it was of no use, he promised to speak to the emperor, who was
then at Compiègne.

According to Fesch's account, Napoleon flew into a violent passion on
learning the decision come to by the thirteen; but he declared that
they would never dare to carry out their plot, and utterly rejected
the idea of not inviting all the members of the Sacred College.

At the proper time a special invitation reached each cardinal. There
was no possibility of escape. To feign illness or invent a pretext
they rightly deemed would be unworthy.

Nevertheless, anxious as they were to avoid offence, when they came to
consider more closely the nature of the different ceremonies, it was
considered by some that they might, without failing in duty, assist at
the two presentations that were to take place before and after the
marriages. Consalvi was among those opposed to this view on grounds of
honor at least; but, not to provoke any further schism in their ranks,
the minority yielded, and this mode of proceeding was decided on. Both
marriages were to be eschewed; but they would assist at both
presentations. The cardinals hoped thus to prove that they did all
{19} they possibly could to please Napoleon consistently with their
sense of duty. It was also considered highly desirable to shield the
fourteen from remark as much as could be, for it was a grievous matter
to right-minded men to see the honor and dignity of the Sacred College
thus abased.

Accordingly, on the evening fixed, all the cardinals went to St Cloud.
Together with the other dignitaries, they were in the grand gallery
waiting the arrival of Napoleon and his new empress, when Fouché, the
minister of police, came up. Consalvi had been very intimate with him,
but having paid scarcely any visits since his return to Paris, from
the motives stated above, they had not hitherto met. Fouché drew him
aside, and asked with much cordiality and interest if it were true
that several cardinals refused to be present at the emperor's
marriage.

Consalvi was silent at first, not wishing to name any one in
particular. But when Fouché insisted, saying that, as minister of
police, he knew of course all about it, and only asked through
politeness, Consalvi replied that he belonged to the number.

"Oh, what do you say?" exclaimed Fouché. "The emperor was speaking of
it this morning, and in his anger named you; but I affirmed that it
was not likely you should be of the set."

Fouché then pointed out the dangerous consequences of such a
proceeding, saying that the non-intervention of the cardinals would
seem to blame the state, the emperor, and even to attack the
legitimacy of the future succession of the throne. He tried to
persuade Consalvi to be present himself at leasts or if the whole
thirteen would not come to the civil marriage, to attend, however, the
religious ceremony. Consalvi could not of course consent; but he told
the efforts they had made to avoid invitations for all, and promised,
at Fouché's request, to repeat this conversation to the twelve.

Their discourse was interrupted by the appearance of the emperor and
empress. Napoleon came in holding Marie-Louise by the hand, and he
pointed out each person to her by name as he drew near. On approaching
the members of the Sacred College, he exclaimed, "Ah, the cardinals!"
and presented them, one after the other, with great courtesy, naming
each, and mentioning some qualification. Thus Consalvi was designated
as he who arranged the concordat.

It was said afterward that Napoleon's kindliness had been intended to
win them over.

They all bowed in return, without speaking. When this ceremony was
over, the thirteen returned to Paris and met at the house of Cardinal
Mattei. Consalvi then related his conversation with Fouché; they saw
clearly what there might be to apprehend, but none wavered in the
resolution taken.

The following day, the civil marriage was celebrated at St Cloud. The
thirteen cardinals abstained from appearing. Of the fourteen, eleven
were present: one was ill, and two, seized with tardy misgiving, said
they were.

Monday, the 2d of April, had been fixed for the triumphal entrance of
the sovereigns into Paris, and for the religious marriage in the
chapel of the Tuileries. A successful representation of the arch of
triumph was made; afterward reproduced in the one at the top of the
Champs Elysées. Napoleon passed under it, with Marie-Louise at his
side, in a carriage that afforded a fair view of both to the
spectators. Arrived at the gate of the Tuileries, on the Place de la
Concorde, they alighted, and he led her through the gardens till they
arrived at the chapel of the palace, prepared for the nuptial
ceremony.

It was crowded densely, and many more persons longed to enter, but
there were thirteen vacant seats!

It had been hoped that Fouché's words would produce some effect, and
{20} that the thirteen cardinals might, at least, be induced to attend
the religions marriage. Their seats had been left up to the last
moment; but as Napoleon drew near, they were hastily removed. His eye,
however, fell immediately on the group of cardinals, always
conspicuous from their red costume, and as he marked the smallness of
their number, anger flashed from his countenance.

Indeed, only twelve cardinals, including Fesch, were present One was
really too ill to go, and two others, as before, pretended sickness.
But, as they wrote to this effect, they were considered as absent from
accident. And they encouraged this version.

During both these days and nights, the thirteen remained at home,
carefully abstaining, as became their position, from all semblance of
participation in any rejoicings.

On the morrow was to take place the final ceremony of presentation to
both sovereigns seated on their thrones. All the cardinals went, and,
according to injunction, in full costume. Two hours passed waiting for
the doors of the throne-room to be opened.

Then the stream began to move toward the spot in the middle of the
grand gallery that connects the Tuileries with the Louvre, where
Napoleon and Marie-Louise were seated on their respective thrones,
surrounded by the members of the imperial family and officers of
state.

The crowd entered slowly, one by one, according to the rule of
precedence prescribed, and each individual, stopping before the
throne, made a profound obeisance, passing out afterward by the door
of the saloon beyond.

In conformity with French etiquette at that time, the senators were
first introduced; and Fesch had the littleness to go in with them,
rather than with the Sacred College. After these followed the
councillors of state and the legislative body, and then came the turn
of the cardinals. But at this moment, Napoleon, with imperious
gesture, beckoned an officer toward him, and gave a hasty order to
have all the cardinals who had not been present at the marriage
immediately expelled from the ante-chamber, as he should not
condescend to receive them. The messenger was precipitately quitting
the hall, when Napoleon, with rapid change of thought, called him
back, and ordered that only Cardinals Opizzoni and Consalvi should be
turned out But the officer, confused, did not clearly seize this
second order, and imagining that the two cardinals named were to be
more particularly designated, acted accordingly.

The scene that followed may be conceived. It rises up vividly. The
order for expulsion was as publicly intimated as it had been publicly
given; and scores of eager eyes turned on the thirteen culprits so
ignominiously dismissed. The report of what was coming got whispered
from hall to hall, and flew on to the numerous groups that thronged
even the vestibule and staircase; if the buzz ceased as the cardinals
drew near, it followed swiftly on their receding steps, while they
traversed each apartment. Friends began to tremble for their personal
safety: the bloody tragedy of Vincennes rose up in remembrance to many
an anxious heart.

Their equipages had disappeared in the confusion of the day. The
Parisian crowd were astounded that morning to mark thirteen rich
scarlet dresses wending about in search of conveyances or homes.

Within the palace, meanwhile, precedence, contrary to custom, had been
given the ministers; but after them the other cardinals were at length
introduced. As each, in turn, drew near the thrones, and, not feeling
very pleasantly we may believe, made his respectful salutation.
Napoleon was giving way to a rapid flow of violent language. Sometimes
he addressed the empress, or sometimes those standing near. The Sacred
College, as a body, came in for its share of abuse; but two cardinals
were special objects {21} of reproachful epithets. "He might spare the
others," said Napoleon, "as obstinate theologians full of prejudice;
but Cardinals Consalvi and Opizzoni he never could forgive." Opizzoni
was ungrateful, owing, as he did, to him (Napoleon) the archbishopric
of Bologna, and the cardinal's hat; but Consalvi was the most guilty
of all. "Consalvi," cried the emperor, warming as he went on, "does
not act from theological prejudice: he is incapable of that; but he
hates me for having caused his fall from the ministry. And this is now
his revenge. He is a deep politician, and he seeks now to lay a subtle
snare, whereby hereafter to attack the legitimacy of a future heir to
the throne."

Marie-Louise, accustomed to the stalely etiquette of Austria, must
have been rather surprised at this outburst. Perhaps her own destiny,
as bride of that crowned soldier of fortune, did not then look quite
so brilliant to her. It is easy to fancy courtiers around with their
varied shades of amaze, horror, and fear at such delinquency, and its
consequences, painted on their faces.

Consalvi tells us in his memoir on the marriage, and also in that of
his private life, that the fury of Napoleon on the day of the
religious ceremony had been so intense, that on coming out from chapel
he actually ordered three cardinals to be shot, afterward confining
the sentence to Consalvi alone. And the cardinal each time says that
he probably owed his life to the intervention of Fouché.

But in a note which M. Crétineau-Joly mentions as detached from the
memoirs, Consalvi writes thus of Napoleon: "In his fits of
anger,--often more feigned than real, especially at first,--he would
threaten _to have persons shot,_ as he frequently did with regard to
myself; but I am persuaded that he never would have signed the order
for execution. More than once I have heard his devoted followers and
intimate confidants relate that the murder of the Duke d'Enghien had
been a surprise rather than a deliberate act of will. I should not be
astonished at the truth of this, for it was a useless crime, leaving
only shame and remorse, which Bonaparte might easily have spared
himself."

The contradiction in these passages is remarkable. M. Crétineau-Joly
does not give the date of the note, so we are reduced to conjecture.
It seems likely to have been written at a later period, when the
downfall of Napoleon would naturally call forth from Consalvi the
deepest charity and most lenient interpretations. The two memoirs, it
will be remembered, were penned during the cardinal's captivity at
Rheims.

The day after their expulsion, those among the cardinals who were
bishops had orders to resign their sees immediately, under pain of
imprisonment. They signed the deed as required, but with the proviso
of the Pope's consent. At eight o'clock on the same evening each one
received a short note from the minister of public worship, enjoining
him to wait on that functionary in an hour's time, for the purpose of
hearing the emperors' orders.

The whole thirteen met in the minister's ante-chamber, and were
introduced together to his cabinet. Fouché was with him, and from a
kindly intention, says Consalvi. Both seemed grieved at the business
they had to transact.

As soon as Fouché perceived Consalvi, he exclaimed,

"Ah, cardinal, I warned you the consequences would be terrible. What
pains me most is that you should be of the number."

Consalvi thanked him for his sympathy, but said he was prepared for
all that might follow.

The thirteen were then made to sit down in a circle, and the minister
of public worship began a long discourse, which could not much have
benefitted the culprits, as only three understood French. The
substance of it was that they had committed a {22} state crime, and
were guilty of treason, having conspired against the emperor. The
proof of this lay in the secrecy they had observed toward him (the
minister) and toward the other cardinals. They ought to have spoken to
him as their superior, and he would have enlightened them with regard
to their erroneous idea of the privative right belonging to the Pope
in matrimonial cases between sovereigns. Their crime, he said, might
have the most serious consequences on the public tranquillity, unless
the emperor succeeded in obviating them, for their mode of acting had
tended to nothing less than to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the
succession to the throne. He concluded by declaring that the emperor,
judging the cardinals to be rebels guilty of conspiracy, had ordered
them to be informed:

1. That they were from that moment deprived of all their property,
ecclesiastical and patrimonial, for the sequestration of which
measures had been already taken.

2. That his majesty no longer considered them as cardinals, and
forbade them henceforth to wear any ensigns of that dignity.

3. That his majesty reserved to himself the right of afterward
deciding with regard to their persons.

And the minister gave them to understand that a criminal action would
be brought against some.

Even going back as fully as we can to the ideas of the times, there is
something equally startling and absurd in the notion of a lay minister
of state undertaking to enlighten princes of the church on matters of
canon law, coolly naming himself as their superior, and treating them
to a long homily on their duties and misdemeanors. The same
pretensions are doubtless reproduced in all revolutionary times; but
still the absurdity strikes us forcibly as we read this account.

Consalvi replied that they were erroneously accused of conspiracy and
rebellion--crimes unworthy of the purple, and also of their individual
characters. No secret, he said, had been made of their opinion to the
other cardinals, though it had been expressed without seeking to gain
proselytes. If they had not communicated with the minister, they had
nevertheless spoken quite openly to Cardinal Fesch, their own
colleague and the emperor's uncle, begging him to lay their
determination, founded solely on motives of conscience, before
Napoleon. Consalvi also explained how they endeavored to avoid all the
blame now laid to their charge by requesting partial invitations,
which request, if complied with, would have prevented their views from
being made public. The other two cardinals who could speak French
likewise expressed themselves in similar terms.

Both ministers appeared convinced, and, regretting the emperor had not
himself heard their defence, suggested that they should write it out
for his perusal. No difficulty was made in complying with this
proposal. The ministers then said that the cardinals must not,
however, bring forward the real motive of their absence, namely, the
Pope's right, as that was just what irritated Napoleon; but lay the
cause to sickness, or some excuse of that kind. The cardinals declined
taking this course, as incompatible with their duty.

Here we must remark that the whole scene appears to us got up to make
them yield at last; but Consalvi, ever charitable, says not a word to
that effect.

One of the ministers then tried to make out a draft of a letter for
the emperor that should be satisfactory to both parties; and one of
the cardinals had the imprudence to copy these rough sketches, for the
purpose of comparing them and seeing afterward what could be done. The
minister insisted much on having the paper then and there drawn up, as
Napoleon was going to travel, and would leave Paris immediately. But
Consalvi, pleading his colleagues' ignorance of the French language,
{23} succeeded at length in obtaining consent for them to retire
together and deliberate among themselves.

It was eleven o'clock when they withdrew; and some of the cardinals
had the further imprudence to assure the ministers that the
expressions used by the latter had been faithfully copied.

As soon as Consalvi was alone with his colleagues and could speak
freely, he showed them the full meaning of the French terms suggested,
and the impropriety, to say the least, of using them. All agreed to
hold staunchly to their duty. But now appeared the further difficulty,
created by having copied the ministers' words, which it would thus be
impossible to seem to forget. Fouché was to see Napoleon soon after
leaving them, and would doubtless hasten to assure him that the
cardinals were writing a letter conformable to his wishes. Thus
Napoleon, prepared for submission, would give way to tenfold anger on
finding the reverse.

The letter was dictated by conscience alone, but its expressions were
as much as possible tempered by prudence. Every word was carefully
weighed; and five hours passed in drawing it up. By its tenor, they
sought to exculpate themselves from all suspicion of revolt and
treason, saying that the real cause of their absence was because the
Pope was excluded from the matter; that they had not pretended thereby
to institute themselves judges, or cast any doubts among the public
either on the validly of the first marriage, or the legitimacy of the
children that might follow the second. In conclusion, they assured
Napoleon of their submission and obedience, without making any request
for the restoration of their property or their purple. The thirteen
signed by order of seniority in the cardinalate.

Cardinal Litta immediately conveyed this document to the minister of
public worship, who pronounced himself tolerably satisfied. But
Napoleon quitted Paris the next day sooner than had been anticipated,
and without giving the audience to the minister which had been agreed
on. Consequently the latter could not give the letter then, and he
informed the cardinals that they must therefore conform to the orders
already received. Accordingly they laid aside the ensigns of their
dignity, and hence arose the designation of _black_ and _red_
cardinals. Their property was immediately confiscated, and their
revenues, contrary to custom, were thrown into the public treasury.

After a short excursion in the Netherlands, Napoleon returned to
Paris. Meanwhile the cardinals had put down their carriages, and hired
more modest abodes, better suited to their fallen fortunes.
Contradictory rumors were afloat abroad as to their fate. Two months
and a half passed ere any change took place.

But on the 10th of June each cardinal received a note from the
minister of public worship, appointing a time for him to call; two
cardinals being designated for each successive hour. Cardinals
Consalvi and Brancadoro were those summoned for the first hour. When
they reached his cabinet, the minister informed them that they were to
set out for Rheims in twenty-four hours, and to remain there until
further orders should be given. Passports were in readiness. All the
other cardinals successively received a similar sentence; the only
difference lay in the place of abode. They were exiled by twos, and
care was taken to separate those supposed to be intimate. The minister
offered to each cardinal fifty louis for the expenses of his journey;
some accepted, and others declined; Consalvi being among the latter.
Soon after their arrival in the towns designated, each cardinal had an
intimation from the minister that a monthly pension of 250f. would be
duly paid. Consalvi refused to profit by this allowance, and he thinks
the others did the same. On the 10th of January, 1811, both he and his
{24} companion received a note from the sub-prefect of Rheims,
requesting them to call and give information on certain orders that
had arrived from the supreme authority in Paris. The two cardinals
went. The sub-prefect then informed them that he was required to ask
what sums they had received for their subsistence since their exile at
Rheims, through what conveyance or persons, from whom, and to what
amount Consalvi was able to answer that he had not accepted a penny
from any one. "But how then do you live, since the government has
seized all your property?" "My banker at Rome sends the necessary sums
through his correspondent at Paris. Under other circumstances I would
have borrowed from my friends."

This measure of the government was caused by irritation on learning
that charitable persons had united to make up a general fund every
month for the support of the cardinals, and it was wished to put a
stop to the proceeding. Consalvi concludes the memoirs of his private
life about this time, expressing a fear that the business mentioned
above will not end with the interrogatory, but may bring about
disastrous consequences. He also says, "We live in exile; foregoing
all society, as becomes our situation and that of the Holy See and the
sovereign pontiff our head. The red cardinals, I am told, remain in
Paris, and go much in the world, but are not esteemed for their late
conduct."

It is curious to contract with the preceding account the manner in
which M. Thiers disposes of this same episode. "On the day of the
emperor's marriage," says that historian, "thirteen out of
twenty-eight cardinals failed to be present at the ceremony. The
motive, which they dared not assign, but which it was desired to make
the public understand, was that, without the Pope, Napoleon could not
divorce, and thence, the first marriage still subsisting, the second
was irregular. This motive was unfounded, since no divorce had taken
place (for in effect divorce being forbidden by the Church could only
have been pronounced by the Pope), but simply annulment of the
marriage with Josephine, pronounced by the ordinary after all the
degrees of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had been exhausted."  [Footnote 1]

  [Footnote 1: M. Thiers here falls into a grave error: divorce being
  contrary to the law of God, no Pope can pronounce one. The question
  was whether Josephine were lawfully married or not.]

In reality, however, this conduct of the thirteen cardinals, acting in
conformity with their head, Pope Pius VII., though cut off from all
communication with him, was the protest of the Church against temporal
despotism in things spiritual. The Church was in chains, but God had
left her a living voice to proclaim her rights. Consalvi never for one
instant quits his ground--the Church's right of judgment--to give a
shadow of personal opinion on the matter in question. It is a fine
spectacle also to see him with his few colleagues, deserted by so many
of their own body, quietly discussing what degree of excommunication
Napoleon had incurred, whether all contact was forbidden, while they
inhabited his very capital, and knew well the stem nature of that
inexorable will.

The black cardinals continued to inhabit their different places of
exile until Napoleon, working on the weakness and the affections of
the aged pontiff, drew from him that semblance of a second concordat
dated the 25th of January, 1813. Then, restored to liberty, they
hastened to the feet of Pius VII.; and found him overwhelmed with
grief at the concessions he had made, at what he called his guilt.
Truly he had but yielded in his feebleness to the unceasing
persuasions of the red cardinals, backed by Napoleon's promises in
favor of the Church, and to the charm exercised by that mighty genius
when he stooped to court affection. The proviso made that the new
concordat, to become binding, should first be submitted to the Sacred
College assembled, {25} happily afforded the opportunity of annulling
it. That was fully and worthily done by the papal letter addressed to
the emperor on the 24th of March following.

When the course of events in Europe brought about such a change in his
own position, Napoleon, still powerful notwithstanding, began to wish
for a reconciliation with the Holy See. On the 23d of January, 1816,
Pius VII. was allowed to set out for Rome, restored to his paternal
sovereignty. Strangely, however, Consalvi was not permitted to
accompany him. He received instead a note from the minister of public
worship, informing him that orders would shortly be transmitted
concerning himself, the execution of which admitted neither appeal nor
yet delay.

And accordingly, two days after the Pope's departure, a letter came
from the Duc de Rovigo, minister of police, telling Consalvi that he
was condemned to another exile in the town of Béziers, and was to set
out immediately for that destination in the strictest incognito, and
escorted during the whole journey by an officer of gendarmerie.

Nothing more is said of this incident. Consalvi does not carry his
memoirs beyond 1812. Two notes found among his correspondence, and
signed by the functionaries above named, reveal the orders for this
second exile. Napoleon abdicated on the 4th of April, 1816. On the
19th of May, in the same year, Pius VII. officially recalled Consalvi
to his office of secretary of state.

Thus did Providence terminate the struggle between the spiritual and
temporal powers; thus closed for Consalvi the exile consequent on his
opposition to the imperial marriage.

On the very day that restored Consalvi to his councils, Pius VII.
learned that all the nations of Europe refused to receive within their
territories the proscribed family of Napoleon. Rome opened her gates.

Madame Mère, as she was called, the mother of Napoleon, wrote thus to
Consalvi, 27th May, 1818:

  "I wish and I ought to thank your eminence for all you have done in
  our favor since the burden of exile has fallen on my children and
  myself. My brother, Cardinal Fesch, did not leave me ignorant of the
  generous way in which you received the request of _mom grand et
  malheureux proscrit de St. Hélène_. He said that on learning the
  emperor's prayer, so just and so Christian, you had hastened to
  interpose with the English government, and to seek out priests both
  worthy and able. I am truly the mother of sorrows; and the only
  consolation left me is to know that the Holy Father forgets the
  past, and remembers solely his affection for us, which he testifies
  to all the members of my family.

  "My sons, Lucian and Louis, who are proud of your unchanging
  friendship toward them, have been much touched likewise by all that
  the Pope and your eminence have done, unknown to us, to preserve our
  tranquillity when menaced by the different powers of Europe. We find
  support and an asylum in the pontifical states only; and our
  gratitude is as great as the benefit. I beg your eminence to place
  the expression of it at the feet of the holy pontiff, Pius VII. I
  speak in the name of all my proscribed family and especially in the
  name of him now dying by inches on a desert rock. His holiness and
  your eminence are the only persons in Europe who endeavor to soften
  his misfortunes, or who would abridge their duration. I thank you
  both with a mother's heart,--and remain always, eminence, yours very
  devotedly and most gratefully,
      "Madame."

Another letter, from the ex-king of Holland, father of the present
emperor of the French, addressed to Cardinal Consalvi, still further
demonstrates the charity shown by Rome, and suggests many reflections.
With these extracts from Consalvi's {26} correspondence as a sequel,
we shall close our episode of the imperial marriage; the circumstances
they recall form a not uninstructive commentary on an event that
seemed to place Napoleon at such a high point of worldly greatness.

  "Eminence,--Following the advice of the Holy Father and of your
  eminence, I have seen Mgr. Bernetti, who is specially charged with
  the affair in question; and he, with his usual frankness, explained
  the nature of the complaints made by foreign powers against the
  family of the Emperor Napoleon. The great powers, and principally
  England, reproach us with always conspiring. They accuse us of being
  mixed up, implicitly or explicitly, with all the plots in existence;
  they even pretend that we abuse the hospitality granted us by the
  Pope to foment divisions in the pontifical states, and stir up
  hatred against the august person of the sovereign.

  "I was fortunately able to furnish Mgr. Bernetti with proofs to the
  contrary; and he will himself tell you the effect produced on his
  mind by my words. If the emperor's family, owing so much to Pope
  Pius XII. and to your eminence, had conceived the detestable design
  of disturbing Europe, and if it had the means of so doing, the
  gratitude that we all feel toward the Holy See would evidently
  arrest us on such a course. My mother, brothers, sisters, and uncle
  owe too much respectful gratitude to the sovereign pontiff and to
  your eminence to draw down new disasters on this city, where, while
  proscribed by the whole of Europe, we have been received and
  sheltered with a paternal goodness rendered yet more touching by
  past injustice. We are not conspiring against any one, and still
  less against God's representative on earth. We enjoy in Rome all the
  rights of citizens; and when my mother learned in what a Christian
  manner the Pope and your eminence were avenging the captivity of
  Fontainebleau and the exile of Rheims, she could only bless you in
  the name of her _grand et malheureux mort_, shedding sweet tears for
  the first time since the disasters of 1814.

  "To conspire against our august and sole benefactor would be an
  infamy that has no name. The family of Bonaparte will never merit
  such a reproach. I convinced Mgr. Bernetti of it, and he will
  himself be our surety with your eminence. Deign then to listen to
  his words, and to grant us the continuance of your favor, together
  with the protection of the Holy Father.--In this hope, I am,
  eminence, your very respectful and most devoted servant and friend,

    "L. DE SAINT-LEU."
    "_Rome, 30th Sept_. 1821."

------

{27}

From Once A Week.

AN ENGLISH MAIDEN'S LOVE.


I read this incident when a mere girl in a very stupid old novel
founded upon it, which I never could succeed in meeting with again.
The preface stated that in some church in England there yet remained
the monument of the knight with his noble one-armed wife beside him. I
should be glad if any of your readers could tell me where this
monument is to be seen, and the real names (which I have forgotten) of
the knight and lady.

  'Twas in the grand heroic days,
    When Coeur de Lion reigned and fought;
  An English knight ta'en in those frays
    To Sultan Saladin was brought.

  The sultan sat upon his throne,
    His courtiers stood around;
  And emir, prince, and padisha
    Bent lowly to the ground.

  They served him upon bended knee--
    "To hear is to obey;"--
  For the fierce and cruel Moslem race
    An iron hand must sway.

  The monarch gazed on each stem face;
    "Ye Moslem chiefs are brave;
  But I know a braver man than ye,
    Bring forth the Christian slave!"

  The slave was brought, and at a sign
    The scimitar waved high,
  But the English captive gazed unmoved,
    With calm unshrinking eye.

  Then spoke the sultan: "Hugh de Vere,
    I've need of men like thee,
  And thou shalt be the first man here,
    In this land, after me.

  "Thou shalt have gold, and gems, and land,
    Palaces shall be thine.
  And thou shalt wed a queenly bride,
    And be a son of mine.

  "Only forsake thy fathers' faith,
    Mah'med and God adore,
  And forget thy love and fatherland.
    Which thou shalt see no more."

  Then Hugh de Vere obeisance made;--
    "Since I must make reply,
  I will not change my love or faith,
    Far liever would I die.
                                                         {28}

  "I have a God who died for me.
    His soldier I am sworn.
  Shall I, whose shoulder bears the cross,
    Upon the cross bring scorn?

  "I have a love, a gentle girl.
    Whom I love as my wife;
  I cannot bear a Moslem name.
    Nor wed a Moslem wife."

  "Bethink thee now," the sultan said;
    "How knowest thou that the maid
  Is not now wed, since thy return
    Hath been so long delayed?

  "Fickle and false is woman's heart,
    It changes like the sky;
  The showers that fall so fast to-night
    To-morrow' sun will dry.

  "Nor--trust me--e'er was maiden yet
    Constant as is the dove,
  Who dies of grief for her lost mate,
    And knows no second love."

  Then at the monarch's feet bowed low
    The saintly frères who came
  To ransom slaves, bound by their vow,
    For Jesu's holy name.

  And at his footstool wealth untold
    With lavish hands they pour:
  "His bride sends thee her gems and gold;
    Sir Hugh de Vere restore!"

  The sultan spoke: "The other knights
    And men may go with thee.
  But not for gold or jewels bright
    Shall Hugh de Vere go free.

  "I love him with a brother's love,
    His love I hope to win.
  And in this land raise him above
    All men save Saladin.

  "What is a woman's love to mine?
    A hundred slaves I'll give,
  Let him his Christian faith resign,
    And in my shadow live.

  "His lady-love sends pearls and gold,
    She'd give them for a shawl,
  But she must give a dearer thing
    Before I yield my thrall.
                                                            {29}
  "I'll try how Christian maidens love--
    This answer to her bear,
  'Thy faith and fealty to prove,
    Give what is far more dear.

  "'This is the ransom I demand,
    No meaner thing I'll take,
  Thy own right arm and lily hand
    Cut off for thy love's sake."

  "Return, good frères," Sir Hugh then said,
    "To my betrothed bride,
  And speak of me henceforth as dead,
    Since here I must abide.

  "For rather would I die this day
    Beneath the paynim swords,
  Than ye should bear Agnes de Bray
    The sultan's cruel words.

  "For well I know her faithful heart
    Both arm and life would give
  To ransom mine;--and will not prove
    Her death, that I may live."

  Then mournfully the ransom sent
    The good frères took once more.
  And with the captives they had freed
    Sailed to the English shore.

  And Earl de Bray's castell they sought,
    And to fair Agnes told,
  How that her lover could not be
    Ransomed for gems or gold.

  And that the cruel sultan asked,--
    Nor meaner thing would take,--
  Her own right arm and lily hand,
    Cut off for her love's sake.

  A shudder ran through all who heard,
    Her mother shrieked aloud,
  Her father, crimsoning, clutched his sword,
    And death to Moslems vowed.

  Her little sister to her ran,
    And clasped her tightly round:
  "Sure, sister, such a wicked man
    Cannot on earth be found?"

  But Agnes smoothed the child's long hair
    And kissed her, then spoke low,
  "That cruel is the ransom asked.
    My dear ones, well I know.
                                                            {30}
  "But did not God for ransom give
    His own beloved Son?
  And do not churls and nobles give
    Their lives for king and throne?

  "Has not my lord and father bled
    By Coeur de Lion's side?
  And would he bid his daughter shirk
    Duty--whate'er betide?

  "Am I not Hugh de Vere's betrothed,
    Fast pledged to be his wife?
  Do not I owe him fealty,
    Even though it cost my life?

  "What is my life? Long days and years
    In vain repining spent,
  And orisons to God to end
    My dear love's banishment.

  "And he _has heard_. At last my prayers
    Have reached up to God's throne
  God gives me back my long lost one,
    Nor leaves me sad and lone.

  "Only, he asks a sacrifice,
    A proof my love is pure:
  For such great gain, a little pain.
    And shall I not endure?"

* * * * *

  Once more the Sultan Saladin
    Sat in his royal court,
  At his right hand stood Hugh de Vere
    Grave-eyed and full of thought.

  A herald came. "Sultan, our lord,
    The Christians' holy men
  Who come to ransom captive slaves,
    An audience crave again."

  The friars came, and, bowing low,
    They placed before the throne
  A silver casket richly chased:
    And spoke in solemn tone.

  "Monarch, to whom women are slaves,
    Toys of an idle hour,
  Learn in a nobler faith than thine
    Love's purity and power.

  "The cruel ransom thou didst ask
    For Hugh de Vere here take,
  His love's right arm and lily hand
    "Cut off for her love's sake."
                                                               {31}
  Then Hugh de Vere, beside himself,
    The casket seized, and said,
  "O cruel monks, why told ye her?
    I bade ye call me dead.

  "O fair sweet arm! O dear white hand!
    Cut off for my poor sake!"
  And to his breast prest it and sobbed,
    As if his heart would break.

  But Saladin the casket oped,
    And lo! embalmed there lay
  The fair white arm and lily hand
    Sent by Agnes de Bray.

  And as he gazed his tears flowed down,
    His nobles also wept
  "Oh I would ere I such words had said
    I'd with my fathers slept!"

  The lily hand full reverently
    And like a saint's he kissed.
  "O gentle hand! what noble heart
    Thee owned, I never wist.

  "I never dreamed that woman lived
    Who would, to save her lord,
  Thus freely give her own right arm
    And hand unto the sword.

  "Mah'med and God witness for me,
    I loved Sir Hugh de Vere!
  And thought if I this ransom asked
    I should retain him here.

  "Fair arm, fair hand, and true brave love!
    My kingdom I'd resign--
  Richer than any king of earth
    In such a love as thine!

  "Take, Hugh de Vere, thy freedom, won
    So nobly by thy love;
  Take gems, and silks, and gold,--all vain
    Saladin's grief to prove.

  "Tell her I yield my selfish love:
    Well may she claim thy life!
  She who was such a noble love
    Will be a noble wife!

  "Unloose the sails, make no delay,
    Depart ere close the day.
  While I among my precious things
    Thy ransom stow away.

  "That, 'mid my treasure placed, it may
    To future ages prove
  How holy Christians' plighted troth,
    How pure their maidens' love!"

{32}

From Chamber's Journal.

BELL GOSSIP.


There are some competent artistic observers who contend that bells
were the origin, the cause, the ruling motive, of one of the most
important parts of a Christian church--perhaps _the_ most important,
in regard to external appearance. The Rev. J. H. Sperling, in a paper
read recently before the Architectural Institute, dwells at
considerable length on the influence of the turret, campanile, or
bell-tower in determining the character of a church. As a means of
summoning the faithful to mass (there were no Protestant churches,
because no Protestants, in those days), or to bid them pray wherever
they might be, a bell was needed with a sound that would reach to a
distance; and this could only be insured by placing it in a tower at
some elevation. The Gothic architects made everything contribute to
the design of their cathedrals and churches; and this elevation of the
bell was just the thing to call forth their ingenuity. They made the
bell-tower one of the chief features in their design. It was often
entirely detached from the building, and was known generally as the
campanile. Examples of this are observable at Canterbury and
Chichester cathedrals, at Beccles, at Ledbury, and at West Walton in
Norfolk. Salisbury cathedral had originally a campanile; but modern
wiseacres, who thought they knew better than the men of old, removed
it. The central towers of cathedrals and churches were intended as
lanterns to let in light, not as turrets to contain bells; this was a
later innovation. Many towers have been altered from their original
purpose to convert them into bell-towers, but injuriously--as at
Winchester and Ely. Mr. Sperling, as a matter of usefulness as well as
of style, advocates the detached or semi-detached campanile; and
recommends architects to direct their attention more frequently to
this matter.

Another way in which church bells manifest, if not a scientific or
artistic, at least a historical value, is in their connection with the
saints of the Catholic Church; they are still existing records of a
very old ecclesiastical custom. The bell of a church was frequently,
if not generally, named after the patron saint of that church; and if
there were more bells than one, the lowest in tone was named after the
patron saint, and the others after saints to whom altars, shrines, or
chapels within the edifice were dedicated. Probably, in such case,
each bell was appropriated to the service of its own particular saint;
for the use of many bells in a _peal_ is comparatively modern. At
Durham cathedral, and at the church of St Bartholomew the Great near
Smithfield, are (or were recently) examples of a family of bells
receiving names bearing special relation to the particular fabric for
which they were intended.

Archaeologists claim for church bells a certain value in regard to the
inscriptions which they nearly always bear, and which serve as so many
guide-posts directing to facts belonging to past ages. Each great
bell-founder (and many of them belonged to monastic institutions) had
his own particular style of ornamentation, and his own favorite
inscription, monogram, or epigraph. Sometimes it was only his own
name; sometimes a name and a date; sometimes a pious ejaculation. The
towns of Norwich, Lynn, Colchester, Salisbury, etc., had all
celebrated families of bell-founders, in the days when the later
Gothic cathedrals and churches were built. {33} The earliest known
_dated_ bell is at Fribourg, bearing the year 1258, and the
inscription: _"O Rex Gloriae, veni cum pace; me resonante pia populo
succurre Maria."_ The oldest in England is supposed to be that at
Duncton in Sussex, dated 1319. London can boast one a little over four
centuries old, at All Hallows Staining, Mark Lane. The inscriptions on
the bells, in the days when saints patronized them, were mostly in
Latin, in most cases including the entreaty, _"Ora pro nobis_" (Pray
for us). Sometimes the mottoes adverted to the many uses which church
bells subserved, such as:

  "Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum,
  Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro."

Even this did not exhaust the list; for we meet with an enumeration of
nearly twenty purposes answered by church bells--some of which we
should be little disposed to recognize in these scientific days of
ours. The following is not an actual motto on a bell, but an elegy on
the subject:

  "En ego Campana, nunquam denuntio vana,
  Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum.
  Defunctos plango, vivos voco, fulmina frango,
  Vox mea, vox vitae, voco vos, ad sacra venite.
  Sanctos collaudo, tonitrua fugo, funera claudo,
  Funera plango, fulgura frango, Sabbatha pango,
  Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos."

Occasionally, some of the more peculiar of these uses were expressed
in English:

  "Sometimes joy, sometimes sorrow.
  Marriage to-day, and Death to-morrow."

They generally lose their point when they lose their Latinity.

The mottoes on old bells, other than those which were dictated by the
reverential feeling of the middle ages, comprise instances of vanity,
ignorance, and silliness, such as would hardly be expected in these
matters. Sometimes a kind of moral aphorism is attempted, with more or
less success.

  "Mankind, like us, too oft are found
  Possessed of nought but empty sound.

  When backward rung, I tell of fire;
  Think how the world shall thus expire.

  When souls are from their body torn,
  'Tis not to die, but to be born."

One, very short, bids us to

  "Embrace trew musick."

A bell-founder named Pleasant used to put all kinds of punning mottoes
on his bells suggested by his name. Some record the financial virtues
of the persons who supplied the money for casting the bell:

  "I'm given here to make a peal,
  And sound the praise of Mary Neale."

  "All ye who hear my solemn sound.
  Thank Lady Hopton's hundred pound."

  "Robert Forman collected the money for casting this bell:
  I'll surely do my part as well."

The name of the founder is sometimes supplanted by that of the
churchwarden, or they may appear in companionship.

  "John Martin of Worcester he made wee,
  Be it known to all that do wee see."

  "John Draper made, as plainly doth appeare.
  This bell was broake and cast againe wich
      tyme churchwardens were,
  Edward Dixon for the one who stode close to his tacklin.
  And he that was his partner then was Alexander Tacklyn."

The rhymster was evidently driven to his wits' end by the name of
Tacklyn. Some had a touch of loyalty in them:

  "God save the Church,
  Our Queen, and Realme,
  And send us peace in Xt."

The following are examples of a more or less childish class, marvels
to find perpetuated in hard metal:

  "My sound is good, my shape is neat:
  Perkins made me all complete."

  "I am the first, although but small,
  I will be heard above you all."

  "I sound aloud from day to day:
  My sound hath praise, and well it may."

  "I ring to sermon with a lusty boom,
  That all may come, and none may stay at home."

  "Pull on, brave boys; I am metal to the backbone,
  I'll be hanged before I'll crack."

The letters of the inscription are not, as some persons may suppose,
cut or engraved on the metal by hand: they are formed in _intaglio_ or
sunk in the sand of the mould, and thus appear in relief on the
outside of the bell when cast. What can be done in this way by that
strange people the {34} Chinese may be seen in the British Museum; we
might search long enough to find an English bell equal in elaborate
ornamentation to the Chinese bell there deposited.

The musical _tone_ of a bell unquestionably depends on the scientific
principles of acoustics as applied to music. The pitch of any one bell
is determined conjointly by the size and the thickness. Of two bells
equally large, the thicker gives the higher note; of two bells equally
thick, the smaller gives the higher note. But then bell-founders look
to the _quality_ of the tone as well as to the pitch; and on this
point there is much divergence of opinion among them. Concerning the
metal used, some combination of copper and tin predominates in nearly
all church bells; generally from two to three times as much copper as
tin. Small additions of other metals are occasionally made, according
to the theoretical views of the founder. The popular belief that
silver improves the tone of a bell, is pronounced by Mr. Sperling and
Mr. Denison to be a mistake; if added in large quantity, it would be
as bad as so much lead; if in small quantity, it does neither good nor
harm. Whether there is or is not really silver in two well-known
bells, called the "Acton Nightingale" and the "Silver Bell" of St
John's College, Cambridge, it is believed by these authorities that
the sweetness of the tone is due to other causes. A feeling of piety
probably influenced the wealthy persons who, in old days, were wont to
cast silver into the furnace containing the molten bell-metal. Mr.
Sperling thinks that the old bells were, as a rule, better than the
modern, by having more substance in them--obtaining depth and fulness
of tone by largeness in height and diameter, rather than by
diminishing the thickness at the part where the hammer or clapper
strikes. "Nothing is more easily starved than a church bell." A
long-waisted bell (high in the sides) is considered to give forth a
more resonant tone than a shallow or low waist, because there is more
metal to act as a kind of sounding-board; but a lower bell is easier
to ring in a peal; hence, as Sperling thinks, a reason for the
difference in the richness of tone in old and modern bells. There are
indications that the old founders sometimes tuned a set of bells in
what is called the _minor_ mode, the source of much that is tender and
plaintive in Scotch and Irish melodies; but in our days they are
always in the _major_ mode. Where the ringing is done by clock-work,
the sounds of several bells constitute a _chime_--where by hand, a
_peal_--but in either case the actual tone or note of each bell is
fixed beforehand. It is by many persons believed that the quality of
the tone is improved by age, owing to some kind of molecular change in
the metal; this is known to be the case in some old organs, and in
instruments of the violin class, in the metal of the one and the wood
of the other; and so far there is analogy to support the opinion. For
good peals of bells, the founders generally prefer D or E as the note
for the tenor or largest bell.

As to largeness in a bell, its intention bears relation rather to
_loudness_ than to _pitch_, as a means of throwing the sound to a
great distance. This is the reason for the mighty bells that we are
told of--St. Paul's weighing something like 13,000 lbs.; Antwerp,
16,000 lbs.; Oxford, 17,000 lbs.; Rome, 18,000 lbs.; Mechlin, 20,000
lbs.; Bruges, 23,000 lbs.; York, 24,000 lbs.; Cologne, 25,000 lbs.;
Montreal, 29,000 lbs.; Erfurt, 30,000 lbs.; "Big Ben," at the Houses
of Parliament, 31,000 lbs.; Sens, 34,000 lbs.; Vienna, 40,000 lbs.;
Novgorod, 69,000 lbs.; Pekin, 119,000 lbs.; Moscow, 141,000 lbs.; and,
giant of all the giants, another Moscow bell weighing 192 tons, or
430,000 lbs. Our own Big Ben is more than twice as heavy as our own
St. Paul's bell, which used to be regarded as one of our wonders, and
its sound travels much further; but whether its quality of tone is
equal, is a point on which opinions differ. {35} The history of the
two Big Bens must be more or less familiar to most of our readers--how
that three chief commissioners of works, and two architects, and three
bell-founders, and two bell-doctors, quarrelled year after year; how
that both the Bens cracked, and got into disgrace; how that one of
them recovered its voice again; and how that we have paid the piper to
the tune of something like four thousand pounds for the two Big Bens
and the four smaller bells. If a musical reader wishes to know, he may
be told that the four quarter-bells give out the notes B, E, F++, G++,
and that Big Ben's tone is E, an octave below the first E. Remember,
when Big Ben is heard six miles off, it is half a minute behind time,
seeing that sound takes about half a minute to travel that distance.

As to _bell-ringing,_ the adepts insist upon it that this is a
science; and they give it the name of _campanology._ We all know, ever
since we learnt about permutation and combination at school, that if
there are six, eight, ten, or any number of distinct things, we may
arrange them in an enormous number of ways, each way differing from
every other. The things in this case are bells of different tones; and
according to the order in which they are struck by the hammer or
clapper so many changes may we produce. Out of the almost infinite
number of these changes, campanologists select certain groups which to
their ear seem most musical and agreeable; and these changes are known
by the names of their proposers or inventors, just as we speak of a
work by a great artist. It is not clearly known whether change-ringing
began earlier than the seventeenth century; but it is certain that the
art is practised much more in England than in any other country. There
are peals from two or three to ten or twelve bells. Sixteen of twelve
bells, and fifty of ten bells, are mentioned in the books as peals now
existing in England. The largest peals now in England are at Bow
church, Exeter, and York, each of ten bells; at Bow church and at York
they vary from eight hundredweights to fifty-three hundredweights
each; at Exeter from eight to sixty-seven hundredweights. From these
weights, it must be evident that it is no small labor for men to pull
such bells for several hours at a time. Just as the achievements of
celebrated pedestrians and race-horses are placed upon record, so are
the fraternity proud to refer to the bell-ringing exploits of their
crack pullers. Twenty-four changes per minute are frequently reached.
We are told that in 1787, 5,040 changes were rung in three hours and a
quarter; and that on other occasions there were 6,876 changes rung in
four hours and a quarter, 7,000 in four hours, 10,008 in six hours and
three quarters, 14,224 in eight hours and three quarters, and (the
_magnum opus_) 40,320 changes rung by thirteen men in twenty-seven
hours, working in relief gangs. In one of the old churches, North
Parret in Somerset, the belfry contains a set of rhyming rules,
purporting that a six-pence fine shall be imposed on the ringers for
cursing or swearing, for making a noise or telling idle stories, for
keeping on their hats, for wearing spurs, or for overturning the bell.
This overturning does sometimes occur, even to the loss of life. One
ringer was killed about the time when his brother was drowned; and the
following delectable epitaph records the double catastrophe:

  "These 3 youths were by misfortun serounded;
  One died of his wound, and the other was drownded."

Whether bell-pinging is really a science, or whether it is only an
ingenious art, as most people would prefer to call it, certainly the
technical terms are most profuse and puzzling. Let the reader make
what he can out of the following, taken at random from one of the
books on the subject: Treble lead, plain work, course, call word,
reverse method, direct method, double, method, balance, hold up, cut
down, following, handstroke, rounds, {36} backstroke, plain hunt,
touches, course ends, hunting up, hunting down, place making, dodging,
double dodging, Bob doubles, singles, observation, grandsire doubles,
slow course, principle, Bob minor, double Bob minor, treble Bob,
superlative surprise, wrong way, Bob triple, tittums. Bob caller, Bob
major, double Bob major, treble Bob major, Bob caters, grandsire
caters, Bob royals, Bob cinques, Bob maximus, treble Bob maximus. Bob
certainly seems to be in the ascendant here. When the reader has
marvelled at these funny names, let him try to understand the
directions for ringing one particular set of changes: "Call two Bobs
on 9, O, x; bring them round. Or, if the practitioner pleases, he may
call the tenth and eleventh to make the ninth's place; the former will
be a six before the course end comes up. Then a Bob when the tenth and
eleventh dodge together behind completes it. In this course the bells
will be only one course out of the tittums"--which it is very
satisfactory to hear. Once more; and here we would ask whether the
directions do not suggest the idea of a damsel going through a sort of
country-dance with seven swains all rejoicing in the name of Bob?
"When the seventh has been quick, call a Bob when she dodges the right
way behind, which will make her quick again; then, if the sixth goes
up before the seventh, keep her behind with Bobs, until the seventh
comes up to her; but if the sixth does not go up before the seventh,
call her the right way behind again, and the sixth is sure to be up
before her the next time." After a little more of these extraordinary
evolutions--"If not out of course, Bob with the seventh down quick
till the fourth comes home; if out of course, a single must be called
when the seventh goes down quick, to put them right. But if it happens
that the fourth is before the fifth comes home, call when the seventh
does her first whole term, and down quick with a double." And we hope
that they lived happy ever afterward.

------

From The Month

KIRKSTALL ABBEY: A SONNET.

  Roll on by tower and arch, autumnal river;
  And ere about thy dusk yet gleaming tide
  The phantom of dead day hath ceased to glide,
  Whisper it to the reeds that round thee quiver--
  Yea, whisper to those ivy-bowers that shiver
  Hard by on gusty choir and cloister wide:
  "My bubbles break; my weed-flowers seaward glide:
  My freshness and my mission last for ever!"
  Young moon, from leaden tomb of cloud that soarest,
  And whitenest those hoar elm-trees, wrecks forlorn
  Of olden Airedale's hermit-haunted forest,
  Speak thus: "I died; and lo, I am reborn!"
  Blind, patient pile, sleep on in radiance! Truth
  Fails not; and faith once more shall wake in endless youth.

      AUBREY DE VERE.

------

{37}


From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.


CHAPTER XIII.

One day there was a great deal of company at Mistress Wells's house,
which was the only one I then haunted, being as afore said, somewhat
sickened of society and diversions. The conversation which was mostly
ministered amongst such as visited there related to public affairs and
foreign countries, and not so much as in some other houses to private
scandals and the tattle of the town. The uncertainty I was in
concerning my father's present abode and his known intent soon to
cross over the sea from France worked in me a constant craving for
news from abroad, and also an apprehensive curiosity touching reports
of the landing of seminary priests at any of the English ports. Some
would often tarry at Mr. Wells's house for a night who had lately come
from Rheims or Paris, and even Rome, or leastways received letters
from such as resided in those distant parts. And others I met there
were persons who had friends at court; and they often related
anecdotes of the queen and the ministers, and the lords and ladies of
her household, which it also greatly concerned me to hear of, by
reason of my dearest friend having embarked her whole freight of
happiness in a frail vessel launched on that stormy sea of the court,
so full of shoals and quicksands, whereby many a fair ship was daily
chanced to be therein wrecked.

Nothing notable of this kind had been mentioned on the day I speak of,
which, howsoever, proved a very notable one to me. For after I had
been in the house a short time there came there one not known, and yet
it should seem not wholly unknown to me; for that I did discover in
his shape and countenance something not unfamiliar, albeit I could not
call to mind that I had ever seen this gentleman before. I asked his
name of a young lady who sat near to me, and she said she thought he
should be the elder brother of Mr. Hubert Rookwood, who was lodging in
the house, and that she heard he tabled there also since he had come
to town, and that he was a very commendable person, above the common
sort, albeit not one of such great parts as his brother. Then I did
instantly take note of the likeness between the brothers which had
made the elder's face not strange to me, as also perhaps that one
sight of him I had at Bedford some years before. Their visages were
very like; but their figures and mostly their countenances different.
I cannot say wherein that great differency did lie; but methinks every
one must have seen, or rather felt it. Basil was the tallest and the
handsomest of the twain. I will not be so great a prodigal of time as
to bestow it on commendations of his outward appearance whose inward
excellences were his chiefest merit. Howsoever, I be minded to set
down in this place somewhat touching his appearance; as it may so
happen that some who read this history, and who have known and loved
Basil in his old years, should take as much pleasure in reading as I
do in writing the description of his person, and limning as it were
the resemblance of him at a period in this history wherein the
hitherto separate currents of his life and mine do meet, like a noble
river {38} and a poor stream, for to flow onward in the same channel.

Basil Rookwood was of a tall stature, and well-proportioned shape in
all parts. His hair of light brown, very thickly set, and of a sunny
hue, curled with a graceful wave. His head had many becoming motions.
His mouth was well-made, and his lips ruddy. His forehead not very
high, in which was a notable dissemblance from his brother. His nose
raised and somewhat sharply cut. His complexion clear and rosy; his
smile so full of cheer and kindliness that it infected others with
mirthfulness. He was very nimble and active in all his movements, and
well skilled in riding, fencing, and dancing. I pray you who have
known him in his late years, can you in aught, save in a never-altered
sweetness mixing with the dignity of age, trace in this picture a
likeness to Basil, your Basil and mine?

I care not, in writing this plain showing of mine own life, to use
such disguises as are observed in love-stories, whereby the reader is
kept ignorant of that which is to follow until in due time the course
of the tale doth unfold it. No, I may not write Basil's name as that
of a stranger. Not for the space of one page; nay, not with so much as
one stroke of my pen can I dissemble the love which had its dawn on
the day I have noted. It was sudden in its beginnings, yet steady in
its progress. It deepened and widened with the course of years, even
as a rivulet doth start with a lively force from its source, and,
gathering strength as it flows, grows into a broad and noble river. It
was ardent but not idolatrous; sudden, as I have said, in its rise,
but not unconsidered. It was founded on high esteem on the one side,
on the other an inexpressible tenderness and kindness. Religion,
honor, and duty were the cements of this love. No blind dotage; but a
deathless bond of true sympathy, making that equal which in itself was
unequal; for, if a vain world should have deemed that on the one side
there did appear some greater brilliancy of parts than showed in the
other, all who could judge of true merit and sound wisdom must needs
have allowed that in true merit Basil was as greatly her superior whom
he honored with his love, as is a pure diamond to the showy setting
which encases it.

Hubert presented to me his brother, who, when he heard my name
mentioned, would not be contented till he had got speech of me; and
straightway, after the first civilities had passed between us, began
to relate to me that he had been staying for a few days before coming
to town at Mr. Roper's house at Richmond, where I had often visited in
the summer. It so befel that I had left in the chamber where I slept
some of my books, on the margins of which were written such notes as I
was wont to make whilst reading, for so Hubert had advised me, and his
counsel in this I found very profitable; for this method teaches one
to reflect on what he reads, and to hold converse as it were with
authors whose friendship and company he thus enjoys, which is a source
of contentment more sufficient and lasting than most other pleasures
in this world.

Basil chanced to inhabit this room, and discovered on an odd by-shelf
these volumes so disfigured, or, as he said, so adorned; and took such
delight in the reading of them, but mostly in the poor reflections an
unknown pen had affixed to these pages, that he rested not until he
had learnt from Mr. Roper the name of the writer. When he found she
was the young girl he had once seen at Bedford, he marvelled at the
strong impulse he had toward her, and pressed the venerable gentleman
with so many questions relating to her that he feared he should have
wearied him  but his inquiries met with such gracious answers that he
perceived Mr. Roper to be as well pleased with the theme of his
discourse as himself, and as glad to set {39} forth her excellences (I
be ashamed to write the words which should indeed imply the speaker to
have been in his dotage, but for the excuse of a too great kindness to
an unworthy creature) as he had to listen to them. And here I must
needs interrupt my narrative to admire that one who was no scholar,
yea, no great reader at any time, albeit endowed with excellent good
sense and needful information, should by means of books have been
drawn to the first thoughts of her who was to enjoy his love which
never was given to any other creature but herself. But I pray you,
doth it not happen most often, though it is scarce to be credited,
that dissemblance in certain matters doth attract in the way of love
more than resemblance? That short men do choose tall wives; lovers of
music women who have no ear to discern one tune from another; scholars
witless housewives; retired men ambitious helpmates; and gay ladies
grave husbands? This should seem to be the rule, otherways the
exception; and a notable instance of the same I find in the first
motions which did incline Basil to a good opinion of my poor self.

But to return. "Mistress Sherwood," quoth Basil, "Mr. Roper did not
wholly praise you; he recited your faults as well as your virtues."

I answered, it did very much content me he should have done so, for
that then more credit should be given to his words in that wherein he
did commend me, since he was so true a friend as to note my defects.

"But what," quoth he, archly smiling, "if the faults he named are such
as pleased me as well as virtues?"

"Then," I replied, "methinks, sir, the fault should be rather in you
than in her who doth commit them, for she may be ignorant, or else
subject to some infirmity of temper; but to commend faults should be a
very dangerous error."

"But will you hear," quoth he, "your faults as Mr. Roper recited
them?"

"Yea, willingly," I answered, "and mend them also if I can."

"Oh, I pray you mend them not," he cried.

At which I laughed, and said he should be ashamed to give such wanton
advice. And then he:

"Mr. Roper declares you have so much inability to conceal your
thoughts that albeit your lips should be forcibly closed, your eyes
would speak them so clearly that any one who listed should read them."

"Methinks," I said, willing to excuse myself like the lawyer in the
gospel, "that should not be my fault, who made not mine own eyes."

"Then he also says, that you have so sharp an apprehension of wrongs
done to others, that if you hear of an injustice committed, or some
cruel treatment of any one, you are so moved and troubled, that he has
known you on such occasions to shed tears, which do not flow with a
like ease for your own griefs. Do you cry mercy to this accusation,
Mistress Sherwood?"

"Indeed," I answered, "God knoweth I do, and my ghostly father also.
For the strong passions of resentment touching the evil usage our
Catholics do meet with work in me so mightfully, that I often am in
doubt if I have sinned therein. And concerning mine own griefs, they
have been but few as yet, so that 'tis little praise I deserve for not
overmuch resentment in instances wherein, if others are afflicted, I
have much ado to restrain wrath."

"Ah," he said, "methinks if you answer in so true and grave a manner
my rude catechizing. Mistress Sherwood, I be not bold enough to
continue the inventory of your faults."

"I pray you do," I answered; for I felt in my soul an unusual liking
for his conversation, and the more so when, leaving off jesting, he
said, "The last fault Mr. Roper did charge you with was lack of
prudence in matters wherein prudence is most needed in these days."

{40}

"Alas!" I exclaimed; "for that also do I cry mercy; but indeed, Master
Rookwood, there is in these days so much cowardice and time-serving
which doth style itself prudence, that methinks it might sometimes
happen that a right boldness should be called rashness."

Raising my eyes to his, I thought I saw them clouded by a misty dew;
and he replied, "Yea, Mistress Constance, and if it is so, I had
sooner that myself and such as I have a friendship for should have to
cry mercy on their death-beds for too much rashness in stemming the
tide, than for too much ease in yielding to it. And now," he added,
"shall I repeat what Mr. Roper related of your virtues?"

"No," I answered, smiling. "For if the faults he doth charge me with
be so much smaller than the reality, what hope have I that he should
speak the truth in regard to my poor merits?"

Then some persons moving nearer to where we were sitting, some general
conversation ensued, in which several took part; and none so much to
my liking as Basil, albeit others might possess more ready tongues and
a more sparkling wit. In all the years since I had left my home, I had
not found so much contentment in any one's society. His mind and mine
were like two instruments with various chords, but one key-note, which
maintained them in admirable harmony. The measure of our agreement
stood rather in the drift of our desires and the scope of our
approval, than in any parity of tastes or resemblance of disposition.
Acquaintanceship soon gave way to intimacy, which bred a mutual
friendship that in its turn was not slow to change into a warmer
feeling. We met very often. It seemed so natural to him to affection
me, and to me to reciprocate his affection, that if our love began
not, which methinks it did, on that first day of meeting, I know not
when it had birth. But if it be difficult precisely to note the
earliest buddings of the sweet flower love, it was easy to discern the
moment when the bitter root of jealousy sprang up in Hubert's heart.
He who had been suspicious of every person whose civilities I allowed
of, did not for some time appear to mislike the intimacy which had
arisen betwixt his brother and me. I ween from what he once said, when
on a later occasion anger loosened his tongue, that he held him in
some sort of contempt, even as a fox would despise a nobler animal
than himself. His subtle wit disdained his plainness of speech. His
confiding temper he derided; and he had methinks no apprehension that
a she-wit, as he was wont to call me, should prove herself so witless
as to prefer to one of his brilliant parts a man notable for his
indifferency to book learning, and to his smooth tongue and fine
genius the honest words and unvarnished merits of his brother.

Howsoever, one day he either did himself notice some sort of
particular kindness to exist between us, or he was advertised thereof
by some of the company we frequented, and I saw him fix his eyes on us
with so arrested a persistency, and his frame waxed so rigid, that
methought Lot's wife must have so gazed when she turned toward the
doomed city. I was more frighted at the dull lack of expression in his
face than at a thousand frowns or even scowls. His eyes were reft of
their wonted fire; the color had flown from his lips; his always pale
cheek was of a ghastly whiteness; and his hand, which was thrust in
his bosom, and his feet, which seemed rooted to the ground, were as
motionless as those of a statue. A shudder ran through me as he stood
in this guise, neither moving nor speaking, at a small distance from
me. I rose and went away, for his looks freezed me. But the next time
I met him this strangeness of behavior had vanished, and I almost
misdoubted the truth of what I had seen. He was a daily witness, for
several succeeding weeks, of what neither Basil nor I {41} cared much
to conceal--the mutual confidence and increasing tenderness of
affection, which was visible in all our words and actions at that
time, which was one of greater contentment than can be expressed. That
summer was a rare one for fineness of the weather and its great store
of sun-shiny days. We had often pleasant divertisements in the
neighborhood of London, than which no city is more famous for the
beauty of its near scenery. One while we ascended the noble river
Thames as far as Richmond, England's Arcadia, whose smooth waters,
smiling meads, and hills clad in richest verdure, do equal whatsoever
poets have ever sung or painters pictured. Another time we disported
ourselves in the gardens of Hampton, where, in the season of roses,
the insects weary their wings over the flower-beds--the thrifty bees
with the weight of gathered honey--and the gay butterflies, idlers as
ourselves, with perfume and pleasure. Or we went to Greenwich Park,
and underneath the spreading trees, with England's pride of shipping
in sight, and barges passing to and fro on the broad stream as on a
watery highway, we whiled away the time in many joyous pastimes.

On an occasion of this sort it happened that both brothers went with
us, and we forecasted to spend the day at a house in the village of
Paddington, about two miles from London, where Mr. Congleton's sister,
a lady of fortune, resided. It stood in a very fair garden, the gate
of which opened on the high road; and after dinner we sat with some
other company which had been invited to meet us under the large cedar
trees which lined a broad gravel-walk leading from the house to the
gate. The day was very hot, but now a cooling air had risen, and the
young people there assembled played at pastimes, in which I was
somewhat loth to join; for jesting disputations and framing of
questions and answers, an amusement then greatly in fashion, minded
one of that fatal encounter betwixt Martin Tregony and Thomas
Sherwood, the end of which had been the death of the one and a fatal
injury to the soul of the other. Hubert was urgent with me to join in
the arguments proposed; but I refused, partly for the aforesaid
reason, and methinks, also, because I doubted that Basil should acquit
himself so admirably as his brother in these exercises of wit, wherein
the latter did indeed excel, and I cared not to shine in a sport
wherein he took no part. So I set myself to listen to the disputants,
albeit with an absent mind; for I had grown to be somewhat thoughtful
of late, and to forecast the future with such an admixture of hope and
fear touching the issue of those passages of love I was engaged in,
that the trifles which entertained a disengaged mind lacked ability to
divert me. I ween Polly, if she had been then in London, should have
laughed at me for the symptoms I exhibited of what she styled the
sighing malady.

A little while after the contest had begun, a sound was heard at a
distance as of a trampling on the road, but not discernible as yet
whether of men or horses' feet. There was mixed with it cries of
hooting and shouts, which increased as this sort of procession (for so
it should seem to be) approached. All who were in the garden ran to
the iron railing for to discover the cause. From the houses on both
sides the road persons came out and joined in the clamor. As the crowd
neared the gate where we stood, the words, "Papists--seditious
priests--traitors," were discernible, mixed with oaths, curses, and
such opprobrious epithets as my pen dares not write. At the hearing of
them the blood rushed to my head, and my heart began to beat as if it
should burst from the violence with which it throbbed; for now the mob
was close at hand, and we could see the occasion of their yells and
shoutings. About a dozen persons were riding without bridle or spur or
other furniture, on lean and bare horses, which were fastened {42} one
to the other's tails, marching slowly in a long row, each man's feet
tied under his horse's belly and his arms bound hard and fast behind
him. A pursuivant rode in front and cried aloud that those coming
behind him were certain papists, foes to the gospel and enemies to the
commonwealth, for that they had been seized in the act of saying and
hearing mass in disobedience to the laws. And as he made this
proclamation, the rabble yelled and took up stones and mud to cast at
the prisoners. One man cried out, "Four of them be vile priests." O ye
who read this, have you taken heed how, at some times in your lives,
in a less space than the wink of an eye, thought has outrun sight? So
did mine with lightning speed apprehend lest my father should be one
of these. I scanned the faces of the prisoners as they passed, but he
was not amongst them; however I recognized, with a sharp pain, the
known countenance of the priest who had shriven my mother on her
death-bed. He looked pale and worn to a shadow, and hardly able to sit
on his horse. I sunk down on my knees, with my head against the
railings, feeling very sick. Then the gate opened, and with a strange
joy and trembling fear I saw Basil push through the mob till he stood
close to the horse's feet where the crowd had made a stoppage. He
knelt and took off his hat, and the lips of the priests moved, as they
passed, for to bless him. Murmurs rose from the rabble, but he took no
heed of them. Till the last horseman had gone by he stood with his
head uncovered, and then slowly returned, none daring to touch him.
"Basil, dear Basil!" I cried, and, weeping, gave him my hand. It was
the first time I had called him by his name. Methinks in that moment
as secure a troth-plight was passed between us as if ten thousand
bonds had sealed it. When, some time afterward, we moved toward the
house, I saw Hubert standing at the door with the same stony rigid
look which had frighted me once before. He said not one word as I
passed him. I have since heard that a lady, endowed with more
sharpness than prudence or kindness, had thus addressed him on this
occasion: "Methinks, Master Hubert Rookwood, that you did perform your
part excellently well in that ingenious pastime which procured us so
much good entertainment awhile ago; but beshrew me if your brother did
not exceed you in the scene we have just witnessed, and if Mistress
Sherwood's looks do not belie her, she thought so too. I ween his
tragedy hath outdone your comedy." Then he (well-nigh biting his lips
through, as the person who related it to me observed) made answer: "If
this young gentlewoman's taste be set on tragedy, then will I promise
her so much of it another day as should needs satisfy her."

This malicious lady misliked Hubert, by reason of his having denied
her the praise of wit, which had been reported to her by a third
person. She was minded to be revenged on him, and so the shaft
contained in her piercing jest had likewise hit those she willed not
to injure. It is not to be credited how many persons have been ruined
in fortune, driven into banishment, yea, delivered over to death, by
careless words uttered without so much as a thought of the evil which
should ensue from them.

And now upon the next day Basil was to leave London. Before he went he
said he hoped not to be long absent, and that Mr. Congleton should
receive a letter, if it pleased God, from his father; which, if it
should be favorably received, and I willed it not to be otherwise,
should cause our next meeting to be one of greater contentment than
could be thought of.

I answered, "I should never wish otherwise than that we should meet
with contentment, or will anything that should hinder it." Which he
said did greatly please him to hear, and gave him a comfortable hope
of a happy return.

{43}

He conversed also with Mistress Ward touching the prisoners we had
seen the day before, and left some money with her in case she should
find means to see and assist them, which she strove to do with the
diligence used by her in all such managements. In a few days she
discovered Mr. Watson to be in Bridewell, also one Mr. Richardson in
the Marshalsea, and three laymen in the Clink. Mr. Watson had a sister
who was a Protestant, and by her means she succeeded in relieving his
wants, and dealt with the gaolers at the other prisons so as to convey
some assistance to the poor men therein confined, whose names she had
found out.

One morning when I was at Kate's house Hubert came there; and she, the
whole compass of whose thoughts was now circled in her nursery, not
minding the signs I made she should not leave us alone, rose and said
she must needs go and see if her babe was awake, for Hubert must see
him, and he should not go away without first he had beheld him walk
with his new leading-strings, which were the tastefullest in the world
and fit for a king's son; and that she doubted not we could find good
enough entertainment in each other's company, or in Mr. Lacy's books,
which must be the wittiest ever written, if she judged by her
husband's fondness for them. As soon as the door was shut on her,
Hubert began to speak of his brother, and to insinuate that my
behavior to himself was changed since Basil had come to London, which
I warmly denied.

"If," I said, "I have changed--"

"_If_," he repeated, stopping my speaking with an ironical and
disdainful smile, and throwing into that one little word as he uttered
it more of meaning than it would seem possible it should express.

"Yes!" I continued, angered at his defiant looks. "Yes, if my behavior
to you has changed, which, I must confess, in some respects it has,
the cause did lie in my uncle's commands, laid on me before your
brother's coming to London. You know it, Master Rookwood, by the same
token that you charged me with unkindness for not allowing of your
visits, and refusing to read Italian with you, some weeks before ever
he arrived."

"You have a very obedient disposition, madam," he answered in a
scornful manner, "and I doubt not have attended with a like readiness
to the behest to favor the _elder_ brother's suit as to that which
forbade the receiving of the younger brother's addresses."

"I did not look upon you as a suitor," I replied.

"No!" he exclaimed, "and not as on a lover? Not as on one whose lips,
borrowing words from enamored poets twenty times in a day, did avow
his passion, and was entertained on your side with so much good-nature
and apparent contentment with this mode of disguised worship, as
should lead him to hope for a return of his affection? But why
question of that wherein my belief is unshaken? I know you love me,
Constance Sherwood, albeit you peradventure love more dearly my
brother's heirship of Euston and its wide acres. Your eyes deceived
not, nor did your flushing cheek dissemble, when we read together
those sweet tales and noble poems, wherein are set forth the dear
pains and tormenting joys of a mutual love. No, not if you did take
your oath on it will I believe you love my brother!"

"What warrant have you, sir," I answered with burning cheek, "to
minister such talk to one who, from the moment she found you thought
of marriage, did plainly discountenance your suit?"

"You were content, then, madam, to be worshipped as an idol," he
bitterly replied, "if only not sued for in marriage by a poor man."

My sin found me out then, and the hard taunt awoke dormant pangs in my
conscience for the pleasure I had taken and doubtless showed in the
disguised professions of an undisguised admiration; but anger yet
prevailed, {44} and I cried, "Think you to advance your interest in my
friendship, sir, by such language and reproaches as these?"

"Do you love my brother?" he said again, with an implied contempt
which made me mad.

"Sir," I answered, "I entertain for your brother so great a respect
and esteem as one must needs feel toward one of so much virtue and
goodness. No contract exists between us; nor has he made me the tender
of his hand. More than that it behoves you not to ask, or me to
answer."

"Ah! the offer of marriage is then the condition of your regard, and
love is to follow, not precede, the settlements, I' faith, ladies are
very prudent in these days; and virtue and goodness the new names for
fortune and lands. Beshrew me, if I had not deemed you to be made of
other metal than the common herd. But whatever be the composition of
your heart, Constance Sherwood, be it hard as the gold you set so much
store on, or, like wax, apt to receive each day some new impress, I
will have it; yea, and keep it for my own. No rich fool shall steal it
from me."

"Hubert Rookwood," I cried in anger, "dare not so to speak of one
whose merit is as superior to thine as the sun outshines a
torchlight."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, turning pale with rage, "if I thought thou didst
love him!" and clenched his hand with a terrible gesture, and ground
his teeth. "But 'tis impossible," he added bitterly smiling. "As soon
would I believe Titania verily to doat on the ass's head as for thee
to love Basil!"

"Oh!" I indignantly replied, "you do almost constrain me to avow that
which no maiden should, unasked, confess. Do you think, sir, that
learning and scholarship, and the poor show of wit that lies in a
ready tongue, should outweigh honor, courage, and kindliness of heart?
Think you that more respect should be paid to one who can speak, and
write also, if you will, fair sounding words, than to him who in his
daily doings shows forth such nobleness as others only inculcate, and
God only knoweth if ever they practise it?"

"Lady!" he exclaimed, "I have served you long; sustained torments in
your presence; endured griefs in your absence; pining thoughts in the
day, and anguished dreams in the night; jealousies often in times
past, and now--"

He drew in his breath; and then not so much speaking the word
"despair" as with a smothered vehemence uttering it, he concluded his
vehement address.

I was so shaken by his speech that I remained silent: for if I had
spoken I must needs have wept. Holding my head with both hands, and so
shielding my eyes from the sight of his pale convulsed face, I sat
like one transfixed. Then he again: "These be not times, Mistress
Sherwood, for women to act as you have done; to lift a man's heart one
while to an earthly heaven, and then, without so much as a thought, to
cast him into a hellish sea of woes. These be the dealings which drive
men to desperation; to attempt things contrary to their own minds, to
religion, and to honesty; to courses once abhorred--"

His violence wrung my heart then with so keen a remorse that I cried
out, "I cry you mercy, Master Rookwood, if I have dealt thus with you;
indeed I thought not to do it. I pray you forgive me, if unwittingly,
albeit peradventure in a heedless manner, I have done you so much
wrong as your words do charge me with." And then tears I could not
stay began to flow; and for awhile no talk ensued. But after a little
time he spoke in a voice so changed and dissimilar in manner, that I
looked up wholly amazed.

"Sweet Constance," he said, "I have played the fool in my customable
fashion, and by such pretended slanders of one I should rather incline
to commend beyond his deserts, if that were possible, than to give him
vile terms, have sought--I cry you {45} mercy for it--to discover your
sentiments, and feigned a resentment and a passion which indeed has
proved an excellent piece of acting, if I judge by your tears. I pray
you pardon and forget my brotherly device. If you love Basil--as I
misdoubt not he loves you--where shall a more suitable match be found,
or one which every one must needs so much approve? Marry, sweet lady;
I will be his best man when he doth ride to church with you, and cry
'Amen' more loudly than the clerk. So now dart no more vengeful
lightnings from thine eyes, sweet one; and wipe away the pearly drops
my unmannerly jesting hath caused to flow. I would not Basil had
wedded a lady in love with his pelf, not with himself."

"I detest tricks," I cried, "and such feigning as you do confess to. I
would I had not answered one word of your false discourse."

Now I wept for vexation to have been so circumvented and befooled as
to own some sort of love for a man who bad not yet openly addressed
me. And albeit reassured in some wise, touching what my conscience had
charged me with when I heard Hubert's vehement reproaches, I
misdoubted his present sincerity. He searched my face with a keen
investigation, for to detect, I ween, if I was most contented or
displeased with his late words. I resolved, if he was false, I would
be true, and leave not so much as a suspicion in his mind that I did
or ever had cared for him. But Kate, who should not have left us
alone, now returned, when her absence would have been most profitable.
She had her babe in her aims, and must needs call on Hubert to praise
its beauty and list to its sweet crowing. In truth, a more winsome,
gracious creature could not be seen; and albeit I had made an
inpatient gesture when she entered, my arms soon eased hers of their
fair burthen, and I set to playing with the boy, and Hubert talking
and laughing in such good cheer, that I began to credit his passion
had been feigning, and his indifferency to be true, which contented me
not a little.

A few days afterward Mr. Congleton received a letter, in the evening,
when we were sitting in my aunt's room, and a sudden fluttering in my
heart whispered it should be from Basil's father. Mine eyes affixed
themselves on the cover, which had fallen on the ground, and then
travelled to my uncle's face, wherein was a smile which seemed to say,
"This is no other than what I did expect." He put it down on the
table, and his hand over it. My aunt said he should tell us the news
he had received, to make us merry; for that the fog had given her the
vapors, and she had need of some good entertainment.

"News!" quoth he. "What news do you look for, good wife?"

"It would not be news, sir," she answered, "if I expected it."

"That is more sharp than true," he replied. "There must needs come
news of the queen of France's lying-in; but I pray you how will it be?
Shall she live and do well? Shall it be a prince or a princess?"

"Prithee, no disputings, Mr. Congleton," she said. "We be not playing
at questions and answers."

"Nay, but thou dost mistake," he cried out, laughing. "Methinks we
have here in hand some game of that sort if I judge by this letter."

Then my heart leapt, I knew not how high or how tumultuously; for I
doubted not now but he had received the tidings I hoped for.

"Constance," he said, "hast a mind to marry?"

"If it should please you, sir," I answered; "for my father charged me
to obey you."

"Good," quoth he. "I see thou art an obedient wench. And thou wilt
marry who I please?"

"Nay, sir; I said not that."

"Oh, oh!" quoth he. "Thou wilt marry so as to please me, and yet--"

"Not so as to displease myself, sir," I answered.

"Come," he said, "another question. {46} Here is a gentleman of
fortune and birth, and excellent good character, somewhat advanced in
years indeed, but the more like to make an indulgent husband, and to
be prudent in the management of his affairs, hath heard so good a
report from two young gentlemen, his sons, of thy abilities and proper
behavior, that he is minded to make thee a tender of marriage, with so
good a settlement on his estate in Suffolk as must needs content any
reasonable woman. Wilt have him, Conny?"

"Who, sir?" I asked, waxing, I ween, as red as a field-poppy.

"Mr. Rookwood, wench--Basil and Hubert's father."

Albeit I knew my uncle's trick of jesting, my folly was so great just
then, hope and fear working in me, that I was seized with fright, and
from crimson turned so white, that he cried out:

"Content thee, child! content thee! 'Tis that tall strapping fellow
Basil must needs make thee an offer of his hand; and by my troth,
wench, I warrant thee thou wouldst go further and fare worse; for the
gentleman is honorably descended, heir-apparent to an estate worth
yearly, to my knowledge, three thousand pounds sterling, well disposed
in religion, and of a personage without exception. Mr. Rookwood
declares he is more contented with his son's choice than if he married
Mistress Spencer, or any other heiress; and beshrew me, if I be not
contented also."

Then he bent his head close to mine ear, and whispered, "And so art
thou, methinks, if those tell-tale eyes of thine should be credited.
Yea, yea, hang down thy head, and stammer 'As you please, sir!' And
never so much as a _Deo gratias_ for thy good fortune! What thankless
creatures women be!" I laughed and ran out of the room before mine
aunt or Mistress Ward had disclosed their lips; for I did long to be
in mine own chamber alone, and, from the depths of a heart over full
of, yea overflowing with, such joy as doth incline the knees to bend
and the eyes to raise themselves to the Giver of all good--he whom
all other goodness doth only mirror and shadow forth--pour out a hymn
of praise for the noble blessing I had received. For, I pray you,
after the gift of faith and grace for to know and love God, is there
aught on earth to be jewelled by a woman like to the affection of a
good man; or a more secure haven for her to anchor in amid the present
billows of life, except that of religion, to which all be not called,
than an honorable contract of marriage, wherein reason, passion, and
duty do bind the soul in a triple cord of love?

And oh! with what a painful tenderness I thought in that moving hour
on mine own dear parents--my mother, now so many years dead; my
father, so parted from his poor child, that in the most weighty
concernment of her life--the disposal of her in marriage--his consent
had to be presumed; his authority, for so he had with forecasting care
ordained, being left in other hands. But albeit a shade of melancholy
from such a retrospect as the mind is wont to take of the past, when
coming events do cast, as it should seem, a new light on what has
preceded them, I could not choose but see, in this good which had
happened to me, a reward to him who had forsaken all things--lands,
home, kindred, yea his only child, for Christ's dear sake. It minded
me of my mother's words concerning me, when she lay dying, "Fear not
for her."

I was somewhat loth to return to mine aunt's chamber, and to appear in
the presence of Kate and Polly, who had come to visit their mother,
and, by their saucy looks when I entered, showed they were privy to
the treaty in hand. Mine aunt said she had been thinking that she
would not go to church when I was married, but give me her blessing at
home; for she had never recovered from the chilling she had when Kate
was married, and {47} had laid abed on Polly' wedding-day, which she
liked better. Mistress Ward had great contentment, she said, that I
should have so good an husband. Kate was glad Basil was not too fond
of books, for that scholars be not as conversable as agreeable
husbands should be. Polly said, for her part, she thought the less wit
a man had, the better for his wife, for she would then be the more
like to have her own way. But that being her opinion, she did not
wholly wish me joy; for she had noticed Basil to be a good thinker,
and a man of so much sense, that he would not be ruled by a wife more
than should be reasonable. I was greatly pleased that she thus
commended him, who was not easily pleased, and rather given to despise
gentlemen than to praise them. I kissed her, and said I had always
thought her the most sensible woman in the world. She laughed, and
cried, "That was small commendation, for that women were the
foolishest creatures in the world, and mostly such as were in love."

Ah me! The days which followed were full of sweet waiting and pleasant
pining for the effects of the letter mine uncle wrote to Mr. Rookwood,
and looking for one Basil should write himself, when licence for to
address me had been yielded to him. When it came, how unforeseen, how
sad were the contents! Albeit love was expressed in every line, sorrow
did so cover its utterance, that my heart overflowed through mine
eyes, and I could only sigh and weep that the beginning of so fair a
day of joy should have set in clouds of so much grief. Basil's father
was dead. The day after he wrote that letter, the cause of all our
joy, he fell sick and never bettered any more, but the contrary: time
was allowed him to prepare his soul for death, by all holy rites and
ghostly comforts. One of his sons was on each side of his bed when he
died; and Basil closed his eyes.


CHAPTER XIV.

Basil came to London after the funeral, and methought his sadness then
did become him as much as his joyfulness heretofore. His grief was
answerable to the affection he had borne unto his father, and to that
gentlemen's most excellent deserts. He informed Mr. Congleton that in
somewhat less than one year he should be of age, and until then his
wardship was committed to Sir Henry Stafford. It was agreed betwixt
them, that in respect of his deep mourning and the greater commodity
his being of age would afford for the drawing up of settlements, our
marriage should be deferred until he returned from the continent in a
year's time. Sir Henry was exceeding urgent he should travel abroad
for the bettering as he affirmed of his knowledge of foreign
languages, and acquirement of such useful information as should
hereafter greatly benefit him; but methinks, from what Basil said, it
was chiefly with the end that he should not be himself troubled during
his term of guardianship with proceedings touching his ward's
recusancy, which was so open and manifest, no persuasions dissuading
him from it, that he apprehended therefrom to meet with difficulties.

So with heavy hearts and some tears on both sides, a short time after
Mr. Rookwood's death, we did part, but withal with so comfortable a
hope of a happy future, and so great a security of mutual affection,
that the pangs of separation were softened, and a not unpleasing
melancholy ensued. We forecasted to hold converse by means of letters,
of which he made me promise I should leastways write two for his one;
for he argued, as I always had a pen in my hand, it should be no
trouble to me to write down my thoughts as they arose, but as for
himself, it would cost him much time and labor for to compose such a
letter as it would content me to receive. But herein he was too
modest; {48} for, indeed, in everything he wrote, albeit short and
mostly devoid of such flowers of the fancy as some are wont to scatter
over their letters, I was always excellently well pleased with his
favors of this kind.

Hubert remained in London for to commence his studies in a house of
the law; but when my engagement with his brother became known, he left
off haunting Mr. Lacy's house, and even Mr. Wells's, as heretofore.
His behavior was very mutable; at one time exceedingly obliging, and
at another more strange and distant than it had yet been; so that I
did dread to meet him, not knowing how to shape mine own conduct in
his regard; for if on the one hand I misliked to appear estranged from
Basil's brother, yet if I dealt graciously toward him I feared to
confirm his apprehension of some sort of unusual liking on my part
toward himself.

One month, or thereabouts, after Basil had gone to France, Lady Surrey
did invite me to stay with her at Kenninghall, which greatly delighted
me, for it was a very long time then since I had seen her. The reports
I heard of her lord's being a continual waiter on her majesty, and
always at court, whereas she did not come to London so much as once in
the year, worked in me a very uneasy apprehension that she should not
be as happy in her retirement as I should wish. I long had desired to
visit this dear lady, but durst not be the first to speak of it. Also
to one bred in the country from her infancy, the long while I had
spent in a city, far from any sights or scents of nature, had created
in me a great desire for pure air and green fields, of which the
neighborhood of London had afforded only such scanty glimpses as
served to whet, not satisfy, the taste for such-like pleasures. So
with much contentment I began my journey into Norfolk, which was the
first I had taken since that long one from Sherwood Hall to London
some years before. A coach of my Lord Surrey's, with two new pairs of
horses, was going from the Charter-house to Kenninghall, and a
chamber-woman of my lady's to be conveyed therein; so for conveniency
I travelled with her. We slept two nights on the road (for the horses
were to rest often), in very comfortable lodgings; and about the
middle of the third day we did arrive at Kenninghall, which is a place
of so great magnitude and magnificence, that to my surprised eyes it
showed more like unto a palace, yea, a cluster of palaces, than the
residence of a private though illustrious nobleman. The gardens which
we passed along-side of, the terraces adorned with majestic trees, the
woods at the back of the building, which then wore a gaudy dress of
crimson and golden hues,--made my heart leap for joy to be once more
in the country. But when we passed through the gateway, and into one
court and then another, methought we left the country behind, and
entered some sort of city, the buildings did so close around us on
every side. At last we stopped at a great door, and many footmen stood
about me, and one led me through long galleries and a store of empty
chambers; I forecasting in my mind the while how far it should be to
the gardens I had seen, and if the birds could be heard to sing in
this great house, in which was so much fine tapestry, and pictures in
high-gilt frames, that the eye was dazzled with their splendor. A
little pebbly brook or a tuft of daisies would then have pleased me
more than these fine hangings, and the grass than the smooth carpets
in some of the rooms, the like of which I had never yet seen. But
these discontented thoughts vanished quickly when my Lady Surrey
appeared; and I had nothing more to desire when I received her
affectionate embrace, and saw how joyful was her welcome. Methought,
too, when she led me into the chamber wherein she said her time was
chiefly spent, that its rich adornment became her, who had verily a
queenly beauty, and a {49} presence so sweetly majestic that it alone
was sufficient to call for a reverent respect from others even in her
young years. There was an admirable simplicity in her dress; so that I
likened her in my mind, as she sat in that gilded room, to a pare fair
diamond enchased in a rich setting. In the next chamber her
gentlewoman and chambermaids were at work--some at frames, and others
making of clothes, or else spinning; and another door opened into her
bed-chamber, which was very large, like unto a hall, and the canopy of
the bed so high and richly adorned that it should have beseemed a
throne. The tapestry on the wall, bedight with fruits and flowers,
very daintily wrought, so that nature itself hath not more fair hues
than therein were to be seen.

"When my lord is not at home, I mislike this grand chamber, and do lie
here," she said, and showed me an inner closet; which I perceived to
be plainly furnished, and in one corner of it, which pleased me most
for to see, a crucifix hung against the wall, over above a
kneeling-stool. Seeing my eyes did rest on it, she colored a little,
and said it had belonged to Lady Mounteagle, who had gifted her with
it on her death-bed; upon which account she did greatly treasure the
possession thereof.

I answered, it did very much content me that she should set store on
what had been her grandmother's, for verily she was greatly indebted
to that good lady for the care she had taken of her young years; "but
methinks," I added, "the likeness of your Saviour which died for you
should not need any other excuse for the prizing of it than what
arises from its being what it is, his own dear image."

She said she thought so too; but that in the eyes of Protestants she
must needs allege some other reason for the keeping of a crucifix in
her room than that good one, which nevertheless in her own thinking
she allowed of.

Then she showed me mine own chamber, which was very commodious and
pleasantly situated, not far from hers. From the window was to be seen
the town of Norwich, and an extensive plain intersected with trees;
and underneath the wall of the house a terrace lined with many fair
shrubs and strips of flower-beds, very pleasing to the eye, but too
far off for a more familiar enjoyment than the eyesight could afford.

When we had dined, and I was sitting with my lady in her dainty
sitting-room, she at her tambour-frame, and I with a piece of
patch-work on my knees which I had brought from London, she began
forthwith to question me touching my intended marriage, Mr. Rookwood's
death, and Basil's going abroad, concerning which she had heard many
reports. I satisfied her thereon; upon which she expressed great
contentment that my prospects of happiness were so good; for all which
knew Basil thought well on him, she said; and mostly his neighbors,
which have the chiefest occasions for to judge of a man's disposition.
And Euston, she thought, should prove a very commendable residence,
albeit the house was small for so good an estate; but capable, she
doubted not, of improvements, which my fine taste would bestow on it;
not indeed by spending large sums on outward show, but by small
adornments and delicate beautifying of a house and gardens, such as
women only do excel in; the which kind of care Mr. Rookwood's seat had
lacked for many years. She also said it pleased her much to think that
Basil and I should agree touching religion, for there was little
happiness to be had in marriage where consent doth not exist in so
important a matter. I answered, that I was of that way of thinking
also. But then this consent must be veritable, not extorted; for in so
weighty a point the least shadow of compulsion on the one side, and
feigning on the other, do end by destroying happiness, and virtue
also, which is more urgent. She made no answer; and I then asked her
if she {50} liked Kenninghall more than London, and had found in a
retired life the contentment she had hoped for. She bent down her head
over her work-frame, so as partly to conceal her face; but how
beautiful what was to be seen of it appeared, as she thus hid the
rest, her snowy neck supporting her small head, and the shape of her
oval cheek just visible beneath the dark tresses of jet-black hair!
When she raised that noble head methought it wore a look of becoming,
not unchristian, pride, or somewhat better than should be titled
pride; and her voice betokened more emotion than her visage betrayed
when she said, "I am more contented, Constance, to inhabit this my
husband's chiefest house than to dwell in London or anywhere else.
Where should a wife abide with so much pleasure as in a place where
she may be sometimes visited by her lord, even though she should not
always be so happy as to enjoy his company? My Lord Arundel hath often
urged me to reside with him in London, and pleaded the comfort my Lady
Lumley and himself, in his declining years, should find in my filial
care; but God helping me--and I think in so doing I fulfill his
will--naught shall tempt me to leave my husband's house till he doth
himself compel me to it; nor by resentment of his absence lose one day
of his dear company I may yet enjoy."

"O my dear lady," I exclaimed, "and is it indeed thus with you? Doth
my lord so forget your love and his duty as to forsake one he should
cherish as his most dear treasure?"

"Nay, nay," she hastily replied; "Philip doth not forsake me; a little
neglectful he is" (this she said with a forced smile), "as all the
queen's courtiers must needs be of their wives; for she is so
exacting, that such as stand in her good graces cannot be stayers at
home, but ever waiters on her pleasure. If Philip doth only leave
London or Richmond for three or four days, she doth suspect the cause
of his absence; her smiles are turned to frowns, and his enemies
immediately do take advantage of it. I tried to stay in London one
while this year, after Bess was married; but he suffered so much in
consequence from the loss of her good graces when she heard I was at
the Charter-house, that I was compelled to return here."

"And hath my lord been to see you since?" I eagerly asked.

"Once," she answered; "for three short days. O Constance, it was a
brief, and, from its briefness, an almost painful joy, to see him in
his own princely home, and at the head of his table, which he doth
grace so nobly; and when he went abroad saluted by every one with so
much reverence, that he should be taken to be a king when he is here;
and himself so contented with this show of love and homage, that his
face beamed with pleasant smiles; and when he observed what my poor
skill had effected in the management of his estates, which do greatly
suffer from the prodigalities of the court, he commended me with so
great kindness as to say he was not worthy of so good a wife."

I could not choose but say amen in mine own soul to this lord's true
estimation of himself, and of her, one hair of whose head did, in my
thinking, outweigh in merit his whole frame; but composed my face lest
she should too plainly read my resentment that the like of her should
be so used by an ungrateful husband.

"Alas," she continued, "this joy should be my constant portion if an
enemy robbed me not of my just rights. 'Tis very hard to be hated by a
queen, and she so great and powerful that none in the compass of her
realm can dare to resent her ill treatment. I had a letter from my
lord last week, in which he says if it be possible he will soon visit
me again; but he doth add that he has so much confidence in my
affection, that he is sure I would not will him to risk that which may
undo him, if the queen should hear of it. 'For, Nan,' he writes, 'I
resemble a man scrambling up unto a slippery rock, who, if he {51}
gaineth not the topmost points, must needs fall backward into a
precipice; for if I lose but an inch of her majesty's favor, I am like
to fall as my fathers have done, and yet lower. So be patient, good
Nan, and bide the time when I shall have so far ascended as to be in
less danger of a rapid descent, in which thine own fortunes would be
involved."

She folded this letter, which she had taken out of her bosom, with a
deep sigh, and I doubt not with the same thought which was in mine own
mind, that the higher the ascent, the greater doth prove the peril of
an overthrow, albeit to the climber's own view the further point doth
seem the most secured. She then said she would not often speak with me
touching her troubles; but we should try to forget absent husbands and
lovers, and enjoy so much pleasure in our mutual good company as was
possible, and go hawking also and riding on fine days, and be as merry
as the days were long. And, verily, at times youthful spirits assumed
the lead, and like two wanton children we laughed sometimes with
hearty cheer at some pleasantry in which my little wit but fanciful
humor did evince itself for her amusement. But the fair sky of these
sunshiny hours was often overcast by sudden clouds; and weighty
thoughts, ill assorting with soaring joylity, wrought sad endings to
merry beginnings. I restrained the expression of mine own sorrow at my
father's uncertain fate and Basil's absence, not to add to her
heaviness; but sometimes, whilst playing in some sort the fool to make
her smile, which smiles so well became her, a sharp aching of the
heart caused me to fail in the effort; which when she perceived, her
arm was straightway thrown round my neck, and she would speak in this
wise:

"O sweet jester! poor dissembler! the heart will have its say, albeit
not aided by the utterance of the tongue. Believe me, good Constance,
I am not unmindful of thy griefs, albeit somewhat silent concerning
them, as also mine own; for that I eschew melancholy themes, having a
well-spring of sorrow in my bosom which doth too readily overflow if
the sluices be once opened."

Thus spake this sweet lady; but her unconscious tongue, following the
current of her thoughts more frequently than she did credit, dwelt on
the theme of her absent husband; and on whichever subject talk was
ministered between us, she was ingenious to procure it should end with
some reference to this worshipped object. But verily, I never
perceived her to express, in speaking of that then unworthy husband,
but what, if he had been present, must needs have moved him to regret
his negligent usage of an incomparable, loving, and virtuous wife,
than to any resentment of her complaints, which were rather of others
who diverted his affections from her than of him, the prime cause of
her grief. One day that we walked in the pleasaunce, she led the way
to a seat which she said during her lord's last visit he had commended
for the fair prospect it did command, and said it should be called "My
Lady's Arbor."

"He sent for the head-gardener," quoth she, "and charged him to plant
about it so many sweet flowers and gay shrubs as should make it in
time a most dainty bower fit for a queen. These last words did, I
ween, unwittingly escape his lips, and, I fear me, I was too shrewish;
for I exclaimed, 'O no, my lord; I pray you let it rather be
_un_fitted for a queen, if so be you would have me to enjoy it!' He
made no answer, and his countenance was overcast and sad when he
returned to the house. I misdoubted my hasty speech had angered him;
but when his horse came to the door for to carry him away to London
and the court, he said very kindly, as he embraced me, 'Farewell, dear
heart! mine own good Nan!' and in a letter he since wrote he inquired
if his orders had been obeyed touching his sweet countess's
pleasure-house."

{52}

I always noticed Lady Surrey to be very eager for the coming of the
messenger which brought letters from London mostly twice in the week,
and that in the untying of the strings which bound them her hand
trembled so much that she often said, "Prithee, Constance, cut this
knot. My fingers be so cold I have not so much patience as should
serve to the undoing thereof."

One morning I perceived she was more sad than usual after the coming
of this messenger. The cloud on her countenance chased away the joy I
had at a letter from Basil, which was written from Paris, and wherein
he said he had sent to Rheims for to inquire if my father was yet
there, for in that case he should not so much fail in his duty as to
omit seeking to see him; and so get at once, he trusted, a father and
a priest's blessing."

"What ails you, sweet lady?" I asked, seeing her lips quiver and her
eyes to fill with tears.

"Nothing should ail me," she answered more bitterly than was her wont.
"It should be, methinks, the part of a wife to rejoice in her
husband's good fortune; and here is one that doth write to me that my
lord's favor with the queen is so great that nothing greater can be
thought of: so that some do say, if he was not married he would be
like to mount, not only to the steps, but on to the throne itself.
Here should be grand news for to rejoice the heart of the Countess of
Surrey. Prithee, good wench, why dost thou not wish thy poor friend
joy?"

I felt so much choler that any one should write to my lady in this
fashion, barbing with cruel malice, or leastways careless lack of
thought, this wanton arrow, that I exclaimed in a passion it should be
a villain had thus written. She smiled in a sad manner and answered:

"Alas, an innocent villain I warrant the writer to be, for the letter
is from my Bess, who has heard others speak of that which she doth
unwittingly repeat, thinking it should be an honor to my lord, and to
me also, that he should be spoken of in this wise. But content thee;
'tis no great matter to hear that said again which I have had hints of
before, and am like to hear more of it, maybe."

Then hastily rising, she prepared to go abroad; and we went to a lodge
in the park, wherein she harbored a great store of poor children which
lacked their parents; and then to a barn she had fitted up for to
afford a night's lodging to travellers; and to tend sick
people--albeit, saving herself, she had no one in her household at
that time one half so skilful in this way as my Lady l'Estrange. I
ween this was the sole place wherein her thoughts were so much
occupied that she did for a while forget her own troubles in curing
those of others. A woman had stopped there the past night, who, when
we went in, craved assistance from her for to carry her to her native
village, which was some fifteen miles north of Norwich. She was
afraid, she said, for to go into the town; for nowadays to be poor was
to be a wicked person in men's eyes; and a traveller without money was
like to be whipt and put into the stocks for a vagabond, which she
should die of if it should happen to her, who had been in the service
of a countess, and had not thought to see herself in such straits,
which she should never have been reduced to if her good lady had not
been foully dealt with. Lady Surrey, wishing, I ween, by some sort of
examination, to detect the truth of her words, inquired in whose
service she had lived.

"Madam," she answered, "I was kitchen maid in the Countess of
Leicester's house, and never left her service till she was murthered
some years back by a black villain in her household, moved by a
villain yet more black than himself."

"Murthered!" my lady exclaimed. "It was bruited at the time that lady
had died of a fall."

"Ay, marry," quoth the beggar, {53} shaking her head, "I warrant you,
ladies, that fall was compassed by more hands than two, and more minds
than one. But it be not safe for to say so; as Mark Hewitt could
witness if he was not dead, who was my sweetheart and a scullion at
Cumnor Place, and was poisoned in prison for that he offered to give
evidence touching his lady's death which would have hanged some which
deserved it better than he did--albeit he had helped to rob a coach in
Wales after he had been discharged, as we all were, from the old
place. Oh, if folks dared to tell all they do know, some which ride at
the queen's side should swing on a gibbet before this day
twelvemonth."

Lady Surrey sat down by this woman; and albeit I pulled her by the
sleeve and whispered in her ear to come away--for methought her talk
was not fitting for her to hear, whose mind ran too much already on
melancholy themes--she would not go, and questioned this person very
much touching the manner of Lady Leicester's life, and what was
reported concerning her death. This recital was given in a homely but
withal moving manner, which lent a greater horror to it than more
studied language should have done. She said her lady bad been ill some
time and never left her room; but that one day, when one of her lord's
gentlemen had come from London, and had been examining of the house
with the steward for to order some repairing of the old walls and
staircases, and the mason had been sent for also late in the evening,
a so horrible shriek was heard from the part of the house wherein the
countess's chamber was, that it frighted every person in the place, so
that they did almost lose their senses; but that she herself had run
to the passage on which the lady's bed-chamber did open, and saw some
planking removed, and many feet below the body of the countess lying
quite still, and by the appearance of her face perceived her to be
gone. And when the steward came to look also (this the woman said,
lowering her voice, with her hollow eyes fixed on Lady Surrey's
countenance, which did express fear and sorrow), "I'll warrant you, my
lady, he did wear a murtherer's visage, and I noticed that the corpse
bled at his approach. But methinketh if that earl which rides by the
queen's side, and treads the world under his feet, had then been nigh,
the mangled form should have raised itself and the cold dead lips
cried out, 'Thou art the man!' Marry, when poor folks do steal a
horse, or a sheep, or shoot the fallow-deer in a nobleman's park, they
straightway do suffer and lose their life; but if a lord which is a
courtier shall one day choose to put his wife out of his way for the
bettering of his fortunes, even though it be by a foul murther, no
more ado is made than if he had shot a pigeon in his woods."

Then changing her theme, she asked Lady Surrey to dress a wound in her
leg, for that she did hear from some in that place that she often did
use such kindness toward poor people. Without such assistance, she
said, to walk the next day would be very painful. My lady straightway
began to loosen the bandages which covered the sore, and inquired how
long a time it should be since it had been dressed.

"Four days ago," the beggar answered, "Lady l'Estrange had done her so
much good as to salve the wound with a rare ointment which had greatly
assuaged the pain, until much walking had inflamed it anew."

We both did smile; and my lady said she feared to show herself less
skilful than her old pupil; but if the beggar should be credited, she
did acquit herself indifferently well of her charitable task; and the
bounty she bestowed upon her afterward, I doubt not, did increase her
patient's esteem of her ability. But I did often wish that evening my
lady had not heard this woman's tale, for I perceived her to harp upon
it with a very notable persistency; and when I urged no credit should
attach itself to her {54} report, and it was most like to be untrue,
she affirmed that some similar surmises had been spoken of at the time
of Lady Leicester's death; and that Lord Sussex and Lord Arundel had
once mentioned, in her hearing, that the gypsy was infamed for his
wife's death, albeit never openly accused thereof. She had not taken
much heed of their discourse at the time, she said; but now it came
back into her mind with a singular distinctness, and it was passing
strange she should have heard from an eye-witness the details of this
tragedy. She should, she thought, write to her husband what the woman
had related; and then she changed her mind, and said she would not.

All my pleadings to her that she should think no more thereon were
vain. She endeavored to speak of other subjects, but still this one
was uppermost in her thoughts. Once, in the midst of an argument
touching the uses of pageants, which she maintained to be folly and
idle waste, but which I defended, for that they sometimes served to
exercise the wit and memory of such as contrive them, carrying on the
dispute in a lively fashion, hoping thus to divert her mind, she broke
forth in these exclamations: "Oh, what baneful influences do exist in
courts, when men, themselves honorable, abhor not to company with such
as be accused of foul crimes never disproved, and if they will only
stretch forth their blood-stained hands to help them to rise, disdain
not to clasp them!"

Then later, when I had persuaded her to play on the guitar, which she
did excellently well, she stopped before the air was ended to ask if I
did know if Lady Leicester was a fair woman, and if her husband was at
any time enamored of her. And when I was unable to resolve these
questions, she must needs begin to argue if it should be worse never
to be loved, or else to lose a husband's affection; and then asked me,
if Basil should alter in his liking of me, which she did not hold to
be possible, except that men be so wayward and inconstant that the
best do sometimes change, if I should still be glad he had once loved
me.

"If he did so much alter," I answered, "as no longer to care for me,
methinks I should at once cast him out of my heart; for then it would
not have been Basil, but a fancied being coined by mine own
imaginings, I should have doted on."

"Tut, tut!" she cried; "thou art too proud. If thou dost speak truly,
I misdoubt that to be love which could so easily discard its object."

"For my part," I replied, somewhat nettled, "I think the highest sort
of passion should be above suspecting change in him which doth inspire
it, or resenting a change which should procure it freedom from an
unworthy thrall."

"I ween," she answered, "we do somewhat misconceive each one the
other's meaning; and moreover, no parallel can exist between a wife's
affection and a maiden's liking." Then she said she hoped the poor
woman would stay another day, so that she might speak with her again;
for she would fain learn from her what was Lady Leicester's behavior
during her sorrowful years, and the temper of her mind before her so
sudden death.

"Indeed, dear lady," I urged, "what likelihood should there be that a
serving-wench in her kitchen should be acquainted with a noble lady's
thoughts?"

"I pray God," my lady said, "our meanest servants do not read in our
countenance, yea in the manner of our common and indifferent actions,
the motions of our souls when we be in such trouble as should only be
known to God and one true friend."

Lady Surrey sent in the morning for to inquire if the beggar was gone.
To my no small content she had departed before break of day. Some days
afterward a messenger from London brought to my lady, from Arundel
House, a letter from my {55} Lady Lumley, wherein she urged her to
repair instantly to London, for that the earl, her grandfather, was
very grievously sick, and desired for to see her. My lady resolved to
go that very day, and straightway gave orders touching the manner of
her journey, and desired her coach to be made ready. She proposed that
the while she was absent I should pay a visit to Lady l'Estrange,
which I had promised for to do before I left Norfolkshire; "and then,"
quoth my lady, "if my good Lord Arundel doth improve in his health, so
that nothing shall detain me at London, I will return to my
banishment, wherein my best comfort shall ever be thy company, good
Constance. But if peradventure my lord should will me to stay with
him" (oh, how her eyes did brighten! and the fluttering of her heart
could be perceived in her quick speech and the heaving of her bosom as
she said these words), "I will then send one of my gentlewomen to
fetch thee from Lynn Court to London; and if that should happen, why
methinks our meeting may prove more merry than our parting."

She then dispatched a messenger on horseback to Sir Hammond
l'Estrange's house, which did return in some hours with a very
obliging answer; for his lady did write that she almost hoped my Lady
Surrey would be detained in London, if so be it would not discontent
her, and so she should herself have the pleasure of my company for a
longer time, which was what she greatly desired.

For some miles, when she started, I rode with my lady in her coach,
and then mounted on a horse she had provided for my commodity, and,
accompanied by two persons of her household, went to Sir Hammond
l'Estrange's seat. It stood in a bleak country without scarce so much
as one tree in its neighborhood, but a store of purple heath, then in
flower, surrounding it on all sides. As we approached unto it, I for
the first time beheld the sea. The heath had minded me of Cannock
Chase and my childhood. I ween not what the sea caused me to think of;
only I know that the waves which I heard break on the shore had, to my
thinking, a wonderful music, so exceeding sweet and pleasant to mine
ears that one only sound of it were able to bring, so it did seem to
me, all the hearts of this world asleep. Yet although I listed
thereunto with a quiet joy, and mine eyes rested on those vasty depths
with so much contentment, as if perceiving therein some image of the
eternity which doth await us, the words which rose in my mind, and
which methinks my lips also framed, were these of Holy Writ: "Great as
the sea is thy destruction." If it be not that some good angel
whispered them in mine ear for to temper, by a sort of forecasting of
what was soon to follow, present gladness, I know not what should have
caused so great a dissimilarity between my then thinking and the words
I did unwittingly utter.

Lady l'Estrange met me on the steps of her house, which was small, but
such as became a gentleman of good fortune, and lacking none of the
commodities habitual to such country habitations. The garden at the
back of it was a true labyrinth of sweets; and an orchard on one side
of it, and a wood of fir-trees beyond the wall, shielded the shrubs
which grew therein from the wild sea-blasts. Milicent was delighted
for to show me every part of this her home. The bettering of her
fortunes had not wrought any change in the gentle humility of this
young lady. The attractive sweetness of her manner was the same,
albeit mistress of a house of her own. She set no greater store on
herself than she had done at the Charter-house, and paid her husband
as much respect and timid obedience as she had ever done her mistress.
Verily, in his presence I soon perceived she scarce held her soul to
be her own; but studied his looks with so much diligence, and framed
each word she uttered to his liking with so much {56} ingenuity, that
I marvelled at the wit she showed therein, which was not very apparent
in other ways. He was a tall man, of haughty carriage and
well-proportioned features. His eyes were large and gray; his nose of
a hawkish shape; his lips very thin. I never in any face did notice
the signs of so set a purpose or such unyielding lineaments as in this
gentleman. Milicent told me he was pious, liberal, an active
magistrate, and an exceeding obliging and indulgent husband; but
methought her testimony on this score carried no great weight with it,
for that her meekness would read the most ordinary kindnesses as rare
instances of goodness. She seemed very contented with her lot; and I
heard from Lady Surrey's waiting-maid (which she had sent with me from
Kenninghall) that all the servants in her house esteemed her to be a
most virtuous and patient lady; and so charitable, that all who knew
her experience her bounty. On the next day she showed me her garden,
her dairy, poultry-yard, and store-room; and also the closet where she
kept the salves and ointments for the dressing of wounds, which she
said she was every morning employed in for several hours. I said, if
she would permit me, I would try to learn this art under her
direction, for that nothing could be thought of more useful for such
as lived in the country, where such assistance was often needed. Then
she asked me if I was like to live in the country, which, from my
words, she hoped should be the case; and I told her, if it pleased
God, in one year I would be married to Mr. Rookwood, of Euston Hall;
which she was greatly rejoiced to learn.

Then, as we walked under the trees, talk ensued between us touching
former days at the Charter-house; and when the sun was setting amidst
gold and purple clouds, and the wind blew freshly from the sea, whilst
the barking of Sir Hammond's dogs, and the report of his gun as he
discharged it behind the house, minded me more than ever of old
country scenes in past time, my thoughts drew also future pictures of
what mine own home should be, and the joy with which I should meet
Basil, when he returned from the field-sports in which he did so much
delight. And a year seemed a long time to wait for so much happiness
as I foresaw should be ours when we were once married. "If Lady
l'Estrange is so contented," I thought, "whose husband is somewhat
churlish and stem, if his countenance and the reports of his neighbors
are to be credited, how much enjoyment in her home shall be the
portion of my dear Basil's wife! than which a more sweet-tempered
gentleman cannot be seen, nor one endued with more admirable qualities
of all sorts, not to speak of youth and beauty, which are perishable
advantages, but not without attractiveness."

Mrs. l'Estrange, an unmarried sister of Sir Hammond, lived in the
house, and some neighbors which had been shooting with him came to
supper. The table was set with an abundance of good cheer; and
Milicent sat at the head of it, and used a sweet cordiality toward all
her guests, so that every one should seem welcome to her hospitality;
but I detected looks of apprehension in her face, coupled with hasty
glances toward her husband, if any one did bring forward subjects of
discourse which Sir Hammond had not first broached, or did appear in
any way to differ with him in what he himself advanced. Once when Lord
Burleigh was mentioned, one of the gentleman said somewhat in
disparagement of this nobleman, as if he should have been to blame in
some of his dealings with the parliament, which brought a dark cloud
on Sir Hammond's brow. Upon which Milicent, the color coming into her
cheeks, and her voice trembling a little, as she seemed to cast about
her for some subject which should turn the current of this talk, began
to tell what a store of patients she had {57} seen that day, and to
describe them, as if seeking to stop the mouths of the disputants.
"One," quoth she, "hath been three times to me this week to have his
hands dressed, and I be verily in doubt what his station should be. He
hath a notable appearance of good breeding, albeit but poorly
apparelled, and his behavior and discourse should show him to be a
gentleman. The wounds of his hands were so grievously galled for want
of proper dressing, when he first came, I feared they should mortify,
and the curing of them to exceed my poor skill. The skin was rubbed
off the whole palms, as if scraped off by handling of ropes. A more
courageous patient could not be met with. Methought the dressing
should have been very painful, but he never so much as once did wince
under it. He is somewhat reserved in giving an account of the manner
in which he came by those wounds, and answered jestingly when I
inquired thereof. But to-morrow I will hear more on it, for I charged
him to come for one more dressing of his poor hands."

"Where doth this fellow lodge?" Sir Hammond asked across the table in
a quick eager manner.

"At Master Rugeley's house, I have heard," quoth his wife.

Then his fist fell on the table so that it shook.

"A lewd recusant, by God!" he cried. "I'll be sworn this is the popish
priest escaped out of Wisbeach, for whom I have this day received
orders to make diligent search. Ah, ah! my lady hath trapped the
Jesuit fox."

I looked at Milicent, and she at me. O my God, what looks those were!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

From The Popular Science Review.

MIGRATIONS OF EUROPEAN BIRDS.

The migrations of animals--especially those of the feathered
tribe--constitute one of the most interesting and improving studies
that the admirer of nature can pursue. When naturalists were less
conversant with the movements of birds of passage, and knew little of
their habits and haunts, it used to be a favorite mode of accounting
for the regular disappearance of many species by attributing to them
what is the case with certain animals, namely, a torpid condition
during winter. It was affirmed that certain birds spent the cold
months at the bottom of lakes, and gravely asserted by an authority of
the last century that "swallows sometimes assemble in numbers,
clinging to a reed till it breaks and sinks with them to the bottom;
that their immersion is preceded by a song or dirge, which lasts more
than a quarter of an hour; that sometimes they lay hold of a straw
with their bills, and plunge down in society; and that others form a
large mass by clinging together by the feet, and in this manner commit
themselves to the deep." Irrespective of the ridiculous absurdity of
such assertions, and their want of corroborative evidence, we have the
recorded opinions of John Hunter and Professor Owen as to the
incompatibility of a bird's organism for such a mode of existence. In
all probability, the statement may have in part arisen from the
well-known circumstance that many birds of passage tarry in their
summer retreats until caught by the cold of winter, when individuals
may be found benumbed and senseless; {58} this is a common occurrence,
even with the swallows and other birds of northern India, where in the
cold months the temperature during night falls often to freezing,
whilst at midday it may range as high as 80° Fahr. in the shade. I
have also seen the green bee-eater and small warblers so mach affected
by a temperature of 40° on the banks of the Nile in Nubia as to be
scarcely able to fly from twig to twig. The effects of severe winters
on many of our indigenous as well as migratory birds have been
frequently exemplified by the numbers found dead in sheltered
situations, and especially if the cold sets in early, when
comparatively few birds of passage escape; for instance, the
corn-crake has been found in Britain during the winter months; we know
of one individual that was picked up on Christmas-day, crouching among
furze bushes, almost insensible from cold. The winter homes of
European birds of passage comprehend southern Europe, lower Egypt, and
the countries that lie between the desert and southern shores of the
Mediterranean, including the elevated lands of Tunis, Algeria, and
Morocco, which, although differing in physical features and, in some
respects, in climate, are, strictly speaking, but an extension of
Europe, for their flora and fauna are European. It is only when the
traveller crosses the Sahara, with its salt lakes and moving clouds of
sand, and gains the region of verdure beyond, that he enters on a new
zoological and botanical province. It is curious and instructive to
observe how well this statement accords with late geological
discoveries. From a series of ascertained facts the student of
physical science is enabled to speculate on a time when equatorial
Africa was divided from the northern portion of the continent by a
great sea, of which the Sahara formed the bed; it extended from the
Gulf of Cabes to Senegambia in the west, and was many hundred miles in
breadth. The Mediterranean sea did not then exist; therefore there was
no great obstacle to the southern migrations of animals until they
reached the shores of the great central African sea; but as there was
no desert in those days, there would be no hot winds to temper the
climates northward, and consequently we should expect to find traces
of more rigorous winters in central and southern Europe; and such have
been clearly proven by certain evidences, which were lucidly explained
by Sir Charles Lyell at the last meeting of the British Association.
Thus, although we may wonder at the extraordinary intelligence which
prompts the bird to cross the Mediterranean, we see at the same time
that it is going to no foreign land, where it will not meet friends to
cheer it, or food unsuited to its wants. The two great causes which
bring about the regular migrations of birds are either change of
climate or failure of food--most often both combined. Any ordinary
observer must have often remarked that the first effect of a decrease
in temperature in autumn is the sudden disappearance of many winged
and wingless insects, on which many soft-billed birds of passage
depend. At that season swallows, that seemed so full of life and
vigor, skimming over fields, threading along the lanes, or twittering
from straw-built sheds, are soon seen collecting in flocks, and
flitting about with a marked diminution in their activity--now
huddling together on the eaves of houses, or assembling in long lines
on the telegraph wires; another boreal blast, not yet sufficient to
turn the leaf, sends the whole flock southward, for they soon find
that there is no use facing the north from whence the cold puffs are
coming, whilst by holding in the direction of the sun, with the balmy
southern winds occasionally beckoning them to advance, they soon gain
the object of their desires. Thus flocks may be seen pursuing their
journey, and picking up a livelihood and more companions as they speed
their way over mountain, moor, field, city, or sea to {59} the sunny
climes and eternal sunshine of southern Europe and trans-Mediterranean
lands. The majority of migratory birds cross the latter sea during the
vernal and autumnal equinoxes; whilst a few, such as certain finches
and water birds, make their appearance on the islands and southern
shores throughout the winter; the latter, however, are in a great
measure dependent on the state of the weather, and their numbers
increase or decrease accordingly.

It is evident that such animals as the lapp, lemming, musk-ox, or
reindeer must push southward on the approach of winter. Their
migrations are by no means unexpected; nor would the mere land journey
of birds create amazement when we know the real causes; but to cross
the great inland sea anywhere, save at its entrance, must be
considered a great feat when performed by tiny warblers, and birds not
physically adapted for long flights; for instance, the willow warbler
or the land-rail, crossing the broadest parts of the Mediterranean,
must traverse at least six hundred miles. No doubt the heated winds
from the desert exert a great influence in determining the route to be
taken by migratory birds, especially in the countries that come
directly under their operation; and at no seasons are their presence
more apparent than during the spring and autumn; for not only then do
they blow their greatest violence, but are also most keenly felt by
contrast with the previous hot or cold months. Thus the winds that
beckon the bird in autumn to come southward, drive it back again to
Europe in spring. Much, however, depends on the constitutional powers
of the individual species, which vary greatly in members of the same
family; for instance, the little chiffchaff often makes its appearance
in England as early as the middle of March, whilst its congener, the
willow warbler, is seldom seen before the end of April; the spotted
fly-catcher and night-jar arrive toward the end of May, and depart
again early in September. Bird migrations may be said to be either
complete or partial; some birds totally abandon Europe during winter,
and take up their residence in north Africa; others repair merely to
the more genial climates of the south of Europe; whilst many remain,
but in diminished numbers, throughout the year, the majority resorting
to milder temperatures. For example, the swallow tribe leave Europe
entirely; the wagtails have their winter homes among the oases of the
desert and on the banks of the Nile, whilst a few tarry in southern
Europe, and with their brethren in spring push northward. A good many
stone-chats spend the winter in Britain, whilst the majority move
southward; not so with their close ally, the whin-chat, which
disappears entirely during the cold season, and, with the migratory
portion of the last-named species, seeks the more genial climates of
north Africa. Thus, in all probability, there are individual
stone-chats that have alternately braved the cold of the north and the
more cheerful winter of the Sahara; for we cannot suppose that there
is a set that invariably stop in the north, and another that constancy
leave at the approach of winter. At all events, here is displayed a
flexibility of constitution often considered characteristic of man
alone. Although the regular birds of passage maintain much exactitude
with reference to their arrivals and departures, others seem to err
greatly when compelled by weather or other causes to trust to their
own intelligence in guiding them from place to place; even many
migratory species far exceed the bounds of their usual resorts, and
certain individuals, not known to be migratory, have found their way
across the whole continent of Europe. A good example of the latter is
seen in the late irruption of Pallas's sand-grouse from north-western
Asia, so well illustrated by Messrs. Moore and Newton, in the "Ibis."
The short-toed lark seldom {60} migrates beyond the northern shores of
the Mediterranean, yet finds itself often in Britain, and caught
either in gales, or wandering unknowingly northward; occasional
individuals of the Egyptian vulture from Spain, the Griffon vulture
and spotted eagle from the mountains of central Europe, and the
spotted cuckoo from north Africa. Moreover, several American species
have been recorded, chiefly water birds, which, of course, are better
adapted to brave the dangers of the deep. Certain birds--to wit, the
redbreast, song-thrush, and black-bird--do not leave the north of
Europe, whilst many of their brethren of Italy and the neighboring
countries make regular annual migrations to Africa and the islands. To
account for this remarkable anomaly, it will be observed that the
robin of the south is far less omnivorous than its northern compeer,
and is not nearly so familiar in its habits--like the warblers, it
depends almost entirely on insect food; consequently, when that fails,
it has no alternative but to push southward, and participating, like
other species, in climatic effects, it would doubtless follow a like
route; and much the same with the thrushes, as they depend in a great
measure on fruits for their winter subsistence. When the grapes of the
south are gathered, having no holly-berries, mountain ash, or haws to
draw on for their winter wants, they would naturally disperse;
probably many fly northward as well; for all the thrushes that cross
the Mediterranean during winter are but an infinitesimal part of what
frequent Italy and the south of Europe in summer. No doubt much
depends on the nature of the locality, whether favorable or otherwise;
and wherever a complete or only partial failure of food has taken
place, so accordingly will the species depart or remain. Moreover,
what has just been remarked in connection with the stone-chat, might
be applied again to the robins and thrushes of southern Europe:
supposing one of either hatched in Italy, and after several years'
migrations to the oasis of the desert, should deviate on one occasion
from its accustomed course and fly northward, and spend the winter in
northern Europe,--with the example of the resident individuals before
it, no doubt the robin would soon pick up crumbs at the kitchen door,
and the thrushes crowd with their indigenous brethren on the
holly-trees, and, becoming climatized, remain in their adopted
countries ever afterward. Although we have no direct proof that such
occurrences actually take place, there is nothing in the bird's
constitution to preclude such a supposition; and not only that, but we
know in the case of Pallas's sand-grouse, and many other accidental
visitors, that they have at once adapted themselves to the food
afforded by the country, although perfectly new to them. How far such
influences, acting on generations and for long periods, do effect the
external appearances or internal structure of a species, are points
not yet clearly determined; but doubtless, as the geographical
distribution and migrations of animals become better known, so will
many difficulties of that nature be cleared up. Of the vast hosts of
birds that cross the Mediterranean annually not a few perish on their
way, and their bodies are thrown up on the beach; many arrive only to
die, as we can testify from our own observations along the shores of
Malta, where we have picked up numerous warblers that had been either
drowned on their passage or died on the rocks, or had dashed
themselves at night against the fortifications and light-houses.

      "The beacon blaze illures
  The bird of passage, till he madly strikes
  Against it, and beats out his weary life."

The quail on its way to Europe in spring, or Africa in autumn, is
often borne back by a strong head-wind to the country it had just
left; and we have repeatedly noticed that a strong sirocco in
September scarcely ever fails in throwing abundance of quail {61} on
the southeast coast of Malta, in the same way that a powerful gregale
brings in many that had been bent on an opposite direction. We now
come to observe that extraordinary intelligence whereby swallows, for
instance, are enabled year after year to return to the same nest.
Taking into consideration the long absence, the dangers and
difficulties incident to the voyage, it seems incredible that any
animal not human can be capable, after nearly eight months' sojourn in
central Africa, to return in spring to a farm-yard in the midland
counties of England; and still more wondrous, as recorded in
"Yarrell's British Birds," that several swifts, undeniably marked,
returned not only for three years in succession, but one of the number
was caught in the same locality at the expiration of seven years.
Here, then, are displayed effects of memory and perception--in fine, a
wondrous manifestation of intellect, which, under the vague name of
instinct, has been applied, we think too indiscriminately, to
such-like mental phenomena among the lower animals.

None of the eagles of Europe seem to cross the great inland sea, or
perform regular migrations. The osprey and peregrine falcon wander
over the south of Europe and north Africa in increased numbers during
the winter months. Flocks of honey-buzzards, orange-legged falcons,
and lesser kestrels, together with numbers of marsh harriers,
kestrels, sparrow-hawks, and in a less proportion the hobby, merlin,
and Montagu's and Swainson's harriers, follow the migratory birds to
and from Africa--some in hot pursuit of the warblers and quail, which
they feed on when they cannot procure more choice food. Thus flocks of
hawks may be seen hovering over the fields in spring, and along the
southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the birds of passage are
assembling before they commence their voyage northward,--all driven
hence by the hot blasts of the desert, which, under such local names
as harmattan, sirocco, kamsin, simoom, and samiel, soon wither
verdure, and compel birds of passage to turn their faces northward,
and fly with all speed to more genial climes. A naval officer informed
us that one spring evening, when a hundred miles off the coast of
Africa, the rigging of his vessel was covered by small birds, which
were seen arriving in scattered flocks from the south; among them were
many hawks and a few small-sized owls, possibly the Scop's eared owl,
which migrates in great numbers at that season. No sooner had the
little birds settled down on the yards than the hawks commenced to
prey on them, and were seen actually devouring their captives within a
few yards of the officers, who attempted to put a stop to the
slaughter by shooting the depredators, but in vain; they continued
pursuing the unfortunate small birds from rope to yard-arm and around
the vessel, until night put an end to the scene, when friend and foe
went to roost, and at break of day all sped their way northward.

The short-eared and Scop's owls are migratory species; both pass and
repass the Mediterranean in great numbers every spring and autumn, not
in flocks, but singly; the latter is much in request as an article of
food, and killed in several of the islands in large numbers; during
its passage through Malta dozens of this handsome little owl may be
seen in the poultry market. As beetles, moths, and the larger insects
constitute the favorite food of the Scop's owl, and bats enter largely
into the fare of its short-eared congener, it may be supposed neither
can have much inducement to prolong its stay in Europe after
September.

The night-jar, although late in arriving in the north of Europe,
crosses the Mediterranean in March; the nocturnal habits of the bird,
by restricting its movements to night and twilight, will account for
its slow progress; it is also much esteemed by the natives {62} of the
south as an article of food. None of the swallow tribe are more exact
in their times of arrival and departure than the swifts, which seem to
proceed further southward than any of the others; whether from sudden
failure of food or change of climate, or both, it is seldom the black
swift tarries on its way; for, not content with the climate of the
southern shores of the great inland sea, it pushes on with little
delay to Abyssinia, Nubia, and even Timbuctoo. The Alpine swift passes
to and from Europe in small numbers; compared with the last-named
species, this is a hardy bird; we have seen it and the house marten
sporting around Alpine glaciers at the latter end of August, when
there was a hoar frost every night, and occasional heavy falls of
snow; many Alpine swifts spend the entire year on the Himalayan
ranges. The chimney, house, and sand swallows make their first
appearance in spring, and leave Europe in the order here given; none
seem to pass the winter in any of the islands, and on their arrival in
Africa move steadily southward to more genial regions. The rock
swallow and rufous swallow make regular migrations from Asia Minor to
south-eastern Europe, few venturing westward of Greece. Owing to the
strong N.E. winds that prevail during the cold months, and sweep along
the Mediterranean basin with great violence, many birds are blown from
one coast to another, and turn up in districts in every way
uncongenial to their habits and wants: thus are recorded by C. A.
Wright, Esq., in his admirable catalogue of "Birds observed in Malta,"
the appearance of the diminutive golden and fire-crested wrens among
the woodless tracts of these bare islands; supposing them to have come
from the nearest point of Sicily, they must have flown at least fifty
miles! Along the shores of the Mediterranean the approach of spring is
heralded by flocks of gaudy bee-eaters, which may be seen advancing
northward in scattered hosts emitting their characteristic call-note.
We have watched them approaching Malta during the calm and delightful
weather at that season, when a few, attracted by the verdure, would
break off from the rest and descend, whilst the majority continued
steering their course in a northerly direction. Luckless is the bird
wanderer that makes a temporary resting-place of Malta at any time,
especially on Sunday, for no sooner is an individual recognized than a
dozen guns are put in requisition, and soon the fair forms of the
bee-eater, oriole, etc., are seen stretched in rows on the benches of
the poulterer. The weird-like form of the hoopoe may constantly be
seen drifting before a south wind in spring, or hastening southward in
August, seldom in flocks, but so numerous that on one occasion, on a
projecting rock in the island of Gozo, we saw in the course of half an
hour no less than ten hoopoes arrive, one after another. None of the
woodpeckers, neither the creeper, nuthatch, nor the wren, seem to
migrate. The warblers no doubt constitute by far the greatest minority
of the birds of passage, and may be said to be most punctual in their
time of arrival and departure. As with other groups, many entirely
abandon their summer or winter residences at the migratory seasons,
whilst others leave a few stragglers behind. The sedge, willow,
garden, the chiffchaff, whitethroat, Sardinian, Dartford, subalpine,
Vieillot's warblers, and the blackcap annually cross and recross the
Mediterranean with undeviating regularity, some in enormous numbers,
especially the garden warbler and whitethroat, which being then plump
and in good condition are in great request, and constitute the
Italian's much relished _beccafico_. The nightingale appears in
considerable numbers and shares the same fate with the last-named
species. The two redstarts, wheatear, whin, and stone-chats, with the
redbreast, come and go to Africa regularly, leaving a few stragglers
on the islands during winter, which, {63} however, unite with their
brethren from north Africa in spring, when all proceed to Europe. The
blue-throated warbler repairs to Egypt in winter, from the
south-eastern countries of Europe and western Asia. A small migration
takes place of the russet and eared wheat-ears annually to southern
Europe in summer, and back again to the African deserts in autumn. As
the song thrush and blackbird are plentiful throughout the year along
the Atlas range, it is probable few of them return in spring, and
whatever do cross in autumn and winter remain with the residents. The
golden oriole passes through Malta regularly on its way northward, and
in small flocks returns to Africa immediately after the harvest and
fruit are collected in autumn. The ring ousel is also migratory; and
although a few missal thrushes and redwings appear on the islands and
southern shores during the cold season, neither can strictly speaking
be called birds of passage, as their numbers seem entirely dependent
on the state of the weather in Europe and local gales. The tree,
meadow, red-throated and tawny pipits cross and recross regularly, and
often in large flocks. The meadow pipit is another illustration of a
bird which remains all the year in northern Europe, but is migratory
in the southern parts. As soon as the hot weather has fairly set in in
Africa, flocks of the short-toed lark proceed to southern Europe and
distribute themselves over wastes; like other desert-living birds, it
is very sensible of cold, and accordingly quits Europe before the
regular migratory season. The sky, crested, and Calandral arks go
southward late in October and the following month; the two last-named
are extremely abundant in north Africa during winter. The woodlark
repairs to southern Europe during the winter, but a few also regularly
push further southward, and cross again in spring. The pied wagtail
and its northern variety, called after the late Mr. Yarrell, repair to
southern Europe on the approach of winter, and many also cross the
great inland sea and proceed a long way into Africa; we found the
former very common up the Nile to the second cataract. The grey
wagtail, although nowhere so common, follows the same course and
pushes northward at the same time with its congener in spring. The
yellow wagtails of Europe have been so frequently confounded and
misnamed, that until the student has carefully examined specimens of
each he will be almost sure to become confused. There is, first, the
yellow wagtail of the British islands, called also Ray's wagtail, that
migrates to the continent in winter, but we opine not to southern
Europe; this bird has been mistaken for the yellow wagtail of the
continent, first described by Linnaeus. Enormous flocks of the
last-named bird cross regularly to and from Africa annually: probably
not a straggler remains in either country after the migratory seasons
are over. We have repeatedly noticed varieties of this wagtail with
grey and black-colored heads, which many naturalists consider as
specific differences, whilst others appear to class them under the
head of a race or variety of the _Motacilla flava_ of Linnaeus. We are
enabled so far to strengthen the latter opinion, by the fact that in a
large series of skins collected from flocks of yellow wagtails during
their migrations across the Mediterranean, we could make out a gradual
transition from the one state of plumage to the other, and we
frequently found the grey, black, and olive-headed (or yellow wagtail
proper) all in one flock and constantly associating together, and with
the same call-note; the only difference was the call-note in autumn in
some was noticed to be harsher; these, however, we ascertained to be
birds of the year. The rook is migratory in south-eastern Europe, and
repairs to the delta of the Nile in large flocks; sometimes it is
driven by stress of weather to the islands of the mid and western
Mediterranean. {64} The northern portion of Africa is a favorite
resort for the starling in winter, when flocks may be constantly seen
all over the south of Europe; they quit, however, in spring and go
northward. The jay has been recorded as migratory, and said to
frequent north Africa, Malta, and Egypt. We cannot, however, find any
authentic confirmation of this statement. All the European flycatchers
cross the Mediterranean very punctually. The spotted bird is by far
the most numerous, next the pied, and in a much less proportion, the
white-necked flycatcher. The first has a very extensive geographical
range, embracing the whole continent of Africa and Europe, and breeds
in great numbers even in North Britain, where we have seen large
flocks in autumn pursuing their retrograde coarse southward. The
woodchat shrike seems to be the only representative of the family that
regularly leaves Europe in winter; its red-backed congener has been
said to migrate to north Africa. The finches are always late in
migrating in autumn, and leave north Africa long before the other
birds of passage; at all times much depends on the severity of the
weather, their numbers increasing or diminishing accordingly. No
doubt, like the thrushes and other species indigenous to temperate
climes, many individuals extend their range during the winter months,
not so much from failure of food, as the cold weather allows them to
wander over regions inimical to their constitutions and wants in
summer; from this cause and the state of the climate in north and mid
Europe, together with the transporting power of gales, may be
attributed the pretty regular appearance of flocks of the following
finches on the islands and southern shores of the great inland ocean.
The linnet is plentiful in Egypt and north Africa in winter; small
flocks of the chaffinch, greenfinch, goldfinch, common buntings,
sirinfinch, grosbeak, and ortolan may be seen among the tamarisk and
olive groves of north Africa at the same season, whilst a few solitary
individuals of the crossbill, scarlet grosbeak, reed and meadow
buntings, cirl and bramble finches, tree and rock sparrows, find their
way in winter to the islands and southern shores of the Mediterranean.
The cuckoo and wryneck are among the foremost birds of passage that
cross to and from Africa, and both seem to have much the same
geographical distribution. We have heard the cuckoo's welcome note
among the carol trees of Malta in March; in the north of Europe in
May; among the stunted birch trees on the confines of perpetual snow
on the Himalayan mountains in July; and often recognized its handsome
form among the orange groves on the torrid plains of India as late as
November.

Many wood and stock pigeons migrate to Africa in winter; their
headquarters, however, would seem to be located in the south of
Europe; not so with the turtle dove, of which flocks of thousands may
be seen steering their course southward in autumn and _vice versa_ in
spring; very few, if any, remaining in Europe or in Africa at the
termination of their migrations. At these seasons they are caught in
great numbers, by means of clapnets and decoy birds. The quail
invariably flies within a few feet of the sea when crossing.

As soon as the cold weather has fairly set in along the shores of the
Mediterranean, a partial migration of the following plovers takes
place. The Norfolk plover disperses in winter over the islands, and
penetrates far south to central Africa. During November flights of
golden plovers arrive on the northern exposures of the Maltese
islands; also a few of the grey and a good many of the lapwing
plovers, all of which go to Africa. The dotterel, with its two-winged
allies, and the Kentish plover, pursue much the same course, perhaps
if anything more of all these pass in autumn than recross in spring,
for the reason that several of the species are resident {65} in
Africa, and extensively distributed over the entire continent. The
common heron and crane repair southward to the African lakes and
rivers, and may be seen during the winter months flying at great
heights; neither is attracted by the mere appearance of land, whist
the purple heron Egret squacco, night heron, little bittern, glossy
ibis, whimbrel, common and slender-billed curlews, fly at lower
levels, and tarry on the islands on their way.

The frosts of October and the following months drive across the inland
sea myriads of greenshanks, wood, the common and little sandpipers,
stilts, water-rails, the common, spotted Baillons, and little crakes,
and the coot. In smaller numbers come black-tailed godwits, common and
jack-snipes, common and spotted redshanks, marsh and green sandpipers,
with ruffs, the great snipe, knot, curlew sandpiper, dunlin turnstone.
Now and then the woodcock wanders across, but as a rule its migration
is mostly confined to the south of Europe. The Adriatic gull extends
its range over the western Mediterranean in winter. Many northern
gulls and terns, to wit, the herring, lesser, and black-backed gulls,
Sandwich, common, the little, the black, the white-winged, and the
whiskered terns, spread themselves over the sea, and wander up the
Nile and to the lakes of north Africa. Of the duck tribe nearly all go
north in spring. Among others, we have noticed the bean goose,
shoveller, shelldrake, mallard, pintail, gadwall, widgeon, teal,
gargany, and castaneous ducks; the red-breasted merganser, and the
cormorant; the crested, horned, eared, and little grebes.

------

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par
des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.


ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT UNION BETWEEN
THE ANGLICAN AND GREEK CHURCHES.


It is remarkable with what perseverance Protestants have ever labored
to bring about a reconciliation and union between themselves and the
schismatical churches of the East.

When one compares the terms between which it is desired to effect this
union, it is difficult to conceive of two which are more opposed, and
between which there is a more complete contrast. Protestants reject
the authority both of tradition and of the hierarchy; the veneration
of saints, images, and relics; outward ceremonial, and all that which
may be considered as composing the external side of religion. The
Greeks, on the contrary, so far from rejecting these, have rather
exaggerated their importance. It seems impossible that they should
ever reach a uniformity of sentiment; but yet the endeavor to effect
it has been steadily persevered in.

As far back as 1559 Melancthon tried to bring about an understanding
with Joseph II., the patriarch of Constantinople; and on sending him
the confession of Augsburg, he wrote, with rather more cunning than
fairness, "that the Protestants had remained {66} faithful to the Holy
Scriptures, to the dogmatic decisions of holy councils, and to the
teaching of Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Epiphanius, etc., the fathers
of the Greek Church; that they rejected the errors of Paul of
Samosata, of the Manichees, and of all the heresiarchs condemned by
the Holy Church, as well as the superstitious practices introduced by
ignorant monks into the Latin Church, wherefore he besought the
patriarch to give no heed to the evil reports which were in
circulation against Protestants."

It seems the patriarch was not to be caught by these plausible
professions, for he made no reply. The Protestants were not
discouraged, and fifteen years later a fresh attempt was made by the
Lutheran university of Tübingen. The ambassador of the German emperor
at Constantinople was a Protestant, and had brought with him a
minister of his own denomination, named Gerlach. It was he who carried
on the negotiations between the university of Tübingen and the
Patriarch Jeremias. The whole of this correspondence is before the
public. The patriarch refutes the Protestant doctrines with great
ability and clearness, and concludes by requesting the professors of
Tübingen to trouble him no longer and to send him no more letters.
They were not to be discouraged by a trifle like this; but write what
they would, the patriarch made them no further reply. This negotiation
began in 1573 and lasted until 1581, but nothing came of it.

Fifty years after the Lutherans had failed, in their turn the
Calvinists made another effort, which seemed to promise better
success. The ambassadors of Holland, England, and Sweden took the most
active and energetic part in the matter. The patriarch, of
Constantinople, Cyril Lucar, himself a Calvinist at heart, so far from
opposing their designs, favored them with all his power. Success
seemed certain. After various vicissitudes Cyril Lucar died in 1638.
[Footnote 2] A few weeks after his death the synod of Constantinople
pronounced sentence of censure upon his propositions, and anathema
upon himself. In 1642 a second council was held under the Patriarch
Parthenius, who was very hostile both to Rome and to Catholics, which
confirmed the previous condemnation of Cyril. Among others, Peter
Mogila, metropolitan of Kief, signed this fresh censure. Last of all,
these condemnations of 1638 and 1642 were confirmed by a council held
at Jerusalem in 1672, over which the Patriarch Dositheus presided.

  [Footnote 2: He was thrown into the Bosphorus by the sultan, at the
  request of his brother bishops.--Ed. C.W.]

The creation of a bishopric at Jerusalem may be regarded, also, as an
attempt at reunion between the Protestants and the schismatic churches
of the East. Frederick William IV., king of Prussia, assisted by M. de
Bunsen, was the promoter of this idea, but it was too ingenious and
too complicated to be practical. It proposed to labor for the
conversion of the Jews; to prepare the way for the union of the
schismatical churches of the East with, the Anglican; and, by means of
the evangelical church of Prussia, to induce the various sects of
Protestantism to conform in matters of doctrine and discipline to the
Church of England. The archbishop of Canterbury favored the plan; but,
as was to be expected, there were many Protestants who were very far
from giving it their approbation. As to the Oriental Christians, they
were exceedingly astonished, as Dr. Bowring humorously related before
Parliament, at the arrival, not only of a bishop (_un vescovo_), but
of a lady-bishop (_una vescova_) and baby-bishops (_vescovini_). After
an existence of twenty years, no pretence is yet made that the
bishopric of Jerusalem has succeeded in effecting any reconciliation
whatever with the Oriental churches, or that it has in any measure
prepared the way for the uniting of {67} Protestantism itself. The
Anglican Church is herself more divided than ever, and demonstrates
more conclusively from year to year how impossible it is for her to
keep fast hold upon any creed whatever. Perhaps this manifestation of
internal division and doctrinal anarchy may contribute somewhat to
turn the eyes of Anglicans toward the ancient and immovable Church of
the East.

However this may be, we have before us in our own day a fresh attempt
at reunion about which we must say a few words. The facts are as
follows: Three or four years ago Dr. Troll,  [Footnote 3] bishop of
the Episcopalian Church in San Francisco, discovered that there were
in his diocese some four hundred persons belonging to the Greek
Church, who, while they recognized his authority up to a certain
point, yet refused to receive communion from his hands. Dr. Troll
referred the matter to the convention of the Episcopal Church in the
United States, who appointed a committee to examine and report on the
relation in which the two churches stood toward one another. The
Church of England took part in the investigation, and convocation met
at Canterbury in 1863, appointing a commission whose duty it should be
to have an understanding with the Episcopal Church in America and
co-operate with her. In the month of February, 1865, this commission
presented their report before convocation at Canterbury. The American
committee published a series of works designed to prepare the way for
union by making known the dogmas and rites of the Greco-Russian
Church. The English commission formed an association whose object it
was to make the Oriental churches known to Englishmen, and in turn to
make the Anglican Church understood by the Christians of the East. The
Anglican archbishop of Dublin, many other bishops of the same church,
and the archbishop of Belgrade, were among the patrons of this
association.

  [Footnote 3: There is some mistake here. Dr. Kip is the Protestant
  Bishop of California.--Ed. C.W.]

In 1864, Dr. Young of New York made a visit to Russia, where he put
himself in communication with the more prominent members of the
Russian episcopate. The Episcopalian bishop of San Francisco visited
Georgia, Servia, and Bulgaria, and more recently Nice, where he
frequented the Russian chapel.

Messrs. Popof and Wassilief, chaplains of the Russian ambassadors at
London and Paris, were present at the sittings of the English
commission and took part in its deliberations. By the very last news
from America we are informed that _divine service_ [_i.e.,_mass.--Ed.]
was solemnly celebrated, according to the Oriental rite and in the
Sclavonic language, in one of the principal Episcopalian churches of
New York city. According to the American newspapers, the celebrant was
F. Agapius, recently come to America, having been appointed by the
Russian Church to the spiritual charge of his co-religionists in the
United States. The "Union Chrétienne," Paris paper, informs us that
Father Agapius Honcharenko is a deacon of the Russian Church who was
ordained priest by a bishop of the Greek Church, which ordination was
irregular; and that F. Agapius acted without any authority from the
Russian Church; and lastly, that he was associated with M. Alexander
Herzen at London and took part in the publication of the "Kolokol"
(the "Clock"). This last fact is of a character to make a deep
impression upon the members of the synod of St. Petersburg, but it is
not so clear that it exercised the same influence upon the mind of the
Americans. The "Union Chrétienne" appears to think that when this
valuable information about Agapius Honcharenko reaches New York, the
Episcopal Church will have nothing more to do with him. This is
possible, but as yet it is mere conjecture. However this may be, this
little incident is not calculated to {68} kindle in the synod of
Russia any great zeal for the proposed reunion.

The "Den" (Day), a periodical in Moscow, has also an account of the
celebration of this mass in New York, in its fourteenth number, 1865.
Evidently the Moscovite journal has none of the information as to this
individual, P. Honcharenko, which was given by the "Union Chrétienne;"
but it makes up for this by the important fact that although this
priest may have received no mission from the Russian Church, he was
endowed with at least equal power and authorization by the
metropolitan of Athens and the synod of the kingdom of Greece, which
is easy of explanation, since from Athens he embarked for America.

The April number, 1865, of the "Otetchestrennyja Sapiski," or
"Patriotic Annals," also speaks of the attempt at reunion, and it
repeats the conditions proposed by the theologians of the Episcopal
churches of England and America. These conditions no doubt constitute
matter of much interest, but as we have not been able to procure this
number of the St. Petersburg review, we can say nothing about them.

On the whole, up to the present time but one bishop of the Oriental
schismatic church has shown himself favorable to this project, viz.,
Monsignor Michel, archbishop of Belgrade, or, rather, metropolitan of
Servia, under which title he presides over the church in Servia. This
prelate made his theological studies at Kief, has held the see of
Belgrade since 1859, and is not yet forty years of age. Those persons
whose privilege it has been to have access to him, represent him as a
man of a high order of intelligence, very pleasing and attractive in
his personal appearance, dignified in his manners, and very exemplary
in his life. If one may rely upon the testimony of Protestant
travellers who have been in communication with him, it would appear
that he has shown himself very favorable to a reconciliation between
the Church of England and the schismatical churches of the East, and
that for his own part he would not hesitate to express in warm terms
his gratitude to the Protestants for their profitable investigations
regarding the Greek Church. In fine, it is possible that Monsignor
Michel might allow himself to be induced to take up again, in an
underhand way, the scheme of Cyril Lucar. This is no small
undertaking. Before it is possible to blend these two churches into
one, a perfect understanding must be had on a great number of points
which are of the highest importance. It will suffice to mention such,
_e.g._, as the mass, the sacraments, the procession of the Holy Ghost,
devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, and the honor to be
paid to relics and images. In addition to these must be settled the
question as to the validity of the Anglican orders. As to Monsignor
Michel personally, he would have an additional difficulty to contend
with. Everybody knows that the people of Servia have very little
sympathy with the people of England, and they would undoubtedly
manifest very little inclination to follow their metropolitan should
he try to induce them to do so.

It must be admitted, however, that the endeavor to reunite the two
churches has far more hope of success in the nineteenth than it had
either in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. On the one hand, the
teaching of the Puseyites has spread widely among the Anglican clergy.
Men of distinction who have made their studies at Oxford and Cambridge
are beginning more and more to suspect that apostolicity is an
essential note of the church of Jesus Christ, and that it is very
difficult to discover this in a church which dates only from the time
of Henry VIII.; they are gradually giving up the principle of private
judgment, and are learning to appreciate more and more the value of
tradition, of the fathers, and of the general councils of the Church.
On the other hand, adherence to {69} orthodoxy has, in the East, lost
somewhat of its deep, sincere, and inflexible character. Some years
since we had occasion to show, in the pages of this review, that in
her theological teaching the Russian Church had been materially
affected by Protestant influence. This is no longer so in our own day,
if we may judge by the public writings of the Russian bishops, and
there has been a very general return to doctrines much more in harmony
with the traditions of the churches of the East. But at the same time
one must admit that rationalism and infidelity have made fearful
ravages in the East as well as in the West. Talk with young men from
Russia, Greece, Romania, and Servia who have made their studies in
either Russian or German universities, who have attended the course of
lectures given by professors from either Athens or Paris, and you will
see how feeble, cold, and wavering their faith has become. The result
has been a prevailing atmosphere, both intellectual and moral, which
enervates the firmness of convictions, and generates a certain laxity
in one's hold on the teachings of the faith. People have become more
ready to conform to public opinion, and I should be greatly surprised
if an attempt similar to that made by Cyril Lucar should find in the
East of to-day an equally universal and prompt condemnation.

Moreover, the working of Protestant missions in the East has not been
so completely unsuccessful as many persons are pleased to report As a
general thing Protestant missionaries are men of intelligence,
education, and good breeding; they make a thorough study of the
country in which they reside; they erect schools and printing presses,
and put in circulation a large number of books. It is impossible to
admit that all this can be absolutely without effect. These schools
and those books must be the germ of an influence which time cannot
fail to develop. I am very well assured that Protestantism has very
few attractions for the people of the East in any point of view, least
of all on the side of externals, and that the difficulty of making
Protestants of the people of the East would be very great; still, one
must not conclude from this that it would be impossible to bring about
a certain kind of union; that an arrangement might not be made which
would introduce a different spirit into the schismatical churches of
the East while they yet preserved their external form. I grant you the
liturgy of the East, eminently dogmatical as it is, would contrast
most singularly with Protestant notions; but remember, we are not now
speaking of Protestantism in its pure development, but of the Anglican
phase of it, and of Anglicanism leavened by Puseyism.

In conclusion, I have no faith myself in this attempt; but still a
person would have a false idea of the state of the case who should
regard the move as a purely fanciful one, and one unworthy the
attention of serious-minded men.

But, now, supposing this effort should be successful, have we
Catholics any cause for alarm? I think rather the contrary. The Church
of England is as clearly wanting in apostolicity as the Greek Church
is in catholicity. The one has need to link herself on to the chain of
past time; the other to extend her boundaries, that she may no longer
feel herself to be enclosed within a part of the world; that she may
not have the appearance of identifying herself with only a few of the
many races of men. Even admitting that by means of this alliance the
English could congratulate themselves upon having won back their title
to apostolicity, and the Greeks in turn theirs to catholicity, the
need of unity would be felt all the more, which neither can ever
attain to, apart from that rock upon which our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ has built his Church, and against which the gates of hell shall
never prevail.

J. GAGARIN.  [Footnote 4]

  [Footnote 4: F. Gagarin is a Russian prince, a convert from the
  Greek schism, and a member of the Society of Jesus.--Ed.]

------

{70}

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

THE CHILDREN.

  When the lessons and tasks are all ended,
    And the school for the day is dismissed,
  The little ones gather around me
    To bid me "good night," and be kissed.
  Oh, the little white arms that encircle
    My neck in their tender embrace;
  Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven,
    Shedding sunshine of love on my face.

  And when they are gone, I sit dreaming
    Of my childhood--too lovely to last--
  Of joy that my heart will remember
    While it wakes to the pulse of the past:
  Ere the world and its wickedness made me
    A partner of sorrow and sin,
  When the glory of God was about me,
    And the glory of gladness within.

  I ask not a life for the dear ones
    All radiant, as others have done;
  But that life may have just enough shadow
    To temper the glare of the sun;
  I would pray God to guard them from evil;
    But my prayer would bound back to myself:
  Ah, a seraph may pray for a sinner.
    But a sinner must pray for himself^

  I shall leave the old house in the autumn,
    To traverse its threshold no more;
  Ah! how I shall sigh for the dear ones
    That meet me each morn at the door;
  I shall miss the "good-nights" and the kisses,
    And the gush of their innocent glee;
  The group on the green, and the flowers
    That are brought every morning for me.

----------
{71}

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XIII.

The next morning Winny presented herself at the breakfast-table,
looking more attractive and more tidily dressed, her rich glossy hair
better brushed and smoothed down more carefully than was usual at that
hour of the day. Her daily custom, like all other country girls who
had household concerns to look after, was not to "tidy herself up"
until they had been completed. She was not ignorant, however, of the
great advantage which personal neatness added to beauty gave a young
girl who had a cause to plead. And although the man upon whom she
might have to throw herself for mercy was her father, she was not slow
on this occasion to claim their advocacy for what they might be worth.
But she had also prayed to God to guide her in all her replies to the
parent whom she was bound to honor and obey, as well as to Love. She
had not contented herself with having set out her own appearance to
the best advantage, but she had also set out the breakfast-table in
the same way. The old blue-and-white teapot had been left on the
dresser, and a dark-brown one, with a figured plated lid, taken out of
the cupboard of Sunday china. Two cups and saucers, and plates "to
match," with two real ivory-hafted knives laid beside them. There was
also some white _broken_ sugar in a glass bowl, which Winny had won in
a lottery at Carrick-on-Shannon from a "bazaar-man." There was nothing
extraordinary in all this for persons of their means, though, to tell
the truth, it was not the every-day paraphernalia of their
breakfast-table. Winny had not been idle either in furnishing the
plates with a piping hot potato-cake, a thing of which her father was
particularly fond, and which she often gave him; but this one had a
few carraway-seeds through it, and was supposed to be better than
usual. Then she had a couple of slices of nice thin bacon fried with
an egg, which she knew he liked too. All this was prepared, and
waiting for her father, whose fatigue of the day before had caused him
to sleep over-long.

While waiting for him, it struck Winny that he must think such
preparations out of the common, and perhaps done for a purpose. Upon
reflection she was almost sorry she had not confined her
embellishments to her own personal appearance, and even that, she
began to feel, might have been as well let alone also. But she had
little time now for reflection, for she heard her father's step, as he
came down stairs.

She met him at the door, opening it for him.

"Good morrow, father," she said; "how do you find yourself to-day? I
hope you rested well after your long walk yesterday."

"After a while I did, Winny; but the tea you made was very strong, an'
I didn't sleep for a long time after I went to bed."

"Well, 'a hair of the hound,' you know, father dear. I have a good cup
for you now, too; it will not do you any harm in the morning when you
have the whole day before you. And I have a nice potato-cake for you,
for I know you like it."

"Troth I b'lieve you have, Winny; an' I smell the carraways that I
like. But, Winny, sure the ould blue teapot's not broken, is it?"

{72}

"No, father; but I was busy with the potato-cake this morning, and had
not time to wash it out last night, so I took out number one to give
it an airing; and I put down the other things to match."

The portion of this excuse which was true was far greater than that
which was not; and Winny, who as a general rule was truthful, was
satisfied with it--and, reader, so must you be.

"Never mind, Winny, you are mistress here, an' I don't want any
explanation; it wasn't that made me spake; but I'd be sorry th' ould
blue teapot was bruck, for we have it since afore you were well in
your teens. You're lookin' very well this mornin', Winny agra."

"Hush, father; eat your cake, and don't talk nonsense. There's an egg
that black Poll laid this morning, and here's some butter I finished
not five minutes before you came in yesterday evening. Shall I give
you some tea?"

"If you please, Winny dear." And the old man looked at his daughter
with undeniable admiration.

They then enjoyed a neat and comfortable breakfast, which indeed
neither of them seemed in a hurry to bring to an end. The old man was
constrained and silent, and left all the talk to Winny, who, it must
be admitted, never felt it more difficult to furnish conversation. Old
Ned looked at her once or twice intently, as if wondering at her being
much finer than usual; and then he looked at the breakfast gear; and
the expression of his face was as if he suspected something. These
looks, both at herself and the table, did not escape Winny's notice,
but she never met them, always interrupting any exclamation which was
likely to follow them with some question or remark of her own, such
as, "Do you like that cake, father?" "That is the muil cow's butter; I
always keep her milk by itself, and churn it in the small chum for
you, father; you said you liked it." "Here, Bully-dhu, is a piece of
cake for you."

With some such heterogeneous questions or remarks as these, she
managed to parry his looks, or at all events the observations which
were likely to follow them, and direct for the moment--ah, Winny, it
was only for the moment!--his thoughts from whatever was upon them,
and which Winny believed she knew right well.

But this suspense on both sides must come to an end. Old Ned, from his
conversation with Mick Murdock, had determined not to speak to his
daughter until he knew Tom had done so. But Winny did not know this,
and dreaded every moment a thunder-clap would come which she was
herself preparing for her father, and she was anxious, if it was only
for the sake of propriety, to tell her story unprovoked.

The old man now stood up from the table, saying he would be likely to
be out all day, as he was preparing to get down some wheat. But Winny,
when it came to the point, could only stammer out in a feeble voice,
that she wanted to speak to him before he went.

"Now's your time, Winny dear, for I have a great dale to do before
dinner-time; an' I must be off to the men."

"Father dear, I may as well tell you at once--I'm in trouble--about
--about--about--Tom--Murdock." And she threw her arms round his neck,
and laid her cheek upon his shoulder.

"An' is that all, mavourneen? Ah, Winny, Winny, I knew it would come
to this!--mavourneen macree, I knew it would. But there, Winny jewel,
don't be crying--don't be crying; sure you know I'm not the man to
cross your wishes; no--no, my own girl, I'd neither oppose you nor
force you for 'the world; aren't you the only one I have on airth? an'
sure isn't your happiness mine, Winny dear? There, Winny, don't cry;
sure you may do as you like, mavourneen macree, you may."

Winny knew that all this was uttered under a misconception, and it
gave her but little comfort. There was {73} _one_ part of it, however,
she would not forget.

"Oh, father," she sobbed out upon his breast, "Tom Murdock has asked
me to marry him." And the tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Why then, Winny dear, dhry up them tears; sure I know they're on my
account, at the thoughts of partin' me; but won't you be livin' at the
doore with me while I last? Isn't it what I always hoped an' prayed
for?--och, Winny, Winny, but you're the lucky girl this day, an' I'm
the lucky man, for it will add ten years to my life."

And he kissed her yielding lips over and over again. But she did not
speak; while the big tears continued to course themselves down her
pale but beautiful cheeks.

"Don't--don't, Winny asthore; don't be crying on my account; sure I
may say we'll not have to part at all. Mick an' I have it all settled,
mavourneen; he's to build you a grand new house where th' ould one
stan's, an' I'm to furnish it from top to toe; and Mick an' I will
live here, not three hundred yards from the pair of you. Oh, Winny,
Winny, but it's I is the happy man this day! There, don't be cryin', I
tell you; sure I would not gainsay you for the world;" and he kissed
her again. But still she did not speak.

"There, Winny, there; don't be sobbin' an' cryin', I tell you. Why,
what's the matther with you, Winny mavrone?"

"Oh, father, father, it never can be!" she exclaimed in broken sobs,
and clinging to his neck closer than ever.

"Nonsense, Winny! what's the matther, I say? why can't it be? Of
course you did not refuse Tom's offer?"

"I'd, father--indeed I did. I never can care for Tom Murdock; father,
I could never be happy with that man. Don't ask me to marry him."

"Is the girl mad? To be sure I will, Winny. There's but the two of you
in it an' with Mick's farm an' mine joined,--the leases are all as one
as 'free simple,'--you'd be as grand as many ladies an' gentlemen in
the county;" and he disengaged himself from her arms, and strode
toward the door.

Winny thought he was going; but he had no notion of it at so unsettled
a point. She rushed between him and the door.

"Father, don't go!" she cried; "for God's sake don't leave me that
way!"

"Winny, it's what I'm greatly surprised at you, so I am. My whole life
has been spent in puttin' together a dacent little fortun' for you; I
never had one on airth I loved but yourself an' your poor mother--God
rest her sowl! I never spoke a cross word to you, Winny jewel, since I
followed her to the grave, four days after you were born; an' now, in
my old days, when I haven't long to last, you're goin' to break my
heart, an' shorten them same. Oh, Winny, Winny, say it's only jokin'
you are, an' I'll forgive you, cruel as it was."

"No, father, I'm telling you the real truth; people seldom joke with
the tears running down their cheeks; look at them, father. I know all
you say is true; and indeed it will break my own heart to oppose you,
if you do not yield. But listen here, father dear; sure after all your
love and kindness to me for the last eighteen or twenty years, I may
say, you won't go now and spoil it all by crossing my happiness
without any necessity for it. Tom put all the grandeur and wealth
before me himself, that the joining of the two farms and marrying him
would bring to me. But it is no use, father; I never liked that man,
and I never can. Oh, don't ask me, father asthore; I'm contented and
happy as I am."

"Winny, I never found you out in a lie since you could first spake,
an' I'm sure you won't tell me one now. Listen to me, Winny. Tom
Murdock is a fine, handsome young fellow, an' {74} well to do in the
world, with a grand education, an' fit to hould his own anywhere; and
I say he's any young girl's fancy, or ought to be, at any rate. You
an' he have been reared at the doore with each other. What you are
yourself, Winny asthore, I need not say, for every one that sees you
knows it; and well they may, for sure you spake for yourself. It
seldom happens--indeed, Winny, I never knew it--that a boy an' girl
like you an' Tom, reared at the doore that way, fail but what they
take a likin' to each other. It seems Tom done his part, both as to
the likin' an' spakin', as he ought to do in both; but you, Winny,
have done neither. Now, Winny, I can't but think that's very strange,
an' I have but the one way to riddle it. Tell me now, honestly and
plainly, is there any one that cum afore Tom in his request? Answer me
that, Winny?"

"I win, father, honestly and truly. It is not that any one has come
between me and Tom that made me refuse him. The very thing that you
say, of our being reared at the door with one another, has made me
dislike him. I have seen too much of his ways, and heard too many of
his words, ever to like him, father; there is no use in trying to make
me, for I never can."

"But, Winny jewel, you have hardly answered my question yet. Are you
secretly promised, Winny, to any other young man that you're afeard I
wouldn't like? that's the plain question. The truth now, Winny,--the
truth, Winny!"

"No, father, certainly not. Tom Murdock is the only man that ever
asked me."

"Was there ever anything betune you an' young Lennon, Emon-a-knock, as
I have heard you call him myself?"

"Never, father; Emon never spoke to me upon such a subject, and
further than that, he has paid me less compliments and spoken less to
me upon any subject than fifty young men in the parish."

It so happened, however, that the name had hightened Winny's color,
and her father, looking at her with an admiring and affectionate
smile, said:

"Fifty, Winny! well, in throth, I don't wonder at it, or a hundred an'
fifty, if they were in the parish."

Winny took advantage of his smile.

"There, father dear, don't be angry with your poor colleen; she'll do
better than to marry riches with misery. Thank God, and you, father,
she will have more than enough without coveting Tom Murdock's share."
And she held up her beautiful lips, and looked in the old man's face
with eyes swimming in tears.

Old Ned had fought the battle badly, and lost it. He bent down his
head to meet his daughter's caress, and pressed her to his heart.

"There, Winny mavourneen," he exclaimed; "I have not loved you as the
apple of my eye, since your poor mother died, for me to thwart you
now. You shall never marry Tom Murdock except with your own free will
and consent, asthore. As you say, Winny dear, we neither want nor
covet his share. But sure, Winny dear, I thought you were for him all
along."

"Oh, thank you, thank you a thousand times, father dear; that is so
like you. I knew you would not break your Winny's heart."

But Winny Cavana was too honorable, even toward the man she hated, to
tell her father of the conversation she had overheard between old
Murdock and his son at the gate. She had gained her cause without
that.



CHAPTER XIV.

Tom Murdock had no fixed purpose in anywhere he went after Winny
Cavana left him discomfited upon the road. He wandered on past Kate
Mulvey's, on toward Shanvilla, but not with any hope or wish to come
{75} across Edward Lennon. His intentions of "dealing with him" were
yet distant and undefined. What naturally occupied his thoughts was
the humiliation he felt at Winny Cavana having refused him. Although
he had complained to his father "that he did not think she was for
him," yet upon a due consideration of his personal appearance, and his
position in the country, he felt persuaded in his own mind that his
father was right, and that nothing was required to secure success but
to go boldly and straightforward to work. Tom had hinted to his
father, although the old man had not observed it, or if so, had taken
no notice of it, that there were more reasons than he was aware of for
his wishing to secure Winny Cavana's ready money at all events; and
his exclamation when his father spoke of only the interest, might have
awakened him to the dread, at least, that there really was some cause,
with which he was unacquainted, why he dwelt so much more on the
subject of her fortune than the land. The fact was so. Tom Murdock was
a worse young man than any one--except his immediate associates--was
aware of. In addition to his other accomplishments, perhaps I should
rather say his attributes, he possessed a degree of worldly cunning
which would have sufficed to keep any four ordinary young men out of
trouble. But he required it all, for he had four times more
villany--not to answer for, for it was unknown, but on his
conscience--than any young man of like age in the parish.

One great keeper of a secret--for the time being, at least--is plenty
of money. With plenty of money you can keep people in the dark, or
blind them with the brightness of the glare. You can keep them in the
country, or you can send them out of it, as circumstances require. You
can bribe people to be silent, or to tell lies, as you like. But a
villain who has not plenty of money cannot thrive long in his villany.
When his money fails, his character oozes out, until he becomes
finally exposed.

Tom Murdock had practically learned some of the above truths by his
experience in life, short as it was, better than anything he had
learned at Rathcash national school. The later part of it was what he
now feared, but did not wish to learn.

Tom could not have been in the habit of going to Dublin, to Armagh,
and Sligo (no one knew in what capacity), three or four times a year,
where he played cards and bet high, without money of his own;
supposing even that his expenses of the road (which was shrewdly
suspected) had been paid. He could not have sent half-a-dozen young
_friends_ to America, and compromised scores of actions ere they came
before a court of law, without money. He could not have kept a brace
of greyhounds, and a race-mare, at Church's hotel in
Carrick-on-Shannon, as "Mr. Marsden's," without money; and more money
in all these cases, from the secrecy which was required, than almost
the actual cost might involve. There were other smaller matters, too,
which increased the necessity for Tom Murdock to be always in
possession of some ready cash. This, from his position as heir to
Rathcashmore, and heir presumptive, if not apparent, to Rathcash
alongside of it, he had as yet found no difficulty in procuring upon
his own personal security; and to do him justice, he had hitherto
avoided mixing up his father's name or responsibility in any of his
borrowing transactions. Then there was the usurious interest which
these money-lenders, be they private or public, charge upon loans, to
be added to Tom's liabilities. If he was pressed by Paul, he robbed
Peter to pay him; and when (after long forbearance) he was pressed by
Peter, he robbed Paul back again. Upon all these and such-like
occasions, Winny Cavana's fortune, which he said would be paid down,
was the promptest guarantee he could hold out for payment; for {76}
ultimately, he said, they could not lose, as he must some day or other
"pop into the old chap's shoes," and in the meantime he was paying the
interest regularly.

Winny Cavana's instinct had not deceived her; but had she known
one-half as much as some of Tom Murdock's bosom friends could tell
her, she would have openly spurned him, and not have treated his
advances with even the forced consideration she had done.

He wandered on now toward Shanvilla, without, as we have seen, any
fixed purpose. Personally humiliated as he had been by Winny's refusal
of him, his thoughts dwelt more upon the fact that he could no longer
reckon upon her fortune to pay off the tormenting debts which were
every day pressing more heavily upon him; for he could not but believe
that her refusal of him would get abroad. The Peters had been robbed
often enough, and they would now let the Pauls fight their battle the
best way they could with Tom Murdock himself; they were safe now, and
they would keep themselves so. They had told Tom this,--"not that they
doubted him, but their money was now otherwise employed." Tom began to
fear, therefore, that an exposure must soon break out.

How could he face his father, too? He would undoubtedly lay his
failure to the score of his own impetuous and uncouth manner of
seeking her favor; for he had often charged him with both,
particularly toward Winny Cavana. One or two of his creditors had
given up even the pretence of being civil, and had sworn "they would
go to his father for payment, if not promptly settled with."

It was no great wonder if Tom wandered through the country with no
fixed purpose, and finally arrived, tired and ill-humored, at his
father's house.

The old man had missed him "from about the place" all the forenoon,
and had naturally set down his absence to the right cause. He had been
candid in his advice to his son, "to spake up bowldly, and at wanst,
to Winny;" and he was sincere in his belief that she would "take him
hoppin." This day, suspecting he was on the mission, he had "kep'
himself starvin'," and delayed the dinner for his return. He had
ordered Nancy Feehily to have "a young roast goose, an' a square of
bacon, an' greens, for dinner agen misther Tom cem home." He
anticipated "grand chuckling" over Tom's success, of which he made no
more doubt than he did of his own existence.

"At last, Tom a wochal, you're cum," he said, as his son entered the
door. "But where the sorra have you been? I think Winny's at home this
betther nor two hours, for I seen her going in. Well, Tom, you devil!
didn't I tell you how it id be?--_dhitidtch!_" he added, making an
extraordinary noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and
giving his son a poke in the ribs with his forefinger.

"No, but did not I tell you how it would be? There, father! that
bubble's burst, and I'm sorry I ever made an _onshiough_ of myself."

"Faix, an', Tom, you must be an _onshiough_ if that bubble burst,
unless it's what you blew it out yourself. Di ye mane to say you spoke
to her plain, as I tould you to do, Tom avic?"

"As plain as the palm of my hand, father. I put the whole thing before
her in the kindest and fondest manner ever a man spoke. I told her how
my whole heart and soul was waiting for her this three or four years
past--God forgive me for the lie."

"Amen, Tom, if it was one; but maybe it wasn't, man. You're vexed now,
Tom agra; but it won't be so. I tell you she only wants to see if
you'll folly her up afther she giving you one refusal. What did she
say, agra?"

Here Nancy Feehily brought in the roast goose and square of bacon,
with a dish of smoking "Brown's fancies" {77} in their jackets, and a
check was given to the conversation. The old man, as he had said, had
"kep' himself starvin'," and Tom could not keep himself from a like
infirmity in his ramble through the country. He was not one of those
who permitted a mental annoyance to produce a physical _spite_ in
return; he did not, as they say, cut his nose to vex his face, nor
quarrel with his bread and butter; so, between them, they did ample
justice to Nancy Feehily's abilities as a cook.

"You don't mane to say she refused you, Tom?" said the old man, after
the girl had left, and while he was waiting for his son to cut him
another slice of bacon.

"She did, father; but let me alone about her now: I'll tell you no
more until I make myself a rousing tumbler of punch after dinner. She
shall not take away my appetite, at all events."

Nor did she. Tom never ate a better dinner in his life, and his father
followed his example. Old Mick had taken the hint, and said no more
upon the subject. There was nothing but helping of goose, and slices
of bacon, and cutting large smiling potatoes through the middle, with
a dangerous sound of the knife upon the cloth, until the meal was
ended.

Then, when the things had been removed, and Tom had made his rouser to
his satisfaction, and his father had done the same, Tom told him
precisely what had taken place between him and Winny Cavana.

Old Murdock listened with an attentive stare until his son had told
him all. He then put out his tongue and made another extraordinary
sound, but very different from the one already alluded to; and
exclaimed, "Bad luck to her impidence, say I!"

"And I say amen, father."

"Tell me, Tom, do you think that fellow Lennon is at the bottom of all
this? Did you put that to her?"

"I did, father, and she was not a bit puzzled or flustrificated about
him. She spoke of him free and easy; but she denied that there was
ever a word between them but common civility."

"An' maybe it's the thruth, Tom avic. You'll find anyhow that she'll
change her tune afther her father gets spakin' to her on the subject.
He'll be as stout as a bull, Tom; I know he will. He tould me he'd
never give in, and that he'd threaten to cut her fortun' off, and make
over his interest in the land to the church for charitable purposes,
if she tuck up the smallest notion of that pauper,--that scullion, he
called him. Don't be down about it, Tom. They say that wan swallow
makes no summer; an' I say, wan wild goose makes no winter. My advice
to you now, Tom, is, to wait a while; don't be goin' out at all,
neither here nor there for some time. I'll let on I don't know what
can be the matther with you; an' you'll see she'll come an' be hoppin'
round you like a pet robin."

"I hope you are right, father, but I don't think so; I never saw a
woman more determined in my life--she took her oath."

"Pshaw, Tom, that's nothin'. Don't torment yourself about it now; mark
my words, her father will soon bring her to her senses."

"I do not much care whether he does or does not as to herself; only
for that six hundred pounds, the most of which I want badly. I would
not envy any man that was tied to the like of her."

"Arra, Tom jewel, what would you want wid the most of six hundred
pounds; sure if you got it itself, you oughtn't to touch a penny of
it."

Tom had not intended to say what he had said; it slipped out in his
vexation. But here his worldly cunning and self-possession came to his
aid, and he replied.

"Perhaps not, indeed, father; but there is a spot of land not far off
which will soon be in the market, I hear, and it would be no bad
speculation to buy it. I think it would pay six or seven per cent
interest." Tom knew his father's weakness for {78} a bit of land, and
was ready enough.

"Oh, that's a horse of another color, Tom. Arra, where is it? I didn't
hear of it."

"No matter now, father. I cannot get the money, so let me alone about
it. I wish the d--l had the pair of them."

"Whist, whist, Tom avic; don't be talking in that way. Sure af it's a
safe purchase for six per cent., the money might be to be had. Thanks
be to God, we're not behouldin' to that hussey's dirty drib for
money."

Here a new light dawned upon Tom. Might he not work a few hundreds out
of his father in some way or other for this pretended purchase, and
then say that it would not be sold after all; and that he had relodged
the money, or lost it, or was robbed--or--or--something? The thought
was too vague as yet to take any satisfactory shape; but the result
upon his mind at the moment was, that his father was too wide awake to
be dealt with in that way.

"Well, father," he said, "I shall be guided by your advice in this
business still, although I have done no good by taking it to-day; but
listen to me now, father."

"An' welcome, Tom. I like a young man to have a mind of his own, an'
to be able to strike out a good plan; an' then, if my experience isn't
able to back it up, why I spake plainly an' tell him what I think."

"My opinion is, father, that I ought to go away out of this place
altogether for a while. You know I am not one that moping about the
house and garden would answer at all. I must be out and going about,
father, or I'd lose my senses."

This was well put, both in matter and manner, and the closing words
told with crowning effect. Tom had said nothing but the fact; such
were his disposition and habits that he had scarcely exaggerated the
effects of a close confinement to the premises, while of sound bodily
health.

"Begorra, Tom, what you say is the rale thruth; What would you think
of going down to your aunt in Armagh for a start?"

"No use, father,--no use; I could be no better there than where I am.
Dublin, father, or the continent, for a month or six weeks, might do
me some good."

"Bedads, Tom, that id take a power of money, wouldn't it?"

"Whether you might think so or not, father, would depend upon what you
thought my health and happiness would be worth; here I cannot and will
not stay, that is one sure thing."

"Well, Tom, af she doesn't cum round in short, afther her father opens
out upon her, we'll talk it over, and see what you would want; but my
opinion is, you won't have to make yourself scarce at all--mind my
words."

Here Tom fell into such a silent train of thought, that all further
conversation was brought to an end. Old Mick believed his son to be
really unhappy "about that impideut hussey;" and having made one or
two ineffectual efforts "to rouse him," he left him to his
meditations.

At the moment they were fixed upon a few of his father's closing
words, "see what you'll want." "Want--want!" he repeated to himself.
"A dam' sight more than you'll fork out, old cock."

Old Mick busied himself about the house, fidgeting in and out of the
room--upstairs and downstairs; while Tom was silently arranging more
than one programme of matters which must come off if he would save
himself from ruin and disgrace.

His father had ceased to come into the room; indeed his step had not
been heard through the house or on the stairs for some time, and it
was evident he had gone to bed. But Tom sat for a full hour longer,
with scarcely a change of position of even hand or foot. At length,
with a sudden sort of snorting sigh, he stood up, stretched himself,
with a loud and weary moan, and went to his room.


[TO BE CONTINUED.]


--------
{79}

From The Dublin Review.

MADAME RÉCAMIER AND HER FRIENDS.


_Souvenirs et Correspondance tirés des Papiers de Madame Récamier,_
Paris: Michel Lévy Frères. 1859.


We took occasion in our number of last January to trace the fortunes
of that distinguished lady who became consort of the greatest, though
not the best, of the kings of France. We saw her rise from obscurity
to eminence, without being giddy through her elevation; resisting the
fascinations of a licentious court; imbibing celestial wisdom from
hidden sources in proportion to the difficulties of her position;
exerting great influence without abusing the delicate trust; and at
length, bowed with age, retiring into the conventual seclusion of the
establishment her piety had reared, and there breathing her last amid
the love and admiration, the prayers and blessings, of a thousand
friends.

We have now another portrait to hang beside that of Frances de
Maintenon--the portrait of one who in some respects resembled her;
who, rising, like her, from an inferior condition, was courted by an
emperor, and betrothed, or all but betrothed, to a royal prince;
withstood innumerable temptations at a period of boundless corruption;
conciliated the esteem and friendship of the best and wisest men, and
then glided into the vale of years through the peaceful shade of the
Abbaye-aux-Bois. The first of these ladies was resplendent in talents,
the second in beauty; the one excelled in tact, the other in sweetness
and grace; the one in the sphere of politics and public life, the
other in the realm of letters and the private circle. If Madame de
Maintenon was the most admired, Madame Récamier was the most loved.
Each appeared under a sort of disguise, for one spoke and acted as if
she were not the wife of her own husband, and the other as if she were
the wife of him who was her husband only in name. Both have had
violent detractors; both are best known by their letters; and thus,
where they agreed and where they differed, they remind us of each
other. Of both France is proud, and both, as years pass on, are rising
into purer and brighter fame. At the same time it can by no means be
said of Madame Récamier, as it may most truly of Madame de Maintenon,
that religion was the one animating principle of her life; yet the
facts which we have to recount will show--not, indeed, that religion
supplied her with the main ends of her existence, but that it enabled
her in a corrupt age to follow the objects of her choice in habitual
submission to God's actual commandments.

Julie Bernard, the subject of the present memoir, was born at Lyons,
on the 4th of December, 1777. Her father, a notary of that city, was
remarkable for his handsome face and fine figure, and Madame Bernard
was a noted beauty. She had a passion for show, and during the long
illness which ended in her death in 1807, found her chief amusement in
dress and ornaments. When Julie was seven years old, her father was
appointed to a lucrative post in Paris, and left his little daughter
at Villefranche, under the care of an aunt. Here the first of her
numberless admirers, a boy of her own age, made a deep impression on
her susceptible mind, and here, too, she received her earliest
education in the convent of La Déserte. The memory of that hallowed
spot, its clouds of incense, its processions in the garden, its hymns
and flowers, abode with her, {80} she said, through life like a sweet
dream, and to the lessons there taught she ascribed her retention of
the faith amid the host of sceptical opinions she encountered in after
years. It was not without regret and tears that she bade farewell to
the abbess and sisters, and turned her face toward Paris and the
attractions of her parents' home. Nothing but accomplishments were
thought of to complete her education. The brilliant capital was to
supersede the "Déserte" in her affections, and her mother took great
pains to make Juliette as frivolous as herself. Her chief attention
was given to music, she was taught to play the harp and piano by the
first artists, and took lessons in singing from Boïeldieu. This was a
real gain, though in a different way from that which was intended. We
shall see further on how the skill thus acquired was afterward
employed in the service of religion, and how the habit of playing
pathetic airs and pieces soothed many a sad moment when she was old
and blind.

Her first contact with royalty was by accident. Her mother had taken
her to see a grand banquet at Versailles, to which, as in the days of
Louis XIV., the public were admitted as spectators. Juliette was very
beautiful, and the queen, struck by her appearance, sent one of her
ladies to ask that she might retire with the royal family. Madame
Royale was just of the same age as Juliette, and the two children were
measured together. Madame Royale also was a beauty, and not
over-pleased, it seems, by this close comparison with a girl taken out
of a crowd. How little could either foresee the strange fortunes that
awaited the other!

Madame Bernard, with her love of display, took a pride also in
gathering clever men around her. Laharpe, Lemontey, Barrère, and other
members of the legislative assembly, frequented her drawing-room, and
M. Jacques Récamier, an eminent banker of Paris, and son of a merchant
at Lyons, was a constant guest. His character was easy and jovial; he
wrote capital letters, spouted Latin, made plenty of money, spent it
fast, and was often the dupe of his generosity and good humor. He had
always been kind to Juliette, and had given her heaps of playthings.
When, therefore, in 1793, he asked her hand in marriage, she consented
without any repugnance, though Madame Bernard explained to her the
inconveniences which might arise from their disparity of age, habits,
and tastes--M. Récamier being forty-two and Juliette only fifteen. The
wedding took place; but their union is a mystery which has never been
solved with certainty. To her nominal husband she was never anything
but a daughter. Her niece, Madame Lenormant, says she can only attest
the fact, which was well known to all intimate friends, but that she
is not bound (_chargée_) to explain it. Madame M----, another
biographer, believes, as did many beside, that she was in reality M.
Récamier's daughter; that, living, as every one did during the reign
of terror, in fear of the guillotine, he wished to be able to leave
her his fortune in case of his death, and, in the meantime, to place
her in a splendid position; that Madame Récamier, made aware of her
real parentage, would of course be the last to reveal and publish her
mother's shame; and that this story, carefully borne in mind, explains
all the anomalies of her life.

To this strange alliance, however, is due the formation of the most
remarkable literary salon of the present age. It represented more
perfectly than any other those of the Hôtel Rambouillet and of Madame
de Sablé in the seventeenth century; of Madame Geoffrin, Madame
d'Houdetot, and Madame Suard, in the eighteenth;  [Footnote 5] and it
surpassed in solid attractions those of Madame de Staël at Coppet, and
of Madame d'Albany of {81} Florence, of which it was the contemporary.
She was herself its life, and diffused over it a charm no biographer
can seize. So young and fair, so fascinating yet so innocent, she
riveted every gaze, and attracted all hearts without yielding to any.
Like the coloring of a landscape which changes every hour, she defied
description, and found no adequate reflex save in the fond esteem and
faithful memory of those who knew her. Yet her nearest and dearest
friends felt that she was above them; and it might be said of her, as
Saint-Simon said of the Duchess de Bourgogne, that she walked like a
goddess on clouds. Her beauty made her popular, and she was talked of
everywhere; for the Parisians at this time, like refined pagans,
affected the worship of beauty under every form. She seemed,
therefore, by general consent, to have a natural mission to restore
society, which a series of revolutions had completely disorganized,
and her power of drawing people together and harmonizing what party
politics had unstrung, became more apparent every day. By birth she
belonged to the people, by tastes and manners to the aristocracy, and
had thus a double hold over those who, with republican principles,
were fast returning to early associations of rank and order.

  [Footnote 5: _"Causeries du Lundi,"_ par Sainte-Beuve. Tome i, pp.
  114, 115.]

It was a happy day when the churches were re-opened in Paris, and the
soft swelling notes of the _O Salutaris Hostia_ filled the crowded
fanes once more. It was as the paean of the faithful over the
scattered army of unbelief. Madame Récamier was in request. She held
the plate for some charitable object at Saint-Roch, and collected the
extraordinary sum of 20,000f. The two gentlemen who attended her could
scarcely cleave a way for her through the crowd. People mounted on
chairs, on pillars, and the altars of the side chapels, to see her. In
these days, dancing was her delight. She was the first to enter the
ball-room, and the last to quit it. But this did not last long. She
soon gave up the shawl-dance, for which she was famous, though nothing
could be more correct and picturesque than the movements she executed
while, with a long scarf in her hands, she made it by turns a sash, a
veil, and a drapery--drooping, fluctuating, gliding, attitudinizing,
with matchless taste. Her reign was absolute. In the promenades of
Longchamps, no carriage was watched like hers; and every voice
pronounced her the fairest.

Twice only in her life did she meet Bonaparte, and to most persons in
her position and at that period those moments would have proved fatal.
His eye was as keen for female charms as for weak points in the
enemy's line. He saw her first in 1797, during a triumphal fête given
at the Luxembourg palace in his honor. He had just returned from his
marvellous campaign in Italy and genius was reaping the laurels too
seldom bestowed on solid worth. Madame Récamier was not insensible to
his military prowess. She stood up to observe his features more
plainly, and a long murmur of admiration filled the hall. The young
conqueror turned his head impatiently. Who dared to divide public
attention with the hero of Castiglione and Rivoli? He darted a harsh
glance at his rival, and she sank into her seat. But the beautiful
vision rested in his memory. He saw her once again, about two years
later, and spoke with her. It was at a banquet given by his brother
Lucien, then minister of the interior. Madame Récamier as usual was
all in white, with a necklace and bracelets of pearls. The First
Consul paid her marked attention, and his words, though insignificant
in themselves, meant more than met the ear. His manners, however, were
simple and pleasing, and he held a little girl of four years old, his
niece, by the hand. He chid Madame Récamier for not sitting next him
at dinner, fixed his gaze on her during the music, sent Fouché to
express to her his admiring regard, and told her himself that he {82}
should like to visit her at Clichy. But Juliette, though respectful,
was discreet. Time flowed on; Napoleon became emperor, and from the
giddy height of the imperial throne bethought him of the incomparable
lady in white. He had a double conquest to make. Her château was the
resort of emigrant nobles who had returned to France, and whose
sympathies were all with the past. To break up her circle, to gain her
over to his interests, to enhance by her presence the splendor of his
dissolute court, were objects well worthy of his plotting, ambitious,
and unscrupulous nature. Fouché was again employed as tempter. He
remonstrated with her on the species of opposition to the emperor's
policy which was fostered in her salons, but found her little disposed
to make concessions, or avow any liking for the despot. His genius and
exploits, she admitted, had dazzled her at first, but her sentiments
had entirely changed since her friends had been persecuted, the Duc
d'Enghein put to death, and Madame de Staël driven into exile. In
spite of these frank avowals, which were equally respectful and
fearless, Fouché persisted in his design, and in the park around
Madame Récamier's elegant retreat, urged her, in the emperor's name,
to accept the post of _dame du palais_ to the empress. His majesty had
never yet found a woman worthy of him, and it was impossible to say
how deep might be his affection for one like her; how wholesome an
influence she might exert over him; what services she might render to
the oppressed of all classes; and how much she might "enlighten the
emperor's religion!" Madame Murat, to her shame, seconded these
proposals, and expressed her earnest desire that Madame Récamier
should be attached to her household, which was now put on the same
footing as that of the empress. To these reiterated advances, Madame
Récamier returned the most decided refusal, alleging, by way of
courtesy, her love of independence as the cause. At last, foiled and
irritated, Fouché--the Mephistopheles of the piece--quitted Clichy,
never to return.

The consular episode in Madame Récamier's life has made us anticipate
some important events. We must return to the first years of her
marriage. It was in 1798 that some negotiations between her husband
and M. Necker, the ex-minister of Louis XVI., brought her in contact
with that statesman's celebrated daughter, Madame de Staël. At their
first interview a sympathy sprung up between the two ladies, which
ended in a lasting friendship. Madame Récamier lived in her friends,
and her circle was a host ever increasing, for she always talked much
and fondly of the friends of former years. She could say, like the
Cid, "five hundred of my friends." Yet she had her degrees of
attachment. They were, to use the beautiful simile of Hafiz, like the
pearls of a necklace, and she the silken cord on which they lay. The
chief of this favored circle were four--Madame de Staël among
womankind, and for the rest Chateaubriand, Ballanche, and Montmorency.

M. Necker's hôtel in the Rue du Mont-Blanc having been purchased by M.
Récamier, no cost was spared in its decoration. It was a model of
elegance, and every object of furniture down to the minutest ornament
was designed and executed expressly for it. Here the opulent husband
was installed, while the fair hostess held her court at the château of
Clichy. M. Récamier dined with her daily, and in the evening returned
to Paris. No political distinction prevailed in her assemblies, but
the restored emigrants were peculiarly welcome. Like Madame de Staël,
Chateaubriand, and almost all reflective persons in our age, she
thought monarchy had better be limited by a parliament than, as
Talleyrand said, by assassination. Yet revolutionary generals and
military dukes gathered round her, side by side with the Duc de
Guignes, Adrien and {83} Mathieu de Montmorency, and other
representatives of the fallen aristocracy. In her presence they forgot
their difference at least for awhile, and lost insensibly the asperity
of party prejudice.

Duc Mathieu de Montmorency was Madame Récamier's senior by seventeen
years. He had served in America in the regiment of Anvergne, of which
his father was colonel, and on his return to France abandoned himself
to all the pleasures and fashions of the world. His residence in the
land of Penn and Washington had imbued him with republican notions,
which he shared with a clique of young noblemen like himself. Such
persons, as is well known, were among the earliest victims of the
revolution they hurried on. Duc Mathieu emigrated in 1792, and soon
afterward learned in Switzerland that his brother, the Abbé de Laval,
whom he tenderly loved, had been beheaded. Remorse filled his breast,
and drove him almost to madness. He charged himself with his brother's
death. It was he who had proposed in the states general the abolition
of the privileges of nobility, approved the sequestration of church
property, and strengthened the hands of Mirabeau and the power of that
assembly which paved the way for regicide and the reign of terror.
Madame de Staël was his intimate friend. She had shared his political
enthusiasm, and did all in her power to soothe him. But religion alone
could pour balm into his smarting wounds. His conversion was complete
and lasting. The impetuous, seductive, and frivolous young man became
known to all as a fervent and strict Christian. Sainte-Beuve speaks of
him as a "saint." Extreme delicacy of language indicated the inward
discipline he underwent; while the warmth of his feelings and the
solidity of his judgment inspired at the same time confidence and
regard. His friendship for Madame de Staël continued, though their
religious convictions differed, and he was alive to the imperfections
of her character. He hoped one day to see her triumph over herself,
and his solicitude for Madame Récamier was equal, though in another
way. Over her he watched continually like a loving parent. He trembled
lest she should at last fall a victim to the gay world which so much
admired her, and which she sought to please. To shine without sinning
is difficult indeed. Montmorency's letters prove the depth and purity
of his affection. His intimacy with his _amiable amie_ lasted unbroken
during seven-and-twenty years, and ended only with his death.

Montmorency's death was the fitting sequel of a holy and useful life.
It happened in 1826. He had recently been elected one of the forty of
the French Academy, and had also been appointed governor to the Duc de
Bordeaux, the grandson and heir of Charles X. He had gone to the
church of St. Thomas d'Aquin on Good Friday, apparently in perfect
health, and was kneeling before the altar and the "faithful cross on
which the world's salvation hung," when his head bowed lower, and in a
moment the bitterness of death was past.

Laharpe was another distinguished man to be numbered among the lovers
of Madame Récamier's society. He had known her from a child, and when
his exquisite taste in literature had obtained for him the title of
the French with his regard was not lessened for one whose reputation
was as flourishing as his own. He passed weeks at Clichy, and when he
reopened his course of lectures on French literature at the Atheneum
she had a place reserved for her near his chair. The letters she
received from him are equally affectionate and respectful. He too had
been converted through the excesses of that revolution which he had in
the first instance encouraged. After suffering imprisonment in 1794,
his ideas and conduct underwent a total change, and he resolved to
devote his pen for the rest of his days to the service of religion.
{84} The energy with which he denounced "philosophers" and demagogues
drew upon him proscription, and it was only by concealing himself that
he escaped being transported. Of all revolutions, that of France in
the last century has, by the horror it excited and the reaction it
produced, tended more than any other to consolidate monarchy,
discredit scepticism, and promote the salvation of souls. It is a
beacon-fire kindled to warn nations of the rocks and shoals--the
faults of rule and the crimes of misrule--by which society may
suddenly be broken up and civilization retarded.

Montmorency was a statesman, Laharpe a man of letters; let us now turn
to another friend of Madame Récamier's, who from a private soldier
rose to be a king and leave a dynasty behind him. This was Bernadotte.
In 1802, M. Bernard was postmaster-general, and suspected of
complicity in a royalist correspondence that menaced the government.
Madame Récamier was one day entertaining a few guests at dinner, and
Eliza Bonaparte, afterward Grand Duchess of Tuscany, was present by
her own invitation. On rising from table a note was placed in the
hands of the hostess announcing the arrest and imprisonment of M.
Bernard. To whom should she have recourse at such a moment but to the
First Consul's sister? She must see him, she said, that very evening.
Would Madame Bacciocchi procure her an interview? The princess was
cold. She would advise Madame Récamier to see Fouché first. "And where
shall I find you again, madam, if I do not succeed?" asked Madame
Récamier. "At the Théâtre Français," was the reply; "in my box with my
sister."

Nothing could be gained from Fouché except the alarming information
that the affair was a very serious one, and that unless Madame
Récamier could see the First Consul that night it would be too late.
In the utmost consternation she drove to the Théâtre  to remind Madame
Bacciochi of her promise. "My father is lost," she said, "unless I can
speak with the First Consul to-night." "Well, wait till the tragedy is
over," replied the princess, with an air of indifference, "and then I
shall be at your service." Happily there was one in the box whose dark
eyes, fixed on the agonized daughter, expressed clearly the interest
he felt in her position. He leant forward, and explaining to the
princess that Madame Récamier appeared quite ill, offered to conduct
her to the chief of the government. Madame Bacciocchi readily
assented, and gladly resigned the suppliant to Bernadotte's charge.
Again and again he promised to obtain that the proceedings against M.
Bernard should be stopped, and repaired immediately to the Tuileries.
The same night he returned to Madame Récamier, who was counting the
moments till he re-appeared. His suit had been successful, and he soon
after procured the prisoner's release. Madame Récamier accompanied him
to the Temple on the day M. Bernard was delivered. He was deprived of
his post, for, though pardoned, he had undoubtedly been guilty of a
treasonable correspondence with the _Chouans_.

This was the foundation of Bernadotte's friendship with Madame
Récamier. "Neither time," he wrote to her, when adopted by Charles
XIII., as his son and heir--"neither time nor northern ice will ever
cool my regard for you." He had many noble qualities, and did much for
Sweden. We could forgive him for joining the coalition against France,
if he had not embraced Lutheranism for the sake of a crown.

During the short peace of Amiens, in 1802, Madame Récamier visited
England, where she received the kindest attentions from the Duchess of
Devonshire, Lord Douglas, the Prince of Wales, and the Duc d'Orleans,
afterward king of the French. Those who can refer to the English
newspapers of that year will find that {85} all the movements of the
beautiful stranger were regularly gazetted.

But where is Madame de Staël? In the autumn of 1803 she was exiled by
Bonaparte, who feared her talents and disliked her politics. As the
daughter of Necker and the friend of limited monarchy, she was
particularly obnoxious to one who represented both democracy and
absolutism. Madame Récamier, with her habitual generosity, offered her
an asylum at Clichy, which she accepted, under the impression that her
further removal from Paris would not be insisted on. Junot, afterward
the Duc d'Abrantes, their mutual friend, interested himself in her
behalf, but without success. Her sentence of exile was confirmed; she
was not to approach within forty leagues of the capital. So she
wandered through Germany, and collected materials for her
"_Allemagne_" and "_Dix années d'Exil._" At Weimar she studied German
literature under Goethe, Wieland, and Schiller, and in 1805 held her
court at Coppet in the Canton de Vaud. Here occurred, as we shall
presently see, one of the most singular episodes in Madame Récamier's
life. She, with Madame de Staël in Switzerland, and Madame d'Albany in
Florence, divided the empire of literary salons on the continent; and
each of these ladies felt in turn the weight of the despot of Europe's
sceptre.  [Footnote 6] In 1810 the writer of "_Corinne_" became the
guest of Mathieu de Montmorency, near Blois, and within the prescribed
distance from Paris. In the château of Catherine de Medici she
collected round her a few friends, who were fearless of annoyance and
exile. But her work on Germany abounded with allusions to the imperial
police. The whole edition of ten thousand copies was seized, and she
received an order from the Duc de Rovigo to return immediately to
Switzerland Madame Récamier, faithful and courageous, followed her,
though timid advisers prophesied that no good would come of such
imprudence. She stayed there only a day and a half, and then pursued
her way in haste to Paris. But the sentence of exile had already gone
forth against her. The calm and religious Duke Mathieu had just before
expiated in like manner the crime of visiting the illustrious exile.
Her book on Germany did not contain a line directly against the
emperor; but it was enough that the authoress's heart beat with the
pulses of rational freedom, and the Corsican's tyranny became minute
in proportion to the territory over which it spread. Thus the ladies,
who so loved each other, were not only exiled, but separated. Rivers
rolled and Alps rose between them; lest, perchance, they should
combine their elegant and harmless pursuits.

  [Footnote 6: "_Comtesse d'Albany_," par M. St. Réne Taillandier, p.
  229.]

The limits allowed us in this article do not admit of our tracing the
events of Madame Récamier's life in strict chronological order, and
bringing out by degrees the character and history of her several
friends. Each of them in turn will lead us away from the main thread
of our story, and we hope that our readers will follow us with
indulgence when we are obliged to take it up again rather awkwardly.
We cannot do otherwise than mass together many things which had better
be kept apart.

One day, in the autumn of 1806, Monsieur Récamier brought some dismal
news to Clichy. The financial condition of Spain and her colonies,
combined with other untoward events, had placed his bank in such
jeopardy that, unless the government could be induced to advance him
£40,000 on good security, he must stop payment within two days. A
large party had been invited to dinner; and the hostess, suppressing
her emotions with extraordinary self-command, did the honors of her
house in a manner calculated to obviate alarm. It was a golden
opportunity for imperial vengeance, and it was not lost. All aid from
the Bank of France was {86} refused, and the much-envied Maison
Récamier was made over, with all its liabilities, to the hands of its
creditors. So cruel a reverse was enough to try the fortitude of the
most Christian. Nor was Madame Récamier found wanting in that heroic
quality. Indeed, there are few women who, taken all in all, would
serve better to enforce Eliza Famham's ingenious arguments for the
superiority of her sex.  [Footnote 7] While her husband's spirit was
almost broken under the blow, she calmly, if not cheerfully, sold her
last jewel, and occupied a small apartment on the ground floor of her
splendid mansion. The rest of the house was let to Prince Pignatelli,
and ultimately sold. The French have their faults--great faults; what
nation has not?--but let us do them the justice to say that in their
friendships they are faithful. The poor wife of the ruined banker was
as much honored and courted by them in her adversity as she had been
when surrounded with every luxury and every facility for hospitable
entertainments. Let those who would form an idea of the sympathy
expressed by her friends read that touching letter of Madame de Staël
which Chateaubriand has preserved.  [Footnote 8] The opulent and gay,
the learned, the brilliant, the serious, came in troops to that garden
of the hotel in the Rue du Mont Blanc, where the unsullied and queenly
rose was bending beneath the storm. The jealous emperor, at the head
of his legions in Germany, heard of the interest she excited; for
Junot, just returned from Paris, could not refrain from reporting at
length what he had seen. But Napoleon interrupted him with impatience,
saying, "The widow of a field-marshal of France, killed on the
battle-plain, would not receive such honors!" And why should she? Is
there no virtue but that of valor? Are there no conquests but those of
the sword?

  [Footnote 7: "Woman and Her Era." 2 vols. New York.]

  [Footnote 8: In the "_Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe._"]


The trial which Juliette bore so patiently was fatal to her mother.
Madame Bernard's health had long been declining; laid on a couch, and
elegantly attired, she received visits daily; but her strength gave
way altogether when her daughter fell from her high estate. She little
knew that Madame Récamier was on the very point of having a royal
prince for her suitor. Only three months after the failure of the bank
Madame Bernard passed away, deeply lamented by her loving daughter,
whom filial piety made blind or indulgent to her imperfections.

Prince Augustus of Prussia was a nephew of Frederick the Great.
Chivalrous, brave, and handsome, he united very ardent feelings with
candor, loyalty, and love, of his country. He had, in October, 1806,
been made prisoner at the battle of Saalfeld, where his brother,
Prince Louis, had fallen fighting at his side. The mourning he still
wore added to his dignity, and the society and scenery in the midst of
which Madame Récamier first met him, deepened the charm of his
presence and devoted attentions.

It was in 1807, on the banks of the lake of Geneva, hallowed to the
thoughtful mind by so many historic associations, and encircled by all
the gorgeous loveliness of which nature is so lavish in the valleys of
the Alps. There in the château of Madame de Staël, Juliette listened
during three months to his earnest conversation, and heard him propose
that she should be his bride. Her marriage with M. Récamier presented
no real difficulty; it was a civil marriage only; the peculiar case
was one in which the Catholic Church admits of declaration of nullity;
and for which, in Protestant Germany, legal divorce could very easily
be obtained. Madame de Staël's imagination was kindled by this
romantic incident, and she did not fail to second the prince's suit.
Juliette herself was fully alive to the honors that were proposed her.
It was no impoverished refugee that sought her hand. Though a prisoner
{87} for the moment, he would, doubtless, soon be set at liberty, and
he was as proud as any of his exalted rank. Yielding, therefore, to
the sentiments he inspired, Madame Récamier wrote to her husband to
ask his consent to a separation. This he could not refuse; but, while
granting it, he seems to have appealed to her feelings with a degree
of earnestness which profoundly touched her heart. He had, he said,
been her friend from childhood; and, if she must form another union,
he trusted it would not take place in Paris, nor even in France. His
letter turned the current of her desires. She thought of his long
kindness, his age, his misfortune, and resolved not to abandon him.
Religious considerations may also have weighed with her, for Prince
Augustus did not hold the true faith. He had, moreover, two natural
daughters, the countesses of Waldenburg, and this circumstance also
may have indisposed her to the match.  [Footnote 9] He had, as she
once said, many fancies. Would a morganatic marriage bind his
wandering heart, or could she endure the pain of being expatriated for
ever? They parted without any definite engagement, but he repaired to
Berlin to obtain his family's consent. Madame Récamier returned to
Paris; and, though she declined the honor of his hand on the ground of
her responding imperfectly to his affection, she sent him her
portrait, which he treasured till the day of his death. A ring which
she also gave him was buried with him, and they never ceased while on
earth to correspond in terms of the warmest friendship. In 1815 the
prince entered Paris with the victorious legions of allied Europe,
having written to his friend from every city that he entered; and in
1825 they had their last interview in the Abbaye-aux-Bois.

  [Footnote 9: "Madame Récamier," by Madame M----]

We must now follow her into exile. It was in the latter part of 1811
that she took up her abode in the dreary town of Châlons-sur-Marne,
which happened to be just as far from Paris as she was required to
live, and no further. The prefect was an amiable man, and retained his
post during forty years, enjoying the confidence of each government in
succession. But that which alleviated most the dulness of Châlons was
its neighborhood to many beloved friends, particularly Montmorency. In
June, 1812, however, she quitted it for Lyons, being unwilling to
compromise those who were most ready to console her in exile. Many a
château round had claimed the happiness of entertaining her; but to be
kind to those who are suspected is always to draw suspicion on one's
self. Renouncing many delights within her reach, she had sought one of
the purest in playing the organ in the parish church, both during the
week and on Sundays at high mass and vespers. She did the same at
Albano during her stay there in the ensuing year.

Italy, and above all Rome, attracts sooner or later whatever is most
cultivated in mind and taste. Thither, in 1813, Madame Récamier turned
her steps. She was attended by her niece and her maid. Montmorency
accompanied her as far as Chambery, and her carriage was well supplied
with books, which M. Ballanche had selected to beguile the tedium of
the way. This gentleman was the son of a printer at Lyons, and his
genius became his fortune. His prose writings were considered a model
of style, and ultimately obtained him a place in the French Academy.
Neglecting subjects of the day, he uniformly indulged his fondness for
abstract speculation, and in several works ingeniously set forth his
ideas on the progress of mankind through alternate periods of revival
and decay.  [Footnote 10] He was profoundly Christian at heart, but
coupled his belief in the fall and redemption with peculiar notions
respecting human perfectibility.

  [Footnote 10: "_Institutions Sociales,_" 1818. "_Palingénésis
  Sociale._" 1830]

{88} His mind was dreamy, his system mystical, but he realized
intensely the existence of things unseen, and declared that "he was
more sure of the next world than of this present." He mistrusted,
indeed, the reality of material phenomena, and rested in the thought
of two, and two only, luminously self-evident beings, himself and his
creator. But genius is a dangerous gift to the student of theology,
and perhaps Ballanche would have been more sound if he had been less
clever. From the moment he saw Madame Récamier, he became ardently
attached to her society. Her praise was his richest reward, and the
prospect of reading his essays and poems to her more than doubled the
pleasure of composing them. The first time he conversed with her a
curious incident occurred. After getting over the difficulty he
experienced in talking on ordinary topics, he had risen to a higher
strain, and expatiated in glowing language on philosophical and
literary subjects, till Madame Récamier, who had for some time been
much incommoded by the smell of the detestable blacking with which his
shoes had been cleaned, was obliged to tell him timidly that she
really could not bear it any longer. M. Ballanche apologized humbly,
left the room, and, returning a minute later without his shoes, took
up the conversation where he had dropped it, and was soon in the
clouds again. But his shoes were not his only drawback. He was
hideously ugly, and that by a cruel mishap. A charlatan, like the one
who practiced upon Scarron, had prescribed such violent remedies for
his headaches that his jaw had become carious, and a part of it was
removed by trepanning. A terrible inroad was made on one of his cheeks
by this operation; but his magnificent eyes and lofty forehead
redeemed his uncomely traits, and amid all his awkwardness and
timidity his friends always discerned an expression of tenderness and
often a kind of inspiration breathing from his face. Madame Récamier's
talents were of a high order, for she could appreciate those of
others. She soon forgot Ballanche's shoes, forgot his ungainly
movements and ghastly deformity, and fixed her gaze on that inner man
which was all nobility and gentleness, glowing with poetry, and
steeped in the dews of Hermon. Let us leave him now at Lyons; we shall
meet him again before long.

There was a vast and dreary city toward the south of Italy which had
once been called Rome. It was now the capital of the department of the
Tiber. Without the Caesars or the Pope, it was Rome no more. No
foreigners thronged its streets and fanes, its prelates were
scattered, and its scanty inhabitants looked sullenly on the Frank
soldiers who turned its palaces and sanctuaries into barracks. Hither
came Madame Récamier, and her apartment in the Corso was soon hailed
as an oasis in the wilderness. All the strangers in the deserted
capital, and many of the Romans, paid their court to this queen of
society; and Canova, one of the few stars left in the twilight,
visited her every evening, and wrote to her every morning. He
chiselled her bust as no hand but his could chisel it, and seized
ideal beauty while copying what was before him. He called it
"Beatrice," and it was worthy of the name. Ballanche, too, came all
the way from Lyons to visit the universal favorite. He travelled night
and day, and could remain at Rome only one week. The very evening of
his arrival Madame Récamier began to do the honors of the Eternal
City. Three carriages full of friends drove from her house to St.
Peter's and the Coliseum, where they all alighted. Ballanche moved
solemnly, with his hands beside him, overpowered by the grandeur of
all around. On a sudden his _parfaite amie_ looked back. He was not
without his shoes this time, but without his hat. "M. Ballanche," she
said, "where is your hat?" "Ah!" replied the philosopher, "I have left
it at Alexandria." And so it was--so {89} little did his thoughts
dwell on external life.

From  Rome the travellers proceeded to Naples. A cordial welcome
awaited Madame Récamier from Caroline Bonaparte, whom she had known of
old. A page from the royal palace brought her a magnificent basket of
fruit and flowers immediately on her arrival, and she soon became the
confidante of both king and queen. Joachim Murat sat on a usurped
throne, and was reaping the bitter fruits of a false position. Duty
bound him to Napoleon, interest to the allies. First he was perfidious
to his master, next to his colleagues. One day he entered his wife's
saloon in great agitation, and finding Madame Récamier, avowed to her
that he had signed the coalition. He then asked her opinion of his
act, taking it for granted that it would be favorable. But, though not
an imperialist, she was a Frenchwoman. "Sire!" she replied, "you are
French, and to France you should be faithful." Murat turned pale. "I
am a traitor then," he exclaimed, and, opening the window in haste,
pointed to the British fleet sailing into the bay. Then burying his
face in his hands, he sunk upon a sofa and wept. The year after,
faithless alike to Europe and to the empire, a tempest cast him on the
shore of Pizzo, and he was taken and shot like a brigand.

A dense crowd was collected in the Piazza del Popolo to see the entry
of Pius VII., after the Apollyon of kingdoms had been sent to Elba.
The Roman nobles and gentleman headed the procession, and their sons
drew the pontiff's carriage. In it he knelt, with his hair unsilvered
by age, and his fine face expressing deep humility. His hand was
extended to bless his people, but his head bowed before the almighty
disposer of human events. It was the triumph of a confessor rather
than of a sovereign--of a principle, not of a person. Never did such a
rain of tears fall on the marble paving at St. Peter's as when at last
he traversed the church and prostrated himself before the altar over
the tomb of the apostles. Then the _Te Deum_ rose and echoed through
those gorgeous arches, and Madame Récamier was not insensible to the
affecting scene. Before leaving Rome the second time, she paid a
farewell visit to General Miollis, who had commanded the French
forces. He was extremely touched by this civility, and received her in
a villa he had bought, and which still bears his name. He was quite
alone, with an old soldier for his servant. She was, he said, the only
person who had called upon him since he had ceased to govern Rome.

After three years' absence she returned to Paris, and, still radiant
with beauty and overflowing with gladness, resumed her undisputed
empire over polite society. Her husband had regained his lost ground,
and was again a prosperous banker, while she possessed in her own
right a fortune inherited from her mother. The restoration of Louis
XVIII. had changed the face of her salon and of society in general.
Her friends were once more in power, and those who had vexed her and
them were banished or forgotten. The Duke of Wellington often visited
her, and she presented him to Queen Hortense. He shocked her, however,
after the battle of Waterloo, by saying of Napoleon, "I have well
beaten him!" She had no love for the ex-emperor; but France was her
country, and she could not exult over its defeat. Her niece declares
that Wellington was not free from intoxication with his success, and
that nothing but the indignant murmurs of the pit prevented him from
entering the royal box with his aides-de-camp.  [Footnote 11] Madame
de Staël died in 1817, and her friend, Mathieu de Montmorency,
gathered up with piety and hope every indication of a religious spirit
which she had left behind. She never raised her eyes to heaven without
thinking of him, and she believed that {90} in his prayers his spirit
answered hers.  [Footnote 12] Prayer, she wrote, was the bond which
united all religious beings in one, and the life of the soul. Sin and
suffering were inseparable, and she had never done wrong without
falling into trouble. During the long sleepless nights of her last
illness she repeated constantly the Lord's prayer to calm her mind,
and she learned to enjoy the "Imitation of Jesus Christ."

  [Footnote 11: "_Souvenirs de Madame Récamier_," vol. i., p.268.]

  [Footnote 12: "_Dix années d'Exil._" ]

The void she left in Madame Récamier's circle was filled by one whose
writings were, the talk and admiration of Europe. This was
Chateaubriand. Professor Robertson has lately brought him very
agreeably to our remembrance in his able and interesting lectures on
modern history. The Duc de Noailles, that contemporary, as he has been
called, of Louis XIV., pronounced his eulogy when taking his place in
the French Academy, and he has left us his biography in the most
charming form in which that of any one can be read, viz., written by
himself. The portrait a man draws of himself in writing rarely
deceives; for the very attempt to falsify would betray the real
character. Chateaubriand's vanity escapes him in his memoirs as
frequently as it did in his conversation, yet there cannot be a doubt
that he had great qualities, and has built himself an enduring name.
That extreme refinement of thought which is inseparable from genius
makes him difficult to appreciate, and the phases of society through
which he passed were so conflicting as to be fatal to the consistency
of almost all public men. Yet he was on the whole faithful through
life to his first principles. At one time he defended monarchy, at
another freedom, pleading most eloquently for that which for the
moment seemed most in danger. He knew the value of their mutual
support, and, like all who move on a double line, he was often
misunderstood. Born of an ancient and noble family, he chose at the
same time the profession of arts and arms. The popular excesses of
1791 drove him from Paris, and he embarked for America. There, in the
immense forests and savannas of Canada and the Floridas, often living
among savages, he stored up materials for his early romances, and
acquired that grandeur and depth of coloring in descriptions of
natural scenery for which he is so remarkable. He was near the
tropics, in the land of the fire-fly and hummingbird, when he heard of
the flight of Louis XVI. and his arrest at Varennes. Hastening back to
rejoin the standard of his royal master, he again took arms, and was
seriously wounded at the siege of Thionville. From Jersey he was
transported to London, where he lived in extreme want, taught French,
and translated for publishers. Here, too, he produced his first work,
which was tainted with the infidelity of the day. The death of his
pious mother recalled him to a better mind, and awakened in him a
train of thought which issued at length in the "_Génie du
Christianisme._" "_Atala_" and "René," likewise under the form of
romance, serving as episodes to his great work, avenged the cause of
religion, and powerfully aided in producing a reaction in favor of
Christianity. The First Consul hailed the rising star, and attached
him as secretary to Cardinal Fesch's embassy at Rome. In 1804 he had
just been appointed to represent France in the republic of Valais,
when he heard of the odious execution of the Duc d'Enghien, and
immediately sent in his resignation. He could serve a ruler who had
brought order out of chaos, but not an assassin. From that day he
never ceased to be hostile to the empire. After wandering, as Ampère
did later, along the classic shores of Greece and the monuments of
Egypt, and kissing the footprints of his Redeemer on the mount of
Calvary, he returned to France, and in the Vallée-aux-Loups composed
his prose poem, the "Martyrs," in {91} which, as in "Fabiola" and
"Callista," the glowing imagery of pagan art is blended with the
ethical grandeur of the religion of Christ. A place was awarded him in
the French Academy, which he was not permitted to take till the
Bourbons were restored. Their return filled him with joy, and a
pamphlet he had written against Bonaparte was said by Louis XVIII. to
have been worth an army to his cause. On the escape of Napoleon from
Elba he accompanied the king to Ghent, and, on re-entering Paris, was
raised to the peerage and made minister of state. In 1816, having
published his "Monarchy according to the Charter," he lost the royal
favor and his honorary title. His work, however, continues to this day
"a textbook of French constitutional law."  [Footnote 13]

  [Footnote 13: Robertson's "Lectures," p. 291.]

Such was the statesman, apologist, philosopher, and poet who, in his
forty-ninth year, obtained an ascendancy over Madame Récamier's
imagination so complete that the religious Montmorency trembled, and
the thoughtful Ballanche dreamed some ill. They thought, too, that her
manners changed toward them, but she soon restored their confidence.
It would be vain, indeed, to deny that her regard for Chateaubriand
caused her many anxious thoughts and secret tears, particularly when,
after a few years, he neglected her for the din of political debate
and the society of beings less exalted and pure. But this estrangement
was only temporary, and both before it and after it, till he died, her
daily task was to soothe the irritability to which poets are said to
be especially subject; to amuse him herself, as Madame de Maintenon
amused Louis XIV.; and to surround him with those who, for her sake as
well as for his, labored for the same charitable end.

Another reverse befel her in 1819. M. Récamier fouled again, and
£4,000, which his wife had invested in his bank, went with the rest.
Trusting in the security of his position, she had shortly before
purchased a house in the Rue d'Anjou and furnished it handsomely.
There was a garden belonging to it, and an alley of linden-trees,
where Chateaubriand tells us he used to walk with Madame Récamier. But
the house and garden were sold, and the occupant removed to a small
apartment in the quaint old Abbaye-aux-Bois. She placed her husband
and M. Bernard with M. Bernard's aged friend in the neighborhood, and
dined with them, her niece, Ballanche, and Paul David every day. In
the evening she received company, and her cell soon became the
fashion, if not the rage. It was an incommodious room, with a brick
floor, on the third story. The staircase was irregular; and
Chateaubriand complains of being out of breath when he reached the
top. A piano, a harp, books, a portrait of Madame de Staël, and a view
of Coppet by moonlight, adorned it. Flower-pots stood in the windows;
and in the green garden beneath nuns and boarders were seen walking to
and fro. The top of an acacia rose to a level with the eye, tall
spires stood out against the sky, and the hills of Sèvres bounded the
distant horizon. The setting sun used to gild the picture and pierce
through the open casements. Birds nestled in the Venetian blinds, and
the hum of the great city scarce broke the silence.

Here Madame Récamier received every morning a note from Chateaubriand,
and here he came at three o'clock so regularly that the neighbors, it
is said, used to set their watches by his approach. Few persons were
allowed to meet him, for he was singular and exclusive; but, when
evening closed, the _élite_ of France and half the celebrities of
Europe found their way here by turns. The Duchess of Devonshire and
Sir Humphrey Davy, Maria Edgeworth, Humboldt, Villemain, Montalembert,
Alexis de Tocqueville, and Sainte-Beuve were frequent guests, and so
also was one who {92} deserves more special notice, Jean Jacques
Ampère.

It was on the 1st of January, 1820, that his illustrious father
presented him, then in his twentieth year, to the circle of friends
who met at the Abbaye-aux-Bois.  [Footnote 14] The enthusiasm with
which he spoke, the gentleness of his disposition, the nobility of his
sentiments, and the brilliancy of his talents, soon secured him a high
place in Madame Récamier's esteem. He attached himself to her with an
ardor that never cooled, and that appeared quite natural to the elder
guests who had long experienced her magical influence. During the
career of fame which he ran her counsels were his guide, and her
goodness his theme. However deep his studies, however distant his
wanderings, among the surges of the Categat or the pyramids of the
Pharaohs, his thoughts always reverted to her, and letters full of
respect and devotion proved how amiable was his character, how
observant and gifted his mind.

  [Footnote 14: _Le Correspondant_, Mai, 1864, p. 46.]

In November, 1823, he and the faithful Ballanche accompanied her to
Italy. Her niece, whom she treated as a daughter, was suffering from a
pulmonary complaint, and change was thought desirable for her.
Chateaubriand's visits had grown less frequent. A political rivalry
also had sprung up between her dearest friends, Chateaubriand having,
in December, 1822, accepted the office of minister of foreign affairs
vacant by the resignation of Mathieu de Montmorency. They disdained
alike riches and honors, but each was bent on the triumph of a
conviction, and on linking his name with a public act. Many thorns
beset her path in consequence of their disunion, and absence for a
time from France seemed to offer several advantages. She fully
possessed the confidence of Madame de Chateaubriand, and all who knew
the _capricieux immorel,_ as that lady called her husband, were of
opinion that by going to Italy she might avoid many occasions of
bitterness, and recall him to a calmer and nobler frame.

Nearly a month was passed in the journey from Paris to Rome. The
travellers paused in every town, and explored its monuments, churches,
and libraries. During the halt at midday, and again in the evening,
they talked over all they had seen, and read aloud by turns. Ballanche
and his young friend Ampère discussed questions of history and
philosophy, and Madame Récamier gave an air of elegance to an
apartment in the meanest inn. She had her own table-cloth to spread,
together with books and flowers; and her presence alone, so dignified,
so graceful, invested every place with the charm of poetry. Ballanche
and Ampère projected a guide-book, and thus the latter was
unconsciously laying up stores for that graphic "Histoire Romaine à
Rome,"  [Footnote 15] on which his reputation as an author mainly
rests. The year was just closing when they arrived in Rome. It was
here that he met Prince Louis Bonaparte, the present emperor, who was
then a boy, and here he had long and frequent conversations with
Prince Napoleon, his elder brother, while Queen Hortense, then called
the Duchess of Saint-Leu, was walking with Madame Récamier in the
Coliseum, or the campagna around the church of St. John Lateran or the
tomb of Cecilia Metella. Rome was then the asylum of the Bonapartes,
as it has ever been the home of the outcast and the consolation of the
wretched. The aspect was greatly changed since the former visit Pius
VII. had lately yielded up his saintly spirit to God, and Leo XII. sat
on his throne. The fêtes and ceremonies that attended his elevation
were all over except that of the pontifical blessing given from the
balcony of St Peter's. Madame Récamier took her place beside the
Duchess of Devonshire in joint sovereignty over society at Rome. {93}
The Duc de Laval, Montmorency's cousin, who was then the French
ambassador, placed his house, horses, and servants at her disposal,
and began or ended every evening with her. The duchess just mentioned
was in her sixty-fourth year, and preserved the traces of remarkable
beauty. Her eyes were full of fire, her skin was smooth and white. She
was tall, erect, queenly, and thin as an apparition. Her skeleton
hands and arms were like ivory, and she covered them with bracelets
and rings. Her manners were distinguished, and she seemed at the same
time very affectionate and rather sad.

  [Footnote 15: Published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes,_ 1866-67.]

The long friendship which subsisted between this English Protestant
lady and Cardinal Consalvi was not the least singular feature in her
history. Her intimacy with Adrien and Mathieu de Montmorency was such
that they always called her the _duchesse-cousine_, though they were
not related to her at all. The Duc de Laval, whom she had known in
England, writes thus of her to Madame Récamier, in May, 1823:

  "The duchess and I are agreed in admiring you. She possesses some of
  your qualities, and they have been the cause of her success though
  life. She is of all women the most attaching. She rules by
  gentleness, and is always obeyed. What she did in her youth in
  London, that she now recommences here. She has all Rome at her
  disposal--ministers, cardinals, painters, sculptors, society, all
  are at her feet."

Her days, however, were dwindling to a close, as were those also of
Cardinal Consalvi. Just seven months after the decease of Pius VII.
that eminent statesman followed him to the tomb. All Rome went to see
him laid in state--all except Madame Récamier, who, full of the sorrow
which the duchess would feel for his loss, and imagining that she
would only be pained by such idle curiosity, drove to the solitude of
the villa Borghese. On alighting from her carriage, she saw the tall
and elegant figure of the duchess in deep mourning, and looking the
picture of despair. To her astonishment the latter proposed that they
should go and see the lifeless cardinal. It was, indeed, a solemn
scene. The chaplains had retired for a brief space to dine, and the
public were excluded. The ladies only entered to take their last look
of human greatness. There he lay--the steady foe of the French
revolution and the imperial despot, the minister of two popes during
five-and-thirty years, the able and successful nuncio at the congress
of Vienna. There he lay in the sleep of death, with his purple round
him, and with his features still beautiful, calm, and severe.

Madame Récamier and her niece fell on their knees, praying fervently
for the departed, and still more so for the lonely friend beside them,
who had survived all the affections of her youth. She did not long
survive. In March, 1824, she expired after a few days' illness. No one
had been allowed to approach her till the last moment and for this
extraordinary exclusion different reasons are assigned. Madame
Récamier and the Duc de Laval believed that it was through fear lest
she should declare herself a Catholic. They were admitted just before
the vital spark was extinguished, and she died while they knelt beside
her, and Madame Récamier held her wan hand, and bathed it with tears.
After again visiting Naples, after excursions round the gulf, and
reading as she went the glowing descriptions of Chateaubriand and de
Staël, while the ardent Ampère and the meditative Ballanche supplied
their living comments, Madame Récamier returned to spend her second
winter in Rome, and enjoy the society of the Duc de Noailles and
Madame Swetchine. The duke was in his twenty-third year, and she used
to say that he was the last and youngest of those whom she called her
real friends. His subsequent history of Madame de Maintenon proves how
just a claim he had to be so regarded.

{94}

Madame Swetchine, when she arrived in Rome, was imbued with some
prejudices against Madame Récamier, but they vanished at the first
interview, and the love that sprang up between them was of the holiest
kind:

  "I feel the want of you (she wrote in 1825) as if we had passed a
  long time together, as if we had old associations in common. How
  strange that I should feel so impoverished by losing what a short
  time since I did not possess! Surely there is something of eternity
  in certain emotions. There are souls--and I think yours and mine are
  among the number--which no sooner come in contact with each other
  than they throw off the conditions of their mortal existence, and
  obey the laws of a higher and better world."

After an absence of eighteen months, Madame Récamier returned to
Paris. It was in May, 1825. Charles X. was being consecrated at
Rheims, and both Chateaubriand and Montmorency were there for the
ceremony. When the former received a line to inform him that the cell
in the Abbaye was again occupied, he lost no time in paying his usual
visit at the same hour as before. Madame Récamier's residence in Italy
had produced the desired effect on him. His fitful mood was over. Not
a word of explanation or reproach was heard, and from that day to his
death, twenty-three years later, the purest and most perfect harmony
existed between them. He had again fallen from power, and had been
rudely dismissed. His only crime had been silence. He would not
advocate the reduction of interest on the public debt, which appeared
to him an act of injustice. How many would be half ruined by the
change from five to three per cent! He abstained from voting. De
Villèle was incensed, and a heartless note informed one of the
greatest men in France that his services were no longer needed. By a
strange mishap he did not receive it at the right time, went to the
Tuileries, attended a levee, and was going to take his place at a
cabinet council, when he was told that he was no longer admissible. He
had ordered his carriage for a later hour, and was now obliged to walk
back in his full court robes through the streets of Paris. He long and
bitterly remembered this ungenerous treatment. In his opposition to
the Villèle ministry he displayed prodigious talent; and in January,
1828, it gave place to that of Martignae, and he was himself appointed
ambassador at Rome.

Among the letters he wrote during his embassy, there is one very brief
and touching, addressed to the little Greek Canaris, then educated in
Paris by the Hellenic committee. The emancipation of the Christians of
the East, whether Catholic or schismatic, was an object dear to
Chateaubriand's heart, as well as to the royalists in general. The
question was not embarrassed by those false views of freedom which
make many who love it afraid to speak its praise lest they should seem
to countenance its abuse. "My dear Canaris," he says, "I ought to have
written to you long ago. Pardon me, for I am full of business. My
advice to you is this: Love Madame Récamier. Never forget that you
were born in Greece, and that my country has shed its blood for the
freedom of yours. Above all, be a good Christian; that is, an honest
man submitting to the will of God. Thus, my dear little friend, you
will keep your name on the list of those famous Greeks of yore where
your illustrious father has already inscribed it. I embrace
you.--Chateaubriand." How delighted must the young Athenian have been
to carry this note to the Abbaye-aux-Bois the next time he went to
visit Madame Récamier, as he did on almost every holiday!

We have already spoken of Mathieu de Montmorency's singular death.
Madame Récamier was one of the first to hear of it. She hastened to
sit beside the corpse of her revered friend, and mingled her tears
with those of his mother and widow. The {95} latter, who had always
been attached to her, now became her intimate companion, and, when she
came to Paris, stayed at the Abbaye expressly to be near her. Even
Chateaubriand, who had been Montmorency's political rival, joined the
train of mourners, and composed a prayer on the occasion for Madame
Récamier's use. It is somewhat inflated, and breathes the language of
a poet rather than of a Christian. It ends thus: "O miracle of
goodness! I shall find again in thy bosom the virtuous friend I have
lost! Through thee and in thee I shall love him anew, and my entire
spirit will once more be united to that of my friend. Then our divine
attachment will be shared through eternity." These expressions are
overstrained; but they illustrate the character of Madame Récamier's
affection for her male friends. Of these Chateaubriand became
henceforward the chief, and his letters to her from Rome, together
with his subsequent intercourse with her in Paris, form the most
important part of her remaining history. Everything was summed up in
him,--diplomacy, politics, literature: he was to her, and not to her
only, their chief representative. His correspondence, as preserved by
her niece, is sparkling and pointed, full of incident, and especially
interesting to those who remember Rome during the last years of Leo
XII. and the pontificate of Pius VIII. Three letters a week reached
her while his embassy lasted, and he has inserted several of them in
his "_Mémoires_," though not without dressing them up a little for
posterity. Veneration and regard for her is their key-note. _Mille
tendres hommages_, he writes. _Que je suis heureux de vous aimer!_ But
French politeness always sounds strange and fulsome when dissected in
English. In May, 1829, he obtained leave to return to Paris for a
time, and he was welcomed at the Abbaye by numerous admirers. There he
read aloud his "_Moise,_" in the presence of Cousin, Villemain,
Lamartine, Mérimée, and a host of _literati_ beside. There he
expressed all his fears for the ancient dynasty under the guidance of
Prince Polignac. He had no personal feeling for the minister, save
that of friendship. But he could discern the signs of the times. He
sought an audience of the king, to warn him of the reefs on which he
was being steered; but he was no favorite with Charles X., and his
request was refused. Yet he might, if his counsels had been listened
to, have saved his master from exile and France from the revolution of
July. The crown was in his idea above all things except the law. He
would neither abandon the charter for the king, nor the king for the
charter. The ordinances of July were subversive of the constitution,
but the moment they were recalled he was on the monarch's side.

It was too late to stem the tide of insurrection. A ducal democrat was
called to the throne. His partisans and those of the dethroned
sovereign did not usually mix in society; but the salon in the Abbaye
was an exception to every rule. There and at Dieppe, in the bathing
season, the royalists Grenarde and Chateaubriand constantly met
Ballanche, Ampère, Lacordaire, and Villemain, who welcomed the new
regime. Madame Récamier, with admirable tact, kept them in social
harmony, and her efforts in this direction were the more praiseworthy
because she was not indifferent to their respective bias. She had
always loved the old dynasty, both because of its hereditary rights
and the glorious associations attached to it in history. She lamented
the shortsightedness of the Polignac ministry; but she lamented still
more the accession of Louis Philippe, which drove the greater part of
her friends into the obscurity of private life.

In April, 1830, her husband died. He was then in his eightieth year,
and during his last illness was removed to the Abbaye, that he might
be surrounded by every sort of attention. In taste, character, and
understanding he differed from Madame Récamier {96} as widely as
possible. They had but one quality in common: each was good and kind.
Notwithstanding the singularity of their tie, they lived together
thirty-five years without any disagreement. M. Bernard and his old
friend Simonard were also gone. Madame Lenormant was married, and
though the family circle that used to dine at the Abbaye was no more,
some faithful friends, such as Ballanche and Paul David, met daily at
the widow's hospitable board. The former of these was especially
disappointed by the fall of the elder Bourbon branch. He had hoped to
see its alliance with that moral, political, and social progress which
was the dream of his existence. Elective monarchy now seemed to hold
out better prospects of his _palingénésie sociale_.

The attitude assumed by Chateaubriand at this period was such as to
command general respect. He attempted, but in vain, to procure the
recognition of Henry V., and to place his rights under the protection
of the Duke of Orleans. Then, declining to take the oath of allegiance
to Louis Philippe, he retired from the peerage, and gave up his
pension. The friends, however, from whom he differed were delighted to
perceive that his cordiality with them in private was in no degree
lessened. But there was a circle within the circle that frequented the
Abbaye, and it was in 1832 that the Duc de Noailles became enrolled
among the select few. This was owing in part to the sympathy which
existed between him and Chateaubriand, and the high estimate which the
latter formed of his judgment. Neither was he so dazzled by the future
of society as to forget or despise its past. Both found in the history
of the kings of France the sources of all subsequent improvement. The
Duc de Noailles did not come alone to the Abbaye. His regard for
Madame Récamier was such that he brought with him every member of his
family whom he thought most worthy of her acquaintance, and invited
her in turn and her friends to grace with their presence the fair
domain of Maintenon. Here, surrounded by souvenirs of Louis XIV.,
Chateaubriand took notes for a chapter in his "Memoirs," which was not
inserted, but given in manuscript to Madame Récamier. It fills
seventeen pages, and forms one of the most striking parts of the
volume under review. The writer recalls the delicious gardens he has
visited in Greece, Ithaca, Grenada, Rome, and the East, and compares
them with the surroundings of the château of Maintenon. He touches on
many salient points in the history of that remarkable lady who bought
it in 1675, and whose corpse had, in his own day, been dragged round
the sacred enclosure of St. Cyr with a halter round the neck. He then
passes to the night spent in the château by Charles X., when the king,
driven from the seat of government, dismissed his Swiss Guards, and
placed himself almost in the condition of a prisoner. It was in Madame
Récamier's drawing-room that the auto-biography for which this
description was intended was first published, and that in the way so
fashionable among the ancient Romans and still common in France--by
the author's reading it aloud to an assembly of friends. Thus Statius
read his "Thebais,"  [Footnote 16] thus Alfieri his tragedies, at
Rome. The readings of the "_Mémoires d'outre Tombe_" spread over two
years, and his fame extended so fast that it was difficult to find
room for those who craved admittance. Publishers, also, were eager to
purchase the manuscript, to be printed at the writer's death; and some
royalist friends availed themselves of this circumstance to obtain for
him a pension for life. The excitement attending the recitals relieved
his ennui, and literary labor helped to pay his debts. The work
itself, though intensely interesting to all who heard it and felt
personally interested in the events it recorded, is too lengthy,
detailed, peevish, {97} and egotistic to add much to Chateaubriand's
fame. Any theme he handled was sure to call forth eloquence and
genius; but himself was the very worst subject he could choose,--the
worst, not, perhaps, for the entertainment of his readers, but for the
reputation of the writer.

  [Footnote 16: Juvenal, Sat. VII., 82-86.]

In October, 1836, Louis Napoleon made his attempt at Strasburg, and
having been arrested, was brought to Paris for trial. His mother, the
ex-queen Hortense, fearing lest her presence there might only add to
his danger, paused at Viry, and allowed her devoted follower, Madame
Salvage, to proceed. This lady, relying on Madame Récamier's fidelity
to her friends, repaired immediately to the Abbaye, and, with a
portfolio of treasonable correspondence, sought an asylum there. On
the morrow, Madame Récamier visited the queen, or, to speak more
correctly, the Duchess of St. Leu, at Viry, and found her in extreme
distress. Her worst fears, indeed, were over. The prince's life was
spared, but, before his trial was concluded, he was shipped off to New
York. The prospect of thus losing him afflicted the duchess greatly,
for she had a mortal malady, and knew that her time on earth could not
be long. The next year, in fact, Louis Napoleon, informed of her
dangerous illness, hastened to Europe to see her once more. In 1840 he
again asserted, at Boulogne, his claim to the throne. He was tried by
the chamber of peers, and Madame Récamier, though she had been obliged
to appear and answer some questions before the _juge d'instruction_,
was not deterred by this annoyance from asking permission to visit the
prisoner. She saw him at the _Conciergerie_, not through attachment to
his cause, but for his departed mother's sake. Two years after, when
imprisoned in the fortress of Ham, he sent her his "_Fragmens
Historiques_." In writing to her, he said: "I have long wanted to
thank you, madam, for the kind visit you paid me in the
_Conciergerie_, and I am happy to have the opportunity now of
expressing my gratitude. . . . . You are so accustomed to delight
those who approach you, that you will not be surprised at the pleasure
I have felt in receiving a proof of your sympathy, and in learning
that you feel for my misfortunes." Enclosed in this letter was another
for Chateaubriand, much longer, and highly creditable to the prince's
talents and good taste. In it he declared his intention of beguiling
his prison hours by writing a history of Charlemagne as soon as he
should have collected the necessary materials. The prominent place
which that prince held in his thoughts is strikingly brought before us
in the preface to his "Julius Caesar." In 1848, when fortune smiled,
and he arrived in Paris already elected deputy, one of his first
visits was to the Abbaye-aux-Bois. It was just after the death of
Chateaubriand, and Madame Récamier had not the pleasure of seeing him.
In another year, she had entered into her rest, and he was far on the
turbulent way to an imperial throne.

We must not forget to mention among her friends one with whom we may
be excused for having more sympathy than with Napoleon III. This was
Frederic Ozanam. He was born in 1813, and was still a student, and in
his twentieth year, when first presented by Ampère to Madame Récamier.
Chateaubriand was much struck by him, and he was present at several
readings of the "_Mémoires_." But he came to the Abbaye rarely, and
when his friend Ampère asked him the reason, he replied:  "It is an
assembly of persons too illustrious for my obscurity. In seven years,
when I become professor, I will avail myself of the kindness shown
me." With rare modesty, the young man kept his word. In seven years,
and no less, he took his place in the renowned circle. His talents
were already appreciated, and though timid and all but awkward, his
conversation often {98} broke through the restraints of habit, and
swept along its shining course as if he were surrounded by his pupils
in the lecture-room. Every year added to his celebrity. His character,
his philosophy, his scholarship, were all Christian, and his
professional life was devoted to one end. He vindicated the moral and
literary attainments of the middle ages against modern
detractors--against those who mean by the dark ages the ages about
which they are in the dark. He traced in all his works the history of
letters in barbarous times, and showed how, through successive periods
of decadence and renaissance, the Church has ever been carrying
forward the civilization of mankind.  [Footnote 17] His publications
have been edited by friends of whom he was worthy--Lacordaire and
Ampère; and who would come to lay a votive wreath on Madame Récamier's
tomb, without having one also for the grave of Ozanam?

  [Footnote 17: "_La Civilisation au Ve Siècle_," etc.]

The winter of 1840-41 was a disastrous one for Lyons and its
neighborhood. The swollen waters of the Rhone and Saone rising,
overflowed their banks, and ravaged the surrounding country with
resistless violence. The government was not slow to relieve the
sufferers, and public as well as private charity poured in from every
quarter. Madame Récamier felt deeply for her native city, and resolved
on making an extraordinary to aid it in its distress. She organized a
_soirée_ to which persons were to be admitted by tickets. These were
sold at twenty francs each, but were generally paid tor at a higher
rate. Lady Byron gave a hundred for hers. Rachel recited _Esther;_
Garcia, Rubini, and Lablache sang; the Marquis de Vérac placed his
carriages at their disposal; and the Duc de Noailles supplied
refreshments, footmen, and his _maître d'hôtel_. The Russians residing
in Paris were especially active in disposing of tickets; Chateaubriand
from eight o'clock to the end of the _soirée_ did the honors of the
saloon by which the company entered. Reschid-Pacha sat on the steps of
the musician's platform, half buried beneath waves of silk and
flowers. The rooms were adorned with exquisite objects of art, and
4,390 francs were received and transmitted to the mayor of Lyons.
Sixty poor families were selected by the curés to receive this bounty;
Madame Récamier having requested that it might not be broken up into
petty sums. In the midst of the glittering throng that assembled in
the old Abbaye that evening, it is said that she eclipsed them all in
beauty and grace. This may appear fabulous to many, for she was then
in her sixty-third year; yet her niece would hardly assert it if it
had not been the general opinion.

In 1842, Madame Récamier had the satisfaction of seeing Ballanche take
his place in the French Academy. His friends, indeed, were more elated
on the occasion than the philosopher himself. Literary honors were
little in his eyes compared with the exertion of a moral and
philosophic influence. His passion for machinery had nearly ruined
him; and his generosity was always beyond his narrow means. Like
Socrates in the basket, he lived above the earth, and the trivial
concerns of daily life dried up the sap of his sublime speculations.
[Footnote 18] Chateaubriand used to call him the hierophant; for he
had a small sect of followers whom he initiated in his mysticism.

  [Footnote 18: Aristophanes. "The Clouds." ]

A cloud was gathering over his existence, and over the gladness of all
who frequented the Abbaye. Since the year 1839, Madame Récamier's
health had been growing feebler, and a cataract was perceived slowly
forming on her eyes. She bore the affliction with her usual calm, and
the fear of becoming less able to amuse Chateaubriand was her chief
distress. When her blindness became confirmed, her eyes were still
brilliant; and her ear being {99} fine, she knew all who approached
her by their voice. The valet took care to set everything in her
apartment in its fixed place, so that she could move about without
stumbling. In this way she often dissembled her loss of sight, and
many who visited her came away with the impression that she saw pretty
well. Long intercourse with Chateaubriand had made her habits as
methodical as his. He still came to her daily at half-past two. They
took tea together, and talked for an hour. Then the door opened to
visitors, and the good Ballanche was always the first. This would have
been mere dissipation, but for the more serious occupations of the
morning. She rose early, had the papers read to her rapidly, then the
choicest of new works, and afterward some standard author. Modern
literature had always been her delight; and it cheered her even in her
darkness. When she drove out, it was generally with some charitable
purpose; for the time was passed for paying other visits. Never, since
Montmorency had recommended it, did she forget to read or hear read,
daily some work of piety; and as age advanced and sorrow weighed more
heavily, she derived from the practice increasing solace and strength.

Now came what Ballanche called "the dispersion," from which afterward
he dated his letters. Prince Augustus of Prussia died in 1845, and
charged Humboldt to execute his last commands with regard to her whom
he had never ceased to respect and love. Her portrait, by Gerard,
which she had given him, and her letters, were returned when he could
no longer treasure them. His death affected her deeply; for other
flowers also were fading from life's garden, and the winter of age was
freezing everything but her affections. From Maintenon she passed into
Normandy with her niece and Ampère, who had just returned from Egypt,
weary and sick with travel. Wherever she went, the blind beauty of the
first empire wanted no one claim to respectful and devoted attention.
By the use of belladonna, she sometimes dilated the pupil, and
acquired for a few hours the sense of sight. In this way she saw and
admired Ary Scheffer's beautiful picture of St. Augustine, which he
brought from the exhibition to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, on purpose that
Chateaubriand and herself might inspect it. But such brief enjoyment
only made returning darkness more gloomy; and an operation offered the
best prospect of permanent relief. Meanwhile, Chateaubriand having
broken his collar-bone in stepping from his carriage, a delay
occurred. Madame Récamier would not deprive herself of the pleasure of
diverting him during his confinement to the house. Her friends often
assembled under his roof; and when he visited the Abbaye again, he was
always carried into the roam by two domestics. Indeed, he never walked
any more. Nor in her case did the operation for cataract succeed, for
the patient did not enjoy that composure which was indispensable for a
cure. Ballanche had been seized with pleurisy, and was dangerously
ill. The blind lady to whom he had so long been devoted, breaking
through all her surgeon's instructions, and braving the light she
should have shunned, crossed the street which separated her from the
dying man, and sat by his pillow to the last.

One who has often looked on death declares that she never saw it
present so grand a spectacle as in Ballanche. All his philosophy was
heightened into faith; all his poetry was wrapt into devotion.
Serenely trusting in the divine goodness, he realized intensely the
mysteries of the unseen world; and, with the holy viaticum on his
lips, quitted his earthly tabernacle with joy, whilst she who watched
at his side lost all hope of sight in her streaming tears. Ballanche's
mortal remains lie in the vault of the Récamier family; and his life
has been written by Ampère. He and Madame Récamier {100} together
selected the choicest passages from his works; and beneath the shade
of beech-trees, amid the calm of nature, her niece's daughters read
aloud to her Ballanche's long-treasured letters. She would scarcely
have survived her grief had not Chateaubriand's infirmities still
given a scope to her existence. Madame de Chateaubriand died in the
winter of 1846-7. She abounded in charitable works, and the poor loved
her name. The desolate widower proposed that Madame Récamier should
take her place. He pressed his suit, but she persisted in her refusal.
She thought the little variety caused by his daily visits to her
essential for his comfort; and that if she were always with him, he
would be less consoled. "What end," she asked, "could marriage answer?
At our age there is no service I may not reasonably render you. The
world allows the purity of our attachment; let it remain unaltered. If
we were younger, I would not hesitate a moment to become your wife,
and so consecrate my life to you."

A second operation was performed, with no better result than before.
The hope of being enabled to serve Chateaubriand more effectually
alone induced her to submit to it. His end was fast approaching, and
society itself seemed about to be dissolved. Without were contests;
within were fears. The revolution of February, 1848, undid the
revolution of July, 1830. The streets of the capital flowed with
blood, and the roar of cannon in the insurrection of June shook the
chamber of the expiring poet, and brought tears to his eyes. He heard
with keen interest of the death of Monseigneur Affre, the good
shepherd who gave his life for his sheep. The intrepid courage of that
glorious martyr lent fresh nerve to his jaded spirit; and though his
brilliant intellect had for some time past lost its lustre, his
thoughts were perfectly collected to the last. He was heard to mutter
to himself the words he had written in 1814: "No; I will never believe
that I write on the tomb of France." The chill waters of the river of
death could not extinguish the patriotism that burned in his breast.
The Abbé Guerry, his confessor and friend, stood near him with the
consolations of religion; his nephew, Louis de Chateaubriand, and the
superioress of the convent of Marie-Therése, which he and his wife had
founded. After receiving the blessed sacrament, he never spoke again;
but his eyes followed Madame Récamier with an expression of anguish
whenever she left the room. This was her crowning sorrow, that she
could not see the sufferer she sought to relieve. When the worst was
over, the calm of despair spread over her face, and a deathly
paleness, which nothing could remove. She gratefully assented to
everything which was proposed for her comfort; but her sad smile
proved how vain was the effort to restore her to gladness. Those
affectionate beings alone who live on friendship can comprehend the
extent of her desolation.

Chateaubriand's obsequies were performed in the church of the
_Missions étrangères_, where a large concourse assembled,
notwithstanding the city and the state were still in the agony of a
social crisis. But his ashes were transferred to his own Brittany,
where a solitary rock in the bay had long before been granted him by
the municipality of St. Malo, as a place of burial. More than 50,000
persons were present at this strange and solemn interment. They seemed
to represent France mourning his loss. The sea was covered with boats;
the roofs of the houses, and the shores beneath, were crowded with
spectators; banners floated from rock and tower; while mournful
canticles and booming cannon broke the stillness of the air. The
coffin was laid in a recess of the steep cliff, and surmounted by a
granite cross. Ampère was deputed by the French Academy to pronounce
his eulogy on the occasion; and he concluded his report to that body
in these {101} words: "It would seem that the genius of the
incomparable painter had been stamped on this last magnificent
spectacle; and that to him alone among men it had been given to add,
even after death, a splendid page to the immortal poem of his life."

On Easter day in the following year Madame Récamier was persuaded to
remove from the Abbaye-aux-Bois to the National Library, where her
niece and nephew resided. The cholera had broken out in the
neighborhood of the Abbaye; and though she did not fear death, she had
a peculiar horror of that dreadful pestilence. But her flight was
vain; the scourge pursued her, and fell with sadden violence on her
enfeebled frame. The day before, Ampère and Madame Salvage had dined
with her, and on the morning of her seizure her niece's daughter
Juliette had been reading to her the memoirs of Madame de Motteville.
During twelve hours she suffered extreme torture, but spoke with her
confessor, and received the sacrament of extreme unction. Continual
vomiting prevented the administration of the eucharist. Ampère, Paul
David, the Abbé de Cazalès, her relations and servants, knelt around
her bed to join in the prayers for the dying. Sobs and tears choked
their voices, and "Adieu, adieu, we shall meet again; we shall see
each other again," were the only words her agony allowed her to utter.

Madame Récamier breathed her last on the 11th of May, 1849. The
terrible epidemic, which generally leaves hideous traces behind,
spared her lifeless frame, and left it like a beautiful piece of
sculptured marble. Achille Devéria took a drawing of her as she lay in
her cold sleep, and his faithful sketch expresses at the same time
suffering and repose.

Such was the end of her who, without the prestige of authorship, was
regarded by her contemporaries as one of the most remarkable women of
her time. We will not indulge in any exaggerated statement of her
piety. Great numbers, no doubt, have attained to more interior
perfection. Her ambition to please was undoubtedly a weakness.
Religion did not make her what she was; yet she would never have been
what she was without it. It was the ballast which steadied her when
carrying crowded sail. It was the polar star that directed her course
amid conflicting currents and adverse storms. It raised her standard
of morality above that of many of her associates. It taught her how to
be devout without dissimulation, a patroness of letters without
pedantry, a patriot and a royalist without national disdain or
political animosity. It made her charitable to the poor, kind to the
aged and sorrowful, gracious and unassuming with all, at the very time
that the proudest of emperors invited her presence at his court, and
his brother Lucien made her the idol of his verse. Its golden thread
guided her aright through the intricate mazes of social life--through
a matrimonial position equally strange and unreal--an engagement to a
royal prince who was the foe of France--through friendships with
Bernadotte and Murat on their thrones, with the queens of Holland and
of Naples when fallen, and with the third Napoleon when plotting to
regain the sceptre of the first. It so lifted her above intrigue and
cabals that she could give her right hand to the disaffected General
Moreau and her left to the devoted Junot--could be made the confidante
of all parties without betraying the secrets of any. It inclined her
to be chary of giving advice, but to make it, when asked for, tell
always on the side of virtue. It enabled her to exhort the sceptical
with effect, and dispose the philosophic to accept the faith.
[Footnote 19]

  [Footnote 19: See her letters to Ampère in the _Correspondant_,
  1864.]

Her autobiography has unfortunately been destroyed by her own
direction, because blindness would not allow her to revise it and
cancel its {102} defects. But many fragments of it have been
preserved, and a thousand personal recollections, collected from those
who knew her, have been wrought by her niece and other biographers
into a lasting monument.

--------

From The Fortnightly Review

CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS.

BY SIR JOHN BOWRING.


I was gathering together some examples of the strange opinions held by
the Chinese as to "outer nations," when I fell upon a curious official
document, presented to the emperor by a great mandarin, who occupies a
very prominent place in the modern history of China, Keshen, once
viceroy of the two Kwang. His name brought immediately to my
recollection, by a very natural association, that of my old
acquaintance, Father Huc, whose contributions to our knowledge of
China, Tartary, and Tibet are among the most original authentic, and
instructive that we possess.

It is a matter much to be regretted that only a small part of Father
Huc's personal adventures has ever been communicated to the public. I
first met with him on one of the Chusan islands, dressed as a
Chinaman, and living in every particular as the natives live--his food
was rice--his drink was only tea. He was recognized as the director
and instructor of no less than five Catholic communities. I had heard
of the existence of professors of the Tien-choo (heavenly master)
religion, and, going some way into the interior, found the Lazzarist
doctor instructing the people. He had an extraordinary mastery of the
colloquial Chinese; spoke and wrote Manchoo, and was not unacquainted
with the Mongolian tongue. I enjoyed his company as a fellow
traveller, having given him a passage in a vessel which was at my
disposal, and I fell in with him in five different and distant parts
of China. I have no doubt of the general veracity of his narrative, of
his sincere love of truth--perhaps not wholly separated from a
certain credulity and fondness for the marvellous, with which, I have
observed, oriental travellers are not unfrequently imbued. It would be
interesting to learn how Father Huc got to Peking, lived for many
years in the city and its neighborhood, no one knowing or supposing
him to be a foreigner--what were the arrangements by which, departing
on his mission to Manchuria, he managed to escape from the
scrutinizing eye of the police, at a period, too, when the
determination to repel the intrusion of "barbarian strangers" was at
its height. Of his interviews with Keshen, after the discovery of the
objects of his journey, and the determination of the mandarin envoy to
drive him out of the country, he gives many interesting particulars in
his "Souvenirs," but he does not mention that Keshen, who had been
stripped at Peking of some millions sterling, the gatherings of
profits and peculations in the high offices he had filled, and who
managed to amass a considerable sum of money in Tibet, confided his
sayings in that country to the keeping of the Lazzarist missionary;
and at the very time when the decree was issued for his banishment,
Keshen obtained from him a promise that he would, when he passed into
the {103} territory of China, deliver over "the silver" to the parties
whom Keshen designated. Huc was a delightful companion; he had no
asperity; on the contrary, he was full of jokes and merriment.
Courageous, too, when in the presence of danger, his ready wit
furnished him with every appliance necessary to his safety and
protection. His familiarity with Chinese character was remarkable; he
knew when and where and how to domineer and command, where it was safe
to assume authority. In China, one of the common instruments of
government is to send from the court secret spies, whose persons are
unknown, and the object of whose mission is to report confidentially
to the emperor on the shortcomings or misdoings of the great
mandarins. It was often Huc's fortune to be thought one of these
mysterious but redoubtable visitants, and he turned the suspicion to
excellent account. The fact of his speaking Manchoo, and being well
acquainted with Tartar forms and usages, very naturally strengthened
the conclusion that it was most desirable to obtain his patronage and
favorable opinion in the confidential communications to be made to the
Tartar dynasty. No doubt many a functionary has trembled,
self-condemned, in the presence of the missionary, and has courted his
indulgent judgment by those attentions which are supposed to
conciliate. Bribes, large and attractive, representing the estimated
value of the service to be rendered, are constantly offered and
frequently received by the traveller who is believed to have the ear
of the supreme authority. I have heard that from twenty to thirty
thousand pounds sterling are sometimes collected in a district
circuit, the collection being made at the risk of either the bribed or
the briber, or of both, each being necessarily at the mercy of the
other in case of betrayal. But, at the same time, Father Huc possessed
all the arts of prostration and deference when the circumstances of
the case required them. There was, however, less of assumption in his
lowliness than in his loftiness; his was never "a pride that aped
humility." The acting was when he played the part of a ruler. He was
altogether a natural man--unobtrusive, but fluent in the presence of
those interested--and who could fail to be interested in his strange
adventures? He never recovered the free use of his limbs after he
returned to Europe; and died in France, leaving much undone--the doing
of which would have been most useful to his race.

One of the great grievances of which the Chinese complained, in the
time of the East India Company monopoly, and down to the Pottinger
war, was the "oozing out" of the silver in China for the payment of a
poisonous drug to the "outer barbarians." It was, however, then the
fact, as it is the fact now, that the poppy is widely cultivated, and
opium largely manufactured, by the Chinese themselves in several of
the provinces of the empire. It used to be the belief in China that
there alone was the pure metal produced, and that the coins brought
from afar would in process of time be converted, by natural process,
into base metal, or something worse. I recollect a person being
charged with stealing his master's money; he did not deny having had
the custody of the dollars, but swore they had been eaten by white
ants. Keshen was directed to give his opinion to the emperor as to the
quality of the silver brought to China by foreigners, and these are
his words:

"The foreign money brought from these outer nations is all boiled and
reduced by quicksilver. If you wrap it up and lay it aside for several
years without touching it, it will be turned into moths and corroding
insects, and the silver cups made from it by these strangers will
change into feathers."

After stating that the coins show their impurity when submitted to the
crucible, he adds:

"Yet we find that in Kiangnan and by the course of the river Hwac, and
{104} all along the rivers to the south, foreign dollars are used in
trade and circulated most abundantly; we even find them of more value
than Sycee silver; this is really what I cannot understand!" Truly it
passeth all understanding if the premises of the mandarin be correct.
Some one suggests that Keshen had read in our sacred book of our
treasures "that moth and rust do corrupt" (Matt. vi. 19), and of the
"riches" which "make to themselves wings and fly away" (Prov. xxiii.
5).

As was said of old time, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,"
so the Chinese still recognize the principle that the penalty to be
paid for crime need not be visited on the criminal himself, but that
the substitution of an innocent for a guilty person to bear the award
of the law may satisfy all the demands of justice. In the
embarrassments of the imperial treasury during the last war,
proclamations of the emperor frequently appeared in the _Peking
Gazette_, authorizing the commutation of the judicial sentences which
inflicted personal punishment by the payment of sums of money, to be
estimated according to the gravity of the offence, and the rank or
opulence of the offender. Men are to be found as candidates for the
scaffold when a large remuneration is offered for the sacrifice of
life--to such a sacrifice posthumous honor is frequently attached--a
family is rescued from poverty, and enters on the possession of
comparative wealth. The ordinary price paid for a man's life is a
hundred ounces of pure silver, of the value of about £33 sterling. In
the Buddhist code such an act of devotion and self-sacrifice ranks
very high in the scale of merits, and would ensure a splendid
recompense in the awards of the tribunal which is, after death, to
strike the balance of good and evil, when every individual's mortal
history is to be the subject of review.

Some illustrations may not be unwelcome. In the history of the
intercourse of the East India Company with the Chinese, it will be
found that the authorities were never satisfied with the averment that
the individual charged with offences could not be found; they always
insisted that some English subject could be found and delivered over
to the penalties of the law. They invariably took high ground;
asserted that the laws of China must be respected in China, and that
those laws provided a certain and always applicable punishment by
which the demands of justice might and ought to be satisfied. They
turned a deaf ear to the representation that, according to European
law, the individual who had committed a crime was the only proper
person to be punished for that crime, and considered it a sort of
"barbarian" notion that any crime should be passed over without being
followed by the appropriate penalty visiting somebody or other. The
theory fills the whole field of penal legislation. Households,
villages, and even districts are made responsible for offences
committed within their boundaries; and it is not unusual for high
functionaries to be called upon to suffer for misdeeds not their own,
which no vigilance could prevent and no sacrifices repair. There
ought, say the sages, to be no wrong without a remedy, no sin without
consequent suffering; and it is better that an innocent man should now
and then be sacrificed than that guilt should not necessarily and
inevitably be followed by penal consequences.

There is every reason to believe that on one occasion, to prevent the
stoppage of trade, which was the menaced consequence of non-obedience,
an innocent man was delivered over to the authorities (but not by the
British), and executed at Canton. During the administration of Sir
John Davis, six Englishmen were brutally murdered at Kwan Chuh Kei, a
small village on the Pearl river. The English government insisted on
the punishment of the murderers, and six men were publicly beheaded.
It is quite certain they had nothing to do with {105} the crime; they
were brought gagged to the place of execution, and English gentlemen,
under the instructions of the consul, witnessed the decapitation; but
everybody was satisfied that the criminals were allowed to escape, and
that guiltless men were beheaded in their stead; and Lord Palmerston
most properly directed that no British authority should be present at
such executions, lest their presence might be deemed to imply
approbation of the administration of justice in China.

It once occurred to me to have to make representations to the governor
of Kiangsoo in consequence of some Chinese troops having fired upon
the British settlement of Shanghai. No injury was done, but the act
was of a character which might have led to serious consequences. An
interview was asked, and, accompanied by the British admiral, I went
to the tent of the great mandarin. On being introduced, we found six
soldiers kneeling by his side. Close at hand was an executioner, and
we saw as we passed the huge heavy swords which are employed by him in
his wonted work. "It was quite right to complain," said the mandarin;
"it was quite fit those who had committed the outrage should be
visited with the punishment. Inquiries had been made, and it was very
likely the men present were guilty; at all events, they had been in
the neighborhood. Utter the word, and their heads shall fall at your
feet." We informed his excellency that such abrupt and sudden action
did not accord with our notions of justice, and we requested that the
men might be relieved of their terrors and released on the spot This
was done, and the governor, who was also the military
commander-in-chief, merely told the trembling soldiers that they owed
their lives to our clemency--a clemency they little anticipated from
"outside barbarians."

Baron Gros informed me that when the French embassy was going up the
Peiho--which, by the way, is not the real name of the river, and only
means a river in the north, by which the Tientsing stream is usually
designated in the south--an outrage was committed on a French sailor
by a Chinaman, who was arrested and condemned to death. A deputation
waited on the ambassador from the offender's native village, bringing
with them an old man whom they wished to be hanged instead of him who
had committed the offence. They represented that the condemned man was
young, that his mother was dependent upon his labor, and would have no
means of support if deprived of her son; that it would be very hard if
she were made the victim. And, moreover, it could make no difference
to his excellency (the minister) whether the old man or the young were
executed. The death of either would show that punishment would
assuredly follow injuries done to the subjects of "the great man's
nation." They were informed that European usages demanded that the
criminal should suffer for the crime. They returned next day to offer
"a better bargain" to the ambassador. They brought down two men to
suffer in expiation of the offence of one. Surely two Chinamen might
be accepted for the wrong committed upon the stranger. The mission, of
course, failed; the delegates departed sorely disappointed, and
greatly wondering at the strange notions which the "red-haired outer
men" had of what is right and what is wrong.

There is a Chinese aphorism, _Puh tá, puh chaou_ ("No blows, no
truth"), whose universal recognition will best illustrate the general
character of the administration of justice. Torture is not employed on
criminals alone in order to elicit confession, but constantly to
witnesses when their evidence does not suit the foregone conclusions
of the judge, who, in very many cases, is bribed beforehand, and
desirous that the statements made should be such as to warrant his
predetermined verdict. Truth is a virtue little appreciated among
Orientals, and especially among the Chinese. They are afraid {106} of
truth. It gives the authorities accurate information as to their
whereabouts which may involve them in difficulties. They do not know
what may have happened in a particular locality, and therefore prefer
saying where they were not than where they were, in order to avoid
compromising themselves by putting the _runners_ upon a true scent.
Then again, habits of mendacity and a constant disregard of truth lead
to inaccuracy of observation. I remember a case in which three sets of
witnesses gave three separate versions as to the time of the day on
which an important event had occurred--that it was in bright daylight;
that it was in utter darkness; that it was neither light nor dark; and
in that case I had reason to believe there was no intended perjury.
Against perjury there is really no protection but in the dread of
punishment. We tried in Hong Kong different usages which were expected
to give some security for obtaining the "truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth." Cocks' heads were cut off by or in the
presence of the witnesses, and they pronounced denunciations and
consented to have their blood shed if there was falsehood in their
testimony. Sometimes an earthenware plate was broken, and the parties
offered themselves to be shattered and broken to bits as was the plate
if they did not tell the truth. Others favored the writing of an
aphorism of the sages on a piece of paper, burning it at a lamp, and
requiring the witness to swear that as he hoped not to be burned and
tormented he would say all that was true. But every experiment failed.
Oaths, however enforced, with whatever forms invested, were discovered
to be utterly worthless; and it was wisely decided that the penalties
of perjury should attach equally to the sworn and the unsworn man. It
occurred to me to consult a person of some eminence as to the
possibility of administering any form of an oath which would be held
binding. He said that there was one temple within the city which was
held sacred to truth, and that promises made and contracts entered
into within that particular sanctuary were deemed better guaranteed
than any other. But he said the place was inaccessible to Europeans;
and he thought that nothing but the dread of punishment for falsehood
gave any security, and even that security was most insufficient, for
the elucidation of truth.

A case, which it was my duty to investigate, connected with the
smuggling of British property, came before the chief judge at Canton.
I had come to a conclusion as to the guilt of certain parties, which
conclusion was different from that formed by the Chinese official. One
day several Chinamen were brought to me in a dreadfully mutilated
state--their faces and arms covered with wounds and bruises inflicted
by heavy blows of the bamboo. It appeared their evidence confirmed the
opinion I had formed, and was altogether opposed to the theory of the
mandarin, and they were bastinadoed until they declared that all they
had said was false, and their testimony was made to accord with the
views of the magistrate. Sentence was delayed; new and irresistible
evidence was brought forward--meanwhile, perhaps, the mandarin had
been bribed; but certain it is the witnesses were again summoned
before him. They were informed they must be punished for the _lies_
they had told while under torture; and I heard, but I did not see the
men a second time, that they were again beaten until they declared
that their first and not their last story was the true one; the
mandarin reporting that his early impressions had been removed on
further investigation.  [Footnote 20]

  [Footnote 20: The Emperor Paul, of Russia, once published a decree
  requiring that every one who passed in front of his palace should
  wear short breaches and silk stockings, under penalty of a flogging.
  In the cold weather people took care to avoid the neighborhood of
  the palace, and went to their business by various circumambulations.
  Being annoyed at the absence of the multitude, whom he was fond of
  looking at from the palace windows, he published a second edict, in
  which he ordered that any person wearing the before-enforced costume
  should receive the same sort of castigation. It was said that an
  unfortunate foreigner, who did not understand Russian--and had he
  understood it, might not have escaped the penalty--was flogged on
  two following days for disobeying the imperial mandate--for not
  wearing, and for wearing, the obligatory and the interdicted
  costumes.]

{107}

I was once engaged in correspondence with the Taeping chiefs, while
they were in possession of Nanking. The fact that they had printed and
circulated a portion of the Old Testament in Chinese created a
wonderful interest in the religious world, while the belief that they
were banded together for the patriotic purpose of replacing an
intrusive and oppressive dynasty by a national and liberal government,
led to much sympathy even beyond the field of missionary action. I
sent a ship of war to Nanking in order to ascertain, by direct
intercourse with its traders, the exact character of the insurrection.
They put forward the most monstrous pretensions. One of the kings
called himself "The Holy Ghost, the Comforter"--the third person of
the Trinity; and demanded our recognition of his authority, advising
us that we knew his coming had been foretold in our own Scriptures.
Another claimed to be the "Uterine, younger brother of Jesus Christ;"
and gave an account of mutual invitations which had passed between
them; of the visits of the king to paradise, where his "heavenly
brother" had introduced him to his wives and family; and he reported
specially a personal intervention of Jesus, who came down to earth in
order to settle the number of stripes which were to be given to a
woman of the harem who had offended her master. Our people on landing
were called "ko-ko" (brothers) by the insurgents, who inquired whether
we had brought them tribute, and were willing to recognize the
universal authority of the celestial king. It was only on this
condition that they would allow us to obtain the coal we desired to
purchase for the use of the steamer--a condition of course not
complied with; so that the evidence of brotherhood was not of a very
complete or satisfactory character.

In a very elaborate communication which I received from the Taeping
sovereigns, they desired a personal description of "God the Father,"
that they might compare our notions of the Deity with their own--the
color of his hair, the size of his abdomen; and inquired particularly
whether we had any poetry--as they had--written with his own hand.
That there was, and is, in this extraordinary movement an element of
well-warranted discontent and resistance to the exactions, extortions,
and corruptions of the Manchoo authorities cannot be doubted; but,
strange to say, not a single man of mark, not one literary graduate,
not an individual either known to or possessing the confidence of the
higher or the middle classes, ever joined the rebellion. Lamentable as
is the general ignorance of the Chinese as to remote nations, the
ignorance exhibited by the Taepings was the grossest of all. It will
be no wonder that "the rebels," most of whom came from the interior of
China, and had never had any communication with western nations,
should display such a want of knowledge, when even books of authority
give such confirmation as will be found in a popular geography,
written by a man who had visited the Dutch archipelago, and on his
return gave to his countrymen the results of his observation and
experience:  [Footnote 21]

  [Footnote 21: Dr. Medhurst published a translation of this work of
  Wang Tac Lai, Shanghai, 1849.]

  "European countries are originally on the outside verge of
  civilization, and their being now assimilated to the villages of our
  inner land is entirely owing to the virtuous influences of our
  august government, which transforms these distant and unknown
  regions by the innate force of its own majesty."

European nations are thus described:

  "The Dutch share the sovereignty of Europe with the English, or
  'red-haired nation,' and the French.

  "The English nation is poor but powerful; and being situated at a
  most {108} important point, frequently attacks the others.

  "The Hollanders are like the man who stopped his ears while stealing
  a bell. Measuring them by the rules of reason, they scarcely possess
  one of the five cardinal virtues (which, according to the Chinese,
  are benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and truth). The
  great oppress the small, being overbearing and covetous. Thus they
  have no benevolence. Husbands and wives separate with permission to
  marry again; and before a man is dead a month his widow is permitted
  to go to another. Thus they have no rectitude. They are extravagant
  and self-indulgent in the extreme, and so bring themselves to the
  grave without speculating on having something to tranquillize and
  aid their posterity. Thus they have no wisdom. Of the single quality
  of sincerity, however, they possess a little.

  "The dispositions of the French are violent and boisterous. Their
  country is poor and contains but few merchants; hence they seldom
  come to Batavia. Whenever the Dutch are insulted by the English,
  they depend upon the French for assistance. The kingdom of France is
  large and the population numerous, so that the English are somewhat
  afraid of them.

  "The dependent countries of Europe are intermixed and connected
  without end. Some of the places can be visited by ships when they
  become a little known; and some are held in subjection by the Dutch,
  and governed by them. The rest live in hollow trees and caves of the
  earth, not knowing the use of fire, and wander about naked or in
  strange and uncouth attire. They cannot all be fully known, nor are
  there any means of inquiring about them. We have heard of such names
  as Tingli (English), Po-ge (Pegu?) Wotsie (Bussorah?), China (which
  is not supposed to mean the celestial empire); but have no
  opportunity of knowing anything of their manners and customs."

  He says of Mekka (Mohia) that "its walls are extremely high, and the
  whole ground splendid with silver and gold and beautiful gems,
  guarded by a hundred genii, so that the treasures, cannot be taken
  away. The true cultivators of virtue may ascend to Mekka and worship
  the real Buddha, when, after several years of fasting, they return
  and receive the title of Laou Keun--doctor; they can then bring down
  spirits, subdue monsters, drive away noxious influences, and defeat
  demons."

He mentions a sea-dog on the loadstone sea (_tze-she-yang_), where
there are so many magnets, that if a vessel with iron nails gets into
the neighborhood it is inevitably absorbed. Hence, those who navigate
it employ only bamboo pegs. He reports the existence of a sea-horse
(_hai ma_) at Malacca, which comes out of the ocean in pursuit of a
mare. The horse has a fine black skin, a very long tail, and can
travel hundreds of miles a day; but when on shore, if he be allowed
only to see a river, off he goes to his native element; nothing can
control him. He describes a sea-mare attached to the rocks at the
bottom of the sea by a stalk from her navel many hundred yards long.
"When discovered," he, says, and this is no doubt true, "male and
female appear together, so that they are never solitary. The Dutch pay
the fishermen liberally for catching a sea-mare, but she never lives
after separation from her root. When caught, the Dutch, who are
'envious people,' put them into spirits, and preserve them." "I  never
saw," he says, "the flying head, but have heard of it, and that it
abounds in Amboyna, and resembles a native woman. Its eye has no
pupil, and it can see in the dark. It flies about; nothing but the
head enters houses and eats human entrails; but if it meet anything
sour it cannot open its eyes. Drops from a piece of linen sprinkled
upon it will be security against its mischief." He says there "is an
animal somewhat like a man, {109} but with a mouth from ear to ear.
Its loud laughs indicate a storm  its name is the _hai-ki-shang,_ or
sea priest; its appearance prognosticates evil."

He speaks of a race of men called _wei tan,_ "dwelling among the
hills, with ugly faces and tattooed bodies, who have tails five or six
inches long, at the end of which are several bristles, about an inch
or two in length. These savages frequently engage themselves as
sailors, and come to Batavia, but as soon as they are discovered, run
away and conceal themselves, and if examination be insisted on, they
change countenance and violently resist." He gives a description of
sundry European instruments; calls the telescope "a cunning invention
of supernatural agents." He recommends his countrymen not to believe
that the "large eggs" (no doubt ostriches) sometimes brought to China
are "mares' eggs," which he is sure they are not. He thinks there may
be fishes large enough to swallow ships, as he himself saw a mortar
capable of holding five pecks, which he was told was the vertebral
bone of a fish.

Of Manilla he gives a tolerably sensible account, having, as he says
himself, traded there. He adds: "Since the withdrawal of the English
there has been general tranquillity, peace, and joy in the regions
beyond sea. He humbly conceives this is due to the instruction
diffused by the sacred government of China, which overawes insulated
foreigners, soaking into their flesh, and moistening their marrow, so
that even the most distant submit themselves."

It is not an unusual practice for opulent Chinamen from the interior
to visit their friends at the ports opened to trade, and to seek
introductions to "the merchant outer people" who buy their silks,
teas, and rhubarb, and pay them dollars or opium in exchange. As
Chinese habits, Chinese costumes, and Chinese opinions are all moulded
to the same type--as all read the same language, study the same books,
and have done so for a hundred generations--the contrast between
European and Chinese life is startling. That a guest or visitor should
be placed on the right hand, shows that one of the first requirements
of courtesy is unknown or disregarded; that a lady with large feet
should by possibility be of "gentle birth," no Chinese woman of
quality dares to believe; that the magnetic needle should point to the
north, instead of the south, shows a strange unacquaintance with
elementary science; but, above all, that civilized and adjacent
nations should have written languages so imperfect that they cannot
read the letters on the books of their neighbors, is wholly
unintelligible to a Chinese literate. I remember showing a picture of
the Crystal Palace to a mandarin from the interior. He at first denied
that such a building could ever have been erected; he was sure it was
only a picture--a fancy; he had never seen anything like it at Peking.
Was it possible there should be an emperor out of China with so
beautiful a palace as this? He was told this was the palace built by
and for the people. This was quite sufficient to convince him that we
were practising upon his credulity; and though Chinese courtesy would
not allow him to call us liars, it was very clear he had come to the
conclusion that we were nothing better.

They have manufacturers of false noses in China, but none of false
teeth. There are practitioners who profess to cure the tooth-ache
instantaneously, and people worthy of credit have assured me they
succeed in doing so. The works of European dentists are among the most
admired examples of the skill of foreigners. A mandarin who was
anxious to learn something about the making of teeth, once produced to
me a box fall of artificial noses of various sizes and colors, with
which he supplied the defects of his own; he said he used one sort of
nose before and another after his meals, {110} and insisted that
Chinese ingenuity was greater than our own. What, in process of time,
will be the action of western civilization on the furthest eastern
regions--whether, and in what shape, we shall make returns for the
instruction our forefathers received from thence--is a curious and
interesting inquiry--more interesting from the vast extent of the
regions before us. The fire-engine is almost the only foreign
mechanical power which has been popularized in China. There is
scarcely a watch or clock maker in the whole empire, though opulent
men generally carry two watches. The rude Chinese agricultural and
manufacturing instruments have been nowhere supplanted by European
improvements. No steamship has been built by the Chinese; the only one
I ever saw would not move after it was launched; it was said a
Chinaman, who had only served on an English steamer as stoker, was
required by the authorities to construct the vessel. There is neither
gold nor silver coinage; the only currency being a base metal, chien,
whose value is the fifth of a farthing. The looms with which their
beautiful silk stuffs are woven are of the most primitive character.
Yet they have arts to us wholly unknown. They give to copper the
hardness and the sharpness of steel; we cannot imitate some of their
brightest colors. They have lately sent us the only natural green
which is permanent, which has been known to them, as printing, wood
engraving, the use of the compass, artillery practice, and other great
inventions, from immemorial time. Paper was made from rags long
anterior to the Christian era, and promissory notes were used at a
still earlier period. The Chinese may be proud of a language and a
literature which has existed for thirty centuries, while in Europe
there is no literary language now written or spoken which would have
been intelligible seven hundred years ago. If, then, this singular
people--more than a third of the whole human race--look down with
some contempt on the "outside races," let them not be too harshly
judged, or too precipitately condemned.

--------

From The Month.

PIERRE PRÉVOST'S STORY;
OR, TRUE TO THE LAST.



CHAPTER I.


In one of my summer rambles through the north of France, I came across
a little seaside village which possessed so many charms that it was
the greatest difficulty in the world to tear myself away from it.

It was indeed a lovely spot. The village, situated on a noble cliff,
was enclosed almost in a semicircle of richly wooded hills, which
stretched, as far as the eye could see, into the very heart of noble
Normandy.

At your feet the glorious sea came dashing in to a shore over which
great masses of bold rock were liberally scattered, and round which
the waves used to play in the summertime, however little obstacle was
afforded to their fury when fierce winds blew up a storm in the cruel
winter-time.

But perhaps the most attractive feature of the place to me was a
splendid river, within a mile's walk of the village, which was
plentifully supplied with fish, and afforded me many and {111} many
day's amusement, and not a little excellent sport.

My time was pretty well my own, and I had made up my mind for a
tolerably long spell of idle enjoyment; so, under these circumstances,
it may not appear strange that I resolved to take up my quarters
at----.

The inhabitants of the place were mostly poor fishermen, who used to
ply their trade nearly the whole of the week, and by great good luck
frequently got back to their wives and families toward its close.

A very pretty cottage, with a bay-window commanding a splendid view of
the sea, took my fancy immensely, and though it was rather a humble
sort of place, I determined if possible to make an impression on its
possessors, in order to secure two rooms for my use during my stay.
Alphonsine was certainly not the most sweet-tempered woman I have ever
met, in fact rather the contrary; at the same time I fully persuaded
myself that a great many disagreeables would be counteracted by the
possession of my much-coveted bay-window.

Alphonsine evidently ruled the establishment with a rod of iron. She
was a tall, thin, ill-favored looking woman, who was always prepared
for a wrangle, and who looked uncommonly sharp after her own
interests. However, by paying pretty liberally and in advance, I soon
won her heart, and flatter myself that it was by excellent generalship
on my part that I contrived very soon to be entirely in her good
books. Her hard face used sometimes actually to relax into a grim kind
of smile in my presence, and I fancied her harsh voice used almost
imperceptibly to soften in addressing me. Beside, she was accustomed
to bustle about in a rough kind of way in order to get things straight
and comfortable, and I really think tried to do her best to make me
feel at home. What more could I want than this? And then she had two
delightful children, a boy and a girl, with whom I was very soon
especially friendly, and who tended to enliven me up a bit whenever I
chanced to be at all dull. The boy was about thirteen years old, and
his sister, who looked a year or so younger, was indeed a lovely
child. She was as fair as a lily, and had that sweet expression of
countenance which is so often found among the peasants in Normandy;
her eyes were large and exquisitely blue, and with all this she had a
decided will of her own. But then she was the daughter of Alphonsine.

It was some little time before I made the acquaintance of the master
of the establishment; for he was always busy fishing, and, as I have
said before, the fishermen who lived in the village seldom got home
before Saturday evening, and had to be off again either on Sunday
evening or by daybreak on Monday.

However, Saturday soon came round, and with it Pierre Prévost.

He was about five-and-thirty years old, very dark and singularly
handsome. His hair, which was thick, fell about his head in ringlets;
he was short, and had most expressive eyes. I was not long in
perceiving that he was in every way a great contrast to Alphonsine.
His expression was sad, and he seldom or never smiled; and I noticed
he seemed to shrink rather nervously from the piercing look with which
he was very frequently favored by "la belle Alphonsine." His sweet and
handsome face soon disposed me favorably toward him, notwithstanding
that there were circumstances which occurred on our first acquaintance
which would otherwise have tended to prejudice me entirely against
him.

I was smoking a pipe and chatting quietly to Alphonsine in the great
chimney-corner on the evening I allude to, when all at once the two
children came tearing in from school with their books under their
arms.

"He is come!" cried they, in their shrill treble voices. "We saw his
boat just coming near the shore. He will be on the sand almost in a
{112} moment We may go and meet him, may we not, mother?"

"What's the use?" said she, in rather a more disagreeable tone than
usual. "I am sure he would much prefer to come alone. Beside, I want
you both. Go into the garden to get me something to make a salad of.
Come now!"

These last two words settled the matter, and the children were soon
off, without another word about the expedition to the sea-shore.

"That's strange," thought I to myself; "I wonder if this Pierre can be
a bad father, or at any rate a bad husband?"

A few minutes afterward he came in.

As if to strengthen this bad impression of mine, I noticed that
Alphonsine never moved when he entered, and did not attempt to offer
her hand or cheek to him. She did not even welcome him with a smile.

No, she contented herself with taking a slate down from the wall, the
pencil belonging to which was already in her hand:

"How much?" said she, coolly.

Pierre Prévost pulled out of his pocket a great leather purse, and
detailed, day by day, how much he had made by the sale of his fish.
After which, he put down the money upon the corner of the table.

All this time the woman was eagerly dotting down the various sums on
the slate. Then she gravely added them all up, and determinedly
counted out every sou.

By great good luck the figures tallied with the money. Then Alphonsine
shut up the money in a drawer, and locked it very securely.

Meanwhile Pierre repocketed his leather purse, which he had just
emptied, never attempting to grumble in the least, and going through
the task as methodically as possible.

"I was quite wrong in forming so hasty an opinion," thought I to
myself, as I witnessed this peculiar scene; "Pierre is not such a bad
fellow, after all."

It was not long before the young ones made a second burst into the
room, making rather more noise than they did on the first occasion.

They were not long in scrambling on to Pierre's knees, and smothering
him with kisses, and it was all done so heartily, with such warmth,
and so naturally, that I could not help exclaiming to myself, "Why,
he's a capital father, after all!"

But, judge, of my astonishment when I heard their pretty voices call
out,

"Oh! we're so glad to see you back again, dear uncle Pierre!"

Then he was their uncle, after all, and he was not married to
Alphonsine. But was he her brother, or merely a brother-in-law? And
yet she seemed so entirely to have the upper-hand over him. It
certainly was a very remarkable coincidence.

But what surprised me most of all was the fatherly affection that
Pierre Prévost seemed to have for the two children.

He took them on his knees, and played with them, and appeared to make
so much of them, that I, who was a silent spectator of this little
scene, became really quite interested.

This lasted for about five minutes, and then all at once it seemed as
if the old pain came over him, for he turned quite sad again, and
turned deathly pale, and I could see the tears starting to his eyes.
And then he got up, and looking steadily into the young innocent faces
of his nephew and niece, said, in an extremely soft voice,

"Go and play on the sand. Go along, my pretty ones!"

The poor children, who seemed quite astonished at the sudden change in
his demeanor, hesitated for a moment. However, another beseeching look
from their uncle, and an angry word or so from Alphonsine, soon
persuaded them what to do; whereupon they set out very slowly for the
sea-shore.

{113}

"They know perfectly well how little you care for them," said
Alphonsine, very bitterly; "and it would be just as well if you would
not go out of your way to show it."

Pierre made no answer. He shut his eyes, and put his hand to his heart
as if to express the pain he was suffering.

Then taking a spade from the corner,

"I am going to work in the garden," said be, gently.

And then he went out, looking very sorrowful.

------

CHAPTER II.

Things seemed to be taking quite a dramatic turn, and I made up my
mind to try hard and unravel the plot.

I followed Pierre, and having secured myself in a convenient
hiding-place, determined to watch.

He walked quietly on, but soon stopped at a little vegetable garden,
quite at the end of the village. At first he pretended to set to work
vigorously, but his eyes kept wandering to a little rose-covered
cottage within a stone's-throw of the garden. He soon left off
working, and leaning listlessly on his spade, he kept his eyes firmly
fixed on one of the windows, which was almost covered with the
luxuriant growth of roses and honeysuckle.

As the wind played fitfully with the curtain of green which darkened
the window, I fancied I recognized the shadow of a woman.

Immovable as a statue, Pierre Prévost remained where he was, and
though night drew on, he did not leave his post till the heavens were
bright with myriads of stars; and then swinging his spade over his
shoulder, he began to retrace his steps to the village.

But, just before he left the garden, I thought I heard a bitter sigh
borne on the wind from the cottage window.

The next day, when I was coming away from early mass, I saw Pierre
standing in the porch of the church. The two children were clinging to
one of his hands, while the other, still wet with holy water, was
gently extended to a young woman who was in the act of passing before
him. She was a lovely creature, with golden hair, large expressive
blue eyes, and a face like one of Fra Angelico's angels. Although she
could not have been less than thirty years old, she appeared to have
all the lightness and vivacity of a girl of eighteen.

When their fingers met, an almost imperceptible thrill seemed to
affect them both, and as they gazed into one another's faces they both
turned deathly pale.

Could it have been the shadow that I recognized through the roses the
evening before?

The tide came up very early that evening, and necessitated the
departure of all the fishermen before night came on.

Pierre Prévost was one of the first to start, but he went a long way
round to get to the sea-shore, and passed before the windows of the
rose-covered cottage.

A flower fell at his feet. He picked it up eagerly, and kissing it
passionately, thrust it into his bosom and hastened away.

As the evening wore on, and while the little boats were just fading
away in the distance, I watched again, and distinctly saw a white
handkerchief waving from the window of the pretty cottage.

I was naturally anxious to find out about this little romance, and was
continually puzzling my poor brains to discover the truth of the
story.

There were hundreds of people I might have asked, and, of course,
Alphonsine would have been only too happy to have enlightened me. But
I determined, if possible, to hear it all from Pierre's own lips, and
accordingly made up my mind to stifle my idle curiosity.

{114}

CHAPTER III.


Pierre and I soon became firm friends, and I persuaded him on one
occasion to take me on one of his fishing expeditions.

It was a lovely night, the heavens were ablaze with stars, and the
little boat tossed idly on the waves which scarcely rippled against
its keel. Pierre's companions were asleep down in the cabin, waiting
for a breeze to spring up before they could throw in their nets. As
for myself, I was smoking quietly on deck, having my back against a
coil of rope, and revelling in the delicious quiet which reigned
around, when Pierre joined me, and having lighted his pipe, sat down
by my side, and spoke, as far as I can remember, as follows:

I believe, monsieur, you are anxious to know why I am such a sad
looking fellow? Perhaps you will laugh at me, but that can't be
helped. I am sure you are sincere, and wish me well, and therefore I
have no hesitation in opening my heart to you.

I love Marie! There is hardly any need, perhaps, to tell you that. And
yet this love is the foundation of all my sorrow. But I firmly believe
that the good God willed that we should love one another, and so I am
content. Ever since our earliest childhood we have gone through life
hand in hand. When we were little ones we always played together on
the sand; and there has hardly been a pang of sorrow or a feeling of
joy which has not been felt by both alike. I used to think once that
we were one both in body and soul, and there are old folks in the
village who have said it over and over again. We made our first
communion on the same day, and at the same hour, side by side; and
these little matters are bonds of union indeed, and are not easily
forgotten. When I first began to seek my bread on the sea, she always
offered up a little prayer for me at the cross in the village and she
was ever the first to rush waist-deep into the sea to greet me on my
return. And then I used to carry her on my shoulders back again, and
kiss off the tears of joy which flowed down her pretty cheeks. Ah! we
were happy indeed in those childish days, which are passed and gone.
Why are we not always children?

And the years that followed were hardly less happy for either of us.
In the cold winter-time we were always side by side in the
chimney-corner. Spring saw us wandering over the fresh meadows
gathering the early violets. We worked together in the harvest-field
under the summer sun, and went off nutting when the brown leaves told
us of the approaching autumn. And then came the time when we were both
old enough to marry. We had neither of us dreamed of such a thing, and
could not be persuaded that we were not still children. We were quite
happy enough without troubling our heads about marriage.

However, others thought of it for us, and good Father Hermann began to
be anxious that we should make up our minds.

But the matter was not so easily settled, and several obstacles soon
presented themselves. To begin with, Marie's mother was rich. I was
far from it, and an orphan into the bargain. I had been brought up by
my brother Victoire--a splendid fellow. It was he who went with Father
Hermann to Marie's mother, in order boldly to talk over our marriage,
which they were all so anxious about.

"I had always made up my mind that Marie should never marry any one
who had not quite as much as herself," replied she, "and that was her
dear father's wish. However, I am sure you speak truly when you say
that they both love one another very dearly. Let it be as you say."

The old lady had a kind warm heart

[As he said these last words, Pierre's voice thickened, and I noticed
a tear trickling down his honest brown face. But my sailor was a {115}
brave fellow, and I had hardly time to shake him warmly by the hand
before he had quite mastered his grief, and was able to go on with his
story.]

Marie and I were not the only happy ones then, I can assure you.
Victoire, my brother. Father Hermann, the whole village in fact, for
we were both very popular, rejoiced with us. It was the week before
the marriage. Of course I had not gone to sea. Victoire was also very
anxious to remain; however, his wife persuaded him to go. Several in
the village found fault with her for doing so, on the pretext that
working at a festal time was very bad luck; but they had no right to
say so. Victoire's children were very young, and had to be provided
for; and so Victoire went. In the evening great black clouds darkened
the sky. We were evidently threatened with a dreadful storm. But we
were enjoying ourselves too much to think of storms or friends at sea.
All at once there was a vivid flash of lightning and then a peal of
thunder, which seemed to shake every cottage to its foundation. And
then came piercing cries:

"A boat in distress, and threatened with instant destruction!"

It was Victoire's boat!

I was on the shore in an instant What an awful storm! Never in my
whole life had I seen its equal.

All that was in a man's power I did, you may be quite sure. Three
times I dashed madly into the waves, only to be thrown back by the
fury of the sea. The last time I was all but lost myself. However, I
was rescued and brought back to the shore, bruised and insensible.
Some thought me dead. Would that I had been, and had out side by side
with that other body stretched lifeless on the rocks!

It was Victoire!

When I came to myself he was near me, quite still, and covered with
blood; but with just enough breath left to whisper in my ear:

"Pierre, my boy, be a brother to my wife, a father to my children. God
bless you, boy."

"Victoire," answered I, "I swear it."

And then he died without a murmur.



CHAPTER IV.

Of course you will guess, monsieur, that this awful affair was the
means of putting off our marriage. Marie and I neither of us
complained, but consoled ourselves with the reflection that all would
soon be well. I took up my position in my brother's house, and warmly
kissed my brother's children, now mine. Alphonsine tried to show her
gratitude as well as she could. And so six months slipped away, and
the villagers began talking again about our marriage. I don't know how
it was, but I began to feel very nervous and uneasy about the matter,
and I did not so much as dare broach the subject either to Alphonsine
or Marie's mother. In a little time the latter began the subject
herself.

"Pierre," said she, "you have adopted your brother's children, have
you not?"

"Yes, mother."

"And his wife also?"

"Yes; I must take care of his wife quite as much as her children."

"You have quite made up your mind?"

"Perfectly."

"Am I to understand that you never mean to leave them?"

"I swore I would not to my brother before he died."

Then there was a silence, and my heart beat very quick.

"Listen, Pierre," said the old woman; "don't think that I wish to
deprive the widow or the orphans of one morsel of the sustenance you
intend to set aside for them. Even if I did, your good heart would
hardly listen to me. But you must understand that I know Alphonsine.
{116} My daughter can never live with Alphonsine; and Alphonsine can
never live with me. Never!"

This last word seemed to open an abyss before my very feet. I too knew
Alphonsine. I too began now to understand that either of these
arrangements would be perfectly impracticable.

"Mother," I began--

"I don't wish to hinder jour marriage," replied the old lady, very
slowly; "I simply impose one condition. You must be quite aware that
in this matter my will must be law."

Still I hesitated.

"It will be for you then to decide your own fate," added she; "and my
daughter's as well."

I raised my head. Marie was there, and our eyes met. I must break my
oath or lose her for ever.

It is absolute torture to recall those fearful moments. My head seemed
to swim round, and when I tried to speak, there was something in my
throat which nearly choked me. And still Marie looked at me; and oh,
how tenderly!

"Pierre," said the old lady again, "you must answer; will you remain
alone with Alphonsine, or will you come here alone? Choose for
yourself."

I looked at Marie again, and was on the point of exclaiming, "I must
come here!" but the words again stuck in my throat, and my tongue
refused to speak. And then I began to ease my conscience with the
thought that I could still work for Victoire's wife and children, and
tried to think they would be equally happy, although I was not always
with them. But then I thought of that dreadful night, and the storm,
and the pale face, and the whisper in my ear came back again, and I
fancied I heard my brother say, "It was not that you promised me, my
brother; it was not that!"

At last the bitter words rose to my mouth, and in a hollow voice I
answered:

"I must keep my oath!" And then, like a drunken man, I fell prostrate
on the floor.

When I recovered she was near me still, and her sweet voice whispered
in my ear,

"Thank God, Pierre, you are an honest man!"

Those words were my only comfort in the long dreary year which
followed that fearful day. I was never myself again. I tried to rouse
myself up, and take some interest in my daily work, and did my best to
appear cheerful and contented at home, but I was not the same man that
I used to be. The children were a great comfort to me when I was at
home; but the long hopeless days and the dark dreary nights were
miserable enough, God knows. I seemed to dream away my life.

I thought it best to keep away from Marie, as a meeting would be
painful to both. And so we never met.

At last a report got about the village that Marie was going to be
married.

I could no longer keep away from her now, and she, too, appeared
anxious that we should meet. In a very few days we were once more side
by side.

There was no need of me to speak. She read my question in my eyes: of
her own accord she answered:

"Yes, Pierre, it is quite true."

"But, Pierre," added she in tears, "I am yours, and must be yours for
ever. Unless I can get you to say, Marry Jacques, I will remain single
all my life. But my mother begs me to get married; and what can I do?
She is very old, and very ill just now. I feel I _too_ have got a duty
to fulfil."

I uttered a cry of despair.

"Pierre," said Marie, still weeping, "you must know how dearly I love
you. My fate is that I must love you still. But, for all that, Pierre,
I cannot let my mother die."

I could not bear to hear her weep; but what comfort could I give? At
last the devil entered into my heart, {117} and I broke forth in
bitter curses at my fate, and what I chose to call her inconstancy.

"I don't deserve this," said Marie very softly; "and I hardly expected
that I should ever hear these words from your lips. Still, I believe
you love me, after all. I hope you will feel, when you think over all
that has passed, that I am not heartless, and that I deserve some
answer to the question which my lips almost refuse to ask. You will
give me an answer, I am sure, by-and-by."

And then she left me, half-mad as I was, lying coiled up in a heap at
the roadside.

During the next few days I did reflect. If I could not marry Marie
myself, had I any right to hinder her marriage with another? Was I
justified in preparing for her a life of solitude, and in depriving
her of a mother's care? And then, again, I began to perceive that no
one was at all inclined to take my part in the village. My popularity
was fast declining, since no one could look into my heart, or could
have the least idea what I had suffered, or knew what had actually
taken place. I was pitied, but considered very selfish. I was
continually told that Marie's mother was ailing sadly, and that she
had deserved better treatment at my hands.

At last Father Hermann comforted me, and benefitting by his good
advice and by the help of our holy religion, I began to be in a better
frame of mind.

I made up my mind to give Marie her freedom. But I could not bear to
see her again, and so I wrote.



CHAPTER V.

The marriage between Jaques and Marie was soon arranged, and soon the
second festal day came round.

In the morning I put out to sea as usual; but as the evening wore on,
I found I was under the influence of a spell and that it was quite
impossible for me to remain where I was. Accordingly I returned; and,
led on by the spell and attracted like a moth to the candle, wended my
way to the rejoicings, in order that I might torture myself for the
lost time.

I have heard of the agonies of the rack, of the thumb-screw, of saints
being boiled in oil and crucified, and many other dreadful horrors;
but I very much doubt if any martyr ever suffered the agony that I did
that night.

It was in the dusk of the evening, and Marie was just finishing a
song, while all were resting from the dances which had followed one
another in quick succession. She was just singing the last verse, in
which my name was accidentally introduced, when a sailor who was just
behind me struck a match in order to light his pipe. The light exposed
me to the view of the whole company. Directly Marie saw me, she
uttered a piercing cry and fainted away. I rushed toward her, not
thinking what I was doing. But Jaques was at her side before me.
Instead, however, of showing the least jealousy or putting himself in
a passion, he grasped me warmly by the hand, and then looked tenderly
at Marie, who now began to revive.

"Never fear, and keep up a good heart," said he, in a strange kind of
voice. You would never guess what he did, and perhaps will hardly
believe when I tell you.

Ordinarily a very temperate, steady man, he astonished the company by
giving out that he intended to throw a little life into the fête. On
this he ordered wine and cider, and lastly a plentiful supply of
brandy.

In a very little time he was helplessly drunk, or at least pretended
to be so. As the evening wore on, he got from bad to worse, insulted
and quarrelled with the men, and fairly disgusted the women. The
village was in an uproar, and there was not a soul who did not speak
in strong terms of the disgraceful conduct of Jaques. At the earnest
entreaty of the worthy {118} fellow we kept our counsel, and
accordingly the new marriage was at once broken off.

The rest of my story you know almost as well as I do myself. You see
my life from day to day. You can picture to yourself my sorrow and my
unhappy position. You can see how little _she_ has changed.

And yet we can never be more to one another than we are now. Never.
Never! We are married, and yet we are not. We are separated, alas,
here on earth, but we _must_ be united in heaven. Think of the years
that have passed, and think how happy we might have been, and what a
thread there was between our present existence and the life we long to
lead. God's will be done!

Poor Pierre here let his head fall into his hands, and wept in
silence.

How could I comfort the poor fellow?

It was not the kind of grief that needed consolation, and so I let him
weep on.

All at once a breeze sprung up and filled the sails. Pierre
immediately roused himself, but soon relapsed into his accustomed calm
quiet manner.

Both the other sailors now came on deck, the nets were thrown over,
and the business of the night began.



CHAPTER VI.

Three years afterward, by the merest accident in the world, I happened
to return to my favorite little village. There was evidently some
excitement going on, and as I chanced to recognize my old friend
Father Hermann, I went up and renewed our acquaintance.

"What is the matter?" said he; "why you do not mean to say you don't
know?"

"Not in the least."

"Why your old friend Alphonsine has been dead six months."

"I really don't see why the worthy inhabitants of the village should
rejoice at that," said I.

"A great obstacle has been removed," said the father; "don't you
remember?"

"Of course; and what has followed?"

"The marriage of Pierre Prévost and Marie!"

I was not long in accompanying Father Hermann to the cottage in which
my old friends were receiving the warm congratulations of their
friends and neighbors.

They recognized me at once, and insisted that I should be present at
the entertainment which was to follow in the course of the day. Of
course I accepted the invitation. I never remember having enjoyed
myself so much, and am quite certain that I spoke from my heart when I
proposed, in my very best French, the healths of la belle Marie and
Pierre Prévost.

------

{119}

From The Popular Science Review.

INSIDE THE EYE:
THE OPHTHALMOSCOPE AND ITS' USES.

BY ERNEST HART, OPHTHALMIC SURGEON.


There are few spectacles more affecting--and there were few more
hopelessly distressing--than that which many have seen, of the blind
man, with eyes unaltered in their human aspect of beauty, searching
vainly to penetrate the unchangeable darkness of a noonday, bright to
others, and replete with the splendor of light and color. There have
always been many of these sufferers from a disease which claims the
most profound sympathy, and which seemed bitterly to reproach our
science that it could not timely penetrate the mystery of that obscure
chamber which lies behind the iris, and had found no means for
enabling us to see through the clear but darkened space of the pupil.
That reproach, at least, exists in part no longer. Since some few
years now we have learnt how to explain the obscurity of the interior
of the eye, and by what optical contrivances we can overcome this
darkness and look into the depths of the ocular globe; thus inspecting
with ease, and quite painlessly to the individual, the lenses and
humors of the eye, the nerve of sight and its transparent retinal
expansion, and even the vascular tissue which lies behind and
surrounds this. This is a great triumph of physical science, and it is
no barren triumph. The insight which we gain into the host of
affections of the refracting media and deep membranes of the eye has
given to our diagnosis and therapeutical treatment of the most obscure
forms of disease leading to blindness, a certainty and precision to
which we were formerly strangers.

The optical instrument by which we are able to effect this inspection
is known by the fitting title of the _Ophthalmoscope_ ([Greek text]
the eye; [Greek text],  I survey). With this instrument, the manner of
using it, and its valuable applications, I am necessarily
professionally much occupied in daily work; and as the editor of the
"Popular Science Review" has requested me to give some plain account
of the matter, I will endeavor to afford an untechnical statement of
what the ophthalmoscope is, and what are some of the most useful
results which have been obtained by its use.

Let me first remind the general reader that in the human eye, behind
the pupillary aperture of the colored iris, which presents to the
unaided eye of the observer the mere aspect of black darkness, lies,
first, a clear bi-convex _lens_; and behind this, filling the eye, and
giving to it the character of a solid ball, a transparent globular
mass, known as the _vitreous body_, or _humor_. It is into a
depression in the front of this that the aforesaid lens is fitted, so
that the whole space of the eye behind the _iris_ is filled by the
_lens_ and _vitreous body_. The optic nerve, or nerve of sight, which
pierces the tunics of the eye at the back and near the centre, spreads
out and forms an expanded tunic of nerve-structure which enwraps the
vitreous body as far as its most forward edge, where the colored iris
descends in front of it. Enwrapping again this nerve-tunic or _retina_
is a vestment, chiefly made of blood-vessels, connected by fine tissue
and thickly coated with black pigment, having its own optical uses.
This second outer pigmented vascular tunic is _the choroid_. This
again is enclosed within the external strong fibrous membrane, which
includes and protects all the sclerotic membrane {120} ([Greek text],
hard). These are the two humors and three tunics of the eye which can
to a greater or less extent be examined during life by the aid of the
ophthalmoscope.

They can all be more or less investigated in the living eye by the aid
of the ophthalmoscope, because by the aid of this instrument we are
able to see through the pupillary space. If one considers what is the
reason of the apparent darkness of the pupillary aperture and the
chambers of the eye behind it, it is not difficult to gain an idea of
the means by which this optical condition may be altered so as to
enable us to see where all seem to the unaided vision obscure.

[Illustration: Doctor looking through ophthalmoscope.]

{121}

This darkness of the pupillary aperture is attributable partly to
obvious causes, such as the natural contraction of the pupil or _iris_
which occurs under light--this contraction limiting the number of rays
which can enter the eye. Then that black pigment which lines the iris
absorbs a great deal of light; and thus, as in the case of albinos,
whose eyes are deficient in pigment, or where the pupil is dilated,
either through disease or by artificial agents, these obstacles for
seeing into the living eye are removed. But still the main
difficulties are not cleared away; and if you take for example an
albino animal, such as one of those beautiful little white-furred
rabbits, whose rosy eyes look like fiery opals edged with swan's down,
and dilate the pupils with atropine, it is still not possible to see
clearly the details of the structure within and at the back of the
eye. This is by reason of the structure of the eye as an optical
instrument, and because the rays of light in entering and in emerging
from it undergo refraction, according to definite laws. The light
which penetrates the eye traverses the transparent retina, producing
the impression necessary for sight, and is partly absorbed by the
black pigment of the choroid; but a great number of the rays are
reflected; for here there is no exception to the general rule that
some of the rays of light falling upon any substance are always
reflected. These rays, in returning, are refracted through the
vitreous body and lens, just as they were in entering the eye, with
the object then of causing them so to converge as to produce upon the
retina a clear and definite image of whatever external object they
started from. Similarly, then, on their emergence they are refracted
chiefly by the lens and cornea, so as to form an image in the outer
air, the emergent rays coinciding in their path with that which they
took when entering, and the image formed in the air being conjugated
with the retinal image; being formed, therefore, on the same side,
varying with the position of the lens and object, and the
accommodation of the eye. Thus, then, to perceive this aerial image,
derived from the retinal reflection, the eye of the observer needs to
be placed in the axis of the converging rays; but since this is also
the axis of the entering rays, he will of necessity in that position
cut off those rays altogether of the light proceeding, say, from a
lamp, or the source of light opposite to the eye to be illuminated.

The problem to be solved consists, then, in the simple illumination of
the eye to be observed by a source of light so arranged that the
observer can be placed in the axis of the rays entering and emerging
without intercepting those rays. This may be most conveniently
effected by placing the source of light aside of the eye to be
observed, and observing through a pierced concave mirror, which
reflects that light into the eye. We can then, by looking through the
central aperture of this mirror, place ourself in the path of the
entering and emerging rays. The mirror becomes the source of light to
the observed eye; the rays which it flashed into the eye emerge {122}
in part, and return along the same path, forming the aerial image at a
distance and under circumstances regulated by the optical conditions
of the eye observed, and within view of the observer who is looking
through the mirror. A very simple diagram will suffice to explain
this: _r a_ is the circle of diffusion of the retina, and the lines
indicate how the reflected rays will pass through the media of the
eye, and form at _r' a'_ real enlarged but inverted image of the
fundus of the eye. This will be placed at the distance of distinct
vision of the subject, and has relation to the accommodation of the
eye.

[Illustration:  Diagram of preceding discussion.]

As these are variable quantities, the practice of ophthalmoscopy
demands a little address, which habit quickly gives. It is for want of
understanding this, and from impatience of these preliminary
difficulties, that many have been discouraged at the outset, and have
abandoned unwisely the attempt to learn the use of the ophthalmoscope.

The image obtained in the way mentioned is not so distinct as to give
that full perception of details which is necessary for scientific and
medical purposes. A more defined image is obtained by interposing, for
example, a bi-convex lens on the path of the luminous rays emerging
from the eye observed. The effect of holding such a lens of short
focus before the observed eye whilst examining it with a concave
ophthalmoscopic mirror is to cause the rays emerging from the eye to
undergo a further refraction, and to modify the actual image which
they form, producing one which is smaller, more defined, but still
inverted. This is the most simple and one of the most satisfactory
methods of exploring the eye with the ophthalmoscope. It is that of
the most general and easy application, and I will, therefore, add a
few words to explain how it may most conveniently be practised.

We will suppose that it is the human eye which is to be examined. The
room is to be made dark; the person to be seated; a light--the white
flame of an oil-lamp or an Argand gas-burner--to be placed near his
head, on the side, and at the level of the eye to be observed. The
observer takes then the concave mirror in the hand of the side toward
the lamp, and placing it against the front of his eye, so that the
upper edge rests against his eyebrow, brings his head to the level of
that of the person seated, looks through the central perforation at
the eye to be observed, and by a little careful change in the
direction of the mirror casts, by its aid, upon the eye examined the
light of the lamp.

He will now perceive that the pupillary aperture is illuminated, and,
no longer black, shines with a silvery or reddened light. He takes now
the bi-convex lens of short focus in the hand hitherto free, and
places it in front of the examined eye, and at such a distance as to
make the focus of the lens coincide with the pupil of that eye
--distance varying from two to three inches. He himself will usually
need to be at a distance from twelve to eighteen inches. This is for
normal eyes. The slight movements backward and forward necessary to
adjust these distances correctly, are effected very easily and
precisely after practice; but at first it is a little difficult to
avoid changing the direction of the mirror while thus slightly
advancing or retiring the head; and this is a point on which it is
well to give a warning, for it is a frequent source of discouragement
to beginners, who find that at every movement they interfere with the
illumination of the eye, and so suffer from a series of little
failures at the outset. The first thing, in fact, that every one sees
amounts to a little more than a red, luminous disc; those who begin by
seeing nothing more, therefore, need not to be discouraged; a little
patience and time will enable them to see what more practised persons
describe. The eye to be examined may be more fully observed by
dilating the pupil {123} with atropine--a drop of a solution, one
grain to a pint of water, or one of the atropized gelatines prepared
for me by Savory and Moore, each of which contains one hundred
thousandth of a grain of atropine, and will maintain dilation during
several hours. This acts also perfectly well with rabbits or cats.

[Illustration:  Doctor examining patient.]

The first thing seen is the red reflection of the choroidal vessels
showing through the transparent retina; and when the eye observed is
directed upward and inward, we see the usually circular disc of the
optic nerve, encircled by a double ring, cream-colored, or very
faintly roseate or grey, and surrounded by the red choroid. The two
rings are the apertures in the choroid and sclerotic, of which the
former is the smaller. From out this disc we see springing the retinal
artery and retinal veins, sometimes centric, at others excentric, in
their passage. The artery is easily recognized as being somewhat
smaller in calibre, and of a lighter red. The artery usually divides
into a superior and inferior branch, each of which subdivides
forthwith into two secondary branches, and these again continue to
subdivide, dichotomously, running forward to the anterior limits of
the retina. The veins, which are somewhat larger and deeper colored,
usually pierce the disc of the optic nerve in two trunks. Pulsation
may occasionally be detected in the veins by watching carefully their
color, which seems to change at each impulse just where they pass over
the edge of the optic disc and bend to pierce the nerve.

Fuller details of the ophthalmoscopic appearances of healthy eyes,
both human and animal, will be found in Zander's treatise, excellently
edited and translated by Mr. R. B. Carter, of Stroud. In the healthy
eye the aqueous humor, lens, and vitreous humor are clear, and do not
in any way obstruct the passage of the light. It is otherwise in
disease; and this brings us to the discussion of some of the practical
applications of the ophthalmoscope. Here, perhaps, I may be permitted
to quote some of the {124} paragraphs of a paper which I read lately
on the subject before the Hanveian Society:

[Illustration: Interior of eye. ]

  "Taking up the diagnosis of the various forms of disease any of
  which would have been held to constitute the condition known as
  amaurosis, it may be noted, first of all, that even in the hands of
  the novice ophthalmoscopic examination supersedes those chapters in
  ophthalmology which were formerly devoted to the means of
  distinguishing between incipient cataract and amaurosis. In the
  past, and even at present, with those surgeons who are content to
  treat deep-seated diseases of the eye by guessing at their nature,
  and have not adopted the systematic use of the ophthalmoscope into
  their practice, the functional annoyances which commonly occur at
  the outset of the formation of lenticular cataract, have been, and
  are, fertile sources of deception. The patient complains of frontal
  pain, of confused vision, stars of light, and some other vague
  symptoms which characterize the outset alike of many forms of
  deep-seated disease of the eye, and of the fatty degeneration of the
  lens which commonly gives rise to lenticular cataract, probably from
  coincident swelling of the lens. An error arising from this source
  has many times condemned the unfortunate subject of a commencing
  cataract to the severe treatment thought appropriate to the unhappy
  class of amaurotics. The kind of alteration in the lens,
  imperceptible by any other means than the ophthalmoscope, is the
  slightly opaque striation of the substance of the lens sometimes
  seen in an early stage. These opaque striae may occupy either the
  anterior or the posterior segment of the lens, and spring from the
  centre of the crystalline or converge toward the centre from the
  circumference. In order to see the latter, the pupil must be fully
  dilated with atropine; as, indeed, for the purposes of complete
  ophthalmoscopic examination it always needs to be; and then, just as
  the greatest expert cannot discover them except by ophthalmoscopic
  illumination, so, neither with its aid, can they be passed over with
  ordinary care. In order to be quite sure in any delicate case, it is
  well to lower the light a little, and use only a feebly illuminating
  power, as a very strong light may overpower a {125} commencing
  opacity, and render us unable to detect the striae. This practical
  caution applies equally to all other conditions of opacity in the
  transparent media. In two cases, lately, I have been able to set at
  rest doubts of this kind, which happened to be in the persons of
  medical men, who were much disquieted by the symptoms--one a member
  of this society. In a third case I have recently detected incipient
  cataract (peripheric striae) in a gentleman supposed to be suffering
  from commencing glaucoma.

  "It is of frequent occurrence to find the capsule of the lens
  stained with black spots; these are stains left by the uveal
  pigment, and occur usually after an attack of iritis, when the iris
  has been in contact with the lens. When the iris has been adherent,
  a complete ring of pigment may often be seen on the surface of the
  lens. A day's experience at any ophthalmic clinique can mostly show
  examples of this condition; but it is only when these deposits are
  numerous, and in the central line of vision, that they become
  troublesome. They are then met with as the sequences of severe
  choroido-iritis, and usually coincide with further mischief in the
  vitreous and choroid.

  "The vitreous, under the influence most commonly of choroiditis, and
  usually syphilitic choroiditis, presents alterations of the most
  striking character for ophthalmoscopic observation. The patients who
  offer these changes complain usually of considerable dimness of
  sight, which on examination is found to include both diminution in
  the acuteness of visual perception, and restriction in _the field of
  vision_, or extent of any object seen at once. The great source of
  trouble to them is, that when they lift the eye or move the head,
  black corpuscles, or streaks, or webs float before their eyes, and
  obscure the object at which they are looking; and when the eyes are
  kept still, these fall again and disappear. Examine now the eyes of
  such an one, and you will see that the phenomena described are due
  to the existence of actual shreds, corpuscles, or webs of fibrous
  and albuminous exudation, which float in the vitreous, and at each
  motion of the eye rise in clouds and obscure the fundus, so that you
  can barely see it, or perhaps not at all. These conditions, I say,
  are mostly specific, but not invariably. They are sometimes the
  result of scrofula, and probably of other forms of choroiditis."


Here, then, are a large number of cases in which the ophthalmoscope
transports us at once from the regions of the known to the unknown.
There are other classes of cases equally striking. Let me take
illustrative examples. Two persons apply for advice, complaining that
the sight has been gradually growing more and more dim, perhaps in one
eye,--it may be in both. The progress of the disease has been
insidious and nearly painless. The eyes are to all external appearance
healthy, except probably that in both patients the pupils are
partially dilated and sluggish. The ophthalmoscope helps us to solve
the problem.

The one is a case, it may be, of slow atrophy of the optic nerve,
proceeding from central disease of the brain--from pressure on the
optic tracts of nerve within the skull, or from defective nutrition
following losses of blood. We find the nerve glistening white and
slightly cupped, the arteries small, the fundus otherwise healthy. In
the other we recognize at once, in the fulness of the veins, their
pulsation, and the marked excavation of the optic disc, the
indications of excessive tension of the eyeball and undue pressure of
the nerve. The first requires careful constitutional treatment and a
long course of studied hygiene and medication; the second calls for
direct and immediate interference, with the view of relieving the
intra-ocular pressure. In the diagnosis of this great class of
glaucomatous disease of the eye--disease {126} characterized of loss
of vision, sometimes slow and sometimes rapid, but always
characterized by definite ophthalmoscopic signs: cupping of the disc,
pulsation, fullness of the veins, and it may be more or less haziness
of the transparent media--ophthalmoscopy has rendered a most brilliant
and inestimable service. Prior to the introduction of the use of this
instrument the disease was of an unknown pathology; its results were
fatal to vision, but there were no means of diagnosing the conditions
attending the earlier stages, and blindness followed almost certainly
and inevitably. The investigation of the disease has brought us a
remedy in the excision of a portion of the iris--a practice introduced
by Von Gräfe, of Berlin, and of which the success is in suitable cases
most gratifying.

Another series of examples may be chosen to illustrate the application
of ophthalmoscopy. I avoid giving details here, but it is perhaps
right to say that these are not fanciful sketches, but notices of
cases in my experience and taken from my note-books of practice. Two
persons are asking for advice as to the management of their eyes for
short-sightedness. Are both to receive the same advice? The
ophthalmoscope alone can furnish positive data. With this we may
discover a staphylomatous condition of the back of the eye, a bright
excentric margin around the optic disc and edge with black pigment.
Examining it closely, we may find that this pigmented edge gives
evidence of progressive inflammation at the back of the eye, and
extending to continuous and increasing atrophy and retrocession of the
coats of the eye. This person is in danger of becoming rapidly made
short-sighted or of losing sight altogether. We must prohibit the use
of concave glasses for a certain length of time, and must adopt active
and effectual measures for subduing the atrophic inflammation. In the
other patient the ophthalmoscope may show us but little stretching or
waste, and that not progressive, and will enable us then to calm his
fears, to prescribe appropriate glasses, and to dismiss him to his
occupation with ease of mind and safety. So with sudden lose of sight
from intra-ocular haemorrhage, the ophthalmoscope gives us information
which could never have been guessed at without it, and guides us, not
only to the local knowledge, but to the constitutional information
essential for cure.

There are certain conditions of the eye which may warn any one that it
is desirable that the condition of the vision ought to be investigated
by the ophthalmoscope. Rapidly increasing short-sightedness is one of
the most marked, and when this becomes associated with weakness of
sight and loss of acuteness in the perception of small objects, the
warning is very urgent. A diminution in the field of vision is another
important indication of internal changes in the eye, of which only the
ophthalmoscope can detect the true nature. It would be difficult,
perhaps, to say whether more mischief is done and more suffering is
caused by the total neglect of such symptoms or by their ignorant
palliation by the aid of common spectacles, chosen empirically,
because they facilitate vision for the time. The great use of the
ophthalmoscope, then, is this: that it arms us with an instrument of
precision, by which we can determine the precise local condition of
the parts of the eye in which the function of sight is resident and
through which it is regulated. If it cannot do all that we might ask,
it is because the sense of sight is in truth a cerebral function, of
which the eye is only an instrument; and in dealing with cerebral
affections of the sight, it can indeed give us information which
without it we should lack, but it leaves still to be desired more
intimate acquaintance with first causes, which at present we can only
discuss inferentially. To the amateur in science, and to the lover of
nature, it discloses an exquisite spectacle, unknown till now, that
carries {127} observation into the inner chambers of the living eye,
and displays its wonders and its beauties. The observation is
perfectly painless, and may easily be effected: rabbits, for example,
submit to it with great calmness and composure, and at the College of
Physicians' _soirée_ last year, a little pet white rabbit of mine sat
up calmly in a box which I had made for the purpose, and was examined,
by the aid of a modification which I devised of Liebreich's
demonstrating ophthalmoscope, by many score of observers. Mine has the
advantage of being adapted for use even amid a blaze of light, and it
cannot easily be disarranged; two qualities valuable in an instrument
for demonstration.

----------

From The Lamp.

THE PILGRIMAGE TO KEVLAAR.

FROM THE GERMAN.


  The mother stood at the window.
    The son he lay in bed;
  "Here's a procession, Wilhelm;
    Wilt not look out?" she said.

  "I am so ill, my mother,
    In the world I have no part;
  I think upon dead Gretchen,
    And a death-pang rends my heart."

  "Rise up; we will to Kevlaar;
    Will staff and rosary take;
  God's Mother there will cure thee,--
    Thy sick heart whole will make."

  The Church's banner fluttered,
    The Church's hymns arose;
  And unto fair Cöln city
    The long procession goes.

  The mother joined the pilgrims,
    Her sick son leadeth she;
  And both sing in the chorus,
    "_Gelobt seyst du, Marie!_"    [Footnote 22]

      [Footnote 22: "Praised be thou, Mary!"]

II.

  The holy Mother in Kevlaar
    To-day is well arrayed,--
  To-day hath much to busy her.
    For many sick ask her aid.

{128}

  And many sick people bring her
    Such offerings as are meet;
  Many waxen limbs they bring her,
    Many waxen hands and feet.

  And who a wax hand bringeth,
    His hand is healed that day;
  And who a wax foot bringeth,
    With sound feet goes away.

  Many went there on crutches
    Who now on the rope can spring;
  Many play now on the viol
    Whose hands could not touch a string.

  The mother she took a waxen light.
    And shaped therefrom a heart;
  "Take that to the Mother of Christ," she said,
    "And she will heal thy smart."

  He sighed, and took the waxen heart,
    And went to the church in woe;
  The tears from his eyes fell streaming,
    The words from his heart came low.

  "Thou that art highly blessed,
    Thou Mother of Christ!" said he;
  "Thou that art queen of heaven,
    I bring my griefs to thee.

  I dwell in Cöln with my mother;
    In Cöln upon the Rhine,
  Where so many hundred chapels
    And so many churches shine.

  And near unto us dwelt Gretchen;
    But dead is Gretchen now.
  Marie, I bring a waxen heart,--
    My heart's despair heal thou.

  Heal thou my sore heart-sickness;
    So I will sing to thee
  Early and late with fervent love,
    "_Gelobt seyst du, Marie!_"

{129}

III.

  The sick son and the mother
    In one chamber slept that night;
  And the holy Mother of Jesus
    Gild in with footsteps light

  She bowed her over the sick man's bed,
    And one there hand did lay
  Upon his throbbing bosom,
    Then smiled and passed away.

  It seemed a dream to the mother,
    And she had yet seen more
  But that her sleep was broken,
    For the dogs howled at the door.

  Upon his bed extended
    Her son lay, and was dead;
  And o'er his thin pale visage streamed
    The morning's lovely red.

  Her hands the mother folded.
    Yet not a tear wept she;
  But sang in low devotion,
    "_Gelobt seyst du, Marie!_"

MARY HOWITT.

------

From The Reader.

THE ANCIENT LAWS OF IRELAND.



_Ancient Laws of Ireland_. Vol. I. Printed for Her Majesty's
Stationery Office. (London: Longman. Dublin: Thorn.)


This is a curious book, throwing some glimmerings of light upon a very
remote and obscure period of Irish history. In 1852 a government
commission, called the "Brehon Law Commission," was issued to the Lord
Chancellor of Ireland, Lord Rosse, Dean Graves, Dr. Petrie, and
others, appointing them to carry into effect the selection,
transcription, and translation of certain documents in the Gaelic
tongue containing portions of the ancient laws of Ireland, and the
preparation of the same for publication. In pursuance of this, the
commissioners employed Dr. O'Donovan and Professor O'Curry, two Gaelic
scholars of high distinction, to transcribe and translate various law
tracts in the Irish language in the library of Trinity College,
Dublin, of the Royal Irish Academy, of the British Museum, and in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford. The transcriptions occupy more than 5,000
manuscript pages, including all the law tracts which it was thought
necessary to publish, and have nearly all been translated; but the two
chosen scholars did not live to complete and revise their
translations. The portion now published was prepared for the press by
W. Neilson, Hancock, LL.D., first in conjunction with Dr. O'Donovan,
and, after his death, with the Rev. Mr. O'Mahony, professor of Irish
in the university of Dublin. It is a volume of some 300 pages, the
Irish on one page and the translation opposite, containing the first
part of the _Senchus Mor_ (we are not told how much is to follow),
treating of the law of distress or distraint, with an Irish
introduction, and various Irish glosses and commentaries on the text.

The title _Senchus Mor_  (pronounced "Shanchus Môr") for which seven
or {130} eight different derivations are suggested, appears to mean
"the great old laws," or "the great old decisions." The chief
manuscripts of it which are known to exist are three in Trinity
College, Dublin, and one in the Harleian collection in the British
Museum, and the earliest of these is assigned to _circa_ A.D. 1300.
But quotations from the _Senchus Mor_ are found in "Cormac's
Glossary," the greater part of which was probably composed in the
ninth or tenth century, and the date of the original compilation is
put by good judges, on various evidence, at A.D. 438 to 441. It is, in
short, a codification and revision, under the direction of St.
Patrick, of the judgments of the pagan Brehons. Three kings, three
poets, and three Christian missionaries (of whom Patrick was one) were
combined in this work, and the code then established remained the
national law of Ireland for nearly twelve centuries. The pagan laws
embodied in this revised code were in force during a period of unknown
antiquity, prior to the introduction of Christianity to the island.

  "The _Senchus Mor_ has been selected by the commissioners for early
  publication as being one of the oldest and one of the most important
  portions of the ancient laws of Ireland which have been preserved. It
  exhibits the remarkable modification which these laws of pagan
  origin underwent, in the fifth century, on the conversion of the
  Irish to Christianity.

  "This modification was ascribed so entirely to the influence of St.
  Patrick that the _Senchus Mor_ is described as having been called in
after times 'Cain Patraic,' or Patrick's law.

  "The _Senchus Mor_ was so much revered, that the Irish judges,
  called Brehons, were not authorized to abrogate anything contained
  in it.

  "The original text, of high antiquity, has been made the subject of
  glosses and commentaries of more recent date; and the _Senchus Mor_
  would appear to have maintained its authority among the native Irish
  until the beginning of the seventeenth century, or for a period of
  1,200 years.

  "The English law, introduced by King Henry the Second in the twelfth
  century, for many years scarcely prevailed beyond the narrow limits of
  the English pale (comprising the present counties of Louth, Meath,
  Westmeath, Kildare, Dublin, and Wicklow). Throughout the rest of
  Ireland the Brehons still administered their ancient laws amongst
  the native Irish, who were practically excluded from the privileges
  of the English law. The Anglo-Irish, too, adopted the Irish laws to
  such an extent that efforts were made to prevent their doing so by
  enactments first passed at the parliament of Kilkenny in the
  fortieth year of King Edward III. (1367), and subsequently renewed
  by Stat. Henry VII., c. 8, in 1495. So late as the twenty-fourth and
  twenty-fifth years of the reign of King Henry VIII. (1534) George
  Cromer, archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, obtained a
  formal pardon for having used the Brehon laws. In the reign of Queen
  Mary, 1554, the Earl of Kildare obtained an eric of 340 cows for the
  death of his foster-brother, Robert Nugent, under the Brehon law.

  "The authority of the Brehon laws continued until the power of the
  Irish chieftains was finally broken in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
  and all the Irish were received into the king's immediate protection
  by the proclamation of James I. This proclamation, followed as it
  was by the complete division of Ireland into counties, and the
  administration of the English laws throughout the entire country,
  terminated at once the necessity for, and the authority of, the
  ancient Irish laws.

  "The wars of Cromwell, the policy pursued by King Charles II. at the
  restoration, and the results of the revolution of 1688, prevented any
  revival of the Irish laws; and before the end of the seventeenth
  century the whole race of judges (Brehons) and professors (Ollamhs)
  of the Irish laws appears to have become extinct."

{131}

Portions of the text of the _Senchus Mor_, as we now have it, are held
by Gaelic scholars to be in the language of the fifth century, in what
was called the _Bérla Feini_ dialect; other portions translated from
that ancient form into Gaelic of the thirteenth century. Various
ancient Irish glosses and commentaries accompany the text, and also an
introduction of high antiquity, giving an account of the origin of the
_Senchus Mor_.

  "Patrick came to Erin to baptize and to disseminate religion among
  the Gaeidhil--_i.e._, in the ninth year of, the reign of Theodosius,
  and in the fourth year of the reign of Laeghairè [pronounced Layorie
  or Layrie], son of Niall; king of Erin." The combination of the
  Roman pagan laws with Christian doctrine in the Theodosian code
  received imperial sanction in A.D. 438, and was at once adopted both
  in the eastern and western empires. St. Patrick, Dr. Hancock
  remarks, a Roman citizen, a native of a Roman province, and an
  eminent Christian missionary, would be certain to obtain early
  intelligence of the great reform of the laws of the empire and of
  the great triumph of the Christian church. Having now been six years
  in Erin, and established his influence there, he attempted
  successfully a similar reform in that remote island, and the
  composition of the _Senchus Mor_ was accordingly commenced in that
  same year, 438, and completed in about four years.

  "In ancient Irish books the name of the place where they were
  composed is usually mentioned. The introduction to the _Senchus Mor_
  contains this information, but is very peculiar in representing the
  book as having been composed at different places in different
  seasons of the year: 'It was Teamhair in the summer and in the
  autumn, on account of its cleanness and pleasantness during these
  seasons; and Rath-guthaird was the place during the winter and the
  spring, on account of the nearness of its fire-wood and water, and
  on account of its warmth in the time of winter's cold.'

  "Teamhair, now Tara, was, at the time the _Senchus Mor_ was
  composed, the residence of King Laeghairè, the monarch of Erin, and
  of his chief poet Dubhthach Mac ua Lugair, who took such a leading
  part in the work.

  "Teamhair ceased to be the residence of the kings of Ireland after
  the death of King Dermot, in A.D. 565, about a century and a quarter
  after the _Senchus Mor_ was composed. Remains are, after the lapse
  of nearly 1,400 years, to be still found, the most remarkable of
  their kind in Ireland, which attest the ancient importance of the
  place."

In the introduction a curious account is given of St. Patrick's manner
of dealing with the existing "professors of the sciences," and his
admission of the claim of inspiration on behalf of his pagan
predecessors.

  "Patrick requested of the men of Erin to come to one place to hold a
  conference with him. When they came to the conference the gospel of
  Christ was preached to them all; and when the men of Erin heard of
  the killing of the living and the resuscitation of the dead, and all
  the power of Patrick since his arrival in Erin, and when they saw
  Laeghairè with his Druids overcome by the great signs and miracles
  _wrought_ in the presence of the men in Erin, they bowed down, in
  obedience to the will of God and Patrick.

  "Then Laeghairè said: 'It is necessary for you, O men of Erin, that
  every other law should be settled and arranged by us, as well as
  this.' 'It is better to do so,' said Patrick. It was then that all
  the professors of the sciences in Erin were assembled and each of
  them exhibited his art before Patrick, in the presence of every
  chief in Erin.

  "It was then that Dubhthach was ordered to exhibit the judgments and
  all the poetry of Erin, and every law which prevailed among the men of
  Erin, through the law of nature, and {132} the law of the seers, and
  in the judgments of the island of Erin, and in the poets.

  "They had foretold that the bright word of blessing would
  come--_i.e._, the law of the letter; for it was the Holy Spirit that
  spoke and prophesied through the mouths of the just men who were
  formerly in the island of Erin, as he had prophesied through the
  mouths of the chief prophets and noble fathers in the patriarchal
  law; for the law of nature had prevailed where the written law did
  not reach.

  "Now the judgments of true nature which the Holy Ghost had spoken
  through the mouths of the Brehons and just poets of the men of Erin,
  from the first occupation of this island down to _the reception_ of
  the faith, were all exhibited by Dubhthach to Patrick. What did not
  clash with the Word of God in the written law and in the New
  Testament, and with the consciences of the believers, was confirmed
  in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and
  the chieftains of Erin; for the law of nature had been quite right,
  except the faith and its obligations, and the harmony of the church
  and the people. And this is the _Senchus Mor_.

  "Nine persons were appointed to arrange this book--viz., Patrick,
  and Benen, and Cairnech, three bishops; Laeghairè, and Corc, and
  Dairè, three kings; Rosa--_i.e._, Mac-Trechim, and
  Dubhthach--_i.e._, a doctor of the _Bérla Feini_, and
  Fergus--_i.e._, a poet.

  "Nofis, therefore, is the name of this book which they
  arranged--_i.e._, the knowledge of nine persons--and we have the
  proof of this above."

And in one of the ancient commentaries on the introduction we are
told:

  "Before the coming of Patrick there had been remarkable revelations.
  When the Brehons deviated from the truth of nature, there appeared
  blotches upon their cheeks; as first of all on the right cheek of
  Sen Mac Aige, whenever he pronounced a false judgment, but they
  disappeared again when he had passed a true judgment, etc.

  "Connla never passed a false judgment, through the grace of the Holy
  Ghost, which was upon him.

  "Sencha Mac Col Cluin was not wont to pass judgment until he had
  pondered upon it in his breast the night before. When Fachtna, his
  son, had passed a false judgment, if, in the time of fruit, all the
  fruit of the territory in which it happened fell off in one night,
  etc.; if in time of milk, the cows refused their calves; but if he
  passed a true judgment the fruit was perfect on the trees; hence he
  received the name of Fachtna Tulbrethach.

  "Sencha Mac Aililla never pronounced a false judgment without
  getting three permanent blotches on his face for each judgment.
  Fitliel had the truth of nature, so that he pronounced no false
  judgment. Morann never pronounced a judgment without having a chain
  around his neck. 'When he pronounced a false judgment the chain
  tightened around his neck. If he passed a true one it expanded down
  upon him."

Corc and Dairè were territorial chieftains, or minor kings. Laeghairè,
son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, was monarch of Erin; his reign
commenced A.D. 428, four years before the arrival of Patrick, and
ended with his life in 458, one year after the foundation of Armagh by
that great Christian missionary. Laeghairè is usually called the first
Christian king of Ireland, but it seems more likely from the evidence
we have that he himself did not become a Christian, although he
acknowledged the merit of St. Patrick, and gave him permission to
preach and baptize, on condition that the peace of the kingdom should
not be disturbed. Travellers in our time, by mail-steamers from
Holyhead and the Island of Druids, may some of them not know that
Kingstown is a name given, but a few years ago, to "Dunleary"--that
is, the fortress of King Laeghairè, when George IV., by graciously
landing there, supplanted the {133} memory of the ancient king.
Dubhthach, Fergus, and Rossa, or Rosa, were eminent poets and learned
men; they exhibited "from memory what their predecessors had
_sung_"--for much of the ancient law was preserved in the form of
verse, and Dubhthach, "royal poet of Erin," at the compilation of the
_Senchus Mor_, put a thread of poetry round it for Patrick. Many parts
of the work as we have it are in verse.

The subject of that part of the _Senchus Mor_ which is contained in
the volume before us is the "Law of Distress"--that is, the legal
rules under which distraint was to be made of persons, cattle, or
goods, in a great variety of cases. To a general reader, the legal
verbosity and trivial repetitions make the book hard to read; but
imbedded in it, so to speak, are many curious little fragments of a
very remote and obscure social system, and some of these we shall
proceed to set before our readers.

Fines in cases of death, bodily hurt, insult, or injury of whatever
kind were arranged according to the dignity of the parties concerned.
The "honor-price" is the same for a king, a bishop, a chief
law-professor, and a chief poet who can compose a quatrain
extemporaneously.

At a feast, "his own proper kind of food" is assigned to persons of
different rank--as, for example, the haunch for the king, bishop, and
literary doctor; a leg for the young chief; a steak for the queen; the
heads for the charioteers; and a _croichet_ [unknown part] for "a king
opposed in his government."

Should a person have property, it shall not increase his honor-price,
unless he do good with it.

A king with a personal blemish was allowed with difficulty, if at all.

In case of distress by or on a person of distinction, _fasting_ was a
necessary legal form--the creditor had to "fast upon" his debtor until
a pledge was given for the claim. Something very similar to this
curious process is found in the ancient Hindoo laws, and appears to be
practised in India to the present day, under the name of "_dherna_,"
According to Sir William Jones, the creditor sat at the debtor's door,
abstaining from food, till, for fear of becoming accountable for the
man's death, the debtor paid him. As to the Irish mode of "fasting
upon" a debtor of the chieftain grade, exact particulars are not
given; but it would seem that on presentation of the claim of
distraint at the residence of the debtor the "fasting" began, and if
the debtor did not pay or give a pledge, but allowed his creditor to
go on fasting (it is not said for how long), he became liable to
double the debt, and other penalties.

If one of inferior grade comes to sue one of the chieftain grade, he
must be accompanied, on his part, by one of the chieftain grade.

Among articles enumerated as coming under various rather puzzling
rules and exemptions in cases of distraint, we find, weapons for
battle; a racehorse; a harp-comb, and other requisites for music; toys
for the children--viz., "hurlets, balls, and hoops," and also "little
dogs and cats;" the "eight parts which constitute a mill;" the fork
and cauldron; the kneading-trough and sieve; the bed-furniture--
_i.e._, plaids and bolsters; the reflector or mirror; the chess-board;
the seven valuable articles of the house of the chieftain--viz.,
"cauldron, vat, goblet, mug, reins, horse-bridle, and pin;" the
cattle-bells, the griddle, the "branch-light of each person's house;"
the lap-dog of a queen, the watch-dog, the hunting hound; implements
of weaving and of spinning.

Fines and penalties were provided, among other cases, for withholding
the food-tribute from a king or chief; for the deficiency of a feast;
for neglecting the due clearing of roads in war, or in winter, or at
time of a fair; for neglecting the due preparation of a fair-green;
for neglecting any persons or things cast ashore by the sea (in this
case the "territory" was liable); {134} for neglecting "the common net
of the tribe;" for breaking the laws of rivers and fishing; for
neglecting the due maintenance and medical treatment of the sick; for
not helping in the erection of the common fort of the tribe; for not
blessing a completed work. This last is a curious offence. "It was
customary," we read in a note to p. 132, "for workmen, on completing
any work, and delivering it to their employer, to give it their
blessing. This was the 'abarta,' and if this blessing was omitted, the
workman was subject to a fine, or loss of a portion of his fee, equal
to a seventh part of his allowance of food while employed--the food to
which a workman was entitled being settled by the law in proportion to
the rank of the art or trade which he professed. And it would appear
that the first person who saw it finished and neglected the blessing
was also fined." To the present day, among Irish peasants, it is
thought a marked omission if, in transferring or praising, or even
taking notice of, any possession, especially if it be a living
creature, one neglects to say "God bless it!" or "I wish you luck with
it!" or some such good word; and where you see any work going on, it
is right to say, "God bless the work!"

Distress was levied on defaulters for share in building "the common
bridge of the tribe;" for beef to nourish the chief "during the time
that he is making laws;" for the "cow from every tribe," sent on
demand, "when the king is on the frontier of a territory with a host."
"Now, the custom is that this cow is taken from some one man of them
for the whole number. They make good that cow to him only." Also for
the victualling of a fort; for guarding and feeding captives; for the
maintenance of a fool, or of a madwoman, or of an aged person, or of a
child. "Five cows is the fine for neglecting to provide for the
maintenance of the fool who has land, and _power of amusing;_ and his
having these is the cause of the smallness of the fine. Ten cows is
the fine for neglecting to provide for the maintenance of every
madwoman; and the reason that the fine is greater than that of the
fool is, for the madwoman is not a minstrel, and has not land. If the
fool has not land, or has not power of amusing, the fine for
neglecting to provide for his maintenance is equal to that of the
madwoman who can do no work." "A 'cumhal' of eight cows is the fine
for neglecting to maintain any family senior who has land after his
eighty-eighth year. As to each man of unknown age after his ninetieth
year, his land shall pass from the family who have not maintained him
to an extern family who have maintained him. As to every senior of a
family and man of unknown age without land, a 'cumhal' of five 'seds'
is the fine for not maintaining him."

There are fines for evil words, false reports, slander, nicknames, and
satire. The poets were supposed to have the power of turning a man's
hair gray by force of satire, or even of killing him. There are also
fines for "failure of _hosting_," "the head of every family of the lay
grades is to go into the battle;" "every one who has a shield to
shelter him, and who is fit for battle, is to go upon the plundering
excursion." "Three services of attack" are enumerated--on pirates,
aggressors, and wolves; and "three services of defence"--to secure
"promontories [hills?], lonely passes, and boundaries."

"Distress of three days for using thy horse, thy boat, thy basket, thy
cart, thy chariot, for wear of thy vessel, thy vat, thy great
cauldron, thy cauldron; for 'dire'-fine in respect of thy house, for
stripping thy herb-garden, for stealing thy pigs, thy sheep; for
wearing down thy hatchet, thy wood-axe; for consuming the things cast
upon thy beach by the sea, for injuring thy meeting-hill, for digging
thy silver mine, for robbing thy bee-hive, for the fury of thy fire,
for the crop of thy sea marsh, for the 'dire'-fine in respect to thy
corn-rick, thy turf, thy ripe {135} corn, thy ferns, thy furze, thy
rushes, if without permission; for slighting thy law, for slighting
thy inter-territorial law, for enforcing thy 'Urradhus' law; _in the
case_ of good fosterage, _in the case_ of bad fosterage, the fosterage
fee in the case over fosterage _for_ cradle clothes; for recovering
the dues of the common tillage land, for recovering the dues of joint
fosterage, for recovering the dues of lawful relationship, for
unlawful tying, over-fettering of horses, breaking a _fence_ to let
cows into the grass; breaking it before calves _to let them_ to the
cows. The restitution of the milk is in one day."

There are also fines for quarrelling in a fort; for disturbing the
meetinghill; for stripping the slain; for refusing a woman "the
longed-for morsel;" for scaring the timid, with a mask or otherwise;
for causing a person to blush; for carrying a boy on your back into a
house so as to strike his head; for love-charms and "bed-witchcraft;"
for neglect in marriage; for "setting the charmed morsel for a
dog--_i.e._, to prove it;" for failure as to "the safety of a
hostage;" for "withholding his fees from the Brehon."

For mutilation and for murder, the "eric-fine and honor-price" varied
according to circumstances.

Distress of five days' stay is "for not erecting the tomb of thy
chief;" "for false boasting of a dead woman;" for satirizing her after
her death; for causing to wither any kind of tree; for the eric-fine
for an oath of secret murder.

In certain cases, persons were exempted from distress for a longer or
shorter period. For example: "A man upon whom _the test of the
cauldron_ is enjoined--_i.e._, to go to a testing cauldron--and he
shall have exemption until he returns;" "a man whose wife is in
labor;" "a man who collects the food-tribute of a chief."

The bodies and bones of the dead are protected by penalties. There is
a fixed fine and "honor-price" for carrying away the remains of a
bishop out of his tomb (as relics?); also _breaking bones_ in a
churchyard, "to take the marrow out of them for sorcerers." "The bone
of a king drowned in the stream, or of a hermit condemned to the sea
and the wind," belongs to the people of the land where it happens to
be cast, until the tribe of the deceased pay for its redemption.

There are penalties for "lookers-on" at an ill deed; and these are
divided into three classes: "a looker-on of full fine" is one who
"instigates, and accompanies, and escorts, and exults;" of half fine,
one who does not instigate, but does the other acts; of quarter-fine,
one who "accompanies only, and does not prohibit, and does not save."
Clerics, women, and boys are exempt.

One is accountable (in different degrees) for one's own crime, the
crime of a near kinsman, the crime of a middle kinsman, and the crime
of a kinsman in general.

"There are four who have an interest in every one who sues or is
sued"--the tribe of the father, the tribe of the mother, the chief,
the church; also the tribe of the foster-father.

"Every tribe is liable after the absconding of a member of it, after
warning, after notice, and after lawful waiting."

The notes to this volume are few and unimportant, and further
elucidations on many points are much to be desired. The printing of
the original Gaelic along with the translation must add greatly to the
cost of the work, but the value of the text to philologers may perhaps
make this worth while. Only we hope that this laudable and interesting
undertaking, of the publication of the ancient laws and institutes of
Ireland, will not, like other Irish schemes that could be named, make
a costly and elaborate beginning, and then, exhausting its means in
the outset, break down altogether. This first volume gives us a strong
desire to see the proposed plan carried into {136} completion without
undue delay. It would appear that all the heavy part of the literary
work of it is already done.

------

MISCELLANY.


_The Transparency of the Sea. _--At a late meeting of the French
Academy of Science, M. Cialdi and Father Secchi sent the result of
some observations they have made "On the Transparency of the Sea." The
experiments were made at the end of April, on board a vessel, near
Civita Vecchia, from six to twelve miles from land, and at depths
varying from 90 to 300 metres, the sea being perfectly clear and
tranquil. Discs of different diameters and colors attached to wires
being plunged horizontally under water, showed that the maximum depth
at which the largest (a white disc 3-1/4 metres in diameter) could be
seen was 42-1/2 metres, the sun being elevated 60-1/4° above the
horizon. With a vertical sun the depth of visibility shall be 45
metres. The color of the disc appeared at first a light green, then a
clear blue, which became darker as it was lowered, until it could no
longer be distinguished from the surrounding medium. Discs of a yellow
or sandy color disappeared at less than half the depth of the white
discs--that is to say, between 17 and 24 metres. The height of the sun
and the clearness of the sky greatly influence the depth at which
objects may be seen. Viewing the light reflected from a submerged
white disc through a spectroscope, the red and yellow colors were
found to be rapidly absorbed. As it was sunk deeper in the sea a
portion of the green became absorbed, the other colors remaining
unaltered. The authors remark that this luminous absorption of the
more refrangible rays is what would be expected from the calorific
opacity and the actinic transparency of water. From the foregoing
results, they doubt whether the bottom of the sea has ever been seen
at a depth of 100 metres, as it is more probable that the mud and sand
brought up by waves has been mistaken for such: the fact that the
bottom of the sea is a worse reflector than the white disc,
strengthens this supposition.



_Irish Limestone Caverns._--At a late meeting of the Cork Cuvierian
Society, Professor Harkness, so well known for his investigations of
Scottish rocks, announced the discovery of the bones of mammals in a
limestone quarry at Middleton, County Cork. The rock consists of the
ordinary limestone of the district, in one part much fissured, and
under this fissured portion there is a mass of brown clay, the
thickness of which cannot be determined, as its base is not seen. This
reddish-brown clay under the limestone is the deposit which furnishes
the fossil bones, and which, doubtless, fills the space which was once
a natural grotto. Beside the bones, which are in a fragmentary
condition, there are also present teeth and antlers. The latter are
much broken, and do not afford sufficient character to enable the
species to be accurately determined. They seem, however, to belong to
two forms, one of which had the beam and branches smooth and
sub-compressed, features which indicate the antlers of the reindeer;
and the other with the horns rounded and rough, a form of surface
which marks the antlers of the common stag. Of these antlers two
portions which appear to belong to the reindeer have been cut while in
the fresh state; and the faces of the cuts being almost smooth, this
cutting appears to have been effected by a fine regular-edged
instrument rather than, by a serrated tool. The leg bones which appear
in this clay have all been broken, for the most part longitudinally,
except the carpal and tarsal, and other small bones of the
extremities. This longitudinal fracturing of the long bones of the leg
is not known to occur in any mammalian remains which belong to a
period previous to that where we have evidence of the existence of
{137} the human race; and these broken bones afford evidence of the
occurrence of man, who, for the purpose of obtaining the marrow,
divided them in the direction most available for this object. Beside
the evidence afforded by the cut antlers and longitudinally divided
bones, there are other circumstances indicating the occurrence of man
in connection with these remains; one of these is the presence of
charred wood, which is equally disseminated through the clay with the
bones and teeth. This charred wood is the remains of the ancient fires
by means of which former human beings cooked their food.



_Is there an Open Arctic Sea?_--Sir Roderick Murchison, who answers
this question in the affirmative, gives the following arguments in
support of his opinion:--(1.) The fact has been well ascertained by
Scoresby and others, that every portion of the floating pack-ice north
of Spitzbergen is made up of frozen sea-water only, without a trace of
terrestrial icebergs like those which float down Baffin's Bay, or
those which, carrying blocks of stone and _débris_, float northward
from the land around the South Pole. (2.) The northern shores of
Siberia tell the same tale; for in their vast expanse the absence of
icebergs, or erratic blocks, or anything which could have been derived
from great or lofty masses of land, has been wen ascertained. (3.) As
a geologist, Sir R. Murchison could point out that this absence of
erratic blocks in northern Siberia has existed from that remote
glacial period when much larger tracts of northern Europe were
occupied by glaciers than at the present day. (4.) The traveller
Middendorf found the extreme northern promontory of Siberia, Taimyr,
clad with fir trees, while the immense tract of country to the south
of it was destitute of trees, showing a milder climate at that point
of Siberia nearest the pole.



_Food as a Means of Preventing Disease_,--It seems not at all
improbable that, as has been shown by Liebig in the case of plants,
most of those diseases which we at present attribute to the presence
of some morbid substance in the blood, are produced in the first
instance by the absence of some of the proper constituents of the
blood. The blood when abnormally composed will allow vegetable and
other growths to take place in it, thus producing painful symptoms;
but if it contained its suitable components, it is most probable that
it would be then enabled to resist the development of the materials we
refer to. In the case of the potato disease, there can hardly be a
doubt that the sap becomes deteriorated, owing to the absence of the
proper proportion of potash, prior to the development of the oïdium
which commits such ravages. The idea which we have given has not had
many advocates in this country, and we are glad to find that Mr.
Erasmus Wilson has in some measure lent his support to the theory.
Although Mr. Wilson does not go as deeply into the question as we
should wish, still he shows that food may well be employed not only in
preventing but in curing disease. If, he says, it be admitted that
food is the source of the elements of which the body is composed, what
kind of body can be expected in the case of a deficient supply of
food, whether that deficiency proceed from actual want, or from some
perverse theory of refinement, founded on a false conception of the
nature and objects of food, and ignorance of its direct convertibility
into the flesh and blood of man? We think Mr. Wilson is too determined
a supporter of flesh-eating tastes. If he had his way, he would
convert man into a decidedly carnivorous animal, and we do not think
that either experience or an appeal to the anatomy of the human
masticatory and digestive organs would bear out his views.--_Vide "On
Food as a Means of Prevention of Disease._"


_Are the Flint Implements from the Drift Authentic?_--A pamphlet has
appeared from the pen of Mr. Nicholas Whitley, of the Royal
Institution of Cornwall, in which it is attempted to be proved that
the so-called flint implements are not the result of workmanship. The
_Popular Science Review_ gives the following abstract of Mr. Whitley's
argument: (1.) _The "implements" are all of flint._ The tools employed
by men of the recognized archaeological stone age are made of stones
of various kinds, of which there are examples of serpentine, granular
greenstone, indurated claystone, trap greenstone, claystone, quartz,
syenite, chest, etc. Why, therefore, {138} should the only weapon in
the drift deposit be manufactured from flint solely? (2.) The
_"implements" are all of one class--axes_. Were they then a race of
carpenters? Man is a cooking animal; and if ten thousand axes have
been found, surely one seething-pot or drinking-cup ought to have
turned up. He needs shelter, but no remnant of his clothing or hut has
been found. Almost everywhere where there are chalk flints we find
axes, and nothing but axes. (3.) _There is a gradation in form_ from
the very rough fracture of the flint to the perfect almond-shaped
implement. Let the most enthusiastic believer in their authenticity
examine carefully the one thousand implements in the Abbeville museum,
and he would probably reject two-thirds as bearing no evidence of the
work of man. But it would be impossible for him to say where nature
ended and art began. (4.) Some of the implements are admirable
illustrations of the form produced by the natural fracture of the
egg-shaped flint nodule. (5.) It is supposed that these weapons were
used for cutting down timber and scooping out canoes. But it should be
remembered that the gravels in which they are found were formed during
a severe Arctic climate, in which no tree but a stunted birch could
have grown, certainly none large enough to form a canoe. (6.) _Their
number._ The implements are found by thousands in small areas, and in
numbers quite out of proportion to the thinly scattered population
that must have (if at all) then existed.



_The Sponge Fishery._--The main industry of the island of Crete is the
sponge fishery which is pursued on its coasts. It is chiefly carried
on by companionships of from twenty to thirty boats, for mutual
support and protection. The mode of operation preparatory to a dive is
very peculiar and interesting. The diver whose turn it is takes his
seat on the deck of the vessel, at either the bow or stern, and
placing by his side a large flat slab of marble, weighing about 25
lbs., to which is attached a rope of the proper length and thickness
(1-1/2 inch), he then strips, and is left by his companions to prepare
himself. This seems to consist in devoting a certain time to clearing
the passages of his lungs by expectoration, and highly inflating them
afterward; thus oxidizing his blood very highly by a repetition of
deep inspirations. The operation lasts from five to ten minutes, or
more, according to the depth; and during it the operator is never
interfered with by his companions, and seldom speaks or is spoken to;
he is simply watched by two of them, but at a little distance, and
they never venture to urge him or distract him in any way during the
process. When from some sensation, known only to himself, after these
repeated long-drawn and heavy inspirations, he deems the fitting
moment to have arrived, he seizes the slab of marble, and, after
crossing himself and uttering a prayer, plunges with it like a
returning dolphin into the sea, and rapidly descends. The stone is
always held during the descent directly in front of the head, at
arm's-length, and so as to offer as little resistance as possible;
and, by varying its inclination, it acts likewise as a rudder, causing
the descent to be more or less vertical, as desired by the diver. As
soon as he reaches the bottom he places the stone under his arm to
keep himself down, and then walks about upon the rock, or crawls under
its ledges, stuffing the sponges into a netted bag with a hooped
mouth, which is strung round his neck to receive them; but he holds
firmly to the stone or rope all the while, as his safeguard for
returning and for making the known signal at the time he desires it.
The hauling up is thus effected: The assistant who has hold of the
rope awaiting the signal, first reaches down with both hands as low as
he can, and there grasping the rope, with a great bodily effort raises
it up to nearly arm's-length over his head; the second assistant is
then prepared to make his grasp as low down as he can reach, and does
the same; and so the two alternately, and by a fathom or more at a
time, and with great rapidity, bring the anxious diver to the surface.
A heavy blow from his nostrils to expel the water and exhausted air
indicates to his comrades that he is conscious and breathes, a word or
two is then spoken by one of his companions to encourage him if he
seems much distressed, as is often the case; and the hearing of the
voice is said by them to be a great support at the moment of their
greatest state of exhaustion. A few seconds' rest at the surface, and
then the diver returns into the boat to recover, generally putting
{139} on an under-garment or jacket, to assist the restoration of the
animal heat he has lost, and to prevent the loss of more by the too
rapid evaporation of the water from his body.--_Travels in Crete._



_The Sun's Spots._--Father Secchi writes from Rome, under date of Aug.
8, to the _Reader_ as follows: I thank you for the interest you take
in the observations of the sun. The last large spot has been very
interesting for science, and I hope to be able to publish all the
drawings we have made of it by projection. Meanwhile I send you two of
them, photographed on a large scale. You will see in the printed
article which I send you, that I have been able to see the
_prominences_ and _depressions_ produced by the spot at the edge of
the sun; not only myself but also M. Tacchini. I regret that the
shortness of time does not allow me to copy the drawings made on that
occasion, but I send a copy of them to Mr. De la Rue, and you will see
them. As to the _willow-leaves_ and _rice-grains_ question, I think,
as you say, we are all right and all wrong. I will state clearly what
I see. On first placing the eye to the telescope, and in very good
moments of definition, the surface of the sun appears certainly to me
made up of many oblong bodies, which I think are the willow-leaves of
Mr. Nasmyth; their orientation is in every direction, but they take a
converging direction in the neighborhood of the spots, where they form
the tongues, currents, and such like. But this view is, as I said,
rather difficult to obtain, and many times I have looked for it quite
without success. Is this a defect of vision, or caused by the sun's
_changements?_ If by willow-leaves other things than these are
understood, I have not seen them. M. Airy seems to understand other
things, and then I am quite at a loss. This, therefore, is a matter
very problematic, and to be better studied. By projection on a large
scale in some beautiful moments of definition, these oblong bodies on
the general surface of the sun have been seen by my assistant also;
but generally they are not visible, but the sun appears like clouds.
As to the mobility of the solar surface, you can judge from the two
photographs that I send you; they have been made only at an interval
of twenty-four hours. I think we assisted at the outbreaking of the
spot, and at its arrangement from a great confusion of movements into
a regular transformation of an ordinary group of spots. The appearance
which I have seen is quite like that which takes place when a great
movement is excited in a stream of running water, which finally
resolves itself into some vortices which take their course
independently. The movement of these spots even alone is capable of
demonstrating materially what Mr. Carrington has found with great
labor--that there is in the sun a real drift of matter, since without
this it would be impossible to explain how the spot has been increased
in two days to a length twice as great as its breadth, this remaining
almost constant. But more of this in a particular memoir.



NEW PUBLICATIONS.


HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
By John Henry Newman, D.D., of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London:
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green. 1865. 8vo., pp. 379.

Under this title, Dr. Newman has republished the charming
autobiography which originally appeared as an answer to the calumnies
of Charles Kingsley, and was entitled "_Apologia pro Vita Sua_,"
republished in a neat and attractive manner by the Appletons. We
earnestly recommend all our readers, whether they be Catholics or not,
who have not procured and read the "_Apologia_," to do so without
delay, if they wish to give themselves a rich intellectual treat. The
American edition is decidedly to be preferred, on account {140} of the
complete history it furnishes of the controversy with Mr. Kingsley
which led to the composition of the book. In England, this controversy
is already well-known to the entire religious and literary world, and
may be supposed by this time to have lost its interest. Dr. Newman's
autobiography will never lose its interest and value while the English
language remains; and for this reason, it was no doubt a wise thought
in the author to prepare it for posterity in a form wherein the local
and personal controversy which occasioned its being written should no
longer be connected with its proper subject-matter. No doubt, too, the
author felt some reluctance to perpetuate, in close connection with
his own personal history, the memory of the severe castigation which
he administered to his opponent. This is honorable to his delicate and
charitable sentiments. At the same time, the castigation was
necessary, it was just, it was not one whit too severe, and we owe a
debt of gratitude to Dr. Newman for having applied the terrible lash
which he possesses, but which he employs so seldom and usually so
lightly, in this case with all his strength to the shoulders of a
delinquent. There is a certain small class of writers in the English
Church, some of whom are Puseyites, others more or less broad in their
views, who violate all the laws of honorable and courteous warfare in
their attacks on the Catholic Church. They take the line of charging
fraud, forgery, lying, and utterly unprincipled and wicked motives and
maxims upon the hierarchy, priesthood, and other advocates of the
Catholic cause. One of the first and foremost of these was Mr.
Meyrick, of Oxford, the author of a disingenuous work against Catholic
morals, and one of Mr. Kingsley's defenders. This work of Mr.
Meyrick's was republished in this country with a more offensive
preface, by the Rev. A. C. Coxe, now the bishop of Western New York, a
person who has abjured all regard to the rules of common civility,
both in his public writings and speeches concerning the Catholic
clergy, and also in his private demeanor when he has happened to be
thrown into contact with them personally. This class of writers adopt
what Dr. Newman happily styles a mode of warfare which consists in
"poisoning the wells." That is, they seek to forestall all debate on
the merits of the Catholic question, by accusing the advocates of the
Catholic side of being liars by principle and on system; infamous
persons, who have no claim to decent treatment or even to a hearing.
There is but one course to be taken with opponents of this sort.
Argument, explanation, courtesy, are alike thrown away upon them. They
must be treated like guerrillas, and summary justice must be done up
on them, as the only means of self-defence, and as a salutary example
to others. They must be taught that they cannot have free license to
calumniate and vituperate the Catholic Church or its members with
impunity. How effectually this lesson was read to them by Dr. Newman,
is shown by the hearty applause which his book received from all
England, the evidence of which may be seen in the review of it which
appeared in the principal English periodicals.

We wish to be understood that the language we have used above has no
application to any but a few offending individuals, whose spirit and
manner are even more severely condemned by a large class of the
non-Catholic public than by Catholics themselves. It is very
gratifying to observe the respectful, moderate, and courteous tone
which many of the most illustrious of the recent advocates of the
Protestant side maintain toward the Church of Rome and her
distinguished and worthy members. Copying after Leibniz, the greatest
genius which the Protestant confession can boast of, we have, among
others, Guizot, Ranke, Dr. Pusey, Palmer; and in this country, William
R. Alger, who, albeit he has inadvertently repeated some of the
current misstatements of Catholic doctrine, has always shown a
fairness and generosity of spirit and a readiness to correct mistakes
which make him conspicuous among our honorable opponents. In this
species of candor and courtesy the most eminent writers of the
continent are still far before the most of those in England and
America. Dr. Newman himself and his compeers in the early Oxford
movement, even in their strongest and most pronounced expressions of
opinion against Rome and against various form of dissent, furnished
the most perfect specimens of the truly Christian and gentlemanly
style of polemics which English literature had yet {141} seen. Never
was there a man who kept his intellect and his varied gifts as a
writer more completely under the discipline of a strict conscience,
one who was more scrupulously just and fair, truthful and frank, yet
guarded and cautious, than John Henry Newman. He has the soul of
knightly chivalry in him; religious, fearless, modest, and
compassionate; loyal to the death to every sacred obligation, and
scorning a mean or deceitful act more than common men do treason and
perjury. Such a man ought to have been secure of honorable treatment;
and yet he has not been spared in the strife of tongues; and if he has
at last triumphed over calumny, it has only been by overpowering his
enemies with the superior weight of his armor and strength of his arm,
and not because his holy retirement and spotless name have been
respected. However, after long years, during whose lapse the English
people have disdained and slighted the man of genius and the pure
Christian who is one of the greatest ornaments of their literature, on
account of their intense hostility to his religion, their love of fair
play, and admiration for intellectual greatness and prowess, has
gained a signal victory, and we give them due credit for it. The
demand for the "_Apologia_" on its first publication in successive
numbers was so great that the Longmans were unable to keep up with it.
That it has not been unappreciated also in this country is proved by
the fact that four editions of the American reprint have been
exhausted. Of the book itself, it is almost superfluous to speak at
this late day. It will bear to be read and re-read, and the repeated
perusal, instead of wearying, only brings out new charms and occasions
an increasing delight. We have read and admired Dr. Newman's writings
for more than twenty years, but have never so fully appreciated the
wonderful subtlety and vigor of his intellect as we have done since
reading his last book. It is like the keen, bright, dexterously
wielded, and irresistible scimeter of Saladin. At his conversion
Anglicanism lost a champion far more capable than any other of coping
with its stoutest antagonists, and the Catholic Church gained over the
most formidable of her foes who wields an English pen. Even as now
reproduced by himself, as a mere history of the past, his method of
defending the Church of England against Rome appears to us so much
more subtle and plausible, and adroitly managed, not through any
designed artifice on his part, but from the acuteness with which his
mind detects all the most defensible points of his own position and
the most assailable ones of the opposite, than that of any other
writer, that we instinctively say, no man but John Henry Newman could
fully refute himself. Each successive post at which he pauses in his
gradual approach to the Catholic Church seems as defensible as the
others which he has abandoned as untenable. At his very last halting
place, he has the air of a man who is about to defend himself there to
the last, and is not to be driven further. Indeed, he was not _driven_
by any mind more powerful than his own; for although the arguments of
Cardinal Wiseman had considerable weight with him, neither he nor any
other Catholic writer really answered the difficulties which were in
his own mind, or fully refuted, in a manner consonant to his
intellectual convictions, the plausible arguments by which he
justified to himself and recommended to others a continuance in the
Anglican communion. He was driven only by his innate love of truth,
his conscientiousness, his logical fidelity to his own first
principles, and the grace of God. Humanly speaking, his conversion was
one of the most unlikely events which has ever taken place. Ten years
before it occurred he was at an immense distance from the Catholic
Church, and advancing toward it by a most circuitous route, with the
greatest apparent, reluctance. We rise from the perusal of his own
record of his journey with a sentiment of astonishment that he ever
reached his destination. When we remember the light in which Dr.
Newman was regarded by his own school in the days of his leadership at
Oxford, it appears to us that the estimate formed of him was both
singularly just and singularly incorrect. It was just in one way,
inasmuch as, whatever his modesty may suggest to the contrary, he was
more than any other man the leader of the movement. It was incorrect,
inasmuch as a far greater originative force in causing this movement
and a far greater comprehension of its principles were attributed to
him than he or any other man possessed. The {142} movement itself
created its own agents, and bore them on with a power infinitely
greater than they possessed of themselves. Dr. Newman was a master to
inferior and more backward scholars; but was himself only a scholar,
who began with the first and simplest rudiments of Catholicity. His
merit consisted in this, that while many paused at various stages of
elementary and partial knowledge, he pushed on to the mastery of final
results and completed his curriculum. Considering what he had to
learn, and that he had in great measure to be his own teacher, the
space of ten years was really a short rather than a long period for
the process.

The history of this process constitutes the direct object and the
principal value and charm of the "_Apologia_," and the "History of My
Religious Opinions." The mind of the author is, however, one of those
full streams that overflows its bounds, and whose _obiter dicta_ are
frequently the richest and most precious of its effusions. There are
several passages in this work falling within the scope of this remark.
We can only call attention to two, without quoting them. One is found
on pp. 266-273 of the American edition of the "_Apologia_," and
relates to the doctrine of original sin. Another, on pp. 275-291,
concerns the question of the relations between faith and science and
reason and authority. In the very act of giving a reason for avoiding
the discussion of these questions, the author has given in a short
compass, one of the most admirable disquisitions we have ever read.
There is no passage in all his writings which exhibits better the fine
discrimination of his thought, and the perspicuity and beauty of his
style, and in both these respects it is a specimen of the most perfect
logical and rhetorical art.

We feel bound, however, to enter one _caveat_ against a part of Dr.
Newman's philosophy, which we regard not so much as being a positive
error as a defect, and which has been quite distinctly brought out by
the _Westminster Review_, as a part of his defence of Catholicity
which presents a weak side to the infidel. This defect is one
originating in the philosophy which has prevailed in England, and in
which Dr. Newman was educated; one which has always been conspicuous
in the writers of the Oxford school, and which appears to us to leave
a great _hiatus_ in their theology. This defect may be described,
though it is not defined, as the doctrine _probability_, We have no
hesitation in agreeing with Dr. Newman in the maxim, that in most
matters "probability is the guide of life." We have heretofore
thought, however, that he extended this principle into the domain of
natural and revealed religion so far as to agree with those writers
who consider their fundamental verities as being merely more probable
than their logical contradictories. After carefully weighing his
words, we have come to the conclusion that he does not use the word in
this sense, when he speaks of the great truths of religion. That is,
he does not admit that there is any real probability, though a lesser
one, in the infidel negations, but only a metaphysical possibility. He
allows of a moral certainty which admits of no prudent doubt to the
contrary, but does not reach to a metaphysical certainty. Here again
we agree with him partially, and if we understand rightly the
ecclesiastical decisions on the point, we think his doctrine is one
that has official sanction. That is, we regard, with him, the evidence
of revealed religion and of the authority of the Catholic Church, as
apprehended by the light of our natural intelligence in that act which
theologians call "the preamble to faith," as being in the order of
probability and incapable of generating more than a moral certainty.
That certitude of belief which excludes possibility of error, we
regard as an effect of the gift of faith imparting a supernatural
firmness to the intellectual assent. We dissent from Dr. Newman, when
he extends this doctrine to our ultimate belief in God, and we think
it necessary, in order to give a firm basis even to a true
probability, that we should affirm the absolute intuition of that idea
of God, from which we are able to deduce his attributes; and,
moreover, affirm also the perfect metaphysical demonstrability of all
these attributes as expressed in the Christian conception of God. We
dislike very much any form of expression which implies that we believe
in God on a probability, which is tantamount to saying that "it is
probable there is a God." Even if we say that the being of God is
morally certain, we still leave it possible that there is no God. If
we deduce {143} the being of God from the ultimate principle of the
certainty of our own existence, we make our self-consciousness, our
reason, the laws of our own being, the standard of right and truth
which we establish within ourselves, more certain, and to us more
ultimate than God. We become our own centre and stand-point, our own
ultimate judge, a light and a law to ourselves, really subsisting in
an intellectual independence of God. This is ceding, in our view, to
the pure infidel rationalist all the ground he wants, which is simply
liberty for every one to speculate about the cause of all things, and
their procession to the ultimate end, as he lists. It is true he will
do it without our leave, whatever our way of stating Christian truth;
but if we admit, or do not clearly repudiate, his first principles, he
will point out a logical defect in our argument, and show that we are
inconsistent; and then the philosophical proof of Christianity, which
consists in demonstrating the conception of God from first principles
intuitively certain, and showing that none of the Christian doctrines
which we received from testimony are incompatible with these first
principles, will, in our hands, be defectively managed.

It is proper to state, however, that Dr. Newman does not propose
anything dogmatically on this important question, but rather indicates
that he has not yet obtained a solution which satisfies him.


A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH; FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE
CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.
By M. l'Abbé J. E. Darras; First American from the last French
edition. With an Introduction and Notes by the most Rev. M. J.
Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Vol. I. 8vo., pp. 675. New
York: P. O'Shea.

The appearance of this volume realizes very fully all we were led to
expect from its prospectus. The first impression made upon us by its
exterior dress is that this is an attractive and readable book; two
qualities of a work on history which, whatever be the learning,
accuracy, and completeness displayed in its more intimate perusal, are
not to be despised. We are glad to meet with a life of the Church
which does not look like a catalogue of dried and dead specimens for a
scientific museum. The majority of the volumes which issue from the
press now-a-days like a literary flood, owe their success a vast deal
more to their beautiful typography, chaste binding, and other general
attractive features, than to the solid merit of their contents. As
there are certain orators whose appearance alone captivates their
auditory, and excites in us a curiosity to hear what fine things such
a fine-looking man has to say, so there are books which feel well to
the touch, look good to the eyes, and prejudice one's judgment in
their favor. We will listen to a stupid-looking speaker, or read a
commonplace featured book, on the testimony of their friends, provided
they give us strong recommendations; but a speaker "of a commanding
presence and a winning air," or a book that is well gotten up, we
think worthy of notice at the first introduction.

It is difficult to write an interesting history. Simple facts of the
past stated in dry statistical style, like the reports of an insane
asylum or a poor-house, are about as interesting as they, and appear
to the general reader to be of about equal importance. We may be
thought weak in judgment to say it, but we should like to read history
for the same reason we like to read the last novel by Dickens, in
which the author wields his magic pen to paint life-pictures of the
events of the world before our mind, and compels us to be living
witnesses of the past in the realm of imagination. To insure a deep
interest and a lasting impression all the faculties of the mind should
be engaged. Our imagination must not be told to step out of doors or
go to sleep whilst our memory takes an inventory of facts consigned to
its storehouse by a historian. The senses of sight and of taste are
given to man that he may be guided in supplying his stomach with the
proper quantum and quality of the food it craves. What these senses
are to the stomach, the imagination is to the mind, and if it have no
hand in the choice of mental food there cannot help but be an
indigestion; the brain, indeed, holding the crude mass, but unable to
make any use of it.

We may sum up in a few sentences the application these remarks may
have to the history before us. The volume {144} comes to us with uncut
edges. Let the reader open it at random. He finds before him a fair
page, printed in large cool type, with broad generous margins, looking
as a page ought to look, like a goodly field of wheat or corn, and not
like a stiff, prim, pinched, and gravelled parterre. Let him read down
one page, and he will surely bring his paper-cutter into requisition
and follow the author to the beginning of the next paragraph. He will
find the style, if we mistake not, like one of those charming, shady,
winding, country roads, which always entice you to go just as far as
the next turning; an agreeable contrast to the ordinary page of
history, which to us is so like a grievous paved military road in
France, straight enough, wide enough, and direct enough, but
lamentably monotonous, dry, dusty, and tiresome. There is a little
stiffness and dull regularity about the division of the
subject-matter; but this is inevitable to any history of a long
period, and may be regarded as the signboards and finger-posts on the
road, making up in convenience what they detract from the romance.

As to the character of the work of M. Darras as a history--as one in
which we can learn the actual life of our mother, the Church; one
which we can quote with confidence in public, and not be obliged to
contradict to its back as it stands on our shelves; one which we can
give to our friends, of all classes and opinions, as a good, reliable,
and respectable Church history--we are content to take it as such upon
the warm approbation it has received at the hands of the Holy Father,
the use that is made of it in colleges and seminaries in Europe, the
approval it has obtained from the Rt. Rev. bishops there and in the
United States, and the good opinion universally expressed concerning
it by scholars whose critical judgment is worthy of reliance.
Certainly we have no Church history equal to it in the English
language, and we bid this translated French one welcome, and hope it
may receive an hospitable reception amongst us.

The dissertation on the perpetuity of the Church, and the immortality
of the Papacy, from the pen of the Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding,
which embellishes this edition under the form of an introduction, is
both appropriate and well deserving of perusal. The learned prelate
puts us at once on reading acquaintance with the work of M. Darras,
and enkindles in us the desire to know more of the eventful course of
the existence of Holy Church.



BOOKS RECEIVED.

CAPE COD. By Henry D. Thoreau. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865.
12mo., pp. 252.

COMPLETE WORKS OF THE MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D., late Archbishop of
New York. Comprising his Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc.
Carefully compiled from the best sources, and edited by Lawrence
Kehoe. Two vols. 8vo., pp. 670 and 810. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.

PASTORAL LETTER OF THE MOST RET. J. B. PURCELL, D.D., Archbishop of
Cincinnati, to the Clergy and Laity of the archdiocese, on the late
Encyclical Letter of his Holiness Pius IX. promulgating the Jubilee of
1865, with the Bull of Pius IX. authorizing the Jubilee of 1846.
Printed at the "Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph" Office.


NATURAL HISTORY. A Manual of Zoology for Schools, Colleges, and the
General Reader, by Sanborn Tenney, A.M. Illustrated. New York: Charles
Scribner & Co. 12mo., pp. 540.



From D. & J. Sadlier and Co., New York, we have received the
following: BANIM'S COMPLETE WORKS. PARTS 1, 2, 3, AND 4; THE OLD HOUSE
BY THE BOYNE, by Mrs. Sadlier; CATHOLIC ANECDOTES. Part 1. Translated
from the French by Mrs. Sadlier; THE LIVES OF THE POPES, from the
French of Chevalier d'Artaud, Parts 1 and 2; CAECILIA, a Roman Drama,
and THE SECRET, a Drama, by Mrs. J. Sadlier.

------
{145}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


VOL, II., NO. 8.--NOVEMBER, 1865,



From Revue Générale, Bruxelles.

REV. DEMETRIUS AUGUSTIN GALLITZIN,
AND THE CATHOLIC SETTLEMENTS IN PENNSYLVANIA.


The events of which the United States have, during late years, been
the theatre of action, have revived in the recollection of the editors
of the _Historisch-politische Blätter_ of Munich the name of Loretto,
a small and unpretending town of Pennsylvania, the founder of which
was Prince Demetrius Angustin Gallitzin, the son of the remarkable
woman of whom Germany has a right to be proud. The occasion has
suggested to them a biographical sketch, which, full of interest and
appositeness, will unquestionably be read in Belgium and France with
as much avidity as in Germany.

Twenty years have elapsed since Prince Gallitzin, who had exchanged
the luxuries of princely courts for the poverty of those who herald
the glad tidings, slept in the Lord, after forty years of apostleship
in the wild regions of the Alleghany mountains. The work set up by the
pious missionary yet remains, marked by all the elements of thrifty
life, and the little oasis will long continue to be what it was at its
origin--the cradle of a Christian civilization, which will go on
spreading its blessings to the remotest boundaries, still retaining
the unobtrusive modesty which moved its founder's thought. Indeed, had
the matter rested with Gallitzin's own wishes, his very name would
have passed into vague tradition in those extended regions. It might
even have slept in oblivion; for the prince, so careful was he to
avoid anything that could attract the attentions of the world, lived
and exercised his holy ministry for many years under the borrowed name
of Schmidt.

In Father Lemcke, however, and fortunately too, a canon of the abbey
of the Benedictines of St. Vincent in Pennsylvania, was found a man
who, better than any other, had it in his power to preserve the
reminiscences of the noble missionary, and accurately to depict for us
the traits of his manly character. Not only did the biographer of the
prince know him personally, but he was also his friend, his confidant,
his confessor, and his co-laborer in the missions. After Gallitzin's
death, Father Lemcke came into possession of his papers, letters, and
memoranda, which supplied him with desirable data on the period of
life preceding their ministerial connection. He, and he alone,
therefore, was in a condition to write a true biography of the prince,
and he deemed it a duty to {146} rescue from oblivion the memory of
this distinguished man. In connection with this subject, Father Lemcke
indulges in a judicious remark: "The life of Gallitzin," says he, "is
so intimately inwoven with the events which occurred during his own
times, that it holds out to future generations an interest like to
that which is offered to us in the life of a Bonifacius or of an
Ansgarius, by reason of the facts which have characterized the epochs
in which they lived."

Gallitzin belonged to the phalanx of missionaries who, in the United
States, scattered the seeds of spiritual life. When the prince stepped
on the soil of that vast territory, there was but one prelate, Rt.
Rev. John Carroll of Baltimore, the first bishop of the United States,
who, from the circumstances of the Church, had been obliged to seek
Europe for his episcopal consecration.  [Footnote 23] He had been but
two years installed--from 1790--and had but uncertain and broken
intercourse with his flock. His surroundings, restricted in numbers,
but devoted to the holy cause, were mainly composed of, French
priests. In this infant church Gallitzin was the second priest
consecrated by the Bishop of Baltimore, and missioned, as a true
pioneer of civilization, to carry the cross through the untouched
forests of the New World, There is an unvarying likeness in all great
undertakings; yet it required but a short time--a relatively short
time--considerably to increase the number of those men who had devoted
themselves to the task. In contrast with the bishop, who, in the
course of five years, could ordain and rely on two priests only to
feed the flock of the Lord, "The Catholic Almanac" of the day exhibits
to us, for the United States, seven archbishops, thirty-six bishops,
and four apostolic vicars, with the ministry of two thousand priests,
with the addition of convents of various orders, of seminaries, of
colleges, of numberless benevolent institutions, with over 4,000,000
of Catholics living under the protection of the laws, in the practice
and enjoyment of their faith.

  [Footnote 23: There are new details on this distinguished man in a
  recently published work: "_Die Katholische Kirche in den Vereinigten
  Staatm von Nord Amerika_," etc., etc. Regensburg. 1864.]

The Germans delight in recalling to mind that one of those who helped
to lay the foundations of the Church in North America was the
offspring of a princely house of the Fatherland. Gallitzin was a
German on the maternal side; and the noble parent could well claim
both the spiritual and natural motherhood of her son, the latter of
which was, perhaps, glory enough. How magnificent a mission was that
of Princess Amelia Gallitzin! While gathering around her circle the
choice spirits which seemed destined to keep bright the torch of faith
in Germany, and its living convictions in the midst of a superficial
society without belief and without its guiding lights, the princess
was rearing for the New World a son who was about to turn aside from a
career which his birth and his wealth justly reserved for him, and
take up the arduous and thankless labors of the apostleship. This very
son it was who, through the work of faith, was destined to be the
founder and civilizer of a now flourishing colony.

Strangely enough, nothing in young Gallitzin gave earnest of such a
vocation. His almost feminine nature had marked him for a timid,
shrinking child; but what was still worse, and a source of deep
anxiety to his mother, to this was added a lack of decision, which
seemed so deeply rooted in him that not even the iron will of the
princess could, during the course of many years, draw out any
perceptible results. We have a letter of the princess of the date of
1790, two years before the departure of Demetrius for America, in
which she reiterates on this ground her former complainings, her
exhortations, and her admonitions. It is proper, however, to advert
that the incipient {147} method of training pursued by the princess
herself was not free from defect; for, daring the nonage of her son,
she herself wavered and hesitated between various systems of
philosophy--a course which necessarily must have drawn her into many
an error.

There was, therefore, a defectiveness in the main foundation of the
training of young Gallitzin, who was reared in a sort of religious
indifferentism. But a complete revulsion took place when, after
leaving Münster, the princess was led to rest her convictions, not on
this or the other system of philosophy, but on the rock of Christian
faith--when, from her relations with such men as Furstenberg and
Overberg, she herself had gained a greater degree of firmness and
steadfastness. This reacted on the education of the son, in the
greater decision and authority exerted by the mother; and it was not
without fit intention that Demetrius, in the sacrament of
confirmation, received the surname of Angustin.

Born on the 22d of December, 1770, at the Hague, where his father, a
favorite of the Empress Catherine, was accredited as ambassador of
Russia, young Gallitzin saw before him the opening of a career bound
to lead to the highest dignities of either military or administrative
service. Nothing, therefore, was spared in giving him a complete
education, according to the requirements of the world. This education,
developed and closed under his mother's eyes, must be perfected by
travel; but whither to direct it was a question of moment. The
aristocratic banks of the Rhine were ravaged by the revolutions and
war had converted Europe into a vast battle-field. It opportunely
happened, at that time, that a young priest, by the name of Brodius,
whom the princess had known through the family of the Droste, and who
had been admitted to her circle, was about crossing the Atlantic as a
missionary to America. The princess had had occasions to value the
rare endowments of this priest, and knew how justly her confidence in
him could extend. She therefore proposed to him the companionship of
her son in a journey which seemed to her to be the only practicable
one warranted by the times. The princess, fortunately, met with no
opposition on the part of the prince, her husband. An admirer of
Washington, and still more so of the philosophic Jefferson, he readily
agreed that his son should devote a couple of years to a visit to the
United States, so as to judge for himself of the institutions all that
country. He earnestly charged him to be introduced to these two great
men; while the princess on her part armed him with a letter of
recommendation to the Right Reverend Bishop Carroll.

In August, 1792, when twenty-two years of age, young Gallitzin took
ship at Rotterdam on his way to America. No one could, certainly, have
then stirred him with the idea that the land of America was marked out
as a theatre for the evolutions of his existence. Was there a
presentiment in that parting hour which, he could not know, was to
mark an eternal farewell? Was it a last return of the original
indecision of character which made him linger at the roadstead to
which his mother had accompanied him? No one can now tell; but what we
can say is that when, on the crests of the foaming billows, he caught
sight of the yawl which was to carry him on board, his heart failed
him, and he turned back to retrace his steps. Then did his mother turn
back to him and, with a look of disappointment, "Dimitri," said she,
"I blush for thee"--and, grasping his arm, she urged him on to the
boat. In a moment, and how no one could tell, the young prince was
engulfed in the waves. As quick as thought the practised hands of the
sailors fished him up from the waters, and wafted him to the vessel
that was to bear him away. Such was his farewell to Europe; but this
sea baptism had regenerated him into a new man, as, at a later period,
he told the story to his biographer.

{148}

On the whole, a noted change had taken place in young Gallitzin. In
him every weakness and every irresolution had disappeared, and made
room for a firmness, a determination, and an inflexibility which, to
his family, became a source of greatest astonishment. Two months had
hardly passed by in the intimacies of life with the Bishop of
Baltimore, when he already felt, within himself, what soon became a
clearly defined resolve. With the close of the year 1792 he wrote to
Münster that he had devoted himself, body and soul, to the service of
God and to the salvation of souls in America. He wrote that this
resolution had been determined by the urgent call for laborers in the
vineyard of the Lord; for in the country in which he was then
sojourning, his priests had to travel over a hundred and fifty miles
of territory, and more, to bring to the faithful the word and the
means of salvation.

These were the first news of him received in Münster, and they were
disseminated with the rapidity of lightning. From all sides sprang up
objections, doubts, and remonstrances against the scheme of the young
prince and the boldness of his undertaking. His mother, however, who
had at first been alarmed and steeped in agony at the idea of such a
vocation, soon reasserted her unerring judgment, and looked into the
matter with her wonted greatness of soul. From the moment that, from
letters of distinguished persons, and especially from those of the
Bishop of Baltimore, as well as from those of her son, she became
satisfied that his was a real and substantial calling, she felt
perfectly secure, and all human considerations vanished from her
sight. She therefore wrote to Dimitri that if, after having tried
himself, he was sure that he had really obeyed his vocation, she
willingly accepted the reproaches and troubles which could not fail to
shower upon him; and that, for herself, she could not desire a
consummation dearer to her heart--a greater reward--than to see the
child of her affections a minister at the altar of God. And, indeed,
not light was the burden of reproaches and afflictions which she had
to bear for the love of that son--especially on the part of her
husband, it was anything but light. Her letters to Overberg more than
amply inform us on that subject Gallitzin, however, seemed to have
left his European friends to the indulgence of their astonishment.
Heedless of his former social relations, in firmness and resoluteness
he trod the path which he had marked for himself, and prosecuted his
theological studies with such fervency that his superiors, in view of
his failing health, deemed it their duty to interpose. After two years
of study, however, he became a sub-deacon, and, on the sixteenth of
March, 1795, he was ordained to the priesthood.

There was no lack of labor, however, in the vineyard of the Lord, and
the young Levite, the second one who came out of the first Catholic
seminary in North America, was immediately put to work. At Port
Tobacco, on the Potomac, Gallitzin entered his apostolical career. His
fervor, no doubt, carried him too far into those proverbially malarial
regions; for, stricken down by a spell of fever, he was ordered by his
bishop to return to Baltimore, where Gallitzin was subsequently
directed to ascend the pulpit and preach to the German population
which had settled that portion of the state of Maryland.

The democratic spirit of American manners, which, with its innumerable
abuses, had permeated even religions existence itself, was
diametrically opposed to the just conceptions of the priesthood and of
the organization of the Church which Gallitzin had formed in his mind.
For the primitive morals of which he was then in quest he turned to
the unsettled portions of Pennsylvania. "I went there," he tells us at
a later period, "to avoid the _trustees_ and all the irregularities
which they beget. For success, I had {149} no other warrant than the
building of something new, that could escape the routine of inveterate
custom. Had I settled where the hand had already been put to the
plough, my work would have been endangered, for it had been soon
assailed by the spirit of Protestantism."

In the apostolic trips which frequently took him into the then far
West, on the table lands of the Alleghany range, near Huntington,
where the waters of the Ohio fork away from those of the Susquehanna,
Gallitzin had alighted on a settlement made up of a few Catholic
families. In the midst of this Catholic nucleus he resolved to
establish a permanent colony, which he destined in his mind as the
centre of his missions. Several poor Maryland families, whose
affections he had won, resolved to follow him; and, with the consent
of his bishop, he took up his line of march with them in the summer of
1799, and travelled from Maryland with his face turned to the ranges
of the Alleghany mountains. And a rough and trying journey it
was;--hewing their way through primitive forests, burdened at the same
time with all their worldly goods. So soon as the small caravan had
reached its new home, Gallitzin took possession of this, as it were,
conquered land; and, without loss of time, all the settlers addressed
themselves to the work before them, and worked so zealously that,
before the end of the year, they had already erected a church. The
following is Father Lemcke's account of the humble origin of this
establishment:

  "Out of the clearings of these untrodden forests rose up two
  buildings, constructed out of the trunks of roughly hewn trees; of
  these, one was intended for a church--the other, a presbytery for
  their pastor. On Christmas eve of the year 1799, there was not a
  winking eye in the little colony. And well there might not be! The
  new church, decked with pine and laurel and ivy leaves, and blazing
  with such lights as the scant means of the faithful could afford,
  was awaiting its consecration to the worship of God! There Gallitzin
  offered up the first mass, to the great edification of his flock,
  that, although made up of Catholics, had never witnessed such a
  solemnity, and to the great astonishment of a few Indians, who,
  wrapped up in the pursuit of the chase, had never, in their life,
  dreamed of such a pageantry. Thus it was that, on a spot in which,
  scarcely a year previous, silence had reigned over vast solitudes, a
  prince, thenceforward cut off from every other country, had opened a
  new one to pilgrims from all nations, and that, from the wastes,
  which echoed no sounds but the howlings of the wild beast, welled up
  the divine song which spoke: 'Glory to God in the highest, and
  peace, on earth, to men of good will!'"

The cost of this spiritual and material colonization was at first
individually borne by Gallitzin. Captain McGuire, an Irishman, one of
the early settlers of the country, had acquired 400 acres of land,
which he intended for the Church. These he conveyed to Gallitzin, who
divided into small tracts the lands, which he had purchased with his
own means, and distributed them among the poorer members of his
colony, on condition of reimbursement, by instalments, at long
periods--a condition, however, which, in a majority of cases, never
was complied with.

The wilderness soon put on a new aspect. The settlers followed the
impulses of the indefatigable missionary, who kept steadfastly in view
the improvement of his work. His first care was to set up a
grist-mill; then arose numerous out-buildings; additional lands were
purchased, and in a short time the colony was notably enlarged.

In carrying out his work, Gallitzin received material assistance from
Europe. In its origin, sums of money were regularly remitted to him by
his mother; for he kept up a correspondence, which his devotion to her
made {150} dear to his heart In these relations his father took
little, if any, interest, as the determination of his son--his only
son--had proved to him a source of bitter disappointment. Still he
anxiously desired to see him return to Europe. So engrossed, however,
was the young missionary by his work, that such a trip seemed next to
an impossibility. Several years had thus glided by, when the idea of
visiting Europe earnestly engaged his mind.

In the month of June, 1803, he wrote to his mother, in apology for a
long silence; telling her that he is seriously contemplating seeing
her once more, but that he is trammelled in his desire by the want of
a priest to take his place;--indeed, that his work has so grown under
his hands, that he doubts whether he will ever again be privileged to
clasp his mother in his arms. "I may not think of it," he adds; "my
heart is fraught with affection for you, and it seems to me that I
should absolutely see you once more, so as to borrow courage to follow
the path which is marked out for me in this perverse world." The
letters from Overberg are witnesses of the tears shed by the mother,
so anxious again to look upon her son, as well as of the unmurmuring
mournfulness of her resignation.

The announcement of his father's death again brought up the subject of
his visit to Europe. Indeed, his presence was required in the
settlement of his inheritance; but now, as before, the joy of once
more treading his native soil, and the happiness of embracing his
mother, had to yield to what he considered his duty to his infant
colony. The just and plausible reasons which he alleges to his mother
for his course, allow us at the same time fairly to appreciate the
extent of his work, and the hopes built upon its success. Hence he
suggests the consideration due to those families that his advice had
influenced, for the greater honor of religion, to follow him in the
wilderness;--the money obligations, contracted with various friends,
who had trusted him with large sums to speed the development of his
scheme, and whose confidence, therefore, might be seriously wronged by
his departure;--the interests of so many others, who had committed all
their worldly hopes into his hands and whom his absence might leave an
easy prey to heartless speculators;--and, finally, the pending
questions, started by the scheme of erecting into a county the
territory to which the lands of the colony belonged. All these
motives, to which others were added, were sufficiently weighty to
press on the conscience of Demetrius the duty Of remaining at his
post. This final resolution his mother learned with the firmness of
Christian heroism. She wrote to the prince: "Whatever sorrow may have
panged my motherly heart at the idea of renouncing a hope that a while
seemed within reach, I owe it to truth to tell thee that thy letter
has afforded me the greatest consolation that I can look for upon
earth." It is a touching picture to behold, in the sequel, this
zealous mother continuing her interest in the mission founded by the
prince, and providing for its success in keeping with the inspirations
of her heart. Thus it was that, through the channel of the Bishop of
Baltimore, she transmitted to her son a bill of exchange for a
considerable amount, a box of books--a treasure in those
days--rosaries for the settlers, linen for himself and friends,
garments, and even baby-clothes, for the poorer members of the
settlement, sacerdotal vestments, embroidered by the princess herself,
by her daughter, and by Countess de Stolberg, and, lastly, a
magnificent present, which the missionary during his life valued
beyond all price, and with which, in accordance with his wishes, he
was laid to slumber in the tomb.

In the meantime Gallitzin's colony, settled in the midst of those wild
wastes, had expanded and become a town, to which he gave the name of
Loretto, the beginning of which are {151} thus described by our
missionary's successor: "The colony was composed of individuals who
generally purchased considerable tracts, varying from one to four
hundred acres in extent, which they cleared and converted to
cultivation. In proportion as the population increased, they gradually
emerged from the savagery of the earlier periods, and soon experienced
the wants of a growing civilization. The indication of those wants
suggested to Gallitzin's mind the necessity of converting the humble
settlement into a town. Mechanics, of every useful trade, rapidly
gathered around the nucleus--blacksmiths, millers, carpenters,
shoemakers, with even storekeepers, and Loretto soon assumed the
position which its founder had designed.

"Here, then, stands the town; but, with its new dignity, came a host
of vexations. It marked for Gallitzin a period of struggle against
every imaginable difficulty, which brought his firmness to the sorest
trials, and which indeed might have jeoparded the very existence of
his work. In fact, the means of reducing, under the control of a
single hand, the heterogeneous components of such a colony was no easy
problem to be solved. Gallitzin efforts to bring it under a normal
organization had to meet many an antagonizing element, whilst the
peculiar American spirit, which had even then permeated those
solitudes, reared up obstacles to his scheme. Gallitzin, however,
proved unshakable, and exhibited an unbending energy of character. At
one time there was an actual crisis in the prospects of the colony. A
member of the community, with a fair allotment of the goods of this
world, with the excitable American brain and a marked tendency to
speculation, suddenly conceived the idea to set up a competition with
the growing colony and to lay the foundations of a rival one in the
neighborhood. He went to work accordingly, and, with the assistance of
a few Irishmen, actually laid the foundations of  village, which he
named Munster, after one of the provinces of Ireland. This rival of
Loretto immediately became the headquarters of the _propagators of
light_, in other words, of those who had little relish for the zeal of
Gallitzin and the inconvenient discipline of the Church. Satisfied not
only with putting the prosperity of Loretto in evident peril, the
seceders also assailed the character of Gallitzin, and through these
means derived an unexpected help. It happened fitly for their purposes
that at the time two German vagabonds--one a priest of most
questionable character, and the other a nobleman, whom the crime of
forgery had driven from the Old World--presented themselves to
Gallitzin, and anything but pleased, no doubt, with the welcome which
they received, resolved to swell the party of malcontents. With
cunning malice, they soon disseminated reports injurious to their
countryman, gave a pretended substance to unfounded suspicions,
feeding the animosities of the common herd. The fact, also, of
Gallitzin's having assumed a borrowed name was a means of shaking the
settlers and sowing distrust in their minds. Things went on from bad
to worse, and a catastrophe seemed to be imminent, when came the
upshot, so much the more ludicrous because the less expected. The
Gordian knot, after the expeditious American fashion, was cut by an
Alexander who rejoiced in the name of John Wakeland. He was an
Irishman, a giant in stature and strength, famed in the settlement as
a wolf and bear killer; and in reality one of the kindest men in the
world, and one of the hardest to stir from his natural proprieties.
These miserable intrigues and base machinations aroused his
indignation, and he immediately came to the conclusion to put an end
to them by the interposition of the logic of the strong hand. The
agitators had concocted a plan, which was devised to extort from
Gallitzin some sort of an assent, and the {152} prince could hardly
have escaped their intended violence had he not sought sanctuary in
the chapel of Loretto. But the mob had merely adjourned their intended
excesses; and they were preparing for extreme means to achieve their
ends when John Wakeland, brandishing a sturdy hickory in the midst of
the infatuated mob, declared that, he would "settle," on the spot, any
one who durst threaten the good priest. There was a magical spell in
the _hickory_. The timidly good men, who there, as everywhere else,
had shrunk into a circle of impassive inaction, feeling the influence
of a sturdy support, borrowed courage from the hour; and had it not
been for the interference of Gallitzin, his detractors, to use an
American phrase, would have had 'a rough time of it' From that moment,
a complete revulsion of feeling took place in behalf of the
missionary; while the bishop succeeded in ultimately restoring order
and peace in the little parish. He carefully inquired into all the
facts, and then addressed to the parishioners a letter which was
posted at the church door, and recalled the faithful to the regular
order of things.

"Difficulties, however, of another kind, and of a more serious import,
waited on Gallitzin. From the death of his father, he had been
suddenly cut off from the pecuniary assistance which he had
periodically received from Europe. He himself, as a Catholic priest,
had been, by the laws of Russia, excluded from his paternal heritage;
while his mother, who had exhausted her means in litigations, was
compelled to forego the assistance which, from time to time, she had
extended to her son. In satisfying his boundless charities, and in the
achievements of his plans, the founder of Loretto had somewhat relied
on this inheritance, which thus passed away from his hands. This
disappointment, therefore, brought upon him a new burden of anxiety
and cares. Destitution and poverty might have been easily borne by
him; but he could not make up his mind to give up the idea of founding
an imposing Catholic colony--to abandon the undertaking which he had
initiated--to be compelled to relinquish lands which had been
reclaimed by so much toil and so much care--and, especially, to face
impatient creditors, who might accuse him of thoughtlessly going into
debt, and from such an accusation justify their expression of
contempt."

As a crowning development to all of these tribulations, the European
mail brought to Gallitzin the news of his beloved mother's death. On
the 17th of April, 1806, in the city of Münster, the excellent
princess had closed her eyes for ever, comforting her disappointment
that she had not been permitted to see her son on earth by the hope
that she would surely meet him in heaven. The narrative of the last
moments of the Princess Gallitzin, received, by the stout-hearted
missionary, through the letters of his sister, of Overberg, and of
Count de Stolberg, supplied a fund of inexpressible comfort; but from
that hour the temporal claims and requirements of his position bore
terribly on his endurance. It required unheard-of efforts to save his
undertaking from the burden of indebtedness, and if, at the hour of
his death, he quit-claimed the property of the Church and left it free
from all and every charge, the blessed consummation came with the
sunset of life only, and that, too, after miracles of constant energy.
And here, especially, looms up the secondary phase of Gallitzin's
character, which had not escaped his father's more searching eye. In
fact, and in answer to a letter of his wife, in which she bitterly
complained of the inertness of their son, then sixteen years of age,
he wrote to her that "deep waters run still; that, to his mind, she
misconceives the disposition of Demetrius, and that he is ever running
against wind and tide." And indeed, to struggle against the torrent of
time and of events was the whole work of his life. And against this
torrent he heaved up the bulk of {153} his writings that have come
down to us. It is easy to conceive that it required no common reason
to induce a man of his temper of mind to write. We have the motive of
this reason in the fact that a Presbyterian preacher of Huntington had
thought fit to assail and calumniate the Catholic Church as an
institution dangerous to the country and to its liberties. Gallitzin
immediately took up the pen in answer, and the necessities of the
controversy turned him into a polemica writer.

There are in America, no less than in other countries, fanatical
sectarians who follow their congenial instincts in sounding the
alarm-cry whenever the Catholic Church marks out new limits of  lawful
conquest. In this instance, the state was declared to be in peril; but
Gallitzin lost no time in confounding the slanderers of Catholicity by
the publication of his "Defense of Catholic Principles," which
appeared in Pittsburgh in the year 1816. This work, written in
English--for the author wielded the English with as much facility as
he did the German language, his mother tongue--was, on both shores of
the ocean, greeted with success. Father Lemcke made a German
translation of the "Defense of Catholic Principles," of which two
editions were published in Ireland and four in the United States,
ranking "in popularity with 'Cobbett's History of the Reformation,' to
which it bears a resemblance in putting a probing finger on the
plague-spot of Protestantism."

The start being once made, Gallitzin followed up his first work with
other publications of an entirely practical character, directed
against certain prevalent moral diseases of the day, which mark an
epoch in the monography of American ideas. Gallitzin was perfectly
familiar with the mode of treatment of the feverish exuberance of
American notions, and he handled them with all the cautious skill of a
prudent practitioner. Everything which he published on these matters,
both in elucidation of his views and as a muniment against the evils
which he denounced, is written in the winning and popular style which
was familiar to his pen. Hence his works were crowned with success,
even amongst the higher classes of society. "Gallitzin's
publications," says his biographer, "exerted an immense influence in
the period when he lived, but especially so among the humbler members
of the community, for whom they were destined. They were found, and
they may still be found, in the form of unpretending pamphlets, in the
hotels and steamboats of the West, for he had them printed at his own
expense and distributed as the Protestant colporteurs disseminate
their Bibles and tracts. The curiosity of the readers enlarged their
circulation everywhere; and I myself have found them as perfectly
thumbed as any spelling-book in spots where I never dreamed of meeting
with them."

In the meantime, Gallitzin, who had hitherto labored under the
protecting shadow of his humility, had begun to attract the attention
of the American world around him. The manner in which he had marked
his entrance in social life--not so much by the power of genius as by
that integrity of character which commanded the respect of public
opinion--had carried his reputation far beyond the limits of the
frontiers, and secured for him an esteem, the proofs of which came
back to him in numerous testimonials gathering from all sides. It was
at this time that he published various pamphlets signed with his real
name: "Demetrius Augustin Gallitzin, Catholic curate of Loretto."

It was natural, when the question of creating a new bishopric came up,
that all eyes should turn to such a man as Gallitzin. There was a
desire, therefore, more than once expressed to see him called to the
episcopal chair; but he persistently repelled the intended dignity,
and exerted his every power to counteract the efforts of {154} those
who were anxious to have it conferred upon him. He asked for one favor
only--that of remaining at Loretto; and, with this view, he consented
to accept the functions of vicar-general to the Bishop of
Philadelphia, which had been recently raised into a diocese.

Since the earlier period when Gallitzin entered on the discharge of
the holy ministry, those regions had witnessed a great development of
the Catholic faith. From all sides arose new parishes, while the field
of labor went on enlarging under the tireless zeal of our missionary.
"It may be safely affirmed," says his biographer, "that during the
protracted years through which he administered to the district of
country which now constitutes the sees of Pittsburg and Erie, he
filled the place and discharged the duties of a bishop." In order to
form a correct judgment as to the importance of his labors, we must go
back, in imagination, to the exordium of the Catholic Church in those
countries, where the pastors were cut off from all sustaining
advice--from all diocesan organization--and where elements the most
discrepant, and prejudices the most stubborn, were found in daily
conflict. How many difficulties, therefore, to be encountered and
overcome in the discrimination, in certain cases, between falsehood
and truth! What prudence of action was required! How many and delicate
problems presented to the decisions of a tender conscience! Gallitzin,
however, was the man for the situation. "The writings," says his
friend, "which his charge as vicar-general had compelled him from time
to time to publish, bear witness not only to his vigilance and zeal,
but also to the great charity which characterized the performance of
his duties." His was a peculiar solicitude for the persecuted and the
oppressed, because he knew from experience how readily, in America,
they may be made the sport of falsehood, of malevolence, and of that
thirst of revenge which exists everywhere. Hence the not
inconsiderable number of persons, both ecclesiastics and laymen, who
looked up to him for protection, and who might, but for its
interpositions, have been for ever lost. His benevolent bearing won
for him the confidence of the other priests who, like himself, had
consecrated their lives to the salvation of souls. The pastor who from
among them became at a later period the archbishop of Baltimore,
having been in 1830 appointed coadjutor and administrator to the
diocese of Philadelphia, immediately wrote to Gallitzin--whom he
styled the propagandist of the faith--to ask the assistance of his
experience and of his prayers, and to advise him that he not only
confirmed his existing powers, but that he also authorized him to use,
without the necessity of any previous application, those with which,
as coadjutor, he was himself invested. These two men were bound till
death by the closest ties of friendship.

All of Gallitzin's actions were stamped with the characteristics of
candor and uprightness. Should the honor of the Church, or the dignity
of her priesthood, be called into question, he knew no such word as
compromise. He shrank from familiarity with that species of half
education of which presumption is a leading feature; and ever, and
everywhere, stood unshaken in his love and assertion of truth--a
persistency which, on more than one occasion, called down upon him the
imputation of an aristocratic and domineering spirit. Those, however,
who, admitted to the closer intimacies of his life, were best
qualified to judge, soon became convinced of the futility of the
charge. If there were any note of distinction about him, it was to be
traced in the loftiness of his conceptions; for he had long cast off
all princely frippery; and the privileged society in which he
especially delighted was that of the poor and the lowly, with whom he
would kindly converse after possessing himself of their wishes and
needs. {155} In the circuit of his missions, it was his pleasure to
pass by the dwellings of opulence and seek the hospitalities of the
humble cottage. There would the prince sit down to rest, surrounded by
joyous children, distributing pictures among them and sharing in their
humble fare.

Such was Gallitzin, shepherd of souls, polemic and vicar-general, at
Loretto, whence the peaceful work of Christian civilization went on
quietly progressing and gradually enlarging the circle of its
benefits. Years had thus passed on, and the pioneer could already mark
the slanting shadows of declining life, when a young missionary came
over from Europe to share in his toils. This was Father Lemcke, a
Benedictine, who, after having been his assistant, became his
successor. Gallitzin was then sixty-four years of age. Father Lemcke
has left us a picturesque account of his first meeting with the
venerable missionary. He had set out from Philadelphia, and after
several days of rough traveling reached Münster, where an Irish family
gave him hospitality. From that village he procured a guide, and at
this point of his narrative we find him with an Irish lad piloting him
to Loretto. "As we had gone," says he, "a couple of miles through the
woods, I caught sight of a sled, drawn by a pair of vigorous horses;
and in the sled a half recumbent traveler, on every lineament of whose
face could be read a character of distinction. He was outwardly
dressed in a sort of threadbare overcoat; and, on his head, a
peasant's hat, so worn and dilapidated that no one would have rescued
it from the garbage of the streets. It occurred to me that some
accident had happened to the old gentleman, and that he was compelled
to resort to this singular mode of conveyance Whilst I was taxing my
brains for a satisfactory solution of the problem, Tom, my guide, who
was trotting ahead, turned round and, pointing to the old man, said:
"Here comes the priest" I immediately coaxed up my nag to the sled.
"Are you, really, the pastor of Loretto?" said I. "I am, sir." "Prince
Gallitzin?" "At your service, sir," he said with a laugh. "You are
probably astonished"--he continued, after I had handed him a letter
from the Bishop of Philadelphia--"at the strangeness of my equipage?
But there's no help for it. You have no doubt already found out that
in these countries you need not dream of a carriage-road. You could
not drive ten yards without danger of an overturn. I am prevented,
since a fall which I have had, from riding on horseback, and it would
be impossible for me now to travel on foot Beside, I carry along
everything required for the celebration of holy mass. I am now going
to a spot where I have a mission, and where the holy sacrifice has
been announced for to-day. Go to Loretto and make yourself at home,
until my return to night; unless, indeed, you should prefer to
accompany me. You may be interested in the visit."

Father Lemcke accordingly followed Gallitzin, and after a ride of
several miles they reached a sort of a hamlet, where there stood a
good Pennsylvania farm, in which all the Catholics of the vicarage had
gathered as on a festive day. The cabin had been transformed into a
chapel, and the good people were there, crowding; some standing,
others kneeling under the projecting shed; and others again, in small
huts or under the foliage of the grand old trees, were awaiting the
appointed hour. All had their prayer-books in their hands. At a sign
from Gallitzin, Father Lemcke proceeded within to receive the
confessions of the faithful; after which the prince celebrated mass,
preached, and administered the sacrament of baptism. For his pious and
good people it was a very festive day. The dinner which followed, and
in which all shared, was a repast marked by the cheerfulness and the
charity of the agapae of the primitive Christians.

{156}

By nightfall both priests had reached Loretto. On The Sunday
following, Gallitzin introduced his assistant to his German
parishioners, and then, with a quizzical smile, invited him, without
any further ceremony, to ascend the pulpit. Father Lemcke had to
undergo the ordeal, and it proved not to his disfavor. He had
naturally supposed that the same roof which sheltered Gallitzin would
also protect him. The old priest, however, could not see things in
that light; and a few days after, he took him to Ebensburg, the
principal county town, and there installed him as the pastor of the
parish.

Each of the two missionaries who had thus halved the goodly work still
had a respectable circuit to perform. There were stations fifty and
even seventy miles apart, and over this immense extent of territory,
which now constitutes the Pittsburg and Erie bishoprics, there were,
with them, but three or four priests to attend to the work of the
Lord. To Gallitzin was reserved the deep gratification of witnessing
the branching off, from Loretto, of various Catholic parishes, which
were formed in the very manner in which Loretto had been. Twelve miles
north of the primitive colony, up to the head-waters of the
Susquehanna, where lay cheap and rich lands, some of the more
prosperous members of his parish purchased tracts for themselves and
their families, and there laid the grounds of a settlement, to which
they gave the name of St. Joseph, borrowed from the invocation of the
church which Gallitzin had consecrated on that spot. It is now known
on the maps as Carrollton. Among the early settlers and the heads of
families were sturdy John Wakeland, whom the reader may not have
forgotten, and his six sons, as tall and as stalwart as himself, and
all, like him, devoted to the Catholic faith. On the very road to
Loretto, and before the death of the prince, sprang up a rural parish
under the name of St. Augustin. Another was formed with the
appellation of Gallitzin--after the death of the missionary, be it
understood; for his humility during his lifetime never could have
consented to this endowment.

In 1836, Father Lemcke fixed his residence at St Joseph--urged
somewhat to this course by Gallitzin, whose favorite idea had, for
some time, been to witness on that spot the rise and growth of another
Loretto. The old priest, growing into closer intimacy with the younger
missionary, periodically came in his sled to St. Joseph, rejoicing to
behold "a second edition of what he himself had created thirty years
before." So thoroughly had he become linked to this new friend from
far-off Europe, that he never but reluctantly parted from him, and
even shed bitter tears on once hearing that the bishop contemplated
changing Father Lemcke's residence.

Thus was it given to Gallitzin, in the decline of life, to behold
trackless forests converted into fruitful fields. The transient cares
and annoyances of life had disappeared, and a numerous Catholic
population grew around him in the joys of contented toil. The early
settlers who with him had shared the sweat and borne the burden of the
day, had long bidden farewell to their humbler log-cabins. Well
appointed farms, substantial barns, commodious dwellings, surrounded
by beautiful gardens and smiling meadows, wooed the eye as the
rewarding product of their privations and their toils.

In 1839 the old missionary's health began to fail. The load of years
much less than the thousand hardships inseparably connected with the
devotions of apostolic life, weighed heavily on a frame attenuated
indeed, but still erect and resisting. Yet the burden went on pressing
still--the body gradually bent--the step unsteady--the divine fire
which always kindled still animated him; but the voice would refuse
the assistance of its sounds, and the close of his sermons turn into a
peroration of silent {157} tears a thousand times more eloquent then
his spoken words. And yet, with all these warnings, he rejected every
suggestion of precaution and care of himself. To this he would answer,
in his own energetic language, that "as the days had gone by when, by
martyrdom, it was possible for us to testify to God's glory upon
earth, it was our duty, like the toil-worn ox, to remain hitched to
the plough in the field of the Lord." And the event harmonized with
his wish. On Easter Sunday, 1840, Gallitzin, being then seventy years
of age, had early in the morning taken his seat in the confessional.
After the discharge of its duties, he had braced up the remnants of
his strength to ascend the altar for holy sacrifice. He was, however,
compelled to forego the sermon of the day to betake himself to his
bed, from which he was destined never again to rise. The attentive
care of Dr. Rodriguez, his intimate friend, prolonged his existence
for a few weeks; but it was soon ascertained that the noble missionary
was fast sinking under exhausted energies. With the rapidity of
lightning, the sad news was carried abroad. From far and near, old and
young gathered around his dwelling, once more to receive the blessing
of the man whom they revered. So great was the affluence of the
people, that in order to secure a few quiet moments for the glorious
veteran of faith, absorbed in the last meditations and prayers of
earth, it became necessary to warn away the increasing throng of
visitors--and this without his knowledge; for it was his wish to
receive every one of them, and to each to speak the last farewell
which welled up from his loving heart. Yet some did come for whom no
such words passed his lips, which on the contrary moved in utterances
of reproof and blame. Among others came in one of the parishioners, to
whom the dying pastor had been particularly kind. He, however, had
proved ungrateful, and had, indeed, been a cause of much annoyance to
the missionary by habits of drunkenness and other excesses of an
unregulated life. As he entered the room, the venerable pastor turned
to him with a reproachful look and shook his head. This silent
sermonizing produced a deeper impression than had any previous
admonition of Gallitzin. The self-accusing culprit fell upon his
knees, melted to tears, confessed his errors, and promised
thenceforward to amend. The evidence of his sincerity is found in the
statement of Gallitzin's successor, who informs us that he stoutly
held to his promise.

The last scene of this eventful life closed on the sixth of May, when
the missionary prince left this world, accompanied by the prayers of
his parishioners gathered around him; for every apartment of the
house, and every portion of the chapel attached to it, was literally
thronged by a wailing, weeping, and praying community. This supreme
hour revealed the depth and the sincerity of the love which dwelt in
every heart for this man of God. On the day of his burial, whole
populations swarmed from every point--from distances ranging fifty and
sixty miles--to pay to the good father a last tribute of that
affectionate respect which had attended him through life.

The most respectable men of the parish contended for the honor of
bearing his body to the cemetery. In the body of the church, it was a
perfect contest among the congregation to look for the last time on
the feature of him who was thenceforward for ever lost to earth. Those
who were lucky enough, through the pressure of the crowd, to reach the
coffin, kissed in tearful love the icy hands of the missionary; while
the attendants were compelled to resort to force in order to close the
coffin for the final rites of the Church.

It were no easy task, without reference to the work of his
biographer--an ocular witness of Gallitzin's labors--to convey a just
conception of their bearing and extent "When," he says, "we come to
consider the {158} theatre on which Gallitzin inaugurated his immense
labors in so obscure and modest a manner, we realize the amount of
substantial good that can be achieved by an apostolic missionary in
America when, like Gallitzin, he conceives the practical sense of
things and leads them on to their crowning development with the zeal
and perseverance which marked his course. The small county of Cambria,
in Pennsylvania, created in 1807, which is indebted to Gallitzin for a
majority of its settlers, is everywhere, and with every reason,
characterized as the Catholic county. Indeed, when the traveller on
business, or the tourist for pleasure, strikes this point from other
districts of Pennsylvania more controlled by Protestant influences, it
seems to him that he has passed from a comparative desert into a
smiling oasis. This may be easily understood. For all their
journeyings for whole days, over counties twice and thrice more
opulent than this little Catholic county, there is no indication to
tell them what religion is there professed. Not till they have pressed
the soil of Cambria county do they feel that they are in a _truly_
Christian land, as they catch sight of ten Catholic churches and three
monasteries--all of which cropped out of Loretto under Gallitzin's
creative and fostering hands."

From all these results we can frame an accurate judgment of the
prince's career, which was but one continuous struggle--a glorious
struggle, teeming with usefulness. When Gallitzin opened his mission,
the vicar of Christ was persecuted and proscribed. A prisoner, torn
away from his spiritual family, Pius VI. heard the voices of a
_philosophic_ world applauding his abduction, as, ten years later, it
applauded the violence inflicted on the person of Pius VII. It was
just at that dark period which overshadowed the Holy See that the
Church inaugurated her peaceful labors in the United States, and, at
the end of ten years, had marked her beneficent influences by a
progress so rapid that its result could not escape the eye of even the
least observant. While Europe was organizing a settled persecution of
the papal power, the Church in America was growing up and expanding in
influence. Her very adversaries were compelled to bear even reluctant
witness to her triumphs. In one of the meetings of a Bible society
some years ago. Lord Barclay exhibited a summary, in which he lamented
the spread of Catholicity in a country in which he said that in the
year 1790 there was not even a bishop. "Strange," he said, "that
while, in Europe, the power of the see of Rome is overthrown, the Pope
is a prisoner, and Rome is declared to be the second city of the
French empire--strange, I say, that, at this very moment, the power
of the Pope should be rooted in America in this still stranger
manner." Ay! strange indeed, my Lord Barclay; but in no way strange
for those who know that martyrdom is the life of the Church, and that
she woos triumph in persecution. Gallitzin's life is a living,
convincing proof of her triumphs and her hopes.

------

{159}


From The Sixpenny Magazine.

"DUM SPIRO SPERO."

(AN APOLOGUE.)

  My soul was restless, and I sought
    The elf's wild haunt, and breath'd sweet airs:
  I track'd the river's devious route:--
    In vain!--my heart was vext with cares.

  I wandered from the noble park,
    The trimly gay parterre to view;
  Thence pluck'd a rose, without one mark
    To rob it of its faultless hue;

  And, home returning, quaintly placed
    My trophy in a tiny tray
  Of antique silver curious traced;
    Then, charg'd with odor, turn'd away.

* * * * *

  I enter'd yestermorn the room
    Where, all forgotten, dwelt my flower
  Unhappy fate! that tender bloom
    Fell, fainting for the genial shower.

  Vanish'd all vigor had; and now--
    The perfume fled--the tints grown dull--
  It had been sin, I did allow,
    For this so choice a bud to pull.

  Then, with sore heart, I brought a stream
    Of clearest water to its cup.
  What wonder if new life 'gan gleam,
    And care restored what hope gave up?

  Lo! leaf by leaf was slowly raised,
    Till olden flashes came at length:
  Each plaintive petal oped, and gazed.
    And thank'd me with its growing strength.

* * * * *

  Our hearts are like thee, little Rose;
    They quicken what time love-beams shine;
  But under dismal clouds of woes
    How can they choose but droop and pine?

  If sympathy with lute attend
    To lull with some resistless psalm,
  Misfortune's darts can never rend:
    Friends soothe, hope cheers, and heaven anoints with balm!

------

{160}


From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.


AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.



CHAPTER XV.

Then methought was witnessed (I speak of the time when Sir Hammond
l'Estrange made the savage speech which caused his lady and me to
exchange affrighted looks) a rare instance of the true womanly courage
which doth sometimes lie at the core of a timid heart. The meek wife,
which dared not so much as to lift up her eyes to her lord if he did
only frown, or to oppose his will in any trifling matter; whose color
I had seen fly from her cheek if he raised his voice, albeit not in
anger against herself, now in the presence of those at table, with a
face as pale as ashes, but a steady voice, and eyes fixed on him, thus
addressed her husband:

"Sir, since we married I have never opposed your will, or in anything
I wot of offended you, or ever would if I could help it. Do not,
therefore, displeasure me so much, I beseech you, in this grave
instance, as to make me an instrument in the capture. And God knoweth
what should follow of one which came to me for help, and to whom the
service I rendered him would prove the means of his ruin if you
persist therein."

"Go to, madam, go to," cries Sir Hammond; "your business doth lie with
poor people, mine with criminals. Go your way, and intrude not
yourself in weightier matters than belong to your sex."

"Sir," she answers, braving his frowning looks, albeit her limbs began
to tremble, "I humbly crave your patience; but I will not leave you,
neither desist from my suit, except thereunto compelled by force. I
would to God my tongue had been plucked out rather than that it should
utter words which should betray to prison, yea, perhaps to death, the
poor man whose wounds I tended."

The cloud on Sir Hammond's brow waxed darker as she spoke. He glanced
at me, and methinks perceived my countenance to be as much disturbed
as his lady's. A sudden thought, I ween, then passed through his mind;
and with a terrible oath he swore that he misliked this strenuous
urging in favor of a vile popish priest, and yet more the manner of
this intercession.

"Heaven shield, madam," he cried, "you have not companied with
recusants so as to become infected with a lack of zeal for the
Protestant religion!"

The color returned for a moment to Lady l'Estrange's cheeks as she
answered:

"Sir, I have never, from the time my mother did teach me my prayers,
been of any other way of thinking than that wherein she then
instructed me, or so much as allowed myself one thought contrary to
true Protestant religion; or ever lent an ear, and with God's help
never will, to what papists do advance; but nevertheless, if this
priest do fall into any grievous trouble through my speeches, I shall
be a most unhappy woman all my life."

And then the poor soul, rising from her seat, went round to her
husband's side, and, kneeling, sought to take his hands, beseeching
him in such moving and piteous terms to change his purpose as I could
see did visibly affect some present. But I also noticed in Sir
Hammond's face so resolved an intent as if nothing in earth or heaven
should alter it. A drowning wretch {161} would as soon have moved a
rock to advance toward him as she succeeded in swerving his will by
her entreaties.

A sudden thought inspired me to approach her where she had sunk down
on her knees at her husband's feet, he seeking angrily to push her
away. I took her by the hand and said:

"I pray you, dear lady, come with me. These be indeed matters wherein,
as Sir Hammond saith, women's words do not avail."

Both looked at me surprised; and she, loosing her hold of him,
suffered me to lead her away. We went into the parlor, Mrs. l'Estrange
following us. But as I did try to whisper in her ear that I desired to
speak with her alone, the bell in the dining-room began to ring
violently; upon which she shuddered and cried out:

"Let me go back to him, Mistress Sherwood.  I'll warrant you he is
about to send for the constables; but beshrew me if I die not first at
his feet; for if this man should be hung, peace will be a stranger to
me all my life."

Mistress l'Estrange essayed to comfort her; but failing therein, said
she was very foolish to be so discomposed at what was no fault of
hers, and she should think no more thereon, for in her condition to
fret should be dangerous; and if people would be priests and papists
none could help if they should suffer for it. And then she left the
parlor somewhat ruffled, like good people sometimes feel when they
perceive their words to have no effect. When we were alone, "Lady
l'Estrange," I said, "where is Master Rugeley's house?"

"One mile, or thereabouts, across the heath," she answered.

"And the way to it direct?" I asked.

"Yea, by the footpath," she replied; "but much longer by the high
road."

I went to the window and opened the shutter and the lattice also. The
moon was shining very brightly.

"Is it that cottage near to the wood?" I inquired, pointing to a
thatched roof nigh unto the darksome line of trees against the sky.

"Yea," she answered, "how near it doth seem seen in this light!
Constance, what think you to do?" she exclaimed, when I went to her
cupboard and took out the keys she had showed me that morning opened
the doors of the kitchen garden and the orchard.

"Did you not say," I answered, "that the gentleman now in so great
peril did lodge with Master Rugeley?"

"Would you go there?" she said, looking aghast. "Not alone; you durst
not do it!"

"Twenty times over," I answered, "for to save a man's life, and he--he
a--" But there I stopped; for it was her fellow-creature she desired
to save. Her heart bled not like mine for the flock which should be
left without a shepherd; and albeit our fears were the same, we felt
not alike. I went into the hall, and she pursued me--one-half striving
to stay me from my purpose, one-half urging me to fulfil it; yet
retracting her words as soon as uttered.

"When I issue from the door of the orchard unto the heath," I said,
the while wrapping round me a cloak with a hood to it, "and pursue the
path in front, by what token may I find Master Rugeley's house if the
moon should be obscured?"

"Where two roads do meet," she said, "at the edge of the heath, a tall
oak doth stand near to a gate; a few steps to the right should then
lead to it. But verily, Mistress Constance, I be frightened to let you
go; and oh, I do fear my husbands's anger."

"Would you, then, have a man die by your means?" I asked, thinking for
to cure one terror by another, as indeed it did; for she cried,

"Nay, I will speed you on your way, good Constance; and show so brave
a face during your absence as God shall help me to do; yea, and open
the door for you myself, if my husband should kill me for it!"

{162}

Then she took the keys in her hand, and glided like unto a pale ghost
before me through the passage into the hall, so noiselessly that I
should have doubted if aught of flesh and blood could have moved so
lightly, and undid the bars of the back door without so much as a
sound. Then she would fetch some thick shoes for me to wear, which I
did entreat her not to stay me for; but nothing else would content the
poor soul, and, as she had the keys in her hand, I was forced to wait
her return with so much impatience as may be guessed. I heard the
voices of the gentlemen still carousing after supper; and then a
servant's below in the hall, who said the constables had been sent
for, and a warrant issued for the apprehension of a black papist at
Master Rugeley's. Then Milicent returned, and whilst I put on the
shoes she had brought, and she was tying with trembling fingers the
hood of my cloak, the rustling of Mrs. l'Estrange's silk gown was
heard on the stair above our heads, from whence we were like to be
seen; and, fear awakening contrivance, I said aloud,

"Oh, what a rare pastime it should be to dress as a ghost, and
frighten the good lady your sister-in-law! I pray you get me some
white powder to pale my face. Methinks we need some kind of sport to
drive away too much thinking on that dismal business in hand."

The steps over our head sounded more hurried, and we heard the door of
the parlor close with a bang, and the lattice also violently shut.

"Now," I whispered, "give me the keys, good Lady l'Estrange, and go to
your sister yourself. Say I was ashamed to have been overheard to plan
so rank a piece of folly (and verily you will be speaking no other
than the truth), and that you expect I shall not so much as show my
face in the parlor this evening; and lock also my chamber-door, that
none may for a surety know me for to be absent."

"Yea," answered the poor lady, with so deep a sigh as seemed to rend
her heart; "but, God forgive me, I never did think to hide anything
from my husband! And who shall tell me if I be doing right or wrong?"

I could not stay, though I grieved for her; and the sound of her voice
haunted me as I went through the garden, and then the orchard, unto
the common, locking the doors behind me. When this was done, I did
breathe somewhat more freely, and began to run along the straight path
amidst the heath. I wot not if my speed was great--the time seemed
long; yet methinks I did not slacken my pace once, but rather
increased it, till, perceiving the oak, and near it the gate Lady
l'Estrange had mentioned, I stopped to consider where to turn; and
after I had walked a little to the right I saw a cottage and a light
gleaming inside. Then my heart beat very fast; and when I knocked at
the door I felt scarce able to stand. I did so three times, and no
answer came. Then I cried as loudly as I could, "Master Rugeley, I
beseech you open the door." I heard some one stirring within, but no
one came. Then I again cried out, "Oh, for our Blessed Lady's sake,
some one come." At last the lattice opened, and a man's head appeared.

"Who are you?" he said, in a low voice.

"A friend," I answered, in a whisper; "a Catholic. Are yon Master
Rugeley?"

"Yea," he answered.

"Oh, then, if Mr. Tunstall is here, hide him quickly, or send him
away. I am a friend of Lady l'Estrange's and staying in her house. Sir
Hammond hath received tidings that a priest is in this neighborhood,
and a warrant is issued for to apprehend him. His lady unwittingly,
and sorely troubled she is thereat, showed by her speeches touching
your guest, that he is like to be Mr. Tunstall; and the constables
will soon be here."

"Thank you," he replied whom I was addressing; "but Mr. Tunstall is
not the name of my friend."

Then I feared he did take me for a spy, and I cried out, greatly
moved, "As I do hope to go to heaven one {163} day, and not to hell,
Master Rugeley, I speak the truth, and my warning is an urgent one."

Then I heard some one within the house, who said, "Open the door,
Master Rugeley. I should know that voice. Let the speaker in."

Methought I, too, knew the voice of the person who thus spoke. The
door was opened, and I entered a room dimly lighted by one candle.

"Oh, for God's sake," I cried, "if a priest is here, hide him
forthwith."

"Are you a Catholic, my child?"

I looked up to the person who put this question to me, and gave a
sudden cry, I know not whether of terror or joy; for great as was the
change which the lapse of years, and great inward and outward changes,
had wrought in his aspect, I saw it was my father.

"I am Constance," I cried; "Constance Sherwood! Oh, my dear father!"
and then fell at his feet weeping.

After an instant's, astonishment and fixed gazing on my face, he
recognized me, who was, I doubt not, more changed than himself, and
received me with a great paternal kindness and the tenderest greeting
imaginable, yet tempered with reserve and so much of restraint as
should befit one who, for Christ's sake, had dissevered himself from
the joys, albeit not from the affections, of the natural heart.

"Oh, my good child, my own dear Constance," he said; "hath God in his
bounty given thy poor father a miraculous sight of thee before his
death, or art thou come verily in flesh and blood to warn him of his
danger?"

"My dear and honored father," I replied, "time presses; peril is
indeed at hand, if you and Mr. Tunstall are the same person."

"The wounds in my hands," he answered, "must prove me such, albeit now
healed by the care of that good Samaritan, Lady l'Estrange. But
prithee, my good child, whence comest thou?"

"Alas!" I said; "and yet not alas, if God should be so good to me as
by my means to save you, I am Sir Hammond's guest, being a friend of
his lady's. I came there yesterday."

"Oh, my good child, I thought not to have seen thee in these thy
grown-up years. Master Rugeley," he added, turning to his host, "this
is the little girl I forsook four years ago, for to obtain the
hundredfold our Lord doth promise."

"My very dear father," I said, "joy is swallowed up in fear. God help
me, I came to warn a stranger (if so be any priest in these times
should be a stranger to a Catholic), and I find you."

"Oh, but I am mightfully pleased," quoth he, "to see thee, my child,
even in this wise, and to hear thee speak like a true daughter of Holy
Church. And Lady l'Estrange is then thy friend?"

"Yea, my dear father; but for God and our lady's sake hide yourself. I
warrant yon the constables may soon be here. Master Rugeley, where can
he be concealed, or whither fly, and I with him?"

"Nay, prithee not so fast," quoth he. "Flight would be useless; and in
the matter of hiding, one should be more easily concealed than two;
beside that, the hollow of a tree, which Master Rugeley will, I ween,
appoint me for a bed-chamber to-night, should hardly lodge us both
with comfort."

"Oh, sir," said Rugeley, "do not tarry."

"For thy sake, no; not for more than one minute, Thomas; but ere I
part from this wench, two questions I must needs ask her."

Then he drew me aside and inquired what facilities I continued to have
in London for the exercise of Catholic religion, and if I was punctual
in the discharge of my spiritual duties. When I had satisfied him
thereon, he asked if the report was true which he heard from a
prisoner for recusancy in Wisbeach Castle, concerning my troth-plight
with Mr. Rookwood.

"Yea," I said, "it is true, if so be you now do add your consent to
it."

{164}

He answered he should do so with all his heart, for he knew him to be
a good Catholic and a virtuous gentleman; and as we might lack the
opportunity to receive his blessing later, he should now give it unto
me for both his most dear children. Which he did, laying his hand on
my head with many fervent benisons, couched in such words as these,
that he prayed for us to be stayed up with the shore of God's grace in
this world; and after this transitory life should end, to ascend to
him, and appear pure and unspotted before his glorious seat. Then he
asked me if it was Lady l'Estrange who had detected him; whereupon I
briefly related to him what had occurred, and how sore her grief was
therein.

"God bless her," he answered; "and tell her I do thank her and pray
for her with all mime heart."

And more he would have added, but Master Rugeley opened the door
impatiently. So, after kissing once more my father's hand, I went
away, compelled thereunto by fears for his safety, if he should not at
once conceal himself.

Looking back, I saw him and his guide disappear in the thicket, and
then, as I walked on toward Lynn Court, it did almost seem to me as if
the whole of that brief but pregnant interview should have been a
dream; nor could I verily persuade myself that it was not a half
habitant of another world I had seen and spoken with rather than mine
own father; and in first thinking on it I scarcely did fully apprehend
the danger he was in, so as to feel as much pain as I did later, when
the joy and astonishment of that unexpected meeting had given way to
terrifying thoughts. Ever and anon I turned round to gaze on the dark
wood wherein his hopes of safety did lie, and once I knelt down on the
roadside to pray that the night should be also dark and shield his
escape. But still the sense of fear was dulled, and woke not until the
sound of horses' feet on the road struck on my ear, and I saw a party
of men riding across the common. The light in the cottage was
extinguished, but the cruel moon shone out then more brightly than
heretofore. Now I felt so sick and faint that I feared to sink down on
the path, and hurried through the orchard-door and the garden to the
house. When I had unlocked the back door and stood in the hall where a
lately kindled fire made a ruddy light to glow, I tried again to think
I had been dreaming, like one in a nightmare strives to shake off an
oppressive fancy. I could not remain alone, and composed my
countenance for to enter the parlor, when the door thereof opened and
Mrs. l'Estrange came out, who, when she perceived me standing before
her, gave a start, but recovering herself, said, good-naturedly:

"Marry, if this be not the ghost we have been looking for; now
ashamed, I ween, to show itself. I hope, Mistress Sherwood, you do not
haunt quiet folks in their beds at night; for I do, I warn you,
mislike living ghosts, and should be disposed to throw a jug of water
at the head of such a one." And laughing, she took my hand in a kind
manner, which when she did, almost a cry broke from her: "How now,
Milicent! she is as cold as a stone figure. Where has she been
chilling herself?"

Milicent pressed forward and led me to my chamber, wherein a fire had
been lighted, and would make me drink a hot posset. But when I thought
of the cold hollow of a tree wherein my father was enclosed, if it
pleased God no worse mishap had befallen him, little of it could I
force myself to swallow, for now tears had come to my relief, and
concealing my face in the pillow of the bed whereon for weariness I
had stretched myself, I wept very bitterly.

"Is that poor man gone from Rugeley's house?" Milicent whispered.

Alas! she knew not who that poor man was to me, nor with what anguish
I answered: "He is not in the {165} cottage, I hope; but God only
knoweth if his pursuers shall not discover him." The thought of what
would then follow overcame me, and I hid my face with mine hands.

"Oh, Constance," she exclaimed, "was this poor man known to thee, that
thy grief is so great, whose conscience doth not reproach thee as mine
doeth?"

I held out my hand to her without unshading my face with the other,
and said: "Dear Milicent! thou shouldst not sorrow so mach for thine
own part in this sore trial. It was not thy fault. He said so. He
blest thee, and prays for thee."

Uncomforted by my words, she cried again, what she had so often
exclaimed that night, "If this man should die, my happiness is over."

Then once more she asked me if I know this priest, and I was froward
with her (God forgive me, for the suspense and fear overthrew better
feelings for a moment), and I cried, angrily, "Who saith he is a
priest? Who can prove it?"

"Think you so?" she said joyfully; "then all should be right."

And once more, with some misdoubting, I ween, that I concealed
somewhat from her, she inquired touching my knowledge of this
stranger. Then I spoke harshly, and bade her leave me, for I had
sorrow enough without her intermeddling with it; but then grieving for
her, and also afraid to be left alone, I denied my words, and prayed
her to stay, which she did, but did not speak much again. The silence
of the night seemed so deep as if the rustling of a leaf could be
noticed; only now and then the voices of the gentlemen below, and some
loud talking and laughter from some of them was discernible through
the closed doors. Once Lady l'Estrange said: "They be sitting up very
late;  I suppose till the constables return. Oh, when will that be?"

The great clock in the hall then struck twelve; and soon after,
starting up, I cried, "What should be that noise?"

"I do hear nothing," she answered, trembling as a leaf.

"Hush," I replied, and going to the window, opened the lattice. The
sound in the road on the other side of the house was now plain. On
that we looked on naught was to be seen save trees and grass, with the
ghastly moonlight shining on them. A loud opening and shutting of
doors and much stir now took place within the house, and, moved by the
same impulse, we both went out into the passage and half way down the
stairs. Milicent was first. Suddenly she turned round, and falling
down on her knees, with a stifled exclamation, she hid her face
against me, whisperings "He is taken!"

We seemed both turned to stone. O ye which have gone through a like
trial, judge ye; and you who have never been in such straits, imagine
what a daughter should feel who, after long years' absence, beholdeth
a beloved father for one instant, and in the next, under the same roof
where she is a guest, sees him brought in a prisoner and in jeopardy
of his life. Every word which was uttered we could hear where we sat
crouching, fearful to advance--she not daring to look on the man she
had ruined, and I on the countenance of a dear parent, lest the sight
of me should distract him from his defence, if that could be called
such which he was called on to make. They asked him touching his name,
if it was Tunstall. He answered he was known by that name. Then
followed the murtherous question, if he was a Romish priest? To which
he at once assented. Then said Sir Hammond:

"How did you presume, sir, to return into England contrary to the
laws?"

"Sir," he answered, "as I was lawfully ordained a priest by a Catholic
bishop, by authority derived from the see of Rome" (one person here
exclaimed, "Oh, audacious papist! his {166} tongue should be cat out;"
but Sir Hammond imposed silence), "so likewise," he continued, "am I
lawfully sent to preach the word of God, and to administer the
sacraments to my Catholic countrymen. As the mission of priests
lawfully ordained is from Christ, who did send his apostles even as
his Father sent him, I do humbly conceive no human laws can justly
hinder my return to England, or make it criminal; for this should be
to prefer the ordinances of man to the commands of the supreme
legislator, which is Christ himself."

Loud murmurs were here raised by some present, which Sir Hammond again
silencing, he then inquired if he would take the oath of allegiance to
the queen? He answered (my straining ears taking note of every word he
uttered) that he would gladly pay most willing obedience to her
majesty in all civil matters; but the oath of allegiance, as it was
worded, he could not take, or hold her majesty to possess any
supremacy in spiritual matters. He was beginning to state the reasons
thereof, but was not suffered to proceed, for Sir Hammond,
interrupting him, said he was an escaped prisoner, and by his own
confession condemned, so he should straightway commit him to the gaol
in Norwich. Then I lost my senses almost, and seizing Lady
l'Estrange's arm, I cried, "Save him! he is mine own father, Mr.
Sherwood!" She uttered a sort of cry, and said, "Oh, I have feared
this, since I saw his face!" and running forward, I following her,
affrighted at what should happen, she called out, "It shall not be! He
shall not do it!" and with a face as white as any smock, runs to her
husband, and perceiving the constables to be putting chains on my
father's hands and feet, which I likewise beheld with what feelings
you who read this may think, she falls on her knees and gasps out
these words in such a mournful tone, that I shuddered to hear her,
"Oh, sir! if this man leaves this house a chained prisoner, I shall
never be the like of my-self again. There shall be no more joy for me
in life." And then faints right away, and Sir Hammond carries her in
his arms out of the hall. Mine eyes the while met my father's; who
smiled on me with kind cheer, but signed for me to keep away. I
stretched my arms toward him, and with his chained hand he contrived
yet once more for to bless me; then was hurried out of my sight. Far
more time than I ever did perceive or could remember the length of I
remained in that now deserted hall, motionless, alone, near to the
dying embers, the darkness still increasing, too much confused to
recall at once the comforts which sacred thoughts do yield in such
mishaps, only able to clasp my hand and utter broken sentences of
prayer, such as "God, ha' mercy on us," and the like; till about the
middle of the night, Sir Hammond comes down the stairs, with a lamp in
his hand, and a strange look in his face.

"Mistress Sherwood," he says, "come to my lady. She is very ill, and
hath been in labor for some time. She doth nothing but call for you,
and rave about that accursed priest she will have it she hath
murthered. Come and feign to her he hath escaped."

"O God!" I cried, "my words may fall on her ear, Sir Hammond, but my
face cannot deceive her."

He looked at me amazed and angry. "What meaneth this passion of grief?
What is this old man to you, that his misfortune should thus disorder
you?" And as I could not stay my weeping, he asked in a scornful
manner, "Do papists so dote on their priests as to die of sorrow when
they get their deserts?" This insulting speech did so goad me, that,
unable to restrain myself, I exclaimed, "Sir Hammond, he whom you have
sent to a dungeon, and perhaps to death also (God pardon you for it!),
is my true father!--the best parent and the noblest gentleman that
ever breathed, which for many years I had not seen; and here under
your roof, myself your guest, I {167} have beheld him loaded with
chains, and dared not to speak for fear to injure him yet further,
which I pray God I have not now done, moved thereunto by your cruel
scoffs."

"Your father!" he said amazed; "Mr. Sherwood! These cursed feignings
do work strange mishaps. But he did own himself a priest."

Before I had time to answer, a serving woman ran into the hall, crying
out, "Oh, sir, I pray you come to my lady. She is much worse; and the
nurse says, if her mind is not eased she is like to die before the
child is born."

"Oh, Milicent! sweet Milicent!" I cried, wringing my hands; and when I
looked at that unhappy husband's face, anger vanished and pity took
its place. He turned to me with an imploring countenance as if he
should wish to say, "None but you can save her." I prayed to Our Lady,
who stood and fainted not beneath the Rood, to get me strength for to
do my part in that sick chamber whither I signed to him to lead the
way. "God will help me," I whispered in his ear, "to comfort her."

"God bless you!" he answered in a hoarse voice, and opened the door of
the room in which his sweet lady was sitting in her bed, with a wild
look in her pale blue eyes, which seemed to start out of her head.

"Sir," I heard her say, as he approached, "what hath befallen the poor
man you would not dismiss?"

I took a light in my hand, so that she should see my face, and smiled
on her with such good cheer, as God in his mercy gave me strength to
do even amidst the two-fold anguish of that moment. Then she threw her
arms convulsively round my neck, and her pale lips gasped the same
question as before. I bent over her, and said, "Trouble yourself no
longer, dear lady, touching this prisoner. He is safe (in God's
keeping, I added, internally). He is where he is carefully tended (by
God's angels, I mentally subjoined); he hath no occasion to be afraid
(for God is his strength), and I warrant you is as peaceful as his
nearest friends should wish him to be."

"Is this the truth?" she murmured in my ear.

"Yea," I said, "the truth, the very truth," and kissed her flushed
cheek. Then feeing like to faint, I went away, Sir Hammond leading me
to my chamber, for I could scarce stand.

"God bless you!" he again said, when he left me, and I think he was
weeping.

I fell into a heavy, albeit troubled, sleep, and when I awoke it was
broad daylight. When the waiting-maid came in, she told me Lady
l'Estrange had been delivered of a dead child and Sir Hammond was
almost beside himself with grief. My lady's mind had wandered ever
since; but she was more tranquil than in the night. Soon after he sent
to ask if he could see me, and I went down to him into the parlor. A
more changed man, in a few hours, I ween, could not be seen, than this
poor gentleman. He spoke not of his lady; but briefly told me he had
sent in the night a messenger on horseback to Norwich, with a letter
to the governor of the gaol, praying him to show as much
consideration, and allow so much liberty as should consist with
prudence, to the prisoner in his custody, sent by him a few hours
before, for that he had discovered him not to be one of the common
sort, nor a lewd person, albeit by his own confession amenable to the
laws, and escaped from another prison. Then he added, that if I wished
to go to Norwich, and visit this prisoner, he would give me a letter
to the governor, and one to a lady, who would conveniently harbor me
for a while in that city, and his coach should take me there, or he
would lend me a horse and a servant to attend me. I answered, I should
be glad to go, and then said somewhat of his lady, hoping she should
now do well. He made no reply for a moment, and then only said,

"God knoweth! she is not like herself at the present."

The words she had so mournfully {168} spoken the day before came into
my mind, "I shall never be like myself again, and there shall be no
more joy in this house." And, methinks, they did haunt him also.

I sat for some time by her bedside that day. She seemed not ill at
ease, but there was something changed in her aspect, and her words
when she spoke had no sense or connection. And here I will set down,
before I relate the events which followed my brief sojourn under their
roof, what I have heard touching the sequel of Sir Hammond and his
wife's lives.

In that perilous and sorely troubled childbirth understanding was
alienated, and the art of the best physicians in England could never
restore it. She was not frantic; but had such a pretty deliration,
that in her ravings there was oftentimes more attractiveness than in
many sane persons' conversation. They mostly ran on pious themes, and
she was wont to sing psalms, and talk of heaven, and that she hoped to
see God there; and in many things she showed her old ability, such as
fine embroidery and the making of preserves. One day her waiting-woman
asked her to dress a person's wounds, which did greatly need it, and
she set herself to do it in her accustomed manner; but at the sight of
the wounds, she was seized with convulsions, and became violently
delirious, so that Sir Hammond sharply reprehended the imprudent
attendant, and forbade the like to be ever proposed to her again. He
gave himself up to live retired with her, and ceased to be a
magistrate, nor ever, that I could hear of, took any part again in the
persecution of Catholics. The distemper which had estranged her mind
in all things else, had left her love and obedience entire to her
husband; and he entertained a more visible fondness, and evinced a
greater respect for her after she was distempered than he had ever
done in the early days of their marriage. Methinks, the gentleness of
her heart, and delicacy of her conscience, which till that misfortune
had never, I ween, been burdened by any, even the least,
self-reproach, and the lack of strength in her mind to endure an
unusual stress, made the stroke of that accidental harm done to
another through her means too heavy for her sufferance, and, as the
poet saith, unsettled reason on her throne. For mine own part, but let
others consider of it as they list, I think that had she been a
Catholic by early training and distinct belief, as verily I hope she
was in rightful intention, albeit unconsciously to herself (as I make
no doubt many are in these days, wherein persons are growing up with
no knowledge of religion except what Protestant parents do instill
into them), that she would have had a greater courage for to bear this
singular trial; which to a feeling natural heart did prove unbearable,
but which to one accustomed to look on suffering as not the greatest
of evils, and to hold such as are borne for conscience sake as great
and glorious, would not have been so overwhelming. But herein I write,
methinks, mine own condemnation, for that in the anguish of filial
grief I failed to point out to her during those cruel moments of
suspense that which in retrospection I do so clearly see. And so, may
God accept the blighting of her young life, and the many sufferings of
mine which I have still to record, as pawns of his intended mercies to
both her and to me in his everlasting kingdom!

When I was about to set out for Norwich, late in the afternoon of that
same day, Sir Hammond's messenger returned from thence with a letter
from the governor of the gaol; wherein he wrote that the prisoner he
had sent the night before was to proceed to London in a few hours with
some other priests and recusants which the government had ordered to
be conveyed thither and committed to divers prisons. He added, that he
had complied with Sir Hammond's request, and shown so much favor to
Mr. Tunstall as to transfer him, as soon as he {169} received his
letter, from the common dungeon to a private cell, and to allow him to
speak with another Catholic prisoner who had desired to see him. Upon
this I prayed Sir Hammond to forward me on my journey to London, as
now I desired nothing so much as to go there forthwith; which he did
with no small alacrity and good disposition. Then, with so much speed
as was possible, and so much suffering from the lapse of each hour
that it seemed to me the journey should never end, I proceeded to what
was now the object of my most impatient pinings--the place where I
should bear tidings of my father, and, if it should be possible,
minister assistance to him in his great straits. At last I reached
Holborn; and, to the no small amazement of my uncle, Mrs. Ward, and
Muriel, revealed to them who Mr. Tunstall was, whose arrival at the
prison of Bridewell Mrs. Ward had had notice of that morning, when she
had been to visit Mr. Watson, which she had contrived to do for some
time past in the manner I will soon relate.



CHAPTER XVI.

One of the first persons I saw in London was Hubert Rookwood, who,
when he heard (for being Basil's brother I would not conceal it from
him) that my father was in prison at Bridewell, expressed so much
concern therein and resentment of my grief, that I was thereby moved
to more kindly feelings toward him than I had of late entertained. He
said that in the houses of the law which he frequented he had made
friends which he hoped would intercede in his behalf, and therein
obtain, if not his release, yet so much alleviation of the hardships
of a common prison as should render his condition more tolerable, and
that he would lose no time in seeking to move them thereunto; but that
our chief hope would lie in Sir Francis Walsingham, who, albeit much
opposed to papists, had always showed himself willing to assist his
friends of that way of thinking, and often procured for them some
relief, which indeed none had more experienced than Mr. Congleton
himself. Hubert commended the secrecy which had been observed touching
my father's real name; for if he should be publicly known to be
possessed of lands and related to noble families, it should be harder
for any one to get him released than an obscure person; but
nevertheless he craved license to intimate so much of the truth to Sir
Francis as should appear convenient, for he had always observed that
gentlemen are more compassionate to those of their own rank than to
others of meaner birth. Mr. Congleton prayed him to use his own
discretion therein, and said he should acquaint no one himself of it
except his very good friend the Portuguese ambassador, who, if all
other resources failed, might yet obtain of the queen herself some
mitigation of his sentence. Thereupon followed some days of weary
watching and waiting, in which my only comfort was Mistress Ward, who,
by means of the gaoler's wife, who had obliged her in the like manner
before, did get access from time to time to Mr. Watson, and brought
him necessaries. From him she discovered that the prisoner in the
nearest cell to his own was the so-called Mr. Tunstall, and that by
knocks against the wall, ingeniously numbered so as to express the
letters of the alphabet, as one for _a_, two for _b_, and so to the
end thereof, they did communicate. So she straightway began to
practice this management; but time allowed not of many speeches to
pass between them. Yet in this way he sent me his blessing, and that
he was of very good cheer; but that none should try for to visit him,
for he had only one fear, which was to bring others into trouble; and,
for himself, he was much beholden to her majesty, which had provided
him with a quiet lodging and time to look to his soul's welfare; {170}
which evidence of his cheerful and pious spirit comforted me not a
little. Then that dear friend which had brought me this good comfort
spoke of Mr. Watson, and said she desired to procure his escape from
prison more than that of any other person in the same plight, not
excepting my father. "For, good Constance," quoth she, "when a man is
blest with a stout heart and cheerful mind, except it be for the sake
of others, I pray you what kind of service do you think we render him
by delaying the victory he is about to gain, and peradventure
depriving him of the long-desired crown of martyrdom? But this good
Mr. Watson, who as you well know was a zealous priest and pious
missioner, nevertheless, some time after his apprehension and
confinement in Bridewell, by force of torments and other miseries of
that place, was prevailed upon to deny his faith so far as to go once
to the Protestant service--not dragged there by force as some have
been, but compelled thereunto by fear of intolerable sufferings, and
was then set at liberty. But the poor man did not thus better his
condition; for the torments of his mind, looking on himself as an
apostate and traitor to the Church, he found to be more insupportable
than any sufferings his gaolers put upon him. So, after some miserable
weeks, he went to one of the prisons where some other priests were
confined for to seek comfort and counsel from them; and, having
confessed his fault with great and sincere sorrow, he received
absolution, and straightway repaired to that church in Bridewell
wherein he had in a manner denied his faith, and before all the people
at that time therein assembled, declared himself a Catholic, and
willing to go to prison and to death sooner than to join again in
Protestant worship. Whereupon he was laid hold of, dragged to prison,
and thrown into a dungeon so low and so straight that he could neither
stand up in it nor lay himself down at his full length to sleep. They
loaded him with irons, and kept him one whole month on bread and
water; nor would suffer any one to come near him to comfort or speak
with him."

"Alas!" I cried, "and is this, then, the place where my father is
confined?'

"No,", she answered; "after the space of a month Mr. Watson was
translated to a lodging at the top of the house, wherein the prisoners
are leastways able to stretch their limbs and to see the light; but he
having been before prevailed on to yield against his conscience
touching that point of going to Protestant worship, no peace is left
to him by his persecutors, which never cease to urge on him some sort
of conformity to their religion. And, Constance, when a man hath once
been weak, what security can there be, albeit I deny not hope, that he
shall always after stand firm?"

"But by what means," I eagerly asked, '"do you forecast to procure his
escape?"

"I have permission," she answered, "to bring him necessaries, which I
do in a basket, on condition that I be searched at going in and coming
out, for to make sure I convey not any letter unto him or from him;
and this was so strictly observed the first month that they must needs
break open the loaves or pies I take to him lest any paper should be
conveyed inside. But they begin now to weary of this strict search,
and do not care at ways to hearken when I speak with him; so he could
tell me the last time I did visit him that he had found a way by which
if he had but a cord long enough for his purpose, he could let himself
down from the top of the house, and so make his escape in the night."

"Oh," I cried, "dear Mistress Ward, but this is a perilous venture, to
aid a prisoner's escape. One which a daughter might run for her
father, oh, how willingly, but for a stranger--"

"A stranger!" she answered. "Is he a stranger for whom Christ died,
and whose precious soul is in danger. {171} even if not a priest; and
being so, is he not entitled to more than common reverence, chiefly in
these days when God's servants minister to us in the midst of such
great straits to both soul and body?'

"I cry God mercy," I said; "I did term him a stranger who gave ghostly
comfort to my dear mother on her death-bed; but oh, dear Mistress
Ward, I thought on your peril, who, he knoweth, hath been as a mother
to me for these many years. And then-if you are resolved to run this
danger, should it not be possible to save my father also by the same
means? Two cords should not be more difficult to convey, methinks,
than one, and the peril not greater."

"If I could speak with him," she replied, "it would not be impossible.
I will tell Muriel to make two instead of one of these cords, which
she doth twine in some way she learnt from a Frenchman, so strong as,
albeit slight, to have the strength of a cable. But without we do
procure two men with a boat for to fetch the prisoners when they
descend, 'tis little use to make the attempt. And it be easier, I
warrant thee, Constance, to run one's self into a manifest danger than
to entice others to the like."

"Should it be safe," I asked, "to speak thereon to Hubert Rookwood? He
did exhibit this morning much zeal in my father's behalf, and promised
to move Sir Francis Walsingham to procure his release."

"How is he disposed touching religion? she asked, in a doubtful
manner.

"Alas!" I answered, "there is a secrecy in his nature which in more
ways than one doth prove unvestigable, leastways to me; but when he
comes this evening I will sound him thereon. Would his brother were in
London! Then we should not lack counsel and aid in this matter."

"We do sorely need both," she answered; "for your good uncle, than
which a better man never lived, wanes feeble in body, and hence easily
overcome by the fears such enterprises involve. Mr. Wells is not in
London at this tune, or he should have been a very palladium of
strength in this necessity. Hubert Rookwood hath, I think, a good
head."

"What we do want is a brave heart," I replied, thinking on Basil.

"But wits also," she said.

"Basil hath them too," I answered, forgetting that only in mine own
thinking had he been named.

"Yea," she cried, "who doth doubt it? but, alas! he is not here."

Then I prayed her not to be too rash in the prosecution of her design.
"Touching my father," I said, "I have yet some hope of his release;
and as long as any remaineth, flight should be methinks a too
desperate attempt to be thought of."

"Yea," she answered, "in most cases it would be so." But Mr. Watson's
disposition she perceived to be such as would meet a present danger
and death itself, she thought, with courage, but not of that stamp
which could endure prolonged fears or infliction of torments.

Since my coming to London I had been too much engaged in these weighty
cares to go abroad; but on that day I resolved, if it were possible,
to see my Lady Surrey. A report had reached me that the breach between
her and her husband had so much deepened that a separation had ensued,
which if true, I, which knew her as well almost as mine own self,
could judge what her grief must be. I was also moved to this endeavor
by the hope that if my Lord Arundel was not too sick to be spoken
with, she should perhaps obtain some help through his means for that
dear prisoner whose captivity did weigh so heavily on my heart.

So, with a servant to attend on me, I went through the city to the
Chapter-house, and with a misgiving mind heard from the porter that
Lady Surrey lodged not there, but at Arundel House, whither she had
removed soon after her coming to London. {172} Methought that in the
telling of it this man exhibited a sorrowful countenance; but not
choosing to question one of his sort on so weighty a matter, I went on
to Arundel House, where, after some delay, I succeeded in gaining
admittance to Lady Surrey's chamber, whose manner, when she first saw
me, lacked the warmth which I was used to in her greetings. There
seemed some fear in her lest I should speak unadvisedly that which she
would be loth to hear; and her strangeness and reserve methinks arose
from reluctance to have the wound in her heart probed,--too sore a
one, I ween, even for the tender handling of a friend. I inquired of
her if my Lord Arundel's health had improved. She said he was better,
and like soon to be as well as could be hoped for now-a-days, when his
infirmities had much increased.

"Then you will return to Kenninghall?" I said, letting my speech
outrun discretion.

"No," she replied; "I purpose never more to leave my Lord Arundel or
my Lady Lumley as long as they do live, which I pray God may be many
years."

And then she sat without speaking, biting her lips and wringing the
kerchief she held in her hands, as if to keep her grief from
outbursting. I dared not to comment on her resolve, for I foresaw that
the least word which should express some partaking of her sorrow, or
any question relating to it, would let loose a torrent weakly stayed
by a mightful effort, not like to be of long avail. So I spoke of mine
own troubles, and the events which had occasioned my sudden departure
from Lynn Court. She had heard of Lady l'Estrange's mishap, and that
the following day I had journeyed to London; but naught of the causes
thereof, or of the apprehension of any priest by Sir Hammond's orders.
Which, when she learnt the manner of this misfortune, and the poor
lady's share therein, and that it was my father she had thus
unwittingly discovered, her countenance softened, and throwing her
arms round my neck, she bitterly wept, which at that moment methinks
did her more good than anything else.

"Oh, mine own good Constance," she said, "I doubt not nature riseth
many passionate workings in your soul at this time; but, my dear
wench, when good men are in trouble our grief for them should be as
noble as their virtues. Bethink thee what a worst sorrow it should be
to have a vile father, one that thou must needs love,--for who can
tear out of his heart affection strong as life?--and he should then
prove unworthy. Believe me, Constance, God gives to each, even in this
world, a portion of their deserts. Such griefs as thy present one I
take to be rare instances of his favor. Other sorts of trials are meet
for cowardly souls which refuse to set their lips to a chalice of
suffering, and presently find themselves submerged in a sea of woes.
But can I help thee, sweet one? Is there aught I can do to lighten thy
affliction? Hast thou license for to see thy father?"

"No, dear lady," I answered; "and his name being concealed, I may not
petition as his daughter for this permission; but if my Lord Arundel
should be so good a lord to me as to obtain leave for me to visit this
prisoner, without revealing his name and condition, he should do me
the greatest benefit in the world."

"I will move him thereunto," my lady said. "But he who had formerly no
equal in the queen's favor, and to whom she doth partly owe her crown,
is now in his sickness and old age of so little account in her eyes,
that trifling favors are often denied him to whom she would once have
said: 'Ask of me what thou wilt, and I will give it unto thee.' But
what my poor endeavors can effect through him or others shall not be
lacking in this thy need. But I am not in that condition I was once
like to have enjoyed." Then with her eyes cast on the ground she
seemed for to doubt if she should {173} speak plainly, or still shut
up her grief in silence. As I sat painfully expecting her next words,
the door opened, and two ladies were announced, which she whispered in
mine ear she would fain not have admitted at that time, but that Lord
Arundel's desire did oblige her to entertain them. One was Mistress
Bellamy, and the other her daughter, Mistress Frances, a young
gentlewoman of great beauty and very lively parts, which I had once
before seen at Lady Ingoldsby's house. She was her parents' sole
daughter, and so idolized by them that they seemed to live only to
minister to her fancies. Lord Arundel was much bounden to this family
by ancient ties of friendship, which made him urgent with his
granddaughter that she should admit them to her privacy. I admired in
this instance how suddenly those which have been used to exercise such
self-command as high breeding doth teach can school their exterior to
seem at ease, and even of good cheer, when most ill at ease
interiorly, and with hearts very heavy. Lady Surrey greeted these
visitors with as much courtesy, and listened to their discourse with
as much civility and smiles when called for, as if no burthensome
thoughts did then oppress her.

Many and various themes were touched upon in the random talk which
ensued. First, that wonted one of the queen's marriage, which some
opined should verily now take place with Monsieur d'Alençon; for that
since his stealthy visits to England, she did wear in her bosom a
brooch of jewels in a frog's shape.

"Ay," quoth Mistress Frances, "that stolen visit which awoke the ire
of the poor soul Stubbs, who styled it 'an unmanlike, unprincelike,
French kind of wooing,' and endeth his book of 'The Gaping Gulph' in a
loyal rage: 'Here is, therefore, an imp of the crown of France, to
marry the crowned nymph of England,'--a nymph indeed well stricken in
years. My brother was standing by when Stubbs' hand was cut off; for
nothing else would content that sweet royal nymph, albeit the lawyers
stoutly contended the statute under which he suffered to be null and
void. As soon as his right hand is off, the man takes his hat off with
the left, and cries 'God bless the queen!'"

"Here is a wonder," I exclaimed; "I pray you, what is the art this
queen doth possess by which she holdeth the hearts of her subjects in
so great thrall, albeit so cruel to them which do offend her?"

"Lady Harrington hath told me her majesty's own opinion thereon," said
Mrs. Bellamy; "for one day she did ask her in a merry sort, 'How she
kept her husband's good-will and love?' To which she made reply that
she persuaded her husband of her affection, and in so doing did
command his. Upon which the queen cries out, 'Go to, go to, Mistress
Moll! you are wisely bent, I find. After such sort do I keep the good
wills of all my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest
assured of some special love toward them, they would not readily yield
me such good obedience.'"

"Tut, tut!" cried Mistress Frances; "all be not such fools as John
Stubbs; and she knoweth how to take rebukes from such as she doth not
dare to offend. By the same token that Sir Philip Sydney hath written
to dissuade her from this French match, and likewise Sir Francis
Walsingham, which last did hint at her advancing years; and her
highness never so much as thought of striking off their hands. But I
warrant you a rebellion shall arise if this queen doth issue such
prohibitions as she hath lately done."

"Of what sort?" asked Lady Surrey.

"First, to forbid," Mrs. Bellamy said, "any new building to be raised
within three thousand paces of the gates of London on pain of
imprisonment, and sundry other penalties; or for more than one family
to inhabit in one house. For her majesty holds it {174} should be an
impossible thing to govern or maintain order in a city larger than
this London at the present time."

Mistress Frances declared this law to be more tolerable than the one
against the size of ladies' ruffs, which were forsooth not to exceed a
certain measure; and officers appointed for to stand at the comers of
streets and to clip such as overpassed the permitted dimensions, which
sooner than submit to she should die.

Lady Surrey smiled, and said she should have judged so from the size
of her fine ruff.

"But her majesty is impartial," quoth Mrs. Bellamy; "for the
gentlemen's rapiers are served in the same manner. And verily this law
hath nearly procured a war with France; for in Smithfield Lane some
clownish constables stayed M. de Castelnau, and laid hands on his
sword for to shorten it to the required length. I leave you to judge.
Lady Surrey, of this ambassador's fury. Sir Henry Seymour, who was
tidying the air in Smithfield at the time, perceived him standing with
the drawn weapon in his hand, threatening to kill whosoever should
approach him, and destruction on this realm of England if the officers
should dare to touch his sword again; and this with such frenzy of
speech in French mixed with English none could understand, that God
knoweth what should have ensued if Sir Henry had not interfered. Her
majesty was forced to make an apology to this mounseer for that her
officers had ignorantly attempted to clip the sword of her good
brother's envoy."

"Why doth she not clip," Mistress Frances said, "if such be her
present humor, the orange manes of her gray Dutch horses, which are
the frightfullest things in the world?"

"Tis said," quoth Mrs. Bellamy, "that a new French embassy is soon
expected, with the dauphin of Auvergne at its head."

"Yea," cried her daughter, "and four handsome English noblemen to meet
them at the Tower stairs, and conduct them to the new banqueting-house
at Westminster,--my Lord Surrey, Lord Windsor, Sir Philip Sydney, and
Sir Fulke Greville. Methinks this should be a very fine sight, if rain
doth not fall to spoil it."

I saw my Lady Surrey's countenance change when her husband was
mentioned; and Mrs. Bellamy looked at her daughter forasmuch as to
check her thoughtless speeches, which caused this young lady to glance
round the room, seeking, as it seemed, for some other topic of
conversation.

Methinks I should not have preserved so lively a recollection of the
circumstances of this visit if some dismal tidings which reached me
afterward touching this gentlewoman, then so thoughtless and innocent,
had not revived in me the memory of her gay prattle, bright unabashed
eyes, and audacious dealing with subjects so weighty and dangerous,
that any one less bold should have feared to handle them. After the
pause which ensued on the mention of Lord Surrey's name, she took for
her text what had been said touching the prohibitions lately issued
concerning ruffs and rapiers, and began to mock at her majesty's
favorites; yea, and to mimic her majesty herself with so much humor
that her well-acted satire must have needs constrained any one to
laugh. Then, not contented with these dangerous jests, she talked such
direct treason against her highness as to say she hoped to see her
dethroned, and a fair Catholic sovereign to reign in her stead, who
would be less shrewish to young and handsome ladies. Then her mother
cried her, for mercy's sake, to restrain her mad speech, which would
serve one day to bring them all into trouble, for all she meant it in
jest.

"Marry, good mother," she answered, "not in jest at all; for I do
verily hold myself bound to no allegiance to this queen, and would
gladly see her get her deserts."

Then Lady Surrey prayed her not to speak so rashly; but methought in
{175} her heart, and somewhat I could perceive of this in her eyes,
she misliked not wholly this young lady's words, who then spoke of
religion; and oh, how zealous therein she did appear, how boldly
affirmed (craving Lady Surrey's pardon, albeit she would warrant, she
said, there was no need to do so, her ladyship she had heard being
half a papist herself) that she had as lief be racked twenty times
over and die also, or her face to be so disfigured that none should
call her ever after anything but a fright--which martyrdom she held
would exceed any yet thought of--than so much as hold her tongue
concerning her faith, or stay from telling her majesty to her face, if
she should have the chance to get speech with her, that she was a foul
heretic, and some other truths beside, which but once to utter in her
presence, come of it what would, should be a delicious pleasure. Then
she railed at the Catholics which blessed the queen before they
suffered for their religion, proving them wrong with ingenious reasons
and fallacious arguments mixed with pleasantries not wholly becoming
such grave themes. But it should have seemed as reasonable to be angry
with a child babbling at random of life and death in the midst of its
play, as with this creature, the lightest of heart, the fairest in
face, the most winsome in manner, and most careless of danger, that
ever did set sail on life's stream.

Oh, how all this rose before me again, when I heard, two years
afterward, that for her bold recusancy--alas! more bold, as the
sequel proved, than deep, more passionate than fervent--this only
cherished daughter, this innocent maiden, the mirror of whose fame no
breath had sullied, and on whose name no shadow had rested, was torn
by the pursuivants from her parents' home, and cast into a prison with
companions at the very aspect of which virtue did shudder. And the
unvaliant courage, the weak bravery, of this indulged and wayward
young lady had no strength wherewith to resist the surging tides of
adversity. No voice of parent, friend, or ghostly father reached her
in that abode of despair. No visible angel visited her, but a fiend in
human form haunted her dungeon. Liberty and pleasure he offered in
exchange for virtue, honor, and faith. She fell; sudden and great was
that fall.

There is a man the name of which hath blenched the cheeks and riven
the hearts of Catholics, one who hath caused many amongst them to lose
their lands and to part from their homes, to die on gibbets and their
limbs to be torn asunder--one Richard Topcliffe. But, methinks, of all
the voices which shall be raised for to accuse him at Christ's
judgment-seat, the loudest will be Frances Bellamy's. Her ruin was his
work; one of those works which, when a man is dead, do follow him;
whither, God knoweth!

Oh, you who saw her, as I did, in her young and innocent years, can
you read this without shuddering? Can you think on it without weeping?
As her fall was sudden, so was the change it wrought. With it vanished
affections, hopes, womanly feelings, memory of the past; nay, methinks
therein I err. Memory did yet abide, but linked with hatred; Satan's
memory of heaven. From depths to depths she hath sunk, and is now
wedded to a mean wretch, the gaoler of her old prison. So rank a
hatred hath grown in her against recusants and mostly priests, that it
rages like a madness in her soul, which thirsts for their blood. Some
months back, about the time I did begin to write this history, news
reached me that she had sold the life of that meek saint, that sweet
poet, Father Southwell, of which even an enemy, Lord Mountjoy, did
say, when he had seen him suffer, "I pray God, where that man's soul
now is, mine may one day be." Her father had concealed him in that
house where she had dwelt in her innocent days. None but the family
knew the secret of its hiding-place. {176}so will be ready in Ireland
She did reveal it, and took gold for her wages! What shall be that
woman's death-bed? What trace doth remain on her soul of what was once
a share in the divine nature? May one of God's ministers be nigh unto
her in that hour for to bid her not despair! If Judas had repented,
Jesus would have pardoned him. Peradventure, misery without hope of
relief overthrew her brain. I do pray for her always. 'Tis a vain
thought perhaps, but I sometimes wish I might, though I see not how to
compass it, yet once speak with her before she or I die. Methinks I
could say such words as should touch some old chord in her dead heart.
God knoweth! That day I write of, little did I ween what her end would
be. But yet it feared me to hear one so young and of so frail an
aspect speak so boastfully; and it seemed even then to my
inexperienced mind, that my Lady Surrey, who had so humbly erewhile
accused herself of cowardice and lamented her weakness, should be in a
safer plight, albeit as yet unreconciled.

The visit I have described had lasted some time, when a servant came
with a message to her ladyship from Mr. Hubert Rookwood, who craved to
be admitted on an urgent matter. She glanced at me somewhat surprised,
upon which I made her a sign that she should condescend to his
request; for I supposed he had seen Sir Francis Walsingham, and was in
haste to confer with me touching that interview; and she ordered him
to be admitted. Mrs. Bellamy and her daughter rose to go soon after
his entrance; and whilst Lady Surrey conducted them to the door he
asked me if her ladyship was privy to the matter in hand. When I had
satisfied him thereof, he related what had passed in an interview he
had with Sir Francis, whom he found ill-disposed at first to stir in
the matter, for he said his frequent remonstrances in favor of
recusants had been like to bring him into odium with some of the more
zealous Protestants, and that he must needs, in every case of that
sort, prove it to be his sole object to bring such persons more
surely, albeit slowly, by means of toleration, to a rightful
conformity; and that with regard to priests he was very loth to
interfere.

"I was compelled," quoth Hubert, "to use such arguments as fell in
with the scope of his discourse, and to flatter him with the hope of
good results in that which he most desired, if he would procure Mr.
Sherwood's release, which I doubt not he hath power to effect. And in
the end he consented to lend his aid therein, on condition he should
prove on his side so far conformable as to suffer a minister to visit
and confer with him touching religion, which would then be a pretext
for his release, as if it were supposed he was well disposed toward
Protestant religion, and a man more like to embrace the truth when at
liberty than if driven to it by stress of confinement. Then he would
procure," he added, "an order for his passage to France, if he
promised not to return, except he should be willing to obey the laws."

"I fear me much," I answered, "my father will not accept these terms
which Sir Francis doth offer. Methinks he will consider they do
involve some lack of the open profession of his faith."

"It would be madness for one in his plight to refuse them," Hubert
exclaimed, and appealed thereon to Lady Surrey, who said she did
indeed think as he did, for it was not like any better could be
obtained.

It pained me he should refer to her, who from conformity to the times
could not well conceive how tender a Catholic conscience should feel
at the least approach to dissembling on this point.

"Wherein," he continued, "is the harm for to confer with a minister,
or how can it be construed into a denial of a man's faith to listen to
his arguments, unless, indeed, he feels himself to be in danger of
being shaken by them?"

"You very well know," I exclaimed {177} with some warmth, "that not to
be my meaning, or what I suppose his should be. Our priests do
constantly crave for public disputations touching religion, albeit
they eschew secret ones, which their adversaries make a pretext of to
spread reports of their inability to defend their faith, or
willingness to abandon it. But heaven forbid I should anyways prejudge
this question; and if with a safe conscience--and with no other I am
assured will he do it--my father doth subscribe to this condition,
then God be praised for it!"

"But you will move him to it, Mistress Constance?" he said.

"If I am so happy," I answered, "as to get speech with him, verily I
will entreat him not to throw away his life, so precious to others, if
so be he can save it without detriment to his conscience."

"Conscience!" Hubert exclaimed, "methinks that word is often
misapplied in these days."

"How so?" I asked, investigating his countenance, for I misdoubted his
meaning. Lady Surrey likewise seemed desirous to hear what he should
say on that matter.

"Conscience," he answered, "should make persons, and mostly women,
careful how they injure others, and cause heedless suffering, by a too
great stiffness in refusing conformity to the outward practices which
the laws of the country enforce, when it affects not the weightier
points of faith, which God forbid any Catholic should deny. There is
often as much of pride as of virtue in such rash obstinacy touching
small yieldings as doth involve the ruin of a family, separation of
parents and children, and more evils than can be thought of."

"Hubert," I said, fixing mine eyes on him with a searching look he
cared not, I ween, to meet, for he cast his on a paper he had in his
hand, and raised them not while I spoke, "'sit is by such reasonings
first, and then by such small yieldings as you commend, that some have
been led two or three times in their lives, yea, oftener perhaps, to
profess different religions, and to take such contradictory oaths as
have been by turns prescribed to them under different sovereigns, and
God each time called on to witness their perjuries, whereby truth and
falsehood in matters of faith shall come in time to be words without
any meaning."

Then he: "You do misapprehend me, Mistress Constance, if you think I
would counsel a man to utter a falsehood, or feign to believe that
which in his heart he thinketh to be false. But, in heaven's name, I
pray you, what harm will your father do if he listens to a minister's
discourse, and suffers it to be set forth he doth ponder thereon, and
in the meantime escapes to France? whereas, if he refuses the loophole
now offered to him, he causeth not to himself alone, but to you and
his other friends, more pain and sorrow than can be thought of, and
deprives the Church of one of her servants, when her need of them is
greatest."

I made no reply to this last speech; for albeit I thought my father
would not accede to these terms, I did not so far trust mine own
judgment thereon as to predict with certainty what his answer should
be. And then Hubert said he had an order from Sir Francis that would
admit me on the morrow to see my father; and he offered to go with me,
and Mistress Ward too, if I listed, to present it, albeit I alone
should enter his cell. I thanked him, and fixed the time of our going.

When he had left  us,  Lady Surrey commended his zeal, and also his
moderate spirit, which did charitably allow, she said, for such as
conformed to the times for the sake of others which their
reconcilement would very much injure.

Before I could reply she changed this discourse, and, putting her
hands on my shoulders and kissing my forehead, said,

"My Lady Lumley hath heard so much from her poor niece of one {178}
Mistress Constance Sherwood, that she doth greatly wish to see this
young gentlewoman and very resolved papist." And then taking me by the
arm she led me to that lady's chamber, where I had as kind a welcome
as ever I received from any one from her ladyship, who said "her dear
Nan's friends should be always as dear to her as her own," and added
many fine commendations greatly exceeding my deserts.


[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

From The London Quarterly Review.

GLEANINGS FROM THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE TROPICS.


ART. VI.--1. _A Narrative Of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro,
etc._By Alfred R. Wallace. London: 1853.

2. _Himalayan Journals; or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the
Sikkim, and Nepal Himalayas_. By Joseph D. Hooker, M.D., R.N., F.R.S.
London: 1854.

3. _Three Visits to Madagascar during the Years_1853, 1854, 1856,
_with Notices of the Natural History of the Country, etc._ By the Rev.
W. Ellis, F.H.S. London: 1859.

4. _The Tropical World: A Popular Scientific Account of the Natural
History of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms._By Dr. G. Hartwig.
London: 1863.

5. _The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures,
Habits of Animals, etc., during eleven Years of Travel._ By Henry
Walter Bates. London: 1863.


The naturalist will never have to complain, with Alexander, that he
has no more worlds to conquer, so inexhaustible is the wide field of
nature, and so numerous are the vast areas which as yet have never at
all, or only partially, been explored by travellers. What may not be
in store for some future adventurer in little known regions; what new
and wonderful forms of animals and plants may not reward the zealous
traveller, when no less than eight thousand species of animals new to
science have been discovered by Mr. Bates during his eleven years'
residence on the Amazons? Nor is it alone new forms of animated nature
that await the enterprise of the naturalist; a whole mine of valuable
material, the working of which is attended with the greatest pleasure,
lies before him in the discovery of new facts with regard to the
habits, structure, and local distribution of animals and plants. It is
almost impossible to exaggerate the importance to the philosophic
naturalist of such studies in these days of thought and progress. The
collector of natural curiosities may be content with the possession of
a miscellaneous lot of objects, but the man of science pursues his
investigations with a view of discovering, if possible, some of those
wonderful laws which govern the organic world, some of the footprints
of the Creator in the production of the countless forms of animal and
vegetable life with which this beautiful world abounds.

We purpose in this article to bring before the reader's notice a few
gleanings from the natural history of the tropics, merely surmising
that we shall linger with more than ordinary pleasure over the
productions of tropical {179} South America, of which Mr. Bates has
charmingly and most instructively written in his recently published
work, whose title is given at the head of this article; we shall pause
to admire, with Dr. Hooker, some of the productions of the mighty
Himalayan mountains; and we may also visit Madagascar in company with
so trustworthy a traveller as Mr. Ellis.

The ancients, before the time of Alexander's Indian expedition, were
unacquainted with any tropical forms of plants, and great was their
astonishment when they first beheld them:

"Gigantic forms of plants and animals," as Humboldt says, "filled the
imagination with exciting imagery. Writers from whose severe and
scientific style any degree of inspiration is elsewhere entirely
absent, become poetical when describing the habits of the
elephant,--the height of the trees, 'to the summit of which an arrow
cannot reach, and whose leaves are broader then the shields of
infantry,'--the bamboo, a light, feathery, arborescent grass, of which
single joints (_internodia_) served as four-oared boats,--and the
Indian fig-tree, whose pendant branches take root around the parent
stem, which attains a diameter of twenty-eight feet, 'forming,' as
Onesicritus expresses himself with great truth to nature, 'a leafy
canopy similar to a many-pillared tent.'"   [Footnote 24]

  [Footnote 24: "Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 155. Sabine's translation ]

It is not possible for language to describe the glory of the forests
of the Amazon, and yet the silence and gloom of the Brazilian forests,
so often mentioned by travellers, are striking realities. Let us read
Mr. Bates's impressions of the interior of a primeval forest:

"The silence and gloom," he says, "are realities, and the impression
deepens on a longer acquaintance. The few sounds of birds are of that
pensive and mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of
solitude rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness.
Sometimes in the midst of the stillness a sudden yell or scream will
startle one; this comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal
which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor.
Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most fearful and
harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy
of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is
calculated to inspire is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar.
Often even in the still hours of mid-day a sudden crash will be heard
resounding afar through the wilderness, as some great bough or entire
tree falls to the ground. There are beside many sounds which it is
impossible to account for. I found the natives generally as much at a
loss in this respect as myself. Sometimes a sound is heard like the
clang of an iron bar against a hard hollow tree, or a piercing cry
rends the air; these are not repeated, and the succeeding silence
tends to heighten the unpleasant impression which they make on the
mind. With the natives it is always the curupira, the wild man, or
spirit of the forest, which produces all noises they are unable to
explain."

Mr. Bates has some exceedingly interesting observations on the
tendency of animals and plants of the Brazilian forests to become
climbers. Speaking of a swampy forest of Pará he says:

  "The leafy crowns of the trees, scarcely two of which could be seen
  together of the same kind, were now far away above us, in another
  world as it were. We could only see at times, where there was a
  break above, the tracery of the foliage against the clear blue sky.
  Sometimes the leaves were palmate, at others finely cut or feathery
  like the leaves of mimosae. Below, the tree trunks were everywhere
  linked together by sipos; the woody, flexible stems of climbing and
  creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that
  of the latter {180} independent trees. Some were twisted in strands
  like cables, others had thick stems contorted in every variety of
  shape, entwining snake-like round the tree-trunks, or forming
  gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others again
  were of zigzag shape or indented like the steps of a staircase,
  sweeping from the ground to a giddy height."

Of these climbing plants he adds:

  "It interested me much afterward to find these climbing trees do not
  form any particular family or genus. There is no order of plants
  whose especial habit is to climb, but species of many of the most
  diverse families, the bulk of whose members are not climbers, seem
  to have been driven by circumstances to adopt this habit. The orders
  Leguminosae, Guttifenae, Bignoniaceae, Moraceae, and others, furnish
  the greater number. There is even a climbing genus of palms
  (_Desmoncus_), the species of which are called in the Tupí language
  Jacitára. These have slender, thickly-spined, and flexuous stems,
  which twine about the latter trees from one to the other, and grow
  to an incredible length. The leaves, which have the ordinary pinnate
  shape characteristic of the family, are emitted from the stems at
  long intervals, instead of being collected into a dense crown, and
  have at their tips a number of long recurved spines. These
  structures are excellent contrivances to enable the trees to secure
  themselves by in climbing, but they are a great nuisance to the
  traveller, for they sometimes hang over the pathway and catch the
  hat or clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other as he
  passes. The number and variety of climbing trees in the Amazon
  forests are interesting, taken in connection with the fact of the
  very general tendency of the animals also to become climbers."

Of this tendency amongst animals Mr. Bates thus writes:

  "All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American monkeys, are
  climbers. There is no group answering to the baboons of the old
  world, which live on the ground. The gallinaceous birds of the
  country, the representatives of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and
  Africa, are all adapted by the position of the toes to perch on
  trees, and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are to
  be seen. A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to the bears
  (_Cercoleptes_), found only in the Amazonian forests, is entirely
  arboreal, and has a long flexible tail like that of certain monkeys.
  Many other similar instances could be enumerated, but I will mention
  only the Geodephaga, or carnivorous ground beetles, a great
  proportion of whose genera and species in these forest regions are,
  by the structure of their feet, fitted to live exclusively on the
  branches and leaves of trees."

  Strange to the European must be the appearance of the numerous woody
  lianas, or air-roots of the parasitic plants of the family _Araceae_
  of which the well-known cuckoo-pint, or _Arum maculatum_, of this
  country is a non-epiphytous member, which sit on the branches of the
  trees above, and "hang down straight as plumb-lines," some singly,
  others in leashes; some reaching half-way to the ground, others
  touching it, and taking root in the ground. Here, too, in these
  forests of Pará, beside palms of various species, "some twenty to
  thirty feet high, others small and delicate, with stems no thicker
  than a finger," of the genus _Bactris_, producing bunches of fruit
  with grape-like juice, masses of a species of banana (_Urania
  Amizonica_), a beautiful plant with leaves "like broad
  sword-blades," eight feet long, and one foot broad, add fresh
  interest to the scene. These leaves rise straight upward alternately
  from the top of a stem five or six feet high. Various kinds of
  Marants, a family of plants rich in amylaceous qualities (of which
  the _Maranta arundinacea_, though not an American plant, yields the
  best arrowroot of commerce), clothe the ground, conspicuous for
  their {181} broad glossy leaves. Ferns of beautiful and varied forms
  decorate the tree-trunks, together with the large fleshy
  heart-shaped leaves of the Pothos plant. Gigantic grasses, such as
  bamboos, form arches over the pathways. "The appearance of this part
  of the forest was strange in the extreme, description can convey no
  adequate idea of it. The reader who has visited Kew, may form some
  notion by conceiving a vegetation like that in the great palm-house
  spread over a large tract of swampy ground, but he must fancy it
  mingled with large exogenous trees, similar to our oaks and elms,
  covered with creepers and parasites, and figure to himself the
  ground encumbered with fallen and rotting trunks, branches, and
  leaves, the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical sun, and reeking
  with moisture!" Amid these "swampy shades" numerous butterflies
  delight to flit. An entomologist in England is proud, indeed, when
  he succeeds in capturing the beautiful and scarce Camberwell beauty
  (_Vanessa antiopa_) or the splendid purple emperor (_Apatura iris_),
  but these fine species do not exceed three inches in expanse of
  wing, while the glossy blue-and-black _Morpho Achilles_ measure six
  inches or more. The velvety black _Papiloio Sesostris_, with a large
  silky green patch on its wings, and other species of this genus, are
  almost exclusively inhabitants of the moist shades of the forest.
  The beautiful _Epicalea ancea_, "one of the most richly colored of
  the whole tribe of butterflies, being black, decorated with broad
  stripes of pale blue and orange, delights to settle on the broad
  leaves of the Uraniae and other similar plants." But like many other
  natural beauties, it is difficult to gain possession of, darting off
  with lightning speed when approached. Mr. Bates tells us that it is
  the males only of the different species which are brilliantly
  colored, the females being plainer and often so utterly unlike their
  partners that they are generally held to be different species until
  proved to be the same. The observations of this admirable naturalist
  on other points in the history of the butterflies of the Amazons,
  are highly important and deeply interesting. We must recur to this
  subject by-and-by.

We cannot yet tear ourselves away from these forests of Pará. We can
well understand the intense interest with which Mr. Bates visited
these different scenes month after month, in different seasons, so as
to obtain something like a fair notion of their animal and vegetable
productions. It is enough to make a naturalist's mouth water for a
week together to think of the many successful strolls which Mr. Bates
took amid the shades of these forests. For several months, he tells
us, he used to visit this district two or three days every week, and
never failed to obtain some species new to him of bird, reptile, or
insect:

  "This district," he says, "seemed to be an epitome of all that the
  humid portions of the Pará forest could produce. This endless
  diversity, the coolness of the air, the varied and strange forms of
  vegetation, the entire freedom from mosquitoes and other pests, and
  even the solemn gloom and silence, combined to make my rambles
  through it always pleasant as well as profitable. Such places are
  paradises to a naturalist, and if he be of a contemplative turn
  there is no situation more favorable for his indulging the tendency.
  There is something in a tropical forest akin to the ocean in its
  effects on the mind--man feels so completely his insignificance
  there and the vastness of nature. A naturalist cannot help
  reflecting on the vegetable forces manifested on so grand a scale
  around him."

Mr. Wallace and Mr. Bates are well-known advocates of Mr. Darwin's
theory of natural selection. The former gentleman was Mr. Bates's
companion in travel for four years, and he has published a very
interesting account of his voyage on his return to England. Whatever
differences of opinion there may be with respect to {182} the
celebrated work which Mr. Darwin gave to the world four or five years
ago, unbiassed and thoughtful naturalists must recognize the force
with which the author supports many of his arguments, and the fairness
with which he encounters every difficulty. The competition displayed
by organized beings is strikingly manifested in the Brazilian forests.
So unmistakable is this fact, that Burmeister, a German traveller, was
painfully impressed with the contemplation of the emulation and
"spirit of restless selfishness" which the vegetation of a tropical
forest displayed. "He thought the softness, earnestness, and repose of
European woodland scenery were far more pleasing, and that these
formed one of the causes of the superior moral character of European
nations;" a curious question, which we leave to the consideration of
moral philosophers. The emulation displayed by the plants and trees of
the forests of Pará is thus spoken of by Mr. Bates:

  "In these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving
  to outvie its fellow, struggling upward toward light and
  air--branch, and leaf, and stem--regardless of its neighbors.
  Parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making
  use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own
  advancement. Live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in
  these wildernesses. There is one kind of parasitic tree very common
  near Pará which exhibits this feature in a very prominent manner. It
  is called the Sipó Matador, or the Murderer Liana. It belongs to the
  fig order, and has been described by Von Martins in the 'Atlas to
  Spix and Martius's Travels.' I observed many specimens. The base of
  its stem would be unable to bear the weight of the upper growth; it
  is obliged, therefore, to support itself on a tree of another
  species. In this it is not essentially different from other climbing
  trees and plants, but the way the matador sets about it is peculiar,
  and produces certainly a disagreeable impression. It springs up
  close to the tree on which it intends to fix itself, and the wood of
  its stem grows by spreading itself like a plastic mould over one
  side of the trunk of its supporter. It then puts forth from each
  side an arm-like branch, which grows rapidly, and looks as though a
  stream of sap were flowing and hardening as it went. This adheres
  closely to the trunk of the victim, and the two arms meet on the
  opposite side and blend together. These arms are put forth at
  somewhat regular intervals in mounting upward, and the victim when
  its strangler is full grown becomes tightly clasped by a number of
  inflexible rings. These rings gradually grow larger as the murderer
  flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with
  that of its neighbor, and in course of time they kill it by stopping
  the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle then remains of the
  selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body
  of its victim, which had been a help to its own growth. Its ends
  have been served--it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and
  disseminated its kind; and now when the dead trunk moulders away,
  its own end approaches; its support is gone, and itself also falls."

The strangling properties of some of the fig-tree family are indeed
very remarkable, and may be witnessed not only in South America, but
in India, Ceylon, and Australia. Frazer observed several kinds of
_Ficus_, more than 150 feet high, embracing huge ironbark trees in the
forests at Moreton Bay. The _Ficus repens_, according to Sir Emerson
Tennent, is often to be seen clambering over rocks, like ivy, turning
through heaps of stones, or ascending some tall tree to the height of
thirty or forty feet, while the thickness of its own stem does not
exceed a quarter of an inch. The small plants of this family, of which
the Murdering Liana is one species, grow and reproduce their kind from
seeds {183} deposited in the ground; but the huge representatives of
the family, such as the banyan-tree, whose

  "Bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
    About the mother tree;"

and the Peepul, or sacred Bo-tree of the Buddhists (_Ficus
religiosa_), originate from seeds carried by birds to upper portions
of some palm or other tree. Fig-trees, as Sir E. Tennent has remarked,
are "the Thugs of the vegetable world; for, though not necessarily
epiphytic, it may be said that, in point of fact, no single plant
comes to perfection or acquires even partial development without the
destruction of some other on which to fix itself as its supporter."
The mode of growth of these trees is well described by the excellent
writer just mentioned, and we shall make use of his own language:

  "The family generally make their first appearance as slender roots
  hanging from the crown or trunk of some other tree, generally a
  palm, among the moist bases of whose leaves the seed carried thither
  by some bird which had fed upon the fig begins to germinate. This
  root, branching as it descends, envelops the trunk of the supporting
  tree with a net-work of wood, and at length, penetrating the ground,
  attains the dimensions of a stem. But, unlike a _stem_, it throws
  out no buds or flowers; the true stem, with its branches, its
  foliage, and fruit, springs upward from the crown of the tree whence
  the root is seen descending; and from it issue the pendulous
  rootlets, which on reaching the earth fix themselves firmly, and
  form the marvellous growth for which the banyan is so celebrated. In
  the depth of this grove the original tree is incarcerated till,
  literally strangled by the folds and weight of its resistless
  companion, it dies and leaves the fig in undisturbed possession of
  its place."  [Footnote 25]

  [Footnote 25: "Ceylon," i., p. 95]

But not trees alone do these vegetable garrotters embrace in their
fatal grasp, ancient monuments are also destroyed by these formidable
assailants. Sir E. Tennent has given an engraving of a fig-tree on the
ruins at Pollanarrua, in Ceylon, which had fixed itself on the
walls---a curious sight, indeed--"its roots streaming downward over
the ruins as if they had once been fluid, following every sinuosity of
the building and terraces till they reach the earth." An extremely
interesting series of drawings is now to be seen in the Linnean
Society's room at Burlington House, illustrating the mode of growth of
another strangling or murdering tree, of New Zealand, belonging to an
entirely different order from that to which the figs belong
(_Urticaceae_), namely, to one of the _Myrtaceae_. The association of
garrotting habits with those of the stinging nettle family is apt
enough, we may be inclined to think; but it is rather disappointing to
meet with these disagreeable peculiarities in the case of the myrtle
group; but such is the fact: the Rata, or _Metrosideros robusta_--as
we believe is the species---climbs to the summits of mighty trees of
the forest of Wangaroa, and kills them in its iron grasp. But,
notwithstanding these unpleasant impressions which "the reckless
energy of the vegetation might produce" in the traveller's mind, there
is plenty in tropical nature to counteract them:

  "There is the incomparable beauty and variety of the foliage, the
  vivid color, the richness and exuberance everywhere displayed, which
  make the richest woodland scenery in northern Europe a sterile
  desert in comparison. But it is especially the enjoyment of life
  manifested by individual existences which compensates for the
  destruction and pain caused by the inevitable competition. Although
  this competition is nowhere more active, and the dangers to which
  each individual is exposed nowhere more numerous, yet nowhere is
  this enjoyment more vividly displayed."

Mr. Bates mentions a peculiar feature in some of the colossal trees
which here and there monopolize a large {184} space in the forests.
The height of some of these giants he estimates at from 180 to 200
feet, whose "vast dome of foliage rises above the other forest trees
as a domed cathedral does above the other buildings in a city." In
most of the large trees of different species is to be seen "a growth
of buttress-shaped projections around the lower part of their stems.
The spaces between these buttresses--which are generally thin walls of
wood--form spacious chambers, and may be compared to stalls in a
stable; some of them are large enough to hold half-a-dozen persons."
What are these buttresses, how do they originate, and what is their
use? We have already seen how great is the competition amongst the
trees of a primeval forest, and how every square inch is eagerly
battled for by the number of competitors. In consequence of this it is
obvious that lateral growth of roots in the earth is a difficult
matter. "Necessity being the mother of invention," the roots, unable
to expand laterally, "raise themselves ridge-like out of the earth,
growing gradually upward as the increasing height of the tree required
augmented support." A beautiful compensation, truly, and full of deep
interest! As Londoners add upper stories to their houses where
competition has rendered lateral additions impossible, so these
gigantic trees, in order to sustain the massive crown and trunk,
strengthen their roots by upper additions.

One of the most striking features in tropical scenery is the
suddenness with which the leaves and blossoms spring into full beauty.
"Some mornings a single tree would appear in flower amidst what was
the preceding evening a uniform green mass of forest,--a dome of
blossom suddenly created as if by magic." In the early mornings, soon
after dawn, the sky is always without a cloud, the thermometer marking
72° or 73° Fahr. Now all nature is fresh, and the birds in the full
enjoyment of their existence, the "shrill yelping" of the toucans
being frequently heard from their abode amongst the wild fruit-trees
of the forest; flocks of parrots appear in distinct relief against the
blue sky, always two by two, chattering to each other, the pairs being
separated by regular intervals, too high, however, to reveal the
bright colors of their plumage. The greatest heat of the day is about
two o'clock, by which time, the thermometer being 92° or 93° Fahr.,
"every voice of bird or mammal is hushed; only in the trees is heard
at intervals the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, which were so
fresh and moist in early morning, now become lax and drooping, and the
flowers shed their petals. The Indian and mulatto inhabitants sleep in
their hammocks, or sit on mats in the shade, too languid even to
talk."

Mr. Bates has given a graphic picture of tropical nature at the
approach of rain:

  "First, the cool sea-breeze which commenced to blow about ten
  o'clock, and which had increased in force with the increasing power
  of the sun, would flag and finally die away. The heat and electric
  tension of the atmosphere would then become almost insupportable.
  Languor and uneasiness would seize on every one; even the denizens
  of the forest betraying it by their motions. White clouds would
  appear in the east and gather into cumuli, with an increasing
  blackness along their lower portions. The whole eastern horizon
  would become almost suddenly black, and this would spread upward,
  the sun at length becoming obscured. Then the rush of a mighty wind
  is heard through the forest, swaying the tree-tops; a vivid flash of
  lightning bursts forth, then a crash of thunder, and down streams
  the deluging rain. Such storms soon cease, leaving bluish-black
  motionless clouds in the sky until night. Meanwhile all nature is
  refreshed; but heaps of flower petals and fallen leaves are seen
  under the trees. Toward evening life revives again, and the ringing
  uproar is resumed from bush and tree. {185} The following morning
  the son again rises in a cloudless sky, and so the cycle is
  completed; spring, summer, and autumn, as it were, in one tropical
  day."

With regard to animal life in the Amazonian forests, it appears that
there is a great variety of mammals, birds, and reptiles, but they are
very shy, and widely scattered. Brazil is poor in terrestrial animals,
and the species are of small size. "The huntsman would be disappointed
who expected to find here flocks of animals similar to the buffalo
herds of North America, or the swarms of antelopes and herds of
ponderous pachyderms of southern Africa."

It has already been observed that the mammals of Brazil are, for the
most part, arboreal in their habits; this is especially the case with
the monkeys, or _Cebidae_, a family of quadrumamous animals peculiar
to the new world. The reader may observe the habits of some species of
this group in the monkey-house of the Zoological Society's Gardens in
Regent's Park. The strong muscular tail, with its naked palm under the
tip, which many of the Cebidae possess, renders them peculiarly well
adapted to a forest life. Mr. Bates states that thirty-eight species
of this family of monkey inhabit the Amazon region, and considers the
Coaitás, or spider-monkeys, "as the extreme development of the
American type of apes." The flesh of one species of Coaitás is much
esteemed as an article of food by the natives in some parts of the
country. The Indians, we are told, are very fund of Coaitás as pets.

Some of our readers are doubtless acquainted with the name of Madame
Maria Sibylla Merian, a German lady who was born about the middle of
the seventeenth century. She was much devoted to the study of natural
history, and travelled to Surinam for the purpose of making drawings
of its animal productions; many of these drawings are now in the
British Museum. This estimable lady, amongst other curiosities of
natural history, affirmed the two following ones:--1. The lantern-fly
(_Fulgora lanternaria_) emits so strong a light from its body as to
enable a person in the night-time to read a newspaper by it. 2. The
large spider (_Mygale_) enters the nests of the little humming-birds,
and destroys the inmates. It would occupy too much time to tell of the
mass of evidence which was adduced in denial of these recorded facts,
but, suffice it to say that Madame Merian was set down as an
arch-heretic and inventor, and that no credit was attached to her
statements. With regard to the first-named heresy, the opinion of
modern zoologists is, that there is nothing at all improbable in the
circumstance of the Fulgora emitting a strong light, as luminous
properties are known to exist in other insects, but that the fact has
been rather over-colored by the imagination of the worthy lady. As to
the second question, about the bird-destroying propensities of the
Mygale, let us hear the testimony of so thoroughly trustworthy a
witness as Mr. Bates:

  "In the course of our walk" (between the Tocantins and Cameta) "I
  chanced to verify a fact relating to the habits of a large hairy
  spider of the genus Mygale, in a manner worth recording. The species
  was _M. avicularia_, or one very closely allied to it; the
  individual was nearly two inches in length of body, but the legs
  expanded seven inches, and the entire body and legs were covered
  with coarse grey and reddish hairs. I was attracted by a movement of
  the monster on a tree-trunk; it was close beneath a deep crevice in
  the tree, across which was stretched a dense white web. The lower
  part of the web was broken, and two small birds, finches, were
  entangled in the pieces; they were about the size of the English
  siskin, and I judged the two to be male and female. One of them was
  quite dead, the other lay under the body of the spider not quite
  dead, and was smeared with the filthy liquor or {186} saliva exuded
  by the monster. I drove away the spider and took the birds, but the
  second one soon died. The fact of species of Mygale sallying forth
  at night, mounting trees, and sucking the eggs and young of
  humming-birds, has been recorded long ago by Madame Merian and
  Palisot de Beauvois; but, in the absence of any confirmation, it has
  come to be discredited. From the way the fact has been related it
  would appear that it had been merely derived from the report of
  natives, and had not been witnessed by the narrators. Count
  Langsdorff, in his 'Expedition into the Interior of Brazil,' states
  that he totally disbelieved the story. I found the circumstances to
  be quite a novelty to the residents here about. The Mygales are
  quite common insects; some species make their cells under stones,
  others form artistical tunnels in the earth, and some build their
  dens in the thatch of houses. The natives call them _Aranhas
  carangueijeiras_, or crab spiders. The hairs with which they are
  clothed come off when touched, and cause a peculiar and almost
  maddening irritation. The first specimen that I killed and prepared
  was handled incautiously, and I suffered terribly for three days
  afterward. I think this is not owing to any poisonous quality
  residing in the hairs, but to their being short and hard, and thus
  getting into the fine creases of the skin. Some Mygales are of
  immense size. One day I saw the children belonging to an Indian who
  collected for me with one of these monsters secured by a cord round
  its waist, by which they were leading it about the house as they
  would a dog."

The name of "ant" has only to be mentioned, and the strange habits of
the various species immediately suggest themselves to the mind of the
naturalist, who is always interested in, and amply repaid by, watching
these insects with the closest scrutiny. Brazil abounds in ants, one
species of which, the _Dinoponera grandis_, is an inch and a quarter
in length; but by far the most interesting to the naturalist, as well
as one of the most destructive to the cultivated trees of the country,
is the leaf-carrying ant (_AEcodoma cephalotes_). In some districts,
we are told, it is so abundant that agriculture is almost impossible,
and everywhere complaints are heard of the terrible pest. This insect
derives its specific name of _cephalotes_ from the extraordinary size
of the heads belonging to two of the orders, which, with a third kind,
constitute the colony. The formicarian establishment consists of: 1.
Worker minors; 2. Worker majors; 3. Subterranean workers. The
first-named kind alone does the real active work. The two last contain
the individuals with the enormous heads; their functions are not
clearly ascertained. In color they are a pale reddish-brown, and the
thorax of the true worker, which is the smallest of the orders, is
armed with three pairs of sharp spines; the head is provided with a
pair of similar spines proceeding from the cheeks behind. This ant,
known by the native name of Saüba, has long been celebrated for its
habit of clipping off and carrying away, large quantities of leaves:

  "When employed in this work," Mr. Bates says, "their processions
  look like a multitude of animated leaves on the march. In some
  places I found an accumulation of such leaves, all circular pieces,
  about the size of a sixpence, lying on the pathway, unattended by
  the ants, and at some distance from any colony. Such heaps are
  always found to be removed when the place is revisited next day. In
  course of time I had plenty of opportunities of seeing them at work.
  They mount the tree in multitudes, the individuals being all worker
  minors. Each one places itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts
  with its sharp scissor-like jaws, and by a sharp jerk detaches the
  piece. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where a
  little heap accumulates until carried off by another relay of
  workers; but generally each marches off {187} with the piece it has
  operated upon and as all take the same road to their colony, the
  path they follow becomes in a short time smooth and bare, looking
  like the impression of a cart-wheel through the herbage."

The Saüba ant is peculiar to tropical America, and, though it is
injurious to the wild native trees of the country, it seems to have a
preference to the coffee and orange trees and other imported plants.
The leaves which the Saüba cuts and carries away are used to "thatch
the domes which cover the entrances to their subterranean dwellings,
thereby protecting from the deluging rains the young broods in the
nests beneath." The insects proceed according to a most orderly
method, "the heavily-laden workers, each carrying its segment of leaf
vertically, the lower edge secured in its mandibles, troop up, and
cast their burdens on the hillock; another body of laborers place the
leaves in position, covering them with a layer of earthy granules,
which are brought one by one from the soil beneath." The labors of
this curious insect are immense, and no obstacles stop their
excavations. An allied species of Rio de Janeiro worked a tunnel under
the bed of the river Parabyba, at a place where it is as broad as the
Thames at London Bridge. These ants are sad rogues, being household
plunderers and robbers of the farinha, or mandioca meal, of the poor
inhabitants of Brazil; and Mr. Bates was obliged to lay trains of
gunpowder along their line of march to blow them up, which in the end
resulted in scaring the burglars away. We have already alluded to the
massive heads possessed by the major and subterranean kinds of
neuters, and stated that the work is done by the worker minor or
small-headed kind. With regard to the function of the large-headed
worker major, Mr. Bates was unable to satisfy himself:

  "They are not the soldiers or defenders of the working portion of
  the community, like the armed class in the termites, or white ants,
  for they never fight. The species has no sting, and does not display
  active resistance when interfered with. I once imagined they
  exercised a sort of superintendence over the others; but this
  function is entirely unnecessary in a community where all work with
  a precision and regularity resembling the subordinate parts of a
  piece of machinery. I came to the conclusion, at last, that they
  have no very precisely defined function. They cannot, however, be
  entirely useless to the community, for the sustenance of an idle
  class of such bulky individuals would be too heavy a charge for the
  species to sustain. I think they serve in some sort as passive
  instruments of protection to the real workers. Their enormously
  large, hard, and indestructible heads may be of use in protecting
  them against the attacks of insectivorous animals. They would be, on
  this view, a kind of _pièces de résistance_ serving as a foil
  against onslaughts made on the main body of workers."

But the third order, the subterranean kind, we are told, is the most
curious of all:

  "If the top of a small, fresh hillock, one in which the thatching
  process is going on, be taken off, a broad cylindrical shaft is
  disclosed, at a depth about two feet from the surface. If this be
  probed with a stick, which may be done to the extent of three or
  four feet without touching bottom, a small number of colossal
  fellows will slowly begin to make their way up the smooth sides of
  the mine. Their heads are of the same size as those of the other
  class (worker major); but the front is clothed with hairs instead of
  being polished, and they have in the middle of the forehead a twin
  ocellus, or simple eye, of quite different structure from the
  ordinary compound eyes on the side of the head. This frontal eye is
  totally wanting in the other workers, and is not known in any other
  kind of ant. The apparition of these strange creatures from {188}
  the cavernous depths of the mine reminded one, when I first observed
  them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They were not very
  pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no difficulty in
  securing a few with my fingers. I never saw them under any
  circumstances than those here related, and what their special
  functions may be I cannot divine."

The naturalist traveller, in the midst of much that interests and
delights him, has to put up with a great deal that is annoying, and
Mr. Bates proved no exception to the rule. The first few nights when
at Caripí, he was much troubled with bats; the room where he slept had
not been occupied for several months, and the roof was open to the
tiles and rafters:

  "On one night," he says, "I was aroused about midnight by the
  rushing noise made by vast hosts of bats sweeping about the room.
  The air was alive with them; they had put out the lamp, and when I
  relighted it, the place appeared blackened with the impish
  multitudes that were whirling round and round. After I had lain
  about well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared amongst
  the tiles, but when all was still again they returned, and once more
  extinguished the light. I took no further notice of them and went to
  sleep. The next night several got into my hammock; I seized them as
  they were crawling over me, and dashed them against the wall. The
  next morning I found a wound, evidently caused by a bat, on my hip."

Bats remind us of the vampire, a native of South America, concerning
whose blood-sucking properties so much discussion has been from time
to time raised. The vampire bat was very common at Ega; it is the
largest of the South American species. Of this bat Mr. Bates writes:

  "Nothing in animal physiognomy can be more hideous than the
  countenance of this creature when viewed from the front; the large
  leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the head, the
  erect, spear-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose, the grin, and
  glistening black eyes, all combining to make up a figure that
  reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative
  people have inferred diabolical instincts on the part of so ugly an
  animal. The vampire, however, is the most harmless of all bats, and
  its inoffensive character is well known to residents on the banks of
  the Amazon."

That much fable has attached itself to the history of this curious
creature we are perfectly convinced, and that its blood-sucking
peculiarities have been grossly exaggerated we must allow. When this
bat has been said to perform the operation of drawing blood "by
inserting its aculeated tongue  [Footnote 26] into the vein of a
sleeping person with so much dexterity as not to be felt, at the same
time fanning the air with its large wings, and thus producing a
sensation so delightfully cool that the sleep is rendered still more
profound," it is clear that the mythical element exists to a great
extent in the narrative; but our author's assertion that "the vampire
is the most harmless of all bats" does not tally with the statements
of other naturalists of considerable note. Mr. Wallace says he saw the
effects of the vampire's operations on a young horse, and that the
first morning after its arrival the poor animal presented a most
pitiable appearance, large streams of clotted blood running down from
several wounds on its back and sides:

    [Footnote 26: An Expression used by Mr. Wood in his "Zoögraphy.'
    It is enough to remark that no known bat has an aculeated.]

  "The appearance," Mr. Wallace adds, "was, however, I dare say, worse
  than reality, as the bats have the skill to bleed without giving
  pain, and it is quite possible the horse, like a patient under the
  influence of chloroform, may have known nothing of the matter. The
  danger is in the attacks being repeated every night till the loss of
  blood becomes serious. To prevent this, red peppers are usually
  rubbed {189} on the parts wounded and on all likely places; and this
  will partly check the sanguinivorous appetite of the bats, but not
  entirely, as in spite of this application the poor animal was again
  bitten the next night in fresh places."  [Footnote 27]

    [Footnote 27: "Travels on the Amazon," p. 44.]

Both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Waterton, if we remember rightly, have borne
similar testimony in favor of the opinion that the vampire does suck
blood. A servant of the former gentleman, when near Coquimbo, in
Chili, observed something attached to the withers of one of his
horses, which was restless, and on putting his hand upon the place he
secured a vampire bat. Mr. Waterton, however, could not induce the
vampires to bite him, notwithstanding the now veteran naturalist
[Footnote 28] slept many months in an open loft which the vampires
frequented; but an Indian boy who slept near him had his toes often
"tapped," while fowls were destroyed, and even an unfortunate donkey
was much persecuted, looking, as Mr. Waterton says, "like misery
steeped in vinegar."

  [Footnote 28: Since this article was in type this excellent
  naturalist and kind-hearted gentleman has passed away from amongst
  us.]

While at Villa Nova, on the lower Amazons, our naturalist was
subjected to another annoyance, in the shape of ticks. The tracts
thereabouts "swarmed with carapátos, ugly ticks, belonging to the
genus _Ixodes_, which mount to the tops of the blades of grass, and
attach themselves to the clothes of passers-by. They are a great
annoyance. It occupied me a full hour to pick them off my flesh after
my diurnal ramble."

Mr. Bates's stay at Ega, on the upper Amazons, and his expeditions in
search of scarlet-faced monkeys, owl-faced night-apes, marmosets,
curl-crested toucans, blind ants, and hundreds of other interesting
animals, must have been particularly enjoyable, if we except the
presence of an abominable gad-fly, which fixes on the flesh of man as
breeding-places for its grub, and causes painful tumors. "Ega was a
fine field for a natural history collector," and Mr. Bates ticketed
with the name of this town more than 3,000 new species of animals.

It is an old and a true saying that you "can have too much of a good
thing." A London alderman would soon grumble had he to dine every day
on turtle only. "The great fresh-water turtle of the Amazons grows in
the upper river to an immense size, a full-grown one measuring nearly
three feet in length by two in breadth, and is a load for the
strongest Indian. . . . . The flesh is very tender, palatable, and
wholesome; but it is very cloying. Every one ends sooner or later by
becoming thoroughly surfeited." Our traveller adds that he became so
sick of turtle in the course of two years that he could not bear the
smell of it, although at the same time nothing else was to be had, and
he was suffering actual hunger. The pools about Ega abound in turtles
and alligators, and the Indians capture a great number of the former
animals by means of sharp steel-pointed arrows, fitted into a peg
which enters the tip of the shaft. This peg is fastened to the
arrow-shaft by means of a piece of twine; and when the missile--which
the people hurl with astonishing skill--pierces the carapace, the peg
drops out and the struck turtle dives to the bottom, the detached
shaft floating on the surface serving to guide the sportsman to his
game. So clever are the natives in the use of the bow and arrow, that
they do not wait till the turtle comes to the surface to breathe, but
shoot at the back of the animal as it moves under the water, and
hardly ever fail to pierce the submerged shell.

One of the most curious and interesting facts in natural history is
the assimilation in many animals of form and color to other objects,
animate or inanimate. Thus the caterpillars termed, from their mode of
progression, "geometric" bear so close a resemblance to the twigs of
the trees or bushes upon which they rest that it is no easy thing to
distinguish them at a {190} glance; the buff-tip moth, when at rest,
looks just like a broken bit of lichen-covered branch, the colored
tips of the wings resembling a section of the wood. The beautiful
Australian parakeets, known as the Batcherrygar parrots, look so much
like the leaves of _Eucalpyti_, or gum-trees, on which they repose,
that, though numbers may be perched upon a branch, they are hardly to
be seen so long as they keep quiet. Some South American beetles (of
the family _Cassidae_) closely resemble glittering drops of dew; some
kinds of spiders mimic flower-buds, "and station themselves motionless
in the axils of leaves and other parts of plants to wait for their
victims." Insects belonging to the genera of _Mantis, Locusta_, and
_Phasma_, often show a wonderful resemblance to leaves or sticks.
Examples of "mimetic analogy" may also be found amongst birds; but
perhaps the most remarkable cases of imitation are to be found among
the butterflies of the valley of the Amazon recently made known to us
by Mr. Bates. There is a family of butterflies named _Heliconidae_, of
a slow flight and feeble structure, very numerous in this South
American region, notwithstanding that the districts Abound with
insectivorous birds. Now, Mr. Bates has observed that where large
numbers of this family are found they are always accompanied by
species of a totally distinct family which closely resemble them in
size, form, color, and markings. So close is the resemblance that Mr.
Bates often found it impossible to distinguish members of one family
from those of the other when the insects were on the wing; and he
observed, moreover, that when a local variety of a species of the
_Heliconidae_ occurred, there was found also a butterfly of another
family imitating that local variety. There is no difficulty at all in
distinguishing the imitators from the imitated, for the latter have
all a family likeness, while the former depart from the normal form
and likeness of the families to which they respectively belong. What
is the meaning of this curious fact? It is this: the _Heliconidae_, or
imitated butterflies, are not persecuted by birds, dragon-flies,
lizards, or other insectivorous enemies, while the members of the
imitating families are subject to much persecution. The butterflies
imitated are said to owe their immunity from persecution to their
offensive odor, while no such fortunate character belongs to the
imitating insects. But how, we naturally ask, has this change of color
and form been effected? Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bates explain it on the
principle of natural selection. Let us suppose that a member of the
persecuted family gave birth to a variety--and there is a tendency in
all animals to produce varieties--exhibiting a very slight resemblance
to some species of  _Heliconidae_. This individual, in consequence of
this slight resemblance, would have a better chance of living and
producing young than those of its relatives which bear no resemblance
whatever to the unmolested family. Some of the offspring of this
slightly favored variety would very probably show more marked
resemblance to the unpersecuted butterflies; and thus the likeness
between insects of totally distinct groups would in course of time be,
according to the law of inheritance, quite complete. This is the
explanation which Mr. Bates gives of this natural phenomenon. The
phenomenon itself is an undoubted one; whether it is or is not
satisfactorily accounted for, cannot at present be determined; we must
wait for further investigation.

We had intended to speak of some of the South American palms, those
wondrous and valuable productions of tropical countries, the
India-rubber trees, and other vegetable productions of the Amazons,
but we must linger no longer with the excellent naturalist from whose
volumes we have derived so much pleasure. Mr. Bates has written a book
full of interest, with the spirit of a real lover of nature and with
the pen of a philosopher.

{191}

Leaving, then, the new world, let us cast a glance, in company with
one of the greatest botanists of the day, at what we may call the
tropical features of the Sikkim Himalayas. Though this region is not
strictly speaking within the tropics, yet the vegetation at the base
is of a tropical character. In this wonderful district the naturalist
is able to wander through every zone of vegetation, from the "dense
deep-green dripping forests" at the base of the Himalaya, formed of
giant trees, as the _Duabanga_ and _Terminalia_, with _Cedrela_ and
_Gordonia Wallichii_, mingled with innumerable shrubs and herbs, to
the lichens and mosses of the regions of perpetual snow. The tropical
vegetation of the Sikkim extends from Siligoree, a station on the
verge of the Terai, "that low malarious belt which skirts the base of
the Himalaya from the Sutlej to Brahma-Koond, in Upper Assam."

"Every feature," writes Dr. Hooker, "botanical, geological, and
zoological, is new on entering this district. The change is sudden and
immediate: sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously different; nor
from the edge of the Terai to the limit of perpetual snow is any
botanical region more clearly marked than this which is the
commencement of Himalayan vegetation." The banks of the numerous
tortuous streams are richly clothed with vines and climbing
convolvuluses, with various kinds of _Cucurbitaceae_ and
_Bignoniaceae_. The district of the Terai is very pestilential, and,
though fatal to Europeans, is inhabited by a race called the Mechis
with impunity. As our traveller proceeded to the little bungalow of
Punkabaree, about 1,800 feet in elevation, the bushy timber of the
Terai was found to be replaced by giant forests, with large bamboos
cresting the hills, numerous epiphytical orchids and ferns, with
_Hoya, Seitamineae_, and similar types of the hottest and dampest
climates. All around Punkabaree the hills rise steeply 5,000 or 6,000
feet; from the road at and a little above the bungalow the view is
described by Dr. Hooker as superb and very instructive:

  "Behind (or north) the Himalaya rise in steep confused masses.
  Below, the hill on which I stood, and the ranges as far as the eye
  can reach east and west, throw spurs on the plains of India. These
  are very thickly wooded, and enclose broad, dead-flat, hot, or damp
  valleys, apparently covered with a dense forest. Secondary spurs of
  clay and gravel, like that immediately below Punkabaree, rest on the
  bases of the mountains and seem to form an intermediate neutral
  ground between flat and mountainous India. The Terai district forms
  a very irregular belt, scantily clothed, and intersected by
  innumerable rivulets from the hills, which unite and divide again on
  the flat, till, emerging from the region of many trees, they enter
  the plains, following devious courses, which glisten like silver
  threads. The whole horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the
  plains, which stretch away into the region of sunshine and fine
  weather, as one boundless flat. In the distance the courses of the
  Teesta and Cosi, the great drainers of the snowy Himalayas, and the
  recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with difficulty traced
  at this the dry season. The ocean-like appearance of this southern
  view is even more conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the
  clouds arranging themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion.
  Endless strata run in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon;
  above these scattered cumuli, also in horizontal lines, are dotted
  against a clear grey sky, which gradually, as the eye is lifted,
  passes into a deep cloudless blue vault, continuously clear to the
  zenith; there the cumuli, in white fleecy masses, again appear;
  till, in the northern celestial hemisphere, they thicken and assume
  the leaden hue of nimbi, discharging their moisture on the dark
  forest-clad hills around. The breezes are south-easterly, bringing
  that {192} vapor from the Indian ocean which is rarefied and
  suspended aloft over the heated plains, but condensed into a drizzle
  when it strikes the cooler flanks of the hills, and into heavy rain
  when it meets their still colder summits. Upon what a gigantic scale
  does nature here operate! Vapors raised from an ocean whose nearest
  shore is more than 400 miles distant are safely transported without
  the loss of one drop of water, to support the rank luxuriance of
  this far distant region. This and other offices fulfilled, the waste
  waters are returned by the Cosi and Teesta to the ocean, and again
  exhaled, exported, expended, recollected, and returned."

Many travellers complain of the annoyance caused to them by leeches.
Legions of these pests abound in the water-courses and dense jungles
of the Sikkim, and though their bite is painless, it is followed by
considerable effusion of blood. "They puncture through thick worsted
stockings, and even trousers; and when full roll in the form of a
little soft ball into the bottom of the shoe, where their presence is
hardly felt in walking."

A thousand feet higher, above the bungalow of Punkabaree, the
vegetation is very rich, the prevalent timber being of enormous size,
"and scaled by climbing _Leguminosae_, as _Bauhinias_ and _Robinias_,
which sometimes sheathe the trunks or span the forest with huge
cables, joining tree to tree." Their trunks are also clothed with
orchids; and still more beautifully with pothos, peppers, vines, and
convolvuli.

"The beauty of the drapery of the pothos leaves (_Scindapsus_) is
pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the foliage assumes or for
the liveliness of its color. Of the more conspicuous smaller trees the
wild banana is the most abundant; its crown of very beautiful foliage
contrasting with the smaller-leaved plants amongst which it nestles;
next comes a screwpine (_Pandanus_) with a straight stem and a tuft of
leaves, each eight or ten feet long, waving on all sides.
_Araliaceae_, with smooth or armed slender trunks, and _Mappa_-like
_Euphorbiaceae_ spread their long petioles horizontally forth, each
terminated with an ample leaf some feet in diameter. Bamboo abounds
everywhere; its dense tufts of culms, 100 feet and upward high, are as
thick as a man's thigh at the base. Twenty or thirty species of ferns
(including a tree fern) were luxuriant and handsome. Foliaceous
lichens and a few mosses appeared at 2,000 feet. Such is the
vegetation of the roads through the tropical forests of Outer
Himalaya."

As we ascend about 2,000 feet higher, we find many plants of the
temperate zone mingling with the tropical vegetation, amongst which "a
very English-looking bramble," bearing a good yellow fruit, is the
first to mark the change; next, mighty oaks with large lamellated cups
and magnificent foliage succeed, till along the ridge of the mountain
to Kursiong, at an elevation of about 4,800 feet, the change in the
flora is complete. Here the vegetation recalls to mind home
impressions: "the oak flowering, the birch bursting into leaf, the
violet, _Chrysosplenium, Stellaria and Arum, Vaccinium_, wild
strawberry, maple, geranium, bramble. A colder wind blew here; mosses
and lichens carpeted the banks and roadsides; the birds and insects
were very different from those below, and everything proclaimed the
marked change in the vegetation." And yet even at this elevation we
meet with forms of tropical plants, "pothos, bananas, palms, figs,
pepper, numbers of epiphytal orchids, and similar genuine tropical
genera."

The hill-station of Darjiling, the well-known sanitarium, where the
health of Europeans is recruited by a temperate climate, is about 370
miles to the north of Calcutta. The ridge "varies in height from 6,500
to 7,500 feet above the level of the sea, 8,000 feet being the
elevation at which the mean temperature most nearly coincides with
that of London, viz., 50°." {193} The forests around Darjiling are
composed principally of magnolias, oaks, laurels, with birch, alder,
maple, holly. Dr. Hooker draws especial attention to the absence of
_Leguminosae_, "the most prominent botanical feature in the vegetation
of the region," which, he says, is too high for the tropical tribes of
the warmer elevation, too low for the Alpines, and probably too moist
for those of temperate regions; cool, equable, humid climates being
generally unfavorable to the above-named order. "The supremacy of this
temperate region consists in the infinite number of forest trees, in
the absence (in the usual proportion, at any rate) of such common
orders as _Compositae, Leguminosae, Cruciferae_ and _Ranunculaceae_,
and of grasses amongst Monocotyledons, and in the predominance of the
rarer and more local families, as those of rhododendron, camellia,
magnolia, ivy, cornel, honeysuckle, hydrangea, begonia, and epiphytic
orchids."

We regret that want of space prevents us dwelling longer on the scenes
of tropical Himalaya, so graphically described by Dr. Hooker. We will
conclude this imperfect sketch with our traveller's description of the
scenery along the banks of the great Rungeet, 6,000 feet below
Darjiling:

  "Leaving the forest, the path led along the river bank and over the
  great masses of rock which strewed its course. The beautiful
  India-rubber fig was common. . . . On the forest skirts, _Hoya_,
  parasitical _Orchidiae_, and ferns abounded; the Chaulmoogra, whose
  fruit is used to intoxicate fish, was very common, as was an immense
  mulberry-tree, that yields a milky juice and produces a long, green,
  sweet fruit. Large fish, chiefly cyprinoid, were abundant in the
  beautifully clear water of the river. But by far the most striking
  feature consisted in the amazing quantity of superb butterflies,
  large tropical swallow-tails, black, with scarlet or yellow eyes on
  their wings. They were seen everywhere, sailing majestically through
  the still, hot air, or fluttering from one scorching rock to
  another, and especially loving to settle on the damp sand of the
  river; where they sat by thousands, with erect wings, balancing
  themselves with a rocking motion, as their heavy sails inclined them
  to one side or the other, resembling a crowded fleet of yachts on a
  calm day. Such an entomological display cannot be surpassed.
  _Cicindelae_ and the great _Cicadeae_ were everywhere lighting on
  the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and anon
  disappeared as if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in
  the sun; they hold on by a few coils of the tall round a twig, the
  greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally
  retracting and darting an unerring aim at some insect. The
  narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding
  hills, prevented any view except of the opposite mountain-face,
  which was one dense forest, in which the wild banana was
  conspicuous."

One of the most remarkable botanical discoveries of modern days is
that of a very curious and anomalous genus of plants, named by Dr.
Hooker _Welwitschia_ in honor of its discoverer. Dr. Frederic
Welwitsch, who first noticed this singular plant in a letter to Sir
William Hooker, dated August, 1860. "I have been assured," says Dr.
Hooker in his valuable memoir of this plant, "by those who remember
it, that since the discovery of the _Rafflesia Arnoldii_, no vegetable
production has excited so great an interest as the subject of the
present memoir." We well remember this singular plant, having seen a
specimen in the Kew Herbarium soon after its arrival in this country.
The following is Dr. Hooker's account of its appearance and prominent
characters:

  "The _Welwitschia_ is a woody plant, said to attain a century in
  duration, with an obconic trunk about two feet long, of which a few
  inches rise {194} above the soil, presenting the appearance of a
  flat, two-lobed depressed mass, sometimes (according to Dr.
  Welwitsch) attaining fourteen feet in circumference (!) and looking
  like a round table. When full grown, it is dark brown, hard, and
  cracked over the whole surface (much like the burnt crust of a loaf
  of bread); the lower portion forms a stout tap-root, buried in the
  soil and branching downward at the end. From deep grooves in the
  circumference of the depressed mass two enormous leaves are given
  off, each six feet long when full grown, one corresponding to each
  lobe. These are quite flat, linear, very leathery, and split to the
  base into innumerable thongs that lie curling upon the surface of
  the soil. Its discoverer describes these same two leaves as being
  present from the earliest condition of the plant, and assures me
  that they are in fact developed from the two cotyledons of the seed,
  and are persistent, being replaced by no others. From the
  circumference of the tabular mass, above but close to the insertion
  of the leaves, spring stout dichotomously branched cymes, nearly a
  foot high, bearing small erect scarlet cones, which eventually
  become oblong and attain the size of those of the common spruce fir.
  The scales of the cones are very closely imbricated, and contain
  when young and still very small solitary flowers, which in some
  cases are hermaphrodite (structurally but not functionally), in
  others female."

After describing these flowers in botanical terms. Dr. Hooker adds,
"The mature cone is tetragonous, and contains a broadly winged scale.
Its discoverer observes that the whole plant exudes a resin, and that
it is called 'tumbo' by the natives. It inhabits the elevated sandy
plateau near Cape Negro (lat 14° 40' S. to 23° S.) on the south-west
coast of Africa." Dr. Hooker regards the _Welwitschia_ as "the only
perennial flowering-plant which at no period has other vegetative
organs than those proper to the embryo itself,--the main axis being
represented by the radicle, which becomes a gigantic caulicle and
develops a root from its base, and inflorescences from its plumulary
end, and the leaves being the two cotyledons in a very highly
developed and specialized condition."   [Footnote 29]

  [Footnote 29: "Transactions of the Linnean Society," vol. xxiv.,
  part i.]

Few countries present more objects of interest to the naturalist than
the island of Madagascar, amongst the botanical treasures of which
island the water yam or lace-leaf (_Ouviranidra fenestralis_) claims
especial notice. This beautiful and singular plant, which belongs to
the natural order _Naiadaceae_, was first made known to the scientific
world by du Petit Thouars in 1822. Horticulturists are indebted to Mr.
Ellis, the well-known author of "Polynesian Researches," for the
introduction of this singular plant into England, specimens of which
may be seen in the Royal Gardens at Kew and elsewhere:

  "This plant," says Mr. Ellis, "is not only extremely curious, but
  also very valuable to the natives, who, at certain seasons of the
  year, gather it as an article of food--the fleshy root when cooked
  yielding a farinaceous substance resembling the yam. Hence its
  native name, _ouvirandrano_, literally, yam of the water;--_ouvi_ in
  the Malagasy and Polynesian languages signifying yam, and _rano_ in
  the former and some of the latter signifying water. The ouvirandra
  is not only a rare and curious, but a singularly beautiful plant,
  both in structure and color. From the several crowns of the
  branching root, growing often a foot or more deep in the water, a
  number of graceful leaves, nine or ten inches long and two or three
  inches wide, spread out horizontally just beneath the surface of the
  water. The flower-stalks rise from the centre of the leaves, and the
  branching or forked flower is curious; but the structure of the leaf
  is peculiarly so, and seems like a living fibrous skeleton rather
  than an entire leaf. The {195} longitudinal fibres extend in curved
  lined along its entire length, and are united by thread-like fibres
  or veins, crossing them at right angles from side to side, at a
  short distance from each other. The whole leaf looks as if composed
  of fine tendrils, wrought after a most regular pattern, so as to
  resemble a piece of bright-green lace or open needlework. Each leaf
  rises from the crown on the root like a short delicate-looking pale
  green or yellow fibre; gradually unfolding its feathery-looking
  sides and increasing its size as it spreads beneath the water. The
  leaves in their several stages of growth pass through almost every
  gradation of color, from a pale yellow to a dark olive-green,
  becoming brown or even black before they finally decay; air-bubbles
  of considerable size frequently appearing under the full-formed and
  healthy leaves. It is scarcely possible to imagine any object of the
  kind more attractive and beautiful than a full-grown specimen of
  this plant, with its dark green leaves forming the limit of a circle
  two or three feet in diameter, and in the transparent water within
  that circle presenting leaves in every stage of development, both as
  to color and size. Nor is it the least curious to notice that these
  slender and fragile structures, apparently not more substantial than
  the gossamer and flexible as a feather, still possess a tenacity and
  wiriness which allow the delicate leaf to be raised by the hand to
  the surface of the water without injury."

No natural order of plants has created or continues to create a
greater degree of interest amongst travellers and botanists than the
_Orchidaceae_, of which more than three thousand species have been
described; the anomalous structure of their reproductory parts, the
singularity in form of the floral envelopes, the grotesque resemblance
which many kinds bear to some object or other of the animal world, the
rarity, beauty, and delicious fragrance of some forms--all combine to
render these plants of great value and interest. As inhabitants of hot
and damp localities, orchids are in general epiphytes, as in the
Brazilian forests, in the lower portions of the Himalayan mountains,
and in the islands of the Indian archipelago; when they occur in
temperate regions they are terrestrial in their mode of growth; in
extremely dry or cold climates, orchidaceous plants are unknown. Two
rare and beautiful epiphytal orchids, the _Angraecum sesquipedale_ and
_A. superbum_, were obtained by Mr. Ellis in Madagascar and Mauritius,
and introduced into this country. Of the former, the largest flowered
of all the orchids, Dr. Lindley has given the following description:

  "The plant forms a stem about eighteen inches high, covered with
  long leathery leaves in two ranks, like _Venda tricolor_ and its
  allies; but they have a much more beautiful appearance, owing to a
  drooping habit, and a delicate bloom which clothes their surface.
  From the axils of the uppermost of these leaves appear short stiff
  flower-stalks, each bearing three and sometimes five flowers,
  extending seven inches in breadth and the same in height. They are
  furnished with a firm, curved, tapering, tail-like spur, about
  fourteen inches long. When first open, the flower is slightly tinged
  with green except the tip, which is almost pure white; after a short
  time the green disappears, and the whole surface acquires the
  softest waxy texture and perfect whiteness. In this condition they
  remain, preserving all their delicate beauty, for more than five
  weeks. Even before they expand, the greenish buds, which are three
  inches long, have a very noble appearance."

To the scientific naturalist few subjects are more full of deep
interest than the question of the geographical distribution of
animals. Dr. Sclater, the active secretary of the Zoological Society
of London, has contributed an instructive paper, "On the Mammals of
Madagascar," to the second, number {196} of the "Quarterly Journal of
Science," from which we gather the following facts: As a general rule,
it is found that the faunae and florae of such countries as are most
nearly contiguous do most nearly resemble one another, while, on the
other hand, those tracts of land which are furthest asunder are
inhabited by most different forms of animal and vegetable life. Now,
Madagascar, with the Mascarene islands, is a strange exception to the
rule; for the forms of mammalia which are found in these islands are
very different from the forms which occur in the contiguous coast of
Africa, although the channel between Madagascar and the continent is
in one place not more than 200 miles: "The numerous mammals of the
orders Ruminantia, Pachydermata, and Proboscidea, so characteristic of
the Ethiopian fauna, are entirely absent from Madagascar. The same is
the case with the larger species of carnivora which are found
throughout the African continent, but do not extend into Madagascar.
Again, the highly organized types of Quadrumana which prevail in the
forests of the mainland are utterly wanting in the neighboring island;
their place being there occupied by several genera of the inferior
family of _Lemurs_," Dr. Sclater shows that this anomaly is not
confined to the orders already enumerated, but that similar
irregularities prevail to a greater or lesser extent in every part of
the mammalian series, and that, in short, the anomalies presented to
us of the forms of life prevalent in the island of Madagascar "are so
striking that claims have been put forward in its favor to be
considered as a distinct primary geographical region of the earth."
Dr. Sclater also draws attention to the very curious fact, "quite
unparalleled, as far as is hitherto known, in any other fauna, that
nearly two-thirds of the whole number of known species of the mammals
of this island are members of one peculiar group of Quadrumana." The
family of _Lemuridae_ contains no less than eight generic types, all
different from those found in Africa and India, although this group is
also represented in Africa by the abnormal form _Perodicticus_, and in
India by _Nycticebus_ and _Loris_, two allied genera. The celebrated
Aye Aye (_Chiromys Madagascariensis_), a specimen of which anomalous
animal is at present in the new monkey-house in the Zoological
Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, is considered by Prof. Owen to be
more nearly allied to some of the African Galagos than to any other
form of animal. Of insectivora, the genera _Centetes, Ericulus_, and
_Echinogale_, small animals resembling hedge-hogs in outward
appearance, are thought to be most nearly allied to an American genus.
From the anomalies in the mammalian fauna of this island. Dr. Sclater
arrives at the following deductions, which, however, as they are based
upon the hypothesis of the derivative origin of species, cannot at
present be deemed altogether conclusive:

  "1. Madagascar has never been connected with Africa, _as it at
  present exists_. This would seem probable from the absence of
  certain all-pervading Ethiopian types in Madagascar, such as
  _Antelope, Hippopotamus Felis_, etc. But, on the other hand, the
  presence of _Lemurs_ in Africa renders it certain that Africa as it
  at present exists, contains land that once formed part of
  Madagascar.

  "2. Madagascar and the Mascarene islands (which are universally
  acknowledged to belong to the same category) must have remained for
  a long epoch separated from every other part of the globe, in order
  to have acquired the many peculiarities now exhibited in their
  mammal fauna--_e.g._, _Lemur, Chiromys, Eupleres, Centetes,_
  etc.--to be elaborated by the gradual modification of pre-existing
  forms.

  "3. Some land-connection must have existed in former ages between
  Madagascar and India, whereon the original stock, whence the present
  Lemuridae of Africa, Madagascar, and India, are descended,
  flourished.

{197}

  "4. It must be likewise allowed that some sort of connection must
  also have existed between Madagascar and land which now forms part
  of the new world--in order to permit the derivation of the
  _Centetinae_ from a common stock with the _Solenodon_, and to
  account for the fact that the Lemuridae, as a body, are certainly
  more nearly allied to the weaker forms of American monkeys than to
  any of the Simiidae of the old world.

  "The anomalies of the mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be
  explained by supposing that, anterior to the existence of Africa in
  its present shape, a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic
  and Indian oceans, stretching out toward (what is now) America on
  the west, and to India and its islands on the east; that this
  continent was broken up into islands, of which some became
  amalgamated with the present continent of Africa, and some possibly
  with what is now Asia--and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene
  islands we have existing relics of this great continent."

We fain would have lingered on the natural products of this
interesting island, to drink of the refreshing liquid furnished by the
traveller-tree, and to admire the sago palms and other vegetable
forms, but space forbids our dwelling longer on the natural
productions of the tropics.  [Footnote 30] We could have spoken of the
aspects of tropical nature as it appears in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and
other islands of the Pacific ocean, but we must stop. We ought not,
however, to conclude these gleanings without a brief notice of Dr.
Hartwig's popular book, whose title we have placed at the head of this
article. There are those who look with contempt on popular science of
all kinds, and regard with undisguised aversion such compilations as
the one before us. We do not share these feelings in the least degree;
on the contrary, we welcome most heartily such introductions to the
study of natural history. True, they may be sometimes of little
scientific value, but they are very useful stepping-stones to
something more solid. They are more especially intended for the young,
but those of mature years may derive much profit by a perusal of many
of these works, and even the naturalist may read them with pleasure
and instruction. The numerous beautifully illustrated and carefully
compiled works on natural history, such as the book before us,
together with "The Sea and its Living Wonders," by the same writer,
with Routledge's admirable "Natural History," and several of the
Christian Knowledge Society's publications, which have appeared within
the last few years, are an encouraging sign of the growing interest
which the rising generation takes in the study of the great Creator's
works, and we heartily wish them "God-speed."

  [Footnote 30: In our own territory of the Seychelles Islands, 4° to
  5° S., 300 miles N. E. of the great island Just alluded to, we see
  one of the strangest of vegetable productions, the double cocoa-nut,
  or Lodoicea, which was fully described by Mr. Ward in the "Journal
  of the Linnean Society, 1864:" "The shortest period before the tree
  puts forth its buds is 30 years, and 100 years must elapse before it
  attains its full growth. One plant in the garden at Government
  House, planted 15 years ago, is quite in its infancy, about 16 feet
  in height, but with no stem yet visible, the long leaves shooting
  from, the earth like the Traveler's Palm (_Urania specioea_), and
  much resembling it in shape, but much larger. Unlike the cocoa-nut
  trees, which bend to every gale and are never quite straight, the
  coco-de-mer trees are as upright as iron pillars. At the ago of 30
  the trees first put forth blossoms. The female tree alone produces
  the nut, and is 6 feet shorter than the male, which attains a height
  of 100 feet. From fructification to full maturity a period of nearly
  10 years elapses." But the remarkable point is the arrangement of
  the roots, unlike any other tree. "The base of the trunk is of a
  bulbous form, and this bulb fits into a natural bowl or socket about
  2-1/2 feet in diameter and 1-1/2 foot in depth, narrowing to the
  bottom. This bowl is pierced with hundreds of small oval holes about
  the size of thimbles, with hollow tubes corresponding on the
  outside, through which the roots penetrate the ground on all sides,
  never, however, becoming attached to the bowl, their partial
  elasticity affording an almost imperceptible, but very necessary
  _play_ to the parent stem when struggling against the force of
  violent gales. This bowl is of the same substance as the shell of
  the nut, only much thicker. As far as can be ascertained, it never
  rots or wears out. It has been found quite perfect and entire in
  every respect 60 years after the tree has been cut down. At Curiense
  many sockets are still remaining which are known to have belonged to
  trees cut down by the first settlers in the Island (1742)." One of
  these sockets is to be seen in the Museum of woods at Kew.]

--------

{198}

From Chamber's Journal.

WINTER SIGNS.

  Links upon the forehead come--
    Strokes alike of time and grief,
  Branches from the heart beneath
    That will never bear a leaf.

  Come the summer, come the spring,
    Still they keep their wintry hue;
  Deepening, stretching o'er the brow.
    Shadows lift them into view.

  Straight and crooked, right and left.
    On the strong and on the weak--
  Upward to the hoary head.
    Downward to the hollow cheek.

  Shadows from the life within,
    Tarrying ere they pass away,
  Plant these stems of sorrow there,
    Growing in the night and day.

  Light that fills the eye afresh
    From some inward moving grace,
  Casting from it, as a sun.
    Quiet rays upon the face--

  Makes these ruts of time appear
    Winding, widening in their space,
  Drawing loving eyes and thoughts
    All their history to trace.

  Whilst upheaved by a smile,
    Radiant in the breast of light,
  These eternal scores of grief
    Tell of many an inner night.

  Stories come up from their roots.
    Half unfolded in their course,
  Showing how a hundred pangs
    Long ago became their source.

--------

{199}

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XV.

Any help which old Murdock was in the habit of getting from his son
upon the farm, and it was at no time of much value, either in labor or
advice, had latterly dwindled down to a mere careless questioning as
to how matters were going on, and his father began to fear that he was
"beginning to go to the bad." Poor old man, how little of the truth he
knew!

There was now always something cranky and unpleasant in Tom's manner.
He was often from home for days together, and, when at home, often out
at night until very late; and if questioned in the kindest manner by
his father upon the subject, his answers were snappish and
unsatisfactory. Poor old Mick--deluded Mick--laid down both his
wanderings and his crankiness to the score of his love for Winny
Cavana, and the uncertainty of his suit.

From one or two encouraging and cheery expressions his father had
addressed to him, Tom knew this to be the view his father had taken of
his case, and he was quite willing to indulge the delusion. Now that
matters had come to an open rupture between him and Winny--for
notwithstanding his father's hopes, he had none--it was convenient for
him that his father should continue of the same mind--nay, more, his
father himself had suggested a step, which, if he could manage with
his usual ability, might turn to his profit, and relieve to a certain
extent some of the perplexities by which he was beset.

Old Mick had spent a long and fatiguing day, not merely in his
peregrinations through the farm, but from anxiety and watching, having
observed Winny go out earlier than usual, and seeing that Tom soon
after had followed her down the road. He was rather surprised in about
an hour afterward to see Winny return alone, and at not having seen
Tom for nearly two hours later in the day, when he returned cross and
disappointed, as we have seen. The "untoward circumstances," detailed
in the conversation after dinner with his son, had not the same
depressing effects upon the old man as upon Tom; for he really
believed that they were not only not past cure, but according to his
notions of how such matters generally went on, that they were on a
fair road to success. He therefore enjoyed a night's sound sleep,
while Tom lay tossing and tumbling, and planning and scheming,--and
occasionally cursing Edward Lennon, whom he could not persuade himself
was not, as his father said, at the bottom of all this. It was near
morning, therefore, before he had fretted himself to sleep.

Early the next day old Mick determined to ascertain the actual state
of facts. He was up betimes, and having seen what was necessary to be
done for the day upon the farm, he set the operations going, and
returned to breakfast. Tom had not yet stirred; and as Nancy had told
the old masther that she "heered him struggling with the bed-clothes,
an' talkin' to himself until nearly morning," he would not allow her
to call him, but went to breakfast by himself, telling her to have a
fresh pot of tay, an' a dacent breakfast for him when he got up. "Poor
fellow," he said to himself, "I did not think that girl had so firm a
hoult of him."

{200}

Old Mick's anticipations of how matters really stood, and his
confidence in Ned Cavana's firmness, were doomed to be shaken, if not
altogether disappointed. Old Ned saw him hanging "about the borders"
with a watchful look directed toward his house. He took it for granted
that Tom had mentioned something of what had occurred to him, and he
knew at once what he was lingering about for.

Ned had undoubtedly led old Murdock to suppose that he would be "as
stout as a bull" with Winny about marrying his son; but when Ned had
spoken thus sternly upon the subject, he had not anticipated any
opposition upon Winny's part to the match. He did not see how she
could object, nor did he see why. Mick had imbibed some slight idea of
the kind from what Tom had told him; but Ned had combated this idea
with great decision, and some sternness; more by way of showing his
neighbor how he could exercise his parental authority, than from any
great dread that he would ever be called on to assert it.

But Ned Cavana knew not the nature Class his own heart. He had
miscalculated the extent of his love for Winny, or the influence her
affectionate and devoted life could exercise over that love, in a case
where such a dispute might come between them. Thus we have seen him
yield to that influence almost without argument, and certainly without
a harsh or angry word. When it came to the point that he had to
confront her tears, where was the fury with which he met old Murdock's
insinuations and suggestions?--where the threats of cutting her off,
not _with_ but _without_ a shilling, and leaving it all to the
Church?--where the steady determination with which he had resolved to
"bring her to her senses?"--all, all lost in the affectionate smile
which beamed upon her pleading love.

Ned Cavana knew now that old Murdock was on the watch for him. He
believed that Tom had told him what had taken place between him and
Winny; and although he did not dread any alteration in his promise to
his daughter, he felt that he could deal more stoutly with old Murdock
with the recollection of Winny's tears fresh on her cheeks, than if
the matter were to lie over for any time. He therefore strolled
through the farmyard, and out on the lane we have already spoken of,
and turned down toward the fields at the back of his garden. This
movement was not, of course, unnoticed by the man who was on the watch
for some such, and accordingly he sloped down toward the gate, at
which he and his son had held the conversation--a conversation which
had confirmed Winny in her preconceived opinion of Tom Murdock's
character and motives.

The two old men thus met once again at the same spot at which the
reader first saw them together.

"I'm glad you cum out, Ned," said Murdock, "for I was watin to see
you, to tell you about Tom. He done his part yesterda' illegant, an'
you may spake to the little girl now as soon as you plaise."

"I have spoken to her, Mick. She tould me all about it herself, last
night."

"Well, she didn't resave Tom at all the way he thought she would, nor
the way she led him to think she would, aidher. I hope she tould the
thruth to you, Ned, and didn't make b'lief to be shy an' resarved, as
she did to Tom. Poor boy, he's greatly down about it."

"She did; she tould me the whole thruth, Mick avic, and it's all no
use; she won't marry Tom--that's the long an' the short of it."

"Why, then, she mightn't be cosherin wid him the way she was, Ned, and
ladin the poor young boy asthray as to her intintions when she brought
him to the point."

"My little girl never done anything of the kind, Mick; she'd scorn to
do it."

"Well, no matther; she done it now, Ned; and as for Tom, he's the
{201} very boy that i'd nather humbug a little girl, nor allow her to
humbug him. Did you spake stout to her, Ned?"

"I said all that was necessary, Mick awochal: but I seen it was no
use, an' I wouldn't disthress the crathur."

"Disthress the crathur, _aniow!_ Athen may be it's what you don't much
care how that poor boy 'ithin there is disthressed through her mains."

"As for that, Mick, it needn't, nor it won't, disthress Tom a bit.
There's many a fine girl in the parish that i'd answer Tom betther nor
my little girl; and when I find that she's not for him, Mick awochal,
I tell you I won't disthress the colleen by harsh mains, so say no
more about it."

"Athen, Ned, I think you tuck it aisy enugh afther all you tould me
d'other day; you'd do this, an' you'd do that, an' you'd cut her off
wid a shillin', an' you'd bring her to her senses, an' what wouldn't
you do, Ned? I tould you to be studdy, or she'd cum over you wid her
pillaver; and I tell you now what I tould you then, that it is all
through the mains of that pauper Lennon she has done this--a purty
_scauhawn_ for her to be wastin' your mains an' your hard earnin's
upon. Arrah, Ned, I wondher you haven't more sense than to be
deludhered by that beggarman out of your little girl an' your money."

"No, Mick, young Lennon has nothing to say to it; if he never was
born, Winny wouldn't marry Tom. I would not misbelieve Winny on her
word, let alone her oath; an' she tould me she tuck her oath to Tom
that she'd never marry him. He taxed her wid young Lennon, an' so did
I; an' she declared, an' I believe her there too, Mick, that there
never was a word between them on such a subject; an' let there be no
more now between us. It can't be helped. But I will not disthress my
little girl by spakin' to her any more about Tom."

"Oh, very well, Ned; that'll do. But, be the book, Tom's not the boy
that'll let himself be med a fool of by any one; an' I'm the very
fellow that is able an' willin' to back him up in it."

"Athen what do you mane, Mick?--for the devil a wan of me can
undherstan' that threat, af it beant the law you mane, an' sure the
gandher in the yard beyant id have more sense than to think iv that.
My little girl never held out the smallest cumhither upon Tom; but,
instead iv that, she tells me that she always med scarse iv herself
wheen he was to the fore. So af it be law you mane, Mick, you may do
your worst."

"No, it isn't the law I mane, Ned. Law is dear at best, an' twiste as
dear at worst; but I mane to say that I'll back up poor Tom 'ithin
there, that's brakin' his heart about Winny; an' if you have any
regard for her, you'll do the same thing; an' you'll see we'll bring
the thing round, as we ought; that's what I mane. The girl can't deny
but what she med much iv Tom, until that other spalpeen cum across
her. Tom's no fool, an' knows what a girl mains very well."

"She does deny it, Mick, an' so she can. But there's no use, I tell
you, in sayin' any more about it. I can see plane an' aisy enough that
Winny isn't for him. I tould her I wouldn't strive to force her likin'
or dislikin', an' I won't; so just tell Tom that the girl is in
earnest. She tould him so herself, an' you may tell him the same
thing. He can't think so much about her, Mick, as you let on, for
there never was any courting betune them from first to last. I'll
spake to you no more about it, Mick, an' you needn't spake to me."

With this final resolve, Ned turned his back completely round upon his
neighbor, and walked with a hasty but firm step into the house.

{202}

Old Mick stood for some moments looking after him in a state of
perplexed surprise. He had some fears, though they were not very
great, that Winny's influence over her father was sufficiently strong
to determine him according to her wishes, if she was really averse to
a match with his son; but this latter was a point upon which he had
scarcely any fears at all; except such as were suggested by the hints
his son himself had thrown out about young Lennon. Upon this part of
the case he had spoken to Ned in such a way as to make him determined
to be very strict and decided in his opposition to any leaning on his
daughter's part in that quarter.

Old Mick, as he stood and looked, was perplexed on both these parts of
the case. If he believed that Winny Cavana had really and decidedly
refused to marry his son, he could only do so upon the supposition
that young Lennon was the mainspring of the whole movement. And,
again, to suppose she had preferred a "secret colloguing with that
pauper," behind her father's back, to an open and straight-forward
match with a rich young man, and what he called a handsomer man than
ever Lennon was, or ever would be, and with her father's full consent,
was what he could not bring himself to believe of any sensible girl.
But this he did believe, that if "that young whelp" was really not at
the bottom of Winny's refusal, a marriage with his son, be it brought
about _by what means it could_, would end in a reconciliation, not
only of Winny to so great a match, but of old Ned, as a necessary
consequence, to his daughter's acquiescence.

With these thoughts, and counter-thoughts, he too turned toward his
house, where he found Tom just going to his breakfast, in no very good
humor with the past, the present, or the future.

His father "bid him the time of day," and said "he had to look after a
cow that was on for cavin'," an' that he'd be back by the time he had
done his breakfast. This was a mere piece of consideration upon old
Mick's part.

Loss of appetite and uneasiness of manner in a handsome young man of
two-and-twenty is unhesitatingly set down by the old crones of a
parish to his being "in love," and they are seldom at a loss to supply
the _colleen dhass_ to whom these symptoms are attributable. In Tom's
case, however, there were other matters than love which were
accountable for the miserable attempt at breakfast he had made,
notwithstanding the elaborate preparations Nancy Feehily had made to
tempt him. His father was surprised to find him so soon following him
to the fields. But Tom, knowing his father's energy of action when a
matter was on his mind, suspected he had not been to that hour of the
day without managing an interview with old Cavana, and was on the
fidgets to know what passed. But love--as love--had nothing whatever
to say to his want of relish for so good a breakfast as had been set
before him.

He met his father returning toward the house, not far from the
celebrated gate already so often mentioned in this story. The spot
where they now met was a little more favorable for a conference than
the gate in question, for, unlike it, there was no private bower for
eavesdroppers to secrete themselves in.

"Well, father," said Tom, breaking into the subject at once, "have you
seen the old fogie about Winny?"

"I have, Tom, an' matthers is worse nor I thought. She has cum round
him most complately; for the present anyhow."

"I told you how it would be, father, and be d--!"

"Whist, Tom, don't be talking that way; there's wan thing I'm afther
being purty sure of, an' that is, that that spalpeen has nothin' to
say to it. It's all perverseness just for a while, an' she'll cum
round afther a bit."

"Well, father. I'll cut my stick for that bit, be it long or short; so
tell me, what can you do for me about money? You know if she was never
in the place, it's nothing to keep me here stravaging about the road."

"Thrue for you, Tom avic. It isn't easy, however, layin' a man's {203}
hand upon what you'd want wid you for a start; but sure my credit is
good in the bank, an' sure I'll put my name upon a bill-stamp for you
for twenty or thirty pounds. Take my advice an' don't go past your
aunt's in Armagh. Tom, she's an illigant fine woman, an' will resave
you wid a _ceade mille a faltha_, an' revive you out an' out afore you
put a month over you. There's not a man in Armagh has a betther thrade
than her husband, Bill Wilson the carpenter--cabinet-maker, I b'lieve
they call him--an' b'lieve my words, she'll make the most of her
brother's son. Who knows, Tom avic? Arrah, maybe you'd do betther down
there nor at home. Any way Winny won't be gone afore you come back,
an' if we can't manage wan thing maybe we would another--_thig um,
thee?_"

"Well, I hope so; but, father, I'll be off before Sunday, and this is
Wednesday."

"You'll have lashins of time, Tom; but the sorra wan but I'll be very
lonely; for although, Tom, you do be wandhering from home by day, and
stopping out late sometimes by night, sure I know you're not far off,
an' I always hear you lettin' yourself in betune night an' mornin'.
Though Caesar doesn't bark at you, I hear him whinin' an' shufflin'
when you're coming to the back doore?"

"No matter about that now, father; I suppose I can get the money
tomorrow or after, and start for my aunt's?"

"Any minute, Tom. I'm never without a bill-stamp in the house in
regard of the fairs. Come in, and I'll dhraw it out at wanst, an' I'll
engage they'll give you the money on it at the bank; don't be the
laste taste aleared of that, Tom."

Whether Tom then intended to be guided by his father's advice, and not
go past his aunt's in Armagh, it is not easy to say; but at all events
he "let on" that he would not do so. When he got his heels loose, with
a trifle of cash in his pocket, he could turn his steps in any
direction he wished.

They then returned to the house, and old Mick, putting on his
spectacles, opened a table-drawer in the parlor, where he kept his
writing materials, accounts, receipts, etc. After some discussion,
which had well-nigh ended in an argument, as to whether the amount
should be twenty or thirty pounds, a bill was ultimately drawn by the
son upon the father for the former sum, at three months. Tom had,
other reasons than the mere increase of ten pounds in the amount, for
wishing to have the word thirty instead of twenty written in the bill;
however, he could not screw more than the latter sum out of the old
man, which he said was ample to take him to his aunt's in Armagh,
where he'd get lashins an' lavins of the best of everything. Tom knew
that for this purpose it would be ample, and therefore failed to bring
forward any arguments to sustain his view as to the necessity of
making it thirty; but as it was he himself who wrote it out, he patted
the blotting-paper over it in great haste--a matter which was not, of
course, observed by the old man, nor if it had been would he have
supposed there was anything unusual, much less for a purpose, in the
act. The father having read it carefully over, and seeing that it was
all correct, wrote his name with some dignity of manner across the
bill. This portion of the writing Tom took care to let dry without any
blotting at all, for he held it to the fire instead. Neither did the
old man observe this unusual course, the manifest mode being to have
used the blotting-paper, as in the first instance.

The matter being now thus far perfected, Tom asked his father if he
could have Blackberry--one of the farm horses--to go into C. O. S.
early next morning.

"An' welcome, Tom, if he was worth a hundred pounds," said the old
man, locking the drawer.

{204}

CHAPTER XVI.

Tom spent the remainder of that day very quietly, most of it in his
own room. His first employment, whatever it may have been, was over an
old portfolio, where he kept his own writing materials. What were the
chief subjects of his caligraphy is not known. Perhaps love-letters to
such of his numerous _enamoratas_ as could read may have formed a
portion, nor is it impossible but the police might have given a trifle
to have laid their hands upon some others. Neither were likely to see
the light, however, as Tom Murdock kept that old portfolio carefully
locked up in his box.

The next morning at an unusually early hour for him Tom proceeded upon
Blackberry, fully caparisoned with the best saddle and bridle in the
place, to C. O. S.; where, after ten o'clock, he found no difficulty
in procuring cash upon his father's acceptance.

Now, although in the first instance Tom had no notion of stopping at
his aunt's in Armagh, or perhaps of going there at all, upon
reflection he changed his mind altogether upon the subject. He had
some congenial spirits there beside his aunt--spirits with whom he
occasionally had had personal communication as well as more frequent
epistolary correspondence. Beyond Armagh, therefore, upon second
thoughts, he resolved not to go upon this occasion. As to any
depression of spirits on account of Winny Cavana, he had none, except
the loss of her fortune, which would have stood to him so well in his
present circumstances. And here he remembered that his father had told
him the interest of "that same" was all he could have touched, and
even that at only three per cent.; so that for the mere present he had
done as well, if not better. What he had drawn out of the bank upon
his father's credit, would settle the two harassing and intricate
cases, which two different attorneys, on the part of those whom he had
most grievously wronged, had threatened to expose in a court of law.
He would have some over--he took care of that--to take him to Armagh
and back, where he could not manage _this time_ to go at the expense
of "the fund." He did not purpose, however, to stop very long at his
aunt's. He would tell Winny when he came back that her refusal of him
had driven him away--he knew nor cared not whither; but that he found
it impossible to live without sometimes seeing her, if it was only
from his own door to hers: yes, he would follow that business up the
moment he returned. In the meantime it might not be without some good
effect his being absent for a short time.

Such were the thoughts and plans with which Tom, after he had settled
with the attorneys, left his poor old father, we may say completely
alone; for after the rather sharp words which had taken place between
the two old men, he could hardly continue his customary visits, or
half-casual, half-projected meetings with Ned Cavana, by their
respective mearings. Hitherto in this respect, more than in actual
visits, the intercourse between these two old men had been habitual,
indeed it may be said of daily occurrence, mutually watched for. If
one saw the other overlooking his men, either sowing or reaping, or
planting or digging, according to the time of the year, the habit
almost amounted to a rule, that, whichever saw the other first, quit
his own men, and sloped over toward his neighbor to have a look at
what was going on, and having there exhausted the pros and cons of
whatever the work might be, a general chat was kept up and the visit
returned on the spot.

Now, however, matters were to a great extent changed. This "untoward
circumstance" between Tom Murdock and Winny Cavana, together with the
subsequent conversation upon the subject between the fathers, rendered
this friendly {205} intercourse impossible. From all his son had told
him, old Mick thought Winny Cavana had treated him badly, and he
considered that old Ned had "gone back of his word" to himself. He was
a plucky, proud old cock, and his advice to Tom would be "to see it
out with the pair of them, without any _pillaver_."

What he meant by "seeing it out" he hardly knew himself, for he had
repudiated the law in a most decided manner when taxed with it by Ned.
What, then, could he mean by "seeing it out?" Perhaps Tom would not
require his advice upon the subject.

From this day forth, however, old Mick was not the man he used to be.
A man at his age, however well he may have worn--ay, even to have
obtained the name of an evergreen--generally does so having his mind
at ease as well as his body in health--the one begets the other; and
so an old man thrives, and often looks as well at seventy as he did at
sixty. But these old evergreens sometimes begin to fail suddenly if
the cold wind of disappointment blows roughly upon their hitherto
happy hearts; and Tom Murdock was not three weeks away, when the
remarks of the people returning from the chapel, respecting old Mick,
were that "they never saw a man so gone in the time." And the fact was
so.

Old Mick Murdock had been all his life a cheerful, chatty man, one
with whom it was a comfort to "be a piece of the road home." Moreover,
he had always been erect in person, with a pair of cheeks like a
scarlet Crofton apple--not the occasional smooth flush of delicacy,
but the constant hard rough tint of health. There were many young men
in the parish whom a walk alongside of old Mick Murdock for a couple
of miles would put out of breath, while you would not see a heave,
however slight, out of old Mick's chest.

Look on him now: "he has not a word to throw to a dog," as the saying
has it; he is beginning to stoop in his gait, and more than once
already he has struck his heel against the ground in walking. As yet
it is not a drag, and those indications of a break-up in his
constitution are comparatively slight. Ere long, however, you will see
him with a stick, and you will be hardly able to recognize him as the
Mick Murdock of a few months before.

Tom, as we have seen, having settled with the attorneys, started for
his aunt's; where, as his father had predicted, he was received with
open arms, and a joyful clapping of hands and a _ceade mille a
faltha_. "Oh, then, Tom, avic macree, but it's you that's welcome; an'
shure I needn't ax you how you are. Oh, but it's you that's grown the
fine young man since I seen you last. An' let me see--how long ago is
that now, Tom agra? It'll be four years coming Easthre Sunda' next
since I was down in Rathcashmore. An' how is Mick a wochal? an' how's
_herself_, Tom, the 'colleen dhass' you know?" And she gave him a poke
with her finger between the ribs. "Ah, Tom avic, yon needn't look so
shy; shure I know all about it, an' why wouldn't I? It'll be an
illigant match for the pair iv ye; as good for the wan as for the
other--coming Shraft, Tom, eh? In troth Winny will be a comfort to
you, as well as a creedit; that's what she will, won't she, Tom?"

"Let me alone now, aunt; I'm tired after the journey; and it's not of
her I'm thinking."

"See that now--arra _na bocklish_, Tom, don't be afther telling me
that; shure didn't Mick himself write to me two or three times to let
me know how matthers was going on, and the grand party he gev on
Hallow-Eve, and the fun ye all had, and how you danced wid her a'most
the whole night."

"Nonsense, aunt! Did he tell you how anybody else danced?"

"No, the sorra word he said about any wan that was there, barrin'
yourself an' herself."

"Well, never heed her now. I'll {206} tell you more about her
to-morrow or next day, and maybe ask your advice upon the subject at
the same time."

Their conversation was here interrupted, as Tom thought very
opportunely, by the entrance of Bill Wilson, whose welcome for his
wife's nephew was as hearty, in a manner, as that which he had
received from herself. The conversation, of course, now "became
general;" and Bill Wilron, although he had never been out of Armagh,
seemed to have everybody down about Tom's country pat by heart, for he
asked for them all by name, not forgetting, although he left her to
the last, to ask for Winny Cavana. It was evident to Tom, from his
manner, that he was up to the project in that quarter; and as evident
that, like his aunt, he knew nothing of how matters up to this had
turned out, or how they were likely to end. He answered his uncle's
questions, however, with reasonable self-possession; and his aunt,
having perceived from his last observation to herself that there was
"a screw loose," turned the conversation very naturally to the subject
of Tom's physical probabilities, saying,

"Athen, Tom jewel, maybe it's what you're hungry, an' would like to
take something to eat afore dinner; shure an' shure it's the first
question I ought to have asked you."

"No, aunt, I thank you kindly, I'll take nothing until your dinner;
there's a friend of mine lives in the skirts of the town; I want to
see him, and I'll be back in less than an hour."

"A friend of yours, Tom? athen shure if he is, he ought to be a friend
of ours; who is he, Tom a wochal?"

"Oh, no, aunt, you never heard of him. He's a boy I have a message to
from, a friend in the country."

"Why, then, Tom, you'll be wanting to know the way in this strange
place, an' shure I'll send the girl wid you to show you. Shure how
could you know, an' you never in Armagh afore?"

"No, aunt, I say, I have a tongue in my head, and I'm not an
_onshiough_. I'll find him out without taking your girl from her
business."

"Athen, Tom jewel, whoever bought you for an _onshiough_ would lay out
his money badly, I'm thinking; an' although you were never in this big
city afore, the devil a bit afeared I am but you'll find your way, an'
well have lashins iv everything that's good for you, and a _ceade
mille a faltha_ when you come back."

Tom then left them, bidding them a temporary good-bye. He he did not
think it at all necessary to enlighten his aunt to the fact that he
had paid periodical visits to Armagh from time to time, and had on
these occasions passed her very door. But these visits were of short
duration, and have been only hinted at. They were sufficient, however,
to familiarize him with the portions of the city to which he now
directed his steps. But as we are not aware of the precise spot to
which he went, nor acquainted with those whose society he sought, we
shall not follow him.

His aunt, after he had left, was in no degree sparing in her praise of
him to her husband, who had never seen him before, but who indorsed
every word she said with the greatest promptitude and good-humor, "as
far as he could see."

Bill Wilson was no fool. He gave his wife's nephew a hearty and a
sincere welcome, and he knew it would be an ungracious thing not to
acquiesce in all that she said to his advantage; but it was an
indiscreet slip to add the words "as far as he could see." It implied
a caution on his part which did not say much for the confidence he
ought to have felt in his wife's opinion, and went merely to
corroborate her praises of his personal appearance.

"As far as you can see,' Bill! Well, indeed, that far you can find no
fault at all, at all; that's shure an' sartin. Where would you find
the likes iv him, as far as that same goes, William Wilson?--not in
Armagh, let me tell you. I ax you did you {207} ever see a finer head
iv hair, or a finer pair iv ejes in a man's head, or a handsomer nose,
or a purtier mouth? An' the whiskers, Bill!--ah, them's the dark
whiskers from Slieve-dhu; none of your moss-colored whiskers that you
see about here, Bill. Look at the hoith iv him!  He's no leprahaun,
Bill Wilson; an' I say if you go out an' walk the town for three
hours, you'll not meet the likes iv him till you come back again to
where he is himself'."

"Faix, an' I won't try that, Mary, for I believe every word you're
afther sayin'. But, shure, I didn't mane to make Little of the young
man at all."

"You said 'as far as you could see,' Bill; an' shure we all know how
far that is. But amn't I tellin' you what is beyant your sight,--what
he is to the backbone, for larnin', an' everythin' that's good, manly,
an' honest? There now, Bill, I hope you don't misdoubt me,--'as far as
you can see,' indeed!"

"Well, Mary, I meant nothing against him by that; indeed I believe,
and I am shure, he's as good as he's handsome. But I must go out now
to the workshop to look after the men. Let me know when he comes
back."

Tom was not so long away as he had intended. The person whom he went
to look for was not at home, and he returned to his aunt at once. He
had not many acquaintances in Armagh, and they were such as might be
better pleased with a visit _after dark_ than so early in the day.

Before "the dinner" was prepared, Tom had another chat with his aunt,
and, as a matter of course, she could not altogether avoid the subject
of Winny Cavana. She had been given to understand by her brother that
a successful courtship was carrying on between Tom and her. But the
humor in which Tom had received her first quizzing upon the subject at
once told that intelligent lady of the "loose screw" on some side of
the question. Upon so important a matter, a married woman, and own
aunt to such a fine young man, one of the parties concerned, Mrs.
Wilson could not permit herself to remain ignorant. Her direct
questions in the first instance, and her dexterous cross-examination
afterward, showed Tom the folly of hoping to evade a full confession
of his having been refused; and it may be believed that he set forth
in no small degree how ill-treated he had been by the said Winny
Cavana _and_ her father.

His aunt consoled him, so far as she could, with hopes that matters
might not be so bad as he apprehended; reminding him at the same time
of the extent of the sea, and the number of good fishes which must
still be in it uncaught. That shrewd woman could also perceive, from
Tom's manner, under his confession, as well as his first ill-humor,
that the loss of Winny Cavana's fortune, and the reversion of her fat
farm, were more matters of regret to him than the loss of herself.

"And why not?" she thought, under the impression of Winny's
ill-treatment of such a fine han'som' young fellow as her nephew.
"Shure, couldn't he have his pick an' choice of any girl in that, or
in any other parish; ay, or among her acquaintances in Armagh, for
that matter? But as for young Lennon! she was sartin shure Winny
couldn't be such a born idgiot as to make much of the likes of him
where Tom was to the fore."

She thus encouraged her nephew, taking much the same view of his case
as old Mick had done, and giving him pretty much the same advice--
"not to dhraw back at all, but to persavare an' get a hoult in her by
hook or by crook, an' thrust to a reconciliation aftherwards. He might
take her word for it, it was more make b'lief than anything else.
Don't give it up, Tom; them sort of girls like persavarince; I know I
did, a wochal, in my time. What's on her mind is, {208} that it's
afther her money you are, an' Not hersel'."

"The devil a much she's out there, aunt; but I wish I could make her
think otherwise."

"Lissen here, Tom; 'a council's no command,' they say, an' my advice
is this. Let on when you go back that you could get an illigant fine
girl in Armagh wid twiste her fortune; but that nothing would tempt
you to forsake your own little girl at home, that was a piece iv your
heart since ye were both the hoith of a creepeen; do you see? an' I'll
back you up in it. Tell her she may bestow her fortune upon Kate
Mulvey or any one she likes; that herself is all you want. You know
she won't do that when it comes to the point."

"Not a bad plan, aunt. But sure I should let on to my father, and to
every one in the neighborhood; and they'll be asking me who she is,
and about her father and her mother, and all about her; and I should
have answers ready, if I mean the thing to look like the truth."

"An' won't I give you all that as pat as A, B, C? Don't I know the
very girl that'll answer to a T, Tom?"

"Why then, aunt dear, mightn't you bring me across her in earnest?"

"Faix, an' I could not, Tom, for a very good reason--that I'm not
acquainted wid her, except to see her sometimes; an' I know her name,
an' who she is, an' her father's name, an' how he med his money.
They're as proud as paycocks, I can tell you; an nayther the wan nor
the other would look the same side iv the street wid the likes iv us,
Tom; but they don't know that at Rathcash; an' shure, if Winny thries
to find out about them, she'll find that you're tellin' the truth as
far as the names an' money goes, an  I'll let on to be as thick as two
pickpockets wid them."

Tom was silent. The closing words of his aunt's speech made him wish
that he could pick some of their pockets of about a hundred pounds.

The plan, however, seemed a good one, and had the effect of putting
Tom Murdock into good humor; and when Bill Wilson joined them at
dinner Tom was so agreeable and chatty, that Bill thought his wife,
although she was Tom's aunt, had not said a word too much for him; and
he regretted more than ever that he had used the words "so far as he
could see." He anticipated--nay, he dreaded--that they would be
brought up to him again that night with greater force than ever.


CHAPTER XVII.

The most part of ready cash, whatever the sum may have been, which Tom
had received at the bank, having been, as he called it, "swallowed up
by them cormorants, the attorneys," he had, after all, but a trifling
balance in his pocket. He was determined, therefore, to live quietly
for some time at his aunt's upon "the lashins and lavins," taking her
advice, and arranging with her his plan of operations upon his return
to Rathcashmore. And his aunt's advice, in a prudent and worldly point
of view, was not to be controverted, if anything could tend toward the
attainment of his object; that was the question.

It was impossible, however, that Tom could rest altogether satisfied
with the company of his aunt and her husband, and three or four
children between ten and seventeen years of age;  particularly as the
eldest of his cousins was a long-necked boy with big, stuck-out ears,
who worked in his father's shop, instead of a graceful girl with dark
hair and fine eyes, whose domestic duties must keep her in the house
as her mother's assistant, or perhaps enable her, when she could be
spared, to guide him through the principal parts of the town, of which
he would have feigned the most profound ignorance. But the eldest
child just past seventeen, as we have seen. {209} happened to be a
boy, not a girl, and Tom did not consider this the best arrangement
that could be wished. In consequence, he sometimes spent an evening
from home, with one or other, or perhaps with all the congenial
spirits with whom, as a _delegate_--for the truth may be
confessed--from another county, he could claim brotherhood. On this
occasion, however, he was not on official business in Armagh; and
whatever intercourse took place between them was of a purely social
nature.

Tom was not altogether such a _mauvais sujet_ as perhaps the reader
has set him down in his own mind to be, from the inuendos which have
been thrown out respecting him, as well as the actual portions of his
character which have made themselves manifest. It must be
confessed--nay, I believe it has been admitted not many lines
above--that he was a Ribbonman; and although that includes all that is
murderous and wicked, when a necessity arises, yet in the absence of
such necessity a Ribbonman may not be altogether void of certain good
points in his character. It is the frightful _obligation_ which he
_labors_ under that makes a villain of him, should circumstances
require the aid of his iniquity. Apart from this, and from what is
termed an agrarian grievance, a Ribbonman may not be a bad family-man,
although the training he undergoes in "The Lodge" is ill calculated to
nourish his domestic sympathies.

Tom had now been upward of a month enjoying the hospitality of his
aunt; and notwithstanding that she had done all in her power to
entertain him, and "make much" of him, he was beginning to tire of the
eternal smoke and flags, and stacks of chimneys, which were always the
same to the eye: no bright "blast of sun," no sudden dark cloud, made
any difference in them; there they were, always the same dark color,
no matter what light shone upon them. No wonder, then, Tom Murdock
began once more to long for the fresh breeze that blew about the wild
hills of Rathcashmore, the green fields of his father's farm, and the
purple heather of Slieve-dhu, with the white rocks of Slieve-bawn by
her side.

Absence too had done more really to touch Tom's heart with respect to
Winny Cavana than to wean him from the "saucy slut," as he had called
her in pique on his departure. He had "come across,"--this is the
Irish mode of expressing, "had been introduced,"--through his aunt's
assistance, several of what she called illigant fine girls, nieces of
her husband's and others, and his heart confessed that none of them
"were a patch" upon Winny Cavana, after all. He thus became fidgety,
and began to speak of returning home. Of course the aunt opposed her
hospitality to such a step, for the present at least: "Just as we were
beginning to enjoy you, Tom avic," said she; and of course her husband
made a show of joining her, although he knew there had been more beer
drunk in the house in the last month than in the six preceding ones;
neither did the cold meat turn out to half the account. He knew this
by his pocket, not by his knowledge of the cookery. Tom, however, made
no promise of further sojourn than "to put the following Sunday over
him," and it was now Thursday. But the next morning's post hurried
matters. It brought him a letter from his father, which prevented his
aunt from pressing his stay beyond the following day, when it was
finally settled by Tom that he would start for home. "It ran thus," as
is the common mode of introducing a letter in a novel or story:

"DEAR TOM,--This comes to you hoppin' to find you in good health,
which I am sorry to say it does not lave me at present; but thank God
for all his mercies. I was very lonesum entirely afther you left me;
an the more, dear Tom, as I had not my ould neighbor Ned Cavana to
spake to, as used to be the case afore that {210} young chisel of a
daughter of his cam round him to brake wid us. She's there still,
seemingly as proud as ever; but she'll be taken down a peg wan of
these days, mark my words. I have wan piece of good news for you, Tom
avic; an' that is, that young Lennon never darkened their doore since
you went; and more be token, she never spoke a word to him on Sunda's
after mass, but went straight home with her father from the chapel.
This I seen myself; for although I have been very daunny since you
left me, I med bowld wid myself not to lose prayers any Sunda' wet or
dhry, for no other purpose but to watch herself an' that chap. So,
dear Tom, you needn't be afeared of him. I think, indeed; I seen him
going down the road the three Sunda's wid Kate Mulvey; so I think
Winny tould the truth to her father about him. Dear Tom, I have not
been well at all at all for the last three weeks, an' I am not able to
be out all day as I used to be, an' I hardly know how matthers are
goin' on upon the farm. I see old Ned a'most every day from the doore
or the garden, where I sometimes go out when it's fine; I see him
wandherin' about his farm as brisk an' as hard as ever. I think
nothin' would give that man a brash. Dear Tom, I did not like writin'
to you to say I was lonesum or unwell until you had taken a turn out
of yourself at your aunt's; but I am not gettin' betther, an' I think
the sight iv you would do me good. Tell your aunt to let you cum home
to me now. Indeed, dear Tom, I'm too long alone; an' havin' no wan to
spake to makes me fret, though I wouldn't interfere wid you for a
while afther you went. If ould Ned Cavana was the man I tuck him to
be, he wouldn't let the few words that cum betune us keep him away
from me all this time, an' I not well; but he never put to me, nor
from me, since you left, nor I to him. Dear Tom, cum back to me as
soon as you can, an' maybe we'll get the betther of him an' Winny,
afther all. Hopin' your aunt, an' the childer, an' Bill himself, is
all in good health, I remain your father till death,
     "Michael Murdock."

Tom, as I have hinted, was not without his good points, and, as he
read over the above letter from his poor lonely father, his heart
smote him for having been so long away, and where, to tell the truth
to himself, he had no great fun or pleasure. His conscience, moreover,
accused him of one glaring act of ingratitude and villany, he might
call it, toward the poor old man. There was something tender and
self-sacrificing in the letter, yet it was not without a complaining
tone all through, that brought all Tom's better feelings uppermost in
his heart; and he resolved to start for home early the next morning.
He now felt that he had business at home, which at one time he had
never contemplated taking the smallest trouble about, beside keeping
his poor old father better company than he had hitherto done. Yet,
with all this softening of his disposition, he was never more
determined to carry out his object with respect to Winny Cavana, by
fair means---or by _foul!_

What his father had said about young Lennon gave him hopes that, in
the end, a scheme which he had planned for the latter might not be
_necessary_.

Tom knew there could be no use in writing to his father to say he
would so soon be home with him. The nearest post-town was seven miles
from Rathcashmore; and although any person "going in had orders" to
call at the post-office, and bring out all letters for the neighbors
of both the Rathcashes, yet were he to write now, his letter was sure
to lie there for some days, and he would undoubtedly be home before
its receipt. Thus he argued, and therefore endeavored to content
himself with the resolution he had formed to make no delay; and
whatever "his traps" may have been, they were got together and locked
in his box at once.

{211}

He had engaged to meet a _particular friend_ on the following evening,
Friday, partly on _business_ previous to returning to _his own part_
the country. But he would now anticipate this visit by going there at
once, so as to enable him to leave for home early next morning. He
hoped to find his father better than his letter might lead him to
suppose; and he had no doubt his presence and society, which he was
determined should be more constant and sympathizing than heretofore,
would serve to cheer him.

Nothing, then, which his aunt could say, and certainly nothing which
her husband had added to what she did say, had any effect toward
altering Tom's resolution to start for home on the following morning.
By this means he hoped to reach his father on the evening of the
second day,--railways had not been then established in any part of
Ireland, not even the Dublin and Kingstown line,--and he would save
the poor old man from the lonesome necessity of going to church on
Sunday, "be it wet or dry."

He carried out his determination without check or hindrance, and
arrived at the end of the lane leading up to Rathcashmore house soon
after dusk in the evening of Saturday. He travelled by car from C--k;
and the horse being neither too spirited, nor too _fresh_, after his
journey, stood quietly on the road, with his head down, and his off
fore-leg in the "first position," until the driver returned, having
left Tom Murdock's box above at the house.

The meeting between old Mick and his son was as tender and
affectionate on the old man's part as could well be, and as much so on
Tom's as could well be expected. Old Mick had some secret
anticipations--presentiment, perhaps, I should have called it--that
they would never part again in this world, until they parted for the
last time. Daily he felt an increasing weakness of limb, weariness of
mind, which whispered to his heart that that parting was not far
distant. His son's arrival, however, had the effect which he had
promised to himself. He seemed to improve both in spirits and in
health. If he had not thrown away the stick,--which the reader was
forewarned he would adopt,--he made more use of it cutting at the
_kippeens_, and whatever else came in his way, than as a help to his
progress.


[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

From The St. James' Magazine.

THE INVENTOR OF THE STEAM-ENGINE.


In 1828 the learned Arago, a Frenchman, published a remarkable work on
the history of the steam-engine. It contains much information that had
hitherto been little known on the scientific labor and discoveries of
Salomon de Caus. He cites the work of the latter, entitled "_Les
Raisons des Forces Mouvantes_," which was first published at Frankfort
in 1615, and reprinted at Paris in 1624; and M. Arago draws from it
the conclusion that Salomon de Caus was the original inventor of the
steam-engine.

Six years after this notice of the life and labor of the French
engineer, there appeared in "_Le Musée des Familles_" a letter from
Marion Delorme, supposed to have been written on the 3d of February,
1641, to her lover Cinq-Mars, in which she tells him that she is doing
the honors of Paris to an English lord, the Marquis of Worcester, and
showing him all {212} the curiosities of that city. She goes on to say
that among other institutions she had taken milord to Bicêtre, where a
madman was confined for insisting on a wonderful discovery he had made
on the application of steam from boiling water; that the
superintendent of the asylum had shown a book to the marquis written
on the subject by this lunatic; and that after reading a few pages the
English nobleman begged for an interview with Salomon de Caus, from
which he returned in a grave and pensive mood, declaring that this man
was one of the greatest geniuses of his age.

Such is the substance of the letter of Marion Delorme; and the editor
of "_Le Musée des Familles_" adds that the Marquis of Worcester
appropriated the discovery to himself, and recorded it in his work
entitled "Century of Inventions," thus causing himself to be looked
upon by his countrymen as the inventor of the steam-engine.

The anecdote became very popular, and was copied into standard works,
represented in engravings, etc., etc. At length some incredulous
authors examined more closely into the matter, and found that not only
had Salomon de Caus never been confined in a lunatic asylum, but that
he had held the appointment of engineer and architect to Louis XIII.
up to his death in 1630, while Marion Delorme is asserted to have
visited Bicêtre in 1641!

On tracing this mystification to its source, we find that M. Henri
Berthoud, a literary man of some repute, and a constant contributor to
"_Le Musée des Familles_," confesses that the letter imputed to Marion
Delorme was in fact written by himself!

But the most curious part of the story is that the world refused to
believe in M. Berthoud's confession, so great a hold had the anecdote
taken on the public mind; and a Paris newspaper went so far even as to
declare that the original autograph of this letter was to be seen in a
library in Normandy, in which province Salomon de Caus was born. M.
Berthoud wrote again denying its existence, and offered a million to
any one who would produce the letter. From that time the affair was no
more spoken of, and Salomon de Caus was allowed to remain in
undisputed possession of his fame, as having been the first to point
out the use of steam in his work, "_Les Raisons des Forces
Mouvantes_." He had previously been employed as engineer to Henry,
Prince of Wales, son of James I., and he published a volume in folio,
in London, "_La perspective avec les Raisons des Ombres et Miroirs_."

In his dedication of another work to the queen of England, 15th of
September, 1614, we find some allusion made to the construction of
hydraulic machines. On his return to France he, as before said, was
appointed engineer to Louis XIII., and was doubtless patronized by
Cardinal Richelieu, that great promoter of the arts and letters.

The writings of Salomon de Caus were held in much estimation among
learned men during the whole of the seventeenth century. He had,
however, been anticipated in the discovery of steam for the propelling
of large bodies, for on the 17th of April, 1543, the Spaniard, Don
Blasco de Garay, launched a steam-vessel at Barcelona, in presence of
the Emperor Charles V. It was an old ship of 200 tons, called the
_Santissima Trinidad_, which had been fitted up for the experiment,
and which moved at the rate of ten miles an hour.

The inventor of this first steamer was merely looked upon as an
enthusiast, whose imagination had run mad; and his only encouragement
was a donation of 200,000 maravedis from his sovereign, but the
emperor no more dreamt of using the discovery than did Napoleon I.,
three centuries later, when the ingenious Fulton suggested to him the
application of steam to navigation. It is well known that Fulton was
not even permitted to make an essay of this new {213} propelling force
before the French emperor. So then, we must date the fact of the
introduction of steam navigation as far back as 1543; anterior to the
discovery of Salomon de Caus in 1615; to the Marquis of Worcester in
1663; to Captain Savary in 1693; to Dr. Papin in 1696; and to Fulton
and others, who all lay claim to the original idea.

But perhaps we may be wrong in denying originality to these men, for
we have no proof that either of them had any knowledge of the
discoveries of his predecessor.

It was only on the 18th of March, 1816, that the first steam-vessel
appeared in France, making her entrance into the seaport of Havre; she
was the _Eliza_, which had left Newhaven, in England, on the previous
day.

------
From The Fortnightly Review.

THE CLOUDS AND THE POOR.


No one can write upon the clouds without some reference to Mr.
Ruskin's labors. Few will forget the four chapters in the first volume
of "Modern Painters," dealing first with men's apathy for those forms
of beauty which daily flit around us, and ending with the magnificent
contrast between Turner and Claude, showing with what difference they
had rendered the calm of the mist and the shock of the tempest, the
crimson of the dawn and the fire of sunset We are, indeed, all of us
too apathetic, and the summer and the winter clouds are alike unheeded
by us. And yet our grey English clouds have impressed themselves upon
even our language and our daily speech. Our word "sky" has nothing in
common with the _ciel_ of the French and the _cielo_ of the Italians,
which through the Latin _coelum_ refer to the clear blue chasm of the
air. Our "sky" is connected with the Old-English _seua_, and literally
means "the place of shadows." Our "welkin" is connected with _wolcen_,
"a cloud," and is derived from a root which points to the incessant,
rolling, billowy motion of the clouds.

But if we have failed to notice the clouds and their beauty, others
have not failed. Men, seeing their power, feeling their blessings,
have worshipped them. Upon them our Scandinavian ancestors built their
creeds, and from them created their gods and goddesses. The beauty and
the delicacy of the early Aryan mythology is interwoven with the
storm-cloud, which alike inspires the story of the Odyssey and solves
the mystery of OEdipus. Mr. Ruskin has already quoted from
Aristophanes. We could wish that he had supplemented the Athenian
poet, who gives merely the latter sensuous mythological view of the
clouds, with passages from the fathers, who so deeply penetrated into
both their beauty and their moral aspect. With them the clouds appear
no longer puissant goddesses, daughters of Father Ocean, thronging in
troops from Maeotis and Mimas, their golden pitchers filled with the
waters of the Nile. Their fleecy forms told them of him who "giveth
snow like wool, and scattereth the hoar frost like ashes," of him who
"maketh the clouds his chariots, and rideth on the wings of the wind."
They could not feel the whirlwind's blast without remembering that it
had borne Elijah heavenward, nor hear the thunder without remembering
the thunder and lightning which clothed God on Sinai, {214} nor watch
the evening rack without remembering that the clouds, such perhaps as
they were gazing at, had received their Master out of his disciples'
sight, and that again from them he should descend at his second
coming. In these days of atmospheric laws, of measurements of
rainfalls, and weather forecasts, we cannot by the utmost effort of
the imagination place ourselves in their position. To them, as to the
first Christians, heaven was directly above their heads, divided from
the earth only by the screen of clouds. They must have regarded those
white ethereal shadows, those dark rolling masses, in much the same
way as the early sacred painters,--peopled each flake with cherubs and
angels, and heard the air rustle with wings.

Be this as it may. Even if religion inspired them with such thoughts,
they certainly were not insensible to the beauty which daily blossoms
in the sky. "There is," cries St. Chrysostom, "a meadow on the earth
and a meadow, too, in the sky. There are the various flowers of the
stars, the rose below, the rainbow above."  [Footnote 31] "Look up to
heaven," he says, "and see how much more beautiful it is than the roof
of palaces. The pavement of the palace above is much more grand than
the roof below."  [Footnote 32] His writings are full of metaphors
drawn from the sky and the clouds. He speaks of "snow-storms of
miracles," and "thick-falling showers of cares," and cries, "When God
doth comfort, though sorrows come upon thee by thousands like
snow-flakes, thou shalt be above them all." He reproaches men for
looking down like swine to the earth, and not up to the sky,
[Footnote 33] which he declares is the fairest of roofs, guiding them
by its beauty to their Maker.  [Footnote 34] And filled with that
democratic spirit which so burns in all his writings, he cries to the
poor man, "Seest thou this heaven here, how beautiful, how vast it is,
how it is placed on high? This beauty the rich man enjoyeth not more
than thou, nor is it in his power to thrust thee aside, and make it
all his own; for as it was made for him, so it was, too, for thee. . .
. . . Do not all enjoy it equally--rich and poor? . . . . . Yea,
rather, if I must speak somewhat marvellously, we poor enjoy it more
than they. . . . . The poor more than any enjoy the luxury of the
elements."   [Footnote 35]

  [Footnote 31: "Homilies on the Statues." The Oxford Translation.]

  [Footnote 32: "Homilies on 1 Thessalonians iv. 12." ]

  [Footnote 33:  "Homilles on St. Matthew." Part II. ]

  [Footnote 34: "Homilles on St. John." Part II.]

  [Footnote 35: "Homilles on 2 Corinthians." ]

The passage is full of the deepest interest. Mr. Ruskin has shown us
with what mixed feelings the Greeks loved the clouds, and how the
mediaevalist feared them. It would be well to know how they have been
and are still viewed in England by the lower classes. For, as we
before said, the upper classes care little about the clouds. The
[Greek text] (changeful days) of England pass by unnoticed, except to
fill up a gap in a conversation. St. Swithin is our national saint,
but we are not enthusiastic devotees. Only when a picnic or a cricket
match is involved do we trouble ourselves about the clouds. Then the
barometer is studied, and the weathercock becomes an object of
interest. In short, only when our pleasures are at stake do we care
whether the day is wet or fine. On the other hand, life with the poor,
man depends on the weather. Three continuous wet days in London throw
no less than twenty thousand people out of employment. Fine weather is
the poor man's bread-winner, his comforter, his physician. He may
therefore be pardoned if, with Ulysses, he in the first place regards
it from an economical point of view. Thus the laborers in the north
midland counties speak of showery weather as "rich weather,"--that
is, not only enriching the crops, but themselves. On the contrary, as
producing a different effect on their calling, the sailors on the
north-east {215} coast speak of such weather as "shabby weather," and
call rain--useless to them--"dirt." This indeed must be the case. In
the lowest as in the earliest stages of society, this utilitarian
spirit--not necessarily base, but co-existent with even a passionate
love of beauty--must prevail. The laborer whose day's wage depends on
the clouds, and the fisherman whose meal rests with the winds, will
naturally first think of them as subservient to the needs of life.
Badly clothed, and ill-fed, they cannot possibly appreciate Mr.
Kingsley's admiration of the east wind. The fisherman only knows it as
producing a dearth of fish. To the midland peasant it is his "red
wind,"--just as Virgil spoke of _nigerrimus Auster_, and as the Greeks
called the north wind "the black wind," still the _bise_ of the
Mediterranean. In the east of England the nightingale is not the bird
of song, not Ben Jonson's "dear good angel of the spring," but the
"barley-bird," because it arrives when the barley is sown. For, on the
whole, barley is more important to the peasant than song, and
therefore the bird is thus called. Nevertheless the song may be highly
prized, but it is still secondary. Thus we stumble upon a curious
explanation of the utilitarian spirit observed in Homer and the
earliest painters. And the terms of our country-people throw a plain
light upon the Homeric epithets "fruitful" ([Greek text]), and "loamy"
([Greek text]), applied to the earth; and the phrases of our fishermen
curiously illustrate the terms "barren" ([Greek text]), and "teeming
with fish" ([Greek text]), as applied to the sea. Society in the same
or parallel stage ever gives the same utterance.

The reality, too, of the elements, as Lear and Jacques would say,
touches the poor to the quick. Hence in the north they simply call
rain "waters," just in the same way as the Greeks used [Greek text]
whilst in the midland counties they nearly as often say "it is
wetting" as "it is raining." Their proverbs, too, smack of the
fierceness of men who have struggled with the storm. So the Anglian
countryman sings of the first three days of March,

  "First comes David, then comes Chad.
  Then comes Winnol blowing like mad."

Their vocabulary, too, teems with words expressive of every shade and
variety of weather. Our skies and clouds have entered far more into
the composition of popular phrases than we are commonly aware. Such
trivial expressions as "being under a cloud," "laying up for a rainy
day," unconsciously reflect the character of our weather. Its power
overshadows even the altar and the grave in the common rhyme:

  "Happy the bride whom the sun shines on.
  Happy the dead whom the rain rains on."

And the rhyme at one time really exercised a spell. You find it used
by lovers amongst our Elizabethan dramatists, who so faithfully
reflected the spirit of the day. Thus, in Webster's _Duchess of
Malfy_, Ferdinand cries to the duchess about her lover:

                "Let not the sun
  Shine on him till he's dead."
            _Act iii. Sc._ 2

But the poor possess an abundance of such expressions. And as life is
real to them, so their sayings are quickened with reality. Thus, "to
be born in a frost" is in Yorkshire an euphemism for being foolish. In
the same county, "to obtain anything under the wind" means to obtain
it secretly. In Norfolk the ploughman says "there is a good steward
when the wind-frost blows." Just consider, too, the richness of their
vocabulary of weather-terms, and the observation which it implies.
Take Yorkshire alone, and there we shall find "dag," "douk," "pell,"
"pelse," "rouk," "rag," "sops," all standing for different kinds and
degrees of rain and showers. There the white winter-mist is the "hag"
the hoar-frost the "rind," the snow-flakes "clarts of snow," and the
summer heat-mist the "gossamer," as Wedgwood {216} notices, the
_Marien fäden_ of Germany. Go into the eastern counties, and the
dialect is as rich. The sea-mist is the "sea-fret" and the "sea-roke."
The heavy rain, which soaks into the earth, is the "ground-rain." The
light rain is the "smur" in Suffolk, the "brange" in Essex, and the
"dag" in Norfolk, from which last word the various corruptions
"water-dogs" and "sun-dogs" are formed.

Passing, however, from words, let us note a few of the weather-rhymes
and weather-proverbs which show what accurate observers necessity has
made our peasants. There is not a village where the local phenomena of
mists and clouds are not preserved in some rhyme. From Cumberland to
Devonshire the land echoes with these weather-saws. In the former
county we have--

  "If Skiddaw hath a cap,
  Criffel wots full well of that."

In the latter, the rhyme--this time really a rhyme--runs:

  "When Haldon wears a hat,
  Let Kenton beware of a skat."

The Warwickshire and Worcestershire peasants in the Vale of Evesham
repeat a similar couplet about their own Bredon, and the
Leicestershire and Lincolnshire churls about their Belvoir.
Weather-rhymes lie treasured up throughout the midland counties about

  "The green-blue mackerel sky,
  Never holds three days dry;"

in the northern counties about "mony haws, mony snaws," and in the
eastern of the "near bur, rain fur."' In England we, too, can rhyme
about _la journée du pèlerin_. For centuries the village poet has sung
of "mare's tails" and "hen-scrattins," and the great "Noah's Ark
cloud," and the "weather-head," of the changes of the moon, how

  "Saturday change, and Sunday full,
  Never did good, nor never wull."

For the peasant in his rude fashion is a meteorologist and has studied
the ways of the clouds, "water wagons," as in some counties he calls
them. From him Aratus might have filled another _Diosemeia_, and
Virgil improved his first Greorgic. Our Elizabethan dramatists have
borrowed some of their most life-like touches from the peasant's
weather-lore. Thus Cunningham, in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit at
Several Weapons_, says of wrangling:

  "It never comes but, like a storm of hail,
   'Tis sure to bring fine weather in the tail on't."
                  _Act. iii., Sc._ 1.

And Webster, borrowing from the sailor, makes Silvio say of the
cardinal that he

  "Lifts up hit nose like a fool porpoise before storm."
    _Duchess of Malfy, Act, iii., Sc. 3._

Shakespeare borrows from both peasant and sailor. His finest
descriptions of cloud scenery, as we shall show, are based upon
popular phrases. Two of his most beautiful similes illustrate the
villager's weather lore. Thus Lucrece is described:

  "And round about her tear-distrained eye.
  Blue circles streamed like rainbows in the sky.
  Those water-galls in her dim element,
  Foretell new storms to those already spent."

And again, in _All's Well that Ends Well_, the countess says to
Helena:

        "What's the matter
  That this distempered messenger of wet,
  The many-colored Iris, rounds thine eye?"
        _Act. i., Sc. 3._

And the peasant's rhymes and sayings undoubtedly contain some germs of
truth, or they could never have so long held their ground. Admiral
Fitzroy, in his "Weather Book," has rightly given a collection of such
saws, though it might with advantage be greatly enlarged. Science has
before now been forestalled by some bold guess of the vulgar. And
often has some happy intuition outstripped the slow labor of the
inductive process.

But with the English peasant a sense of the beautiful accompanies that
of the useful. Living ever out of doors, he names his clouds after
natural objects. He thus gives a {217} reality to them which is
unknown to scientific nomenclature. The "lamb storms" of Derbyshire,
and the "pewit storms" in Yorkskire, significantly mark the time of
year when the lambs are yeaned in the cloughs, and the pewits return
to the moors to breed. His symbolism is always true. The peasant in
the eastern counties talks of "bulfinch skies" to express the lovely
warm vermilion tints of sunset clouds. Tennyson's "daffodil sky" is
not truer, nor Homer's [Greek text] more poetical. In Devonshire the
peasan has his "lamb's-wool sky" the _tenuia lanae vellera_ of Virgil.
In parts of the midland counties he has his "sheep clouds" the
_schäffchen am himmel_ of the German, the same clouds which the
Norfolk peasant boy has described with so perfect a touch:

       "Detached in ranges through the air,
  Spotless as snow, and countless as they're fair.
  Scattered immensely wide from east to west,
  The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest."

The Derbyshire countryman knows the hard stratified masses of cloud
(_cumulo-strati_) by the happy name of "rock clouds" and the great
white rolling avalanches (_cumuli_) as "snow packs" and "wool packs"
the former being rounder than the latter, which lie in folds pressed
and packed upon one another. Further living amongst hills and
mountains, watching them, as Wordsworth says, "grow" at night,
enlarging with the darkness, he finely calls the great hill at the
entrance to Dovedale, Thorpe Cloud. He had seen it apparently shift
and move with the changes of light and atmosphere, and he could only
liken it to a cloud. Perhaps, even at times, some faint glimmering
might flit across his mind of the instability of the hills, and the
rack to him thus became a symbol of the world's unsubstantial pageant.

The midland counties peasant, too, employs such old-world phrases as
the sun is "wading" when it is straggling through a heavy scud, and
the sun is "sitting" when her dark side is turned toward the earth.
The poets themselves may be in vain searched for a finer expression
than the first. The beginning of Sidney's sonnet, which Wordsworth has
adopted,

  "With how sad steps,
    O moon, thou climb'st the sky,"

and Milton's description,

      "As if her head she bow'd
  Stooping through a fleecy cloud,"

are somewhat parallel. But the peasant's expression is equally fine.
Most readers of "Modern Painters" will remember Mr. Ruskin's vivid
description of what he so well calls the "helmet cloud," which rests
on the peaks of mountains. But long before Mr. Ruskin wrote, the
Westmoreland and Cumberland dalesman named the cloud that at times
floats round the tor of Cross Fell by the still better names "helm
cloud" and "helm bar."

We could indeed wish that Mr. Ruskin had more deeply studied peasant
life and peasant habits. The meaning of the clouds in Turner^s
"Salisbury" and "Stonehenge" would have then been more thoroughly
appreciated. Fine and poetical as is Mr. Ruskin's interpretation, yet
we venture to think that he misses the truth when, in this case, he
refers Turner's inspiration to Greek sources. To those who have lived
near the Plain, and have mixed with the shepherds, the meaning and the
symbolism come far nearer home, and more closely touch the heart.
Turner was here no Greek, except as all men who love beauty are
Greeks. Here he was, at all events, intensely English. Sprung like so
many great poets and painters from the lower class, he could
sympathize with the shepherds of the Plain. To them, as to the
shepherd in the "Iliad," standing on the hill-top facing the sea,
shepherding their flocks, far away from any village, on the vast
treeless down, the clouds become a constant source of fear or joy.
Their hearts gladden as the light white clouds roll up from the
English Channel, and then, as they say, "purl round" and retreat.
{218} In spring and summer they joyfully hail the "water dogs," the
"gossamer" of the Yorkshire peasant, which herald the fine weather.
They, above all other English peasants, solitary on that wide plain,
watch with fear the "sun-galls," Shakespeare's "water-galls," as the
broken bits and patches of rainbows are called, hanging glorious, but
wrathful, in the far horizon. They mark with dread "the messengers"
and "water streamers," and at night, too, anxiously note the amber
"wheel-cloud" round the moon.

With all this, like a true poet, Turner sympathized. He entered into
the reality of shepherd life upon the Plain; its joys and its dangers.
In one picture, therefore, he has given us the rain-clouds showering
their blessings upon man, and in the other revealed the dread
fatalistic power that ever darkens the background of life.

But we must leave the peasant, and turn to the fisherman. More even
than the peasant, he naturally regards the weather in its effects upon
his calling. The rain with him--we are speaking more especially now of
the North Country fisherman--is "dirt," and a rainy sky a "dirty sky."
The "water-galls" of the Salisbury shepherd, from which Shakespeare
took those most exquisite similes, have with him lost their beauty,
and are changed into "sea-devils," evil prophets of tempest. The
flying clouds, that herald the storm, are with him "the flying devil
and his imps." He realizes the danger, and therefore christens the
clouds with rough names.

He too, like the peasant, is learned in weather-lore, and keeps an
almanac of weather-rhymes in his memory. In such fishing villages as
Staithes and Runswick, on the north-east Yorkshire coast, a large
collection might easily be formed. They partake of the roughness and
the truthfulness of the inhabitants. Such jingles as:

  "When wind comes before rain
  Then let your topsails remain:
  But if the wind follows rain.
  Then you may close reef again,"

are certainly more accurate in sense than rhythm. Again, the couplet:

  "When the sun crosses line, and wind's in the east.
  It will hand (hold) that way meast, first quarter at least,"

contains a warning not always to be despised. The riddle of the
"brough," that amber halo of clouds seen sometimes round the moon,
which the shepherds of Salisbury Plain call "the wheel," and the
midland peasants "the burr," is solved by the rhyming adage:

  "A far off brough
  Means a near hand rough."

But we must not be too critical, and demand both sense and rhythm. It
is something if in poetry we obtain truth. At all events, the
Yorkshire fishermen's rhymes are quite as good as a great many of
those in which Apollo formerly conveyed his prophecies to mankind. And
we think that Admiral Fitzroy might have profitably added some of them
to his collection.

Many a time have we seen at some little fishing village the fishermen
all detained by some "breeder," or "flyer," whose meaning their eyes
alone could read. If the threatened storm has not visited the coast,
yet the heavy sea tumbling in without a breath of air has shown that
the gale has broken not far distant. Still mistakes arise. Life is
constantly sacrificed. But the glory and the pride of science is,
that, whilst serving the sublimest ends, it still helps the humblest.
We may be unable to control the elements. But we shall triumph over
the law by obeying the law. The day will come when the notion of
chance will be altogether eliminated, and the law by which the clouds
are governed recognized. And in the blessings of science all men are
partakers. Alike shall the fisherman steer his craft with a firmer
faith in the essential goodness of all things, and the hand of the
artist gain strength and his eye see a {219} deeper beauty when each
knows that the clouds are as regular in their movements as the stars.

Of course men living by the sea, daily watching the clouds, life
itself hanging upon a knowledge, however uncertain, of the meaning of
their color and their shapes, have naturally named them in a rude
fashion. Landsmen, who only now and then gaze at the clouds, are apt
to regard them as ever changing. But not "a wisp" flies in the highest
air, not "a creeper" rises out of the sea, whose shapes are not
moulded by a definite law. Day by day the same forms repeat themselves
with unceasing regularity. The clouds might be mapped out like the
land and sea over which they fly. More than half a century has passed
since Howard first gave them names. After him Forster wrote, and like
him illustrated his theory with diagrams of the principal cloud-forms.
And now Admiral Fitzroy has so improved upon their nomenclature, that
there is not a cloud that cannot be scientifically named and defined.
But our sailors and fishermen have long ago known these facts. Not a
stray waif of film flecks the heavens which they have not christened.
They know all kinds and shapes, from the "crow-nests," those tiny
white spots (_cirriti_) dotting the sky, up to the glorious "Queen
Anne's feather," waving far away into the horizon its soft downy
plume, rippled and barred by the wind.

Thus to take a few examples. The North Yorkshire fisherman has his
"dyer's neif," a small dark purple cloud, so called from its supposed
resemblance to the black grained fist (neif) of a dyer. Some three
thousand years ago, Elijah's servant, on Mount Carmel, cried that he
saw a little cloud rising out of the sea like a man's hand. And still
on the Yorkshire coast the fisherman utters the same language, and
knows that cloud still as the forerunner of storm and rain. Quite as
striking, too, is the way in which his names of clouds throw a light
upon Shakespeare. All readers will remember the passage between Hamlet
and Polonins, ending with "Very like a whale;" a phrase which has
passed into a proverb for anything very improbable. And no actor can
utter it on the stage without producing a peal of laughter. Yet the
proverb and the laughter are equally inappropriate. The names of the
clouds in the passage are all real names. The "dromedary cloud," or,
as Shakespeare calls it, "the camel cloud," is well known to sailors.
It is a species of cumulus, a white, packed, humped cloud, and when
seen in the southern hemisphere is said to foretell heat; but, in the
northern, cold. It is also called the "hunchback cloud." "See, there's
the hunchback; look at its pads," North Country fishermen will say.
The "weasel-cloud" also is known, though not so well, and is more
often called "the hog-cloud" and the "wind-bog," from its being the
forerunner of wind. But the "whale-cloud" is as well known to sailors,
especially those employed in the Greenland trade, as the
"bridge-cloud," or "feather-cloud," or any other well recognized form.
"We shall hae a bit o' a puff, lads. See that sea-devil; and yonder's
a regular finner to the norrard," have we heard North Sea captains
say. A "finner," it should be explained, is a small whale. If ever
there was a realist, Shakespeare was. He drew direct from nature. But,
like a true artist, he knew how to mould and shape mere barren
naturalism by the vitalizing power of the imagination. In its white
heat he fused all things. And so, noting the common names of clouds as
daily used in conversation by sailors and fishermen and seafaring
folk, he could rise from the satire of Hamlet to the high pathetic
pitch of Antony's speech:

  "Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;
  A vapor, sometime, like a bear or lion,
  A towered citadel, a pendent rock,
  A forked mountain, or blue promontory.
  With trees upon't, that nod into the world,
  And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast these signs;
  They are black vesper's pageants.

  _Eros._  Ay, my lord.

  _Antony_.
    That which is now a horse, even with a thought
    The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct
    As water is in water.

 _Eros._  It does, my lord.

  _Antony_.
     My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
     Even such a body."

  _Anthony and Cleopatra, Act iv, Sc._ 12.

{220}

Here the whole scene is colored by the imagination and ennobled by
human pathos, such as no other man ever possessed. But the basis of
the thought is the simplest naturalism, such as other men had seen and
observed a thousand times before. The Flying Dragon is mentioned as
far back as the latter part of the sixteenth century by Hyll in his
"Contemplation of Mysteries," where the first rude ideas of weather
forecasts may be found. The "pendent rock" and "forked mountain" are
nothing more than the "rock-clouds" of the Derbyshire peasant,
concerning which a local rhyme runs:

  "When clouds appear like rocks and towers,
  The earth's refreshed by fragrant showers."

We must not, however, lose sight of our North Country fisherman. If to
him the sky is at times black with terror, yet it is also splendid
with beauty. In fine weather it is his garden, the heavenly "meadow,"
as St. Chrysostom would say, blossomed over with flakes and garlands
of cloud-bloom, white and peach-colored. He has his names for them,
his "crow buds," and his "cherry flowers," and the great "tree cloud"
with its purple branches. It is, too, his fairyland full of loveliest
shapes flying and wandering here and there, "pigeons," as he calls
those white detached winged "flyers," "flying fish," "streamers," and
pencilled "plumes."

Thus far of the peasant and the sailor. They certainly more than any
one else recognize the terror and the beauty of cloud scenery. The
well-to-do man knows the clouds only as they affect his pleasures.
Life is not dependent upon them, and he therefore misses that true
enjoyment which springs from reality. On the whole, he thinks with the
Epicurean that rain ought to fall by night, whilst his wife sighs for
Italy and blue skies. But let us, on the contrary, love the grey
cloud, and rather hold with that fine old skipper, who, after enduring
six months of unbroken weather in the Bay of Naples, cried out on
seeing a cloud, "Turn out, boys, turn out; here's weather as is
weather; none of your everlasting blue sky." Let us rather love the
storm-rack that beats against our island. This it is that gives the
color to the cheeks of our maidens; this that has moulded our
features, and deepened the lines of our faces, and hardened the
national character.

Let us be thankful, with Mr. Raskin, that nowhere can the swiftness of
the rain-cloud be seen as in England, nowhere in such perfection as
among the Derbyshire hills; nowhere the keenness of the storm be felt
as on a Yorkshire wold.  [Footnote 36] But in these days even the
power of the elements is threatened. We have seen in Derbyshire, when
the west wind blows, the cloughs filled, not with troops of clouds
dashing slantwise up the valleys, but choked with dull rolling
Lancashire smoke; seen, under this canopy of fog, the snow on the
Edges turn yellow and brown. One by one, too, the blast furnaces are
burning up the Yorkshire moors. And instead of white wreaths of clouds
crowning the wolds, a pillar of fire lights them up by night, and a
cloud of smoke darkens them by day.

  [Footnote 36: "Modern Painter," vol v., part vii., chap. iv., § 14.]

Luckily the sea-coast still remains unpolluted. And if any one really
wishes to study the clouds, let him go to the North Yorkshire and
Northumberland coasts in winter. Then will he understand something of
their majesty and power; then will he see the true purple wind-tints,
see the sky a wilderness full of strange weird creatures--"wild hogs,"
those purple hump-backed clouds running one after another in a line,
and the "Flying Devil and his imps" marshalling the storm, which is
banking up out of the German ocean; see, too, the "Norway bishop"
rise--a man's figure clothed {221} in white, with outstretched arms,
under whose ban many a fisherman from Staithes and Runswick has sunk;
see the figure melt and disappear in a mist of sleet and snow and
hail; and then, last of all, see "the weather-gleam," when all objects
loom against the one pale rift of sky, as ships loom in an east wind.

These sights have never been painted, and never can. Even Turner
cannot give them. For who can give that which is the greatest pleasure
in watching the clouds, the feeling of change? Yon cannot paint the
movement of the rack, as the vapor shifts from form to form, now a
mountain, now a dragon, now a fish, each change answering to the
changes of the spirit. Only the poets can paint the clouds and their
lessons--only Shelley and Shakespeare. But put away even Shakespeare
himself. Love them, study them from nature. And, as St. Chrysostom
says, the poor man, more than any one else, enjoys "the luxury of the
elements." The lawyer may hold _cujus solum ejus ad coelum_; but he
who most enjoys the clouds, as with all things else, is their real
possessor. And the artist and the poor man, though they may not have a
rood of ground to call their own, here reign over an empire.

------

Translated from the German.

MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

A SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC CONGRESSES HELD AT MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

BY ANDREW NIEDERMASSER.


CHAPTER II.

ART.

The Catholic reunions, both in Belgium and in Germany, have taken a
special interest in Christian art; for religion is at once the source
and the end of true art. "Religion," says Lasaulx, "is the soul of
every useful measure, the vivifying principle in the life of nations,
the permanent basis of true philanthropy. In its infancy, as well as
during its most flourishing periods, at all times and among all
nations, art has ever been the handmaid of religion. What is the last
and highest aim of architecture? The erection of churches. How has
sculpture won its noblest triumphs? In pagan antiquity, by
representations of the heathen deities; since the dawn of
Christianity, by presenting to the admiration of the world statues of
our Saviour and his saints. In like manner the noblest subjects of
painting have been furnished by religion, and by history, both sacred
and profane. And do we not meet with the same phenomenon in music and
religions poetry? Hence we may safely conclude that art is the
barometer of a nation's civilization, and above all of its religious
status. A people animated with a lively faith will not hesitate to
manifest it outwardly, sparing neither trouble nor expense, and art
affords the most suitable means of giving expression to its feelings.
If, on the other hand, art is neglected by a nation, it is a certain
sign that its mental and spiritual condition is abnormal; that it must
be under the influence of some disturbing agency.

Art, in its relations to religion and the Church, is one of the
subjects that have claimed the attention of the Catholic congresses;
they discussed the principles of religious architecture, painting,
sculpture, and of church music; they considered the subject of
decorating the sanctuaries of religion in all its branches, and
examined the highest and most important problems of art.

Art, as cultivated during the first {222} ages of Christianity and
during the middle ages, is a subject complete in itself, for we can
trace its use, its progress, and decay, as well as the development of
the ideas which gave it life. Between Christian and pagan art there is
no doubt a connecting link; in fact, we may safely assert that in this
respect, no less than in all others, there is a great unbroken chain
that unites the present age with antiquity. Still, no one can deny
that there is a great and immense difference between Christian nations
and those of antiquity. For, since the birth of Christianity, we may
trace in history a new, active, and all-pervading principle. What the
greatest minds of the pagan world scarcely suspected, has become the
common property of all nations and of all men. Christianity is built
on foundations very different from those on which rested the cumbrous
fabric of paganism. It has impressed an original character on art, in
every branch of which it has produced results of undoubted excellence,
worthy of our admiration. Christian art suffers not by comparison with
the masterpieces of antiquity. Narrow-minded and prejudiced persons
only will maintain that the Greeks alone excelled in the arts. The
independence and excellence of Christian art, compared with that of
classic Greece and Rome, is by no means generally admitted; for many
are unwilling to allow to the Church the credit, which it may justly
claim, of promoting and patronizing the arts. During the last century
art has lacked its proper basis--truth, for art is founded on truth.
But since nations have been led astray by the erroneous idea that art
was revived at Florence, and thence spread over all Europe, it has
lost its independence, confined itself to mere imitations of the
Greeks and Romans, and gradually decayed more and more. In the history
of art no period appears darker than the so-called age of renaissance,
and since then Christian art has been either misunderstood or entirely
despised. Not long ago the masterpieces of Gothic architecture were
looked upon as barbarous; paintings on wood which had for ages graced
the European temples were removed, broken to pieces, and burnt, and
alters of the most elaborate workmanship were treated as mere rubbish.
To level to the ground the noble cathedrals of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries was considered a service to art. And this was
done, not by the ignorant, but by the protectors of learning; nay, by
artists themselves, who were foremost in the work of destruction. A
French architect published an essay to prove that it would advance the
interests of art to turn the cathedral of Spires into a warehouse. On
the cathedrals of Cologne and Strasbourg, also, French architects,
living at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had pronounced
sentence of condemnation. No later than 1825, when Charles X. was
crowned in the cathedral of Rheims, the heads of two hundred statues
were struck off, through fear that the statues might be thrown down on
occasion of the royal salute. No one seems to have thought of
fastening the images; in fact, why should they trouble themselves
about the workmanship of barbarians? During the revolution of 1789,
the French had unfortunately acquired too much skill in smashing the
statues that crowned their grandest cathedrals.

During the period of which we speak, how false was the appreciation of
what is beautiful in art! To man's proud spirit it is humiliating,
indeed, to know his own weakness; to know that for years he may remain
in the darkness of error, without having the strength to burst the
chains that fetter him.

At the beginning of the present century more correct ideas on this
subject were entertained and spread by several eminent German artists,
and for the last thirty years justice has been done to the claims of
the middle ages. Actively co-operating with this {223} movement, the
Catholic conventions of Germany and Belgium have achieved many
desirable results.

At Malines, in 1864, the section for Christian art was very numerously
attended; more than a hundred archaeologists and artists from every
country in Europe had there met to take part in lively and interesting
debates on Christian art, whilst seventy musicians, professionals, and
amateurs held their sessions in another part of the building. Several
years ago, I was present at the general meeting of the German
architects at Frankfort, but I own that in interest their discussions
fell far below those to which I listened at Malines. In 1857, at the
general reunion of the Christian art associations in Germany, which
met at Regensburg, several hundred commissioners were present, and on
that occasion were displayed the same enthusiasm, the same freshness
and interest, which distinguished the discussions at Malines. But this
zeal has long died out; the Christian art associations of Germany
never met again; and at Würzburg, Frankfort, and Aix-la-Chapelle, the
Catholic conventions scarcely deigned to notice Christian art.

The chairman of the section for Christian art at Malines was Viscount
du Bus de Ghisignies. The viscount's appearance is noble and striking;
he seems to have been born to command. In the heat of the combat du
Bus never loses his self-possession; his clear and steady eye watches
the battle; not a word escapes his notice; fair and unprejudiced, he
deals out equal justice to all. If the opinions of a speaker clash
with his own, he twirls his martial moustache with more than ordinary
vigor; but he allows to every one the rights he may justly claim. As
chairman, his duties are not unattended with difficulty. Romans and
Teutons, Frenchman and Britons, Dutchmen and Belgians, meet
alternately in friendly strife; many a blow is exchanged, principle
clashes with principle, and deeply-seated prejudices are uprooted.
Convinced that the harmony of mind, as that of sounds, is the product
of contrast, du Bus acted in accordance with his convictions and nobly
fulfilled the task assigned him. The debates of his section were more
animated and more instructive than those of any other.

At the right of du Bus sat the vice-president of the section.
Professor Cartuyvels, of Louvain, a man well-versed in parliamentary
usage, in which he was excelled by no one except, perhaps, by A.
Reichensperger. A young clergyman from Brabant, Cartuyvels displays a
master mind; equally skilled in aesthetics and in the philosophy and
history of art, the value of these acquirements is enhanced by his
knowledge of the liturgy, of canon law, and of holy writ. He is
thoroughly acquainted with the works of the great masters of Germany
and Italy. His words proclaim the enthusiasm with which he devotes all
the faculties of his soul to the service of Christian art.

Always prepared to speak, he boldly upholds the principles which he
deems correct. He defends them with ardor and confidence of success,
and he seldom fails to carry his point; few are able to cope with him.
It was a glorious sight to see A. Reichensperger and Cartuyvels
engaged in discussion; for

  "Sublimest beauty comes to light
  When powerful extremes unite!"

James Weale was a representative of England and English art at
Malines. For many years Weale has made Bruges his home, and exerted
considerable influence on Belgian art; nevertheless, he is a thorough
Englishman. He is a convert and a disciple of Canon Oakley. By
becoming a Catholic, as is often the case in England, Weale incurred
pecuniary losses; but this sacrifice has only purified and
strengthened his love for the Church. The trials he has undergone have
unveiled the heroic qualities of his heart The greater number of
English converts (and this no one who has had {224} the happiness of
personal acquaintance with them will dispute) are men distinguished
for their great learning and affable manners, and Weale is no
exception to this rule. His principles of art are rigorous, I had
almost said exclusive, but he is convinced of their correctness. In
his views he is unique and definite; he propounds them with uncommon
clearness and precision. When opposing false principles, he is not
very choice in his expressions, generally preferring the strongest.
Weale is the uncompromising enemy of all sham and equivocation. In the
domain of art fails attainments are immense. He knows England, the
Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy. His quick eye instantly
discovers the merits of a painting. That the clergy may become
familiar with every branch of Christian art, is his most ardent
desire. At Bruges Weale publishes "_Le Beffroi_," an archaeological
journal; he would have been the most suitable candidate for the newly
founded chair of archaeology at Louvain.

Having spoken of Weale, we are now led to notice his friend Bethune,
of Ghent. He is a painter, but confines himself chiefly to painting on
glass. Brought up in the school of the celebrated English architect,
Welby Pugin, who, though only forty years of age when he died, in
1852, had already built more than two hundred churches and chapels,
his figures are distinguished by purity of style; he carries out in
practice the theories of Weale. However, he does not by any means
reject everything modern, but judiciously seeks to combine the
beauties of the modern with those of the ancient style of art. Bethune
is remarkable both for his piety and his learning, and this accounts
for the charm and instructiveness of his conversation. He admires
Germany and German art, without being blind to its defects; on the
contrary, his criticisms on the best productions of modern German
painting are severe, not to say harsh. His paintings on glass are in
marked contrast to the productions of the Munich school. He does not
delight in great historical paintings on glass, which tend to make us
forget that we are looking at a window, but seeks to attain unity of
design by subordinating his picture to the plan of the architect. In
the debates at Malines, Bethune did not take so prominent a part as
Weale. Another active member of the section of Christian art was
Bethune's brother, Canon F. A. L. Bethune, professor of archaeology in
the seminary at Bruges. Among the French members, Lavedan deserves to
be mentioned in the first instance. He is a well-known French
journalist, who seems to have a great taste for the fine arts. With
untiring ardor he spoke on every question discussed, and, in spite of
being somewhat prolix, his remarks were always listened to with
pleasure. Although noted rather for wit and polite literature than for
depth of learning, he was master of the situation, and to unhorse him
was not an easy task. He pleaded eloquently for the establishment of a
permanent art exhibition. Whilst Lavedan, like Weale, applies himself
to the theory of art, Jaumot, like Bethune, is a practical artist. Of
the few artists that France can boast of, Jaumot is one of the best;
but he was not permitted to exhibit his cartoons, and has not met with
the encouragement so indispensable to the artist Jaumot complainant of
this at Malines, and maintained that the Belgian clergy are much
better acquainted with the principles of Christian art than the clergy
of France. The Abbe Carion attracted attention by his profound
knowledge of archaeology; all his remarks proved that he understands
thoroughly the subject he treated, though he does not present his
ideas in so pleasing a manner as others. Any seminary may justly be
proud of such professors as Messrs. Carion, Bethune, and Cartuyvels.
No one contributed more to the merriment of the assembly than Van
Schendel, of Antwerp, {225} an old painter, who delights in sketches
of Dutch family life. He railed at everything, and at times he became
quite sarcastic. To find fault seemed to be his sole purpose; whether
justly or not, was of little consequence. He succeeded most admirably
in boring the chairman. Van Schendel seems to dislike the French
language, for he always preferred to speak Dutch. I might speak of
many more, but I shall only mention Delbig, a German painter, residing
at Liege; Alfred Geelhand, Leon de Monge, Martin, Isard, Mommaerts, of
Brussels; Bordeau; de Fleury, an enthusiastic admirer of Flandrin, the
great French painter; Van de Necker, the Abbé Huguet, and the Abbé Van
Drival.

I cannot forbear speaking of A. Reichensperger, of Cologne. For almost
a quarter of a century Reichensperger has been the champion of
Christian art, not only in Germany, where he is looked upon as the
foremost defender of German art during the middle ages, but also in
France and England. In Cologne he had been at the head of the society
for completing the cathedral. In the Prussian chambers at Berlin he
has always exerted himself in favor of true art. He was president of
the general meeting of the Christian art unions, held at Regensburg in
1857, and distinguished himself as an orator at the congress of
artists that assembled at Antwerp some years ago. He was also present
at Malines, and his presence was of great advantage to the Romanic
delegates. Reichensperger is delighted to meet with opposition; nay,
he calls it forth, for without it he appears dissatisfied. In fact, a
debate is impossible without opposition. At Malines, it is true,
opponents were not wanting, but he vanquished them all. Manfully
upholding his German principles, he convinced many of their
correctness. Reichensperger has often earned applause, he has been the
hero of many a parliamentary triumph, during the twelve years that he
has been considered one of the five best speakers in the Prussian
parliament, but in the Petit Seminaire at Malines he gained his most
brilliant successes. His French may not at all times be classical; but
his pointed expressions charmed his French audience. His style is not
florid, but his speeches sparkle with wit, humor, and sarcasm. His
ready logic completely astounded his adversaries. All his remarks
called forth thundering applause, which finally grew so noisy that the
chairman of the first section, "_Les OEuvres Religieuses_" deemed it
necessary to interfere and request a little more moderation.

But what was the subject of all these learned deliberations? Many
questions were discussed, and variety constituted one of the principal
charms of the proceedings, AEthetics were treated in the first place;
the learned speakers philosophized concerning the ideas of truth, of
goodness, and of beauty. One hundred and two years have rolled by
since Baumgarten, the father of aesthetics, died. In 1750 and 1758 he
published the two volumes of his celebrated work entitled
"_AEsthetica_." For more than a hundred years, therefore, aesthetics
have been cultivated with more or less zeal, but with very little
success; the science seems to stagnate because the principles on which
it is based are unsound. Hence most books on aesthetics are loathed.
The best among the recent works on this subject was written by
Lasaulx; but a philosophy of art, from a Catholic point of view, we do
not yet possess, for Dursch's "AEsthetics" has many defects. Jacobs'
"Art and the Church" might, if completed, have supplied a want long
felt.

The discussions on the beautiful led to no important results. Of more
practical consequence was the resolution condemning French pictures.
Mommaerts made an attempt to establish in Brussels a society whose
object was to be the diffusion of pictures artistically
unobjectionable. At Paris Meniolle, assisted by German artists, {226}
intends to do the same for France, where hitherto Schulgen, of
Düsseldorf, has, so to say, held a monopoly. I hope that both projects
may be successful, and escape the fate of many similar enterprises,
which are nipped in the bud. In all likelihood no similar society will
do so much good, and extend its influence so far, as the Düsseldorf
association for the diffusion of good pictures.

Much time was spent in discussing the establishment of museums like
those of Sydenham and Kensington, near London, and in listening to
speeches on fresco paintings, on the stations of the cross, on
exhibitions of works of art, and on the encouragement of artists. On
motion of Weale, a resolution was adopted to found a Belgian national
museum at Louvain, and Reichensperger prevailed on the assembly to
pledge itself to further the completion of St. Rombaut's cathedral at
Malines.

Let this suffice. The musicians would complain, perhaps, were we to
pass them unnoticed. At the request of the general committee at
Brussels, Canon Devroye and Chevalier H. Van Elewyk had prepared eight
theses for discussion. These propositions treat of choral music, of
the education of organists, of the influence of religious music, of
the establishment of societies for the promotion of church music, and
the like. It was proposed to found a musical academy, in which a
special department for religious music is to be established.

Canon Devroye presided; his interesting remarks were always listened
to with pleasure. Dr. Paul Alberdingk-Thijm, of Amsterdam, formerly of
Louvain, was vice-president. He is well acquainted with Gregorian
music and church music in general--of German music also; even of our
most common popular songs he has a thorough practical knowledge; many
of our German songs he renders with exquisite taste. We shall see more
of him hereafter. Verooitte, of Paris, was chosen to be honorary
vice-president. He is well known in France. He founded the academy for
religious music in Paris, which has been in successful operation for
some time, and has contributed materially to raise the character of
religious music in that country. Chevalier Van Elewyk has done all in
his power to establish in Louvain a society for the promotion of
church music, and his exertions were not in vain. A society having the
same object in view was formed at Amsterdam. At Malines there were
also several organ-builders, whose practical advice was of great
advantage to the musical section; the foremost among them were
Cavaillé-Coll, of Paris; Mercklin, of Brussels; and Loret, of Malines.

One of the most remarkable personages at the congress was F. Hermann,
prior of the Carmelites in London. F. Hermann Cohen, the pianist is a
native of Hamburg, and greatly esteemed by the Catholics of Germany.
The manner of his conversion was most wonderful and in many of its
features resembled that of Alphonsus Ratisbonne. Whenever I saw F.
Hermann, in his fine Carmelite habit, I thought of another great
musician, Liszt, whom I had seen and admired at Rome, and of the
Franciscan, F. Singer, who invented the wonderful instrument to the
tones of which I had the pleasure of listening at the general
convention held at Salzburg in 1857. True, F. Hermann is not only an
eminent musician--God has gifted him with many other endowments; as an
orator, especially, he is overpowering, able to move the most
unfeeling. Another monk, a fine and imposing figure and a master of
religious music, the Franciscan friar Egidius, of Jerusalem, offered
very valuable advice. Friar Julian, of Brussels, who has supplied
three nations with organists, took an active part in the debates.
Beside these I shall mention, Arthur de la Croix, of Tournay, who has
written several works on religious music; the Abbé Loth, of Rouen, who
deserves honorable mention as one of {227} the most zealous promoters
of church music; Lemmens, editor of "_L'Organiste Catholique_;" Emile
Laminne, of Tongres, who most eloquently insists on the cultivation of
music in seminaries, and on the appointment of a special committee for
music in every diocese. F. Faa di Bruno, of St. Peter's, in London,
spoke on oratorios; the Abbé Deschutter, of Antwerp, on sacred music
at concerts, Edmund Duval presented a paper on the accompaniment of
plain chant. L'Abbé de Mayer, Prof. Deyoght, and Hafkenscheid, of
Amsterdam, also made important suggestions. On motion of Dr. Paul
Alberdingk-Thijm, the most eminent authorities on sacred music were
appointed corresponding members. The following were elected: Meluzzi,
musical director at St. Peter's, Rome; Dandini, secretary of the
academy of St. Cecilia at Rome; Don Hilarion Eslava, of Madrid; the
Duke de San Clemente, of Florence; John Lambert, of London; Tornan,
archaeologist at Paris; Charles Verooitte, of Paris; the Abbé Loth, of
Rome; Friar Egidius, of Jerusalem; F. Hermann, of London; T. J.
Alberdingk-Thijm, publisher at Amsterdam; and F. Stein, pastor of St.
Ursula's, Cologne.

Hitherto very little has been done for the reformation of church
music; in Germany, as elsewhere, there still exist many reasons for
complaining. Nevertheless, the Gregorian chant is no more antiquated
than the ceremonies of the Church, her liturgy, her liturgical
language, or the vestments used at her offices. Who is there that does
not admire the melody of the sacred hymns, their perfect form, their
solemnity, and their dignity? Moreover, the plain chant demands no
violent exertion on the part of the singer. The voice is strained
neither by difficult figures nor by unnatural intervals, nor does it
require the same compass as the modern music. Unlike instrumental
music, choral music does not stun the hearer by its noisy effect, so
unbecoming divine service.

Nor has sufficient attention been paid to several other points; to the
more thorough study of the liturgy, and of the sacred hymns of the
Church, and to the cultivation of popular music.

Lastly, we must briefly notice the exhibition connected with the
congress of Malines. It was very interesting, and formed a pleasing
feature of the first and particularly of the second congress. Those
who contributed most towards its success were, James Weale, of Bruges,
Bethune, of Ghent, Canon de Bleser, and Abbé Deloigne. Many weeks of
patient research, under the most favorable circumstances, would not
enable us to meet with so many specimens of mediaeval art; in fact,
the collection was of great importance to the student of archaeology.

The works of living masters, too, were on exhibition, and many of them
called forth our especial interest and admiration. They proved
conclusively that the attempts recently made to restore Christian art
to its pristine purity have not been altogether fruitless. In many
places our artisans have again begun to study the medieval art, and
many of them rival in the excellence of their productions the masters
of the middle ages. How beautiful were many pieces of bronze statuary,
of jewelry, and of embroidery, that we found at Malines! The bronze
chandeliers, candelabra, and desks sent by Hart, of London, surpassed
in purity of style and beauty the best works of the old Belgian
masters. The Romanic and Gothic ciboria, chalices, remonstrances,
chandeliers, reliquaries, censers, crosses, croziers, and the like,
contributed by such artists as Bourdon de Bruyne, of Ghent, Martin
Vogeno, of Aix-la-Chapelle, Hellner, of Kempen-on-the-Rhine, rivalled
the most admired productions of the middle ages; the three artists
above-mentioned fully deserved the prizes awarded them by the
congress. Among the sculptors whose statuary graced the exhibition,
well-merited praise was bestowed on de Broeck and Van Wint, of
Antwerp, and {228} Pieckerey, of Bruges. The paintings on glass, also,
exhibited by Westlake, of London, met with general approbation. The
committee which awarded the premiums consisted of Voisin, of Tournay;
von Bock, of Aix-la-Chapelle; Van Drival, of Arras; Felix Bethune and
John Bethune, of Ghent; Cartuyvels, of Liege; Weale, of Bruges; and
Helbeig, of Liege.

Lambotte, of Liege, Reinhold Aasters, of Aix-la-Chapelle, John Goyers,
of Malines, and several others had sent samples of workmanship in
gold. The silk embroideries of Von Lambrechts-Martin, of Louvain,
attracted considerable attention, as did also the sculptures of
Champigneulle, of Metz, and of Phyffers, a Belgian sculptor living in
London. Many other names I have forgotten; but on the whole the
English and Germans excelled the French and Belgians. J.F. Casaretto,
of Crefeld, had brought to Malines a number of vestments, banners,
chasubles, copes, etc, and displayed them to advantage at the Hotel
Liederkercke. They attracted the notice of the Belgian bishops no less
than of the foreign clergy, and their excellence was acknowledged by
all, especially by Bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans. In Germany, for the
last twelve years, Casaretto has enjoyed the patronage of the bishops
and clergy. Though there were at Malines many excellent samples of
workmanship, there was also much that did not soar above mediocrity,
and much that fell beneath it. Even many experienced artisans are
guilty of gross mistakes; some goldsmiths, for instance, manufacture
patens entirely unfit for use. The paten should be perfectly smooth
and even, without any ornament. In Malines there were many chalices
whose feet were so made that it would be next to impossible to hold
them firmly without injuring the hand of the celebrant. In many of the
remonstrances and other sacred vessels, also, serious defects were
noticeable, a proof that there is still room for improvement. To
attain a proper degree of perfection, there should be a closer union
of the mechanical and the fine arts and of both with science. Let our
artisans be acquainted with the principles of art, let them be
thoroughly instructed in the rules laid down by the Church for the
guidance of the artist, let them come into closer contact with men of
science; in fine, let them, thus instructed, be penetrated by the
spirit of faith, purified and ennobled thereby, and they will
certainly produce workmanship worthy of our admiration. On this
subject many useful suggestions were made by Cardinal Wiseman in 1863,
in his well-known lecture on the "Connection between Science and Art."

The results of the debates of the section on art were, as we stated
above, the establishment of a professorship of ecclesiastical
archaeology at Louvain and the foundation of a national museum at the
same place. Considering the many reasons as eloquently urged in its
favor, we doubt not that active and immediate measures will be taken
for the completion of the cathedral of Malines. On the success of the
German artists at the Malines exhibition we lay the more stress
because, at the same time, Ittenbach, of Düsseldorf, surpassed all his
competitors at the Antwerp exhibition of paintings, and the historical
painter, Edward Steinle, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, by his cartoons,
exhibited at Brussels, gained new triumphs for true Christian art. To
the latter fact, Güffers and Swerts, the best Belgian painters,
cheerfully bore witness. In the debates at Malines the superiority of
German art was repeatedly acknowledged by representatives of all
nations.


To return to our fatherland. At the head of the movement for the
regeneration of art in Germany, which distinguished the first half of
the nineteenth century was a Catholic prince, King Louis I. of
Bavaria. It was he, also, who, partly by renovating the cathedrals of
Regensburg, Bamberg, and Spires, and partly by erecting so {229} many
beautiful temples at Munich, rescued Christian art from the disrepute
into which it had fallen. Rarely has so much been done for art in so
short a time as in Bavaria under Louis I.; few monarchs have been more
liberal patrons of every department of art. Many are of opinion that
King Louis' protection should have been confined to German art, but
his great soul scorned such narrow-minded ideas, and he extended his
care to ancient classical art. Foremost among those who, since 1842,
strove to regenerate Christian art in its purely German form was King
Louis' friend, Cardinal Geissel, of Cologne. The association for
completing the cathedral of Cologne called forth great artistic
activity; in that famous edifice was seen the symbol of the Catholic
Church in Germany, and of the final return of all Germany to the one
true faith.

To their exertions we must ascribe the advancement of Christian art
previous to the meeting of the first Catholic general convention.
These conventions have always upheld the claims of Christian art. At
Linz, in 1850, was founded the "Christian Art Union of Germany." In a
few years this society spread over every part of our country. The
Rhenish art unions were the most active, and exercised considerable
influence on those of southwestern Germany; the latter, however, have
proved more lasting and have accomplished more important results.

When once fairly established, the Christian art union held several
general meetings, the first of which took place at Cologne in
September, 1856. The beginning was insignificant, for scarcely a
hundred delegates assembled, and many of these hailed from the Rhenish
provinces. In spite of this drawback, the transactions were far more
interesting than those of many so-called "historical associations,"
that busied themselves with Celtic, Roman, and German antiquities.
Nay, considering the merit of the speeches delivered, they compare
favorably with those of the German architectural society. A still more
brilliant future, however, was in store for the Christian art union.
In 1857, the second general meeting was held at Regensburg, at which
the number of archaeologists and artists amounted to several hundred.
For three days they assembled in the splendid church of St. Ulric,
discussed some most important questions, and listened to several
brilliant speeches. The treasures of mediaeval art, sent from every
part of the diocese of Regensburg, formed a magnificent collection,
for, among all the cities of Germany, Regensburg is one of the richest
in monuments of mediaeval times, whilst its cathedral is one of the
finest in the world. A. Reichensperger, the chairman, enforced strict
order in debate; next to him sat Dr. F. Streber, professor at Munich.
As a successful student of numismatics, his fame was European; in fact
he was a man of superior learning. His best work is his "History of
Christian Art," which was not published previous to his death, but
whose excellence no one will undervalue. If an illustrated edition
were published, it would supplant all other class-books on the same
subject, and be a sure guide and basis of all future researches. And
no wonder, for no man had a clearer and more general knowledge of
everything relating to the history of art than Streber. We hope soon
to see this history grace every collection of the Catholic classics of
Germany.

Another eminent member of the assembly was Dr. Zarbl, canon of the
cathedral at Munich. An eloquent speaker, a writer who recounted his
travels in an interesting manner, and a zealous pastor of souls, the
canon was a patron of Christian art, and intimately acquainted with
its literature. His residence resembled a museum of mediaeval
curiosities. He was president of the Regensburg art union, and well
was he fitted to fulfil his duties. When he walked up the aisles of
his cathedral, his appearance was majestic {230} His words were
impressive and his actions cautious and well considered. Overtopping
most men, and inspiring all with respect, strangers looked up to him
with a feeling akin to awe, whilst to those who knew him he was a kind
and esteemed friend. Canon Zarbl departed this life long ago, to
receive the reward of his virtues. A Benedictine of the abbey at
Metten, on the Danube, a man whose memory is cherished by thousands of
his pupils, F. Ildephonsus Lehner, was the soul of the Regensburg art
union in 1857. As director of the seminary he labored successfully to
imbue his students with an ardent love of Christian art, the
principles of which he had mastered at an early age. This he effected
not so much by aesthetic: theories as by practical instruction. At
Metten he founded a museum of mediaeval art, he formed a school which
was frequented by many talented young men, and assisted by several
friends he founded the Regensburg diocesan art union, and encouraged
artistic literature. Foremost among his disciples is George Dengler,
of Regensburg, who bids fair to attain considerable eminence in
architecture. At the Würzburg general convention, in 1864, F.
Ildephonsus was chosen chairman of the section of Christian art, and
in an eloquent address he urged the German clergy to study the
Catholic liturgy and the regulations of the Church regarding Christian
art.

We must not forget to mention G. Jacob. He was associated for a long
time with Dr. Amberger, one of the first theologians of the present
age, and Grillmaier, the most pious priest that I have ever met with,
in the direction of the seminary at Regensburg, where he was professor
of the history of art. At the suggestion of the Regent Dirschedl, of
Regensburg, and of F. Ildephonsus, Jacob wrote his work on art in the
service of the Church, which was published at the time of the
Regensburg congress. It is a truly admirable work, especially as a
manual for theologians and priests.

In a few weeks it spread all over Germany, and during the last seven
years nothing has been written equal to it in its kind. The
publication of Streber's "History of Art" and a new edition of Jacob's
"Handbook" would be of great service to the German clergy, and would
greatly promote the study of Christian art.

Sighart, of Freising, who had just published his "Albertus Magnus,"
also spoke at Regensburg. He is the most distinguished of the many
writers on the history of art of whom Bavaria justly boasts; twelve
years have elapsed since he began the long series of his valuable
works by his history of the cathedral of Freising. His "History of
Plastic Art in Bavaria," published in 1863, was the crowning effort of
his genius and labors. No other German country can boast of so
complete and perfect a history. He also called into existence a museum
of mediaeval art, and brought to the notice of the learned all the
artistic treasures of the archdiocese. His example has been imitated
in several Bavarian dioceses.

Himioben, of Mayence, was the representative of the art union founded
by him in that diocese. In fact Himioben was one of the firmest stays
of the Catholic association in Mayence, and a prominent orator at all
the general conventions. His appearance was striking, and predisposed
all in his favor. His sparkling eyes, his fine flowing hair, his noble
figure, his sonorous voice, and his youthful ardor and enthusiasm,
made him the favorite of all who had the pleasure of listening to him.
"I have seen the seed germinate, and the flowers bud; you will see
them in full bloom, and reap the fruit." Such were his words to a
younger friend in the fall of 1860, and well do they express his ideas
concerning the regeneration of religious life in the nineteenth
century. Himioben used all his influence in favor of renovating the
cathedral of Mayence, though he did not live to see the repairs
completed. Would that he had witnessed {231} the twentieth of
November, 1864, when the Catholic cause acquired new strength by the
confederation of the Rhenish cities!

Stein, of Cologne, spoke on church music; Professor Reischl, of
Regensburg, on hymnology; Dr. Durch, of Rottweil, on aesthetics;
whilst Wiest urged the renovation of the cathedral at Ulm. But I
cannot mention all who addressed the assembly at Regensburg. But
though there were many and distinguished orators at Regensburg, the
palm of superior success belongs to a musician, J. Mettenleiter, who
edited the "_Musica Divina_" in connection with Canon Proske, and who
at Regensburg gave a practical proof of what true church music is. All
were transported by the magical power of harmony. Regensburg possesses
the best school of church music in Germany, and the choir of its
cathedral rivals that of the Sistine chapel. Besides Mettenleiter and
Proske, we must mention Schrems, Wesselack, and Witt.

The zeal displayed at Regensburg was short-lived; the German art union
never met again in general convention. Since 1858 it has again become
a mere section of the general conventions of the Catholic societies in
Germany. At the Munich convention, in 1861, considerable interest was
taken in Christian art; but at Aix-la-Chapelle, Frankfort, and
Würzburg it had few any friends. At Aix-la-Chapelle, Professor
Hutmacher was chairman of the section of art, at Frankfort Prof.
Steinle, whilst at Würzburg the most active members were F.
Ildephonsus and Dean Schwarz, of Böhmenkirch, in Wirtemberg.

But though much has been done for Christian art by the establishment
of art unions and their general meetings, it has likewise been
promoted in many other ways. The members of the Catholic art unions
not only devoted themselves to the study of art, but also encouraged
others to make researches on this subject, and it is but just to add
that during the past twelve years much has been accomplished that
deserves unqualified praise. To the Bozen art union we owe the
"History of the Development of Religious Architecture in the Tyrol,"
the second part of which was published a year ago by Karl Atz. The
Linz art union, after commissioning Florian Wiener to write directions
for researches on religious monuments, is now preparing a history of
art in the diocese of Linz. Many years ago Giefers rendered a similar
service to Paderborn, Schwarz and Laib to Rottenburg, and
Reichensperger to the Rhenish dioceses. Besides establishing the
Diocesan museum, the richest collection of this kind in Germany, the
Cologne art union founded the "Journal of Christian Art." The
Regensburg union published the work of Jacob mentioned above, and
distributed it among its members. Sighart made researches in the
archdiocese of Munich; whilst Adalbert Grimm, of Augsburg, wrote a
history of his native diocese. Great services were rendered to
Eichstädt by Maitzl, to Bamberg by Kotschenreuter, to Würzburg by
Wieland, to Limburg on the Lahn by Ibach, to Spires by Remling and
Molitor, and to Münster by Zeke. By the advice of Prof. Alzog, the
Freiburg union commenced in 1862 the publication of an art journal. To
the Rottenburg art union we are indebted for an important work on
altars, by Dean Schwarz and Pastor Laib. One of the most active
societies is that of Luxemburg, which has published an art journal
since 1861. These researches were based on those of the historical
associations and on some valuable essays, some of which had been
written long before. Almost every cathedral in Germany can boast of
its historian. Thus Geissel wrote the history of the Imperial
cathedral (1826-8); Wetter and Werner that of the cathedral at Mayence
(1835); Boisserée that of the Cologne cathedral (1821-3); and Giefers
that of the cathedral at Paderborn. To Perger we owe a sketch of St.
Stephen's at {232} Vienna; to Himmelstein, one of the Cathedral at
Würzburg; whilst Grimm and Allioli published an incomplete sketch of
the cathedral at Augsburg, and the histories of the Hildesheim,
Xanten, and Freising cathedrals were written by Kratz, Zehe, and
Sighart. One of the most instructive works lately published is
Schreegraf's history of the cathedral at Regensburg, in three volumes.
Every diocese in Germany has not yet done its duty, and much can and
should still be done by the German clergy. Let us not think lightly of
these laborious researches; their usefulness and importance to science
will one day be made evident to all. Catholics and Protestants must
aid alike in gathering the voluminous materials, which must be placed
at the disposition of him whom God will call to write a national
history of German art. The labors of these societies have already
enabled several prominent men to undertake more extensive works, among
which I will mention Sighart's "History of Art in Bavaria," Lübke's
"History of Art in Westphalia," Heideloff-Lorenz' "Suabian Art during
the Middle Ages," Heider-Eitelberger's "Mediaeval Monuments of the
Austrian Empire," Haas' "History of Styrian Art," Ernst aus dem
'Werth's "Monuments of the Lower Rhine," and Hassler's "Ancient
Monuments of Wirtemberg." A year ago, Lotz published an excellent
work, in two volumes, entitled, "Art-Topography of Germany," whilst
Otte's "History of German Architecture" is on the point of appearing.
Schnaase, too, in his "History of Art" has profited by the labors of
the Catholic art unions, and the same may be said of Müller-Klunzinger
and Nagler, of Munich, in their cyclopedias of art.

Let us not grow languid in our investigations concerning German art
during the middle ages, until the last monument has been discovered
and the last inscription deciphered. Many years must elapse before we
shall arrive at this point. When, in his wanderings throughout Europe,
Böhmer, the author of the great work on imperial decrees, found an
undiscovered document, his joy was indescribable. Equally great was
the delight of the editors of the "_Monumenta Germaniae_" when they
brought to light some annals that were supposed to have perished. The
same pleasure awaits any one who has the good fortune of discovering a
Roman basilica, a remarkable arch, or any other important monument;
who deciphers and explains an old inscription, and adds to the stock
of our knowledge.

As appears from what has been said above, the religions art unions
also established journals and museums. The chief of the periodicals is
the "Journal of Christian Art," edited, since 1851, by Baudri. Among
the contributors to this publication, which does not meet with the
patronage it deserves, are A. Reichensperger, Ernst Weyden, of
Cologne, the learned Dr. van Endert, Canon von Bock, of
Aix-la-Chapelle, and, occasionally, Münzenberger, of Düsseldorf.
Baudri's journal is to Germany what J.N. Alberdingk-Thijm's "_De
dietsche Warande_" is to Holland, what James Weale's "_Le Beffroi_" is
to Belgium, and what Didron's "_Annales_" are to France. The claims of
church music are put forth by the "Caecilia," published in Luxemburg
by Oberhoffer. Pastor Ortlieb, whose premature death we mourn, made a
similar attempt, but failed. In fine, the organ of the altar societies
is "Der Kirchenschmuck," a monthly publication, published in Stuttgart
by Schwarz and Laib. These altar societies may now be found in every
part of Germany, and their silent influence is great. Some societies,
those of Vienna and Pesth, for instance, number thousands of members.
The Brussels and Paris societies, beside attending to their own wants,
work for foreign missions. The most recent of these societies is the
one founded in November, 1864, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, as the
Diocesan society of Limburg. The ladies of Germany have furnished
splendid {233} pieces of embroidery in the form of sacred vestments.

I cannot speak of altar societies without mentioning Kreuser, of
Cologne. Kreuser, with his hoary hair and his mighty snuff-box--a man
full of sparkling wit and endless humor--is known to all of us, for up
to 1861 we never missed him at the general conventions. Since the
Munich convention, however, we have not seen him; he was absent at
Aix-la-Chapelle, at Frankfort, and at Würzburg, and we know not the
reason of his absence. To speak concisely is very difficult, and few
speakers from the Rhenish provinces can boast of this virtue; still,
most Germans, and especially the German ladies, listened with pleasure
to old Kreuser; and no wonder, for Kreuser never failed to do justice
to the ladies of Germany. When Kreuser spoke in a city, his speech was
followed immediately by the establishment of an altar society. He
carried everything by storm, and the impression made by his speeches
was not merely transient, but produced lasting fruits. Kreuser is a
poet, also, a happy improvisatore, able to cope with the most daring
rhymster. He is one of the best read men in Germany, and deserves our
gratitude for his exertions in the cause of Christian art. Twenty
years have rolled by since he published his "Letters on the Cologne
Cathedral," and during the last twelve years his work on architecture
has been studied again and again. That Kreuser's style is deficient in
grace and harmony we will not dispute, still much benefit may be
derived from the perusal of his works.

Francis von Bock, also, deserves our notice. He is the author of a
"History of the Liturgic Vestments," in two vols., illustrated with
two hundred colored engravings. Boldly he demands the use of
appropriate workmanship; fearlessly measures swords with every
opponent, and often his impetuosity is crowned with success. To him
Casaretto, of Crefeld, is indebted for valuable suggestions. He was
also one of the founders of the school of art under the direction of
the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, at Aix-la-Chapelle. Dr. von Bock has
visited every country in Europe, Turkey excepted, which he intends
shortly to visit for the purpose of continuing his researches. Where
can be found an ancient vestment whose texture he did not scrutinize,
and a piece of which he has not begged for still closer examination?
At Gran, at Malines, in Bohemia, in Sicily, at Rome, at Paris, at
Vienna--everywhere Dr. von Bock has left traces of his unwearying
activity. The Rhenish goldsmiths owe him a debt of gratitude. He has
written papers on the church at Kaiserswerth, on the Benedictine
church at Munchen-Gladbach, on Cologne, and on the relics at Gran and
Aix-la-Chapelle. His principal work is on the "Insignia of the Holy
Roman Empire." It is a magnificently illustrated specimen of
typography, equal in every respect to any similar work published in
England or France. At Malines every one spoke loudly in its praise,
and in 1864 the author received from the Emperor Francis Joseph the
Cross of the Iron Crown. Von Bock's style reminds me of the chimes I
have heard in Holland; it consists in a constant repetition of the
same pleasing melody.

Von Bock stands in odd contrast to Dean Schwarz, of Böhmenkirch, the
able editor of the "_Kirchenschmuck._" He is the personification of
repose and dignity, a deep thinker, and a first-class archaeologist.
For many years he has wielded great influence with the clergy.

Whilst the altar societies are displaying greater activity every day,
the Christian art unions, it is said, are daily becoming less zealous.
In some places, no doubt, this is true; but in many dioceses they have
been changing into associations for furthering the completion of the
diocesan cathedral. To mention but a few instances, this was the case
in Regensburg. Since his accession to the episcopal see {234} Bishop
Ignatius von Senestrey applied himself with energy to the completion
of his cathedral. King Louis I. having furnished the means, we have no
doubt that in a few years architect Denzinger will finish the two
towers. At Mayence, likewise, everything is being done for the
completion and decoration of the cathedral. The work has been
intrusted to the skill of Metternich, and Director Veit, assisted by
Lasinsky Settegast and Hermann, is frescoing the walls and the vaults.
Since the fall of the partition between the sanctuary and the nave in
the Cologne cathedral, and since the great festival of October 15th,
1868, the building has been steadily progressing, and the cathedral
lottery promises to furnish the means for completing the towers within
seven years. Schmidt has added a new pyramid to St. Stephen's
cathedral in Vienna, which has now the highest spire in the world.
After rivalling the English architect Welby Pugin by planning almost
two hundred churches and chapels, Statz is now building a cathedral at
Linz. Archbishop Gregory von Scheer has given a new appearance to the
metropolitan Church of Our Lady at Munich, whilst the bishop of
Passau, Henry von Hofstätter, has proved his devotion to the interests
of art by renovating many churches in his diocese. Among all the
German prelates none have built more churches than Cardinal Geissel,
of Cologne, and Bishop Müller, of Münster.

Is it not an encouraging sign that we are completing the immense
edifices of the middle ages? Is it not a proof of vital energy that
the Catholics of all countries are building the grandest churches in
the most correct style? As architectural science progresses, a like
advance must take place in mechanics, and, notwithstanding many
blunders, every branch of art is daily more and more perfected. Not
many years hence all our temples will be completed and adorned with
the splendor becoming the divine service. Let every one do his duty,
fulfilling the task allotted him by divine Providence.

Let us conclude our rapid survey by calling to mind the men who have
begun and directed this movement. Among the Germans, Joseph von
Görres, F. von Schlegel, and Sulpitius Boisserée will head our list.
France justly boasts of de Caumont, Didron, Montalembert, Viollet le
Duc, Cahier, and the Abbé Martin. Oudin must not be forgotten, nor
Bossi, the historian of the catacombs. The merits of Seroux
d'Agincourt, Waagen, Guilhabaud, Schnaase, Kugler, Passavant,
Stieglitz, Geyer, Kallenbach, Forster, Moller, Heideloff, Otte,
Springer, Hefner-Alteneck, Krieg von Hochfelden, von Quast, Jacob
Schmitt, and many others known to every votary of art. To us is
assigned the task of reaping the fruits of their labors.

--------
{235}

From The St. James Magazine.

PROPERZIA ROSSI.


Properzia Rossi, a female artist, celebrated for her misfortunes,
though more for her proficiency in sculpture, painting, and music,
died of a broken heart, just as Pope Clement VII. had invited her to
Rome, to show his admiration for her masterpiece in the church of San
Petronio at Bologna.

  Too late--oh, far too late! Praise comes in vain
  To lull the fever'd agonies of pain.
  I am no more the artist idly proud,
  But the gaunt mortal waiting for a shroud.
  No more the songstress, whose impassioned lay
  O'er taste and feeling held unrivalled sway;
  But a weak woman, desolate and worn,
  Her pulses throbbing, and her heart-strings torn,
  Looking above--sad, humbled, and alone--
  Where mercy dwells with Jesus on his throne--
  Ay, fondly hoping for one smile of light
  From the meek Man of sorrows and of might,
  Who from sin's thrall is powerful to save,
  Died on the cross, and triumphed o'er the grave!

  What though the light of genius fired mine eye,
  That radiant meteor leaves us when we die,
  And conscience whispers that the gifts of heaven
  Were of misused. I thirst to be forgiven.
  Panting I turn from streams once deeply quaff'd.
  And crave the Rock's sole vivifying draught!
  Ay, as I kneel and supplicate for grace,
  I veil in lowliness my tear-bathed face;
  Implore for pardon with intense distress,
  And spurn the gauds of earthly happiness!
  Oh, what avails it that aerial forms.
  And colors vivid as the bow of storms.
  Hang o'er my fancy with bewitching spell?
  Say, have I used these varied talents well?
  Oh, what avails it that my hands would mould
  Beautiful models from the marble cold?
  Have the rich sculptures in the hallow'd fane
  Brought one soil'd spirit to her God again?--
  Recall'd a virtuous feeling to the heart,
  And by religion consecrated art?
  Have the fair features and bright hues I wove'
  In one dark breast illumed the spark of love?
  Or lured the soul from sin's deceptious toys
  To pure devotion's memorable joys?
  Oh, have the gifts of music and of song
  Soothed one sad being of the human throng?--
  Angelic thoughts--submissive, hopeful, kind--
  Breathed o'er a mournful or a shattered mind?
  And has my genius, with a potent sway,
  Gilded the road to heaven--that straight and narrow way?

{236}

  God has been very bounteous; he has given
  Much to enhance the blessedness of heaven.
  The _threefold cords_  [Footnote 37] of talismanic power
  Were meant to yield employment for the hour--
  Life's potent hour of labor, want, and pain--
  Brief as the April drops of sunny rain;
  And yet by mercy recompensed above,
  If well improved in hope, and faith, and love.
  But conscience whispers, and in these dark days
  That voice grows louder as my strength decays,--
  Of wasted talents, of forgotten crime,
  And of a judgment awfully sublime!
  Of duties unfulfill'd, of gifts misspent.
  Of future pangs, of fitting punishment!

  [Footnote 37: Music, painting, and  sculpture.]

  I muse no longer on the _present_--no--
    My life is with the _future_ or the _past_,
  And both are mingling in a magic flow,
    Like turbid waters in a fountain cast.
  The _past_---oh, whether fair, or dark, or both,
    Is but a picture mirror'd on the wave.
  The moral sicknesses--guile, anger, sloth--
    Arise as spectres from a yawning grave;
  What boots it that misfortune paled my cheek.
    That penury and pain obscured my way?
  _Sorrow is voiceless_; 'tis remorse that speaks
    In awful tones of merited decay,
  And of the worm that dieth not--the vale
    Of never-ending, still-beginning death.
  Methinks I hear the harsh, continuous wail,
    The sobs and catchings of convulsive breath.
  Guilt unatoned for--thoughts and words of sin--
    How do they rise up, burning as on glass!
  The evil pent the wishful heart within
    Asking for vengeance! O the hideous mass
  Of wickedness heap'd up, long, long conceal'd!
  But now as by a lightning flash reveal'd.

  Woe! woe! the Eternal Judge's fiery dart
    Hath pierced the labyrinthine cells within,
  Where underneath the pulses of my heart
    Dwells the mysterious form of crouching sin.
  Thoughts, baneful wishes,--ay, as well as deeds,
    Against me in strong phalanx are array'd.
  In vain these tears--in vain this bosom bleeds:
    I look upon myself, and am dismay'd,
  Powerless, and weak, and agonized I cry,--
  And hear the words, "Lost sinner, thou must die!"

  Clouds roll around me, and from an abyss,
    Drear, dark, profound, behold a hideous form!
  Closer and closer serpents coiling hiss,
    And thunders boom along a sky of storm.

{237}

  There is no deed to offer thee of good,
    Thou mocking fiend! laugh on without restraint!
  I seem as borne along a sulphurous flood,
    Too meteorically wild to paint.
  The couch heaves under me, my sight is gone,--
    I am with the accuser, and alone!

  Alone! alone! O tell me not 'tis so.
  That I must grapple powerless with the foe.
  Jesus, thou Lamb of God, arise! arise!
  Arrest these doubts, these daring blasphemies.
  It was for sinners thou didst shed thy blood,
  For guilty mortals, not for angels' good.
  Listen! attend! a sinner asks for aid,--
  For _me_ that blood was spilt, for _me_ thou wast betrayed.

  As when a night of storms has sped away.
  And robed in florid hues appears the day,
  Stealingly, gently lighting up the skies
  With gleams, as from a seraph's smiling eyes,
  Thus o'er my spirit breeds a gracious calm,
  O'er my deep wounds is poured a healing balm.
  Methinks the mild Redeemer stands above,
  And pleads _his_ righteousness, _his_ cross, _his_ love;
  While angels' voices wafted straight from heaven
  Proclaim, "Thy Savior calls! thou art forgiven!"

------

From The Hibernian Magazine.

THE CAPUCHIN OF BRUGES.

  "Three monks sat by a bogwood fire--
    Bare were their crowns, and their garments grey,
  Close sat they by that bogwood fire.
    Watching the wicket till break of day."
                                            Ballad Poetry.

Saving the color of their garments, which, instead of grey, were of a
dark brown, and the omission of any allusion to their long flowing
beards, the above lines convey as accurate an idea as any words could
of the parties that occupied the spacious guest-chamber of the
Capuchin convent of Bruges on the last night of October, 1708.

Seated round the capacious hearth, on which, without aid of grate,
cheerfully blazed a pile of dark gnarled logs dug up from the fens,
which, in the days of Caesar, were shaded by the dense forests of
Flanders, three lay-brothers of the order kept watch for any wayfarer
that might require hospitality or information on the evening in
question. Their convent stood--and a portion of it still stands--at
the southern extremity of the town, close beside the present railway
station. But Bruges was not, a century and a half ago, what it is
today. War, and the recent decline of its ancient commerce, rendered
it, at {238} the period of which we write, anything but a safe or
attractive locality for either tourist or commercial traveller to
visit. There was no "Hotel de Flandre," or "Fleur de Blé," or even
"Singe d'Or,'" for the weary itinerant to seek refreshment or lodging.
Neither were there gens-d'armes in the streets, nor affable
shopkeepers in their gas-lit _magasins_, as at present, to whom the
benighted stranger might apply for information regarding the locality
in which his friends resided. The convents and monasteries, however,
with which Belgium was then, as now, studded, were ever open to the
traveller, be his rank or condition what it might, and pre-eminent for
their hospitality were the Capuchin fathers.

The night was a wild one; and the dying blasts of October seemed bent
on a vigorous struggle ere they expired.

"What an awful storm!" exclaimed Brother Anselm, rising to secure the
huge oak window shutters that seemed, as if in terror, every moment
ready to start from their strong iron fastenings.

"God preserve us I but 'tis fearful," replied one of his companions.
Brother Bonaventure, "and what dreadful lightning!"

Peal after peal of thunder resounded through the spacious hall and
adjoining corridors; and then, again, came the wind beating the rain,
in torrents, against door and casement, and completely drowning the
chimes of the Carillon, though the market-place, where the belfry
stood, was close beside them. Still not a word escaped their third
companion, Brother Francis, a venerable old man who sat nearer than
his younger brethren to the ample fireplace. He continued silently
reciting "Ave" after "Ave" on the beads of the large rosary attached
to his girdle, and seemed, in the excess of his devotion, utterly
unconscious of the storm that howled without.

A loud knocking at the outer gate followed quickly by the ringing of
the stranger's bell, at length announced the arrival of some guest. In
an instant, the old man let his beads fall to their accustomed place
by his side--for the rule of St. Francis gave charity toward the
neighbor a first place among its spiritual observances--and hastened,
as eagerly as his younger brothers, to admit the poor traveller, who
must be sore distrait, on such an awful night.

Lighting a lantern, they proceeded through the court to the outer
porch, and drawing back the slide that covered a small grated aperture
in the wicket, demanded who the wayfarer might be. The gleam of the
lamp fell upon the uniforms of two military men, who seemed engaged in
supporting a third between them, while their horses stood neighing in
terror, and pawing the ground beside them. In a second the gate was
unbarred, and three of Vendôme's troopers entered the court-yard; two
of them still supporting their comrade, who had been badly wounded in
a skirmish with Marlborough's troops, near Audenarde, that morning.
Leaving Anselm with the two other soldiers to look after the horses,
brothers Francis and Bonaventure led the wounded man into the convent.
He seemed weak and faint; but the cheerful blase of the fire, and the
refreshment speedily administered by the good brothers, soon restored
him somewhat, though he still suffered acutely from his wound, and was
utterly unable to stand without the aid of support.

For the first time Brother Francis broke silence. From the moment he
caught a distinct view of the stranger's face, as he sat in the light
of the fire, his gaze seemed riveted upon him; and an observer might
have noticed the old man's lip quiver and his face grow paler, might
have even observed a tear steal down his cheek, as he continued for a
while to gaze in silence on the pallid features of the young soldier.
At length he addressed him, not in French or {239} Flemish, but in a
language which to Brother Bonaventure was foreign.

The stranger's face brightened at the sound of his own tongue, and he
readily made answer to the few hurried questions put him by the old
monk. Their conversation was of very brief duration; but its result
seemed astounding. For when Anselm returned with the soldiers, he
found Bonaventure and the stranger chafing the old man's temples as he
lay in a swoon on the bench before them.

To their inquiries as to the cause of this strange occurrence, Anselm
could give no definite answer. All he knew was, that although he could
not understand what passed between Brother Francis and their comrade,
the conversation seemed to produce a wonderful effect on the former.
He trembled from head to foot, and then smiled, and seemed about to
grasp the stranger in his arms, when he suddenly fell back on the
bench as they now saw him. The young soldier--he was almost a boy,
and strikingly handsome--was equally puzzled. Brother Francis had
merely asked him if he were Irish; and when he answered "Yes;"--if his
name was Herbert, and if it was Gerald Herbert, and if his father and
grandfather were Irish;--and when he replied that his name was Gerald
Walter Herbert, and that his grandfather was not Irish, but English,
the old man muttered something which he could not catch, and fainted.
That was all he could tell them; but what that had to do with Brother
Francis's fit still remained a mystery.

For a considerable time the aged monk lay senseless and almost
motionless, the only symptoms of animation he presented being those
afforded by the convulsive throbbing of his heart, and an occasional
deep-drawn sigh. His brothers seemed deeply afflicted, and sought by
every means in their power to restore him; for Francis, though few
knew anything of his history, was, notwithstanding, the favorite of
the whole community.

Toward midnight the old man revived, and his first inquiry was for the
young soldier. He now embraced him, and, as he pressed him again and
again to his heart, with tears and blessings called him "his son,"
"his dear child." Brothers Anselm and Bonaventure looked at each other
in mute astonishment. They feared that their dear old friend, the
patriarch of the lay-brothers, was losing his reason. They knew that,
for thirty years at least, he had been an inmate of the cloister,
while the party whom he thus lovingly called his son could at furthest
number twenty birthdays, if indeed he could count so many. Still
greater, however, was their surprise, when, on a closer scrutiny, they
could not fail to observe a market family likeness between their aged
brother and the individual on whom all his affections seemed now
centred.

But this was no time for the indulgence of curiosity. The two
troopers, drenched and travel-stained, must be attended to, and the
wound of their comrade looked after. Fortunately their convent
numbered among its inmates one of the best leeches in all West
Flanders. He had been already summoned to the aid of Brother Francis,
and now that he no longer required his services, he directed his
attention to the other invalid, whose case seemed the less urgent of
the two. In a short time his skilful hand extracted a spent ball from
the sufferer's knee, and, by the application of a soothing poultice,
restored him to comparative ease. Nor were Brothers Anselm and
Bonaventure idle meanwhile. Piles of well-buttered _tartines_ made of
wholemeal bread baked in the convent, with plentiful dishes of rashers
and omelets, and a flagon or two of foaming Louvain beer, soon covered
the table. Cold meats, too, of various kinds, were served up in
abundance; and the two dragoons were soon busily engaged in satisfying
appetites good at all times, but now considerably sharpened by a hard
ride and a long fast. {240} It was the first peaceful meal they
enjoyed since the Duke of Burgundy got command; and they blessed their
stars for having been selected to escort young Herbert to the rear.
Having completed the bandaging of his wound, and administered such
medicine as he deemed best calculated to make up for his patient's
loss of blood, the infirmarian led him to the chamber prepared for his
reception; and Brother Francis begged to be allowed to take charge of
him. His request was granted, but on the sole condition that no
conversation of an exciting nature should take place between him and
the invalid till such time as all feverish and inflammatory symptoms
had subsided. Day after day, and night after night, the old man
watched, in strict silence, beside the stranger's couch; and all were
in amazement at such assiduity and attention on the part of one who,
as long as any remembered him, seemed utterly detached from all
earthly affections. They even saw him mingle tears with his prayers,
as he knelt beside the pillow of the sleeper. It was whispered that
the guardian knew something about the matter; for he, too, now came
frequently, and looked with evident interest on the invalid. No one
else ventured to speak to Brother Francis on the subject, for though
generally kind and gentle, and communicative as a child, there were
times when he became sad and reserved--and this seemed one of them.

Ten days passed on, and the invalid made such rapid progress that the
infirmarian and his staff pronounced him quite out of danger, in no
further need of medical treatment, and only requiring the aid of the
cook to recover completely his wonted vigor. The interdict was now
removed, and Brother Francis seemed happy. He could, henceforth, speak
as he pleased to his young protégé. The latter felt equally delighted;
for he felt, he knew not why, a sort of unaccountable attachment--it
was certainly more than mere gratitude--toward the old man growing
daily stronger and stronger within him. And then Brother Francis
called him "my son"--but perhaps, as an old man, that was the name by
which he addressed all youngsters. At all events, he loved the old
monk as a child loves a father, and always felt sad when the duties of
his rule obliged his venerable friend to leave him for a time.

"And so you tell me you have no recollection of your father?" said
Brother Francis, with a sigh, as they sat together one evening--it was
the eve of St. Martin--in the same apartment where we first introduced
them to our readers.

"None whatever," replied his companion; "he left France as a volunteer
with d'Usson's division, and was killed at Limerick when I was but
three years old. So I often heard my mother say."

The speaker did not remark the shudder that ran through the old man's
frame at mention of Limerick; but only paid attention to his next
question, which rapidly followed.

"And your father's father?"

"Was, as I have already said, an Englishman--but he, too, died in the
wars long ago. They say he fell in Spain."

The old man could no longer restrain his feelings. Bursting into
tears, and clasping his young companion to his bosom, as he had done
on the night of their first meeting, he said:

"No, my child--your grandfather, Walter Herbert, is not dead, but yet
survives to give you that blessing which your own poor father could
not bestow on you with his parting breath--he stands before you."

It was a touching scene to witness--that old Capuchin monk, with his
long white beard, and coarse dark gown, and leathern cincture, and
bare sandalled feet, locked in the fond embrace of the young soldier
of "the Brigade," on that eve of St. Martin, in the old convent of
Bruges! We do not mean to intrude on the sacred {241} privacy of
domestic feeling, but leaving parent and child to commune with each
other in the fulness of their hearts, will, with our readers' kind
permission, assume, for the nonce, the province of the Senachie, and
briefly relate as much of their history as we have ourselves learned,
Outre Mer--and is still oftentimes related on long winter evenings by
the brothers who have succeeded--literally stepped into the sandals
of--Brother Francis and his comrades.


THE CAPUCHIN'S STORY.

Walter Herbert, or, as he was called in religion, Brother Francis, was
the only child of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire. Entering the
army at an early age, he found himself stationed with his regiment in
Limerick, when the army of the "Confederates" sat down before that
city in the summer of sixteen hundred and forty-two. He was then in
his twentieth year. Forming part of Courtenay's company, when the city
opened its gates to Garret Barry and Lord Muskerry, he retired with
his commander to King John's castle, where, though closely besieged,
they resolutely held out till St. John's eve, when Conrtenay was
obliged to capitulate. In the course of the attack on the castle, a
mine was sprung by the besieging party, and a turret, in which Herbert
was stationed, fell to the ground with a terrific crash. For weeks he
lay delirious; and when at length he awoke to consciousness, he found
himself the occupant of a handsomely-fitted chamber looking out on the
church of St. Nicholas. His host was a middle-aged,
gentlemanly-looking person, of grave yet affable manners. He was a
widower, and his household consisted of himself, an aged housekeeper,
two sons, and an only daughter. The latter--Eily O'Brien--was the sick
man's principal nurse, and no Sister of Mercy could have bestowed more
care on a suffering invalid than she did on Walter Herbert--stranger
though he was to her creed and her country. From lengthened and almost
continual intercourse, a feeling of mutual affection sprang up between
the young people. Gratitude on the one hand, and sympathy for the
sufferings of the handsome young officer on the other, heightened this
feelings till it grew into deep and lasting love. Like Desdemona, she
loved him "for the dangers he had passed;" and he loved her "that she
did pity them." But an insurmountable obstacle to their union lay in
their difference of religion. Herbert was a Protestant; and old Connor
O'Brien would never hear of any child of his being united to one of
that creed which, in its struggle for ascendency, he believed to be
the cause of so much suffering to his country, even though no other
impediment whatever existed. A private marriage was thus their only
alternative, and to this, in an evil hour, poor Eily consented.

Months rolled on--months of bliss to Walter and Eily--but their
separation was at hand. Important letters called Herbert away, almost
at a moment's notice. He hoped, however, that his absence would be of
no lengthened duration, and that he would soon return to publicly
claim his own Eily as his wife. But alas! his hopes were doomed to sad
and bitter disappointment. On his arrival in England, he found the
entire country in arms; and as it became impossible to remain neutral,
or return to Ireland, he was forced to join the newly-formed corps
just raised in his native county by Henry Ireton, his father's
landlord. Once under military discipline there was no retreating; and
though all his thoughts were turned to Ireland, he was doomed to
maddening suspense regarding her who alone made Ireland dear to him.
All communication between the two countries was now suspended. At
Edgehill and Newbury he retreated before the king's troops--and at
Marston Moor and Naseby had a share in defeating them. But victory or
defeat was alike void of {242} interest to him. It was even with
indifference he heard of his promotion for having saved his general's
life at Naseby. The sole engrossing thought of his existence was how
to get back to Limerick. That long-sought for opportunity at last
arrived; but when it did, it scarcely brought joy to Herbert. He was
ordered to join in the invading Parliamentary force; and, when he
called to mind the fierce fanatics who were to be his fellow-soldiers,
love made him tremble for the Irishry.

The fourteenth of June saw him on the battle-field of Naseby--the
following autumn found him sailing up the Shannon--and, ere the close
of the year, he was gazing on the steeple of St. Mary's and the towers
of Limerick from the battlements of Bunratty, which had fallen into
the hands of the Parliamentarians. He fancied he could even see the
very house in which he had spent so many happy days. But beyond fancy
he could not go. To reach the city was utterly impossible. All he
could learn, from an Abbey fisherman whom they had taken prisoner, was
that Connor O'Brien was still alive, and that his daughter was married
and had a beautiful little boy. Who her husband was his informant
could not say; but he thought he was an officer in Earl Glamorgan's
army. Herbert, however, well knew who he was, and he would have risked
worlds to have sent back his prisoner in safety, with even one line to
Limerick. But Lord Inchiquin's troops were too vigilant to allow of
any communication with the city. Even this intelligence, scanty though
it was, afforded him some consolation. He knew his wife was safe, and
unable any longer to endure the Tantalus-like position in which he was
placed, he found means of returning again to England.

His next and last visit to Ireland was in the summer of sixteen
hundred and fifty. He was then pretty high in command, and had hopes,
as he sat down with Waller's army of investment before Limerick, in
the July of that year, that should he be only able to effect an
entrance into the town, his authority would be sufficient to protect
whomsoever he pleased. But the year passed away, and still the city
held out. And, had he but his wife and child without its walls, he
would have counselled its burghers to hold out even still more
manfully, for he well knew the iron heart and bloody hand of the
execrable Hardress Waller.

The spring of the next year found him still before Limerick; and could
he but communicate with any of its gallant defenders, his hatred of
treachery would have urged him to expose to them the perfidy of one of
their own whom they had raised to the rank of colonel. This wretch was
named Fennell; and, for his treason in selling the passes of the
Shannon at Killaloe, their commander-in-chief Cromwell had promised
him and his descendants many a fair acre in Tipperary. By this pass
Ireton and his myrmidons crossed the river into Clare; and with them
passed Walter Herbert. Still his heart was full of hope of saving all
he held dear in the leaguered city. Spring passed away, and summer
again came; and still the assailing host made no progress toward the
capture of the town which Ireton and his father-in-law regarded as the
key of all the Munster territories. In the burning heat of July, while
pestilence daily thinned the ranks of the besieged, an assault was
ordered on the almost defenceless keep that guarded the northern
extremity of the salmon weir, and Herbert was reluctantly obliged to
form one of the storming party. His immediate senior in command was a
person named Tuthill--one of those heartless hypocrites who could
preach and pray while his brutal soldiery were massacring the wives
and children of the brave men whom the chances of war made his
victims. The fort was carried by overwhelming numbers; and Herbert was
doomed to witness, with horror, the butchery of the surviving
defenders, mercilessly {243} ordered by Tuthill--an order which he
unhappily had no power of countermanding, but in the execution of
which he took no part. Still the city held out, though the "leaguer
sickness" was rapidly decimating its brave garrison. The north
fortress of Thomond bridge was next carried by assault--but to no
purpose. The townsmen succeeded in breaking down two of its arches,
and thus cutting off all approach to the city in that quarter, and in
resisting the sortie three hundred of their assailants perished.
Winter was now fast approaching, and the plague extending from the
city, in which fifty of its victims were now daily interred, commenced
to thin the ranks of the besiegers themselves. Ireton had serious
thoughts of raising the siege, and he would, beyond all question, have
done so, were it not for treachery. Fennell, the traitor of Killaloe,
was again at work--this time, unfortunately, within the very walls of
the city itself.

A truce of some days was agreed on; and Herbert was one of those
appointed to treat with the townsmen. The deputies met on neutral
ground, midway between the city and camp, and within range of the
rival batteries. His heart was now full of greater hopes than ever.
Could he but meet with any member of Eily's family, he hoped that his
love for her would induce them to listen to his counsels. But fate, it
would seem, had leagued all chances against him. Had he met them, he
meant to put them on their guard against Fennell's treachery, and,
without absolutely breaking trust, give them such a key to Ireton's
fears and readiness to make concessions as would, he hoped, lead to an
honorable capitulation, and prevent the bloodshed which, from the
shattered state of the town walls, and the additional element of
treachery within those walls, he now judged to be inevitable, unless
they came to terms with Ireton. But not one of them appeared; for the
traitor had laid his plans deeply, and succeeded in diverting them and
the clerical party, to which they faithfully adhered, from anything
like a compromise. He wished that the sole merit and reward of
surrendering the city should be his own. And he succeeded. The
conference ended fruitlessly; and Herbert returned to the camp
well-nigh broken-hearted.

The plague continued its ravages meanwhile; and, day after day, within
the city, the dying were brought by their relatives to the tomb of
Cornelius O'Dea, where many, it was believed, were restored to health
through the intercession of that saintly prelate, who lay buried in
the cathedral. Its effects were visibly traced in the ranks of the
besieging Army. Still Ireton, relying on treason within, pressed on
the siege. By a bridge of pontoons he succeeded in connecting the
Thomond side of the river with the King's Island, where he now planted
a formidable battery, to play on the eastern side of the city.
Herbert had fortunately escaped witnessing the horrors of Drogheda and
Wexford; but a sight almost as appalling now met his eyes. In the
smoke of the cannonade crowds of plague-stricken victims--principally
women and children--ventured outside the city walls to catch one pure
breath of air from the Shannon, on "the Island" bank,--and there lie
down and die. But when this was discovered, the heartless Waller
forbade even this short respite from suffering. By his orders, those
unhappy beings, who could have no share in protracting the siege, were
mercilessly dogged back by the soldiery into the plague-reeking city--
and such as refused to return were, by the same pitiless mandate,
_hanged_   [Footnote 38] within sight of their fellow-townsmen!

  [Footnote 38: Historical]

The daily sight of this revolting butchery was sickening to the noble
heart and refined feelings of Herbert. But suffering for him had not
yet reached its climax. As he was seated in his tent, one evening
toward the {244} close of October, fatigued after a long foraging
excursion to the Meelick mountains, and musing sadly on the fate of
her who was almost within sight of him, and yet whom, by what seemed
to him an almost supernatural combination of adverse circumstances, he
had not seen for years, his attention was arrested by the cries of a
female who seemed struggling with her captors. His manhood was aroused
by such an outrage--committed almost in his very presence--and he rose
at once to rescue the victim from her assailants. But, horror of
horrors! at the very door of his tent, and in the grasp of an armed
ruffian, lay the fainting and all but inanimate form of his wife! To
fell the wretch, and clasp the beloved object to his bosom, was but
the work of a second. But, oh! how sorrow and sickness had changed
that once beautiful face, and wasted that once symmetrical form. Death
had already clutched her in his bony gripe, and selected her for his
own. His kiss was upon her lips, for they were livid and
plague-stained. And her beautiful blue eyes! how they now wandered
with the wild look of a maniac. All that remained of the beautiful
Eily he once knew were the long fair ringlets that now fell down in
dishevelled masses on her heaving bosom. The sight almost drove him
mad. In vain he clasped her to his heart, and called her by the dear
fond name of wife. She knew him not, yet, when she spoke, her ravings
were all about him; and he often wondered afterward how his brain
stood the shock, when, without knowing him, she still called on him,
"her own dear, dear Walter, to save her, to take her away from those
terrible men--at least to come to her--for, to come to him, she had
left her poor old father and little Gerald behind."

Wholly occupied with his wife, Herbert paid no attention to the
sergeant's guard that stood at the tent door under arms. When at
length he perceived them, he flew into a phrenzy of passion, asking
them how they dared stand thus in his presence?--and ended by
ordering "the catiffs who could thus treat a woman to get out of his
sight presently."

But the orderly remained unmoved. Were his hands free at the moment,
Herbert would have unquestionably run him through for presuming to
disobey his orders, such was the irritated state of his feelings. But
he could not leave the shrinking, still unconscious being that clung
to him for support. Stamping his foot in a rage, he demanded what he
wanted, or why he regained there?

"Pris'ner, sir," was the sergeant's laconic reply, as he mechanically
touched his hat.

"What prisoner?"

"The woman, sir."

"Heavens and earth! do you mean to drive me mad, man?" and the soldier
recoiled for an instant at the voice and look of his officer.

"Can't help it, sir--gen'ral's orders. Woman came to the camp three
times, sir--supposed to be a spy, and ordered to be hanged."

"Hanged!" In a second his burthen was laid on the camp-bed, and the
sergeant laid prostrate by a blow that would have almost felled an ox.

The guard now interposed; and from them he learned that the party in
question had been several times seen to leave the city, in defiance of
Sir Hardress Waller's orders. Twice already she had been flogged back,
but she came out again, that day, at noon, and was by the general's
orders sentenced to execution. The soldier added that an old rebel
[Footnote 39] calling himself her father, when he heard of the
sentence, offered himself in her stead; but Sir Hardress ordered him
to be instantly flogged back. "She was to have been hanged," he
continued, "at sunset, but she broke loose from them and ran toward
his tent as he had seen."

  [Footnote 39: A Fact. _Vide_ "Ferrar's History of Limerick," page 64. ]

"Touch not a hair of her head, on your peril," exclaimed Herbert as
the {245} corporal concluded, and kissing the pallid lips of his wife,
he rushed out of the tent to seek the general, just as returning
consciousness revealed to Eily the name of her deliverer.

"Walter, my own dear husband. Oh! come back, don't leave me," were the
last words he heard as he flew toward the tent of the
commander-in-chief, more like a maniac than anything else.

"By the bones of St. Pancras, he's either mad, or she is," said a tall
weaver from Lambeth, who wore the badge of a lance-corporal.

"Ay is he, and sore wrathful to boot," replied his rear-rank man, with
a grin--he was a butcher from Newgate. "But we are the sufferers, and
shall, I fear, be late for supper. The gallows, however, is ready to
hand, thank God, and we shall make short work of it when the captain
returns."

The name of God on the lips of such a miscreant, and on such an
occasion, makes us almost shudder. But, reader, these were Cromwellian
times, and such were Cromwellian customs.

Herbert found Ireton and his second in command seated at the supper
table--and hell could not have unchained two such incarnate demons on
that same evening. The object of his visit was soon explained. But it
seemed only to supply subject of mirth to his superior officers.

"Pooh, pooh! man," said the commander-in-chief, "you are, I fear,
grown quite a papist, too soft-hearted entirely. I wonder how you
would act had you been at the _battue_ in Drogheda or Wexford?" and
Ireton sipped his hock with a devilish leer.

"But, general, she is my wife," gasped Herbert.

"Folly, man!" rejoined Waller; "no faith to be kept with heretics, you
know, and all these Irish are such. You will easily find another, I
trow you, when we sack the city one of these fine days."

Herbert heeded not the coarse jest of the speaker, but, turning to the
general, implored him to torn a serious ear to a matter on which the
happiness of his life depended. But Ireton seemed inclined to laugh it
off as an excellent joke.

Driven to desperation, the brave soldier, who never before feared or
supplicated any man, sank on his knees, and with tears of agony
besought him to cancel Waller's iniquitous sentence. He even asked him
to do so in memory of the act by which, at the risk of his own life,
he saved his at Naseby. And Ireton seemed almost inclined to relent,
and hope began to brighten in the heart of the suppliant, when a
whisper from Waller to the general blasted them for ever. He had
himself in person given the order for execution, and his callous heart
was too obdurate to feel compunction even for a bad act. Summoning an
orderly, he gave him some instructions in an undertone; and Herbert
was directed by his commander-in-chief to make his report of the
progress of the trenches under his command in the King's Island. This
was but a feint to turn his attention from the main object of his
visit. His report was, however, quickly made, and as there was no
other pretext for detaining him he arose to depart. There was
something more then fiendish in the laugh of Hardress Waller as he
wished him safe home, and a good night's rest.

That night, a heart-broken man knelt beneath the gibbet erected on the
green sward in front of King John's castle. For him all earthly
happiness was now over; and there, in the presence of the pale moon
that looked silently on his sorrow, that cold October night, he vowed
eternal fealty to his wife in heaven, eternal hatred to her murderers.
There was a strange admixture of reverence and irreligion, of love and
hatred, in his feelings and sentiments, no doubt; but the camp of
Cromwell was but an indifferent school for the culture of Christian
ethics. Beside, his brain was, for the time, astray from sorrow and
outraged feeling; he followed but {246} the dictates of human passion
unrestrained by either reason or religion. His heart and his hopes
were already buried in the grade that was soon to close over the
remains of his first and only love; and, from that night out, though
his life was a long and a chequered one, he was never known to smile,
till he became an inmate of the monastery where we found him at the
commencement of our narrative.

The remainder of the siege was a blank chapter in his life. By nature
a soldier, he got through his duties fearlessly but mechanically,
without the slightest feeling of interest in any enterprise in which
he had a share. To him defeat or victory was a matter of utter
indifference; and it was in this mood he entered the fallen city, as
the sun was sinking, on the 27th of October, 1651, and took up his
quarters with Ireton, in the old Dutch-gabled house which is still
standing, and adjoins the Tholsel in Mary street. It is more than
probable that his reason would have altogether succumbed beneath the
terrible shock it had sustained, were it not for some new incidents
that now occurred to awaken it for a time to activity.

By sunrise on the 29th, the Cromwellian garrison beat to arms. It was
the signal for the assemblage of the Irish troops in the old cathedral
of St. Mary's, where, in accordance with the third article of
capitulation, they were to lay down their arms. It was not Fennell's
fault that they escaped the fate of the soldiers and women of Drogheda
and Wexford. He had done his work of treachery well; and we cannot
venture to say what his feelings were when he beheld his brave but
ill-fated countrymen assembled round the altar to deposit at its rails
the weapons they had so long and so gallantly wielded in the cause of
one who was afterward to despoil their children of their lawful
heritage, and sanction its appropriation by the murderers of his
father. Ah! no Irishman can ever forget the ingratitude of the second
Charles. But Walter Herbert thought little of the ceremony gone
through that morning in the old church of the O'Briens till all was
over. As the disarmed garrison marched down the long aisle of the
cathedral many of them dropped dead--it might have been of the
plague, or it might have been of a broken heart. Among the dead were
two whose faces he had not looked on for years--Terence and Donat
O'Brien, his wife's brothers. The sight awakened a new thought within
him--that of his child whom he had not yet seen--and but few moments
elapsed ere he was standing in front of the old corner house opposite
the church of St. Nicholas. But its appearance was sadly changed since
last he saw it. Gable and chimney bore evident marks of the enemy's
cannon, while all around wore an air of desolation and sorrow. He
looked up into one well-remembered window, but no fragrant geraniums
were now there, as of old; no lark carolled the cheering song he so
often listened to, with pleasure, some nine years before; balcony, and
shutter, and curtain had disappeared. The whole house seemed in
mourning. Even his knock rang through the house as through a
sepulchre--so he thought. Twice he repeated it; and, at length, an
aged head peered cautiously through a dormer window, and asked who was
there. His answer quickly brought down the old domestic; but a flood
of tears was her only welcome, as she opened the door and admitted him
She had been the nurse of Eily and her brothers in childhood, and
partly his own in sickness; and was now the survivor of all her old
heart loved; of all, save one, a blue-eyed, curly-headed boy, who now
hid behind her, evidently scared at the presence of a visitor in that
desolate dwelling. A few words of greeting on the part of old Winny or
Winifred assured him that he was known and welcome; and a few words of
fondness addressed to the child soon restored his confidence. He was
even, ere long, seated {247} contentedly on his father's knee, playing
with sword-buckle--for that fair-headed, blue-eyed boy was the only
child of Eily O'Brien and Walter Herbert. And as he gazed with pride
on his beautiful boy, new hope and a new sense of duty sprang up
within him. He felt that there was even yet something to live for. To
protect that half-orphan child and his sorrowing grandsire would from
that moment be the sole duty of his life, the sole solace of
existence; and to this he pledged himself in Eily's little room, to
which he ascended with his youthful companion, who, at his nurse's
bidding, now called him father, and twined his little hands round his
neck as he kissed him. The sudden roll of drums at length announced to
him that it was time to depart, and fondly embracing his child once
more, he hurried out of the house. He would never have left it did he
then but know that in so doing he was bidding his boy farewell for
ever.

The beating to arms announced the commencement of the mock trial of
two dozen individuals, whom Ireton had already virtually sentenced to
death, by excluding them from the protection guaranteed to the
remaining citizens in the terms of capitulation. How readily would
Herbert have saved every one of them, but his vote was only effective
in one case, that of the gallant Hugh O'Neil, the city governor. The
rest were condemned, by a majority, to die; and it was not without a
tear he beheld that long file of brave and resolute men led forth to
the scaffold. Priest and layman, soldier and citizen, were alike
sacrificed, and for no crime save that of loving and defending their
native land. And what Englishman, thought he, would not readily be
guilty of the same offence? All passed silently from the
death-chamber; all, save one, a venerable man, who, with Father
Woulfe, was arrested in the lazar-house while administering the last
sacraments of the Church to its plague-stricken inmates, soon to be
deprived of all spiritual ministry. Herbert thought he recognized him,
as he stood erect and fearless in the council-hall, and with hand
pointed toward heaven, summoning Ireton to meet him, ere a month, at
its judgment bar. He had certainly seen him before, but dressed in
white serge, and not, as now, in purple. Nay, if he remembered
rightly, he had been Eily's confessor, and, with the parish
clergyman's permission, had married them privately in the church of
St. Saviour, having first obtained a promise, freely granted by
Herbert, that the children of that union, if such there were, should
be brought up in the religion of the mother. What would he not have
done to preserve the live [life?] of that venerable, heavenly-looking man! The
last of Ireton's victims was one whose presence among the condemned he
witnessed with astonishment. He had seen him closeted for hours with
that same Ireton; and knew him to have been promised lands and money
for certain services to be rendered to the general. But treachery was
met with treachery; and Fennell, the traitor, ended his days on the
same scaffold with Terence O'Brien, the bishop and martyr.

* * * * * *

The last guard was relieved on the day of execution--it was the eve of
All-Hallows--and the clock of the town-hall was just chiming midnight
as Herbert, who was the officer of the night, commenced his rounds. As
he passed along, in silence and alone, by the Dean's Close, on his way
to the castle barracks, he was suddenly stopped, at the head of an
arched passage, over which an oil lamp feebly flickered, by an
individual closely wrapped up in a large, dark frieze over-coat. To
draw his sword was his first impulse; but a single glance at that wan
face, whose gaze was sadly fixed upon him, changed his purpose in an
instant. And, though armed to the teeth, he trembled in presence of
that defenceless old man, and stood in silence before him.

{248}

"Don't you know me, Walter?" said the stranger.

"Alas! too well," was his reply. "But can I hope that you will ever
forgive me?"

"My creed tells tells me to forgive even my--but I believe you never
meant to be such"--and the old man extended his hand to Herbert.

They stood alone--with no eye upon them save that of the all-seeing
One, and, in his presence, Walter fell on his knees, protesting his
purity of intention, and asking the old man's blessing. And Conner
O'Brien, for it was he, with head uncovered, blessed the stranger for
the first time, and, raising him up, clasped him to his bosom as his
son--the husband of his darling Eily, now sleeping with her mother in
Killely.

Herbert was about to respond, with a fervent assurance of his undying
love and devotion to her, when the old man stopped him short, and,
drawing him into the recess of the bow way, asked him if he might now
rely on his friendship and protection.

"Henceforth, as God is my witness," earnestly replied Herbert, "your
interest and mine are but one."

"Good!" returned his companion. "Then, when occasion presents itself,
you will procure a pass for myself and a friend in whose safety I feel
the deepest interest. For my own life I care not, as I have no one
save you and my grandson now remaining to care for." Then the old man,
despite his resolution, sobbed aloud. "But my friend," he continued,
after a few moments, "cannot yet be spared. We cannot afford to lose
him, and it is solely on his account--though he knows nothing of my
project--that I have waited here to meet you."

After some further brief conversation, they parted with a fond embrace
--the old man to his friend, and Walter to the barracks. When his
watch was ended, he lay down to enjoy, for the first time during many
months, a peaceful slumber of several hours.

The 1st of November, 1651, dawned brightly on the old city of
Luimneach, and its now shattered fortifications--brightly on the
brown heath of the Meelick mountains--brightly on the waving woods of
Cratloe--brightly on the rapids at the salmon weir, and on the snowy
sails of the English transports at anchor in "the pool"--brightly on
the gory head of Terence O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, impaled on the
center tower of the city--brightly, too, on his murderer, Henry
Ireton, as he reviewed the body of troops destined for the siege of
Carrigaholt Castle; for God "maketh his sun to rise upon the good and
bad." Ere the sun set the vanguard of that body had left the Cratloe
hills far behind them, on their march westward; and Herbert was second
in command of the first division. He was well mounted, and with him
rode two peasants thoroughly acquainted with the country, and destined
to serve him as guides. Of late his soldiers remarked that he had
grown unusually silent and morose, and few of them cared to intrude on
him uninvited. Thus it happened that, during the march, he rode
considerably in advance, though always within sight of his detachment,
with no other companions than the two guides.

With one of them he seemed well acquainted, and the soldiers remarked
that he conversed freely with him on the road. The other seemed to
speak but seldom, and then only to his brother guide. This, however,
was no matter of surprise, as it was supposed he spoke in Irish, a
language almost utterly unknown to the English commander. And such, in
reality, was the fact. Whether he understood English or not, he spoke
in his native tongue to O'Brien, who, as the reader may have guessed,
was Herbert's other guide on the evening in question. As they
approached Ennis the old man seemed much excited, alleging, as his
reason, that he feared being recognized; but it was not difficult to
perceive that his {249} anxiety was more for his companion than
himself. They succeeded, however, in reaching their destination, and
encamped near Kilfiehera to await the arrival of the main body from
Kilrush. Under pretext of exploring the wild coast of Kilkee and
Farahee, Herbert left the camp at sunrise, attended solely by the two
individuals who had been his companions on the march from Limerick. He
returned alone, however, in the evening, and rumor went abroad that he
had been deserted by his guides amid the wild recesses of the coast.
This new piece of treachery on the part of the Irishry, after being
warmly denounced round the Cromwellian camp-fires that night, was
forwarded next morning to Limerick, to be faithfully chronicled, with
many other facts of like authenticity, in "Ludlow's Memoirs." Herbert
was too much overjoyed at the escape of his father-in-law and the
friend in whom he seemed so deeply interested, to give himself any
concern about the camp-fire gossip, or Ludlow's version of the matter.

The next week found him again in Limerick. Sudden news of the alarming
illness of the general had reached the camp, and the expedition to the
west was, for the time, abandoned. Herbert found his new post a trying
one--to keep watch and ward with Hardress Waller, one of his wife's
murderers, beside the dying bed of another. Waller was Ireton's
confidant, the ready instrument of all his infamy; and Herbert was
selected by the general to attend him as the only surviving officer
attached to his own regiment since it was first raised in Nottingham,
the native county of both. To escape from his post was impossible.
Nothing short of suicide could free him from it; and the thought of
his little son, if no higher motive, prevented him from putting an end
to his existence. Night after night was he doomed to sit by the
bed-side of the dying man and listen to the wild ravings of remorse
and blasphemy that, almost every moment escaped his plague-stained
lips. He would start up betimes, and, with the frantic look of a
maniac, call for his sword to ward off the fiends that seemed to mock
his tortures; and then he would sink back exhausted, still wildly
raving of Charles Stuart, and Terence O'Brien, the "Lord's anointed,"
as he now called them, whom he had murdered. Nay, he would clutch
Herbert's hand, and, with tears, implore his forgiveness. But Hardress
Waller stood there too, and a look from him would again rouse the
murder-fiend within him. All feeling of compunction would then pass
away; and grim despair again lay hold of him. Oh! it was a fearful
sight--that death-bed of despairing remorse. It never left Herbert's
memory, and was the commencement of that change that ultimately
converted the Puritan soldier into a Christian monk.

Ireton died in his house in Mary street on the 26th of November, 1651,
still "raging and raving," says the chronicler,  [Footnote 40] of the
unfortunate prelate, whose unjust condemnation he imagined hurried on
his death. Herbert was of the party appointed to guard the remains to
England, and, before setting out, hastened to his father-in-law's
house to bring his child with him. But, alas! he found it empty, and
not the slightest trace of Winny or the boy. Nor could any one tell
him what had become of either. With a bursting heart, he set out with
the funeral cortege to Cork, and thence to Bristol, resolved never
more to draw sword in Cromwell's cause. Arrived in London, he
delivered up his charge, and at once quitted the kingdom, without
waiting for the lying in state at Somerset House, or final interment
in Westminster Abbey, of Ireton's plague-stricken corpse. Though
pledged never again to serve in the ranks of the monsters whose
atrocities in Ireland made him so often blush for his native country,
he could not yet entirely wean {250} himself away from his old
profession. After a few months passed in idleness and _ennui_ on the
continent, during which he vainly tried to forget the loss of his wife
and child, he entered the Earl of Bristol's regiment as a volunteer,
and faithfully maintained the cause of King Charles till his
restoration. It was when forming part of his body-guard at Lord Tara's
residence in Bruges, where the exiled monarch occasionally resided,
that he first met with the Capuchin fathers, and was by them received
into the Catholic Church. With the king he returned to England, but
only to have all his sad recollections awakened by meeting once more
with his old enemies, Waller and Ireton.

  [Footnote 40: Burke, "_Hibernia Dominicana_."]

Ireton! some astonished reader will exclaim. Why, surely, we buried
him years ago, and are not expected, we presume, to believe in ghosts
in this enlightened nineteenth century of ours.

And yet we must repeat what we have written. On his return to London,
Walter Herbert again stood face to  with Waller and Ireton--the
former, with a smile of hypocritical adulation, welcoming the return
of him whose father he had aided in murdering--the latter, a hideous
spectacle, first dangling on a gallows at Tyburn, and then grimly
staring at the by-passers--if those sightless sockets could be said to
stare--from the highest spike on Westminster Hall. It was a shocking
sight to Herbert--that ghastly skeleton and that ghastly head--and
recalled to his memory, with sadness and horror, another but far
different head which, ten years before, he saw set up, pallid and
blood-stained, on the castled tower of Limerick. God is very just,
thought he, as he passed on, with a shudder.

On his return to England Herbert found himself friendless. All his
relatives had died, or perished on the battle-field, during the civil
wars, and of his child there was still no trace. All he could learn
was that he had been sent to his grandfather, then resident on the
continent; but where the grandfather resided, there was no means of
ascertaining. Tired of England, and the cruelties and perfidies he
daily saw endorsed by the sign-manual of one who, he imagined, should
have learned toleration and honor in the school of affliction--in
hopes also of meeting with his child--he quitted his native land for
ever, and joined the ranks of the Duke of Lorraine, the old ally and
friend of his former commander, the Earl of Bristol. With him and Sir
George Hamilton he fought the battles of Spain for nigh fifteen years;
and his last achievement in her service was one of the brightest on
record. With a few resolute companions he held his ground for two
entire days in the shattered citadel of Cambrai, though the battery to
which they returned shot for shot was under the personal inspection of
Louis XIV. and the renowned hunchback Luxemburg. The bursting of a
shell laid him senseless, and when, after a long and painful illness,
he was again restored to health, he resolved, in thanksgiving, to
devote the remainder of his days to the exclusive service of God, in
the convent where he first learned to know him.

During the recital of the foregoing narrative, which, for brevity's
sake, we have given consecutively, and in our own words, Brother
Francis was frequently interrupted by his youthful auditor, as new
light was thrown by him on events in his family history which, till
then, he had never heard satisfactorily cleared up. He had already
learned from his mother that his grandfather had been an English
officer, supposed to have fallen in Cromwell's wars, though a vague
report reached the family that he was seen in Spain after Cromwell's
death. Of his grandmother, he only heard that she died young, and that
her father resided for a considerable time in Brussels, with his
grandson, whom, at his death, he confided to the care of none guardian
of St. Antoine's at Louvain, who was his brother-in-law, and who had
brought the boy, when a mere child, from Ireland. {251} He further
learned that, after the completion of his studies, and contrary to the
wish of his uncle, who intended him for the ecclesiastical state, his
father embraced the profession of arms, and, shortly after his
marriage, embarked with the French troops sent by King Louis to
Ireland. He fell at the siege of Limerick, and his widow died of a
broken heart soon after the intelligence of her husband's death
reached her. He was himself then but a boy, and was placed by his
mother's relatives at the Benedictine college of Douai, whence he
passed, in due time, like his father, to the ranks, and was then
serving, as we have already seen, in the Duke of Vendôme's anny.

"But you did not say who the other person was that accompanied you on
the march from Limerick to Carrigaholt, or what became of him or his
companion," resumed the young soldier, when he had concluded.

"That remains to this day a mystery to me," replied his grandfather,
"for I never saw either after we parted that evening. I left them on a
lofty isolated rock off the coast of Clare, to which they were
conveyed, as the surest place of safety, by a few poor fishermen, then
dwelling in a ruined keep on the verge of the cliff's, which, if I
remember rightly, they called Dunlicky. Had I much curiosity I might
have possibly learned the stranger's name, but I never inquired, and
probably, as I did not, my father-in-law never told me. Certain it is
that he must have been a person of high distinction, as all addressed
him with marked respect, I might almost say reverence, and seemed most
devoted to him, though, as far as I could see, he possessed no earthly
means of remunerating them--nothing, in fact, save the half-military,
half-rustic garments in which he was clad. And as they left him and
his companion in one of the two small huts that served as a shelter in
stormy weather for the few wild-looking sheep that browsed on the
island, they promised soon to return with such necessaries as he might
require during his stay among them. On returning to the canoe that
brought us from the mainland, I remembered that I heard something fall
from the stranger as he stepped ashore on a ledge of the island. In my
hurry at the moment I paid no attention to the circumstance; and it
was only on our arrival at the foot of the cliff on which the old
castle stood, that I found the object which he had dropped lying in
the bottom of the boat. Hoping soon to be able to restore it to its
owner, I took it with me, and ever since it has remained in my
possession; for I need scarcely say, after all you have heard, that an
opportunity of restoring it never since presented itself. I still
retain it, with the father guardian's permission, in hopes of one day
discovering its lawful claimant."

Here Brother Francis drew from the folds of his garment a small ebony
crucifix, inlaid with pearl, and richly set in gold, and, reverently
kissing it, handed it to his companion. The latter, after carefully
examining it, read the following inscription, beautifully engraved in
text characters round the rim--

  "J. B. RINUC. LEG. AP. R.R.D.D.
  EDM DO. O'DWYER EP O.
  LUIM I. M.DCXLVI."

Still the history and after fate of the owner of the crucifix remained
a mystery to them. Perhaps some reader of the foregoing pages may be
able to throw some light on the subject, if not for their benefit, at
least for ours.

Little more remains to be told of Brother Francis. In his ninetieth
year he died peacefully in the midst of the brotherhood with whom so
many years of his life had been happily spent--and his eyes were
closed in death by the hands of Eily O'Brien's grandchild, young
Gerald Herbert, who had likewise joined the order, and given up the
camp and its turmoil, and the world and its deceit, to don the cowl of
St. Francis, and spend the rest of his days with the humble,
hospitable Capuchins of Bruges.

----

{252}


From The Month.

THE DAUGHTERS OF THE DUC D'AYEN.


The stirring events, political and military, which followed on the
outbreak of the great French revolution, giving a shock to every
institution, secular and religious, and leaving their mark on the
history of every civilized country, affected also, to an unexampled
degree, the fortunes of families and individuals throughout Europe.
The troubles that overwhelmed the thrones of kings, and seemed to
threaten the Church herself with destruction, penetrated even to the
very lowest classes of society. The great were ruined as well as their
princes; the wealthy and noble were proscribed and exiled; new
families arose as well as new dynasties; and if the cottage was spared
persecution, it did not escape the conscription, while in many cases
its inmates died on the guillotine by the side of the tenants of the
neighboring palace. By this great and universal convulsion hearts and
characters were tried to the utmost; and if many in every class sank
under the ordeal which called for courage, patience, and prudence, and
other virtues in the heroic degree, it is no less true that many
others, who seemed to have been born for a life of quiet and ordinary
duty, for unbroken and uneventful happiness, displayed unexpected
strength of character, great qualities of heart and mind, and revealed
graces of the highest order under the blows of affliction. We are in
some respects fortunate in living just at the distance we do from a
period like this; for it has not yet passed into the region of pure
history, in which we can feel no practical concern; and yet time
enough has elapsed since its close for us to reap a part at least of
the rich inheritance that it has left behind it of memoirs and
correspondence relating to those who played an actual part in its
scenes. It was crowded with lives that deserve to be written, full of
interest and instruction.

Let us confine ourselves to France alone. That country produced a
number of most remarkable men, brought to the surface, as it were, by
the breaking up of the great fountains of her national life, who, for
bad or for good, played the chief part in the political changes which
so powerfully affect Europe to the present day, or, as the soldiers of
a new era of military glory, bore her flag in triumph into every
capital on the continent. These men figured in events which write
themselves sooner than any other on the pages of history; and every
one, therefore, has heard of the names and exploits of the emperor and
his marshal. More noble and heroic, more beneficial, and more truly
glorious to their country, were the lives of hundreds--men and women--
who took a part in the great outburst of fresh religious activity
which followed upon the restoration of freedom to Catholicism, of
whose piety, charity, and devotion the present Church of France is the
fruit and the monument. A great deal remains to be done as to the
biography and history of this great religious restoration, in many
respects already equalling, in others even outshining, the earlier
glories of the French Church, for a moment submerged by the
revolution. Lastly, there is another department also in which literary
labor will be well repaid--the history of the sufferers in the
revolution, whether ecclesiastics or secular, whether they perished on
the guillotine, were transported to Cayenne, or claimed as emigrants
the hospitality of England and other European countries.

{253}

Many of these emigrants were persons who had never known what it was
to have a whim ungratified; who had lived all their lives amidst the
frivolous dissipation of the highest society in Paris, infected as it
was with the withering influences of Voltairianism; and who had shared
in the illusive enthusiasm with which the earlier steps of the
revolution had been welcomed. Exile, poverty, forced inaction,
obscurity, and the utter want of all that had before been the
occupation of their lives, came upon them as a far more severe,
because more wearing and protracted, trial than if they had had to
bear the short agony of the massacres or the revolutionary tribunal.
Yet, under an ordeal such as this, great and wonderful virtues often
unfolded themselves, which bore witness to the sound religious
training that so many of them had received, of which their patience
and courage were the natural fruits. In this way their history
furnishes us with many characters of wonderful interest; and the
effect of it is not only to enlist our sympathies for individuals, but
to give us also a higher idea of the upper classes in France than is
generally derived from the annals of that dreadful period.

I have been led to these remarks by reading a little volume lately
published in Paris, under the title "_Anne Paule Dominique de
Noailles, Marquise de Montagu_," There may, perhaps, be many more such
memoirs: this, at all events, though written without pretension or
ambition, certainly gives the history of a very beautiful character,
drawn out by continual misfortune, and it contains incident enough to
furnish the plots of three or four romances. Although it deals chiefly
with the history of Madame de Montagu, it gives us incidentally the
outline both of the lives and characters of her sisters. There are
also, of course, other subordinate figures in the picture; and the
author has shown great skill in giving us a very graphic account of
each in a few words or lines. I shall proceed, without further
prologue or apology, to use the materials furnished by this volume for
a short sketch of Madame de Montagu and her sisters.

These ladles were the daughters of the Duc and Duchesse d'Ayen. The
duke was the eldest son of the last Maréchal de Noailles; his wife was
the daughter of M. d'Aguesseau, son of the chancellor of that name.
They had five daughters, called, as the custom was, Mdlle. de
Noailles, Mdlle. d'Ayen, Mdlle. d'Epernon, Mdlle. de Maintenon, and
Mdlle. de Monclar. The eldest married her cousin, the Viscount de
Noailles; the second became Madame de la Fayette, wife of the
celebrated marquis; Mdlle. d'Epernon was twice married, but died
young, and we shall have no occasion to mention her name again; Mdlle.
de Maintenon is the principal subject of the volume we have before us,
having married the Marquis de Montagu; Mdlle. de Monclar became Madame
de Grammont. The sisters probably owed more to their mother than to
any one else in the world, and were formed by her; a short notice of
her is, therefore, the natural introduction to their history.

Many who have been acquainted with the effects of the influence of the
French emigrants who came to England at the time of the revolution
have remarked that some of the most devout and religious among them
must have had a certain tinge of strictness and rigor about them which
betrayed the distant influence of Jansenism, even over those who were
in no sort of way its disciples. This may be seen even in some of
their ascetical works. The Duchesse d'Ayen seems either to have been
brought up in this school, or to have taken up its teaching from
something in her own character congenial to it. As was natural in a
granddaughter of d'Aguesseau, she loved order and prudence with
hereditary instinct, and was, moreover, acquainted with suffering; her
piety was most genuine, and as wife and mother none could surpass her.
The {254} due was a man of the world, a thorough gentleman, with all
the dilettante learning that befitted his high station. He had passed
through several brilliant campaigns, was a member of the Academy of
Sciences, and shone even in Paris in the art of conversation. His time
was mostly spent at court, or in gay circles away from home; but when
he did return the most delicate attentions were lavished on his wife;
and she, on her side, had taught their five children to greet his
visits with love equal to their respect. And in truth, though their
father's quick temper inspired the girls with some natural fear, his
many amiable qualities could not fail to call forth their deepest
affection.

Madame d'Ayen they dearly loved. The free unbroken intercourse which
is natural to English homes was not in accordance with the rules of
those stately Parisian families, but the first act of the day was to
go and salute their mother; next, they were sure to meet her going to
or returning from mass, when they were taking their morning walk;
afterward, they all dined together at three, and then came the
pleasant hours spent in her bedroom, while she instructed and amused
them by turns in gentle maternal converse. They had other instructors
I but she really formed their minds.

A bright worldly future opened before these young girls, with their
good birth, high connections, and splendid fortune. Who would have
dreamed of coming storms? But the pious mother did not wait for
misfortune to teach them companionship with sorrow; they began when
children to visit the suffering, and two poor people of the parish
stood sponsors for Mdlle. de Maintenon at the baptismal font. She was
born in 1766, and the parish church was St. Roch; opposite stood the
family hotel, with its spacious gardens reaching up to the Tuileries.

After their marriages the sisters became brilliant stars in Parisian
society, and the tenderest union ever reigned between them. The
eldest, Madame de Noailles, was admired by every one for her sweetness
and grace, being commonly called either "that angel," or the "heavenly
viscountess." Even the family confessor, the saintly Abbé Edgworth,
writing of her after her death to Madame de Montagu, says, "The fate
of that angelic soul, which I knew so intimately on earth, can inspire
no uneasiness. For my part, I acknowledge in all simplicity that she
seems now to return me ten-fold all the good I formerly wished her.
The mere remembrance of her strengthens me, and would keep me from
loving earth, could it still offer any enjoyment."

The sisters vied with each other in love and veneration for their
mother and Madame de Noailles especially had the happiness of being
scarcely ever separated from her. The young wife, however, espoused
with ardor her husband's political opinions; and he was much more
liberal in his views than the Duchesse d'Ayen. Like many other nobles
of the time, both about court and in the provinces, M. de Noailles
hailed with enthusiasm the first dawn of the revolution, believing it
would bring about a new era for France, a grand national reform.
Madame d'Ayen, on the contrary, looked on events with some mistrust;
her experience, her natural prudence and cautious character, made her
more anxious, more inclined to circumspection.

Even after the Bastille had been taken, and when so many families
began to emigrate, M. de Noailles, like his brother-in-law M. de la
Fayette, continued to hope. The events of 1792, however, induced him
to seek refuge in England. The Duc d'Ayen had taken refuge in
Switzerland; but when he heard of the attack on the Tuileries in June,
1792, he flew to the aid of the king and the royal family, considering
that though his post of captain of the royal guard had been abolished,
the danger of Louis had created it anew. He was with that {255} small
band of devoted adherents who would have defended the king on the
fatal 10th of August--the last day of the real monarchy--when Louis'
heart failed him, and he took refuge in the assembly. The Duc d'Ayen
managed again to get away into Switzerland; the other members of his
family, quitting their splendid hotel, hid themselves in a wretched
dwelling of the nearest feubourg. Madame de Noailles was to have
joined her husband in London, where they intended shortly to embark
for America; but she lingered with her mother, first to assist her
grandfather, the Marshal de Noailles, in his dying moments, and next
to console his aged widow, now well-nigh reduced to second childhood.
The result was captivity and death for all time. Madame de Noailles'
virtue shone forth with lustre throughout these trying hours, and it
is as a meek victim of the revolution that she especially deserves
remembrance.

At first the three ladies were simply detained as "suspected" in their
own hotel, during the winter of '93; but in April following they were
transferred as prisoners to the Luxembourg. There they found in a room
below them their relatives, the Maréchal de Mouchy and his wife, who
had already suffered a detention of five months. Not far off was a
cousin, the Duchesse d'Orléans, widow of Philippe Egalité, lately
executed. These were sad recognitions, few or no prisoners being ever
set at liberty, though many went through the mockery of a trial. Soon
after Madame d'Ayen's arrival, M. and Madame de Mouchy were
guillotined. From the first she and her daughter prepared for death.
Both did all they could to alleviate the suffering around them. Madame
d'Ayen gave up her bed to the Duchesse d'Orléans, who was very ill,
and treated with even exceptional cruelty. Madame de Noailles shared
her mother's attendance on this lady, and on several others. She made
the beds for all their relatives, helped them to dress, and washed up
the dishes; in short, waited upon the whole party as if she had been
accustomed all her life to servile occupations. With true virtue, she
even showed no repugnance at anything, but preserved throughout her
usual sweet serenity of temper. Her consolation was to mount up twice
a week to an upper story, under pretence of breathing the fresh air,
but in reality to obtain a view from the window of her children in the
garden beneath. She had contrived to keep up some correspondence
outside, and they came at the stated hour, under the care of their
tutor. Occasionally she managed to receive notes from him, or to send
him one. An extract from the last she wrote, and when she _felt_ an
eternal separation impending, shows the strength of her piety:

  "God sustains me, and will, I am convinced, to the end. Farewell! Be
  assured that my gratitude toward you will accompany me above. But
  for you, what would have been my children's fate? Farewell, Alexis,
  Alfred, Euphemia! Bear God in your hearts every day of your lives;
  attach yourselves steadfastly to him; pray for your father, and for
  his true happiness; remember your mother also, and that her sole
  desire has been for your eternal welfare. I hope to be re-united
  with you in the bosom of God, and in that hope give my last blessing
  to you all."

These words show a soul which could not be ill prepared for death.
When hastily summoned one day to leave the Luxembourg for the
Conciergerie, a certain road to execution, both Madame de Noailles and
her mother were quite ready. Madame d'Ayen had the "Imitation" open at
that beautiful chapter on the cross. Hastily writing on a scrap of
paper--"Courage, my children, and pray"--she put it in as a mark,
and begged the Duchesse d'Orléans, if her life were spared, to give it
to them. This commission was faithfully executed, and the little book
still exists, showing {256} traces of Madame d'Ayen's last tears as
she named her daughters.

The poor old maréchale scarcely knew what was going on, but followed
mechanically. The Conciergerie was crowded, and afforded small
accommodation for new-comers. Madame de Noailles thought it useless to
sleep that night. When her mother pressed her to lie down a little,
she said, "Why seek repose on the brink of eternity?" Early next
morning all three were astir, and persuaded each other to break their
fast, for no dinner had been provided on the previous evening. Madame
de Noailles insisted on dressing both her mother and grandmother,
whispering, "Have good courage, mamma; there is only one hour more!"

But nearly the whole day passed in terrible expectation. Not till five
in the afternoon came the open carts that were to carry forty
condemned prisoners to the Barrière du Trône for execution. Long
previous to detention, Madame de Noailles had secured, in case of
danger, the services of a good priest--Père Carrichon, of the Oratory.
News of their coming fate reached him, and, faithful to his promise,
despite the personal risk, he arrived at the prison door in time. The
first cart filled and passed out. It contained eight ladies, of whom
the last was the old maréchale. In the second were Madame d'Ayen and
her daughter; after whom six men took their places.

The account given by Père Carrichon of this closing scene is our last
view of Madame de Noailles, and tallies with what has gone before.
Serene and gentle, her thoughts appeared wrapt in God. Père Carrichon
tried to make himself seen as the cart came out. Evidently Madame de
Noailles was looking for some one; but her glance did not rest on him.
Having made a great circuit, he posted himself in a conspicuous place
at the opening of a bridge. Again Madame de Noailles anxiously scanned
the crowd around, and again without discerning the face she sought.
Père Carrichon was tempted to give up the effort in despair. Priestly
charity prevailed, however, and he hastened forward to the Rue St.
Antoine. A violent storm had come on; thunder and lightning raged, the
wind blew furiously. The poor victims were drenched; the ladies' hair
streamed about their faces, and their hands, closely tied behind each,
could give no relief. What with the jolting and wind, they could
hardly keep their seats on those narrow planks. The savage curiosity
of the populace yielded to the violence of the storm; the crowd
dispersed; windows and doors closed. Père Carrichon ventured nearer
the cart, amid the very escort of soldiers intent on guarding
themselves from the storm. Suddenly Madame de Noailles' countenance
lighted up with her own sweet smile; her eyes were thankfully raised
to heaven, and then she leaned forward, whispering to her mother. She
had seen him, Père Carrichon felt sure of it. A grateful smile stole
over the duchess's face also.

Père Carrichon continued walking beside the cart; his heart raised in
prayer; the mute confession was made, the silent absolution given.
Solemn, touching scene!--those two heads, one so fair, reverentially
bent down with looks of mingled contrition and hope; the priest
fulfilling his errand of mercy; and the storm raging on.

At length the carts stopped. The executioner and his assistants came
forward, one carelessly twirling a rose between his lips. The
guillotine fell on the maréchale; afterward on Madame d'Ayen; and
Madame de Noailles suffered next. Up to the last moment both mother
and daughter employed themselves in exhorting their companions to
Christian repentance. The vicomtesse devoted herself especially to a
young man whom she had overheard blaspheming. One foot was already on
the bloody ladder, when, turning round a last time, she {257}
murmured, with imploring accents, "I conjure you, say--Forgive me!"
Their own sweet countenances spoke only of heaven. So beautiful were
these deaths, that, despite the horrors of the scene, Père Carrichon
could but raise his full heart in praise and thanksgiving to God. Thus
lived and died the eldest of these five sisters.

The second, Madame de la Fayette, is a beautiful character; so
enthusiastic in spirit, so warm and generous in heart. Endowed with
good natural powers, her mind had been highly cultivated, she could
reason well, and possessed a ripe judgment. Prompt and decided on
great occasions, she was then energetic enough in carrying out her
resolutions; but by a strange contradiction of nature, doubts often
assailed her in little matters, and she would hang back, uncertain
what course to pursue. Ardent in her piety, she was yet tormented with
scruples; and unfortunately Madame d'Ayen had so far condescended to
these as to allow her daughter not to make her first communion till
after marriage. Naturally enough, at that late period the great act
was accomplished with much mental suffering. Madame de Montagu said
with truth that this beloved sister was not sufficiently interior, and
thirsted too eagerly after the consolations of human affections; but
for sincerity, faith, zeal, and submission to the divine will Madame
de la Fayette was most admirable. Her greatest quality was
self-sacrifice, unshrinking devotion to those she loved--the virtue of
a wife and a mother. M. de la Fayette attests that he owed to her
unalloyed happiness during a wedded union of thirty-four years.
"Gentle, tender, virtuous, and high-souled, this incomparable woman
has been the charm and pride of my existence."

She too was imprisoned, but was afterward released. Her first thought
was to join her husband, a captive at Olmutz. Other duties detained
her for a while; but the ultimate object was kept steadily, though
silently, in view. Madame de la Fayette sent her young son out of
France across the Atlantic, confiding him to Washington's protection;
then she hastened to look after her daughters in Auvergne, and settle
money accounts there. Happily, she was able to buy back Chavaniac, the
property of an old aunt who had brought up her husband. Business
concluded, she sought for Madame de Grammont; the two sisters had not
met since the tragic death of their relatives. Madame de Noailles'
orphan children were living with their aunt. Tearing herself from
them, Madame de la Fayette--who could only obtain a passport for
America--then went round by sea to Altona, in Denmark, where her other
sister, Madame de Montagu, and many French exiles, had fixed their
residence for a while. This also was a meeting in which bitter pain
was mingled with joy. "Did you see them?" were the only words Madame
de Montagu could sob forth, after a long, mute caress. "Alas! I had
not that happiness," replied Madame de la Fayette, whose filial heart
was choking with the same remembrances.

Proper measures having been taken for obtaining an audience of the
emperor, Madame de la Fayette announced her intention of proceeding to
Vienna forthwith, that she might solicit permission to share her
husband's captivity. The simple words in which she mentioned her
generous purpose thrilled through the little circle; vain attempts
were made to dissuade her from it; she gently, but firmly, persisted.
Her sister could best understand the feelings that guided her, and
that she did so was expressed by silent repeated pressures of her
hand.

Madame de la Fayette--accompanied by her two girls, aged thirteen and
fifteen--reached Vienna under an assumed name. The emperor granted her
request, and she hastened joyfully to Olmutz. Such was her enthusiasm
at sight of the gloomy fortress in which her husband was confined,
that she began repeating Tobias' beautiful canticle (c. xiii.), and
entered with it on her lips.

{258}

It was the 15th of October, 1795. M. de la Fayette had already been a
close prisoner for three years; during the last eighteen months
especially he had received no tidings of what was going on in the
world without. A vague rumor of excesses committed in France had
indeed reached his unbroken solitude, but not the name of one victim;
he knew nothing of the fate of his wife and children. Now, without one
word of preparation, the door of his cell was unlocked; figures
darkened the threshold. Could it be? His heroic wife and their two
children! Yes; they had come to share the hardships of his prison
life.

The emperor of Austria had spoken to Madame de la Fayette of her
husband's place of confinement in a manner which showed her afterward
that he was quite ignorant of the rigorous treatment to which the
prisoner was subjected. Two little cells, with a wretched bed and a
table and chair in each, formed the sole accommodation. As for eating,
there was one pewter spoon, no such luxury as knife or fork being
allowed. Pens, paper, and ink were only forthcoming on rare occasions,
and then the open letter had to be written under the eye of an
official. Madame de la Fayette endured all these annoyances for two
years; and truly the abnegation of her young daughters during this
long period is nearly as admirable as her own. The girls employed
themselves very usefully in concocting new articles of clothing out of
old materials. Madame de la Fayette, like her husband, soon began to
suffer from such close confinement; but when, after eleven months'
illness, she applied for leave to go and consult a physician at Vienna
for a few days only, the answer was that, once outside the fortress,
she would never be re-admitted. The prison doctor could only exchange
conversation in Latin with her husband, and neither of them appear to
have been adepts in that language; moreover, his hurried visit was
obliged to take place in the presence of an officer.

Friends wearied both France and foreign powers with solicitations for
the release of General de la Fayette. Fox painted the miseries endured
at Olmutz in eloquent terms before a British House of Commons; but it
was not until October, 1797, that the prison gates opened at length,
through Bonaparte's intervention.

The name she bore often proved detrimental to her, but Madame de la
Fayette gloried in it. With Robespierre's fall all prisoners in France
were set at liberty. General de la Fayette, however, was accused of
having betrayed the revolution because he had refused to become privy
to its crimes, and his wife was therefore detained. Interrogated by
Legendre, who told her how much he detested the very name of la
Fayette, she boldly expressed her readiness to defend him and it
against whatsoever accuser. Legendre remanded her to prison "for
insolence."

This devoted love for husband and children did not suffice to fill her
heart. It was burning also with other affections. To Madame de la
Fayette we owe a touching life of the Duchesse d'Ayen, written while
at Olmutz, on the margin of a stray volume of Buffon, with a broken
toothpick for her pen and a piece of Chinese ink. When told of the
tragic fate that had overtaken her relatives, she could not believe it
at first; especially it seemed impossible that men could have been so
barbarous to her "angelic sister." On recovering a little from this
overwhelming sorrow, she wrote to her children:

  "I thank God for having preserved to me life and reason, and do not
  regret your absence at such a moment. He kept me from revolt against
  him; but I could not long have borne the semblance of any human
  consolation. To follow in the track of such dear footsteps would
  have sweetened the last pangs for me."

{259}

In the prisons of the revolution her sole thought was how to relieve
the wants and sufferings of those around. With her cousin, the
Duchesse de Duras, at Plessis, she was constantly interceding for the
sick and poor among their fellow captives, and this at a time when a
chance word sufficed for death, as sixty victims chosen by caprice or
at hazard were regularly dragged forth each day for execution. Her
spirit never forsook her under trying circumstances, and she often
showed wonderful presence of mind. Once she pleaded her own cause
before the tribunal of Puy, and on several occasions harangued the
people. Her language at these times was always nobly firm, and
sometimes proud even to haughtiness. In a letter addressed to Brissot,
after asking for liberty, or at least the favor of remaining a
prisoner on parole, which the whole village of Chavaniac volunteered
to guarantee, she concludes by saying, "I consent to owe you this
service." Her letters to the two ministers, Roland and Servan, or to
foreign princes on behalf of her husband, are no less elevated in
tone. She never stoops to flatter. No wonder that she exercised a
species of fascination over all those who approached her; with
whatever feelings the acquaintance began, it was impossible to know
and not to love her.

In all her sorrows, ardent faith sustained her. When danger again
threatened at Paris, she writes to Madame de Montagu: "We mast abandon
ourselves wholly to God in this critical hour. Let us live like
Abraham, ready to start whenever God calls, and to go wheresoever he
appoints." When she felt her end approaching, once more she repeated
aloud that canticle of Tobias, singing which she had, years before,
entered the fortress of Olmutz. True in death to her character through
life, her heart was inflamed with celestial desires, and still
overflowing with human affection. Drawing all her loved ones round
her, she gave them a last blessing, and gently expired, holding her
husband's hands within her own.

Of four daughters of the Duc d'Ayen, Madame de Grammont was the least
attractive. Her person was small, her appearance stiff, her features
marked; there was nothing soft about her look or manner. Her virtue
was of a stern kind; she had schooled herself into a certain absence
of feeling, neither right nor lovable; but fortunately her actions
often contradicted her professions. Thus her kindness never failed,
and her charity to the poor was boundless. There was a contradiction
too between what she said and what she wrote--her speeches are always
more or less stern, while her letters frequently betray deep
affection; like a person who speaks from principle, but dares to let
herself out on paper, sure of restraining emotion when necessary.
Sacrifice was the prominent feature of her piety; duty dictated her
every sentiment.

Eight out of her nine children she saw carried to their graves in
youth, and each time she could say with composure, "The Lord hath
given and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
Writing to Madame de Montagu about a daughter whose end was
approaching, she uses these words: "As life ebbs away, her peace and
self-possession are perfect. . . . . . I do not despair of helping her
passage into the bosom of God after having erst borne her in my own;
and it is sweet to make her repeat, 'I was cast into thy arms, O Lord,
from the beginning: thou art my God, even from my mother's womb.'" It
was not in her character to disclose the struggle of natural feeling
that was going on in her heart at the time that she was writing words
like these.

Once Madame de Grammont writes to her sister: "The expectation,
experience, and long continuance of misfortune have at length made me
_impassible_." "And I," adds Madame de Montagu, commenting on the word
in {260} her journal, "am still a reed shaken by every breath." The
two phrases aptly characterize each sister.

In 1848, Madame de Grammont, who had been an eye-witness of the two
preceding revolutions, was quite surprised at the fears entertained by
those around her. "But, grandmamma," said a member of her family, "if
the guillotine were set up again as in the reign of terror, surely you
would feel some uneasiness?" "Poor child!" replied the old lady, "that
has nothing to do with the question. Must we not all die? The
important thing is to be well prepared; the mode of death is a mere
detail." And thus unmoved she lived on to the age of eighty-five--that
is, till the year 1853--having survived all her sisters. Though her
husband had been banished for some time, she never emigrated; and
sixty-seven years of her life were passed in retirement at their
château of Villersexel. There she was much beloved, being a true
mother to all the poor.

Her sisters also were warmly attached to her. Madame de Montagu held
her in such veneration, that though a little the older of the two, she
always kept a journal for Madame de Grammont to read, that she might
point out her faults and help her to amend. She called Madame de
Grammont her _second conscience_ and the province in which she resided
the kingdom of Virtue, with Peace (Villersexel) for its capital.

Madame de Grammont felt their mother's loss, in her way, as deeply as
the rest. Perhaps, too, this heavy trial laid the foundation of her
remarkable firmness; for there are some strong natures that cannot
bend through fear of breaking. When able afterward to communicate with
Madame de Montagu, she writes:

"Since the immolation of those dear victims, the cross is my sole
place of refuge. With you, and all those we love in this world and the
other, I cast myself into Gods's arms. There let all disquietude
cease; there let our minds and hearts rest for ever; thence let us
derive strength to perform our allotted task here below."

Her father had entreated Madame de Grammont to consult her personal
safety in those perilous times by joining himself and Madame de
Montagu in Switzerland. She declined, because her husband was only
just recovering from a dangerous illness, and also through fear of
compromising his family. Indeed, so much was circumspection necessary,
that her letters were written on cambric handkerchiefs, which Madame
de Grammont took the further precaution of sewing inside her
messenger's waistcoat lining.

Madame de Montagu affords a strong contrast to Madame de Grammont. She
went through life thrilling at every step; full of tears that often
gushed for joy, but oftenest welled up from deep fountains of sorrow;
heroic in faith, like the others, but quivering and writhing beneath
each new load of anguish. She never grew accustomed to suffering, and
yet God tried her well; but he could not weary her love for himself.
And thus, while human affections were ever causing sharp pain, divine
love gave her strength to bear it without asking her to overcome
_them_. Such was her character, which grace supported without
changing.

Madame de Montagu was admired in the world, but never cared for
triumphs of any kind. Her sole wish was to please God and her home
circle, and do good to her fellow-creatures. We may believe that the
pauper sponsors who held her at St. Roch watched over their charge
through life. For well and zealously, though full of natural
shrinkings, did Madame de Montagu perform her part on the busy stage.
Her timidity was put to its first great trial when, at sixteen, she
had to undergo her first introduction to her intended husband, on whom
she dared not raise her eyes, to see whether her parents' choice
suited her, in appearance at least, until he fortunately turned away
to look at a picture. Next {261} came the further suffering of
receiving congratulatory visits from all Paris, during which the poor
bride elect was seated bolt upright, pale and trembling, beside her
mother, and between two goodly rows of members of either family,
ranged along both sides of the apartment. At church on the wedding-day
she regained her composure, because all else was forgotten in the
earnest prayer breathed that she might well perform her new duties.

Almost immediately the young wife had to sacrifice her greatest
pleasure, that of seeing her mother and sisters frequently. M. de
Montagu was obliged to join his regiment, and she was left under the
tutelage of her father-in-law, a kind and clever man, but eccentric
and full of vagaries. To please him she did everything not wrong,
commencing that petty series of daily yieldings, insignificant to
careless eyes, but so meritorious because so difficult. This is
woman's battlefield, obscure but high; and in this path Madame de
Montagu always walked, perfectly ignorant that her simplicity was in
any way extraordinary. The good she did by example, and without any
words, was immense; only near relatives and intimate friends could
perceive it. One of these, M. de Mun, used to say that she was the
only _dévote_ he ever knew who made him wish to be saved. So far could
she condescend even to the pleasures of others, that in exile, after
all her sorrows, she danced at a rustic ball. And to a nature like
hers, such griefs as she had known were undying even in their
keenness. One of her characteristic traits was that she never forgot
an anniversary: everything that had happened to herself and to those
dear to her was treasured up, and recalled as the days came round. If
it was an occasion of gladness, it was celebrated in public; but her
life was more crowded with the memories of sorrow, and these she kept
for the quiet of her own room.

We should occupy a larger space than that which is at our disposal
were we to try to follow Madame de Montagu through the various stages
of her exile from France. She first came to England, settling at
Richmond; then she went with her husband to Aix-la-Chapelle, whence
the success of the revolutionary armies drove them again to England.
They stayed at Margate for a while; then the declaration of war
between England and France brought out an order for the _émigrés_ not
to live on the coast, and Richmond received them once more. Economy,
however, forced them to seek a cheaper abode at Brussels. Afterward
this place of refuge became unsafe, and Madame de Montagu was forced
to separate from her husband, and accept the hospitality of an aunt,
Madame de Tessé--a _philosophe_ old lady, who had been a friend of
Voltaire's, but who, as one of her grandnieces said of her, "_tout en
se croyant incrédule, ne laissait pas de faire un grand signe de croix
derrière ses rideaux chaque fois qu'elle prenait une médecine._"
Madame de Tessé lived at Lowemberg, in Switzerland; her character is
charmingly hit off in the memoir before us; she would have delighted
Mr. Thackeray. But the presence of Madame de Montagu brought
persecution upon her kind relation, who took the characteristic
resolution of selling her property and going elsewhere. She took her
niece and family first to Erfurt, then to Altona, where many French
_émigrés_ were assembled. Her plan was to find a quiet spot beyond the
Elbe, where she could live in peace and carry on her farming
operations; for her great delight was to manage everything herself,
and to supply all the needs of her household from her own resources.
They were a long time in finding a place that would suit Madame de
Tessé. At length an estate named Wittmold was found, on the banks of
the lake of Ploen; and here the exiles found rest for some time. The
best elements of Madame de Montagu's beautiful character were
developed under the hardships and {262} sufferings of this life of
poverty and continued apprehension. She had, of course, never known
even the idea of want before she left France. When she left Paris, she
so little expected to have to manage for herself, that it was only in
consequence of Madame de Grammont's imperturbable prudence that she
made any provision for the future. They had to part in secret, as it
was dangerous to let the servants know of the intended flight of
Monsieur and Madame de Montagu. In the suppressed agitation of the
moment, Madame de Grammont was characteristically thoughtful. She
asked her sister whether she was sure she had her jewels. "Why take
them? we are not going to a fête." "_Raison de plus; c'est parceque
vous n'allez pas à une fête, qu'il faut les emporter_." The advice was
afterward found to have been indeed important; but even the sale of
her jewels only supported Madame de Montagu for a time. In the course
of her long exile, she never made herself a very perfect manager.

She tried to study domestic economy; but she proved a greater
proficient in not spending on herself than in learning how to manage
household affairs on small means. Still her superintendence of the
farm produced good results, from the zeal with which it inspired the
workpeople. However low her funds, she always visited the sick and
poor, managing to procure them some relief; she also worked
unceasingly at objects for sale. Throughout life she never knew
idleness, devoting fixed hours to prayer, reading, the instruction of
her children, and works of charity. As years went on, she more and
more begrudged the hours often forcibly given in social life to
frivolous conversation. Her pleasure was to employ each moment
usefully in some home duty; but this could not always be the case
during exile, especially when residing with her kind but worldly aunt,
Madame de Tessé.

At this period it was that she organized her _oeuvre des émigrés_; a
stupendous work, if we consider that there were 40,000 persons to
assist, and 16,000,000 francs the moderate sum estimated as requisite
for carrying it out with success. Unfortunately the details in figures
of this work have been lost; for Madame de Montagu carefully noted
down every fraction received, from what quarter it came, and how
expended. But we know that the correspondence alone cost annually
about 500 francs during the four years it existed--that is, from 1796
to 1800. She collected money in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, France,
the Netherlands, and England; and beside distributing pecuniary
assistance, solicited employment for persons of all ages and sexes.
She had children to get into schools, young women to place as
governesses, drawings and needlework to sell, etc. All this was done
without quitting her quiet home on the borders of Lake Ploen, or
giving up one domestic occupation. When pressed for time she sat up at
night. Winter only increased her zeal. "The colder it is," said she,
"the warmer my heart grows." Indeed, she ended by selling for this
work the mourning worn for her mother and sister, which she had kept
as a relic; at another time she also sold her prayer-book for the same
object. But she never would take from this fund for members of her own
family; she preferred working for them, not from pride, but through
delicacy. For another charity she once cut off her beautiful hair and
sold it, receiving eighty francs.

It is curious to remark that this gentle woman nevertheless had her
own firm opinions, even on politics; and though never obtruding, still
constantly held them. One is surprised to find also that these
opinions were not often identical with the views held by those she
most respected and loved. In 1790, M. de Beaune, her father-in-law,
alarmed at the turn affairs were taking, wished to emigrate with all
his family. His idea was to draw Frenchmen together on neutral {263}
ground, to place their families in safety, and having gained the
support of foreign powers, to return with a good army for the
protection of the king and the party of order in the state. Madame de
Montagu fully shared these views; but her husband at this time
disapproved of emigration, considering it the greatest mistake that
could be committed by the king's friends. He hoped to arrive at an
understanding between the liberal party and the _droite_, so as to
save both the monarchy and liberty. His two elder brothers-in-law, MM.
de Noailles and la Fayette, went far beyond these views. Without
wishing to overturn royalty, their dream was to see it based on
republican principles.

So indignant did this render M. de Beaune, that he broke with them
entirely, and wished Madame de Montagu to give up seeing her two
sisters, who naturally embraced their husbands' opinions. She could by
no means understand that persons were to be proscribed because of
their political opinions; but, not to irritate M. de Beaune farther,
she would not receive Madame de la Fayette, who offered to pay her a
visit at Plauzat in Auvergne, and went instead to meet her privately
at a neighbouring inn.

Meanwhile M. de Montagu had yielded to his father's wishes, and at the
end of 1791 resolved to emigrate; his choice, however, fell on England
rather than Coblentz, where M. de Beaune then was. Madame de Montagu
was to accompany her husband. Ere leaving Plauzat she had the
happiness of seeing her mother again, but could not summon up courage
to tell her of her own approaching departure for England. Both mother
and daughter looked on public matters exactly in the same way; there
was great similarity between them as to judgment; but the duchesse was
not impulsive, like Madame de Montagu. They parted most tenderly, with
a presentiment of coming evil; but little did either dream that the
guillotine was to separate them for ever.

Then commenced for Madame de Montagu the miseries and heart-burnings
of exile. Twice she visited England, spending some time at Richmond
and Margate. Griefs began to accumulate; she lost a child for the
third time; Marat was lording it over Paris; M. de Montagu in disgust
again quitted France, and went to serve under his father's orders on
the banks of the Rhine; the massacres of September took place,
followed by the fatal battle of Jemappes. The _émigrés_ were
henceforth banished. Then the king and queen fell victims to the
revolution; Savenay destroyed the last hopes of the Vendeans. In
addition to all these public sorrows, and to the pressure of poverty,
Madame de Montagu lost another child, her fourth; it seemed as if all
her children were born but to die.

All her life she suffered from great delicacy of constitution, and
this natural tendency was further increased by her extreme
sensibility. Just after losing a child for the first time, and while
she was praying, bathed in tears, beside its dead body, a messenger
came to tell her that Madame de Grammont had just given birth to her
first infant. Madame de Montagu, drying up all traces of her own
sorrow, immediately hastened off to congratulate the young mother; but
she had scarcely left her sister's room when she fainted in the
adjoining apartment. A severe illness followed, the precursor of many
others; indeed, it may be said that her whole life was passed amid
moral and physical suffering. Death was ever busy in her family.

She lost her only son Attale, a fine young man, just when he had
attained his twenty-eighth year; and in this case sorrow was
aggravated by the circumstance of his dying through accident--a gun
went off in his hand. No fears, however, were entertained at first.
Madame de Montagu herself was only recovering by slow degrees from
{264} a dangerous malady; a sudden and fatal termination had occurred
for her son, and she knew it not. They dared not tell her. But the
next day, being Trinity Sunday, Madame de Grammont suggested that she
should receive holy communion, though still in bed: the priest, in
presenting the sacred host, invited her to meditate on the passion,
and especially on the sentiments of the Blessed Virgin at the foot of
the cross, where _her son died_.

Madame de Montagu immediately understood him. Her husband then brought
to her bedside the young widow and three orphan girls. Attale's mother
wept in silence, at length ejaculating: "Thy decree, O Lord, has thus
ordained, and I submit. But strike no more, for I am ready to faint
beneath the weight of my cross." But she reproached herself afterward
for this.

Often before had she endured the mother's agony; but this was the
hardest blow of all. And Madame de Montagu lived on to see many loved
ones go before her; father, and husband, and several other relations
preceded her to the tomb; for she lingered till 1839. Among them was
M. de la Fayette, who died in 1834, having survived his wife
twenty-seven years. Madame de Montagu and all the members of her
family requested to be buried at Picpus.

This spot was hallowed to them by sacred memories, for there reposed
above thirteen hundred victims of the revolution. Its continued
existence as a cemetery was due to the pious labors of Madame d'Ayen's
daughters. In the days of terror, a pit had been dug outside the
Barrière du Trône, and all the persons immolated in that quarter of
Paris were promiscuously thrown into it. The savage mode of proceeding
has been related. As each head fell from the guillotine, it was cast,
together with the body, still dressed, into a large barrel painted
red. Each night after the executions were over, these barrels were
taken to Picpus, and their contents indiscriminately emptied into the
pit. The ground had formerly belonged to an Augustinian convent.
There, it could not be doubted, lay the remains of Madame d'Ayen and
her daughter. Madame de Montagu and Madame de la Fayette, on their
return to France, ardently wished to raise a monument to their memory;
but on discovering the immense number of victims interred together, it
seemed more desirable that the undertaking should be of a less private
nature. By their joint efforts, many families of other victims were
attracted to the pious enterprise; souls devoted to prayer gathered
round; the old convent and church of Picpus rose from their ruins. A
cemetery was constructed round that gloomy pit, where not even a name
had been scrawled to recall the memory of those who slept below.
Madame d'Ayen's three daughters could at least enjoy the sad
consolation of praying near their mother's tomb.

All the sisters had bitterly, keenly, felt the cruel stroke that
deprived them of three such near relatives, and in such a painful
manner; but none suffered more enduringly than Madame de Montagu. She
was staying with Madame de Tessé, in Switzerland. News had reached her
of the execution of her grand-aunt and uncle, M. and Madame de Monchy;
but she was completely ignorant of what had become of her mother and
sister. Fears, however, were rife. One day she set out to meet her
father, whom she had not seen for some time; and he was so changed,
that, perceiving him on the way, she only recognized him from his
voice. Each alighted, and his first question was to ask whether she
had heard the news; but, seeing her excessive emotion, he hastened to
assure her of his own perfect ignorance. She felt a calamity
impending, but dared not press for information in the presence of a
third person. They drove to an inn; and when father and daughter were
alone together, he, after some preparation, informed her that he had
just lost his mother. {265} A deadly paleness overspread her
countenance; confused and dizzy, she exclaimed with clasped hands,
"And I--," "I am uneasy about your mother and sister," answered M.
d'Ayen, cautiously. But she was not to be deceived. His looks belied
his words. That was the hour of bitterest anguish in Madame de
Montagu's life. Cries and tears gave no relief. Again and again she
saw the scene re-enacted. Reason trembled, but still she strove to
pray and be resigned. Remembering her mother's pious practice in times
of sorrow, she also recited the magnificat; then, with beautiful
feeling, in the midst of her own anguish, she knelt down and prayed,
all shuddering, for those that made them suffer. But nature struggled
still; and days passed ere she recovered sufficient composure to be
left alone. When all the details reached her, strong religious feeling
transformed the dungeon, the cart, the scaffold into so many steps by
which the martyrs had ascended up to heaven. The love unceasingly
manifested by the three sisters for their martyred relatives is very
touching. They were first reunited at Vianen, near Utrecht, in 1799.
The ostensible object was to settle the division of property rendered
necessary by their mother's death; but in reality they were much more
occupied in calling up sweet memories of her and of their beloved
sister. Madame de la Fayette was then about forty years of age; Madame
de Montagu had reached her thirty-second year; and Madame de Grammont
was rather more than a twelvemonth younger. They remained a month
together, their husbands and families being also on the spot. Not a
little suffering was caused by cold and hunger, for their united
purses could still only produce insufficient means; fuel was wanting,
and they had scanty fare. The three, however, would sit up at night to
enjoy each other's society, wrapping their mantles round them to keep
out the cold, and sharing one wretched _chaufferette_. They spoke very
low, so as not to disturbed husbands and children sleeping in the
adjoining rooms. One great subject of conversation was to point out
their mutual defects--a Christian habit acquired under Madame d'Ayen's
training, and surprisingly brought into play again under such
circumstances.

Madame de Grammont remarked that events were graven in letters of fire
in Madame de Montagu's countenance, and characteristically advised her
to become more calm. She also took the opportunity of teaching her how
to meditate--a service which the elder sister gratefully acknowledges
in her diary. Madame de Montagu observed with admiration Madame de
Grammont's recollected demeanor at mass, which they attended almost
daily, saying she looked like an angel, absolutely annihilated in the
presence of God. "As for me, I feel overwhelmed at my poverty beside
her." Indeed, the two sisters vied in humility with each other. Madame
de Grammont having once said, "You excite me to virtue and attract me
to prayer," Madame de Montagu quickly replied, "Then I am like the
horses in this country; for one sees wretched-looking animals along
the canals drawing large boats after them."

But the chief theme at night was ever their mother. Madame de Montagu
was accustomed to unite herself with the dear victims in special
prayer every day at the "sorrowful hour," and the other two now
undertook the same practice. They also composed beautiful litanies in
remembrance of them during their stay at Vianen. Madame de Grammont
held the pen, writing sometimes her own inspiration, and sometimes
what her sisters dictated. They called these prayers "Litany of our
Mothers."

One of the most interesting episodes in the life of Madame de Montagu
was her intimacy with the celebrated Count Stolberg, whose conversion
to Catholicism seems to have been mainly attributable to the influence
of her character. She came across him during her residence at Ploen
and Wittmold. {266} He was at that time at the head of the government
of the Duke of Oldenburg; and he assisted her with all his power in
her charitable labors for the relief of the French emigrants. The
acquaintance between them sprung up in 1796. Count Stolberg, with his
wife and sister,--the only one of the three who did not afterward
become Catholic,--had already begun to see something of the
inconsistencies and deficiencies of Lutheranism. They were calm,
thoughtful, upright souls; grave, severe, and simple, after the best
type of the German character. They often conversed on and discussed
religious matters among themselves; but they were very ignorant about
the Catholic Church and its doctrines. Madame de Montagu taught them
more about Catholicism, without speaking on the subject directly, than
a whole library of controversial theology. Fragile in health,
sensitive to excess, overflowing with sympathy and tenderness, tried
by long and varied suffering, and strengthened, elevated, and
spiritualized by the cross, without having been hardened or made
impassible,--her whole character showed a force and power and
greatness that was obviously not its own. Such persons have an
irresistible attractiveness; and they speak with a strange silent
eloquence to intelligent hearts in favor of the religion which can
produce and sustain them. Madame de Montagu was not a person to
introduce controversial topics; but she won upon her new friends
gradually, and at last they could not help telling her so, after
listening to the account they had begged her to give of her own and
her sisters' sufferings. After a time their hearts strongly turned to
Catholicism; but intellectual difficulties remained on the mind of
Stolberg, which were not set at rest till 1800, after he had been
engaged in a correspondence with M. de la Luzerne and M. Asseline, to
whom Madame de Montagu and her sisters had introduced him. The French
prelates did their part; but the illustrious convert must ever be
considered as in truth the spiritual child of Madame de Montagu.

------

From All the Year Round

A FEW SATURNINE OBSERVATIONS.


Here is a gentleman at our doors, Mr. R. A. Proctor, who has written a
book upon that planet Saturn, and he asks us to stroll out in his
company, and have a look at the old gentleman. It is a long journey to
Saturn, for his little place is nine and a half times further from the
sun than ours, and his is not a little place in comparison with our
own tenement, because Saturn House is seven hundred and thirty-five
times bigger than Earth Lodge.

The people of Earth Lodge made Saturn's acquaintance very long ago;
nobody remembers how long. Venus and Jupiter being brilliant in
company, may have obtruded themselves first upon attention in the
evening parties of the stars, and Mars, with his red face and his
quick movement, couldn't remain long unobserved. Saturn, dull, slow,
yellow-faced, might crawl over the floor of heaven like a gouty and
bilious nabob, and be overlooked for a very little while, but somebody
would soon ask, Who is that sad-faced fellow with the leaden
complexion, who sometimes seems to be standing still or going
backward?

He was the more noticeable, because {267} those evening parties in the
sky differ from like parties on earth in one very remarkable respect
as to the behavior of the company. We hear talk of dancing stars, and
the music of the spheres, but, in fact, except a few, all keep their
places, with groups as unchanging as those of the guests in the old
fabled banquet, whom the sight of the head of Medusa turned to stone.
Only they wink, as the stone guests probably could not. In and out
among this company of fixtures move but a few privileged stars, as our
sister the moon and our neighbors the planets. These alone thread the
maze of the company of statues, dancing round their sun, who happens
to be one of the fixed company, to the old tune of Sun in the middle
and can't get out. Some of the planets run close, and some run in a
wide round, some dance round briskly, and some slip slowly along. Once
round is a year, and Saturn, dancing in a wide round outside ours, so
that in each round he has about nine times as far to go, moves at a
pace about three times slower than ours. His year, therefore, is some
twenty-seven times longer; in fact, a year in the House of Saturn is
as much as twenty-nine years five months and sixteen days in our part
of the world. What, therefore, we should consider to be an old man of
eighty-eight would pass with Saturn for a three-year-old.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop Wilkins did not see why some of
his posterity should not find out a conveyance to the moon, and, if
there be inhabitants, have commerce with them. The first twenty miles,
he said, is all the difficulty; and why, he asked, writing before
balloons had been discovered, may we not get over that? No doubt there
are difficulties. The journey, if made at the rate of a thousand miles
a day, would take half a year; and there would be much trouble from
the want of inns upon the road. Nevertheless, heaviness being a
condition of closeness and gravitation to the earth, if one lose but
the first twenty miles, that difficulty of our weight would soon begin
to vanish, and a man--clear of the influence of gravitation--might
presently stand as firmly in the open air as he now does upon the
ground. If stand, why not go? With our weight gone from us, walking
will be light exercise, cause little fatigue, and need little
nourishment. As to nourishment, perhaps none may be needed, as none is
needed by those creatures who, in a long sleep, withdraw themselves
from the heavy wear and tear of life. "To this purpose," says Bishop
Wilkins, "Mendoca reckons up divers strange relations. As that of
Epimenides, who is storied to have slept seventy-five years. And
another of a rustic in Germany, who, being accidentally covered with a
hayrick, slept there for all autumn and the winter following, without
any nourishment." Though, to be sure, the condition of a man free of
all weight is imperfectly suggested by the man who had a hayrick laid
atop of him. But what then? Why may not smells nourish us as we walk
moonward upon space, after escape from all the friction and the sense
of burden gravitation brings? Plutarch and Pliny, and divers other
ancients, tell us of a nation in India that lived only upon pleasing
odors; and Democritus was able for divers days together to feed
himself with the mere smell of hot bread. Or, if our stomachs must be
filled, may there not be truth in the old Platonic principle, that
there is in some part of the world a place where men might be
plentifully nourished by the air they breathe, which cannot be so
likely to be true of any other place as of the ethereal air above
this? We have heard of some creatures, and of the serpent, that they
feed only upon one element, namely, earth. Albertus Magnus speaks of a
man who lived seven weeks together upon the mere drinking of water.
Rondoletius affirms that his wife did keep a fish in a glass of water
without any food for three years, in which space it was constantly
augmented, till at first it could {268} not come out of the place at
which it was put in, and at length was too big for the glass itself,
though that were of large capacity. So may it be with man in the
ethereal air. Onions will shoot out and grow as they hang in common
air. Birds of paradise, having no legs, live constantly in and upon
air, laying their eggs on one another's backs, and sitting on each
other while they hatch them. And, if none of these possibilities be
admitted, why, we can take our provision with us. Once up the twenty
miles, we could carry any quantity of it the rest of the way, for a
ship-load would be lighter than a feather. Sleep, probably, with
nothing to fatigue us, we should no longer require; but if we did, we
cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves
firmly and safely as in our chambers.

As for that difficulty of the first twenty miles, it is not impossible
to make a flying chariot and give it motion through the air. If
possible, it can be made large enough to carry men and stores, for
size is nothing if the motive faculty be answerable thereto--the great
ship swims as well as the small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as
well as a little gnat. Indeed, we might have regular Great Eastern
packets plying between London and No Gravitation Point, to which they
might take up houses, cattle, and all stores found necessary to the
gradual construction of a town upon the borders of the over-ether
route to any of the planets. Stations could be established, if
necessary, along the routes to the moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the
rest of the new places of resort; some London society could create and
endow a new Bishop of Jupiter; and daring travellers would bring us
home their journals of a Day in Saturn, or Ten Weeks in Mars, while
sportsmen might make parties for the hippogriff shooting in Mercury,
or bag chimeras on the mountains of the moon.

Well, in whatever way we may get there, we are off now for a stroll to
Saturn, with Mr. R. A. Proctor for comrade and cicerone, but turning a
deaf ear to him whenever, as often occurs, he is too learned for us,
and asks us to "let N P' P" N' represent the northern half of Saturn's
orbit (viewed in perspective), _n_ E n' E' the earth's orbit, and N p
p' p" N' the projection of Saturn's orbit on the plane of the earth's
orbit. Let N S N' be the line of Saturn's nodes on this plane, and let
S P' be at right angles to N S, N', so that when at P' Saturn is at
his greatest distance from the ecliptic on the northern side." When of
such things we are asked to let them be, we let them be, and are, in
the denseness of our ignorance, only too glad to be allowed, not to
say asked, to do so. We attend only, like most of our neighbors, to
what is easy to us. Sun is gold, and moon is silver; Mars is iron.
Mercury quicksilver, which we, in fact, rather like still to call
Mercury, thinking nothing at all of the imprisoned god with the winged
heels when we ask how is the mercury in the thermometer. Jove is tin;
yes, by Jove, tin is the chief among the gods, says little Swizzles,
who, by a miracle, remembers one thing that he learnt at
school--Jove's chieftainship among the heathen deities. Venus is
copper, for the Cyprian is Cuprian; and as for Saturn, he is lead. A
miserable old fellow they made Saturn out in the days of the
star-decipherers. Mine, Chaucer makes Saturn say, is the drowning in
wan waters, the dark prison, the strangling and hanging, murmur of
discontent, and the rebellion of churls. I am the poisoner and the
house-breaker, I topple down the high halls, and make towers fall upon
their builders, earth upon its miners. I sent the temple roof down
upon Samson. I give you all your treasons, and your cold diseases, and
your pestilences. This is the sort of estimation in which our
forefathers held the respectable old gentleman we are now going out to
see.

{269}

When Galileo's eyes went out toward Saturn through his largest
telescope--which, great as were the discoveries it made, was clumsier
and weaker than the sort of telescope now to be got for a few
shillings at any optician's shop--he noticed a peculiarity in the
appearance of Saturn which caused him to suppose that Saturn consisted
of three stars in contact with one another. A year and a half later he
looked again, and there was the planet round and single as the disc of
Mars or Jupiter. He cleaned his glasses, looked to his telescope, and
looked again to the perplexing planet. Triform it was not. "Is it
possible," he asked, "that some mocking demon has deluded me?"
Afterward the perplexity increased. The two lesser orbs reappeared,
and grew and varied in form strangely: finally they lost their
globular appearance altogether, and seemed each to have two mighty
arms stretched toward and encompassing the planet. A drawing in one of
his manuscripts would suggest that Galileo discovered the key to the
mystery, for it shows Saturn as a globe resting upon a ring. But this
drawing is thought to be a later addition to the manuscript. It was
only after many perplexities of others, about half a century later,
that Huygens, in the year sixteen fifty-nine, announced to his
contemporaries that Saturn is girdled about by a thin, flat ring,
inclined to the ecliptic, and not touching the body of the planet. He
showed that all variations in the appearance of the ring are due to
the varying inclinations of its plane toward us, and that, being very
thin, it becomes invisible when its edge is turned to the spectator or
the sun. He found the diameter of the ring to be as nine to four to
the diameter of Saturn's body, and its breadth about equal to the
breadth of vacant space between it and the surface of the planet.

The same observer, Huygens, four years earlier, discovered one of
Saturn's satellites. Had he looked for more, he could have found them.
But six was the number of known planets, five had been the number of
known satellites, our moon and the four moons of Jupiter, which
Galileo had discovered; one moon more made the number of the planets
and of the satellites to be alike, six, and this arrangement was
assumed to be exact and final. But in sixteen seventy-one another
satellite of Saturn was discovered by Cassini, who observed that it
disappears regularly during one-half of its seventy-nine days' journey
round its principal. Whence it is inferred that this moon has one of
its sides less capable than the other of reflecting light, and that it
turns round on its own axis once during its seventy-nine days'
journey; Saturn itself spinning once round on its axis in as short a
time as ten hours and a half. Cassini afterward discovered three more
satellites, and called his four the Sideria Lodoicea, Ludovickian
Stars, in honor of his patron, Louis the Fourteenth. Huygens had
discovered, also, belts on Saturn's disc. Various lesser observations
on rings, belts, and moons of Saturn continued to be made until the
time of the elder Herschel, who, at the close of the last century,
discovered two more satellites, established the relation of the belts
to the rotation of the planet, and developed, after ten years' careful
watching, his faith in the double character of its ring. "There is
not, perhaps," said this great and sound astronomer, "another object
in the heavens that presents us with such a variety of extraordinary
phenomena as the planet Saturn: a magnificent globe encompassed by a
stupendous double ring; attended by seven satellites; ornamented with
equatorial belts; compressed at the poles; turning on its axis;
mutually eclipsing its rings and satellites, and eclipsed by them; the
most distant of the rings also turning on its axis, and the same
taking place with the furthest of the satellites; all the parts of the
system of Saturn occasionally reflecting light to each other--the
rings and moons {270} illuminating the nights of the Saturnian, the
globe and moons enlightening the dark parts of the rings, and the
planet and rings throwing back the sun's beams upon the moons when
they are deprived of them at the time of their conjunctions." During
the present century, other observers have detected more divisions of
the ring, one separating the outer ring into two rings of equal
breadth seems to be permanent. It is to be seen only by the best
telescopes, under the most favorable conditions. Many other and lesser
indications of division have also at different times been observed.
Seventeen years ago an eighth satellite of Saturn was discovered by
Mr. Bond in America, and by Mr. Lassell in England. Two years later,
that is to say, in November, eighteen fifty, a third ring of singular
appearance was discovered inside the two others by Mr. Bond, and, a
few days later, but independently, by Mr. Dawes and by Mr. Lassell in
England. It is not bright like the others, but dusky, almost purple,
and it is transparent, not even distorting the outline of the body of
the planet seen through it. This ring was very easily seen by good
telescopes, and presently became visible through telescopes of only
four-inch aperture. In Herschel's time it was so dim that it was
figured as a belt upon the body of the planet. Now it is not only
distinct, but it has been increasing in width since the time of its
discovery.

These were not all the marvels. One of the chief of the wonders since
discovered was a faint overlapping light, differing much in color from
the ordinary light of the ring, which light, a year and a half ago,
Mr. Wray saw distinctly stretched on either side from the dark shade
on the ball overlapping the fine line of light by the edge of the ring
to the extent of about one-third of its length, and so as to give the
impression that it was the dusky ring, very much thicker than the
bright rings, and, seen edgewise, projected on the sky. Well may we be
told by our guide, Mr. Proctor, that no object in the heavens presents
so beautiful an appearance as Saturn, viewed with an instrument of
adequate power. The golden disc, faintly striped with silver-tinted
belts; the circling rings, with their various shades of brilliancy and
color; and the perfect symmetry of the system as it sweeps across the
dark background of the field of view, combine to form a picture as
charming as it is sublime and impressive.

But what does it all mean? What is the use of this strange furniture
in the House of Saturn, which is like nothing else among the known
things of the universe? Maupertuis thought that Saturn's ring was a
comet's tail cut off by the attraction of the planet as it passed, and
compelled to circle round it thenceforth and for ever. Buffon thought
the ring was the equatorial region of the planet which had been thrown
off and left revolving while the globe to which it had belonged
contracted to its present size. Other theories also went upon the
assumption that the rings are solid. But if they are solid, how is it
that they exhibit traces of varying division and reunion, and what are
we to think of certain mottled or dusky stripes concentric with the
rings, which stripes, appearing, to indicate that the ring where they
occur is semi-transparent, also are not permanent? Then, again, what
are we to think of the growth within the last seventy years of the
transparent dark ring which does not, as even air would, refract the
image of that which is seen through it, and that is becoming more
opaque every year? Then, again, how is it that the immense width of
the rings has been steadily increasing by the approach of their inner
edge to the body of the planet? The bright ring, once twenty-three
thousand miles wide, was five thousand miles wider in Herschel's time,
and has now a width of twenty-eight thousand three hundred on a
surface of more than twelve thousand millions of {271} square miles,
while the thickness is only a hundred miles or less. Eight years ago,
Mr. J. Clerk Maxwell obtained the Adams prize of the University of
Cambridge for an essay upon Saturn's rings, which showed that if they
were solid there would be necessary to stability an appearance
altogether different from that of the actual system. But if not solid,
are they fluid, are they a great isolated ocean poised in the
Saturnian mid air? If there were such an ocean, it is shown that it
would be exposed to influences forming waves that would be broken up
into fluid satellites.

But possibly the rings are formed of flights of disconnected
satellites, so small and so closely packed that, at the immense
distance to which Saturn is removed, they appear to form a continuous
mass, while the dark inner mass may have been recently formed of
satellites drawn by disturbing attractions or collisions out of the
bright outer ring, and so thinly scattered that they give to us only a
sense of darkness without obscuring, and of course without refracting,
the surface before which they spin. This is, in our guide's opinion,
the true solution of the problem, and to the bulging of Saturn's
equator, which determines the line of superior attraction, he ascribes
the thinness of the system of satellites, in which each is compelled
to travel near the plane of the great planet's equator.

Whatever be the truth about these vast provisions for the wants of
Saturn, surely there must be living inhabitants there to whose needs
they are wisely adapted. Travel among the other planets would have its
inconveniences to us of the earth. Light walking as it might be across
the fields of ether, we should have half our weight given to us again
in Mars or Mercury, while in Jupiter our weight would be doubled, and
we should drag our limbs with pain. In Saturn, owing to the
compression of the vast light globe and its rapid rotation, a man who
weighs twelve stone at the equator weighs fourteen stone at the pole.
Though vast in size, the density of the planet is small, for which
reason we should not find ourselves very much heavier by change of
ground from earth to Saturn. We should be cold, for Saturn gets only a
ninetieth part of the earth's allowance of light and heat. But then
there is no lack of blanket in the House of Saturn, for there is a
thick atmosphere to keep the warmth in the old gentleman's body and to
lengthen the Saturnian twilights. As for the abatement of light, we
know how much light yet remains to us when less than a ninetieth part
of the sun escapes eclipse. We see in its brightness, as a star,
though a pale one, the reflection of the sunshine Saturn gets, which
if but a ninetieth part of our share, yet leaves the sun of Saturn
able to give five hundred and sixty times more light than our own
brightest moonshine. And then what long summers! The day in Saturn is
only ten and a half hours long, so that the nights are short, and
there are twenty-four thousand six hundred and eighteen and a half of
its own days to the Saturnian year. But the long winters! And the
Saturnian winter has its gloom increased by eclipses of the sun's
light by the rings. At Saturn's equator these eclipses occur near the
equinoxes and last but a little while, but in the regions
corresponding to our temperate zone they are of long duration. Apart
from eclipse, the rings lighten for Saturn the short summer nights,
and lie perhaps as a halo under the sun during the short winter days.

------

{272}


From Chamber's Journal.

SLIPS OF THE PEN.


When Mrs. Caxton innocently made her wiser-half the father of an
anachronism, that worthy scholar was much troubled in consequence. His
anachronism was a living one, or he might have comforted himself by
reflecting that greater authors than he had stood in the same paternal
predicament. Our old English dramatists took tremendous liberties this
way, never allowing considerations of time and place to stand in the
way of any allusion likely to tell with their audience. Shakespeare
would have been slow to appreciate a modern manager's anxiety for
archaeological fidelity. His Greeks and Romans talk about cannons and
pistols, and his Italian clowns are thorough cockneys, familiar with
every nook and corner of London. And so it is with other caterers for
the stage. Nat Lee talks about cards in his tragedy of "Hannibal;"
Otway makes Spartan notables carouse and drink deep; Mrs. Cowley's
Lacedaemonian king speaks of the _night's still Sabbath_; D'Urfey's
ancient Britons are familiar with Puritans and packet-boats; and Rymer
(though he set himself up for a critic) supplies a stage direction for
the representative of his Saxon heroine to pull off her patches, when
her lover desires her to lay aside her ornaments.

When Colman read "Inkle and Yarico" to Dr. Moseley, the latter
exclaimed: "It won't do. Stuff! Nonsense!"--"Why?" asked the alarmed
dramatist.--"Why, you say in the finale:

  'Come let us dance and sing.
  While all Barbadoes' bells shall ring!'

It won't do; there is but one bell in the island!" This mistake was
excusable enough; but when Milton described

         "A green mantling vine,
  That crawls along the side of yon small hill,"

he must certainly have forgotten he had laid the scene of "Comus" in
North Wales. Ernest Jones, describing a battle in his poem, "The Lost
Army," says:

  "Delay and doubt did more that hour
  Than bayonet-charge or carnage shower;"

and some lines further on pictures his hero

  "All worn with wounds, when day was low.
  With severed sword and shattered shield;"

thus making his battle rather a trial of the respective powers of
ancient and modern weapons than a conflict between equally-armed foes.
Mr. Thackeray perpetrates a nice little anachronism in "The Newcomes,"
when he makes Clive, in a letter dated 183-, quoting an Academy
exhibition critique, ask: "Why have we no picture of the sovereign and
her august consort from Smee's brush?"--the author, in his anxiety to
compliment the artist, forgetting that there was no consort till 1840.

A bull in a china-shop is scarcely more out of place than a bull in a
serious poem, but accidents will happen to the most regular of
writers. Thus Milton's pen slipped when he wrote:

             "The sea-girt isles
  That like to rich and various gems _inlay_
  The _unadorned_ bosom of the deep;"

a quotation reminding us that the favorite citation,

  "Beauty when unadorned, adorned the most,"

is but a splendid bull, beautiful for its {273} boldness. Thomson was
an adept at making pretty bulls; here is another:

   "He saw her charming, but he saw not half
   The charms her downcast modesty concealed;"

as if it were possible to see some of them, although they were
concealed. Pope, correct Pope, actually tell us:

     "Young Mars in his boundless mind.
  A work t' _outlast immortal_ Rome designed."

The author of "The Spanish Rogue" makes "a silent noise" invade the
ear of his hero. General Taylor immortalized himself by perpetrating
one of the grandest bulls on record, in which he attained what a
certain literary professor calls "a _perfection_ hardly to be
surpassed." In his presidential address he announced to the American
Congress that the United States were at peace _with all the world_,
and continued to cherish relations of amity with the _rest_ of
mankind. Much simpler was the blunder of an English officer, during
the Indian mutiny, who informed the public, through the _Times_, that,
thanks to the prompt measures of Colonel Edwardes, the Sepoys at Fort
Machison "were all unarmed and taken aback, and, being called upon,
laid down their arms." There was nothing very astonishing in an Irish
newspaper stating that Robespierre "left no children behind him,
except a brother, who was killed at the same time;" but it was
startling to have an English journal assure us that her majesty Queen
Victoria was "the last person to wear _another man's_ crown."

A single ill-chosen word often suffices, by the suggestion of
incongruous ideas, to render what should be sublime utterly
ridiculous. One can hardly believe that a poet like Dryden could
write:

  "My soul is packing up, and just on wing,"

Such a line would have come with better grace from the author of "The
Courageous Turk," a play containing the following curious passage:

      "How now, ye heavens! grow you
  So proud, that you must needs put on curled locks,
  And clothe yourself in perwigs of fire."

Nearly equalled in absurdity by this from Nat Lee's "OEdipus:"

       "Each trembling ghost shall rise,
  And leave their grisly king without a waiter."

When the news of Captain Cook's death at Owhyhee came to England, the
poetasters, of course, hastened to improve the occasion, and one of
the results of their enthusiasm was a monody commencing:

  "Minerva in heaven disconsolate mourned
  The loss of her Cook;"

an opening sufficient to upset the gravity of the great navigator's
dearest friend.

Addison lays it down as a maxim, that when a nation abounds in
physicians it grows thin of people. Fillibuster Henninpen seems to
have agreed with the essayist, or he would hardly have informed
General Walker, in one of his dispatches, that "Doctors Rice and Wolfe
died of the cholera, and Dr. Lindley sickened, _after which the health
of the camp visibly improved._" Intentionally or not, the
stout-hearted soldier suggests that the best way of getting rid of the
cholera is to make short work of the doctors. Among the obituary
notices in a weekly paper, not many months ago, there appeared the
name of a certain publican, with the following eulogium appended to
it: "He was greatly esteemed for his strict probity and steady conduct
through life, he having been a subscriber to the 'Sunday Times' from
its first number." This is a worthy pendant to Miss Hawkins's story of
the undertaker writing to the corporation of London, "I am desired to
inform the Court of Aldermen, Mr. Alderman Gill died last night, by
order of Mrs. Gill;" and not far short, in point of absurdity, is
Madame Tussand's announcement of the exhibition of the effigy of the
notorious Palmer, "who was executed at Stafford with two hundred other
celebrities." {274} The modern fashion of naming florists' flowers
must be held responsible for the very dubious paragraph we extract
from a gardening paper: "Mrs. Legge will be looked after; she may not
be so certain as some, but she was nevertheless very fine in the early
part of the season. Lady Popham is useful, one of the old-fashioned
build, not quite round in the outline, but makes up well."

Thackeray seems to have had an intense dislike to the trouble of
revision, for his popular works, especially those published
periodically, abound in trivial mistakes, arising from haste,
forgetfulness, and want of care. The novelist mortally wounds an old
lady with a candle instead of a candlestick, and afterwards attributes
her death to a stone staircase. Newcome senior is colonel and major at
one and the same time; Jack Belsize is Jack on one page and Charles on
another; Mrs. Raymond Gray, introduced as Emily, is suddenly
rechristencd Fanny; and Philip Fermor on one occasion becomes
transformed into the author's old hero, Clive. With respect to the
last-mentioned gentleman, author and artist seem to have differed, for
while Mr. Thackeray jests about Clive's beautiful whiskers and
handsome moustaches, Mr. Doyle persists to the end in denying young
Newcome's possession of those tokens of manhood.

It is not often that an author is satirical upon his own productions;
but Charles Dickens has contrived to be so. Describing the old inns of
the Borough, in his "Pickwick Papers," he says they are queer places,
with galleries, passages, and staircases wide enough and antiquated
enough "to furnish materials for a hundred ghost-stories, _supposing
we should ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of inventing
any_." How little could Boz have anticipated certain charming
Christmas books witching the world a few years later! So, also,
"American Notes," Mr. Jefferson Brick, and the transatlantic Eden lay
unsuspected in the future, when he made Old Wellor suggest Mr.
Pickwick's absconding to America till Dodson & Fogg were hung, and
then returning to his native land and writing "a book about the
'Merrikens as 'ill pay all his expenses and more, if he blows 'em up
enough!"

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.

1. Abbot Antony said: The days are coming when men will go mad; and,
when they meet a man who has kept his senses, they will rise up
against him, saying, "You are mad, because you are not like us."

2. While Arsenius was still employed in the imperial court, he asked
of God to lead him in the way by which he might be saved.

Then a voice came to him: "Arsenius, flee the company of men,
and thou art in that saving way."

3. Abbot Agatho said: Unless a man begin with the observance of the
Precepts, he will not make progress in any one virtue.

{275}

4. Abbot Ammonas said: Such be thy thought as that of malefactors in
prison. For they are ever asking, "Where is the judge? and when is he
coming?" and they bewail themselves at the prospect.

5. Holy Epiphanius said: To sinners who repent God remits even the
principal; but from the just he exacts interest.

6. Abbot Sylvanus had an ecstacy: and, coming to himself, he wept
bitterly. "What is it, my father?" said a novice to him.

He made answer: Because I was carried up to the judgment, O my son,
and I saw many of our kind going off to punishment, and many a secular
passing into the kingdom.

7. An old man said: If you see a youngster mounting up to heaven at
his own will, catch him by the foot, and fling him to the earth; for
such a flight doth not profit.

8. Abbot Antony fell on a time into weariness and gloom of spirit; and
he cried out, "Lord, I wish to be saved; but my searchings of mind
will not let me."

And, looking round, he saw some one like himself, sitting and working,
then rising and praying, then sitting and rope-making again. And he
heard the angel say: "Work and pray; pray and work; and thou shalt be
saved."

9. Arsenius, when he was now in solitude, prayed as before: "Lord,
lead me along, the way of salvation." And again he heard a voice,
which said: "Flight, silence, quiet; these are the three sources of
sinlessness."

10. "Which of all our duties," asked the brethren, "is the greatest
labor?" Agatho answered: "Prayer; for as soon as we begin, the devils
try to stop us, since it is their great enemy. Rest comes after every
other toil, but prayer is a struggle up to the last breath."

11. Abbot Theodore said: "Other virtue there is none like this, to
make naught of no one."

12. Abbot Sylvanus said: "Woe to the man whose reputation is greater
than his work."

13. Holy Epiphanius said: "A great safeguard against sin is the
reading of the Scriptures; and it is a precipice and deep gulf to be
ignorant of the Scriptures."

14. Once a monk was told, "Thy father is dead." He answered:
"Blaspheme not; my Father is immortal."

------

{276}

MISCELLANY.

_The Dead Sea_.--The level of the Dead Sea is at last finally settled
by the party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Wilson, who were sent
by the Ordance Survey for the purpose of surveying Jerusalem and
levelling the Dead Sea. The results of the survey are being prepared
for publication. The levelling from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea
was performed with the greatest possible accuracy. The depression of
the surface of the Dead Sea on the 12th of March, 1865, was found to
be 1,292 feet, but from the line of drift-wood observed along the
border of the Dead Sea it was found that the level of the water at
some periods of the year stands two feet six inches higher, which
would make the least depression 1,289.5 feet. Captain Wilson also
learnt from inquiry among the Bedouins, and from European residents in
Palestine, that during the early summer the level of the Dead Sea is
lower by at least six feet; this would make the greatest depression to
be as near as possible 1,298 feet. Most of the previous observations
for determining the relative level of the two seas gave most
discordant results. The Dead Sea was found by one to be 710 feet above
the level of the Mediterranean, by another to be on the same level, by
another to be 710 feet lower, and by another to be 1,446 feet lower;
but the most recent before that now given, by the Duc de Luynes and
Lieutenant Vignes of the French navy, agrees with the present result
in a very remarkable manner.

_Eozoon in Ireland_,--The fossil Rhizopod is not confined to the
Canadian rocks. Mr. W. A. Sanford has discovered Eozoon in the green
marble rocks of Connemara in Ireland. His assertion that it is to be
found in these deposits at first excited very grave doubts as to the
accuracy of his observations. Since his first announcement of the
discovery, his specimens have been examined by the distinguished
co-editor of the "Geological Magazine" (Mr. H. Woodward), and this
gentleman fully confirms Mr. Sanford's opinion. In the specimens
prepared from Connemara marble, "the various-formed chambers--the
shell of varying thickness--either very thin, and traversed by fine
tubuli, the silicate filling which resembles white velvet-pile, or
thick, and traversed by brush-like threads, are both present. Although
the specimens were not so carefully prepared as those mounted for Dr.
Carpenter, still the structure was so plainly perceptible as to render
the diagnosis incontrovertible."



_The Mont Cenis Tunnel_.--The following particulars of the state of
the works at Mont Cenis will be read with interest. We owe them to a
recent report of M. Sommeiller, the engineer in charge. The length of
the tunnel from Bardonnêche to Modena is 12,220 metres, and, at the
end of 1804, 2,322 metres had been pierced on the Bardonnêche side,
whilst the work had advanced 1,763 metres from the Modena end, making
in all 4,085 metres--nearly a third of the whole distance. From the
1st of January to the 10th of June of the present year the progress of
the work has been considerably augmented, upwards of 654 metres having
been accomplished. The excavation is now, however, retarded by a mass
of granite, which lessens the work of the machinery by one-third. The
presence of this impediment was almost exactly predicted by MM. Elie
de Beaumont and Sismonda, who stated, as a result of their survey,
that granitic rocks would be met with at a distance of 1,500 or 2,000
metres from the mouth of the tunnel on the Italian side.



_Lightning._--M. Boudin has recently laid before the Academy of
Sciences a return of the deaths which have been caused by the action
of lightning in France during the period 1835-63. During these thirty
years 2,238 persons were struck dead. Among 880 victims during
1854-63, there were but 248 of the female sex; and in several
instances the lightning, falling among groups of persons of both
sexes, especially struck those of the male sex, and more or less
spared the females. In a great number of cases flocks of more than 100
animals, {277} cattle, hogs, or sheep, have been killed, while the
shepherds or herdsmen in their midst have remained uninjured. In 1853,
of 34 persons killed in the fields, 15, or nearly half, were struck
under trees; and of 107 killed between 1841-53, 21 had taken shelter
under trees. Reckoning, then, at only 25 per cent, the proportion
struck under trees, we find that of 6,714 struck in France nearly
1,700 might have escaped the accidents which occurred to them by
avoiding trees during storms.

_More about the Nile_--Another source of the Nile has been discovered
by the adventurous Mr. Baker, whose name has been frequently mentioned
of late among geographers. But this so-called source is a lake only,
the Luta Nzige, about two hundred and sixty miles long, and of
proportionate breadth, which lies between the lake discovered by
Captain Speke and the heretofore explored course of the Nile. The
great river flows from one to the other, forming on the way the Karuma
waterfall, one hundred and twenty feet in height, in which particular
it represents the Niagara Fall between lakes Erie and Ontario. But it
seems right to remark that the true source of the Nile has not yet
been discovered, and that it must be looked for at the head of one of
the streams which flow into the upper lake--the Victoria Nyanza of
Speke. That the two lakes are reservoirs which keep the Nile always
flowing, may be accepted as fact; but to describe them as sources is a
misuse of terms. If Dr. Livingstone, in his new exploration, should
get into the hill-country above the Victoria Nyanza, we might hope to
hear that the real source, the fountain-head, of the Nile had been
discovered. It is worthy of remark that these lakes of the Nile are
laid down and described in old books on the geography of Africa.
Ptolemy mentions them; and they are represented in some of the oldest
Arabian and Portuguese maps. It is well known to scholars that the
Emperor Nero sent two officers expressly to search for the head of the
Nile. "I myself" writes Seneca, "have heard the two centurions narrate
that after they had accomplished a long journey, being furnished with
assistance by the king of Ethiopia, and being recommended by him to
the neighboring kings, they penetrated into far distant regions, and
came to immense lakes, the termination of which neither the
inhabitants knew nor could any one hope to do so, because aquatic
plants were so densely interwoven in the waters." This description
holds good to the present day; and it is thought that certain rocks
seen by the centurions mark the site of the Karuma Falls. Mr. Baker
describes his voyage down the Luta Nzige as "extremely beautiful, the
mountains frequently rising abruptly from the water, while numerous
cataracts rush down their furrowed sides. . . . . . The water is deep,
sweet, and transparent," and, except at the outlet of the river, the
shores are free from reeds. "Mallegga, on the west coast of the lake,
is a large and powerful country, governed by a king named Kajoro, who
possesses boats sufficiently large to cross the lake." "About ten
miles from the junction," he writes, "the channel contracted to about
two hundred and fifty yards in width, with little perceptible stream,
very deep, and banked as usual with high reeds, the country on either
side undulating and wooded. At about twenty miles from Magungo, my
voyage suddenly terminated; a stupendous waterfall, of about one
hundred and twenty feet perpendicular height, stopped all further
progress. Above the great fall, the river is suddenly confined between
rocky hills, and it races through a gap, contracted from a grand
stream of perhaps two hundred yards width to a channel not exceeding
fifty yards. Through this gap it rushes with amazing rapidity, and
plunges at one leap into a deep basin below."


_The Burning Well at Broseley_.--Mr. John Randall, F.G.S., writes to
the "Geological Magazine" anent this extinct petroleum spring. The
so-called burning well has ceased to exist for nearly a century. It
was fed by a spring, and petroleum and naphtha also found their way
from rents in the rock into the water of the well. Springs of
petroleum on a much larger scale are met with in the neighborhood, and
the yield of them was formerly much greater than at present. Many
hogsheads from one of these were exported some years ago under the
name of "Betton's British Oil," The rocks were tapped by driving a
level through one of the sandstone rocks of the coal {278} measures;
but these are now drained; and very little is found to flow from them.



_The Origin of the Salt in the Dead Sea_.--One of our most
distinguished explorers of the Holy Land attributes the intensely
saline character of the Dead Sea to the hill of Jebell Usdum. This is
a huge ridge of salt, about a mile wide, and running N.E. and S.W. for
a distance of three miles and a half, then due N. and S. for four
miles further. It is situated near the southern extremity of the Dead
Sea, and renders that portion of it much more salt than the northern
portion. Further, Mr. Tristram thinks that it is the proximate cause
of the saltness of the Dead Sea, the drainage to which has been
dissolving away portions of salt, and carrying it to the Dead Sea,
ever since the elevation of the ridge of Akabah separated the latter
from the Red Sea, or since the desiccation of the ocean, which existed
to the Eocene period, presuming (which seems most probable) that the
fissures of the Ghor were of submarine origin, and that the valley
itself was during the Tertiary period the northernmost of a series of
African lakes, of which the Red Sea was the next.--Geological
Magazine.


_Iron Implements in Crannogues_.--In a letter addressed to the London
_Reader_, by Mr. George Henry Kinahan, some important points relative
to the antiquity of iron, and the necessity for seeking for traces of
this metal, have been dwelt upon. While investigating one of the
largest crannogues or artificial islands in Loughrea, County Galway,
Ireland, he found only stone implements, with the exception of a rude
knife, which appeared to be of some sort of bronze. But he observed
facts which would seem to indicate that iron implements had been in
use among the inhabitants of the crannogues. These facts are as
follows: 1st, All the stakes that were drawn had been pointed by a
sharp cutting instrument, as were evidenced by the clean cuts. 2d,
Pieces of deer's horn that were found had been divided by a very fine
saw, as was proved by the absence of marks of graining on the surface
of the sections. 3d, On some of the bones there were farrows,
evidently made by sharpening fish-hooks or some pointed implement on
them. 4th, In various places nests of peroxide of iron were observed,
as if an iron instrument had once been there, but had been corroded
away in course of time. Mr. Kinahan draws particular attention to the
circumstances that "few metals corrode as fast as iron, and that,
while stone and bronze would last for ages, iron would disappear,
owing to corrosion, in a comparatively short space of time."



_The Gibraltar Cave Fossils_.--Mr. Busk in his paper on this subject
says: The rock in which the caverns of Gibraltar were found is
limestone, and extends for about three miles from north to south, at
an elevation varying from 1,400 to 1,200 feet. It is geologically
divided into three nearly equal portions by cleavages which separate
the higher parts of the rock on the north and south from the central
and lower part. At the southern face of the rock there is
comparatively low ground, the Windmill Hill being about 400 feet above
the level of the sea; but the strata there are inclined in an opposite
direction to the great mass of what is termed the "Rock of Gibraltar."
In the Windmill rock the caverns have been found, and in these latter
a great quantity of bones was discovered. The bones, which were
mingled with pottery, flint implements, and charcoal, appear to have
been deposited at different periods, and were found at various depths,
the lowest being fourteen feet below the floor of the cavern. Those in
the lowest layer consisted of the bones of mammals, several of which
were of extinct species. They were imbedded in ferruginous earth
partially fossilized, and were covered with stalagmite--no human bones
were with them. Above this layer were deposited the remains of about
thirty human skeletons, with fragments of pottery, flint implements,
particles of charcoal, and a bronze fishing-hook. Some of the pottery
had been turned in a lathe, and bore evidence of classic art. In
another cavern, discovered under the foundation of the military
prison, the remains of two isolated skeletons were also found. Only
one skull had been discovered there, and that had been sent to Mr.
Busk, who remarked that the lower jaw transmitted with the cranium did
not belong to it, showing that there must have been another skull
{279} in the cavern, though no trace of it had been found. There was
nothing in the form of the skull to distinguish it from the ordinary
European type; but the bones of the leg were remarkably compressed;
for which appearance it was difficult to account. Since Mr. Busk's
attention had been drawn to this character, he had observed a similar
compression in the leg-bones of other human skeletons which were known
to be of great antiquity. Whether this conformation was to be regarded
as a race-character, or was produced by special occupation or habit,
Mr. Busk would not venture an opinion upon.--_Social Science Review_.



_Sun's Photosphere_.--From a strict examination of the sun-pictures
obtained at Kew, near London, and from Mr. Carrington's maps, Mr. De
la Rue and assistants hare arrived at the conclusion that the
sun-spots are cavernous, and lie below the general level of the
luminous surface, whilst, on the contrary, the faculae are elevated
above the latter. The reason that the faculae appear brighter is, that
on account of their height above the solar surface, they are less
dimmed by passing through its atmosphere. They further conclude that
the sun's luminous surface is of the nature of cloud, and that the
spots are influenced by the planet Venus. They find that the faculae
retain nearly the same appearance for days together, and consider them
to be small particles of solid or liquid matter in suspension, and
composed of the same cloudy matter as the luminous surface of the sun.
They notice that in the majority of cases the faculae appear to the
left of the spots, as if they had been abstracted from them, and,
rising to a greater elevation where the velocity of rotation is
greater, are consequently left behind. They remark that all the spots
which are seen on the solar surface about the same time show a
resemblance to each other; for instance, if one spot increases to the
central line or past it, another will do the same; if one spot
diminishes from its first appearance, another will do the same; if one
spot breaks out on the right half; another will do the same. It
appears from Mr. Carrington's and all the Kew pictures, that the
influence of Venus is exerted in such a manner that as the spots
approach the neighborhood of this planet by rotation they decrease;
but as the solar surface passes away in the same manner, this
influence causes it to break out into spots on the opposite side. The
question is also proposed, whether the falling behind of the faculae
may not be the physical reaction of the motion of the spots detected
by Mr. Carrington, the current passing upward and carrying the
luminous matter falling behind, whilst the current coming down from a
colder region moves forward, carrying the spot with it, and accounting
for its deficient luminosity.--_Social Science Review_.


_The Arctic Expedition--The Open Polar Sea again_--Last month we
published an extract in which it was stated as the belief of the
writer that there was an open Arctic sea. Here is another opinion
which we find in the _London Reader_ of a late date: "We have received
from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences a map of Spitzbergen, with
explanatory remarks in illustration (by N. Duner and A. E.
Nordenskiöld). This beautiful map is the result of the two last
expeditions undertaken to explore that group of islands. It is based
upon astronomical observations, made at about eighty different places
on the shores of Spitzbergen, with prism-circles by Pistor and
Martins, mercury horizons and good chronometers by Frodsham and
Kessels. The observations were calculated by Professors D. G.
Lindhagen and Duner. The latitude and longitude of seventy-nine
different points are given--the longitude of Sabine's Observatory,
determined as 11° 40' 80", being taken as the starting point of the
longitudes. The value of such a map is at once apparent. All the
highest mountains were ascended during the expedition, and the height
of twenty-eight peaks is given; the highest being Lindström's Mount of
8,800 English feet. The permanent snow-line commences at about 1,500
feet. The whole interior country forms an even ice plateau, here and
there interrupted by rocks. There are many good harbors, and on this
map the places are marked where the explorers anchored. Fish, fowl,
and reindeer are to be met with in great numbers. We quote from the
memoir as bearing upon one of the most interesting questions of the
day. 'During the last years the idea has been vindicated that the
Polar {280} basin is composed of an open sea, only here and there
covered with drift ice. The learned geographer, Dr. Petermann, has
even asserted that it would be as easy to sail from Amsterdam Island
(70° 47') to the Pole, as from Tromsö to Amsterdam Island. This view
is in itself so contrary to all experience that it scarcely merits
refutation, but as different prominent English Arctic navigators seem
inclined to adopt the same view, in spite of the experience gained by
their own numerous Arctic expeditions, we will here give some of the
most important reasons against this supposition. All who for a long
period have navigated the northern seas, whalers and Spitzbergen
hunters, have come to the conclusion that the Polar basin is so
completely filled with ice that one cannot advance with vessels, and
all the attempts that have been made to proceed toward the north have
been quite without success. Passing by older voyagers, Torell and
Nordenskiöld ascended, during the expedition in 1861, on the 23d of
July, a high top on Northeast Land, Snötoppen (80° 23' L.), without
being able, from that height, to see trace of open water to the north
of the Seven Islands. A few days later, when the ice between Northeast
Land and the Seven Islands was separated a little, they could push
forward as far as to Parry's Island, though they, even from the
highest tops on these islands (1,900 feet, 80° 40' L.), could see
nothing but ice northward. From the top of White mountain, at the
bottom of Wijde Jans Water (3,000 feet), we could, on the 22d of
August, 1864, not see anything but ice between Giles Land and
Spitzbergen. Some vessels that had the same year attempted to sail
round Northeast Land were shut up by ice, and had to be abandoned by
their crews. Before leaving the ships, an attempt was made to sail
north, in order to return this way to Amsterdam Island, but they were
soon met by impenetrable fields of ice. Notwithstanding a high prize
has been offered for the reaching of high degrees of latitude, none of
the whalers, who else sail boldly wherever the hope of gain allures
them, have considered it possible to win this prize. We have had
opportunities of speaking to most of the masters of vessels sailing to
Spitzbergen. All experience hitherto acquired seems thus to prove that
the Polar basin, when not covered with compact, unbroken ice, is
filled with closely-packed, unnavigable drift-ice, in which, during
certain very favorable years, some larger apertures may be formed,
which apertures, however, do not extend very far to the north. Older
narratives, by Dutch whalers, who are said to have reached 86° or 87°
nay, even 89-1/2° must therefore be received with the greatest
diffidence, if not looked upon as pure fictions, and the prospect of
being able to advance with vessels from Spitzbergen to the Pole is, no
doubt, extremely slight. _It would be particularly unwise to choose
the spring for such an attempt, and the passage east of Spitzbergen.
At that time and by that passage it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to reach even 78° of latitude._ Whereas, on the west side,
one can every year depend on reaching the 80th degree of latitude, and
in favorable years it might be possible, _in September or October_, to
sail even a couple of degrees higher.'"

------

{281}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.


SIXTEEN 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 Edward the Third. 12mo., pp. 214. Boston: Ticknor &
Fields.


We Catholics of the United States have good reason to congratulate
ourselves upon the appearance of this work. The selection of such a
work for republication is proof of good judgment in the Boston
publishers, while certainly nothing can be more elegant and tasteful
than the "getting up."

Mother Juliana lived in the city of Norwich, England; and, as we are
notified by the famous Father Cressy, who first published and edited
her "Revelations," she wrote during the reign of Edward the Third, and
about three years before his death. She was an anchoret or recluse, a
religious woman who, like St. Bees and many others in England and
elsewhere, lived alone, shut up by herself, in contemplation and
prayer. It is to us a great mystery that these "Revelations," so
excellent in themselves, and edited once by such a man, should be so
little known in our day, and should owe their reproduction once more
in English literature to Protestant curiosity and not to Catholic
piety. We know of nothing of the same kind which can compare with
them. There is an odor of supernatural sweetness about them, and a
depth of contemplative thought, a freshness moreover and originality,
which has never impressed us before when reading books of revelations.
Critical authors have sometimes complained of works of this nature
that much in them of what seems elevated or profound is evidently
derived, at second hand, from the speculations of theologians, and
especially of the philosophical schoolmen; while other things,
supposed to have been seen in vision, are the reproduction of early
histories, once popular, but proved to be apocryphal and destitute of
all authority. Nothing of the kind can be said of these revelations of
Mother Juliana. They sometimes touch upon questions most profound and
difficult, but in the simplest and most inartificial manner, and there
is not the slightest appearance of reproducing what she had read
elsewhere. Every thought bears the stamp of originality and freshness.
All is drawn from the same deep well of contemplation. All comes from
her own mind, whether that mind be divinely illuminated or not. There
is not the least semblance of searching after what is wonderful, or
calculate to strike an undisciplined and curious imagination. For our
own part, we cannot resist the impression that the beautiful and holy
light which beams upon these pages is a divine illumination, is
something supernatural. When we say _supernatural_, this does not
necessarily infer anything strictly miraculous, or revelation in the
highest sense of the word (supernaturally attested, as well as
supernaturally given). We mean simply to say that there is apparent a
certain unction and power of spiritual vision which betokens an
extraordinary gift of divine love and light, to which her natural
power, unaided, could never reach. In reading this book one is
impressed in the same way as when reading the Holy Scriptures or
Thomas à Kempis. There is a natural beauty of style and thought, but
that is not all. There is inspiration, too. It is like a far-reaching
landscape in a fair day, where the distant hills are not fairly
distinguishable from the sky, and the beauty of earth is mingled with
the beauty of heaven.

We have room to give just one example, which we select as showing, in
a few lines, the general characteristics of piety, sweetness,
simplicity, and beauty which everywhere pervade this little book:

  "He is our clothing, that for love wrappeth us, and windeth us,
  halseth us, and all becloseth us, hangeth about us for tender love,
  that he maie never leave us. And so in this sight I saw that he is
  all thing that is good, as to my understanding.

  "And in this he shewed a little thing, the quantitie of a
  hasel-nutt, lying in the palme of my hand, as me seemed; and it was
  as found as a ball. I looked thereon {282} with the eie of my
  understanding, and thought, What may this be?' and it was answered
  generallie thus.

  "'_It is all that is made_.' I marvelled how it might last: for
  methought it might sodenlie have fallen to naught for litleness.

  "And I was answered in my understanding, _'It lasteth and ever
  shall: for God loveth it, And so hath all thing being by the love of
  God.'_"


COMPLETE WORKS OF THE MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF NEW
YORK. Comprising his Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc.
Carefully compiled from the best sources, and edited by Lawrence
Kehoe. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 608 and 810. New York: Lawrence Kehoe, No. 7
Beekman street.


In opening these two capacious volumes, one of the first things that
strikes us is the great number of excellent pieces from the pen of the
late Archbishop of New York which are now entirely forgotten by the
general public. There never was an author more careless of his fame
than Dr. Hughes. He cast his writings upon the world, and gave no
thought to them afterward He was not even at the pains of keeping
single copies of his own publications. So it has happened that many of
his best productions have not only been long out of print, but have
never even been heard of except by a few of the writer's special
friends, or some of our oldest and best read Catholic citizens. We
make no doubt that the collection for which the Catholic public is so
much indebted to the zeal and industry of Mr. Kehoe, will cause
considerable surprise among those who supposed themselves to be well
acquainted with Archbishop Hughes's literary labors. How many persons,
for instance, have ever heard or remember anything of a tract of some
thirty or forty pages called "An Answer to Nine Objections," which
Father Hughes published when he was first a priest? Or of his
controversies with Dr. Delancey, the late Protestant Episcopal bishop
of western New York, and Dr. Onderdonk, P. E. bishop of Pennsylvania?
Or of his letters on "Infallibility," written while he was in
Philadelphia? Or his once famous series of letters on the "Importance
of being in Communion with the Catholic Church?" And yet some of these
deserve to rank among the most important and valuable productions of
his pen. Our readers will find them all in Mr. Kehoe's volumes, and
many other pieces with them which possess a more than ordinary
interest. There is a long letter here to the Leopoldine Society of
Vienna, in which Dr. Hughes exposes in a very graphic and masterly
manner the condition of the Irish emigrants in this country: to the
best of our belief it has never been published before. There is a
touching and beautiful narrative, extracted from the Annals of the
Propagation of the Faith for 1840 of the conversion of the Dodge
Family in western New York. There is a description of a storm at sea,
written during the bishop's voyage to Europe in 1839. And the second
volume closes with a "Christmas Vesper Hymn," which has often been
printed before, and even set to music, but will doubtless be new to
many people.

We have mentioned these portions of Mr. Kehoe's collection, not only
because they are less known than the archbishop's great controversies;
but because every true friend of the lamented prelate's fame ought to
desire them to be far better known than they are. Archbishop Hughes
was one of the kindest, tenderest-hearted men that ever lived; and any
one who should judge him by the severe, caustic tone of his letters to
Breckinridge, for example, or his speeches on the school question,
would gravely mistake his character. Most of the pieces that we have
named, and some others as well, show him in his true and most amiable
light.

The first volume is occupied principally by the archbishop's various
letters and speeches on the School Question; his letters to David
Hale, Mayor Harper, and Colonel Stone: Letters on the Importance of
being in Communion with the Catholic Church; Kirwan Unmasked; and a
number of miscellaneous lectures and sermons. The second contains a
number of letters, sermons, etc., on the Temporal Power of the Pope;
various lectures; over thirty miscellaneous sermons; the Church
Property Controversy with Senator Brooks and others; and a great deal
of miscellaneous matter, including the archbishop's speeches at
banquets etc., during his last visit to Europe. Bishop Bayley's
admirable lecture on {283} the Life and Times of Archbishop Hughes is
given in full, by way of introduction to the second volume.

Mr. Kehoe's collection is the most important contribution to the
history of the Church in the United States that has been made for many
a year. Archbishop Hughes not only played an important part in the
ecclesiastical history of his time and country, but he may be said
without much exaggeration to have _made_ that history. His writings
are destined to hold a permanent place in American Catholic literature
by the side of those of Bishop England, while from their subjects, as
well as the comparatively cheap form in which they are now presented
to us, they will no doubt be more popular than those of the
illustrious Bishop of Charleston.


CAPE COD. By Henry D. Thoreau. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865. 12mo.,
pp. 253.


This is a readable book, notwithstanding some of its critics have put
it down as "dry." The keen observations, and quaint remarks sprinkled
all over its pages, keep its reader in good humor chapter after
chapter until the book is read. Thoreau's books are healthy, and
deserve to be read, especially by our young men.

This is true of the general tone of his writings. Occasionally,
however, there is a slight vein of skepticism running through them.
But he has less of this than his contemporaries. Thoreau had deep
religious feeling, but he found no expression for it in the religious
denominations around him. Had he lived in the fifth century he would
have been a father of the desert. As it is, he gives you the natural
side of life and things exclusively, but with freshness and
originality.

The sturdy integrity of the man, the fixed determination of seeing
life and things with his own eyes, and his resolve to have his own say
about them, is what characterizes all his writings, and what makes
them valuable where popular opinion sways.

As a sample of his talent for description, read the following
pen-drawing of a wrecker:

  "We soon met one of these wreckers,--a regular Cape Cod man, with a
  bleached and weather-beaten face, within whose wrinkles I
  distinguished no particular feature. It was like an old sail endowed
  with life--a hanging cliff of weather-beaten flesh--like one of the
  clay boulders which occurred in that sand-bank. He had on a hat
  which had seen salt water, and a coat of many pieces and colors,
  though it was mainly the color of the beach, as if it had been
  sanded. His variegated back--for his coat had many patches, even
  between the shoulders--was a rich study to us, when we had passed
  him and looked around. It might have been dishonorable for him to
  have so many scars behind, it is true, if he had not had many more,
  and more serious ones, in front. He looked as if he sometimes saw a
  doughnut, but never descended to comfort; too grave to laugh, too
  tough to cry; as in different as a clam,--like a sea-clam with hat
  on, and legs, that was out walking the strand. He may have been one
  of the Pilgrims--Peregrine White, at least--who has kept on the
  back side of the Cape and let the centuries go by. He was looking
  for wrecks, old logs, water-logged and covered with barnacles, or
  bits of boards and joists--even chips, which he drew out of reach
  of the tides and stacked up to dry. When the log was too large to
  carry far, he cut it up where the last wave had left it, or, rolling
  it a few feet, appropriated it by sticking two sticks into the
  ground crosswise above it. Some rotten trunk, which in Maine
  encumbers the ground, and is, perchance, thrown into the water on
  purpose, is here thus carefully picked up, split and dried, and
  husbanded. Before winter the wrecker painfully carries these things
  up the bank on his shoulders by a long diagonal slanting path made
  with a hoe in the sand, if there is no hollow at hand. You may see
  his hooked pike-staff always lying on the bank, ready for use. He is
  the true monarch of the beach, whose 'right there is none to
  dispute,' and he is as much identified with it as a beach bird."


THE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH.
From the Diary of a Staff Officer. By Brevet Major George Ward
Nichols, Aid-de-camp to General Sherman. With a Map and Illustrations.
12mo., pp. 394. New York: Harper Brothers.

The advance of General Sherman, with 70,000 men, through the heart of
the seceded states, will ever be memorable in the annals of American
history as the greatest achievement of modern times. From the time of
his departure from Atlanta, Ga., until the purpose on which he started
was accomplished in the surrender of Gen. Johnston, near Raleigh,
N.C., his {284} movements attracted the attention, and called forth
the criticism, of _un_military as well as military men in Europe and
America. Many were the prophecies uttered of his total failure, but
the able captain who conceived the plan and to whose care it was
intrusted, carried the expedition successfully through. Of this march
most of our readers have read more or less, in the daily papers. These
statements have oftentimes been very incorrect and vague, from the
excitement and hurry of the correspondents in getting them up. The
handsome volume before us, however, is a clear and concise narrative
of that great march, noted down from day to day by a member of General
Sherman's staff. The author in this sketch gives us a true narrative
of the entire march, and account of the interview between Sherman and
Johnston. His style is plain and unaffected, but occasionally a little
inflated. This, however, is pardonable, for he is very brief, and
brevity, the poet says, "is the soul of wit." He wastes but few words
in "saying his say," and has evidently taken much pains in getting his
statements in as small space as possible. The book is embellished with
a fine map of the march, and several appropriate wood-cuts. It also
contains General Sherman's official reports of the campaign, and
statement before the Congressional committee on the conduct of the
war--valuable documents in themselves. We copy the following extracts
from the chapter personal to General Sherman:

  "Late in the summer of 1864, I was relieved from detached service in
  the west, and ordered to report to the general commanding the
  military division of the Mississippi. I found General Sherman at
  Atlanta, seated in the parlor of his headquarters, surrounded by
  several of his generals, and shall never forget the kindness with
  which he received me when he heard that I was a stranger in the
  western army; he said, "Very well; I will retain you on my staff."
  The expression of gentleness, sympathy, and consideration which
  accompanied this brief announcement, made an impression upon me
  which will be fully understood by any officer who has had the
  fortune to be suddenly ordered to a strange and distant field of
  duty, where anxiety and embarrassment awaited him. The incident is
  introduced here because it gives the key-note to a striking feature
  in the character of General Sherman.

  "A striking evidence of his sense of justice and his unselfishness
  may be seen in his refusal to accept the commission of a
  major-general in the regular army which was offered him previous to
  the fall of Atlanta. In his letter declining the honor, he said:
  'These positions of so much trust and honor should be held open till
  the close of the war. They should not be hastily given. Important
  campaigns are in operation. At the end, let those who prove their
  capacity in merit be the ones appointed for these high honors.'

  "General Sherman's memory is marvellous. The simplest incidents of
  friendly intercourse, the details of his campaigns, citations of
  events, dates, names, faces, remain fresh in his mind. A soldier who
  may have addressed him long years ago in the swamps of Florida; some
  heroic deed of an officer at Shiloh; a barn or a hill-side in
  Georgia; a chance expression of your own which you may have
  forgotten; minutest description of the plan of the campaign;
  whatever he has seen, heard, or read, he remembers with astonishing
  accuracy. Napoleon had a similar trait.

  "He is also remarkably observant, especially of the conduct and
  character of the officers of the army. He sees what many persons
  suppose it is impossible for his eye to reach. In an army of 70,000
  men, it might be reasonably imagined that the commanding general is
  too far removed from the great mass to know or be known by them; but
  when it is remembered that Sherman has marched during this campaign
  alternately with one and another corps, it ceases to be a matter of
  surprise that he is thoroughly acquainted with the character of the
  different organizations. In truth, nothing escapes that vigilant and
  piercing eye, from the greatest to the minutest detail of the
  command.

  "General Sherman is sociable in the best sense of the word. When the
  responsibilities of the hour are cast aside--and he throws them off
  with the utmost facility--he enters into the spirit of a
  merry-making with all the zest and appreciation of the jolliest of
  the party. He has a keen sense of wit and humor; and not
  unfrequently he is the centre and life of the occasion. He converses
  freely, yet he is reticent to the last degree, knowing how to keep
  his own counsel, and never betraying his purpose. He is cautious and
  often suspicious; yet no man ever accused him of deceit or
  dishonesty either in word or deed. His unmeasured scorn and contempt
  are visited upon pretense, new philanthropy, arrogance,
  self-conceit, or boasting; but he never fails to recognize and pay a
  hearty tribute to unpretentious merit, courage, capacity, Christian
  manliness and simplicity. He is not prodigal of promises, but his
  word once given is {285} sacred as holy writ. General Sherman is
  terribly in earnest in his method of conducting war, but he is
  neither vindictive nor implacable. He once said to a Methodist
  preacher in Georgia who had, by voice and example, helped to plunge
  the nation into war: 'You, sir, and such as you, had the power to
  resist this mad rebellion; but you chose to strike down the best
  government ever created, and for no good reason whatsoever. You are
  suffering the consequence, and have no great reason to complain.'

  "Yet there is a depth of tenderness akin to the love of woman behind
  that face, which is furrowed with the lines of anxiety and care, and
  those eyes, which dart keen and suspicious glances. Little children
  cling to the general's knees and nestle in his arms with intuitive
  faith and affection. During our sojourn in Savannah his headquarters
  and private room became the play-ground of hosts of little ones,
  upon whom the door was never closed no matter what business was
  pending.

  "General Sherman's integrity seemed to pervade every trait in his
  character. His intense dislike of the men who have been interested
  in the war only to make money out of it, is well known. From the
  first instant of the rebellion pecuniary considerations were cast
  aside by the general, and he has given himself wholly to the service
  of his country. He knows the value of money, but he can say with
  honorable pride that the atmosphere of integrity and honesty about
  him withers and destroys the lust of gain. Not even the taint of
  suspicion in this regard has ever been cast upon him nor upon the
  officers associated with him.

  "In person, General Sherman is nearly six feet in height, with a
  wiry, muscular, and not ungraceful frame. His age is only
  forty-seven years, but his face is furrowed with deep lines,
  indicating care and profound thought. With surprising rapidity,
  however, these strong lines disappear when he talks with children
  and women. His eyes are of a dark brown color, and sharp and quick
  in expression. His forehead is broad and fair, sloping gently at the
  top of the head, which is covered with thick and light brown hair,
  closely trimmed. His beard and moustache, of a sandy hue, are also
  closely cut. His constitution is iron. Exposure to cold, rain, or
  burning heat seems to produce no effect upon his powers of endurance
  and strength. Under the most harassing conditions I have never seen
  him exhibit any symptoms of fatigue. In the field he retires early,
  but at midnight he may be found pacing in front of his tent, or
  sitting by the camp fire smoking a cigar. His sleep must be light
  and unrestful, for the gallopping of a courier's horse down the road
  instantly wakes him, as well as a voice or a movement in his tent.
  He falls asleep as easily and as quickly as a little child--by the
  road-aide, upon the wet ground or the hard floor, or when a battle
  rages near him. His mien is never clumsy or commonplace; and when
  mounted upon review he appears in every way the great captain that
  he is.

  "When sounds of musketry or cannonading reach his ears, the general
  is extremely restless until he has been satisfied as to the origin,
  location, and probable results of the fight in progress. At such
  moments he lights a fresh cigar, and smokes while walking to and
  fro; stopping now and then to listen to the increasing rattle of
  musketry; then muttering 'Forward,' will mount old 'Sam,' a horribly
  fast-walking horse, which is as indifferent to shot and shell as his
  master, and starts off in the direction of the fire.

  "One afternoon during the Atlanta campaign the general paid a visit
  to General Hooker, who had pitched his headquarters in a place
  almost as much exposed to the fire of the enemy as any that could
  have been found along the line. The two generals seated themselves
  comfortably, with their feet planted against the trees, watching the
  operations immediately in front and in full view of the rebels. Very
  soon a rebel shell passed them, shrieking overhead, clearing the
  crockery from the dinner-table with amazing rapidity, and
  frightening the cook Sambo, who afterward excused himself on the
  ground that his mate had been killed the night before by one of
  'them things.' Another shell quickly followed, demolishing a chair
  which had just been vacated by an officer. Meanwhile the rifle
  bullets were singing and 'fiezing' about in a reckless way, chipping
  the bark from the trees, and cutting their leaves and branches.
  Still the two generals sat, discussing military questions, with the
  utmost indifference until the sun went down; while the staff
  officers, not seeing any fun in the business, carried on their own
  conversation as companionably as could reasonably be expected in a
  spot where the protecting trees were five to ten feet apart.

  "The general's habits of life are simple. Primitive almost as first
  principles, his greatest sacrifice will be made when he resigns
  campaigning for a more civilized life. He has a keen sense of the
  beauty of nature, and never is happier than when his camp is pitched
  in some forest of lofty pines, where the wind sings through the
  tree-tops in melodious measure, and the feet are buried in the soft
  carpeting of spindles. He is the last one to complain when the
  table-fare is reduced {286} to beef and 'hard tack,' and, in truth,
  he rather enjoys poverty of food as one of the conditions of a
  soldier's life. I remember that he apologized to our guest, the
  secretary of war, one day at Savannah, because certain luxuries,
  such as canned fruits and jellies, had found their way to his table.

  "'This,' he remarked, 'is the consequence of coming into houses and
  cities. The only place to live, Mr. Secretary, is out of doors in
  the woods.'

  "General Sherman's patriotism is a vital force. He has given himself
  and all that he has to the national cause. Personal considerations,
  I am sure, have never influenced him. Doubtless he is ambitious, but
  it is impossible to discern any selfish or unworthy motive, either
  in his word or deeds. I do not believe it possible for a man more
  absolutely to subordinate himself and his personal interests to the
  great cause than he. His patriotism is as pure as the faith of a
  child; and, before it, family and social influences are powerless.
  His relatives are the last persons to receive from his hand
  preferment or promotion. In answer to the request of one nearly
  allied to him that he would give his son a position on his staff,
  the general's reply was curt and unmistakable: 'Let him enter the
  ranks as a soldier, and carry a musket a few years!'

  "In no instance is it possible for the general to favor the
  advancement of soldiers upon mere political grounds; bravery and
  capacity are the considerations which weigh with him. When a paper
  is handed to him for endorsement, accompanied by questions relative
  to promotion, he leaves the selection of the candidate to army or
  corps commanders, reserving his own opinion until the proper time.

  "He has had as great responsibilities to meet as any man of the age,
  but there has never yet been an instance when he was not equal to
  the occasion, even to the acceptance of a new truth. Few men have so
  harmoniously united common sense and genius as General Sherman."


THE OLD HOUSE BY THE BOYNE. By
Mrs. J. Sadlier. 12mo., pp. 375. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1865.

Another new story by Mrs. Sadlier! "Why, it is only the other day,"
the reader will naturally exclaim, "I read one also from her pen." But
such is the fact. "The Old House by the Boyne" is, however, her latest
production, and well does it sustain her reputation as one of our best
living Irish novelists at home or abroad. Mrs. Sadlier is thoroughly
Irish in her stories, and her sole object in them all is the elevation
and edification of her countrymen and countrywomen on this side the
Atlantic. A most praise-worthy object, and one which must in the end
bring forth good fruit. The low and the vulgar, which the English
novelists, and we are sorry to say some Irish writers also, take
particular pains to bring forward as _the_ leading characters in their
works, find no place in Mrs. Sadlier's books. All that is good and
generous in the Irish character is given its true value, and when
necessity compels her to describe the ruffian, she does so in such a
manner as to make the reader abhor his actions, and not as other
writers have done--make him a sort of a hero, as if his crime was the
rule and not the exception.

Her descriptions of Irish manners, customs, and characteristics can
always be relied upon as correct, for she has made the Irish character
her constant study, and beside, she feels for the miseries and
misfortunes of that unfortunate but generous and kind-hearted people.

Mrs. Sadlier has done much for the Catholic literature of America. Her
works, original and translated, put together, make a large library in
themselves, and every year sees additions to them. We trust she will
be spared a good longtime yet, to aid by her prolific pen the good
cause in this country.


THE PEEP O' DAY; or, John Doe,|and Crohoore of the Billhook. By the
O'Hara Family. A new edition, with Introduction and Notes. By Michael
Banim, the survivor of "The O'Hara Family." Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4. New
York: D. & J. Sadlier. 1865.

These are the first four parts of "The Works of the Brothers Banim,"
known as "The O'Hara Family," now publishing in numbers by the
Sadliers. The Banims were, without an exception, the most powerful
Irish novelists of the present century. Their style of writing was
altogether different from that of Griffin, who was their superior in
describing some phases of Irish life. All through Griffin's writings
can be found that deep religious feeling which he never for a moment
lost sight of. The Banims, although Catholics, launch {287} out more
boldly into the world of passion and folly, and give us more dramatic
scenes; more of reality than the "gentle Griffin" could possibly allow
his pen to write. For this reason we look upon Banim's works as bolder
and more vivid pictures of Irish life, as it existed forty years ago,
than Griffin's. Griffin's are sounder and safer reading, for no word
ever escaped his pen that could not be uttered in any society.

The present editor, Mr. Michael Banim, says in the preface to the
first volume "that my brother and myself were joint producers of the
stories now about to be republished. This being the case, it will, I
trust, be conceded that the editorship has not been intrusted, by the
publisher, to unfit hands. It is my intention, as each volume appears,
in condensed shape, to state in how far I have been concerned
therewith. It is my intention also, as we go on, to append notes here
and there. It will be my endeavor to make these notations as little
cumbrous as possible, and to throw into them whatever of anecdote or
historical reference may appear to me interesting to the reader."

So far the notes are highly interesting. We only wish the publishers
had given us the work in volumes, just as it appears in Dublin,
instead of in numbers. We do not like to read a story by "piecemeal,"
hence our objection to the publication of novels in monthly or
semi-monthly parts. When the whole is completed and published in bound
volumes, these writings will be a valuable addition to our literature.


REMY ST. REMY; or, The Boy in Blue.
By Mrs. C. H. Gildersleeve. 12mo., pp. 352. New York: James O'Kane. 1865.

Another story of the late rebellion. And we may make up our mind to be
overloaded with stories of this description for at least the next ten
years. "The Boy in Blue" is the latest we have seen, and is an
indifferent one enough. There are plots sufficient in the book for two
or three good stories, but they are badly managed, and the various
parts of the story clumsily put together. "The Boy in Blue" proves to
be a girl, who thus unsexed herself for the double purpose of
thwarting the vengeance of a rejected lover, whom she refused to marry
because he was _disloyal_, and of being near a _loyal_ lover whom she
afterward married. The scene opens in Massachusetts, jumps abruptly to
the army of the Potomac, and from there to that of the Cumberland,
where the principal events occur. The characters are nearly all East
Tennesseeans, and are made to figure in the story without any regard
to time or place. The book is one we cannot recommend; for none of the
characters are any better than the law allows them to be. The heroine
is no model for any virtuous modest girl; for no woman of correct
training or good morals could dress herself in the habiliments of the
opposite sex. If the authoress cannot write a better story than this
one, she had better give her time and attention to something else than
novel writing. It is not her _forte_.


CATHOLIC ANECDOTES; OR, THE CATECHISM IN EXAMPLES.
The Apostles' Creed, etc. Translated from the French by Mrs. J.
Sadlier. 12mo., pp. 236. New York: D. & J Sadlier. 1865.

An excellent little book, and should meet with a general circulation.
The present volume contains anecdotes on the different articles of the
Creed, and is to be followed, we believe, by two more on the other
portions of the Catechism. The translation is well made, and the book
is very neatly got up. We earnestly recommend it to our readers as a
book worthy of universal circulation.


THE METROPOLITES; OR, KNOW THY NEIGHBOR.
A Novel, by Robert St. Clar. 12mo., pp. 575. The American News
Company. 1865.

Here is a formidable volume describing fashionable society in New
York. The parentage of the leading character in the story is at first
unknown, but is supposed to be the son of some German emigrant who was
shipwrecked and drowned off the coast. He was brought up by a German
woman, and passed through all phases of New York life, from being a
bootblack and newsboy, to find himself an office boy with a lawyer,
who, seeing in him talent, sent him to college and paid for his
education. Nathan P. Trenk is the cognomen by which this person is
designated {288} in the story. The author seems to have taken every
good quality possessed by different men and placed them _all_ in the
person of his beloved Nathan. His hero far exceeds in perfection the
gods of the ancients. He speaks French like a Frenchman; German like a
German; Spanish like a Spaniard; English of course, and we are led to
infer that if he chose he could converse in the language of Timbuctoo,
Malay, or in the Sanscrit. In fact, he excelled in all things--was
perfect in dancing, music, tragedy, yachting, _and the law_. He is
made to possess nearly all these qualities before he was even sent to
school!! He was also better looking than any of his comrades--a
perfect Apollo. One gets tired of this hero called Nathan, and cannot
help asking, with the poet,

  "How one small head could hold it all."

As a story, "The Metropolites" is a failure. There are many good
passages in it; but it is too inflated in style, too absurd and
impossible in its scope and plot, and too pretentious, to suit the
merest tyro in light literature. It ends too abruptly--in fact, the
story is not finished; for only one or two of the characters are
disposed of, and you are left to imagine what became of the author's
_beau ideal_ of a man--Nathan. But there is no danger of such a
question troubling the reader, for it is very few will have the
patience to wade through its pages to the end. If there be any such,
we pity them.


THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.
Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny. By O. A. Brownson, LL.D.
New York: P. O'Shea.

We have seen some of the advance sheets of Dr. Brownson's forthcoming
work with this title. The book will be out in the course of this
month. It will make a very handsome octavo volume of nearly 500 pages,
elegantly printed. It appears from what we have seen of it to have
been written with great care, and to be a profoundly philosophical
work on the principles of government, and especially on the
constitution of the United States.



NATURAL HISTORY.
A Manual of Zoology for Schools, Colleges, and the General Reader. By
Sanborn Tenney, A.M. Illustrated. 8vo., pp. 540. New York: Charles
Scribner & Co. 1865.

This is an excellent manual for schools and colleges; beautifully
illustrated; well printed on fine paper, from large type; nicely
bound; and is altogether a _fine_ book.

THE LIVES OP THE POPES.
By Chevalier d'Artaud. Translated from the French. Edited by Rev. Dr.
Nelligan. Nos. 1 and 2, pp. 96. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1865.

This is, we believe, the first attempt to give the "Lives of the
Popes" in English. The French work from which this is a translation
has been looked upon as a very reliable one. This work is one that was
much needed in this country, and will no doubt have a decided success.



BOOKS RECEIVED.

From P. O'Shea, New York. Nos. 13 and 14 of the GENERAL HISTORY OF THE
CHURCH, by M. l'Abbé J. E. Darras.


From P. Donahoe, Boston. PARRA SASTHA; or, The History of Paddy
Go-Easy, by William Carleton.


From Ticknor & Fields, Boston. LYRICS OF LIFE, by Robert Browning.



From Charles Scribner, New York. Froude's History of England. Vols.
III. and IV.

------
{289}


THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL, II., NO. 9.--DECEMBER, 1865,

----

From Le Correspondant

GENERAL DE LA MORICIÈRE.

I.

It is the sad destiny of those who outlive their generation to be
called upon to speak over the graves of friends, companions, and
chiefs who have the happiness of being the first to depart. Forced to
envy those who precede them their lot, they readily yield to the
temptation of beguiling their regrets by recalling their memory; and
while thus essaying to lighten their own griefs, they think, perhaps
not justly, that they have something of which to remind forgetful
contemporaries, or which they may teach an indifferent posterity.

The _élite_ of the men who date from the early years of the century
begin already to be decimated by death, and this death which strikes
them with a premature blow, while in the full possession of the gifts
which God had lavished on them, has often been preceded by a disgrace
or a retreat so prolonged that we naturally regard them as having long
since entered into history. Their stern and melancholy fate,
aggravated by the inconstancy of their country, may at least serve to
lengthen the perspective from which our eye contemplates them.

What can less resemble the times in which we live than those early and
splendid years of the parliamentary royalty in which Léon de la
Moricière was first revealed to France and to glory? A whole powerful
generation, delivered from military despotism and the imperial
censorship, enfranchised, brought up, or completed by the free and
loyal _régime_ of the Restoration, was then in full sap and full
bloom. A constellation of rare men, men of original powers and popular
renown, appeared at the head of all the great departments of the
national intelligence, and fulfilled the first condition of the life
of a people that are free and master of their destiny. The nation was
governed or represented by its most eminent men. All its living
forces, all its real wants, all its legitimate interests, were
represented by men of an incontestable superiority. The names of
Casimir Perier, Royer-Collard, Molé, Berryer, Guizot, Thiers, Broglie,
Fitz James, Villemain, Cousin, Dufaure, gave to the contests of the
tribune and to the country itself an _éclat_ never surpassed, not even
in 1789. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset stamped poetry
with a character as original as ineffaceable. Ary Scheffer, {290}
Delaroche, Delacroix, Meyerbeer, in the arts; Cuvier, Biot, Thénard,
Arago, Cauchy, in the sciences; Augustin Thierry, Michelet,
Tocqueville, in history and political philosophy, opened new paths,
into which rushed the ardent and high-spirited youth of the nation.
Lacordaire and Ravignan made radiate from the Christian pulpit a halo
of eloquence and popularity unknown since Bossuet.

Perhaps this fertile opening of political, intellectual, and moral
life did not encounter an analogous development in the military life;
perhaps this purely civil glory extinguished the necessary attraction
of the glory of arms. To this doubt, the army of Africa takes upon
itself to reply.

In the ranks of that army new men, predestined to glory, began
forthwith to appear. Each year, each day, augmented their renown. The
true soldiers of free and liberal France were found. We learned to
greet in that army a new line of soldiers, as chivalric, as
formidable, as brave, as the bravest among their fathers, and adorned
with virtues but too often wanting in our soldiers in former times
--modest and austere virtues, civic virtues, which were the honor, and
in the hour of danger the salvation, of their country. The illustrious
Changarnier is the only one of that glorious phalanx that can receive
here below the homage of our loyal gratitude. Of his noble companions,
some, like Damesme, Négrier, Duvivier, Bréa, gave themselves to be
killed in the streets of Paris in 1848, so that France might remain a
civilized country; others, and the most illustrious, Cavaignac,
Bedeau, La Moricière, have died one by one, obscurely and prematurely,
rendered by implacable destiny useless to the country they had saved.
This oppresses the heart, and certainly does no honor to our times.

Among all those valiant knights, the youngest, the most sympathetic,
the most brilliant, and the most rapidly popular, was this same La
Moricière, who has just been torn from us by death while still so full
of fire, light, and life, of strength and faith, of physical and moral
strength, of faith in God and in the future of France. Although few
to-day know, or, having known, remember, that the future conqueror of
Abd-el-Kader, a simple lieutenant of engineers at the taking of
Algiers by Marshal Bourmont, faithful to the traditions of his
royalist race, accompanied to the coast almost alone that disgraced
and proscribed conqueror, and then returned to take his rank in the
army where he was to conquer the most brilliant renown, without
suspecting, assuredly, that he himself would one day experience
injustice, ingratitude, proscription, exile, and forgetfulness.
[Footnote 41] But all the world knows that the name of La Moricière,
as that of Changarnier, is inseparably connected with the most
dramatic episode of our African history--the two expeditions against
Constantine. The pencil of Horace Vernet has made us all familiar with
those prodigious exploits; he has made live again for us the immovable
intrepidity of Changarnier, inclosed in the square battalion that
saved the army on occasion of the first retreat, and then the
impetuous daring of La Moricière at the head of his Zouaves, the red
fez on his head, the white burnous on his shoulder, rushing the first
up to the breach, where he was soon to disappear in the cloud of smoke
and dust, in the midst of a fearful explosion, to be found again, his
eyes almost destroyed, under a formless group of soldiers blackened
with powder, their garments charred, and their flesh burnt.  [Footnote
42] From that day he was married to fame. All France felt what has
been so well rendered by Tocqueville in a private letter dated
November, 1887: "I am even more interested in La Moricière than I can
{291} explain. He carries me away in spite of myself; and when I read
the account of his storming of Constantine, I seem to see him arrive
first at the summit of the breach, and my soul for the moment is with
him. I love him also, I believe, for France; for I cannot help
believing that there is a great general in that little man."
[Footnote 43]

  [Footnote 41: I must be permitted to refer for all the details of
  the military career of General de la Moricière to the article of M.
  de  in "Le Correspondant" for April, 1860.]

  [Footnote 42: _"Les Zouaves et les Chasseurs à
  pied,"_by his Royal Highness the Duke
  d'Aumale, 1855. _"Histoire de la Conquête
  d'Alger,"_by Alfred Nettement.]

  [Footnote 43: Tocqueville, born the 29th of July, 1805, was nearly
  of the same age with La Moricière, who was born the 6th of February,
  1806. Before being colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies and in the
  ministry, they had, still young, met in 1828 at Versailles, where
  Tocqueville was a judge auditor, and where he received a visit from
  La Moricière, then hardly out of the Polytechnic School. In a letter
  of that date which is found in the precious collection published by
  M. Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville traces a portrait of the future
  hero which remained a striking likeness to his last days: "I must
  say that I have been charmed with him personally; I thought I saw in
  him all the features of a truly remarkable man. I who am habituated
  to live among men profuse in words with little meaning, was wholly
  surprised at the craving for clear and distinct understanding with
  which he seemed to be constantly tormented. The _sang-froid_ with
  which he stopped me to demand an account of one idea before
  proceeding to another, which several times a little disconcerted me,
  and his manner of speaking of only what he perfectly understands,
  have given me an opinion of him superior to almost any that I have
  ever formed of any man at first sight."]

Incorporated with the Zouaves from the foundation of the corps in
1830, it was he who, in gaining with them all his grades up to that of
colonel, created the European reputation of that unequalled troop, at
the same time that by his vigilant activity in the Arab bureaus, he
preluded his remarkable faculties as an organizer and administrator.
Major-general at thirty-four, lieutenant-general at thirty-seven,
governor-general of Algeria _ad interim_ at thirty-nine, he never
quitted Algeria till he had rendered it for ever French by forcing
Abd-el-Kader to surrender his sword to the Duke d'Aumale, a young and
meritorious prince, whose own rising glory was soon to set
unexpectedly in the sad night of exile. He quitted Algeria in the
beginning of 1848, and bore with him a reputation whose brightness was
dimmed by not a shade or a breath. His courage, his rare strategic
ability, the number and splendor of his victories, were enhanced by
the most rigid integrity and at the same time by a humanity and a
generosity all the more meritorious from the pain it must have cost
his impetuous nature to exercise it in favor of barbarous enemies who
massacred and mutilated our soldiers who were taken prisoners.
[Footnote 44]

  [Footnote 44: "In leaving the shores on which he had landed young
  and obscure, and which he quitted illustrious without appearing old,
  he bore with him a recollection more precious than the fame of his
  heroic deeds; his glory was without a stain, his hands, always
  burning for the combat, were sullied by no abuse of victory. When
  the irritation against an enemy that massacred our soldier prisoners
  was at its height. La Moricière, pursuing one day a tribe that was
  in insurrection notwithstanding their oaths, and having driven them
  to the sea, he suddenly halted his columns and suspended his
  vengeance. What fear had seized his intrepid soul? He himself tells
  us: 'In the disposition of mind in which our soldiers then were,
  that vengeance might have been too severe!' Beautiful and touching
  words, which reveal the man in the warrior, and attest a fear of
  excess in the bosom of a courage that paused at no obstacles."--_Le
  General de la Moricière_, by Viscount de Meaux, p. 11.]

He re-entered France, already invested with a sort of legendary halo,
and was everywhere recognized as the true type of disinterested
heroism, intelligent boldness, moral dignity, independence a little
haughty, and liberal instincts, which become the armies of France, at
least such as they were then. Race apart, these _Africans_, as
brilliant as original in the military history of Europe, as foreign to
the brutal manners of the soldier of fortune led by Gustavus Adolphus
and Frederic II. as to the savage and cruel pride of the lieutenants
of Napoleon, showed themselves always the citizens of a free country,
the missionaries of civilization, as well as the first soldiers in the
world.

But military glory did not suffice for La Moricière. Sensible to an
attraction then all powerful, he aspired to enter political life, and
as soon as he was initiated into it he relished it, and devoted
himself to it with that passion which he carried into everything he
undertook. In 1846 he solicited and obtained the suffrages of his
fellow-citizens. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he took his place
with the moderate opposition. By a privilege rarely accorded, it was
given him to conquer at once, on this new and {292} difficult
battle-field, a distinction and an authority almost as fully
acknowledged and as legitimate as that which he had gained on the
theatre of his exploits in Algeria.

La Moricière was born with the gift of eloquence--that gift which is
the first condition neither of the love of liberty nor of the exercise
of power, but which is seldom separated from either in countries and
times which permit free discussion. He united the three qualities,
very rare, which the prince of contemporary orators, M. Thiers, exacts
of those who aspire to govern--knowledge of public affairs, ability to
expose them lucidly and in order, and the weight of character
necessary to defend them. But, against the ordinary rule, his
eloquence was not at all the result of labor. With him the orator was
not slowly disengaged, as with the most illustrious, step by step, in
a continuous progress toward perfection; he revealed himself at once
as a bold and successful improvisator, who, on a chosen ground, had
nothing to fear from anybody. He jeered those who passed for eloquent
without having his extemporary facility. "You Academicians," said he,
"must always retire to make the toilet of your speech, and are never
ready when you are wanted." As for him, he was always ready, and it
was a real pleasure to hear him, and to see him spring to the tribune,
to mount it as if it were his horse, stride it, so to speak, and
master it at a single word, with the ease of the perfect
horseman--then broach the most complicated questions, provoke the most
formidable adversaries, even M. Thiers himself, overcome the tumult,
regain and fix the distracted attention, instruct and charm even those
whom he failed to convince. His eye sparkling, his head aloft, his
voice thrown out by jerks, he seemed always in speaking to be sounding
a charge. He managed figures, metaphors, arguments, with as much
celerity, dash, and freedom as his Zouaves. Supple and impetuous,
bounding as the panther, he turned around his adversary, as if seeking
his vulnerable point, before springing upon and prostrating him.
Rarely did he descend from the tribune without having moved his
auditory, enlightened a question, corrected a misapprehension,
repaired a defeat, prepared or justified a victory. Never was the
celebrated word of Cato on the Gauls, _Rem militarem agere et argute
loqui_, more exactly verified. Under this relation, as under so many
others, he was the most French of the Frenchmen of our age.

This double superiority was manifested with an _éclat_ as sudden as
complete in the midst of the frightful dangers of the revolution of
February, 1848. Named minister by a last effort of expiring legality,
he presented himself with his accustomed intrepidity before the
insurgent populace. The populace mistook and outraged him: dragged
from his horse, wounded with the thrusts of a bayonet, he with
difficulty escaped with his glorious life from the cowardly assassins.
When the Provisional Government issued from the mob, he would neither
serve it nor combat it. But he promised to accept the Republic, and to
be loyal to it, if it would preserve the army. That army was about to
become, in the hands of the National Assembly and under the orders of
the _African_ generals, the last bulwark of European civilization.
When the terrible days of June came to show the depth of the abyss
excavated by February, La Moricière was then by the side of his friend
Cavaignac, who, become his chief, after having been his lieutenant,
and retained himself from personally engaging in the struggle by his
duties as head of the executive, hastened to confide to him the
principal part in repressing the most terrible insurrection that ever
broke out in the most revolutionary city in the world. Those who were
there--those who breathed the inflamed atmosphere of those solemn and
terrible days, run through those narrow streets incumbered with
barricades and heaps of the {293} slain, and where flowed literally
streams of blood, those deserted quays and blocked-up quarters, whose
silence was broken only by _the sublime horror of the
cannonade_--those who were obliged to deliberate through three days
and two nights amidst the roar of that cannonade, while came
alternately messages of death and bulletins of the most sad but most
necessary victories--those alone can know by what means and at what
cost their country could really be saved, without violating the laws
of justice, honor, or humanity. Those who were not there will never
form a conception either of the extent of the danger or of the yawning
gulf in which he came so near being swallowed up, nor of the mixture
of determined energy and invincible patience needed to vanquish those
misguided but intrepid masses inured to war, and desperate, and whose
blows too large a number of former military officers directed against
the inexperience of the Gard Mobile or the hesitation of the troops
that had just entered Paris.

La Moricière, more than any other, was the man for the occasion. His
fiery temperament protected him from that patriotic sadness which
overcast the countenance of General Cavaignac all through the bloody
crisis which must raise him to supreme power. In exposing himself as
at Constantine, for a longer time, and to still greater danger than at
Constantine, in rushing himself the first against the barricades,
defended by adversaries far more formidable than Arabs or Kabyles; in
prolonging the struggle with a revolution madder than that of the
insurgents. La Moricière finally succeeded in wresting Paris from the
insurrection. The confidence with which he inspired the troops, the
high spirits and gaiety, the heroic recklessness which he mingled with
his indomitable resolution, triumphed over every obstacle, and decided
the victory. Thanks to that victory, and to that alone, France was
drawn from the abyss and saved from barbarism.

Hence, on his return from the fearful struggle, he was greeted only
with a unanimous shout of enthusiasm and gratitude. Cavaignac hastened
to set his seal to the general acclamation by associating him to his
government as minister of war.

There was then a short period of confidence, of union, of calm, and of
relative security. Those days must have been sweet to the two friends
placed at the head of the country which they had just saved, and which
gave them freely the gratitude which they had so richly merited. Their
union, intimate and loyal, cordial and frank, contributed often to the
charm and well-being of that bright interval. It received an official
and touching consecration during the discussion of the constitution,
on the occasion of the articles relative to the public force. It was a
beautiful scene. An imprudent member, _apropos_ of the promotion, a
little irregular, of the future Marshal Bosquet, accused the minister
of war of acting from private friendship, and spoke of those whom
chance and fortune had placed at the head of the army. La Moricière
remained calm under the insult, but Cavaignac, seated by his side on
the ministerial bench, was indignant, and, ascending the tribune, and
addressing the aggressor, said: "There is one thing that astonishes
me; it is that you, sir, who were there, on the soil of Africa, as
well as me,--that you could see no other motive for the elevation of
that man but chance and fortune. As for me, if I am surprised, it is
to see him in the second rank, while I am in the first." A noble word,
and worthy of the noblest antiquity, such as could sometimes, by the
side of others by no means felicitous, fall from the lips of the proud
and loyal Cavaignac, then still the idol of the fickle enthusiasm of
conservative France, and which was so soon to leave him only the right
to say, with not less of modest dignity, "I have not fallen from
power; I have descended from it."

La Moricière was then at the {294} apogee of a fortune which nobody
was disposed to regard as excessive or usurped. At the age of forty he
was everywhere known, was invested with universal popularity, and was
the second man of France. The superiority he had won on the
battle-fields of Africa and at the much more formidable barricades in
the streets of Paris, he maintained and exercised in the councils of
his country and on the uncertain and perilous soil of the tribune.
[Footnote 45] Even when individuals were not of his opinion, which was
often the case with his friends of the evening as with those of the
morrow, they regretted or were astonished not to agree with him; they
ceased not to admire him, and were drawn toward him. It was known, it
was felt, that however the passions of the moment might mislead him,
the miserable instincts of envy, servility, selfishness, mean
ambition, or thirst for wealth, could never find a place in his robust
and manly heart. We loved him even when we were forced to oppose him.
Beside, we knew not yet how much better and further on many essential
points he saw, in his transports and gruffness, than many others more
calm or more experienced, and who were, though in a different manner,
as much deceived as he.

  [Footnote 45: "Never has been pushed farther the intelligence, and
  the power of labor, with the passion or struggle under all the forms
  which create public life."'--_Discours du Général Trochu sur la
  tombe de la Moricière à Saint-Philibert de Grand-Lieu._]

Moreover, in the public life of free nations and great assemblies, if
the clashing of opinions and the collision of self-loves give birth to
noisy or passionate dissents, they are rarely deep or lasting. This is
evident from what is seen every day and has been for a long time in
England. One is not forced there to brood in silence and darkness over
animosities which their very impotence renders incurable. Often, on
the contrary, in that open-day life, friendships the most serious, and
alliances the most sincere, succeed to misunderstandings or transports
which with well-born souls cannot survive the action of time and the
lights of experience, when people are agreed on the great conditions
of liberty, dignity, probity, and honor, without which all is null of
itself. But more than this, La Moricière, a short time before getting
power, gave to what was then called the _conservative reaction_ a
pledge the best fitted of all to make us forget the dissensions which
had separated him from us. It was he who directed the first steps of
the Roman expedition, and imprinted on it from the outset its real
character, _that of defending the Pope, and assuring the liberty and
the security of the visible head of the Church_.

To him is due the honor of initiating that expedition, of which twelve
years later he must write the sorrowful epilogue with the blood of the
young martyrs of Castelfidardo. To him and to the assemblies belongs
the glorious responsibility of that grand act of French politics,
which has been too often thrown at us as a crime, by the Caesarian
democracy, hoping to gain the right to give to others an homage not
their due.

Even afterwards, when the substitution of Prince Louis Napoleon for
General Cavaignac had removed him from office, when the dismissal of
his friends, Odillon-Barrot, Tocqueville, and Dufour, had involved his
resignation of his embassy to Russia, which he had accepted at their
request--when, in fine, the conservative party met him often among its
most active opponents, before dividing and turning against itself. La
Moricière preserved in the eyes of all a position apart and a marked
ascendency. In the present he had no peer, and the future, whatever
might happen, seemed to reserve to him a place always eminent, and
always preponderant in the destinies of France and of Europe.

{295}

II.

In one day, or, rather, in one night, all this present and all this
future crumbled. La Moricière, at the age of forty-five, falling from
the most enviable position a French soldier could occupy, without its
being possible to reproach him with the shadow of a crime or even of a
fault, saw for ever closed to him all access to either of the two
careers in which he had won so much glory, and in which he walked as
the peer, or the superior, of all his contemporaries. His military and
public life was closed. The most brilliant of our soldiers succumbed
to a military revolution. The statesman and the tribune, so in love
with popular sympathies, was swept away by a movement sanctioned by a
popularity none could dispute. He was broken when the law was broken
with the assent of the people; he was broken for having remained
faithful to an opinion which had for it constitutional right and the
inviolability of oaths; broken much less by the unmerciful demands of
victory than by the forgetfulness and abandonment of France; broken
for not having comprehended that France had wholly changed her gait
and her tendencies, and no longer held anything which she had
pretended to hold and to love ever since 1814. He must then, in his
turn, undergo those prodigies of inconstancy and ingratitude with
which the contemporary public delights to visit princes when they are
liberal, and superior men when they are honest.

No cup of bitterness was spared him: I mean bitternesses of the mind
and the heart, the most poignant and the most unbearable of all; and I
speak not for him alone, but also for his valiant and unfortunate
companions in glory and in exile. In the first years of his exile he
met, outside of his family and his wife, little sympathy in that
Belgium where Catholics especially were almost all under the
fascination of the conqueror. At that period of life when we have the
full consciousness of our strength and our resources, when the
employment of the gifts received from God is a prime necessity, he saw
himself condemned to forego not only the exercise of power and the
management of great affairs to which he had become accustomed, but all
public life, and, indeed, all active life. In vain he repeated the
device of his generous rival and friend Changarnier, _Happiness is
gone, but honor remains;_ in vain he spoke and wrote with Count de
Maistre after Tilsit, _Europe is Bonaparte's, but my heart is mine;_
he was forced to experience a long while the mortal tediousness of the
dead calm after the salutary and quickening excitements of the storm,
and to sink into a wearisome idleness, the mother, as Fouquet says to
Pignerol, of despair. He had to bear the laceration of impatience,
that mortal despite, that sterility of walks and books for a man of
his condition, that lassitude of a life deprived of all occupation,
that fatigue of doing nothing of which the bare thought made
Saint-Simon shudder, and held him fast in the ante-chamber of Louis
XIV.

But there was for him a more cruel trial still, a thousand times more
bitter, of which neither Fouquet nor Saint-Simon had the remotest
conception.

France was on the point of making war, a great war; and these valiant
guards, these great war-chiefs, are not to be there! From Africa are
drawn the battalions they formed, which they commanded, and so often
led to victory. These battalions are now to march under other chiefs
to new victories. Themselves so long first and alone, on whom the eyes
of France and of Europe were so long accustomed to be
fixed--themselves all glowing with military ardor, full of vigor and
patriotism--having never failed their country, honor, or justice, are
now condemned to inaction, to forgetfulness, to nothingness; noted
subalterns rise and seize the first rank in the eyes of the
world!--who can tell, who can conceive, the anguish, the torture of
these men, so illustrious, so intrepid, and, be it not forgotten, so
innocent, so irreproachable before the country and the army?

{296}

The "Epoque" tells us to-day that a word, a single word, had sufficed
to recall them to France, and to commands in the Crimea, the baton of
the marshal, and all the augmented splendor and prosperity which
victory brings in its train. Nothing is known of it. Always is it a
fact that this word, whether it would have been listened to or not,
was not spoken, and since it was not, it no doubt ought not to have
been spoken.

What, moreover, was that marshal's baton so cruelly stolen from those
who had so well earned it? Those grades, decorations, gildings, and
salaries, the vulgar food of vulgar souls, were they what attracted,
what inflamed, these heroic souls? No, a thousand times no. It was
danger; it was devotedness, enthusiasm, action, the service of France,
the love of country, the love of the noble flag which they had borne
aloft for twenty years; the glorious brotherhood of arms with so many
good soldiers and brave officers, their own offspring, so to speak;
the burning desire, a thousand times legitimate, of adding new laurels
to those already won; in a word, it was HONOR--and it was precisely
honor that condemned them to silence, to inaction, to death--the real
death and the only death they had ever dreaded.

Never did Calderon, the great Spanish poet, in those famous dramas of
his which always turn on the imperious exigencies, the merciless
refinements, the torturing delicacies of honor, imagine a situation
more striking, a trial more acute, a narrower pass, or a yoke more
crushing. The trial was submitted to, the pass was traversed, the yoke
was borne to the end. All we cannot say, and what we do say is nothing
by the side of the suffering we have seen, felt, known, and shared.
Perhaps a day will come when these tortures of the soul will be
comprehended and rewarded with the admiration which is their due. But
who knows? To hope that, it is necessary to believe in the justice of
history, and who knows if there will be again any history worthy of
the name? We may well doubt it, when we mark what is passing around us
in an age which for a long time boasts of having regenerated history,
and when we see liberals make the panegyric of the 10th of August,
Christians applaud the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and writers
in high credit with their several parties undertake to rehabilitate
the reign of terror, the Inquisition, and the Roman empire.

Nothing was wanting, we have said, to the evil fortune of our friend.
After years of exile in Belgium, his only son fell ill in France. And
while were debated with the desolate father the conditions of his
return, the son, the only hope of his family, died. When at length he
was permitted to return, it was too late; he received not the last
sigh of his child. He was inconsolable. "They restore me my country,"
he said; "but who will restore me my child?" It was no longer his
country, such as he had known it, that was restored to him--the
country, above all, by which he had been so well known, so proudly
boasted, and so admired. The real exile is not in being torn from our
native country, but in remaining in it and finding no longer that
which made it specially dear to us. La Moricière perceived it only too
soon. But he comprehended the difference alike of time and men, and
conformed with an intelligent and manly resignation, which held in
nothing from his adhesion, and which took nothing from the energy of
his convictions or the dignity of his attitude. For the rest, he had
brought back with him from the land of his exile neither the illusions
of the _emigré_, blind animosities, nor mean or noisy bitterness. And
yet he was not at the end of his cross.

There remained to him a last human good, a last plank saved from
shipwreck!--his old popularity among {297} his contemporaries, and the
companions in that shipwreck, near his old political friends, in the
bosom of the party which he had not only served and defended, but,
above all, had honored and protected with his glory. That popularity
he risked totally in the most abandoned, the most contested, and the
most vilipended cause in the world. He risked all, and he lost! A
priest whom he had known as a soldier in Africa, under the flag of
France, before becoming his relation and his friend, offered him, in
the name of Pius IX., an opportunity of braving new perils, with the
certainty of being vanquished in the desperate struggle. He ran
thither. Forthwith a long and loud howl of insult and derision rose
from the bosom of the whole so-called European democracy. He was
dragged to the _gemoniae_--both he and the young warriors that
followed in his footsteps. A hideous clamor arose from the lowest
depths of human baseness, from the Thames to the Arno, and pursued
with invectives, railleries, and calumnies the devoted band and their
heroic chief. The vapid calumniators of disinterested virtue spoke all
at once, and spoke alone; France and Europe justified them. New Italy
blushed in her turn to find herself approached by men bold enough to
dare to fight and die under the colors of a pontiff and a father. She
asked and obtained freedom to crush them. But she essayed to kill them
with falsehood before attacking them with the sword, and by falsehoods
such as the world had not heard since the imperial trap set at Bayonne
in 1808. A Cialdini dares call, in an order of the day to his army, La
Moricière and his companions "_mercenaries_ thirsting for gold and
pillage," and King Victor Emmanuel announces to the Emperor of the
French that he "is marching his troops into the Marches and Umbria to
re-establish order there in relation to the temporal authority of the
Pope, and, if it should be necessary, to give battle to the revolution
on the Neapolitan territory."  [Footnote 46] Eight days after the
troops of the king pounced, ten to one, on the little army of La
Moricière. The obscure burgh of Castelfidardo is immortalized by that
butchery. Pimodan perished there by a death worthy of his chief, who
sought refuge in Ancona, and capitulate when his last gun was
dismounted. This French general--and what a general!--gave up his
sword to the Piedmontese! His young companions, prisoners like
himself, passed over Italy in the midst of insults and outrages. La
Moricière, himself released as soon as the work of spoliation was
consummated, returned to France, where he met the scoffs and jeers of
those who insulted his departure.

  [Footnote 46: _Circular of M. Thouvenel_, Minister of Foreign
  Affairs, 18th October, 1860. The "National Opinion," a worthy
  "Moniteur" of Piedmont, adds in its number for Sept. 14, 1860:
  "Victor Emmanuel proposes precisely to protect the Holy Father and
  his temporal authority against the enthusiasm of the volunteers."]

From that moment all was accomplished or marching toward the end
foreseen and determined. The darkest forebodings, the saddest
predictions, are verified. Christian France is resigned, and Europe
has habituated herself to what five years ago appeared to be the _nec
plus ultra_ of impossible iniquity. People have even come to regard
confining the spoliation within its present limits as a benefit which,
if assured, would make a _Te Deum_ break forth from the whole Catholic
world, asleep or deceived.

La Moricière had seen and suffered all this, and it was only the last
phase of a disgrace which lasted fifteen years without relaxation and
without revenge. As his life, rent asunder, drew toward its end, by an
insolent freak of fortune, by a contrast and a coincidence the strange
mystery of which will astonish the future, Abd-el-Kader arrives in
France to be received there as a sovereign!

The conqueror and the conquered, it is said, met in the street: La
Moricière on foot, confounded with the {298} multitude; Abd-el-Kader
with all the pomp of his official train, and the grand cordon of the
Legion of Honor on his breast. They exchanged a single look. After
which, the prisoner of 1847 is found sufficiently avenged on the
prisoner of the 2d of December; pursuing his course with loud din,
caressed, feasted, toasted by courtiers, functionaries, and
freemasons, presented to the universitarian youth as the type of
modern civilization and the religion of large souls, Abd-el-Kader
quitted triumphantly the soil of France, to return with his wives, who
accompanied him, to his palace in the East; La Moricière entered his
house to die there, and he did die there, all alone, forgotten by the
multitude, unknown by the rising generation, and buried in the silence
of the flatterers and satellites of fortune. The death of this great
servant of France is announced by the official journal among the
"Miscellaneous Facts," after an article on conducting water into
Paris! At the decline of day his coffin, in being directed toward a
village cemetery, traverses obscurely the streets of that Babylon
which he had saved, really saved, from barbarism--those very streets
lately ploughed by the pompous _cortège_ of a marshal of France, named
grand master of freemasonry by an imperial decree.

Whilst the Cialdinis, the Fantis, and so many authors and fomentors of
the _guet-apens_ of Castelfidardo, so many other violators of the law
of nations and of their sworn faith, survive and triumph, rolling in
opulence and prosperity. La Moricière, for having been faithful to
law, to honor, and to religion, is extinguished and disappears,
vanquished, ignored, forgotten.

I have said that I suspect the judgments of history, because history
is almost always the servant or the priestess of Success; but its
recitals are always instructive, and I consent that it be questioned
to ascertain if it furnish many instances of a destiny more tragic.

III.

But after having touched the bottom of the abyss, the soul rises to
contemplate and adore the grandeur and glory of adversity. La
Moricière, we know and confess it, triumphant and satisfied, marshal
of France, conqueror at Alma or Magenta, hailed by the curiosity of
the eager multitude, fat and heavy by prosperity, had not risen above
the throng of successful generals, had attained no other glory than
military glory, with which France in all times has been smitten, and
in all times been saturated. His image, placed in its rank in the
galleries of Versailles, in the midst of so many others, would have
awakened in the souls of the visitors only a transient and commonplace
emotion; but La Moricière, betrayed by fortune, disgraced, proscribed,
insulted; La Moricière, conqueror of anarchy and victim of the
dictatorship; La Moricière, condemned by his sense of honor to the
punishment of an obscure idleness; La Moricière, beaten at
Castelfidardo and a captive at Ancona; La Moricière, submitting to the
wrongs of fate with a modesty and a gravity wholly Christian, then
dying all alone, but standing with the crucifix in his hand--is a
personage of another stamp, and rises at once from the ranks of the
herd to the loftiest height of human admiration. This is a glory
apart, which re-youths the soul, which stimulates and purifies it, and
which it would not exchange for any other. This is a spectacle such as
history too rarely offers, such as we Frenchmen, we Catholics, too
docile worshippers of force and fortune, have special need of. Yes,
this glory is enviable, and in reality the most enviable of all
glories. In vain nature rebels, reason and faith unite to  proclaim
it. We are all moved by the recollection of Catinat, old, retired, and
resigned in his retreat, and recalling there, as says Saint-Simon, "by
his simplicity, his frugality, his contempt of the world, his peace of
mind, and the uniformity of {299} his conduct, the memory of those
great men who, after triumphs the best merited, returned tranquilly to
their plough, always loving their country, and little affected by the
ingratitude of Rome, which they had so well served." But Catinat,
really unfortunate; Catinat, a prisoner, exiled, disgraced; Catinat,
removed at the flower of his age from the command of armies, had been
much greater still, and, as our La Moricière have recalled St. Louis
in chains. The ancients said that the good man struggling with
adversity is the most worthy, if not alone worthy, of the favor of
God. Christianity adds, that it is a sight the most necessary and
salutary to the heart of man.

La Moricière was chosen among us to give this high lesson in all its
majesty and in all its beauty. He has shown that double character of
docility under trial, and of empire over misfortune, which makes great
men and great saints. It was because there was in him the stuff of a
great Christian.

Trials and exile rapidly developed in his soul the germs of faith
which early domestic education had planted, and which pure and noble
examples near him led him to admire and cherish. By his marriage with
the granddaughter of the Marchioness of Montagu, he entered a family
in which calamities the most atrocious and the most unexpected, borne
with superhuman energy, had left in the soul only a sublime serenity,
and compassion greater still for the executioners than for the
martyrs. Inflamed by the recitals of a mother-in-law who continued to
the last his most devoted and enthusiastic friend, he had the first
thought of a publication destined to count among the treasures of our
history, and of which he himself dictated the first draft.  [Footnote
47] In learning to appreciate the action of Christian virtue on the
most touching victims of the Reign of Terror as on the obscure duties
of domestic life, he was conducted further and higher still. A study,
an active study, ardent and profound, of the doctrines and results of
religion, became henceforth his principal occupation, and he continued
it with unwearied perseverance to his last moments. Once a Christian
in practice as well as in belief, he would be so openly, and no more
recoil before human respect and the disdains of infidelity than before
the Arabs or the barricades. He was seen at the foot of the Christian
pulpit, following the words of the preacher with deep attention, and
the lively gesticulation habitual to him, marking on his nobly
chiselled features an expressive assent and sometimes an impatient
contradiction, as if he felt that he must in his turn mount the
tribune and reply. One day, at Brussels, a former colleague and
friend, who had known him quite different from what he was now, found
him bending over his maps, tracing the progress of our army in the
Crimea. To hold them unrolled he took the books which he now
generally, and which were the Catechism, his mass-book, the Imitation
of Jesus Christ, and a volume of Père Gratry. At sight of these four
witnesses of a preoccupation so novel, the visitor could not dissemble
his surprise. "Yes, indeed," said the general, "I use these, I occupy
myself with that. I do not wish, like you, to remain with my feet
dangling in the air, between heaven and earth, between light and
darkness. I wish to know whither I go, and by what I am to hold. I
make no mystery of it."

  [Footnote 47: _"Anne Dominique de Noailles, Marquise de Montagu."_
  Rouen, 1859. It May be well to remind the American reader that the
  Marquise de Montagu,  grandmother of General La Moricière's wife,
  was a sister of Madame Lafayette, who so heroically shared the
  prison of Olmntz with her husband, and whoso faith and purity gave a
  superhuman strength and energy to her noble character.--THE
  TRANSLATOR. ]

This public courage against the enemies of the faith availed him from
God the unhoped for and incomparable gift of magnanimous patience,
which he needed to enable him to accept and bear his trials, and to
offer to God all the goods of his glorious life, which he had
sacrificed. The progress of {300} that great soul, becoming every day
more obvious, was manifested especially by his resignation in presence
of the heavy cross which was inflicted on him.

"We welcome the cross at a distance," says Fénelon, "but shrink from
it when close by." It was not so with La Moricière. He had seldom
welcomed the cross when afar, but when it came home to him, he
embraced it, raised it up, and bore it even to the tomb, with a
supernatural generosity, serenity, and simplicity. The _crucifying
experience_ which, according to Fénelon, is always needed to detach us
from ourselves and the world, found in him no revolt, no fainting, no
feebleness. He entered this new career and walked in it to the end
with the vehement and obstinate resolution of a man of war determined
to become a man of God.

A great genius has said it concerns the honor of the human species
that souls  born to suffer should know how to suffer well. La
Moricière was not born to suffer; he was born to combat, to command,
to conquer, and to dazzle; nevertheless, when life became to him only
one long suffering, he learned how to suffer well, to suffer as a
Christian, as a soldier of Christ, as the conqueror of evil--to suffer
not during fifteen days or fifteen months, but through fifteen years,
till death came to relieve him from his post.

All of us who have known and visited him in this second and sorrowful
phase of his existence, owe to him great and valuable lessons, which
his memory and the stern example of his death must render for ever
sacred to us. Doubtless, the acts of the saints, the examples of the
heroes of the Christian life, their trials and their triumphs,
transmitted by historians or commentators to their spiritual
posterity, are much; but they are nothing, or next to nothing, in the
real presence, if I may so speak, of a man marked with the seal of
election, of a confessor, not merely of the faith, but of virtue,
patience, resignation, and Christian abnegation. What history, what
preaching, could avail so much as a clasp of that valiant hand, an
accent of that vibrating voice, a look of that lion's eye, coming to
the support of a truth recognized, asserted, and practised by a soul
of that temper?

No; the flame of that beautiful eye, so limpid and so proud, will
never be forgotten by any who have once seen it, whether touched with
the surprise of generous indignation or softened by sympathy and the
desire to persuade; and that flame, always living in our memory, will
continue to illumine for us the mysteries of life and suffering.

Besides, no exterior metamorphosis accompanied the deep and salutary
change in his interior. Such as he was seen on the field of battle, or
in the assemblies of which he was a member, in the most brilliant and
the most agitated portion of his career, such he was in the solitude
and obscurity of his new life. He was as vehement and as dazzling as
ever, with all his fire and all his charm, with his exuberance of
life, youth, originality, enthusiasm, which seemed always anxious to
overflow on all and on everything around him. Only sourness, wrath,
irritation even the most legitimate, seemed swallowed up in one master
passion, the passion for good--seeking and accepting the will of God,
in the love of souls.

Nothing in him was worn-out or enfeebled, but all was pacified,
reduced to order, animated with a higher and purer inspiration. The
touching forgetfulness of his human glory, humanly buried, rendered
him only the more dear and the more sacred to his friends. These
friends were still numerous; and friends, relations, old comrades, old
colleagues, we were all proud of him, all under his charm as soon as
he reappeared, for too brief moments, amongst us. Nothing, indeed,
could be more natural, for I cannot too often repeat that he preserved
in his private relations all his old fascination, and all his old
{301} attractiveness. Essentially French, with all the good and
generous instincts of our country; essentially modern, also, in the
turn of his mind, his ideas, and his convictions, having nothing
stern, morose, or superannuated in his religion, and willing to place
at the service of the old law, and the old faith, all the resources of
modern civilization, which none better knew or more justly
appreciated; in fine, he remained a liberal in spite of so many
disappointments, so many defections, and so many mad crimes committed
in the name of liberty--a liberal certainly more moderate and more
practical than in the days of his youth, but liberal _altogether a
soldier_, as affirms to us one of those valiant knights who fought
with him at Castelfidardo. He thought with the new generation, and
held liberty a thing so beautiful and so good that he was willing to
accept it frankly and cordially whatever the hand that offered it.

As the price of his suffering, God granted him the conversion of his
soul. As the price of his conversion, it was given him to fix for a
last time the eyes of Europe and of posterity on himself, by a
struggle as unequal as generous, in the service of a cause as
legitimate as abandoned. All has been said both before and since his
death on the epic grandeur and the Christian heroism of the sacrifice
he made for the Papacy, so basely betrayed. It was, as repeated over
and over again, not the sacrifice of his life, which he had a hundred
times exposed with joy on the field of battle, but the sacrifice of
his name, his reputation, his military glory, the victories he had
won. _Se et ante actos triumphos devovit,_ according to the truly
Roman device of the medal offered him by the magistracy of Rome. "He
marched," says General Trochu, "with weakness against force, a signal
and rare honor which remains attached to his name in the judgment of
all honest men of all creeds and of all countries."

Let us endeavor to define clearly what it was, aside from the justice
of the sovereign and the sanctity of the right he went to defend, that
marks his devotion with a character of exceptional grandeur and
purity, which places him--dare I say it?--almost above Lescure and
Larochejaquelein. He was not young, obscure, and inexperienced, as
were those heroes so pure; he was not attracted by novelty, the
irresistible charm of the unknown, the chances of the struggle, or the
fortune of battle; he was vanquished in advance, and he knew it; he
marched in cool blood to an inevitable defeat, and a defeat not simply
material. To yield to that sublime seduction of a duty which can end
only in a catastrophe, he was obliged to break with most of his
political friends. He knew perfectly to what he exposed himself; he
knew thoroughly the cosmopolitan power and implacable fury of the
party which he was sure to stir up against him. He knew that
_clerical_ unpopularity is that which is the hardest to efface, and
the last that is pardoned. He knew it, and as formerly before the
breach of Constantine, he threw himself, head lowered, against it. He
had the noble courage to be unpopular, and so became unpopular even to
heroism. Taking the man such as we have known him, with his character,
his age, and his antecedents, I fear not to affirm that in no epoch
has Christian chivalry ever conceived anything more difficult, more
meritorious, more worthy of eternal memory.

Thus in what must be his check, God granted him here below a glory as
rare as refined and imperishable. He counts in the first ranks of
those who are the seconds for God in the great duel between good and
evil--men predestined to be sponsors for the good, for honor and
justice.  [Footnote 48]

  [Footnote 48: Mgr. Dupanloup _"Oraison funébre du morts de
  Castelfidardo."_]

A handful of young men, miserably scanty in numbers, alone responded
to an appeal of so magnificent, so seductive an example; and of all
the symptoms {302} of the decadence or transformation of European
society, there is none more alarming, more humiliating, than that very
paucity of their numbers. _Their small number honors them, but accuses
us_, said, with too much truth, a brave man, who died at the very
moment he was going to join them. But this small number sufficed for
what La Moricière sought, and for all that he regarded as possible. It
sufficed to represent the honor of Catholic France in the midst of the
cowardly abandonment of Europe. Above all, it sufficed to strip the
lying mask from Piedmontese usurpation, and to spot with blood the
hypocritical hands about to be placed on the shoulder and the white
tunic of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

This done, nothing remained for La Moricière but to die as he has
died. Death came suddenly, but it did not take him unprepared. It
found him on foot, vigilant, decided, invincible, as when, in the
times of his youth, he looked it every day in its face. It found him
armed with a force and a faith it found not in him then. In seeing it
approach he "unhooked his crucifix as he formerly unhooked his sword."
The word is from a bishop and it will remain: "She was sweet toward
death, as she had been sweet toward life," said Bossuet of his
Henrietta of England. He would have said of our hero, that he was
strong against death, as he had been strong against life. He would
have greeted with his immortal accents that death of the soldier which
was also, and above all, the death of a saint. What more admirable or
more complete! That last night after a day divided between private and
public prayer, and the study of the history of the Church in which he
will have a page--a page how resplendent!  [Footnote 49] That word
only to call a priest--that only cry to procure the grace of
absolution--those rapid moments passed while standing in solitude, the
crucifix in his hand--and, in fine, the supreme moment which finds
him in full adoration on his knees before his God!--can there be
conceived a life more generously, more Christianly finished, a death
more happy in its suddenness? Behold him saved from tasting, drop by
drop, the bitterness of separation from his family--his noble wife,
always so worthy of him, and whom God had given for his companion and
his light, and his daughters, whom he adored with the tenderness and
passionate anxiety of an old soldier. Behold him transported at once
from his obscure and wearisome idleness into eternal activity, into a
splendor and a glory which no one can henceforth take from him! What a
triumphant exit from his exile here below! What a triumphant entry
into the heavenly country, the army of the elect, of the confessors of
the faith, the chevaliers of Christ! _Te martyrum candidatus laudat
exercitus._

  [Footnote 49: It is well known that on Sunday, the eve of his death,
  he assisted for the last time at the Benediction of the Blessed
  Sacrament, in the village church of Plouzel. He remained there
  kneeling through the whole office. On his return he read
  "_l'Histoire de l'Eglise_," by the Abbé Darras. It was his last
  reading. The volume was open, near his bed, when he rose to call a
  domestic to go for the parish priest, who barely arrived in time to
  receive his last sigh.]

How he now loves and esteems those fifteen years of human disgrace,
during which divine grace invaded his soul, and led him through thorns
and the cross, scoffs, jeers, disasters, bitterness, anguish, to the
Christian coronation of his career!

"I will go," said the Bishop of Orleans, in speaking of the graves of
the young soldiers of La Moricière, immolated under his eyes in his
last battle,--"I will go there, to cast a look toward heaven and
demand the triumph of justice and eternal honor on the earth; I will
go there to relieve my heart from its sadness and to strengthen my
soul in its faintings. I will learn from them to keep burning within
me zeal for the Church and zeal for souls,--to devote myself to the
struggle of truth and justice, even to the last whisper of my voice
and my last sigh."

And we will go, and the great and dear bishop will come with us;--we
{303} will go and ask, and learn all that we lack, near that grave
opened on the barren heath in Bretagne, at the foot of an unrecognized
cross, where lie the remains of the immortal chief of those
victims--of him who, as Duguesclin, Duguesclin his countryman, had
well deserved to sleep among the kings at Saint-Denis. So long as
there shall be a Christian France, that distant and solitary tomb will
appear to the soul clothed with a solemn grandeur and a touching
majesty. Far from the intoxications of the battle-field, far from the
theatre of his struggles and his successes, under that mound of earth
which will cover to the day of judgment that brave heart and that
victorious arm,--there, there with love it will go to invoke that
great soul, betrayed by fortune and magnified by sacrifice. It is
there that it will admire without reserve the warrior, the statesman,
who preserved unstained his honor--the honor of the soldier, of the
citizen, and of the Christian. It is there that it will be needful to
go to learn the emptiness of human hopes, and at the same time that
there is even in this world true greatness and real virtue. That grave
will tell us how necessary it is to despise iniquitous victories, and
to serve in the army of justice against the army of fortune; to
protest against enervating indolence, against servile compliances,
against the idolatry of Success; to place above the poor tinsel of a
false greatness fidelity to convictions deserted, to the torn flag of
liberty denied, to friends persecuted, to the proscribed, and to the
vanquished. That tomb will teach us, in the confusion and instability
of the present, to preserve before all things integrity of character,
which makes all the power and all the value of the man here below. But
from that tomb will come forth at the same time a harder and a more
necessary lesson still. It will teach us how to be gentle and strong
in adversity; to find calm and joy in suffering; to bear it without
depression and without sourness; to consent, where need is, to be only
a useless servant, and to gain thus eternal life. Yes, all this will
be revealed by the grave of him who will not be forgotten, because he
united in his life things too often separated; because he was not only
a great captain, a great servant of his country, a faithful soldier of
liberty, an honest man, a great citizen, but also a great Christian,
an humble and brave Christian, who loved his soul, and has saved it.

CH. DE MONTALEMBERT.

------
{304}


From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.


CHAPTER XVII.

When I had been a short time in my Lady Lumley's chamber, my Lord
Arundel sent for his granddaughter, who was wont, she told me, at that
hour to write letters for him; and I stayed alone with her ladyship,
who, as soon as Lady Surrey left us, thus broke forth in her praise:

"Hath any one, think you. Mistress Sherwood, ever pictured or imagined
a creature more noble, more toward in disposition, more virtuous in
all her actions, of greater courage in adversity or patience under
ill-usage than this one, which God hath sent to this house to cheer
two lonely hearts, whilst her own is well-nigh broken?"

"Oh, my Lady Lumley!" I exclaimed, "I fear some new misfortune hath
befallen this dear lady, who is indeed so rare a piece of goodness
that none can exceed in describing her deserts. Hitherto she hath
condescended to impart her sorrows to her poor friend; but to-day she
shut up her griefs in her own bosom, albeit I could read unspoken
suffering in every lineament of her sweet countenance."

"God forgive me," her ladyship replied, "if in speaking of her wrongs
I should entertain over-resentful feelings toward her ungracious
husband, whom once I did love as a mother, and very loth hath my heart
been to condemn him; but now, if it were not that I myself received
him in my arms what time he was born, whose life was the cause of my
sweet young sister's death, I should doubt he could be her son."

"What fresh injury," I timidly asked, "hath driven Lady Surrey from
her house?"

"_Her_ house no longer," quoth Lady Lumley. "She hath no house, no
home, no husband worthy of the name, and only an old man nigh unto the
grave, alas! and a poor feeble woman such as I am to raise a voice in
her behalf, who is spurned by one who should have loved and cherished
her, as twice before God's altar he vowed to do. Oh," cried the poor
lady, weeping, "she hath borne all things else with a sweet fortitude
which angels looking down on her must needs have wondered at. She
would ever be excusing this faithless husband with many pretty wiles
and loving subterfuges, making, sweet sophist, the worst appear the
better reason. 'Men must needs be pardoned,' she would say, when my
good father waxed wroth at his ill-usage of her, 'for such outward
neglect as many practice in these days toward their wives, for that it
was the fashion at the court to appear unhusbandly; but if women would
be patient, she would warrant them their love should be requited at
last.' And when news came that Phil had sold an estate for to
purchase--God save the mark!--a circlet of black pearls for the queen;
and Lord Arundel swore he should leave him none of his lands but what
by act of parliament he was compelled to do, she smiled winsomely, and
said: 'Yea, my lord, I pray you, let my dear Phil be a poor man as his
father wished him to be, and then, if it please God, we may live in a
cottage and be happy.' And so turned away his anger by soft words, for
he {305} laughed and answered: 'Heaven help thee. Nan! but I fear that
cottage must needs be Arundel Castle, for my hands are so tied therein
that thy knavish husband cannot fail to inherit it. And beshrew me if
I would either rob thee of it, mine own good Nan, or its old walls of
thy sweet presence when I shall be dead.' And so she always pleaded
for him, and never lost heart until . . . Oh, Mistress Sherwood, I
shall never forget the day when her uncle, Francis Dacre--wisely or
unwisely I know not, but surely meaning well--gave her to read in this
house, where she was spending a day, a letter which had fallen into
his hands, I wot not how, in the which Philip--God forgive
him!--expressed some kind of doubt if he was truly married to her or
not. Some wily wretch had, I ween, whispered to him, in an evil hour,
this accursed thought. When she saw this misdoubt written in his hand
she straightway fell down in a swoon, which recovering from, the first
thing she did was to ask for her cloak and hat, and would have walked
alone to her house if I had not stayed her almost by force, until Lord
Arundel's coach could be got ready for her. In less than two hours she
returned with so wan and death-like a countenance that it frighted me
to see her, and for some time she would not speak of what had passed
between her lord and herself; only she asked for to stay always in
this house, if it should please her grandfather, and not to part from
us any more. At the which speech I could but kiss her, and with many
tears protest that this should be the joyfullest news in the world to
Lord Arundel and to me, and what he would most desire, if it were not
for her grief, which, like an ill wind, yet did blow us this good.
'Yea,' she answered, with the deepest sigh which can be thought of, 'a
cold, withering blast which driveth me from the shelter which should
be mine! I have heard it said that when Cardinal Wolsey lay a-dying he
cried, "It were well with me now if I had served my God with the like
zeal with which I have served my king," or some words of that sort.
Oh, my Lady Lumley!' the poor child exclaimed, 'if I had not loved
Philip more than God and his Church, methinks I should not thus be
cast off!' 'Cast off,' I cried; 'and has my graceless nephew, then,
been so wicked?' 'Oh, he is changed,' she answered--'he is changed.
In his eyes, in his voice, I found not Philip's looks, nor Philip's
tones. Nought but harshness and impatience to dismiss me. The queen,
he said, was coming to rest at his house on her way to the city, and
he lacked leisure to listen to my complaints. Then I felt grief and
anger rise in my breast with such vehemency that I charged him, maybe
too suddenly, with the doubt he had expressed in his letter to my Lord
Oxford. His face flushed deeply; but drawing up haughtily, as one
aggrieved, he said the manner of our marrying had been so unusual that
there were some, and those persons well qualified to judge, who
misdoubted if there did not exist a flaw in its validity. That he
should himself be loth to think so, but that to seek at that moment to
prove the contrary, when his fortunes hung on a thread, would be to
ruin him.'

"There she paused, and clasped her hands together as if scarce able to
proceed; but soon raising her head, she related in a passionate manner
how her heart had then swelled well-nigh to bursting, pride and
tenderness restraining the utterance of such resentful thoughts as
rose in her when she remembered his father's last letter, wherein he
said his chief prop and stay in his fallen estate should be the wife
he had bestowed on him; of her own lands sold for the supply of his
prodigal courtiership; of her long patience and pleading for him to
others; and this his present treatment of her, which no wife could
brook, even if of mean birth and virtue, much loss one his equal in
condition, as well dowered as any in the land, {306} and as faithful
and tender to him as he did prove untoward to her. But none of these
reproaches passed her lips; for it was an impossible thing to her, she
said, to urge her own deserts, or so much as mention the fortune she
had brought him. Only twice she repeated, 'Ruin your fortunes, my
lord! ruin your fortunes! God help me, I had thought rather to mend
them!' And then, when he tried to answer her in some sort of evading
fashion, as if unsaying, and yet not wholly denying his former speech,
she broke forth (and in the relation of this scene the passion of her
grief renewed itself) in vehement adjurations, which seemed somewhat
to move him, not to be so unjust to her or to himself as to leave that
in uncertainty which so nearly touched both their honors; and if the
thought of a mutual love once existing between them, and a firm bond
of marriage relied on with unshaken security, and his father's dying
blessing on it, and the humble duty she had shown him from the time
she had borne his name, sufficed not to resolve him thereunto, yet for
the sake of justice to one fatherless and brotherless as herself, she
charged him without delay to make that clear which, left uncertain,
concerned her more nearly than fortune or state, and without which no,
not one day, would she abide in his house. Then the sweet soul said
she hoped, from his not ungracious silence and the working of his
features, which visibly revealed an inward struggle, that his next
words should have been of comfort to her; but when she had drawn nigh
to him, and, taking his hand, called him by his name with so much of
reproachful endearment as could be expressed in the utterance of it, a
gentleman broke into the room crying out: 'My lord, my lord, the
trumpets do sound! The queen's coach is in sight.' Upon which, she
said that, with a muttered oath, he started up and almost thrust her
from him, saying, 'For God's sake, be gone!' And by a back-door,' she
added, 'I went out of mine own house into the street, where I had left
my Lord Arundel's coach, and crept into it, very faint and giddy, the
while the queen's coach did enter the court with gay banners waving,
and striking-up of music, and the people crying out, "God bless the
queen!" I cry God mercy for it,' she said, 'but I could not say amen.'
Now she is resolved," my Lady Lumley continued, "never to set her foot
again in any of her husband's houses, except he doth himself entreat
her to it, and makes that matter clear touching his belief in the
validity of their marriage; and methinks she is right therein. My Lord
Arundel hath written to remonstrate with his grandson touching his
ill-usage of his lady, and hath also addressed her majesty thereupon.
But all the comment she did make on his letter, I have been told, was
this: 'That she had heard my Lord Arundel was in his dotage; and
verily she did now hold it to be so, for that she had never received a
more foolish letter; and she did pity the old white horse, which was
now only fit to be turned out to grass;' and other biting jests,
which, when a sovereign doth utter them, carry with them a rare
poignancy."

Then my Lady Lumley wiped her eyes, and bade me to be of good cheer,
and not to grieve overmuch for Lady Surrey's troubles (but all the
while her own tears continued to flow), for that she had so noble and
religious a disposition, with germs of so much virtue in it, that she
thought her to be one of those souls whom Almighty God draws to
himself by means of such trials as would sink common natures; and that
she had already marked how, in much prayer, ever-increasing good
works, and reading of books which treat of wholesome doctrine and
instruction, she presently recalled the teachings of her childhood,
and took occasion, when any Catholics came to the house, to converse
with them touching religion. Then, with many kind expressions, she
dismissed me; and on the stairs, as I went out, I met {307} Lady
Surrey, who noticed mine eyes to be red with weeping, and, embracing
me, said:

"I ween Lady Lumley hath been no hider of my griefs, good Constance,
and, i' faith, I am obliged to her if she hath told thee that which I
would fain not speak of, even to thee, dear wench. There are sorrows
best borne in silence; and since the last days we talked together mine
have grown to be of that sort. And so farewell for to-day, and may God
comfort thee in thy nobler troubles, and send his angels to thine
aid."

When I returned to Holborn, Mistress Ward met me with the news that
she had been to the prison, and heard that Mr. Watson was to be
strenuously examined on an approaching day--and it is well known what
that doth signify--touching the names of the persons which had
harbored him since his coming to England. And albeit he was now
purposed steadily to endure extreme torments sooner than to deny his
faith or injure others, she did so much apprehend the weakness of
nature should betray him, that her resolve was taken to attempt the
next day, or rather on the following night, to further his escape. But
how, she asked, could my father be dealt with in time touching that
matter? I told her I was to see him on the morrow, by means of an
order from Sir Francis Walsingham, and should then lay before him the
issues offered unto his election. She said she was very much contented
to hear it; and added, she must now secure boatmen to assist in the
escape who should be reliable Catholic men; and if in this she did
succeed, she feared not to fail in her design.

At the hour I had fixed upon with Hubert, on the next day, he came to
carry me to the prison at Bridewell. Mistress Ward prevailed on Mr.
Congleton to go thither with us, for she was loth to be seen there in
company with known persons, and added privily in mine ear, "The more
so at a time when it may happen I should get into trouble touching the
matter I have in hand." When we reached the place, Hubert presented to
the gaoler Sir Francis's letter, which was also signed by the
governor, and I was forthwith conducted to my father's cell. When I
entered it, and advanced toward that dear prisoner, I dared not in the
man's presence to show either the joy or grief I felt at that meeting,
but stood by his side like one deprived of the power of speech, and
only struggling to restrain my tears. I feared we should not have been
left alone, and then this interview should have proved of little use
or comfort; but after setting for me a chair, which he had sent
for--for there was only one small bench in the cell--this officer
withdrew, and locked the door on me and that dear parent, whose face
was very white and wan, but who spoke in as cheerful and kind a manner
as can be thought of, albeit taxing me with wilfulness for that I had
not complied with his behest that none should come to visit him. I
would not have the chair which had been sent for me--for I did hold
it to be an unbecoming thing for a daughter to sit down in her
father's presence (and he a priest), who had only a poor bench to rest
his limbs on--but placed myself on the ground at his feet; which at
first he misliked, but afterward said it should be as I pleased. Then,
after some affectionate speeches, wherein his great goodness toward me
was shown, and my answers to them, which disburthened my heart of some
of the weight which oppressed it, as did likewise the shedding of a
few tears on his hand, which was clasped in mine, I spoke, in case
time should press, of Sir Francis's offer, and the condition thereunto
attached, which I did with a trembling voice, and yet such indifferent
tones as I could affect, as if showing no leaning to one way of
thinking or the other, touching his acceptance of these terms. In the
brief time which did elapse between my speaking and his reply,
methinks I had an equal fear lest he should {308} assent or dissent
therein--filial love mightfully prompting me to desire his acceptance
of this means of deliverance, yet coupled with an apprehension that in
that case he should stand one degree less high in the favor of God and
the eyes of men. But I was angered with myself that I should have mine
own thoughts therein, or in any way form a judgment forestalling his,
which peradventure would see no evil in this concession; and
forecasting also the consequences which should ensue if he refused, I
resolved to move him thereunto by some such words as these: "My dearly
beloved father, if it be possible, I pray you yield this small matter
to those that seek to save your life. Let the minister come to satisfy
Sir Francis, and all shall be well, yea, without your speaking one
word, or by so much as one look assenting to his arguments."

I dared not to meet his eyes, which he fixed on me, but kept kissing
his hand whilst he said: "Daughter Constance, labor not to move me in
this matter; for far above all other things I may have to suffer,
nothing would touch me so near, or be so grievous to me, as to see
you, my well-beloved child, try to persuade me unto that which in
respect of my soul I will never consent to. For, I pray you, first as
regards religion, can I suffer any to think, albeit I should give no
cause for it but silence, that my faith is in any wise shaken, which
peradventure would prove a stumbling-block to others? or, touching
truth and honesty, shall I accept life and freedom on some such
supposition as that I am like to change my religion, when I should as
soon think to cast myself into hell of mine own free will as to deny
one point of Catholic belief? No, no, mine own good child; 'tis a
narrow path which doth lead to heaven, and maybe it shall prove
exceeding narrow for me ere I reach its end, and not over easy to the
feet or pleasant to the eye; but God defend I should by so much as one
hair's-breadth overpass a narrowness which tendeth to so good a
conclusion; and verily, to be short, my good child, tender my thanks
to Sir Francis Walsingham--who I doubt not meaneth excellently well by
me--and to young Master Rookwood, who hath dealt with him therein;
but tell them I am very well pleased with my present abode as long as
it shall please God to keep me in this world; and when he willeth me
to leave it, believe me, daughter Constance, the quickest road to
heaven shall be the most pleasing to me."

His manner was so resolved that I urged him no further, and only
heaved a deep sigh. Then he said, kindly: "Come, mine own good child,
give me so much comfort as to let me hear that thou art of the same
way of thinking in this matter as thy unworthy but very resolved
father."

"My dear father," I replied, "methinks I never loved you so well, or
honored you one half so much as now, when you have cast off all human
consolation, yea, and a certain hope of deliverance, rather than give
occasion to the enemies of our faith to boast they had prevailed on
you, in ever so small a matter, to falter in the open profession
thereof; and I pray God, if ever I should be in a like plight, I may
not prove myself to be otherwise than your true child in spirit as in
nature. As to what shall now follow your refusal, it lieth in God's
hands, and I know he can deliver you, if he doth will it, from this
great peril you are in."

"There's my brave wench," quoth he then, laying his scarred hand on my
head; "thy mother had a prophetic spirit, I ween, when she said of
thee when yet a puling girl, 'As her days, so shall her strength be.'
Verily God is very good, who hath granted us these moments of peaceful
converse in a place where we had once little thought for to meet."

As I looked upon him, sitting on a poor bench in that comfortless
cell, his noble fair visage oldened by hardships and toils rather than
years, his eyes so full of peace, yea of contentment, that {309} joy
seemed to beam in them, I thought of the words of Holy Writ, which do
foretell which shall be said hereafter of the just by such as have
afflicted them and taken away their labors: "There are they whom we
had some time in derision and for a parable of reproach. We fools
esteemed their life madness and their end without honor. Behold, how
they are numbered with the children of God, and their lot amongst the
saints."

At that time a knock against the wall was heard, and my father set his
ear against it, counting the number of such knocks; for it was Mr.
Watson, he said, beginning to converse with him in their wonted
fashion. "I will tell him I am engaged," quoth he, in his turn tapping
in the same manner. "But peradventure he hath somewhat to
communicate," I said.

"No," he answered, "for in that case he would have knocked three times
at first, for on this signal we have agreed." Smiling, he added, "We
do confess to each other in this way. 'Tis somewhat tedious, I do
admit; but thanks be to God we lack not leisure here for such duties."

Then I briefly told him of Mistress Ward's intent to procure Mr.
Watson's escape.

"Ay," he said, "I am privy to it, and I do pray God it may succeed. It
should be to me the greatest joy in the world to hear that good man
was set free, or made free by any good means."

"Then," I added, "will you not join in the attempt, if so be she can
convey to you a cord? and the same boat should carry you both off."

"Nay," he replied; "for more reasons than one I am resolved against
that in mine own case which in Mr. Watson's I do commend. This
enterprise must needs bring that good woman, Mrs. Ward, into some sort
of danger, which she doth well to run for his sake, and which he doth
not wrong to consent unto, she being of a willing mind to encounter
it. For if the extremity of torture should extort the admissions they
do seek from him, many should then grievously suffer, and mostly his
own soul. But I have that trust in God, who hath given me in all my
late perils what nature had verily not furnished me with, an undaunted
spirit to meet sufferings with somewhat more than fortitude, with a
very great joy such as his grace can only bestow, that he will
continue to do so, whatever straits I do find myself in; and being so
minded, I am resolved not again by mine own doing to put mine own and
others' lives in jeopardy; but to take what he shall send in the
ordinary course of things, throwing all my care on him, without whose
knowledge and will not so much as one hair of our heads doth fall to
the ground. But I am glad to be privy to the matter in hand for Mr.
Watson, so as to pray for him this day and night, and also for that
noble soul who doth show herself so true a Christian in her care for
his weal and salvation."

Then, changing to other themes, he inquired of me at some length
touching the passages of my life since he had parted with me, and my
dispositions touching the state of life I was about to embrace,
concerning which he gave me the most profitable instructions which can
be thought of, and rules of virtue, which, albeit imperfectly
observed, have proved of so great and wholesome guidance to my
inexperienced years that I do stand more indebted to him for this fine
advice, there given me, than for all other benefits besides. He then
spoke of Edmund Genings, who, by a special dispensation of the Pope,
had lately been ordained priest, being but twenty-three years of age,
and said the preparation he had made for receiving this holy order was
very great, and the impression the greatness of the charge made upon
his mind so strong, that it produced a wonderful effect in his very
body, affecting for a time his health. He was infirmarian at Rheims,
and labored among the sick students, a very model of piety and {310}
humility; but _vivamus in spe_ was still, as heretofore, his motto,
and that hope in which he lived was to be sent upon the English
mission. These, my father said, were the last tidings he had heard of
him. His mother he did believe was dead, and his younger brother had
left La Rochelle and was in Paris, leading a more gay life than was
desirable. "And now I pray you, mine own dear honored father," I said,
"favor me, I beseech you, with a recital of your own haps since you
landed in England, and I ceased to receive letters from you." He
condescended to my request, in the words which do follow:

"Well, my good child, I arrived in this country one year and five
months back, having by earnest suit and no small difficulty obtained
from my superiors to be sent on the English mission; for by reason of
the weakness of my health, and some use I was of in the college, owing
to my acquaintanceship with the French and the English languages, Dr.
Allen was loth to permit my departure. I crossed the seas in a small
merchant-vessel, and landed at Lynn. The port-officers searched me to
the skin, and found nothing on me; but one Sledd, an informer, which
had met me in an inn at Honfleur, where I had lodged for some days
before sailing for England, had taken my marks very precisely; and
arriving in London some time before I landed in Norfolk, having been
stayed by contrary winds in my longer passage, he there presented my
name and marks; upon which the queen's council sent to the searchers
of the ports. These found the said marks very apparent in me; but for
the avoiding of charges, the mayor of the place, one Mr. Alcock, and
Rawlins the searcher, requested a gentleman which had landed at the
same time with me, and who called himself Haward, to carry me as a
prisoner to the lord-lieutenant of the county. He agreed very easily
thereunto; but as soon as we were out of the town, 'I cannot,' says
this gentleman, 'in conscience, nor will not, being myself a Catholic,
deliver you, a Catholic priest, prisoner to the lord-lieutenant. But
we will go straight to Norwich, and when we come there, shift for
yourself, as I will do for myself.'

"Coming to Norwich, I went immediately to one of the gaols, and
conferred with a Catholic, a friend of mine, which by chance I found
out to be there imprisoned for recusancy. I recounted to him the order
of my apprehension and escape; and he told me that in conscience I
could not make that escape, and persuaded me I ought to yield myself
prisoner; whereupon I went to my friend Haward, whom, through the
aforesaid Catholic prisoner, I found to be no other than Dr. Ely, a
professor of canon and civil law at Douay. I requested him to deliver
to me the mayor's letter to the lord-lieutenant. 'Why, what will you
do with it?' said he. 'I will go,' I said, 'and carry it to him, and
yield myself a prisoner; for I am not satisfied I can make this escape
in conscience, having had a contrary opinion thereon.' And I told him
what that prisoner I had just seen had urged. 'Why,' said Haward,
'this counsel which hath been given you proceedeth, I confess, from a
zealous mind; but I doubt whether it carrieth with it the weight of
knowledge. You shall not have the letter, nor you may not in
conscience yield yourself to the persecutors, having so good means
offered to escape their cruelty.' But as I still persisted in my
demand, 'Well,' said Mr. Haward, 'seeing you will not be turned by me
from this opinion, let us go first and consult with such a man,' and
he named one newly come over, who was concealed at the house of a
Catholic not very far off. This was a man of singular wit aid
learning, and of such rare virtues that I honored and reverenced him
greatly, which Mr. Haward perceiving, he said, with a smile, 'If he be
of your opinion, you shall have the letter, and go in God's name!'
When we came {311} to him, he utterly disliked of my intention, and
dissuaded me from what he said was a fond cogitation. So being
assuaged, I went quietly about my business, and travelled for the
space of more than a year from one Catholic house to another in
Norfolk and Suffolk, ministering the sacraments to recusants, and
reconciling many to the Church, which, from fear or lack of
instruction or spiritual counsel, or only indifferency, had conformed
to the times. Methinks, daughter Constance, for one such year a man
should be willing to lay down a thousand lives, albeit, or rather
because, as St. Paul saith, he be 'in journeyings often, in perils
from his own nation, in perils from false brethren' (oh, how true and
applicable do these words prove to the Catholics of this land!), 'in
perils in the city, in perils of the wilderness, in perils of the
sea.' And if it pleases God now to send me labors of another sort, so
that I may be in prisons frequently, in stripes above measure, and,
finally, in death itself, his true servant,--oh, believe me, my good
child, the right fair house I once had, with its library and garden
and orchard, and everything so handsome about us, and the company of
thy sweet mother, and thy winsome childish looks of love, never gave
me so much heartfelt joy and comfort as the new similitude I
experience, and greater I hope to come, to my loved and only Master's
sufferings and death!"

At this time of his recital my tears flowed abundantly; but with an
imparted sweetness, which, like a reflected light, shone from his soul
on mine. But to stay my weeping he changed his tone, and said with
good cheer:

"Come now, my wench, I will presently make thee merry by the recital
of a strait in which I once found myself, and which maketh me to laugh
to think on it, albeit at the time, I warrant thee, it was like to
prove no laughable matter. It happened that year I speak of that I was
once secretly sent for by a courtlike gentleman of good wealth that
had lived in much bravery, and was then sick and lying in great pain.
He had fallen into a vehement agitation and deep study of the life to
come; and thereupon called for a priest--for in mind and opinion he
was Catholic--that he might learn from him to die well. According to
the custom of the Church, I did admonish him, among other things, that
if he had any way hurt or injured any man, or unjustly possessed other
men's goods, he should go about by-and-by to make restitution
according to his ability. He agreed to do so, and called to mind that
he had taken away something from a certain Calvinist, under pretence
of law indeed, but not under any good assurance for a Catholic
conscience to trust to. Therefore, he took order for restitution to be
made, and died. The widow, his wife, was very anxious to accomplish
her husband's will; but being afraid to commit the matter to any one,
her perplexed mind was entangled in briers of doubtfulness. She one
day declared her grief unto me, and beseeched me, for God's sake, to
help her with my counsel and travail. So, seeing her distress, I
proffered to put myself in any peril that might befall in the doing of
this thing; but, indeed, persuaded myself that no man would be so
perverse as of a benefit to desire revengement. Therefore committing
the matter to God, I mounted on horseback, and away I went on my
journey. When I came to the town where the man did dwell to whom the
money was to be delivered, I set up my horse in the next inn, that I
might be readier at hand to scape immediately after my business was
despatched. I then went to the creditor's house, and called the man
forth alone, taking him by the hand and leading him aside from the
company of others. Then I declared to him that I had money for him,
which I would deliver into his hands with this condition, that he
inquired no further either who sent or who brought it unto him, or
what {312} the cause and matter was, but only receive the money and
use it as his own. The old fellow promised fair, and with a good will
gave his word faithfully so to do, and with many thanks sent me away.
With all the speed I was able to make, I hastened to mine host's
house, for to catch hold of my horse and fly away. But forthwith the
deceitful old fellow betrayed me, and sent men after to apprehend me,
not supposing me this time to be a priest, but making the surmise
against me that forsooth I was not a man but a devil, which had
brought money of mine own making to bewitch him. All the people of the
town, when they heard the rumor, confirmed the argument, with this
proof among others, that I had a black horse, and gave orders for to
watch the animal diligently, whether he did eat hay as other horses,
or no. As for me, they put a horse-lock about my leg, shut me up close
in a strong chamber, and appointed a fellow to be with me continually,
night and day, which should watch if I did put off my boots at any
time, and if my feet were like horses' feet, or that I was
cloven-footed, or had feet slit and forked as beasts have; for this
they affirmed to be a special mark whereby to know the devil when he
lieth lurking under the shape and likeness of a man. Then the people
assembled about the house in great numbers, and proffered money
largely that they might see this monster with their own eyes; for by
this time they were persuaded that I was indeed an ill spirit, or the
very devil. 'For what man was ever heard of,' said they, 'which, if he
had the mind, understanding, and sense of a man, would, of his own
voluntary will, and without any respect or consideration at all, give
or proffer such a sum of money to a man utterly unknown?' God knowcth
what should have ensued if some hours later it had not chanced that
Sir Henry Stafford did ride into the town, and, seeing a great
concourse of people at the door of the inn, he stopped to inquire into
the cause; which when it was related to him, he said he was a
magistrate, and should himself examine, face to face, this limb of
Satan. So I was taken before him into the parlor; and being alone with
him, and knowing him to be well-disposed in religion, albeit
conforming to the times, I explained in a general manner what sort of
an errand had brought me to that place. Methinks he guessed me to be a
priest, although he said nothing thereon, but only licensed me to
depart and go away whither I would, himself letting me out of the
house through a back-door. I have heard since that he harangued the
people from the balcony, and told them, that whilst he was examining
me a strong smell of sulphur had come into the chamber, and a pack of
devils carried me off through the window into the air; and he doubted
not I had by that time returned to mine own lodging in hell. Which he
did, I knew, for to prevent their pursuing me and using such violence
as he might not have had means to hinder."

"It was not, then," I asked, "on this occasion you were apprehended
and taken to Wisbeach?"

"No," he answered; "nor indeed can I be said to have been apprehended
at all, for it happened in this wise that I became a prisoner. I was
one day in Norwich, whither I had gone to baptize a child, and, as
Providence would have it, met with Haward, by whose means I had been
set at liberty one year before. After ordinary salutations, he said to
me, 'Mr. Tunstall' (for by that name only he knew me), 'the host of
the inn where you were taken last year says I have undone him, by
suffering the prisoner I had promised to deliver to escape; for he
having been my surety with the mayor, he is threatened with eight
months' imprisonment, or the payment of a large fine. He hath come to
this town for to seek me, and hath seized upon me on this charge; so
that I be only at liberty for six hours, for I {313} promised that I
would bring you to him by four o'clock (a Catholic merchant yielding
him security thereof), or else that I should deliver him my body
again. 'I am content,' he said, 'so that I have one of you two.' So
either you, Mr. Tunstall, or I, must needs go to prison. You know my
state and condition, and may guess how I shall be treated, if once I
appear under my right name before them. You know, also, your own
state. Now, it is in your choice whether of us shall go; for one must
go; there is no remedy; and to force you I will not, for I had rather
sustain any punishment whatsoever.' 'Now God be blessed,' I cried,
'that he hath thrown me in your way at this time, for I should never
while I lived have been without scruple if you had gone to prison in
my stead. Nothing grieveth me in this but that I have not finished off
some business I had in this town touching a person in some distress of
mind.' 'Why,' said Haward, 'it is but ten o'clock yet; you may
despatch your business by four of the clock, and then you may go to
the sign of the Star and inquire for one Mr. Andrews, the
lord-lieutenant's deputy, and to him you may surrender yourself.' 'So
I will,' I said; and so we parted. At four of the clock I surrendered
myself, and was straightway despatched to Wisbeach Castle, where I
remained for three months. A message reached me there that a Catholic
which had led a very wicked life, and was lying on his death-bed, was
almost beside himself for that he could get no priest to come to him.
The person which delivered this advertisement left some ropes with me,
by which means I escaped out of the window into the moat with such
damage to my hands that I was like to lose the use of them, and
perhaps of my life, if these wounds had mortified before good Lady
l'Estrange dressed them. But I reached the poor sinner, which had
proved the occasion of my escaping, in time for to give him
absolution, and from Mr. Rugeley's house visited many Catholics in
that neighborhood. The rest is well known to thee, my good child. . . ."

As he was speaking these words the door of the cell opened, and the
gaoler advertised me I could tarry no longer; so, with many blessings,
my dear father dismissed me, and I went home with Mr. Congleton and
Hubert, who anxiously inquired what his answer had been to the
proposal I had carried to him.

"A most resolved denial of the conditions attached to it," I said,
"joined to many grateful acknowledgments to Sir Francis and to you
also for your efforts in his favor."

"'Tis madness!" he exclaimed.

"Yea," I answered, "such madness as the heathen governor did charge
St. Paul with."

And so no more passed between us whilst we rode back to Holborn. Mr.
Congleton put questions to me touching my father's health and his
looks,--if he seemed of good cheer, and spoke merrily as he used to
do; and then we all continued silent. When we arrived at Ely Place,
Hubert refused to come into the house, but detained me on the outward
steps, as if desirous to converse with me alone. Thinking I had spoken
to him in the coach in an abrupt manner which savored of ingratitude,
I said more gently, "I am very much beholden to you, Hubert, for your
well-meaning toward my father."

"I would fain continue to help you," he answered in an agitated voice.
"Constance," he exclaimed, after a pause, "your father is in a very
dangerous plight."

"I know it," said I, quickly; "but I know, too, he is resolved and
content to die rather than swerve an inch from his duty to God and his
Church."

"But," quoth he then, "do you wish to save him?"

I looked at him amazed. "Wish it! God knoweth that to see him in
safety I would have my hand cut off,--yea, and my head also."

{314}

"What, and rob him of his expectant crown--the martyr's palm, and all
the rest of it?" he said, with a perceptible sneer.

"Hubert!" I passionately exclaimed, "you are investigable to me; you
chill my soul with your half-uttered sentences and uncertain meanings!
Once, I remember, you could speak nobly,--yea, and feel so too, as
much as any one. Heaven shield you be not wholly changed!"

"Changed!" quoth he, in a low voice, "I am changed;" and then abruptly
altering his manner, and leaving me in doubt as to the change he did
intend to speak of, he pressed me to take no measures touching my
father's release till he had spoken with me again; for he said if his
real name became known, or others dealt in the matter, all hope on Sir
Francis's side should be at an end. He then asked me if I had heard of
Basil lately. I told him of the letter I had had from him at
Kenninghall some weeks back. He said a report had reached him that he
had landed at Dover and was coming to London; but he hoped it was not
true, for that Sir Henry Stafford was very urgent he should continue
abroad till the expiration of his wardship.

I said, "If he was returned, it must surely be for some sufficient
cause, but that I had heard nothing thereof, and had no reason to
expect it."

"But you would know it, I presume, if he was in London?" he urged. I
misliked his manner, which always put me in mind of one in the dark,
which feeleth his way as he advances, and goeth not straight to the
point.

"_Is_ Basil in England?" I inquired, fixing mine eyes on him, and with
a flutter at my heart from the thought that it should be possible.

"I heard he was," he answered in a careless tone; "but I think it not
to be true. If he should come whilst this matter is in hand, I do
conjure you, Constance, if you value your father's existence and
Basil's also, let him not into this secret."

"Wherefore not?" I quickly answered. "Why should one meet to be
trusted, and by me above all other persons in the world, be kept
ignorant of what so nearly doth touch me?"

"Because," he said, "there is a rashness in his nature which will
assuredly cause him to run headlong into danger if not forcibly
withheld from the occasions of it."

"I have seen no tokens of such rashness as you speak of in him," I
replied; "only of a boldness such as well becomes a Christian and a
gentleman."

"Constance Sherwood!" Hubert exclaimed, and seized hold of my hand
with a vehemency which caused me to start, "I do entreat you, yea, on
my bended knees, if needs be, I will beseech you to beware of that
indomitable and resolved spirit which sets at defiance restraint,
prudence, pity even; which leads you to brave your friends, spurn
wholesome counsel, rush headlong into perils which I forewarn you do
hang thickly about your path. If I can conjure them, I care not by
what means, I will do so; but for the sake of all you do hold dear,
curb your natural impetuosity, which may prove the undoing of those
you most desire to serve."

There was a plausibility in this speech, and in mine own knowledge of
myself some sort of a confirmation of what he did charge me with,
which inclined me somewhat to diffide of mine own judgment in this
matter, and not to turn a wholly deaf ear to his advertisement. He had
the most persuasive tongue in the world, and a rare art at
representing things under whatever aspect he chose. He dealt so
cunningly therein with me that day, and used so many ingenious
arguments, that I said I should be very careful how I disclosed
anything to Basil or any one else touching my father's imprisonment,
who Mr. Tunstall was, and my near concern in his fate; but would give
no promise thereupon: so he was forced to content himself with as much
as he could obtain, and {315} withdrew himself for that day, he said;
but promised to return on the morrow.



CHAPTER XVIII.

When at last I entered the house I sought Mistress Ward; for I desired
to hear what assistance she had procured for the escape of the
prisoners, and to inform her of my father's resolved purpose not
himself to attempt this flight, albeit commending her for moving Mr.
Watson to it and assisting him therein. Not finding her in the parlor,
nor in her bed-chamber, I opened the door of my aunt's room, who was
now very weak, and yet more so in mind than in body. She was lying
with her eyes shut, and Mistress Ward standing by her bedside. I
marked her intent gaze on the aged, placid face of the poor lady, and
one tear I saw roll down her cheek. Then she stooped to kiss her
forehead. A noise I made with the handle of the door caused her to
turn round, and hastening toward me, she took me by the hand and led
me to her chamber, where Muriel was folding some biscuits and cakes in
paper and stowing them in a basket. The thought came to me of the
first day I had arrived in London, and the comfort I had found in this
room, when all except her were strangers to me in that house. She sat
down betwixt Muriel and me, and smiling, said: "Now, mine own dear
children, for such my heart holds you both to be, and ever will whilst
I live, I am come here for to tell you that I purpose not to return to
this house to-night, nor can I foresee when, if ever, I shall be free
to do so."

"O, what dismal news!" I exclaimed, "and more sad than I did expect."

Muriel said nothing, but lifting her hand to her lips kissed it.

"You both know," she continued, "that in order to save one in cruel
risk and temptation of apostasy, and others perhaps, also, whom his
possible speaking should imperil, I be about to put myself in some
kind of danger, who of all persons in the world possess the best right
to do so, as having neither parents, or husband, or children, or any
on earth who depend on my care. Yea, it is true," she added, fixing
her eyes on Muriel's composed, but oh how sorrowful, countenance,
"none dependent on my care, albeit some very dear to me, and which
hang on me, and I on them, in the way of fond affection. God knoweth
my heart, and that it is very closely and tenderly entwined about each
one in this house. Good Mr. Congleton and your dear mother, who hath
clung to me so long, though I thank God not so much of late by reason
of the weakening of her mind, which hath ceased greatly to notice
changes about her, and you, Constance, my good child, since your
coming hither a little lass commended to my keeping. . . . ." There
she stopped; and I felt she could not name Muriel, or then so much as
look on her; for if ever two souls were bound together by an
unperishable bond of affection, begun on earth to last in heaven,
theirs were so united. I ween Muriel was already acquainted with her
purpose, for she asked no questions thereon; whereas I exclaimed, "I
do very well know, good Mistress Ward, what perils you do run in this
charitable enterprise; but wherefore, I pray you, this final manner of
parting? God's providence may shield you from harm in this passage,
and, indeed, human probability should lead us to hope for your safety
if becoming precautions be observed. Then why, I say, this certain
farewell?"

"Because," she answered, "whatever comes of this night's enterprise, I
return not to this house."

"And wherefore not?" I cried; "this is indeed a cruel resolve, a hard
misfortune."

"Heretofore," she answered, "I had noways offended against the laws of
the country, except in respect {316} of recusancy, wherein all here
are alike involved; but by mine act tonight I do expose myself to so
serious a charge (conscience obliging me to prefer the law of divine
charity to that of human authority), that I may at any time and
without the least hope of mercy be exposed to detection and
apprehension; and so am resolved not to draw down sorrow and obloquy
on the gray hairs of my closest friends and on your young years such
perils as I do willingly in mine own person incur, but would not have
others to be involved in. Therefore I will lodge, leastwise for a
time, with one who feareth not any more than I do persecution, who
hath no ties and little or nothing on earth to lose, and if she had
would willingly yield it a thousand times over for to save a soul for
whom Christ died. Nor will I have you privy, my dear children, to the
place of mine abode, that if questioned on it you may with truth aver
yourselves to be ignorant thereof. And now," she said, turning to me,
"is Mr. Sherwood willing for to try to escape by the same means as Mr.
Watson? for methinks I have found a way to convey to him a cord, and,
by means of the management he knoweth of instructions how to use it."

"Nay," I answered, "he will not himself avail himself of this means,
albeit he is much rejoiced you have it in hand for Mr. Watson's
deliverance from his tormentors; and he doth pray fervently for it to
succeed."

"Everything promiseth well," she replied. "I dealt this day with an
honest Catholic boatman, a servant of Mr. Hodgson, who is willing to
assist in it. Two men are needed for to row the boat with so much
speed as shall be necessary to carry it quickly beyond reach of
pursuers. He knoweth none of his own craft which should be reliable or
else disposed to risk the enterprise; but he says at a house of resort
for Catholics which he doth frequent, he chanced to fall in with a
young gentleman, lately landed from France, whom he doth make sure
will lend his aid in it. As dextrous a man," he saith, "to handle an
oar, and of as courageous a spirit, as can be found in England."

As soon as she had uttered these words, I thought of what Hubert had
said touching a report of Basil being in London and of his rashness in
plunging into dangers; a cold shiver ran through me. "Did he tell you
this gentleman's name?" I asked.

"No," she answered, "he would not mention it; but only that he was one
who could be trusted with the lives of ten thousand persons, and so
zealous a Catholic he would any day risk his life to do some good
service to a priest."

"And hath this boatman promised," I inquired, "to wait for Mr. Watson
and convey him away?"

"Yea, most strictly," she answered, "at twelve o'clock of the night he
and his companion shall approach a boat to the side of some
scaffolding which lieth under the wall of the prison; and when the
clock of the tower striketh, Mr. Watson shall open his window, the
bars of which he hath found it possible to remove, and by means of the
cord, which is of the length he measured should be necessary, he will
let himself down on the planks, whence he can step into the boat, and
be carried to a place of concealment in a close part of the city till
it shall be convenient for him to cross the sea to France."

"Must you go?" I said, seeing her rise, and feeling a dull hard
heaviness at my heart which did well-nigh impede my utterance. I was
not willing to let her know the fear I had conceived; "of what use
should it be," I inwardly argued, "to disturb her in the discharge of
her perilous task by a surmise which might prove groundless; and,
indeed, were it certainly true, could she, nay, would she, alter her
intent, or could I so much as ask her to do it?" Whilst, with Muriel's
assistance, she concluded the packing of her basket, wherein the
weighty cord was concealed in an ingenious {317} manner, I stood by
watching the doing of it, fearing to see her depart, yet unable to
think of any means by which to delay that which I could not, even if I
had willed it, prevent. When the last contents were placed in the
basket, and Muriel was pressing down the lid, I said: "Do you,
peradventure, know the name of the inn where you said that gentleman
doth tarry which the boatman spake of?"

"No," she replied; "nor so much as where the good boatman himself
lodgeth. I met with him at Mr. Hodgson's house, and there made this
agreement."

"But if," I said, "it should happen by any reason that Mr. Watson
changed his mind, how should you, then, inform him of it?"

"In that case," she answered, "he would hang a white kerchief outside
his window, by which they should be advertised to withdraw themselves.
And now," she added, "I have always been of the way of thinking that
farewells should be brief; and 'God speed you,' and 'God bless you,'
enough for those which do hope, if it shall please God, on earth, but
for a surety in heaven, to meet again."

So, kissing us both somewhat hurriedly, she took up her basket on her
arm, and said she should send a messenger on the morrow for her
clothes; at which Muriel, for the first time, shed some tears, which
was an instance of what I have often noticed, that grief, howsoever
heavy, doth not always overflow in the eyes unless some familiar words
or homely circumstance doth substantiate the verity of a sorrow known
indeed, but not wholly apparent till its common effects be seen. Then
we two sat awhile alone in that empty chamber--empty of her which for
so long years had tenanted it to our no small comfort and benefit.
When the light waned, Muriel lit a candle, and said she must go for to
attend on her mother, for that duty did now devolve chiefly on her;
and I could see in her sad but composed face the conquering peace
which doth exceed all human consolation.

For mine own part, I was so unhinged by doubtful suspense that I
lacked ability to employ my mind in reading or my fingers in
stitch-work; and so descended for relief into the garden, where I
wandered to and fro like an uneasy ghost, seeking rest but finding
none. The dried shaking leaves made a light noise in falling, which
caused me each time to think I heard a footstep behind me. And despite
the increasing darkness, after I had paced up and down for near unto
an hour, some one verily did come walking along the alley where I was,
seeking to overtake me. Turning round I perceived it to be mine own
dear aged friend, Mr. Roper. Oh, what great comfort I experienced in
the sight of this good man! How eager was my greeting of him! How full
my heart as I poured into his ear the narrative of the passages which
had befallen me since we had met! Of the most weighty he knew
somewhat; but nothing of the last haunting fear I had lest my dear
Basil should be in London, and this very night engaged in the perilous
attempt to carry off Mr. Watson. When I told him of it, he started and
exclaimed:

"God defend it!" but quickly corrected himself and cried, "God's
mercy, that my first feeling should have led me to think rather of
Basil's safety than of the fine spirit he showed in all instances
where a good action had to be done, or a service rendered to those in
affliction."

"Indeed, Mr. Roper," I said, as he led me back to the house and into
the solitary parlor (where my uncle now seldom came, but remained
sitting alone in his library, chiefly engaged in praying and reading),
"I do condemn mine own weakness in this, and pray God to give me
strength for what may come upon us; but I do promise you 'tis no easy
matter to carry always so high a heart that it shall not sink with
human fears and griefs in such passages as these."

{318}

"My dear," the good man answered, "God knoweth 'tis no easy matter to
attain to the courage you speak of. I have myself seen the sweetest,
the lovingest, and the most brave creature which ever did breathe give
marks of extraordinary sorrow when her father, that generous martyr of
Christ, was to die."

"I pray you tell me," I answered, "what her behavior was like in that
trial; for to converse on such themes doth allay somewhat the torment
of suspense, and I may learn lessons from her example, who, you say,
joined to natural weakness so courageous a spirit in like straits."

Upon which he, willing to divert and yet not violently change the
current of my thoughts, spake as followeth:

"On the day when Sir Thomas More came from Westminster to the
Tower-ward, my wife, desirous to see her father, whom she thought she
should never see in this world after, and also to have his final
blessing, gave attendance about the wharf where she knew he should
pass before he could enter into the Tower. As soon as she saw him,
after his blessing upon her knees reverently received, hastening
toward him without care or consideration of herself, passing in
amongst the throng and company of the guard, she ran to him and took
him about the neck and kissed him; who, well liking her most natural
and dear daughterly affection toward him, gave her his fatherly
blessing and godly words of comfort beside; from whom, after she was
departed, not satisfied with the former sight of him, and like one
that had forgotten herself, being all ravished with the entire love of
her father, suddenly turned back again, ran to him as before, took him
about the neck, and divers times kissed him lovingly, till at last,
with a full and heavy heart, she was fain to depart from him; the
beholding thereof was to many that were present so lamentable, and
mostly so to me, that for very sorrow we could not forbear to weep
with her. The wife of John Harris, Sir Thomas's secretary, was moved
to such a transport of grief, that she suddenly flew to his neck and
kissed him, as he had reclined his head on his daughter's shoulder;
and he who, in the midst of the greatest straits, had ever a merry
manner of speaking, cried, 'This is kind, albeit rather unpolitely
done.'"

"And the day he suffered," I asked, "what was this good daughter's
behavior?"

"She went," quoth he, "to the different churches, and distributed
abundant alms to the poor. When she had given all her money away, she
withdrew to pray in a certain church, where she on a sudden did
remember she had no linen in which to wrap up her father's body. She
had heard that the remains of the Bishop of Rochester had been thrown
into the ground, without priest, cross, lights, or shroud, for the
dread of the king had prevented his relations from attempting to bury
him. But Margaret resolved her father's body should not meet with such
unchristian treatment. Her maid advised her to buy some linen in the
next shop, albeit having given away all her money to the poor, there
was no likelihood she should get credit from strangers. She ventured,
howsoever, and having agreed about the price, she put her hand in her
pocket, which she knew was empty, to show she forgot the money, and
ask credit under that pretence. But to her surprise, she found in her
purse the exact price of the linen, neither more or less; and so
buried the martyr of Christ with honor, nor was there any one so
inhuman found as to hinder her."

"Mr. Roper," I said, when he had ended his recital, "methinks this
angelic lady's trial was most hard: but how much harder should it yet
have been if you, her husband, had been in a like peril at that time
as her father?"

{319}

A half kind of melancholy, half smiling look came into the good old
man's face as he answered:

"Her father was Sir Thomas More, and he so worthy of a daughter's
passionate love, and the affection betwixt them so entire and
absolute, compounded of filial love on her part, unmitigated
reverence, and unrestrained confidence, that there was left in her
heart no great space for wifely doating. But to be moderately
affectioned by such a woman, and to stand next in her esteem to her
incomparable father, was of greater honor and worth to her unworthy
husband, than should have been the undivided, yea idolatrous, love of
one not so perfect as herself."

After a pause, during which his thoughts, I ween, reverted to the
past, and mine investigated mine own soul, I said to Mr. Roper:

"Think you, sir, that love to be idolatrous which is indeed so
absolute that it should be no difficulty to die for him who doth
inspire it; which would prefer a prison in his company, howsoever dark
and loathsome (yea consider it a very paradise), to the beautifullest
palace in the world, which without him would seem nothing but a vile
dungeon; which should with a good-will suffer all the torments in the
world for to see the object of its affection enjoy good men's esteem
on earth, and a noble place in heaven; but which should be,
nevertheless, founded and so wholly built up on a high estimate of his
virtues; on the quality he holdeth of God's servant; on the likeness
of Christ stamped on his soul, and each day exemplified in his manner
of living, that albeit to lose his love or his company in this world
should be like the uprooting of all happiness and turning the
brightness of noonday to the darkness of the night, it should a
thousand times rather endure this mishap than that the least shade or
approach of a stain should alter the unsullied opinion till then held
of his perfections?"

Mr. Roper smiled, and said that was a too weighty question to answer
at once; for he should be loth to condemn or yet altogether to absolve
from some degree of overweeningness such an affection as I described,
which did seem indeed to savor somewhat of excess; but yet if noble in
its uses and held in subjection to the higher claims of the Creator,
whose perfections the creature doth at best only imperfectly mirror,
it might be commendable and a means of attaining ourselves to the like
virtues we doated on in another.

As he did utter these words a servant came into the parlor, and
whispered in mine ear:

"Master Basil Rookwood is outside the door, and craves--"

I suffered him not to finish his speech, but bounded into the hall,
where Basil was indeed standing with a traveller's cloak on him, and a
slouched hat over his face. After such a greeting as may be conceived
(alas, all greetings then did seem to combine strange admixtures of
joy and pain!), I led him into the parlor, where Mr. Roper in his turn
received him with fatherly words of kindness mixed with amazement at
his return.

"And whence," he exclaimed, "so sudden a coming, my good Basil?
Verily, you do appear to have descended from the skies!"

Basil looked at me and replied: "I heard in Paris, Mr. Roper, that a
gentleman in whom I do take a very lively interest, one Mr. Tunstall,
was in prison at London; and I bethought me I could be of some service
to him by coming over at this time."

"O Basil," I cried, "do you then know he is my father?"

"Yea," he joyfully answered, "and I am right glad you do know it also,
for then there is no occasion for any feigning, which, albeit I deny
it not to be sometimes useful and necessary, doth so ill agree with my
bluntness, that it keepeth me in constant fear of stumbling in my
speech. I was in a manner forced to come over secretly; because if Sir
Henry Stafford, who willeth me to remain abroad till I have {320} got
out of my wardship, should hear of my being in London, and gain scent
of the object of my coming, he should have dealt in all sorts of ways
to send me out of it. But, prithee, dearest love, is Mrs. Ward in this
house?"

"Alas!" I said, "she is gone hence. Her mind is set on a very
dangerous enterprise."

"I know it," he saith (at which word my heart began to sink); "but,
verily, I see not much danger to be in it; and methinks if we do
succeed in carrying off your good father and that other priest
to-night in the ingenious manner she hath devised, it will be the best
night's work done by good heads, good arms, and good oars which can be
thought of."

"Oh, then," I exclaimed, "it is even as I feared, and you, Basil, have
engaged in this rash enterprise. O woe the day you came to London, and
met with that boatman!"

"Constance," he said reproachfully, "should it be a woful day to thee
the one on which, even at some great risk, which I deny doth exist in
this instance, I should aid in thy father's rescue?"

"Oh, but, my dear Basil," I cried, "he doth altogether refuse to stir
in this matter. I have had speech with him to-day, and he will by no
means attempt to escape again from prison. He hath done it once for
the sake of a soul in jeopardy; but only to save his life, he is
resolved not to involve others in peril of theirs. And oh, how
confirmed he would be in his purpose if he knew who it was who doth
throw himself into so great a risk! I' faith, I cannot and will not
suffer it!" I exclaimed impetuously, for the sudden joy of his
presence, the sight of his beloved countenance, lighted up with an
inexpressible look of love and kindness, more beautiful than my poor
words can describe, worked in me a rebellion against the thought of
more suffering, further parting, greater fears than I had hitherto
sustained.

He said, "He could wish my father had been otherwise disposed, for to
have aided in his escape should have been to him the greatest joy he
could think of; but that having promised likewise to assist in Mr.
Watson's flight, he would never fail to do so, if he was to die for
it."

"'Tis very easy," I cried, "to speak of dying, Basil, nor do I doubt
that to one of your courage and faith the doing of it should have
nothing very terrible in it. But I pray you remember that that life,
which you make so little account of, is not now yours alone to dispose
of as you list. Mine, dear Basil, is wrapped up with it; for if I lose
you, I care not to live, or what becomes of me, any more."

Mr. Roper said he should think on it well before he made this venture;
for, as I had truly urged, I had a right over him now, and he should
not dispose of himself as one wholly free might do.

"Dear sir," quoth he in answer, "my sweet Constance and you also might
perhaps have prevailed with me some hours ago to forego this
intention, before I had given a promise to Mr. Hodgson's boatman, and
through him to Mistress Ward and Mr. Watson; I should then have been
free to refuse my assistance if I had listed; and albeit methinks in
so doing I should have played a pitiful part, none could justly have
condemned me. But I am assured neither her great heart nor your
honorable spirit would desire me so much as to place in doubt the
fulfilment of a promise wherein the safety of a man, and he one of
God's priests, is concerned. I pray thee, sweetheart, say thou wouldst
not have me do it."

Alas! this was the second time that day my poor heart had been called
upon to raise itself higher than nature can afford to reach. But the
present struggle was harder than the first. My father had long been to
me as a distant angel, severed from my daily life and any future hope
in this world. His was an expectant martyrdom, an exile from his true
home, a daily {321} dying on earth, tending but to one desired end.
Nature could be more easily reconciled in the one case than in the
other to thoughts of parting. Basil was my all, my second self, my
sole treasure,--the prop on which rested youth's hopes, earth's joys,
life's sole comfort; and chance (as it seemed, and men would have
called it), not a determined seeking, had thrust on him this danger,
and I must needs see him plunged into it, and not so much as say a
word to stay him or prevent it. . . . . I was striving to constrain my
lips to utter the words my rebelling heart disavowed, and he kneeling
before me, with his dear eyes fixed on mine, awaiting my consent, when
a loud noise of laughter in the hall caused us both to start up, and
then the door was thrown open, and Kate and Polly ran into the room so
gaily attired, the one in a yellow and the other in a crimson gown
bedecked with lace and jewels, that nothing finer could be seen.

"Lackaday!" Polly cried, when she perceived Basil; "who have we here?
I scarce can credit mine eyes! Why, Sir Lover, methought you were in
France. By what magic come you here? Mr. Roper, your humble servant.
'Tis like you did not expect so much good company to-night, Con, for
you have but one poor candle or two to light up this dingy room, and I
fear there will not be light enough for these gentlemen to see our
fine dresses, which we do wear for the first time at Mrs. Yates's
house this evening."

"I thought you were both in the country," I said, striving to disguise
how much their coming did discompose me.

"Methinks," answered Polly, laughing, "your wish was father to that
thought, Con, and that you desired to have the company of this fine
gentleman to yourself alone, and Mr. Roper's also, and no one else for
to disturb you. But, in good sooth, we were both at Mr. Benham's seat
in Berkshire when we heard of this good entertainment at so great a
friend's house, and so prevailed on our lords and governors for to
hire a coach and bring us to London for one night. We lie at Kate's
house, and she and I have supped on a cold capon and a veal pie we
brought with us, and Sir Ralph and Mr. Lacy do sup at a tavern in the
Strand, and shall fetch us here when it shall be convenient to them to
carry us to this grand ball, which I would not have missed, no, not
for all the world. So I pray you let us be merry till they do come,
and pass the time pleasantly."

"Ay," said Kate, in a lamentable voice, "you would force me to dress
and go abroad, when I would sooner be at home; for John's stomach is
disordered, and baby doth cut her teeth, and he pulled at my ribbons
and said I should not leave him; and beshrew me if I would have done
so, but for your overpersuading me. But you are always so absolute! I
wonder you love not more to stay at home, Polly."

Basil smiled with a better heart than I could do, and said he would
promise her John should sleep never the less well for her absence, and
she should find baby's tooth through on the morrow; and sitting down
by her side, talked to her of her children with a kindliness which
never did forsake him. Mr. Roper set himself to converse with Polly; I
ween for to shield me from the torrent of her words, which, as I sat
between them, seemed to buzz in mine ear without any meaning; and yet
I must needs have heard them, for to this day I remember what they
talked of;--that Polly said, "Have you seen the ingenious poesy which
the queen's saucy godson, the merry wit Harrington, left behind her
cushion on Wednesday, and now 'tis in every one's hands?"

"Not in mine," quoth Mr. Roper; "so, if your memory doth serve you,
Lady Ingoldsby, will you rehearse it?" which she did as follows; and
albeit I only did hear those lines {322} that once, they still remain
in my mind:

  "For ever dear, for ever dreaded prince,
  You read a verse of mine a little since,
  And so pronounced each word and every letter,
  Your gracious reading graced my verse the better;
  Sith then your highness doth by gift exceeding
  Make what you read the better for your reading,
  Let my poor muse your pains thus far importune,
  Like as you read my verse--so read my fortune!"

"Tis an artful and witty petition," Mr. Roper observed; "but I have
been told her majesty mislikes the poet's satirical writings, and
chiefly the metamorphosis of Ajax."

"She signified," Polly answered, "some outward displeasure at it, but
Robert Markham affirms she likes well the marrow of the book, and is
minded to take the author to her favor, but sweareth she believes he
will make epigrams on her and all her court. Howsoever, I do allow she
conceived much disquiet on being told he had aimed a shaft at
Leicester. By the way, but you, cousin Constance, should best know the
truth thereon" (this she said turning to me), "'tis said that Lord
Arundel is exceeding sick again, and like to die very soon. Indeed his
physicians are of opinion, so report speaketh, that he will not last
many days now, for as often as he hath rallied before."

"Yesterday," I said, "when I saw Lady Surrey, he was no worse than
usual."

"Oh, have you heard," Polly cried, running from one theme to another,
as was her wont, "that Leicester is about to marry Lettice Knollys, my
Lady Essex?"

"'Tis impossible," Basil exclaimed, who was now listening to her
speeches, for Kate had finished her discourse touching her Johnny's
disease in his stomach. The cause thereof, she said, both herself
thought, and all in Mr. Benham's house did judge to have been, the
taking in the morning a confection of barley sodden with water and
sugar, and made exceeding thick with bread. This breakfast lost him
both his dinner and supper, and surely the better half of his sleep;
but God be thanked, she hoped now the worst was past, and that the
dear urchin would shortly be as merry and well-disposed as afore he
left London. Basil said he hoped so too; and in a pause which ensued,
he heard Polly speak of Lord Leicester's intended marriage, which
seemed to move him to some sort of indignation, the cause of which I
only learnt many years later; for that when Lady Douglas Howard's
cause came before the Star-Chamber, in his present majesty's reign, he
told me he had been privy, through information received in France, of
her secret marriage with that lord.

"'Tis not impossible," Polly retorted, "by the same token that the new
favorite, young Robert Devereux, maketh no concealment of it, and
calleth my Lord Leicester his father elect. But I pray you, what is
impossible in these days? Oh, I think they are the most whimsical,
entertaining days which the world hath ever known; and the merriest,
if people have a will to make them so."

"Oh, Polly," I cried, unable to restrain myself, "I pray God you may
never find cause to change your mind thereon."

"Yea, amen to that prayer," quoth she; "I'll promise you, my grave
little coz, that I have no mind to be sad till I grow old--and there
be yet some years to come before that shall befall me. When Mistress
Helen Ingoldsby shall reach to the height of my shoulder, then,
methinks, I may begin to take heed unto my ways. What think you the
little wench said to me yesterday? 'What times is it we do conform to,
mother? dinner-times or bed-times?'" "She should have been answered,
'The devil's times,'" Basil muttered; and Kate told Polly she should
be ashamed to speak in her father's house of the conformity she
practised when others were suffering for their religion. {323} And,
methought, albeit I had scarcely endured the jesting which had
preceded it, I could less bear any talk of religion, least-ways of
that kind, just then. But, in sooth, the constraint I suffered almost
overpassed my strength. There appeared no hope of their going, and
they fell into an eager discourse concerning the bear-baiting they had
been to see in Berkshire, and a great sort of ban-dogs, which had been
tied in an outer court, let loose on thirteen bears that were baited
in the inner; and my dear Basil, who doth delight in all kinds of
sports, listened eagerly to the description they gave of this
diversion. Oh, how I counted the minutes! what a pressure weighted my
heart! how the sound of their voices pained mine ears! how long an
hour seemed! and yet too short for my desires, for I feared the time
must soon come when Basil should go, and lamented that these
unthinking women's tarrying should rob me of all possibility to talk
with him alone. Howsoever, when Mr. Roper rose to depart, I followed
him into the hall and waited near the door for Basil, who was bidding
farewell to Kate and Polly. I heard him beseech them to do him so much
favor as not to mention they had seen him; for that he had not
informed Sir Henry Stafford of his coming over from France, which if
he heard of it otherwise than from himself, it should peradventure
offend him. They laughed, and promised to be as silent as graves
thereon; and Polly said he had learnt French fashions she perceived,
and taken lessons in wooing from mounseer; but she hoped his stealthy
visit should in the end prove more conformable to his desires than
mounseer's had done. At last they let him go; and Mr. Roper, who had
waited for him, wrung his hand, and the manner of his doing it made my
eyes overflow. I turned my face away, but Basil caught both my hands
in his and said, "Be of good cheer, sweetheart. I have not words
wherewith to express how much I love thee, but God knoweth it is very
dearly."

"O Basil! mine own dear Basil," I murmured, laying my forehead on his
coat-sleeve, and could not then utter another word. Ere I lifted it
again, the hall-door opened, and who, I pray you, should I then see
(with more affright, I confess, than was reasonable) but Hubert? My
voice shook as he said to Basil, whose back was turned from the door,
"Here is your brother."

"Ah, Hubert!" he exclaimed; "I be glad to see thee!" and held out his
hand to him with a frank smile, which the other took, but in the doing
of it a deadly paleness spread over his face.

"I have no leisure to tarry so much as one minute," Basil said; "but
this sweet lady will tell thee what weighty reasons I have for
presently remaining concealed; and so farewell, my dear love, and
farewell, my good brother. Be, I pray you, my bedes-woman this night,
Constance; and you too, Hubert,--if you do yet say your prayers like a
good Christian, which I pray God you do,--mind you say an ave for me
before you sleep."

When the door closed on him I sunk down on a chair, and hid my face
with my hands.

"You have not told him anything?" Hubert whispered; and I, "God help
you, Hubert! he hath come to London for this very matter, and hath
already, I fear, albeit not in any way that shall advantage my father,
yet in seeking to assist him, run himself into danger of death, or
leastways banishment."

As I said this mine eyes raised themselves toward him; and I would
they had not, for I saw in his visage an expression I have tried these
many years to forget, but which sometimes even now comes back to me
painfully.

"I told you so," he answered. "He hath an invariable aptness to miss
his aim, and to hurt himself by the shafts he looseth. What plan hath
he now formed, and what shall come of it?"

{324}

But, somewhat recovered from my surprise, I bethought myself it
should not be prudent, albeit I grieved to think so, to let him know
what sort of enterprise it was Basil had in hand; so I did evade his
question, which indeed he did not show himself very careful to have
answered. He said he was yet dealing with Sir Francis Walsingham, and
had hopes of success touching my father's liberation, and so prayed me
not to yield to despondency; but it would take time to bring matters
to a successful issue, and patience was greatly needed, and likewise
prudence toward that end. He requested me very urgently to take no
other steps for the present in his behalf, which might ruin all. And
above all things not to suffer Basil to come forward in it, for that
he had made himself obnoxious to Sir Francis by speeches which he had
used, and which some one had reported to him, touching Lady Ridley's
compliance with his (Sir Francis's) request that she should have a
minister in her house for to read Protestant prayers to her household,
albeit herself, being bedridden, did not attend; and if he should now
stir in this matter, all hope would be at an end. So he left me, and I
returned to the parlor, and Kate and Polly declared my behavior to
them not to be over and above civil; but they supposed when folks were
in love, they had a warrant to treat their friends as they pleased.
Then finding me very dull and heavy, I ween, they bethought themselves
at the last of going to visit their mother in her bed, and paying
their respects to their father, whom they found asleep in his chair,
his prayer-book, with which he was engaged most of the day, lying open
by his side. Polly kissed his forehead, and then the picture of our
Blessed Lady in the first page of this much-used volume; which sudden
acts of hers comforted me not a little.

Muriel came out of her mother's chamber to greet them, but would not
suffer them to see her at this unexpected time, for that the least
change in her customable habits disordered her; and then whispered to
me that she had often asked for Mistress Ward, and complained of her
absence.

At the last Sir Ralph came, but not Mr. Lacy, who he said was tired
with his long ride, and had gone home to bed. Thereupon Kate began to
weep; for she said she would not go without him to this fine ball, for
it was an unbecoming thing for a woman to be seen abroad when her
husband was at home, and a thing she had not yet done, nor did intend
to do. But that it was a very hard thing she should have been at the
pains to dress herself so handsomely, and not so much as one person to
see her in this fine suit; and she wished she had not been so foolish
as to be persuaded to it, and that Polly was very much to blame
therein. At the which, "I' faith, I think so too," Polly exclaimed;
"and I wish you had stayed in the country, my dear."

Kate's pitiful visage and whineful complaint moved me, in my then
apprehensive humor, to an unmerry but not to be resisted fit of
laughter, which she did very much resent; but I must have laughed or
died, and yet it made me angry to hear her utter such lamentations who
had no true cause for displeasure.

When they were gone,--she, still shedding tears, in a chair Sir Ralph
sent for to convey her to Gray's Inn Lane, and he and Polly in their
coach to Mrs. Yates's,--the relief I had from their absence proved so
great that at first it did seem to ease my heart. I went slowly up to
mine own chamber, and stood there a while at the casement looking at
the quiet sky above and the unquiet city beneath it, and chiefly in
the distant direction where I knew the prison to be, picturing to
myself my father in his bare cell. Mistress Ward regaining her obscure
lodging, Mr. Watson's dangerous descent, and mostly the boat which
Basil was to row,--that boat freighted with so perilous a burthen.
These scenes seemed to rise before mine eyes as I remained motionless,
straining {325} their sight to pierce the darkness of the night and of
the fog which hung over the town. When the clock struck twelve, a
shiver ran through me, for I thought of the like striking at Lynn
Court, and what had followed. Upon which I betook myself to my
prayers, and thinking on Basil, said, "Speak for him, O Blessed Virgin
Mary! Entreat for him, O ye apostles! Make intercession for him, all
ye martyrs! Pray for him, all ye confessors and all ye company of
heaven, that my prayers for him may take effect before our Lord Jesus
Christ!" Then my head waxed heavy with sleep, and I sank on the
cushion of my kneeling-stool. I wot not for how many hours I slumbered
in this wise; but I know I had some terrible dreams.

When I awoke it was daylight. A load knocking at the door of the house
had aroused me. Before I had well bethought me where I was, Muriel's
white face appeared at my door. The pursuivants, she said, were come
to seek for Mistress Ward.


[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

From The Literary Workman.

FACTS AND FICTIONS ABOUT ROME.

BY THE VERY REV. DR. NORTHCOTE.


THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

It is a relief to turn from the dull, stupid, false witness of our own
countrymen to the more lively but not less malicious falsehoods of the
clever Frenchman, Monsieur About. He deserves a higher rank, too, in
the scale of truthfulness as well as of talent than either Mr. Fullom
or Dean Alford; but on this very account he is the more dangerous
enemy. He handles his pen well, and he has the fatal gift of
insinuating the poison he wishes to administer in the minutest
quantities, but with consummate skill. Often it is contained in a
single word or phrase, dropped apparently at random. Sometimes you can
hardly point out a single statement that is really false, yet a
certain tone and flavor pervades the whole which you feel to be
unjust, and which is all the more injurious because of its extreme
subtlety and the difficulty of providing an antidote. An air of
moderation is thus imparted to his book, which, if we may judge by its
rarity, it is not easy to maintain when writing upon this subject He
does not paint either the Pope or his people all black, but sees much
to commend both in the system and the results of the government.
Indeed, some of his descriptions are, in our judgment, as just as they
are graphic. Take, for example, the following description of the lower
orders of the Roman people, the genuine _plebs_:

"The noble strangers who do Rome in their carriages are but slightly
acquainted with the little world of which I am going to speak, or more
probably form a very false judgment about them. They remember to have
been worried to death by blustering _facchini_ (porters) and followed
by indefatigable beggars. They saw nothing but hands open to receive;
they heard nothing but harsh voices screaming forth a petition for
alms. Behind this curtain of mendacity are concealed nearly a hundred
thousand persons who are poor without being idle, and who labor hard
for a scanty supply of {326} daily bread. The gardeners and
vine-dressers who cultivate part of the environs of Rome; workmen,
artizans, servants, coachmen, studio models, peddlers, honest
vagabonds who wait for their supper on some miracle of Providence or
some lucky chance in the lottery, compose the majority of the
population. They manage to struggle through the winter, when visitors
sow manna over the land; in summer they starve. Many are too proud to
ask for an alms, not one of them is rich enough to refuse it, if
offered. Ignorant and curious; simple, yet subtle; sensitive to
excess, yet without much dignity; extremely prudent in the main, yet
capable of the most outrageous pieces of imprudence; going to extremes
both in devotedness and in hate; easy to move, difficult to convince;
more susceptible of feelings than of ideas; sober by habit, terrible
when intoxicated; sincere in practices of devotion the moat _outré_,
but as ready to quarrel with the saints as with men; persuaded that
they have but little to hope for in this life; comforted from time to
time by the prospect of a better, they live in a state of quiet,
grumbling resignation under a paternal government which gives them
bread when there is bread to give. The inequalities of rank, which are
more conspicuous in Rome than in Paris (?), do not move them to
hatred. They are satisfied with the mediocrity of their lot, and
congratulate themselves that there are rich men in the world, that so
the poor may have benefactors. No people are less capable of managing
themselves, so that they are easily led by the first who presents
himself. They have borne a part in all the Roman revolutions, and many
have acquitted themselves manfully in the fight without having the
least idea what it was about. They trusted so little to the republic
that, in the absence of all the authorities, when the Holy Father and
the Sacred College had taken refuge at Gaeta, thirty poor families
quartered themselves in Cardinal Antonelli's palace, without breaking
a single pane of glass. The restoration of the Pope, under the
protection of a foreign army, was no matter of astonishment to them;
they had expected it as a happy event which would restore public
tranquillity. They live at peace with our soldiers, when the latter do
nothing against the peace or honor of their households; and the
occupation of their city by a foreign army does not trouble them,
except when they are personally inconvenienced by it. They are not
afraid to plunge a dagger into the breast of a conqueror, but I will
answer for their never celebrating any Sicilian Vespers.

"They pride themselves on their descent in a direct line from the
Romans of great Rome; and these harmless pretensions seem to me to
have a very tolerable foundation. Like their ancestors, they eat
largely of bread, and are very greedy after sights; they treat their
wives simply as women, not leaving a single farthing at their
disposal, but spending it all on themselves; every one of them is the
client of some client of a patrician. They are well-built, strong, and
able to deal such a blow as would astonish a buffalo; but there is not
one of them who is not on the lookout for some means of living without
work. Excellent workmen when they haven't a farthing, impossible to be
got hold of as soon as they have a crown in their pockets; good,
honest, kindly, and simple-hearted folks, but thoroughly convinced of
their superiority to the rest of mankind. Economical to the last
degree, and living on dry peas, until they can find some splendid
occasion for spending all their savings in a day; they gather _sous_
by _sous_, two or three pounds in the course of the year, to hire the
balcony of some prince at the carnival, or to show themselves in a
carriage at the feast _del Divin 'Amore_, It is thus the Roman
populace forget both the future and the past in _Saturnalia_. The
hereditary want of forethought which possesses {327} them may be
explained by the irregularity of their resources, the periodical
return of _festas_ which exempt them from labor, and the impossibility
of raising themselves to any higher condition, save by the
intervention of a miracle. They are deficient in many virtues, and,
amongst others, in refinement, which formed no part of the inheritance
to which they have succeeded. That in which they certainly are _not_
deficient is dignity and self-respect. They never demean themselves to
low, coarse jokes, or vulgar debauchery. You will never see them
insult a gentleman in the streets, unprovoked, or speak an offensive
word to a woman. That class of degraded beings which we call the
_canaille_ is absolutely unknown here; the _ignoble_ is not a Roman
commodity."

Here is another testimony of a similar kind, from the same pen, to the
character of one particular class of the Roman people, the
Trastevirni, or people who dwell on the northern side of the Tiber. M.
About invites his readers to accompany him to one of the _osterie_ or
public houses of the quarter where blacksmiths, and shoemakers, and
weavers, and hackney-coachmen, etc, together with their wives and
daughters, resort on Sunday, to enjoy a better dinner and a more
generous flask of wine than they can afford themselves during the
week. The entrance is not inviting, and there are not many foreigners,
or English gentlemen either, who would like to venture, as a mere
matter of curiosity, and without any pressing necessity, into the
corresponding establishments of either France or England. M. About is
well aware of this, so he encourages his readers, bidding them fear
nothing; "you shall dine well," he says, "and nobody shall dine upon
you."

"You shall see men here strong as bulls and quite as irascible; men
who think as little of giving a blow as you or I of drinking a glass
of water, and who never strike without having a knife in their hands.
The police will be nowhere near to protect us; they are always out of
the way. Beside, if you were to offend one of these jolly fellows, he
would kill you, though you were in the very arms of the police.
Nevertheless you may come and go in the midst of them, spend lots of
money, pay in gold, make your purse jingle in the hearing of all, and
go home after midnight through the darkest streets, without any one
dreaming of making an attempt on your purse. More than this: we shall
be politely received, and they will put themselves out of the way to
make room for us. They will not stare at us, as though we were wild
beasts; they will even obligingly gratify our curiosity, if it is not
impertinent We need not fear that wine will excite them to pick a
quarrel with us; but woe betide us if we have the misfortune to
provoke them. They are not aggressive when they are in liquor, but
they are very sensitive. They forgive no offence, even an involuntary
one, if it has exposed them to the raillery of their companions. When
you see a woman with her husband, or a girl with her father, put a
bridle on your eyes. It is often dangerous even to cast a furtive
glance on a Trasteverina; and I have known more than one instance in
which the offender has paid the penalty with his life."

I dare say some of our readers are a little disappointed at the sketch
of the character of the Roman people which we have given on the
authority of M. About. They would rather have heard us say they were
all good and pious and edifying members of society and of the Church.
Indeed we have known some zealous souls who expected to find Rome a
sort of monastery on a large scale, where worldly passions and mortal
sins were never heard of, except among the hardened and rebellious
few; and even the imperfections of ordinary mortals were rarely met
with, and assumed some character of special enormity. Rome seems to
have the gift which, from the Catholic point of view, {328} we should
naturally expect it to have, viz., of stirring the affection of men's
hearts in their lowest depths more powerfully than in any other place
in the world. As our divine Master himself was "set for the ruin as
well as for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which
should be contradicted," so the capital of his Church upon earth--the
seat of his vicegerent--that city where his interests take precedence
of every earthly consideration, and the world is made to wait upon the
Church, not the Church upon the world, inspires the strongest possible
sentiment of love or of hatred into the minds of all; and where these
feelings are strong, it is hard to keep the exact balance of impartial
truthfulness. What we love intensely, we naturally like to picture to
ourselves as faultless and perfect; and even if we cannot do this--if
we are conscious of defects and faults, which cannot be denied, we
still wish to conceal them as long as possible from others. What
bitter hatred and prejudice can do in the way of blinding men's eyes
and closing men's ears, we have already seen in the melancholy
examples of Messrs. Alford and Co.; nor should we have far to seek if
we desired to present our readers with specimens of exaggerated praise
dictated by the partiality of affection. Most of us have probably met
with generous enthusiasts, who did not hesitate to prefer Rome to
England, under any conceivable aspect, secular as well as religious,
and who would think it as much a point of honor to defend the
character of the Roman soldiers for bravery, the Roman police for
activity, the Roman scavengers for efficiency, and the Roman people
for industry and honesty, as of the Roman clergy for integrity of
faith and purity of morals, and the Roman government for justice
tempered with clemency. Such persons are very amiable friends, but
somewhat embarrassing allies; and writers, very inferior to M. About,
have no difficulty in destroying their well-meant but ill-planned
system of defence. M. About himself is much too wise to fall into this
blunder of unmitigated extravagance, from his side of the question;
and we have been glad, therefore, to avail ourselves of his clever and
spirited sketches to lay before our readers what we really believe to
be a very tolerable estimate of the true state of the case. It is
certainly no article of the faith to believe the Romans to be
impeccable, or the Roman character in itself to be the ideal of human
perfection; and we hope our devotion to the Holy See will not be
called in question for the avowal. We have already quoted the
testimony of a Protestant traveller, who acknowledges the
strongly-marked character of religion which stamps the whole city of
Rome; but this, of course, is not incompatible with the existence of
much that is evil, against which this religious element is always
contending.

We will add yet one more passage from About, which concerns the
general character of the country people, rather than of the
inhabitants of the metropolis. We have spent several months, at
various times, in more than one Italian village, and have been greatly
edified by the simplicity and piety of the people. They were
guiltless, for the most part, of any political knowledge even as to
the affairs of their own country; and as to any other country beside
their own, it was as far removed from their ordinary range of thoughts
as Mars, Venus, and Saturn still are from the thoughts of our own
peasantry. They rose early and worked hard; still, as M. About is
obliged to acknowledge, one cannot say of them--"as of the Irish, for
example," says M. About--"that they are miserable. They are poor, and
that is all. The fact that their religion, their schooling, and their
medical attendance costs them nothing, compensates to a certain degree
for the heavy taxation they suffer in other ways. Their labor in the
fields keeps them alive till old age. _They pass their life in earning
their livelihood._ {329} The existence of this class resembles a
vicious circle." No doubt it does to those whose view of things is
limited to this world, and who cannot recognize any end or reward of
the suffering of this life beyond it. But the Romans, as he himself
acknowledges, "know how to die. This is a trait in their character
which justice obliges us to recognize. They die as they eat, or drink,
or sleep--quite naturally, simply, and as a matter of course. This
resignation is to be explained by their hopes of a life of happiness
in an ideal world hereafter, and by the continual admonitions of a
religion which teaches that all men must die." In other words, the
Roman peasantry believe the Gospel; and so they accept with patience
the primeval burden laid upon fallen man--"In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou
wast taken." And for this they earn the contemptuous pity of the
enlightened Frenchman. We accept his testimony, whilst we disclaim his
commentary and detest his spirit. We think he speaks truly when he
seizes on this characteristic of the Roman popular mind--familiarity
with the idea of death. We know of no people to whom this and other
truths of the faith seem to be more habitually present. It gives a
color and a tone to their ordinary conversation, even where it does
not bring forth fruits of sanctity. We have ourselves heard of a Roman
lady reconciling herself to a marriage which was proposed to her, and
which in some respects was not inviting, simply by a consideration of
the piety of the intended bridegroom; but this consideration found
expression in a truly Roman way, quite in keeping with what M. About
has observed about them. "He is not lively, I know," said the lady,
"nor handsome, nor clever, but he is pious, and _will make a good
end._" And in a charming little book lately published ("Sanctity in
Home Life") we see another Italian lady, the Countess Medolago,
confiding to a friend her only idea of her future husband much in the
same spirit: "All that I know is that he is pious and very fond of the
Jesuits."



THE POLITICS OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

The facts we have adduced, the pictures we have drawn--or rather which
M. About, a bitter enemy of the Papal power, has drawn--of the
condition of the Roman people, ought, one would think, to have great
weight with those who have any real care for the well-being of a
nation. A man must be firmly wedded indeed to some political crotchet,
who is ready to risk the loss of such advantages as these in exchange
for the realization of his dreams. But in truth it is the hatred of
Catholicism, rather than the love of any political principle, which
lies at the root of most of the declamation we hear against the abuses
of the Papal government. Why is it else that those gentlemen who
profess so lively a concern that the political liberties of three
millions of Italians should suffer some abridgment for the sake of
upholding the Father of Christendom in the independent exercise of his
spiritual power, are yet able to bear with the utmost equanimity the
sight of real cruelty and oppression inflicted upon ten millions of
Christians in European Turkey? The balance of political power among
the different European governments is of more value in their eyes than
the spiritual supremacy of the Pope; peace, commerce, and wealth
depend on the one, only virtue and religion on the other.

But let us come now to the political question, and see how it really
stands. It has been often and truly said, that the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope rests on more legitimate foundations than any
other European sovereignty of the day. Long possession, to be measured
not by generations but by centuries;  donations from other powers; the
free choice of the people, all combine to impart to the chair of Peter
a dignity and a solidity which does not belong to any other throne.
{330} And if it be objected that, however this may have been in times
past, yet now, at least, the consent of the people is wanting, without
which the modern creed of nations will not allow any power to be
secure, we must answer, what has been proved to demonstration, and
what every one at all conversant with the facts of the case well knows
to be true: that it is not in Rome and among Romans that plots have
been hatched against the Pontifical government; a portion of the
people, the discontented, of whom there must ever be some under every
government, have only lent themselves to the execution of plots
conceived and planned in the secret societies or clubs, or even the
ministerial chambers, of Turin and Genoa. Strangers have always been
at the head of every Roman revolution, adventurers who find their
fortunes in troubled waters, or fanatical politicians, who cannot
endure that any one should be happy, excepting according to their own
receipt. So long as English politicians encourage agitation by their
presence in the country and frequent communications with disaffected
parties in it, or by lending their names and their houses as the
medium of correspondence or of banking transactions between the
conspirators, or by delivering sensational speeches in the house; so
long will the Roman mind be more or less agitated; so long as Piedmont
can send her emissaries into all the towns and villages, distributing
money as the reward of acquiescence in her schemes, conspirators, even
among the Romans themselves, will not be wanting; but if all these
things could be removed, and the question were left to the settlement
of the people themselves, we should have no fear of the result.
Whenever the Popes have been driven out of Rome, the people have
hailed their return with universal acclamations of joy, and already we
are told the short experience of the blessings of Piedmontese rule
which the Legations have enjoyed has sufficed to make them regret the
change. The increase of taxes and the military conscription are a
price higher than they are willing to pay for the _name_ of liberty
under the yoke of Victor Emmanuel. We believe that the following
account of the political creed of the great majority of the Pope's
subjects is as accurate as it is moderate. We are indebted for it to a
French ecclesiastic, who has most gratefully followed M. About through
all his misstatements, and published a complete refutation of them. He
tells us that most Romans are of opinion that people may be happy or
miserable under _any_ form of government, according to the way in
which it is administered; that a government of _some_ kind there must
be; or disorder would be universal; and that the Pope being at the
head of the Roman government, is the cause of many advantages: it
attracts princes and other wealthy foreigners to Rome; sometimes
seventy, eighty, or even ninety thousand strangers at a time; it saves
them from the scourge of war; the operations of commerce, if not so
extensive as in some other capitals, are at least more secure and
stable; there is no financial crisis or panic in the money market
returning at periodical intervals, and spreading ruin and desolation
through innumerable families; industry and good conduct, crowned by
success in business, open the way to the possession of estates and
titles; the ranks of the privileged class itself, so to call it--the
clergy--are open to all comers; the great majority of lucrative
offices about the court, prelacies, bishoprics, judgeships, etc., are
given to members of the middle class, no less than three-fourths of
the cardinals (including Cardinal Antonelli himself) having been
chosen from among them; that ninety-nine out of every hundred holding
office under government are laymen; that not more than 100 priests
altogether are employed in the administration of secular affairs; and
that among officials of the same rank, a layman always receives higher
pay than an ecclesiastic; that even in {331} offices which, as having
to deal with matters of religion, might seem fairly to belong to
ecclesiastics alone, two-thirds of the posts are filled by laymen, and
the salaries are divided in about the same proportion; that the Popes,
haying no families of their own, are always spending their private
fortunes on public works for the good of the country, or on the
rebuilding and decoration of churches, to the great encouragement of
the fine arts, and the support of innumerable families; or, finally,
on schools and hospitals, and other works of charity. They know, too,
that, thanks to this liberality, the education of their children need
cost them nothing; that schools of all kinds are more numerous (in
proportion to the population) in Rome than in any other European
capital, and these not only schools of primary instruction for the
children of the poor, containing about 17,000 scholars, of both sexes,
but also for the middle and upper classes, 3,000 of whom receive here
an education fitted to qualify them for any profession they may
prefer, quite gratuitously.

This we believe to be a very fair account of the state of feeling on
political matters among the majority of the Roman people; and if it is
not satisfactory to our modern liberals, because it ignores all their
bright theories and is content to forego the blessings of
representative governments and triennial parliaments, we cannot help
it. We think there is an intimate conviction in most Roman minds that
God's honor and glory, and man's truest happiness, are more earnestly
sought for and more fully attained in that city than elsewhere; and
that this conviction both does, and ought to, reconcile them to any
political disadvantages which such a state of things may entail, as
Mons. Veuillot has well said.

Elsewhere, man is considered primarily as a power; in Rome, he is
primarily a soul. At Rome, the public manners, following more nearly
the august guidance of the Church, have more frequently and more
closely than elsewhere approached the divine ideal of the gospel. I
know what cruel ravages have been wrought by long and wicked
agitations, begun and fostered from without; I know that every people
has its dregs, its populace; but I know also that at Rome this very
populace is not without faith, and I know, too, what solid Christian
virtues adorn the true Roman hearth. Rarely or never do twenty years
roll by without Rome giving to the world one of those heroes who
devote themselves to the love of God and of souls with the triumphant
energy of sanctity. Blest and encouraged by the Popes, these chosen
ones have always left disciples to prolong, as it were, their own
existence, and works which have not perished. And the enlightened
Christian conscience, despising the empty boasts of ignorant pride,
will always assign the first place among nations to that which best
preserves the faith and produces the greatest number of saints.

We are well aware that this test of national greatness would find no
favor in the ears of an English Parliament, but we are foolish enough
to think that there may be truth in it for all that.



{332}


Translated from the German.

MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

A SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC CONGRESSES HELD AT MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

BY ANDREW NIEDERMASSER.


CHAPTER III.


SCIENCE AND THE PRESS.

In the Belgian congress the section of science and the press does not
treat of the same subjects that occupy the attention of that section
in the Catholic conventions in Germany. At Malines Christian
instruction and education are the principal questions debated; in
Germany, on the other hand, the university question is the chief
subject of discussion; at Malines it is slimly attended; at Würzburg,
Frankfort, etc., on the contrary, there was a crowded attendance, and
the proceedings were of the most interesting character. At Malines
forty-five Catholic journalists met and passed important resolutions;
at Würzburg, more than sixty representatives of German science held a
separate conference and drew up an address to the Holy Father. Even
the meeting of literati held at Munich may be called the offspring of
the Catholic general conventions. At Munich, in 1861, Professor
Michaelis proposed a scheme planned by Döllinger for a meeting of the
German savans, which was rejected. Hereupon the project was somewhat
changed and a separate meeting held at Munich. Its results are well
known.

The principal debaters in this section of the Malines congress were
the genial and venerable Count de Villeneuve, Lenormant the daring
traveller, Lecheoni, Soudan, Léger, du Clisieux, Ducpetiaux, Chopinet,
Soenens, Baeten, and Decoster. The presiding officer was Namèche, of
Louvain, who, together with de Ram, Lanny, Delcour, Laforêt, and Perin
worthily represented the university at Louvain. His neighbor was van
der Haeghen, of Brussels, a writer whose name is well known, not only
in Belgium but in foreign countries. Though an excellent linguist, he
deems it his first duty to refute historical misstatements and to
expose without mercy the errors of modern Protestant historians. As
Onno Klopp unsparingly demolishes German scribblers, so van der
Haeghen puts down the Belgian dabblers in history. He is intimately
acquainted with German literature.

The subjects that occupied the attention of the section were popular
instruction, the classics as a means of mental training, the
establishment of professorships on social questions and discipline.

On popular instruction Monseigneur Dupanloup delivered a discourse,
which was the event of the congress, and which has since been read by
all Europe. Count Desbassayns de Richemout, of Paris, an orator
favorably known in Germany as the spirited advocate of a Catholic
university, spoke on the mental activity of society. In the Romanic
world the name of Dupanloup acts like a charm. If a charity sermon is
to be held, which is to move and electrify Paris and all France, the
Bishop of Orleans is called upon. In 1862, when it became necessary to
give a new impetus to the Catholic cause in the East, Dupanloup was
summoned to Rome to {333} call the nations of the earth to a sense of
their duties; thousands rushed to hear him preach at the church of St.
Andrea del Galle. At Malines he met with the same success. When
Dupanloup speaks every listener glows with Catholic zeal, that becomes
more and more intense as he proceeds and finally bursts forth in a
fiery enthusiasm, whose influence reaches far and wide. Such was the
spectacle witnessed at Rome, and repeated at Paris and Malines. One of
the brightest ornaments of the French hierarchy, Dupanloup on every
occasion expresses the opinions of Catholic France with irresistible
force. No wonder, then, that even the emperor fears the bishop's
eloquence. His writings are read by all, and admired for their classic
style. As an orator, he enchants the French and Belgians; on the
Germans, however, he exerts a less powerful influence; they prefer
Montalembert, F. Hermann, or F. Felix. His discourse at Malines was
not, properly speaking, a discourse, but a familiar conversation,
grand and splendid in diction, and full of brilliant turns and telling
_jeux de mots_. The remarks made by Dupanloup on August 30, when
returning thanks for his enthusiastic reception, were a masterpiece of
eloquence, which will never be forgotten by those who listened to him.
The Bishop of Orleans is a man of the people. "I do not know much; but
what I know best and love best is the people." If Dupanloup's speech
was the brightest gem of the congress in 1864, Montalembert, in his
speech on "Religious Liberty," eclipsed all his competitors in 1863.
Montalembert's discourse lasted five hours, two hours longer than
Dupanloup's speech. Montalembert and Dupanloup are the most prominent
representatives of Catholic France. Called by God to battle for his
Church, both are leading millions of soldiers arrayed under the banner
of Christ to victory and triumphs. Montalembert, the athlete of the
tribune, hailed by Pius IX. himself as one of the bravest of the
Christian host, cherishes for the Church an ardent, pure, and holy
love. This love may sometimes carry him too far. At Malines, in 1863,
he laid down many propositions not approved by the congress. The
Cardinal of Malines, however, and the Bishop of Orleans, charitably
threw a veil over every thing objectionable, thus resolving into
perfect harmony everything discordant. Dupanloup evidently thought of
his friend Montalembert when, in his remarks on August 30, 1864, he
uttered the words: "Let us not confound opinions and principles, vital
questions and domestic difficulties; among us let there be no
differences, no disunion, no imprudence."

Count Richemont, of Paris, is a true nobleman in appearance and
bearing; his black beard adds new beauty to his handsome face and
sparkling eyes. His gestures are appropriate and graceful. He speaks
very rapidly, however, swallowing many words, so that we Germans did
not understand him well; in fact, we read his speech with more
pleasure than we listened to it. A more favorable impression was made
by Viscount Anatole Lemercier, of Paris, a man of agreeable manners, a
true Parisian, full of wit and humor, a graceful speaker, who will be
heard with pleasure by any assembly. But, great as are Lemercier's
merits, he has a dangerous rival in Henry de Riancey, who unites in
himself every quality required to become a general favorite. Among the
French journalists he is one of the ablest. In his opinions he steers
a middle course between the extreme views of Montalembert and
Veuillot, or Barrier, Faconet and Chantrel, the oracles of the
"Monde;" and "L'Union," the journal of which he is the editor,
occupies an intermediate position between "Le Monde" and "Le
Correspondant" But de Riancey's labors are not confined to his
editorial sanctum; he cherishes holy poverty, is untiring in the
practice of Christian charity, and justly deserves {334} the title of
"Father of the Poor." These holy practices give an unction to his
words, and throw a halo around his person which he does not even
suspect, but which gains for him the hearts of all that see or hear of
him. His speeches in the section of Christian economy excited great
interest, and when speaking on matters connected with the Catholic
faith he reminded us of the fathers of the Church. His discourse
before the general meeting of the congress, Sept. 12, 1864, was a gem.
He spoke as a soldier of Christ, as an heroic defender of the Church,
showing at once that he was a veteran, who had often struggled for the
triumph of principle. The future does not inspire de Riancey with
anxiety or fear; he is full of hope and confidence, believing that he
lives in an age destined to accomplish great things. He is not
discouraged by the superior power of his opponents, for he bears in
mind Christ's promise to his Church.

When speaking, a pleasant smile rests on de Riancey's lips, and his
features reflect the cheerful calmness of his soul. His friendly eyes
charm his listeners, who regret to see them fixed on his manuscript,
for de Riancey reads his speeches. If the applause of the assembly
become too long and noisy, the speaker's face beams with satisfaction,
and he gracefully passes his hand through his hair. De Riancey
fascinates the hearts of all his hearers.

It is hard to say which of the many eminent French orators at Malines
possesses most claims to our preference. Who is the greatest orator,
Count Montalembert or Bishop Dupanloup, de Riancey or Père Felix,
Viscount Lemercier, Count Richemont, Viscount de Melan, Lasserée, or
Lenormant? Each of them has excellences peculiar to himself that claim
our admiration. In like manner, among the great Italian masters,
Michael Angelo is first in grandeur of style and conception; Titian is
distinguished for the grace of his figures; Correggio for their
angelic purity; whilst Raphael merits the palm for fertility of
invention, correctness of expression, and variety. Père Felix, we have
already stated, pleased the Germans more than Bishop Dupanloup. His
concluding discourse, delivered in St Rombaut's cathedral at Malines,
Sept 3, 1864, was a philosophical review of ecclesiastical history;
the grandeur of its conception well befitted the importance of the
occasion. In appearance, F. Felix is not so majestic as F. de
Ravignan, nor has he so powerful and sonorous a voice as his
predecessor. His discourses betray less enthusiastic love of liberty
than those of F. Lacordaire, but still he is at present _the_ orator
of the day, no less than de Ravignan and Lacordaire were some years
ago. F. Lacordaire, the Dominican, addressed his words to thousands of
young men, who, carried away by the political and literary revolutions
of 1830, were frantic with ideas of liberty, who were attracted and
tormented by the "infinite," and panting for vague, undefined ideals.
This yearning Lacordaire strove to satisfy, by pointing out to them
that Christ and his Church were the realization of their indefinite
ideals, and by teaching them to sanctify liberty by devotion and
sacrifice. The vast schemes of 1830 were not carried out, and their
ideals were not realized. French society felt the vanity of its
aspirations, and was seized by a deadly lethargy, a kind of despair,
as if it had suffered shipwreck. Like so many flaming meteors F. de
Ravignan's conferences suddenly shed a stream of light on the
universal gloom. How majestic was his appearance, how sublime his
language, how ardent his faith, and how holy his life! All France
listened to the Jesuit, and seemed spell-bound. Irreligion was
banished from thousands of hearts, and thousands returned to the
practice of their religious duties and were saved. The spirit of the
age took another direction; men busied themselves exclusively with
their {335} material interests, and they thought only of money, of
steam, of machinery and other branches of industry. For many years
progress has been the watchword--material progress--which has brought
about all these wonders of modern times, which is due to human energy
alone, and which, for this very reason, deifies itself in its pride
and threatens Christianity with destruction. To combat these false
notions, God raised up F. Felix. He devoted his attention to the
popular idol, progress, but he dealt with it in his own way. In Lent,
1856, he began, in the church of Notre Dame, in Paris, his famous
conferences on "Progress by Means of Christianity." Archbishop Sibour
had blessed the orator and his subject. His success was astounding,
and henceforth F. Felix will hold an honorable place among French
pulpit orators. F. Felix is about fifty-five years of age; he has an
intelligent countenance, a noble, manly brow, betokening a deep,
penetrating mind, and a firm will. Since 1856 his voice has improved,
having gained both in compass and in sweetness. It is clear and
piercing, completely filling the immense church of Our Lady at Paris.
The two discourses delivered by F. Felix at Malines (Sept. 2 and 3,
1864) are perhaps his most finished productions. He did not call forth
any momentary burst of enthusiasm, but produced a lasting impression,
that will console and strengthen us in the struggle of life.

The university question, which has been so prominent in Germany, was
not discussed at Malines. The Belgians have had for thirty years a
Catholic university at Louvain, which they support at a great expense,
and for the maintenance of which they constantly struggle. The English
speak of establishing a Catholic college at Oxford. Canon Oakley, a
learned English convert, is working zealously to realize the plan, and
if Newman will agree to take the helm, the enterprise will prosper. We
hope the project will succeed, for English Catholics will not send
their sons to the Catholic university at Dublin, which does not
flourish, and numbers only some two hundred students. In Holland a
Catholic university is not even thought of.

The interests of the Catholic press were not neglected at Malines.
Belgium has done much to raise its character, as was shown by Count de
Theux. Since the congress of 1863 the Belgian journals--especially the
"Journal de Bruxelles"--have steadily progressed. In Belgium, small as
it is, there are fifty Catholic periodicals, some French and some
Flemish. The "Journal de Bruxelles" already rivals the Paris "Monde,"
and both are far in advance of any German journal. At Malines the
members of the press form a section of their own, in which the
principal papers are represented by their directors, editors, or
correspondents. The staff of the "Correspondant" was represented by
Count Francis de Champagny, Viscount Anatole Lemercier, and by Francis
Lenormant, the favorite of the Parisians. "Le Monde," too, had sent
its delegates; prominent among these was Hermann Kuhn, the Berlin
correspondent, who contributes valuable articles on Catholic Germany.
He appeared for the "Mayence Journal" also. We are already acquainted
with de Riancey, the editor of "L'Union." The director of "La Patrie,"
published in Bruges, Neut, was president of the section. Although I
earnestly desired to form the personal acquaintance of M. Neut,
circumstances prevented it; but he appeared to be the leading spirit
of the section. Affable and obliging, lively and ardent, he is a
flowing speaker, well fitted to take the lead, and a bold,
uncompromising Catholic, without a trace of fogyism. To see him is to
love him. He is a man of great practical ability, and writes a popular
style resembling that of Ernest Zander, of Munich. Like Zander he has
grown grey in journalism. The vice-presidents of the section were
Count Celestinè de Martini, {336} director of the "Journal de
Bruxelles;" Leon Lavedan, who writes for the "Gazette de France;" and
Lasserre, editor of the "Contemporain," well known in Germany as a
controversial writer. Lebrocquoi, editor of "La Voix du Luxembourg,"
acted as secretary. Digard of Paris took an active part in the
discussions of the section. Spain was represented by Enrique de
Villaroya and Eduardo Maria de Villarrazza; Portugal by Don Almeida.
The Abbé de Chelen and F. Terwecoren also deserve mention. Verspeyen,
editor of "Le Bien Public," at Ghent, is one of the youngest and most
spirited journalists in Belgium. He is a good speaker, very sarcastic
and impressive. On his recommendation Casoni, of Bologna, who has been
shamefully persecuted by the Sardinians, received a heavy subsidy from
the Malines congress. Lemmens, a very clever man, is associated with
Verspeyen in the editorship of "Le Bien Public," which compares with
the "Journal de Bruxelles" in the same way as "Le Monde" and the
"Weekly Register" compare with "Le Correspondant" and "The Home and
Foreign Review." De Haulleville, formerly editor of the "Universel,"
and at present connected with the "Correspondant," is one of the best
Belgian writers. He is not only a journalist, but also a thorough
historian, well versed in German literature. I must not forget to
mention Demarteau, the editor of the "Liege Journal;" A. Coomans, an
able speaker, who represented the "Antwerp Journal," and Frappier, the
editor of "L'Ami de l'Ordre." Among the English journalists the most
prominent were Simpson, a friend of Sir John Acton, who wrote for the
"Rambler" and "Home and Foreign Review," and Wigley, editor of the
"Weekly Register," who writes for the "Monde" also, a worthy rival of
Coquille, Faconet, Leon Pagès, Kuhn, La Tour, d'Aignan, and H.
Vrignault. Among the periodicals that had sent representatives to
Malines were: "L'Ouvrier," "Le Messager de la Charité," "La Revue
Chrétiénne," "Le Journal des Villes et des Campagnes," "El Diario" of
Barcelona, "La Regeneracion" of Madrid, "L'Union" of Valencia, "El
Register Catolico" of Barcelona, "La Belgique," "La Paix," "Les Précis
Historiques," "Le Courrier de Bruxelles," "Le Moniteur de Louvain,"
"L'Escaut," "Le Courrier de la Sambre," "L'Union de Charleroy," "Le
Nouvelliste de Verviers," "Le Journal de Hainaut," "L'Impartial de
Soignies," "La Gazette de Vivelles," and several others.

The assembly consisted of forty-five journalists, and their
proceedings made a favorable impression. The gentlemen of the press
knew why they had met. It was resolved to hold every year a general
convention of Catholic journalists and to establish at Brussels an
international telegraphic bureau for Catholic journals, because most
of the bureaus now existing are in the hands of Jews, who frequently
forge untruthful telegrams. The meeting tended to foster mutual good
feeling among the representatives of the different journals, and
resolutions were passed to secure unity of action in the Catholic
press.

The managers of the "Correspondant" strove to obtain the patronage of
the Malines congress by distributing a list of contributors. In fact,
its staff comprises some of the most able Catholic journalists, and we
deem it proper to give, the names of Bishop Dupanloup, the Duke
d'Ayen, the Prince de Broglie, the Count Montalembert, the Count
Falloux, the Count de Carné, the Count de Champagny, Viscount
Lemercier, Viscount de Melun, Vicar-General Meignan, Prof. Perreyve,
F. Gratry, Villemain, de Laprade, Augustine Cochin, Foisset, Leonce de
Lavergne, Wallon, N. de Pontmartin, Lenormant, de Chaillard, Amedée
Achard, Marmier, and de Haulleville. No doubt it would be difficult to
find a greater array of talent. The "Correspondant" appears once a
month, making six large volumes per year.

{337}

I had been present at a meeting of journalists connected with the
second general congress of the larger German states held at Frankfort
in October, 1864. Twenty-seven representatives of the German press
attended. Many resolutions were passed, but not one of them was
carried out; nay, the third general congress of the larger German
states never convened.

The journalists of the minor German states, also, met at Eisenach on
May 22, 1864. Thirty-four members were present, and resolved to meet
at stated periods in order to consult about the interests of the
German press. A committee of delegates from seven journals was
appointed, whose headquarters was to be at Frankfort-on-the-Main until
the next general meeting in 1865. From the transaction of these
assemblies, it has become evident that journalism in Germany is still
in its infancy. The German journalists cannot compare with those of
other countries. They form no class of their own; they lack
self-respect and _esprit de corps_; in short, they are, without
exception, in a lamentable state of dependence, for they are not
wealthy nor do they receive becoming remuneration.

In Belgium the press is better organized; it is not oppressed by
taxation, and this is the reason why Brussels alone can boast of
sixty-seven periodicals. In Belgium 10 to 12 francs will procure a
well-written daily paper, far surpassing our German journals.

The Belgian journalists whom I met at Malines despise the Catholic
press in Germany. They reproach us with not doing our duty, and sneer
at us for being duped by Jewish writers.

Journalism is an important profession, whose members should be
conscientious and honorable men. The journalist addresses his language
to an audience far more numerous than the professor's, and at present
his influence is, so to say, unlimited; he reaches every part of
educated society and sways public opinion. He is called to be the
standard-bearer of liberty and truth. He must, therefore, implant
sound principles in the popular mind, and, standing above the reach of
paltry prejudice, unite in himself a high degree of intelligence and
true devotion to the eternal laws of the Church. Such are the
qualities which a journalist should possess. Without independence,
dignity, and moral freedom he cannot do justice to the task imposed on
him by God. "_Impavidum ferient ruinae_."

In England, America, and Belgium, the press wields a powerful
influence; it has become sovereign, and is necessary to the nation's
life. Science feels that unless it is diffused it is powerless, and
that the school-room is too narrow a field; hence it is that men of
learning make use of the press. In Catholic Germany, on the contrary,
there are still districts where the journalist is looked upon with a
jealous eye, and where it is deemed preferable to read papers written
by Jews and literary gipsies.

"Let the Church be free, let her unfold fully her immense power, let
her extend her influence to every grade and station of society, and
things will assume a more promising aspect. Let the Church be again
respected, let her word be heeded in the palace no less than in the
hut, let homage be paid to her in the courts of justice and in
institutions of learning, at the university no less than at the
village school, and a new and golden era will dawn upon us." These
words, first addressed to the German nation by its bishops, have been
repeated again and again by the Catholic general conventions. The
Church has a right to watch over popular education and schools, but,
as Moufang says, she has an equally undeniable title to direct the
education of those who are destined to be the leaders of the people.
The Church is the mother of universities, but, alas! most of her
daughters have forsaken her. Germany possesses eighteen Protestant
universities, but she cannot boast {338} of an equal number of
Catholic institutions. The Church has been robbed of her educational
establishments in the same way in which she has been deprived of her
monasteries and other possessions. Of the twenty-two German
universities six only are Catholic. At the mixed universities
Catholics are by no means on a footing of equality with Protestants,
and a professor or a fellow who is a staunch Catholic will almost
certainly fall into disgrace. The Protestant professors number ten to
one; a great grievance, no doubt.

Even previous to 1848, far-sighted men were penetrated with the
necessity of establishing a purely Catholic university. But since the
emphatic approval of the scheme by the episcopal council of Würzburg,
in 1848, the Catholic conventions have displayed a lively interest in
the plan and have done all in their power to further its realization.
At Regensburg (1849), Mayence (1851), Münster (1852), Vienna (1853),
and Linz (1856), it received the fullest consideration. The convention
of Linz recommended in the warmest terms the restoration of the
university of Salzburg. This recommendation was repeated by the
Salzburg convention in 1857, which requested the prince-archbishop of
Salzburg, Baron von Farnoczky, to undertake this affair, so important
to Germany. At Salzburg the debates on this question were very stormy,
because Innsbruck claimed the preference. In fact, the university of
Innsbruck has been much better attended of late years.

But the most decisive steps in this regard were taken by the
convention of Aix-la-Chapelle. Prof. Möller, of Louvain, delivered an
eloquent discourse on the establishment of the Louvain university! In
glowing words he represented to the assembly how, on the opening of
the first course of lectures at Malines, in 1834, but eighty-six
students followed the course, how the number of students increased in
1885 to 261 and the following year to 360, whilst at the present day
the three state universities together number 800 students less than
Louvain alone! He spoke of the generosity of the Belgians, of their
yearly subscriptions, and of their collections, to which even the
poorest contribute their mite. He reminded them that the Louvain
professors are among the most distinguished for mental activity, and
that they form men of principle, who honorably fulfil the designs of
God upon them. "And is it impossible for the great Catholic German
nation to do what four millions of Belgians have accomplished? Follow
the example thus set you; German laymen, raise your voices, and shrink
not before difficulties or obstacles. Impossible--the word is unworthy
of Germans!" By this speech of the noble Möller the assembly was
aroused, and its members were ready to undergo every sacrifice in
order to realize their plans. On the following day, when the
convention had met in secret session, Theising, of Warendorf, brought
up the university question, and a debate followed, in which Baron von
Andlaw, of Freiburg, Schulte, of Prague, Count Brandis, of Austria,
Thissen, of Frankfort, Möller, of Louvain, and Heinrich, of Mayence,
participated. It was at first proposed to appoint a committee, which
was to exert itself energetically in favor of the project. Councillor
Phillips, Baron Felix von Loe, Count Brandis, Baron Henry von Andlaw,
Chevalier Joseph von Buss, and Baron Wilderich von Ketteler, were
appointed members of the committee and their nomination received with
applause. The motion also provided for the collection of the money
necessary to establish the university. A wordy discourse followed, but
no definite conclusion was arrived at, when Baron von Andlaw struck
the right chord. "I will give $500 for the establishment of a Catholic
university," he exclaimed. "I will give $500 more," cried Councillor
Phillips of Vienna, "I subscribe $300," said {339} Zander, of Munich.
Count Richemont, of Paris, next ascended the tribune, addressed a few
enthusiastic words to the assembly, and subscribed $500. He was
rapidly followed by Counts Spee, Loe, Schaasberg, Stolberg,
Hoensbroich, Brandis, and many other nobles from the Rhenish provinces
and Westphalia, who came forward with generous contributions. Prof.
Schulte, of Prague, and Canon Moufang each subscribed a thousand
florins. Dumortier, of Brussels, Prisac, of Aix-la-Chapelle, Martens,
of Pelplin, Thymus, Bachem, and Pastor Becker also gave solid proofs
of their interest in the enterprise. In a short time the subscriptions
amounted to $7,000, and at Würzburg, in 1864, $30,000 had already been
subscribed.

The scene at Aix-la-Chapelle was more imposing than any other that
marked the sixteen general conventions of the Catholic societies in
Germany. Joy and enthusiasm were depicted on every countenance, and
hope filled every breast. The whole of Catholic Germany shared in
these feelings; for there was now substantial reason for believing in
the ultimate success of the university scheme. True, subscriptions did
not continue to pour in so rapidly as at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the
nobility of southern Germany, in particular, were very remiss in
performing their duty. To collect $7,000,000 is no easy task,
especially as the German clergy have been deprived of almost all their
possessions, whilst the mass of the people show little zeal for the
undertaking. Still the agitation of this question has been productive
of great good to Catholicity in Germany, for it has inspired all of us
with redoubled zeal and energy. The Catholics have begun to claim
their just rights and to insist upon them till they are granted. As
the Rhenish Westphalian nobility have demanded the restoration of the
old Catholic university of Münster, so in Bavaria, where there is a
purely Protestant university, the Catholics should urge the
establishment of a Catholic one, for it is our first duty, as was
remarked by Schulte at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1862, and by Moufang at
Würzburg in 1864, to insist that universities which were founded by
Catholics should retain their original character. In mixed
universities, the Catholic professors will, henceforth, strain every
nerve to secure true equality. Where this equality is trampled under
foot, they will protest and demand their rights. The professors will
be supported by the Catholic students, who were ably represented at
Frankfort and Würzburg by Anschütz and Baron Dr. von Hertling. Do not
the Catholics outnumber the Protestants in Germany? No one knew
Germany and its tribes better than Frederick Böhmer, of Frankfort, and
he always maintained that the Catholics can boast of as many able men
as the Protestants, and that southern Germany, far from being
inferior, surpasses the northern races in mental abilities. To carry
out the programme laid down above will require our best energies, but
we must, moreover, found a _new university_ a purely Catholic and free
institution, untrammelled by state dictation, and entirely under the
direction of the Church. To do this the bishops, the nobles, and the
clergy must use their best endeavors; but the professors, too, must do
their share, and not look on with cold indifference, as is the case
with most of them. If the state encroaches unceasingly on the rights
of the Church in the realms of science, and if its tyranny
persistently oppresses the most able votaries of science because they
are Catholics, why should we not rely on ourselves, and seek strength
in union? There is neither truce nor rest for us until we are not only
equal but superior to our opponents in every branch of science.

Since its organization, two years ago, the university committee has
done all in its power to promote the good cause. One of the most
zealous members is the young Prince Charles, of {340}
Löwenstein-Werthheim, who has been substituted for the deceased Count
Brandis.

Canon Moufang, of Mayence, spoke on the university question at
Würzburg in 1864. Of all the members of the convention he was best
fitted to do justice to the subject. Since 1848 Dr. Moufang has been
present at almost every one of the sixteen general conventions, and
whatever good has been accomplished by them he has promoted and
encouraged. Connected with most of the Catholic movements of our age,
he understands the feelings of his Catholic countrymen and knows how
to give forcible and opportune expression to them; at times his words
are irresistible, like the mountain torrent. At Munich he delivered a
discourse on the Holy Father and his difficulties; in Aix-la-Chapelle
he thundered against the want of principle and of true manliness which
distinguishes our times; at Frankfort he ridiculed anti-Catholic
prejudices, and at Würzburg he convinced his hearers of the necessity
of a Catholic university. But the school question, also, and the
relations between capital and labor, he has lately treated in an
admirable manner. "_Il faut être de son temps_," is Moufang's motto,
and hence he is one of the representative men of public opinion in
Catholic Germany, and when he combats the enemies of the Church the
advantage is always on his side. On the nineteenth of December, 1864,
Dr. Moufang celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination.
Hundreds of priests from the dioceses of Mayence, Limburg, and
Freiburg were present on this solemn occasion, which they will cherish
for ever in their memory. Dr. Moufang's name immediately suggests that
of Canon Heinrich. They are a "_par nobile fratrum_" in literature as
well as in public life, emulating the example of Raess and Weiss and
of Augustus and Peter Reichensperger. At the age of thirty, after
promoting the organization of the first general convention at Mayence,
Dr. Heinrich was appointed secretary of the national council held at
Würzburg in 1848. Since 1848 he distinguished himself at almost all
the general conventions by his activity and the zeal he displayed in
furthering every Catholic enterprise. He is equally active in the
committees, in the secret and in the open sessions. He is not only a
favorite speaker, but also a skilful controversialist and a journalist
of no mean ability. He published the best reply to Renan, and as a
theologian and jurist he is able to cope with any adversary.

Prof. Haffner is the worthy colleague of Moufang and Heinrich. He
cultivates the science which Aristotle and Plato pronounced the
sublimest of all sciences--philosophy. But Haffner is a philosopher
who is intelligible even to ordinary mortals; he makes a practical use
of his knowledge, and is a favorite at the Rhenish clubs. In fact,
there is no reason why he should not be so. His speeches are
instructive, sublime in conception, and well written. The details are
well arranged and he has due regard for literary perspective. His
incomparable humor is unmixed with biting sarcasm, and his figures are
exquisitely beautiful. Haffner's speeches are perfect gems. Long may
you live, noble son of Suabia!

The Mayence delegates form an attractive group, and they all work
right earnestly for the success of the conventions. Beside those
already noticed, I shall mention Dr. Hirschel, canon of the cathedral,
who presided at the first general meeting of the Christian art unions
at Cologne in 1856; Monsignore Count Max von Galen, who delivered an
elegant discourse on the Blessed Virgin at Aix-la-Chapelle; Professors
Holzammer and Hundhausen, profound scholars; Frederic Schneidier,
president of the young men's associations in the diocese of Mayence;
and Falk, president of the social clubs or casinos.

{341}

Councillor Phillips, of Vienna, is generally chosen chairman of the
section of science and the press. Richly does he deserve this
distinction, for Phillips is an ornament to German literature, and his
work on canon law is a "_monumentum aere perennius_" which will be
numbered among the German classics. On the Catholic press, too,
Phillips has conferred a great benefit, for, in conjunction with
Jareke and Joseph von Görres, he founded the "Historico-Political
Journal," of Munich, which he edited for a long time, assisted by
Guido Görres. Being sent as a delegate to the Frankfort Parliament,
Phillips was numbered among the men of "the stone house;" that is to
say, he belonged to the Catholic party, and became the associate of
Döllinger, Lasaulx, Sepp, Förser, Geritz, Dieringer, Von Bally, and
others who took an active part in the debate on the relations between
church and state. Since 1862 Phillips has been chairman of the
committee on the establishment of the Catholic university. The
speeches of the learned professor were remarkable for the force of
their arguments and the clearness of their ideas. His committee
reports are to the point, and he presides with tact and ability.

Privy Councillor Ringseis delivered telling speeches at
Aix-la-Chapelle and Munich; at Frankfort and Würzburg he did not make
his appearance, being already too much bowed down by age. Ringseis was
born in 1785. In the literary world he occupies a prominent position;
but he has always been more successful as an orator than as a writer.
His appearance is inspiring, his words enthusiastic. The simplicity of
his heart, his pleasing cordiality, and the unchanging freshness of
his intellect, endear him to all with whom he comes in contact; yet he
is one of the men who have bravely weathered all the storms of our
age. He resembles an oak that proudly withstands every hurricane.

Baron von Moy was president of the Würzburg convention. From 1832 to
1837 he lectured on constitutional and international laws, and from
1837 he was for ten years professor at Munich, at a time when the fame
of the Munich university attracted hundreds of young men to the
Bavarian capital, when all Germany knew that there was a great
Catholic university at Munich, and when, in the words of Moufang,
"Görres, Ringseis, Döllinger, Möhler, Slee, Phillips, Moy,
Windischmann, and their colleagues, formed the central group of
Catholic Munich." Baron von Moy presided at Würzburg with much tact
and success. Age has already made its inroads, but his voice is still
rich and agreeable. He is untainted by the ungenial formality of our
German professors. In him solid piety is coupled with affability,
cordiality, and benevolence, and adorned by true Catholic
cheerfulness.

The Catholic professors, on the whole, have taken little interest in
these conventions, because the majority of them are unacquainted with
real life. There are exceptions, however, such as those mentioned
above. Schulte, of Prague, also, has displayed a laudable zeal in
every convention until 1862. He favors true progress, and earnestly
wishes the Catholics not only to rival but surpass the Protestants in
every respect. Sometimes he is a little too exacting in his demands;
his expressions are rather strong, and his strictures on abuses are
not sufficiently tempered with moderation. Schulte is no visionary,
for he is thoroughly acquainted with the state of the Church, but he
is carried away by a burning zeal, a kind of holy anger. Hermann
Müller, professor at the Würzburg university, a jurist and philologer,
and formerly well known as a journalist, was the most handsome member
of the Würzburg convention, and his magnificent beard attracted
universal attention. The university was likewise represented by
Professors Contzen and Ludwig and by Dr. Wirsing. Long continued study
has left its traces on the features of Prof. Vering, of Heidelberg,
but it has not {342} hardened his heart against the claims of the
Catholic cause.

At Würzburg sixty-three professors and authors signed an address and
sent it to the Holy Father. In it they declare their readiness to
submit unconditionally to the decision of the Holy See regarding the
meeting of the German _literati_. I cannot refrain from saying a few
words on this meeting, especially as it may be said to have originated
in the general conventions. In fact, the sensation caused by the
Würzburg meeting has by no means subsided. I have lying before me
Döllinger's "Discourse on the Past and Present of Catholic Theology,"
and criticisms on it by the Mayence "Katholik," the Paris "Monde," and
the "Civiltà Cattolica;" also Prof. Hergenröther's speech at Würzburg
on meetings of European scholars, the pamphlet of Prof. Michelis, of
Braunsberg, and a cutting reply in the November number of "Der
Katholik." To these I may add the papal brief to the Archbishop of
Munich (December 21, 1863), the despatch of Cardinal Antonelli to the
nuncio at Munich (July 5, 1864), and the letter of the Holy Father to
Professors Hergenröther and Denzinger, dated October 20, 1864. I fear
the matter will take a disagreeable turn, and that our learned
professors will bring themselves into difficulty. No doubt there is
much truth in Hergenröther's reflections on his colleagues: "All our
learned men are not as prudent as they should be; they have not
sufficient tact, and are wanting in knowledge of the actual state of
things; many a professor in his sanctum acquires ideas wholly at
variance with real life."

The Catholic general conventions will not alter their character in
order to busy themselves with purely scientific concerns; in short, it
cannot become a congress of learned men, nor a substitute for such a
congress. Fully persuaded of this fact, Prof. Denzinger declared, in
the most explicit terms, that the meeting of the German _literati_ was
independent of the sixteenth general convention, which was nowise
responsible for its doings.

Moreover, it is a fact to be borne in mind, that the Holy See has not
forbidden such meetings, that the German bishops do not wish them to
be interfered with, and that no Catholic party, as Michelis says, has
intrigued to prevent them.

If, in spite of all this, the matter does not prosper, the learned men
alone are to blame. It seems to be extremely difficult to prevent
dissensions among men who devote themselves to different branches of
science, to unite in the bonds of friendship and concord the disciples
of the speculative, the historical, and the practical sciences. If I
belonged to the class of men of which I am speaking, I would express
my opinions more fully. Why did not the illustrious theologians of
Tübingen deign to come to Munich in 1863? Why is there so slim an
attendance of German professors at the Catholic congresses? Why do the
representatives of sciences so intimately connected remain estranged
from each other? A closer union would bring about renewed activity,
prejudices would be dispelled, the jealous reserve with which we now
meet on every side would give way to a more healthy state of things,
and youthful genius would be encouraged by the conviction that they
are stayed and supported by men of experience and acknowledged merit.

Will the congress of 1863 remain a fragment, as the general meeting of
the art unions in 1857? We hope not. The best rejoinder to all that
has been said on such meetings would be a general European congress of
all learned Catholics, at Brussels, Greneva, or Frankfort--attended by
Döllinger, Phillips, and Alzog, as the representatives of Germany; by
Perin, Delcour, and de Ram; by Newman, Oakley, Acton, and Robertson;
by Meignan, Montalembert, and Rio, and by the Italians Nardi, Cantu,
and Casoni. The union between the civilized nations of Europe is
becoming {343} closer day by day; will our scholars alone remain
stationary and isolated? If they follow this course, the day of
retribution will soon arrive.

Foremost among the promoters of scientific progress, during the second
half of the nineteenth century, stands a Catholic prince, King
Maximilian II. of Bavaria. History tells of few princes who have so
liberally patronized men of science. With royal munificence he has
founded and endowed institutions of learning and fostered scientific
enterprise. He will always be praised as one of the most generous
patrons of German science, and in the history of literature and
science will occupy an honorable position. Unfortunately, however, the
ideas of the noble prince were not realized by the men he protected.
He lived to be sorely disappointed, and to discover that he had
bestowed his benefits on men unworthy of his confidence. Döllinger,
without mentioning the king's mistakes, has done full justice to his
merits. Döllinger himself holds a princely rank in the European
republic of letters. With skilful hand he is rearing the immense
edifice of a universal Church history. The corner-stone is already
laid and the foundation completed. May God give life and vigor to the
architect, that he may finish his vast undertaking. Since his famous
lectures at the Odeon at Munich, delivered before a mixed audience in
April, 1861, Döllinger has fixed the attention of men holding the most
contrary opinions both in and out of the Church. Of late, many have
been disappointed in Döllinger, though without any reason; they have
given a false meaning to his words--misinterpreted his intentions.
True, he speaks with a boldness to which all cannot immediately
accustom themselves, for he is a thorough enemy of all mental
reservation in theology. He stands on an eminence, surveying not only
our own times but the whole extent of sacred and profane history, and
combines a correct estimate of the necessities of the age with a
fervent love of Christ and his Church.

Hergenröther, our revered professor, is in many respects the
scientific complement of Döllinger. If Döllinger at times goes too
far, Hergenröther knows how to explain, to correct, and to limit his
expressions; this he has done several times of late. Hergenröther is a
man of great learning, acquired by continued mental activity; but he
is likewise well acquainted with the ideas of the present age. His
speech at the Würzburg convention was a masterpiece, full of clear and
well-defined ideas.

His most active colleague in the Würzburg committee was Professor
Hettinger. He is perhaps the most eminent of living controversialists.
He teaches apologetics, which forms the transition from philosophy to
theology. Hettinger takes a large and philosophical, but at the same
time truly Christian and Catholic, view of the world. Every grand and
beautiful idea, both ancient and modern, he has made his own; he has
analyzed every philosophical system, separating truth from falsehood,
and has gathered every sound principle scattered over the wide range
of philosophical literature. His controversial works deserve to be
ranked among the classics of the nineteenth century. His discourses
are listened to with pleasure, whether he speaks from the pulpit, the
professor's desk, or the tribune. At Frankfort and Würzburg he spoke
in a masterly style.

Denzinger presided at the Würzburg conference which sent an address to
the Holy Father. He is a deep theologian, well versed in all
philosophical systems. His mind is admirably trained, his character
settled and determined, and in learning, notwithstanding the frailty
of his body, he has attained an eminence to which few can aspire.
Self-possessed in debate, sure and cautious in his remarks, a deep
thinker, he exhorted all to forbearance, and gave universal
satisfaction.

{344}

The Würzburg professors do honor to every assembly of scholars and to
every Catholic convention.

Abbot Haneberg, of Munich, perhaps the most venerable of our German
monks, bishop elect of Treves, a linguist who speaks fifteen
languages, a first-rate teacher, who will ever be remembered by his
many disciples as one of the best pulpit orators in Germany, was a
zealous advocate of the Munich congress of literati. The circular was
signed by Haneberg, Döllinger, and Prof. Alzog, of Freiburg. Alzog's
manual of ecclesiastical history is the text-book, not only in
Hildesheim and Freiburg, but in almost every seminary in Europe. The
work resembles one of the beautiful mosaics so much admired in St.
Peter's at Rome, and has been of great use. Alzog was present at the
Frankfort conventions.

Prof. Reusch, of Bonn, is one of our best commentators. He has
rendered the Catholics of Germany a great service in translating the
works of the English cardinal, for Wiseman's writings are read by the
whole Church. About a hundred years ago all Germany perused the
productions of the English free-thinking deists, Shaftesbury, Locke,
Morgan, Woolston, and Toland; at present all read the works of
Wiseman, Faber, Newman, Marshall, Dalgairn, and Manning. Toward the
close of the last century, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, Diderot,
and the other infamous encyclopaedists furnished the educated portion
of Germany with intellectual food; now we eagerly study the writings
of Dupanloup, Montalembert, L. Veuillot, Ségur, F. Gratry, and
Nicolas. True, Renan too and "Le Maudit" have their admirers, but the
admirable replies of Dupanloup, Felix, Freppel, Lasserre, Veuillot,
Ségur, Pressensé, Parisis, Scherer, Coquerel, Lamy, and Nicolas, have
likewise found an extensive circle of readers. Catholic controversy
has never flourished more than at present, when hundreds of able
writers plead the cause of Christ and of his vicar on earth.

Professor Vosen, of Cologne, is another eminent controversialist; he
is a skilful debater, and possesses a thorough knowledge of
parliamentary rules and of the social condition of Germany. His
utterance is rapid, but he uses no superfluous verbiage, and every
sentence is clear and well brought out.

Prof. Reinkens, of Breslau, and Floss, of Bonn, were members of the
executive committee at the Munich convention of scholars. Not long ago
he dedicated to us his biography of "Hilary of Poitiers," a work that
may be classed with Möhler's "Athanasius."

Prof. Reischl, of Regensburg, repeatedly a member of different
committees at the general conventions, and an excellent teacher, whose
memory will ever be cherished by his students, is on the point of
finishing, in the course of the present year, his laborious
translation of the Holy Scriptures. For twelve years he has labored
unceasingly, and the work is the golden fruit of his labors, and will
outlive many generations. We may justly place Reischl's translation of
the Bible among our Catholic classics, such as Möhler's "Symbolism,"
Döllinger's "Paganism and Judaism," Hefele's "History of the
Councils," Phillips' "Canon Law," Hettinger's "Apologetics,"
Amberger's "Pastoral Theology," Dieringer's "Book of Epistles,"
Lasaulx's "Philosophy of the Fine Arts," Stöckl's "Philosophy of the
Middle Ages," Kleutgen's "Theology of the Past," "The Legends of Alban
Stolz," etc. Most of these have appeared since 1848, or rather within
the last twelve years, and are the precursors of a great Catholic
literary period, for which every preparation seems to be already made.
That our writers are improving in beauty of style no observer can fail
to notice; as a proof, I need only mention the names of Haffner,
Molitor, Redwitz, and Hahn-Hahn. I cannot pass unnoticed {345}
Stolberg's "History of the Church," Danberger's "History of the Middle
Ages," Gfrörer's great work on Gregory VII. and his times, and the
works of Frederick von Hurter. "Sepp's Jerusalem," also, is a work of
undoubted merit. Professor Sepp delivered some brilliant speeches at
the first Catholic general conventions. His last book is a telling
refutation of Renan and other modern infidels who deny the divinity of
Christ, and deserves to be ranked with the writings of Heinrich,
Haneberg, Deutinger, S. Brunner, Wriesinger, Michelis, Daumer, and
Hahn-Hahn on the same subject.

Michelis, of Braunsberg, shows some of Tertullian's violence; nay,
sometimes he becomes personal in debate, owing to his passionate
temper and his somewhat peevish character. These qualities are coupled
with an ardent love of his religion and his country, and manly honor
and straightforwardness. His speech at Frankfort, in 1862, was
well-timed and called forth immense enthusiasm. Michelis bears a close
resemblance to Prof. Remirding, of Fulda, who has lately acquired a
great reputation as a dogmatic theologian. Remirding has for a long
time been a teacher in England, and is thoroughly acquainted with
English affairs. To him we may apply the adage: "Still waters run
deep." He is silent, uncommunicative, and fond of thought. His bright
eyes beam with intelligence, gentleness, and benevolence. Prof.
Janssen held his maiden speech at the convention of Frankfort, in
1863; it was very successful. Janssen is a disciple of Böhmer, and he,
as well as Ficker, of Innsbruck, and Arnold, of Marburg, is a worthy
successor of that great historian. He is well fitted to write a
satisfactory history of Germany, for Giesebrecht's "History of the
German Emperors" fails to do justice to the Church during the middle
ages. There is no longer any lack of Catholic historians in Germany,
and the labors of Protestant writers have rendered the task easy for
them. Among our Catholic historians I shall mention Onno Klopp, of
Hanover; Hoefler, of Prague; Bader, Huber, Hergenröther, of Würzburg;
Marx, of Treves; Dudik, Gindely, Kampfschulte, of Bonn; Niehus, Rump,
and Hülskamp, of Münster; C. Will, of Nuremberg; Lämmer, of Breslau,
who has lately been appointed professor of theology; Remkens, of
Breslau; Alexander Kaufmann, of Werthheim; Cornelius, Friedrich, and
Pichlcr, of Munich; Roth von Schreckenstein, Watterich, Dominicus,
Ossenbeck, Ennen, Remling, Junckmann, Kiesel, Bumüller, Weiss, Kerker,
and Alberdingk-Thijm.

These gentlemen should try to meet very often, for by seeing ourselves
reflected in others we learn to know ourselves. Böhmer, Pertz, Chmel,
and Theiner have laid the foundations of historical research; on their
disciples devolves the task of continuing the building, and of
completing it according to the intentions of their masters.

My subject is carrying me away, and I am passing the limits I had
marked for myself. How many other names connected with the Munich
reunion of scholars, or the last Catholic congress, should I notice in
order to do justice to all! Professors Reithmayer, Reitter, and
Stadlbauer, of Munich; Mayer, of Würzburg; the learned Benedictines,
Rupert Mettermüller, of Metten, Gallus Morel, of Einsiedeln, Boniface
Gams, of Munich; Professors Schegg, of Freising, Hähnlein, of
Würzburg; Zobl, of Brixen, Uhrig and Schmid, of Dillingen, Engermann,
of Regensburg, Scheeben, of Cologne, Oischinger and Strodl, of Munich,
Hagemann, of Hildesheim, Pfahler, of Eichstadt, Kraus, of Regensburg,
Brandner and Schoepf, of Salzburg, Nirschl and Greil, of Passau; among
our rising scholars, Messrs. Constantine von Schaetzler, of Freiburg,
Langen, of Bonn, Wongerath, Silbernagel, Friedrich, Pichler, and
Wirthmüller, of Munich, Hitz, Kaiser, Kagerer, J. {346} M. Schneider,
J. Danziger, Bach, H. Hayd, Pfeifer, Kaufmann, of Munich, and Thinnel,
of Neisse; among the clergy, Dr. Westermayer, a celebrated preacher;
Schmid, of Amberg, Dr. Gmelch, of Lichtenstein, Dr. Clos, of
Feldaffing, Dr. Zinler, of Gablingen, Wick, of Breslau, Dr. Zailler;
and finally, Canons Rampf and Herb, of Munich, W. Mayer, of
Regensburg, Düx, of Würzburg, Freund, of Passau, Werner, of St.
Pölten, Provost Ernst, of Eichstädt, Canon Eberhard, of Regensburg,
Lierheimer, of Munich, and a host of others.

Truly Providence has blessed Germany with many great intellects, and a
glorious period seems to have begun for Catholic literature. Our
leading men should be animated with a fervent love of their faith, and
true patriotism; thus they will be enabled to take a truly Christian
view of the world.

I cannot refrain from saying a few words on the representatives of the
German press.

Dr. Ernest Zander, of Munich, is the spokesman of the German
journalists at the general conventions.

Zander has now been connected for twenty-seven years with the press,
but he is still quite hearty and ready to do battle, and the
subscribers of "Der Volksbote" read his spicy articles with
undiminished pleasure.

Although a poor speaker, his appearance is always greeted with
applause, and at the close of his remarks there is no end of cheering.

He calls things by their proper names, spares nobody, and has an
inexhaustible fund of wit and humor.

His numerous decorations, his bushy eyebrows, his twinkling eyes, and
his sarcastic smile, make his remarks doubly interesting.

On matters connected with the Catholic press, there are no authorities
more reliable than Zander and Jörg, of Munich, Sausen, of Mayence, and
Sebastian Brunner, of Vienna.

J. B. von Pfeilschifter, of Darmstadt, is older than the gentlemen
above mentioned; in fact, he is the oldest Catholic journalist in
Germany.

Pfeilschifter, says Maurice Brühl, combines varied learning and
extensive reading with the experience of many years.

Since 1815 he has been actively engaged as a journalist, and for a
long time he was the only champion of lawful authority and political
order, and for this reason he was continually scoffed at and slandered
by his revolutionary colleagues. Zander has a worthy rival in Bachem,
of Cologne. Properly speaking, Bachem is a publisher, but he is
likewise a very able editor. At the conventions he is the most
business-like representative of the press, and seems to know more
about journalism than the editors. In 1865 Bachem's paper will
probably number 6,000 subscribers, which is a very respectable
circulation. His journal is one of the most influential Rhenish
papers, and very ably edited. If papers of equal merit were published
at Mayence, Carlsruhe, Stuttgart, Augsburg, Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna,
Prague, Breslau, and Münster, our political press would satisfy every
reasonable demand.

Francis Hülskamp, of Münster, is one of the youngest among our German
journalists, but he has outstripped many older men, for he was the
first to give a decisive impetus to the Catholic press. Three years
ago Hülskamp and his friend, Hermann Rump, founded the "Literary
Index." Now, in December, 1864, the "Index" can boast of 6,000
subscribers and 30,000 readers. All the other German literary papers
together, Protestant as well as Catholic, do not equal the "Index" in
circulation. Success like this is unheard of in Germany, and proves
that for the Catholics the time of inaction is past. Hülskamp is not
only a critic, but also well-versed in philology, exegesis, and
ecclesiastical history. In poetry, too, he has made some creditable
essays, and at Frankfort, in 1863, he proved conclusively that he is a
promising {347} speaker. Long may this energetic son of Westphalia's
red soil live and flourish!

Among the most regular members of the Catholic conventions is Dr.
Louis Lang, of Munich, who has distinguished himself by his ability as
secretary. The Catholic press also owes him a debt of gratitude. He
has greatly enlarged and improved the Munich "Sonntagsblatt" and
secured for it the services of the best writers in Germany,
succeeding, by these means, in making it rival the "Heimgarten" and
the "Sonntagsfreude." The "Josephsblatt," a monthly published by Lang,
has already a circulation of 40,000 subscribers, and bids fair to
number 100,000 by the end of 1865. Our illustrated papers, too, have
improved wonderfully since 1862; therefore let us not despair, but
trust in God.

At our Catholic conventions there were no meetings of journalists
exclusively. But there were many complaints of the inefficiency of the
press, and the journalists were severely blamed. Nor is the press so
numerously represented as at Malines, and the journalists present are
not so independent as the members of the Belgian, English, and French
press, who are fully conscious of the importance of their position.

Among the journalists whose acquaintance I formed at the Catholic
conventions, the most distinguished are Dr. Max Huttler, of Augsburg,
a man who has the welfare of the Catholic press deeply at heart;
Hoyssack, of Vienna, Dr. Krebs, of Cologne, Dr. Stumpf, of Coblentz,
Hermann Kuhn, of Berlin, Daumer, of Würzburg, Planer, of Landshut, Dr.
Frankl, of Gran in Hungary, Dr. von Mayer, of Hungary, Aichinger, of
Pondorf, Riedinger and Hällmayer, of Spires, Stamminger, the
enterprising editor of the "Chilianeum" at Würzburg, Thüren, of
Cologne, and a number of others.

It is but proper to give at least a passing notice to the latest
offspring of the Catholic conventions, the "Society for the
Publication of Catholic Pamphlets." It was founded at Würzburg, but
the seat of the executive committee is at Frankfort. On motion of
Heinrich and Thissen, of Frankfort, it was recommend by the Catholic
convention at Würzburg. Previous to the Würzburg convention, Thissen
had already made some attempts at Frankfort.

The scheme was well received in Germany. Already the number of
subscribers amounts to 2,000 and at the end of 1865 it will probably
reach 25,000. Canon Thissen has been one of the leading spirits at
every convention which he attended. He has an artful way of suggesting
ideas and gaining for them the favor of the assembly; to carry them
out, however, he needs the help of others. A thorough master of
parliamentary tactics, he is a capital manager, and in debate he may
safely trust to the inspiration of the moment. His brother, A.
Thissen, of Aix-la-Chapelle, is well suited to be the secretary of our
conventions.

{348}

From The Month.

FALLING STARS.

(FROM THE GERMAN.)

  Oh, know'st thou what betideth
    When from the heavens afar.
  Like fiery arrow, glideth
    An earthward-falling star?

  Yon glorious myriads, streaming
    Their quiet influence down,
  Are little angels gleaming
    Like jewels in a crown.

  Untiring, never sleeping,
    God's sentinels they stand;
  Where sounds of joy and weeping
    Rise up on every hand.

  If darkling here and dreary,
    One patient cheek grow pale;
  If in the conflict weary
    One trusting spirit fail;

  If to the throne ascendeth
    One supplicating cry,--
 Then heavenly mercy sendeth
    An angel from on high.

  Soft to the chamber stealing,
    It beams in radiance mild.
  And rocks each troubled feeling
    To slumber like a child.

  This, this is what betideth
    When from the heavens afar.
  Like fiery arrow, glideth
    An earthward-falling star.


--------

{349}

From Once a Week.

A BUNDLE OF CHRISTMAS CAROLS.


Carols, as the name implies, are joyous songs for festive occasions,
at one period accompanied with dancing. In an old vocabulary of A.D.
1440, _Caral_ is defined as _A Songe;_ in John Palsgrave's work of
A.D. 1530, as _Chanson de Noël;_whilst in Anglo-Saxon times the word
appears to have been rendered _Kyrriole,_ a chanting at the Nativity.
The earliest carol in English, known under that name, is the
production of Dame Berners, prioress of St Alban's in the fourteenth
century, entitled _A Carolle of Huntynge_. This is printed on the last
leaf of Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Christmas carols, A.D. 1521,
and the first verse modernized runs thus:

  "As I came by a green forest side,
  I met with a forester that bade me abide,
  Whey go bet, hey go bet, hey go how.
  We shall have sport and game enow."

Milton uses the word carol to express a devotional hymn:

              "A quire
  Of squadron'd angels hear his carol sang."

And that distinguished light of the English Church, Bishop Jeremy
Taylor, speaks of the angels' song on the morning of the Nativity as
the first Christmas carol: "As soon as these blessed choristers had
sung their Christmas carol, and taught the Church a hymn to put into
her offices for ever," etc.

According to Durandus, it was customary in early days for bishops to
sing with their clergy in the episcopal houses on the feast of the
Nativity. _"In Natali praelati cum suis clericis ludant, vel in
domibus episcopalibus."_ These merry ecclesiastics sung undoubtedly
Christmas carols.

But carols, like everything else, must be divided into two sorts,
religious and secular--the carols "in prayse of Christe" and the merry
songs for the festive board or fireside. These may be broken up into
further varieties, thus:

RELIGIOUS
  Scriptural,
  Legendary,
  Lullaby.

SECULAR
  Convivial or festive.
  Wassail,
  Boar's head,
  In praise of holly and ivy.

Of the variety called _Legendary_, I propose now to speak. These are,
as a rule, the most popular of all carols, deriving mainly, as I said
before, their origin, and many of their expressions, from the ancient
mysteries. In the old plays songs are frequently introduced which
resemble, in a very striking manner, what are commonly called carols.
The following song of the shepherds occurs in one of the Coventry
pageants:

  "As I rode out this endenes  [Footnote 50] night,
  Of three Jolly shepherds I saw a sight,'
  And all about their fold a star shone bright;
      They sang terli, terlow,
  So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow."

  [Footnote 50: Last]

The last lines actually form the chorus of one of the carols in the
fifteenth-century manuscript formerly in the possession of Mr. Wright:

  "About the field they piped full right,
  Even about the midst of the night;
  Adown from heaven they saw come a light,
  Tyrle, tyrle,
  So merrily the shepherds began to blow."

Again, in _Ludus Coventriae_:

  "Joy to God that sitteth in heaven,
    And peace to man on earth ground;
  A child is born beneath the levyn,
    Through him many folk should be unbound."

A sixteenth-century carol commences:

  "Salvation overflows the land.
  Wherefore all faithful thus may sing,
      Glory to God most high
      And peace on the earth continually,
      And onto men rejoicing."

{350}

In the Coventry Plays again we find:

  "Of a maid a child should be born,
  On a tree he should be torn,
  Deliver folks that are forlorn."

A genuine carol of the sixteenth century supplies us with the
following:

  "Jesu, of a maid thou wouldst be born.
  To save mankind that was forlorn,
      And all for our sins."

And one of the reign of Henry VI.:

  "Thy sweet Son that thou hast borne,
  To save mankind that was forlorn.
  His head is wreathed in a thorn.
  His blissful body is all to-torn."

The "Cherry-Tree Carol," formerly a great favorite throughout England,
recollections of which yet linger amongst the country-folk, is in many
instances a literal copy from the Coventry Mysteries. I give the
popular version of the "Cherry-Tree Carol:"

  "Joseph was an old man.
    And an old man was he.
  When he wedded Mary
    In the laud of Galilee.

  "Joseph and Mary
   Walked through an orchard good.
  Where were cherries and berries
    As red as any blood.

* * * * *

  "O then bespake Mary
    With words both meek and mild,
  'Gather me some cherries, Joseph,
    They ran so in my mind.'"

St. Joseph refuses "with words most unkind" to grant her request,
apparently unaware that his spouse is about to become the mother of
the Son of God. The unborn Saviour, however, directs the Blessed
Virgin to

 "'Go to the tree, Mary,
    And it shall bow to thee,
  And the highest branch of all
    Shall bow down to Mary's knee.'

* * * * *

  "Then bowed down the highest tree
    Unto his mother's hand:
  Then she cried. 'See, Joseph.
    I have cherries at command.'

  "O eat your cherries, Mary,
    O eat your cherries now,
  O eat your cherries, Mary,
    That grow upon the bough.'"

Another version gives the following reply of S. Joseph:

  "O then bespake Joseph.
    'I have done Mary wrong.
  But cheer up, my dearest.
    And be not cast down.'"

I give a portion of the rest of the carol, some of the verses being
remarkably touching and beautiful:

  "As Joseph was a-walking,
    He heard an angel sing,
  'This night shall be born
    Our Heavenly King.

  "He neither shall be born
     In honsen nor in hall,
  Nor in the place of paradise.
     But in an ox's stall.

  "He neither shall be clothed
    In purple nor in pall,
  But all in fair linen
    As were babies all.

  "He neither shall be rocked
    In silver nor in gold,
  But in a wooden cradle.
    That rocks on the mould.

  "He neither shall be christened
    In white wine nor in red.
  But with the spring water
    With which we were christened.'"

In the fifteenth pageant of the Coventry Mysteries the following lines
occur:

  "_Mary_, Ah, my sweet husband, would you tell to me
  What tree is yon, standing on yon hill?

  "_Joseph_, Forsooth. Mary, it is yclept a cherry tree.
  In time of year you might feed you thereon your fill.

  "_Mar._ Turn again, husband, and behold yon tree.
  How that it bloometh now so sweetly.

  "_Jos._ Come on, Mary, that we were a yon city.
  Or else we may be blamed, I tell you lightly.

  "_Mar._ Now, my spouse, I pray you to behold
   How the cherries (are) grown upon yon tree;
   For to have thereof right fain I would.
   And it please you to labor so much for me.

  "_Jos._ Your desire to fulfil I shall assay sekerly,
   How to pluck you of these cherries, it is a work wild.
   For the tree is so high, It would not be lightly (easy).

* * * * *

  "_Mar._ Now, good Lord, I pray thee, grant me this boon,
  To have of these cherries, and it be your will;
  Now I thank God this tree boweiht to me down,
  I may now gather enow, and eat my fill.

{351}

  "_Jos._ Now I know well, I have offended my God in trinity.
  Speaking to my spouse these unkind words.
  For now I believe well it may none other be,
  But that my spouse beareth the King's Son of Bliss."

It is interesting to note the way in which the more modern composition
retains all the incidents and traditions of the mediaeval mystery. Our
popular carol speaks of St. Joseph as _an old man, and an old man was
he,_ while the mystery represents him as saying (p. x.), _I am an old
man, and I am so aged and so old._The tree is the same, there is the
same desire of the Virgin Mother to taste the fruit, the same refusal
and bitter retort of her husband, the bowing-down of the tree, and the
regret of St. Joseph for his unkindness. Mr. Hone was not ashamed to
say of the "Cherry-Tree Carol:" "The admiration of my earliest days
for some lines in it still remains, nor can I help thinking that the
reader will see somewhat of cause for it."

The following example is still given on almost every broadside
annually printed: it is called "The Three Ships." I ought perhaps
first to state that the Three Ships are supposed to signify the
mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation being, as the _Speculum
Vitae Christi_ hath it, "the high work of all the Holy Trinity, though
it be that only the Person of the Son was incarnate and became man:"

  "I saw three ships come sailing in,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day:
  I saw three ships come sailing in
    On Christmas day in the morning.

  "And what was in those ships all three,
    On Christmas day? etc.,
  And what was in, etc.,
    On Christmas day in the morning?

  "Our Saviour Christ and our Lady, etc..
    On Christmas day in the morning.
  Pray whither sailed those ships all three? etc.,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

  "O, they sailed into Bethlehem, etc..
    On Christmas day in the morning;
  And all the bells on earth shall ring, etc.,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

  "And all the angels in heaven shall sing, etc,
    On Christmas day In the morning.
  And all the souls on earth shall sing, etc.,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

  "Then let us all rejoice amain, etc..
    On Christmas day in the morning."

Another rude and rather amusing version is sometimes given of this
carol, called "The Sunny Bank:"

  "As I sat on a sunny bank,
    A sunny bank, a sunny bank.
  As I sat on a sunny bank,
    On Christmas day in the morning,

  "I spied three ships come sailing by, etc..
    On Christmas day, etc.;

  "And who should be with those three ships?
    On Christmas day, etc.,

  "But Joseph and his fair lady, etc.,
    On Christmas day, etc.

  "Oh, he did whistle, and she did sing,
    And all the bells on earth did ring.
  For joy that our Saviour they did bring
    On Christmas day in the morning."

An old Dutch carol, given by Hoffman, commences:

  "There comes a vessel laden.
  And on its highest gunwale
  Mary holds the rudder,
  The angel steers it on."

And thus explains the mission of the ship:

  "In one unbroken course
  There comes that ship to land:
  It brings to us rich gifts,
  Forgiveness is sent to us."

This translation is taken from Mr. Sandys' book on "Christmas-tide."
About the sixteenth century a similar carol was sung at Yule, which is
given by Ritson:

  "There comes a ship far sailing then,
  Saint Michael was the steersman;
    Saint John sat in the horn:
  Our Lord harped, our Lady sang,
  And all the bells of heaven they rang
   On Christ's Sunday at morn."

Another specimen I take from a Birmingham collection; it is called
"The Seven Virgins." This is given also by Mr. Sylvester from "the
original old broadside." It is singular, however, that his old copy
should include a line which he confesses to be a "modern
interpolation!"

  "All under the leaves, and the leaves of life,
  I met with virgins seven.
  And one of them was Mary mild.
    Our Lord's mother in heaven.
  O, what are you seeking, you seven pretty maids.
    All under the leaves of life?"

{352}

  'We're seeking for no leaves, Thomas,
    But for a friend of thine.
  We're seeking for sweet Jesus Christ,
    To be our heavenly guide.'
  'Go down, go down to yonder town,
    And sit in the gallery,
  And there you'll see sweet Jesus Christ
    Nailed to a yew tree.'
  And they went down to yonder town
    As fast as foot could fall,
  And many a bitter and grievous tear
    From our Lady's eyes did fall.
  'O, peace, mother, O, peace, mother,
    Your weeping doth me grieve,
  I must suffer this, he said.
    For Adam and for Eve.

* * * * *

  'O mother, take you John Evangelist
    To be your favorite son,
  And he will comfort you sometimes.
    Mother, as I have done.'

* * * * *

  "Then he laid his head on his right shoulder.
      Seeing death it struck him nigh,
  'The Holy Ghost be with your soul,
    I die, mother. I die.'"

Many of my readers will recollect the famous carol of "The Seven
Joys," still croaked out in the streets of London and elsewhere about
Christmas time. Very similar carols to this exist of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, one of which I select from Mr. Wright's
manuscript. I have, as in all other cases, modernized the orthography:

OF THE FIVE JOYS OF OUR LADY.

* * * * *

  "The first Joy that came to thee
   Was when the angel greeted thee.
   And said, 'Mary, full of charity,
             Ave, plena gratia.'
   The second joy that was full good
   When God's Son took flesh and blood.
   Without sorrow and changing of mood,
           'Enixa es puerpera.'
   The third joy was full of might,
   When God's Son on rood was put.
   Dead and buried, and laid in sight,
           'Surrexit die tertia.'
   The fourth joy was on Holy Thursday,
   When God to heaven took his way,
   God and man withouten nay.
            'Ascendit supra sidera.'
   The fifth joy is for to come.
   At the dreadful day of doom,
   When he shall deem us all and some
            'Ad coeli palatia.'"

* * * * *

The following carol for St. Stephen's day is from a manuscript of the
time of King Henry VI. The reader will be amused to find the great
proto-martyr here introduced as a servant of King Herod, and intrusted
with the task of bringing in the boar's head, a famous dish, and "the
first mess" at Christmas and other high festivals. There was evidently
some honor attached to this office, for Holinshed tells us that King
Henry II., in 1170, on the day of his son's coronation, served him as
sewer, bringing up the boar's head, _according to the manner_; and in
1607, at St. John's College, Oxford, the "first mess was carried by
the tallest and lustiest of all the guard."

  "Saint Stephen was a clerk in King Herod's hall.
  And served him of bread and doth as ever king befall.

  "Stephen out of kitchen came, with boar's head in hand.
  He saw a star was fair and bright, over Bethlem stand.

  "He cast adown the boar's head, and went into the hall,
_S. Stephen._ I forsake thee, King Herod, and thy works all,

  "I forsake thee, King Herod, and thy works all,
  There is a child in Bethlehem born, is better than we all.

"_Herod._ What aileth thee, Stephen? What is thee befall?
  Lacketh thee either meat or drink in King Herod's hall?

"_S. Stephen_. Lacketh me neither meat nor drink in King Herod's hall.
  There is a child in Bethlehem born, is better than we all.

* * * * *

"_Herod_. That is all so sooth, Stephen, all so sooth, I wit,
  As this capon crow shall lyeth here in my dish.

  "That word was no soon said, that word in that hall.
  The capon crew _Christus natus est_ among the lords all."

* * * * *

This brings us to the more modern legendary carol of "The Carnal [a
bird] and the Crane," in which the same incident occurs of the bird
crowing in the dish:

  "As I passed by a river side.
    And there as I did rein [run],
  In argument I chanced to near
    A carnal and a crane.

  "The carnal said unto the crane,
    'If all the world should turn,
  Before we had the Father,
    But now we have the Son.'

  "'From whence does the Son come?
    From where and from what place?
  He said, 'In a manger,
    Between an ox and ass.'

* * * * *

  "'Where is the golden cradle
    That Christ was rocked in?
  Where are the silken sheets
    That Jesus was wrapt in?'

  "'A manger was the cradle
    That Christ was rocked in;
  The provender the asses left
    So sweetly he slept on.'

{353}

  "There was a star in the west land,
    SO bright it did appear
  Into King Herod's chamber.
    And where King Herod were.

  "The wise men soon espied it,
    And told the king on high,
  'A princely babe was born that night,
    No king could e'er destroy.'

  "'If this be true,' King Herod said,
    'As thou tellest unto me.
  This roasted cock that lies in the dish,
    Shall crow full fences three.'

  "The cock soon freshly feathered was,
    By the work of God's own hand,
  And then three fences crowed he
    In the dish where he did stand."

Herod then gives orders for the general massacre of the young
children, and the Saviour, with Joseph and his mother, travel into
Egypt amongst the "fierce wild beasts." The blessed Virgin being
weary, "must needs sit down to rest," and her son desires her to "see
how the wild beasts come and worship him:"

  "First came the lovely lion,
    Which Jesu's grace did spring.
  And of the wild beasts in the field
    The lion shall be the king."

The Holy Family continuing their flight, pass by a husbandman "just
while his seed was sown:"

  "The husbandman fell on his knees,
    Even before his face;
  'Long time thou hast been look'd for,
    But now thou'rt come at last.'

* * * * *

  "'The truth, man, thou hast spoken,
    Of it thou mayst be sure.
  For I most lose my precious blood
    For thee and thousands more.

  "'If any one should come this way,
    And inquire for me alone.
  Tell them that Jesus passed by,
    As thou thy seed did sow.'"

King Herod comes afterward with his train, and furiously asks of the
husbandman whether our Saviour has passed by; the husbandman replies
that

  "'Jesus passed by this way
    When my seed was sown.

  "But now I have it reapen,
    And some laid on my wain.
  Ready to fetch and carry
    Into my barn again.'"

Herod, supposing that it must be "full three quarters of a year since
the seed was sown," turned back, and "further he proceeded into the
Holy Land." A manuscript of the fifteenth century, preserved in the
British Museum, contains a representation of the flight into Egypt, in
which the above legend is introduced. The city of Bethlehem stands in
the background, and on the right, in the distance, a field of corn and
a reaper, who is in conversation with a soldier by his side. A curious
Scotch tradition states that when Herod and his soldiers made their
inquiry of the husbandman, "a little black beetle lifted up his head,
and exclaimed, _The Son of Man passed here last night_." Black beetles
are probably not more popular here than in Scotland, but Highlanders,
whenever they find the dastardly insect, kill it, repeating the words,
"_Beetle, beetle, last night_."

"The Holy Well" is a very favorite carol with the broadside printers;
I have seen it side by side with a very lively "legendary" production,
"Flyaway Carol:"

  "There good old Wesley, and a throng
      Of saints and martyrs too,
  Unite and praise their Saviour's name.
      And there I long to goo.
             Fly away! Fly away!
             While yet it's called to-day!"

The Magi or three Kings of Cologne form the subject of many an old
carol. The names of these "famous men" are supposed to have been,
Kasper or Gaspar, King of Tarsus, young and beardless; Melchior, King
of Nubia, old, with long beard and grey hair; and Balthazar, King of
Saba, a negro. Their offerings were, as is well known, symbolical; to
use the words of the Anglo-Saxon Hymnary, translated by the recorder
of Sarum:

  "Incense to God, and myrrh to grace his tomb,
  For tribute to their King, a golden store;
  One they revere, three with three offerings come,
          And three adore."

From an old commentary on the gospel of St. Matthew, we gather some
curious matter relating to the history of the Three Wise Men. A
certain nation dwelling close to the ocean, in the extreme east,
possessed a writing, inscribed with the name of Seth, concerning the
star which was to appear:

{354}

"Twelve of the more learned men of that country * * * has disposed
themselves to watch for that star; and when any of them died, his son
or one of his kindred * * was appointed in his place. These,
therefore, year by year, after the threshing out of the corn, ascended
into a certain high mountain, called _Mons victorialis_, having in it
a certain cave in the rock, most grateful and pleasant, with fountains
and choice trees, into which, ascending and bathing themselves, they
prayed and praised God in silence three days. And thus they did,
generation after generation, watching ever, lest peradventure that
star of beatitude should arise upon themselves, until it appeared
descending on the mountain, having within itself, as it were, the form
of a man-child, and above it the similitude of a cross; and it spake
to them, and taught them, and commanded them that they should go into
Judaea. And journeying thither for the space of two years, neither
food nor drink failed in their vessels."

Other old accounts state that their journey occupied twelve days only:
"they took neither rest nor refreshment; it seemed to them indeed as
one day; the nearer they approached to Christ's dwelling, the brighter
the star shone."   [Footnote 51]

  [Footnote 51: Early Christian Legends.]

  [Illustration: Drawing described below. ]

There appears to have been no decided opinion or tradition as to the
form of the star; it is shown thus by Albert Durer, in an old book
which I have by me of 1519: it is drawn with eight points, the lowest
one being much longer than the others; in another book, 1596, I find
it represented as a star of six points; in some old pictures it is
shown as a sort of comet, and it is described to have been "as an
eagle flying and beating the air with his wings," having within the
form and likeness of the Holy Child.

In "Dives and Pauper," printed in 1496, we gather the following
account of it:

  "_Dives_. What manner of star was it then?

  "_Pauper_. Some clerks tell that it was an angel in the likeness of
  a star, for the kings had no knowledge of angels, but took all heed
  to the star. Some say that it was the same child that lay in the
  ox-stall which appeared to the kings in the likeness of a star, and
  so drew them and led them to himself in Bethlehem."

I wish it were possible to give here a quaint illustration of the
journey of the Three Wise Men, from a sheet of carols printed in 1820,
which forms one of the wood-cuts procured with no little difficulty
from the publisher by Mr. Hone, and is but little known.

The history of the Magi is even traced further; after their return to
their own country they were baptized by St. Thomas the Apostle, became
missionaries with him, and were, it is said by some, martyred.

Their journeyings did not, however, end with their deaths--their
bodies were translated to Constantinople, thence to Milan, and
afterward to Cologne, where they are still preserved in the cathedral,
and their history recorded in a series of frescoes. Their shrine at
Cologne was once exceedingly rich and magnificent, but during the
excitement of the first French revolution many of the jewels which
adorned the monument were sold and replaced by paste or glass
counterfeits. The following description of their tomb I gather from
Mr. Fyfe's book on "Christmas:"

  "The coffin is stated to have two partitions, the lower having a
  half, and the upper a whole, roofing. The former compartment
  contains the bones of the three kings, whose separate heads appear
  aloft through the aperture in the half-roofing; and on this roofing
  are inscribed the names _Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar_, encrusted in
  rubies. {355} The heads are adorned with crowns weighing six pounds
  apiece, of gold, diamonds, and pearls. It is asserted (but doubted)
  that the tomb and its contents are of the value of £240,000."

From the offerings of the three kings arose the practice of Christmas
gifts, and the festival of the Epiphany has always been observed in
remembrance of their visit to Bethlehem; it has also been the custom
from earliest times for our sovereigns to offer the three mystic gifts
of gold, myrrh, and incense at the altar on the day of the Epiphany,
which custom is still observed at the Chapel Royal, the royal
oblations being received by the dean or his deputy in a bag of crimson
and gold. The Epiphany is also a "scarlet day" at the universities.
After this long roundabout discourse, I am almost afraid to weary my
readers with a second edition of the wanderings of the Wise Men, but I
must rely upon their generous forbearance; the accompanying carol is
from a manuscript of the time of King Henry VII.:

  "Now is Christmas i-come,
  Father and Son together in One,
  Holy Ghost, as Ye be One,
                         In fere-a:
  God send us all a good new year-a.

  "There came iij kings from Galilee
  Into Bethlehem that fair city
  To seek him that ever should be,
                         By right-a,
  Lord, and King, and Knight-a.

  "At they came forth with their offering,
  They met with Herod that moody king,
                          This tide-a,
  And this to them he said-a.

"_Her_. Of whence be ye, you kings iij?
"_Mag_. Of the East, as ye may see,
  To seek him that ever should be,
                          By right-a.
  Lord, and King, and Knight-a.

"_Her_. When you at this child have been,
  Come home again by me,
  Tell me the sights that you have seen,
                          I pray you,
  Go no other way-a.

* * * *

  "The Father of heaven an angel down sent,
  To these iij kings that made present
                         This tide-a.
  And this to them he said-a,
  My Lord hath warned you every one
  By Herod King you go not home
  For an you do, he will you slay,
                         And strew-a,
  And hurt you wonderly-a.

  "Forth then went these kings iij
  Till they came home to their countree.
  Glad and blithe they were all iij,
  Of the sights that they had seen.
                         By dene-a.
  The company was clean-a."

* * * *

I will conclude with a modern specimen of a legendary carol written by
the Rev. Dr. Neale, and published in Novello's shilling collection.
The story of St. Wenceslaus, the good King of Bohemia, is given by
Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his "Life of Christ:"

'"One winter night, going to his devotions in a remote church,
barefooted in the snow, * * his servant Podavius, who waited on his
master's piety, and endeavored to imitate his affections, began to
faint through the violence of the snow and cold, till the king
commanded him to follow him, and set his feet in the same footsteps
which his feet should mark for him; the servant did so, and either
fancied a cure, or found one, for he followed his prince, helped
forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the forming
footsteps for him in the snow."

  "Good King Wenceslaus look'd out.
    On the Feast of Stephen;
  When the snow lay round about.
    Deep and crisp and even:
  Brightly shone the moon that night,
    Though the frost was cruel,
  When a poor man came in sight,
    Gath'ring winter fuel.

  "'Hither, page, and stand by me.
    While thou know'st it telling,
  Yonder peasant who is he?
    Where and what his dwelling?
  "'Sire, he lives a good league hence
    Underneath the mountain;
  Right against the forest fence,
    By Saint Agnes' fountain.'

  "'Bring me flesh and bring me wine.
    Bring me pine logs hither;
  Thou and I will see him dine,
    When we bear them thither.'
  Page and monarch forth they went.
    Forth they went together:
  Through the rude wind's wild lament,
    And the bitter weather.

  "'Sire, the night is darker now.
    And the wind blows stronger.
  Fails my heart, I know not how,
    I can go no longer.'
  "'Mark my footsteps, good my page;
    Tread thou in them boldly;
  Thou shalt find the winter's rage
    Freeze thy blood less coldly.'

  "In his master's steps he trod.
    Where the snow lay dinted;
  Heat was in the very sod
    Which the saint had printed.
  Therefore, Christian men--be sure--
    Wealth or rank possessing,
  Ye who now will bless the poor,
    Shall yourselves find blessing."

------

{356}

From The Dublin Review.

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM.

_The Formation of Christendom_. Part First.
By T. W. ALLIES. London: Longmans.


It is somewhat paradoxical, but strictly true, to say that the
greatest and most important revolution which ever took place upon
earth is that to which least attention has hitherto been paid, and
concerning which least is known--the substitution of "Christendom" for
the heathen world. Before our own day no historian, no philosopher of
modern times has felt any interest in this vast theme, and whatever
information with regard to it is attainable must be sought in the
fragmentary remains of ancient writers, or in works very recently
published on the continent. In the volume before us Mr. Allies has
taken ground not yet occupied by any English author. He has availed
himself of two works--Döllinger's "Christenthum und Kirche" and
Champagny's Histories--and he acknowledges in the most liberal and
loyal manner his obligation to them; but, in the main, he has been
left to find his way for himself, and no man could well be more highly
qualified for the task, whether by the gifts of nature or by the
acquirements of many years. We infer from the work itself that his
attention was immediately turned to the subject by his appointment as
professor of the "Philosophy of History" in the Catholic university of
Dublin, under the rectorship of Dr. Newman. The duties of his post
obliged him to weigh the question, "what is the philosophy of
history?" and the inaugural lecture with which the volume before us
commences, although it gives no formal definition of the phrase (which
is to be regretted), supplies abundant considerations by the aid of
which we may arrive at it. History, in its origin, was far more akin
to poetry than to philosophy, and even when it passes into prose it is
in the half-legendary form, which makes the narrative of Herodotus and
of the annalists of the middle ages so charming to all readers. They
are ballads without metre. Next came that style of which Thucydides is
the model, and which Mr. Allies calls "political history." "Its limit
is the nation, and it deals with all that interests the nation."
"Great, indeed, is the charm where the writer can describe with the
pencil of a poet and analyze with the mental grasp of a philosopher.
Such is the double merit of Thucydides. And so it has happened that
the deepest students of human nature have searched for two thousand
years the records of a war wherein the territory of the chief
belligerents was not larger than a modern English or Irish county.
What should we say if a quarrel between Kent and Essex, between Cork
and Kerry, had kept the world at gaze ever since? Yet Attica and
Laconia were no larger."

And yet it needed something more than territorial greatness in the
states of which he wrote to enable even Thucydides himself to realize
the idea of a philosophical history. For the five hundred years which
followed the Peloponnesian war brought to maturity the greatest empire
which has ever existed among men, and although, at the close of that
period, one of the ablest and most thoughtful of writers devoted
himself especially to its history, yet, says our author, "I do not
know that in reading the pages of Polybius, of Livy, or even of
Tacitus, we are conscious of a wider grasp of thought, a more enlarged
experience of political interests, a higher idea of {357} man, and of
all that concerns his personal and public life, than in those of
Thucydides." Great, indeed, was the genius of those ancient
historians, magnificent were the two languages which they made their
instruments--languages "very different in their capacity, but both of
them superior in originality, beauty, and expressiveness to any which
have fallen to the lot of modern nations. It may be that the marbles
of Pentelicus and Carrara insure good sculptors." "In the
narrative--that is, the poetic and pictorial part of history--they
have equal merit. Their history is a drama in which the actors and the
events speak for themselves. What was wanting was the bearing of
events on each other, the apprehension of great first principles--the
generalization of facts." And this no mere lapse of time could give.
It is wanting in the works of the greatest ancient masters. It is
found in moderns in all other respects immeasurably their inferiors.
"What, then, had happened in the interval?" Christianity had
happened--Christendom had been formed. '"There was a voice in the
world greater, more potent, thrilling, and universal, than the last
cry of the old society, _Civis sum Romanus_, and this voice was _Sum
Christianus_. From the time of the great sacrifice it was impossible
to sever the history of man's temporal destiny from that of his
eternal; and when the virtue of that sacrifice had thoroughly leavened
the nations, history is found to assume a larger basis, to have lost
its partial and national cast, to have grown with the growth of man,
and to demand for its completeness a perfect alliance with
philosophy."

Thus, then, the "philosophy of history" is the comparison and
arrangement of its great events by one whose mind is stored with the
facts which it records, and who at the same time possesses the great
first principles which qualify him to judge of it. We may, therefore,
lay it down as an absolute rule, that without Christianity no really
philosophical history could have been written.

Not unnaturally, then, the first example of the philosophy of history
was given by a man whose mind, if not the greatest ever informed by
Christianity, was at least among a very few in the first class, was
moreover so thoroughly penetrated by Christian principles, that to
review the events of the world in any other aspect, or through any
other medium, would have been to him as impossible as to examine in
detail without the light of the sun the expanse of plains and hills,
rivers and forests, which lay under him as he stood on some
predominant mountain peak. God, the Almighty Creator--God incarnate,
who had once lived and suffered on earth, and now reigned on high
until he should put all enemies under his feet, and who was coming
again to judge the world which he had redeemed--the Church founded by
him to enlighten and govern all generations throughout all nations,
and in which dwelt the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost--the
evil spirits, powerless against the divine presence in the Church, but
irresistible by mere human power--the saints, no longer seen by man,
but whose intercession influenced and moulded all the events of his
life,--all these were ever before the mind of St. Augustine, not
merely as articles of faith which he confessed, but as practical
realities. To trace the events of the world without continually
referring to all these, would have been to him not merely irreligious,
but as unreal, unmeaning, and fallacious as it would be to a natural
philosopher of our own day to investigate the phenomena of the
material world without taking into consideration the attraction of the
earth and the resistance of the air. This should be noticed, because
we have all met men who, while professing to believe most, if not all,
of these things, would consider it bad taste to introduce such
considerations into any practical affair. They are, in short, part of
that very {358} remarkable phenomenon, the "Sunday religion" of a
respectable English gentleman, which he holds as an inseparable part
of his respectability, but which is well understood to have no bearing
at all upon the business of the week. Living as St. Augustine did at
the crisis at which the civilization of the ancient world was finally
breaking up, his eye was cast back in review over the whole gorgeous
line of ancient history, which swept by him like a Roman triumph.
Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, each had its day; the last and greatest
of them all he saw tottering to its fall. But far more important than
this comprehensive survey, which the circumstances of his times made
natural to so great an intellect, was his possession of fixed and
certain principles, the truth of which he knew beyond the possibility
of doubt, and which were wide enough to solve every question which the
history of the world brought before him. Great men there had been
before him, but the deeper their thoughts, the more had they found
that the world itself and their own position in it were but a hopeless
enigma without an answer, a cypher without a key. A flood of light had
been poured upon the piercing mental eye of St. Augustine when the
waters of baptism fell from the hand of the holy Ambrose upon his
outward frame. Every part of the Old Testament history glowed before
him, as when from behind a cloud which covers all the earth the light
of the sun falls concentrated upon some mountain-peak; and the man who
reverences and ponders as divine that inspired history has learned to
read the inner meaning of the whole history of the world as no one
else can. In every age, no doubt, Almighty God rules and directs in
justice and mercy the world which he has created; but in general he
hides himself behind an impenetrable veil. "Clouds and darkness are
round about him, justice and judgment the establishment of his
throne." To many an ordinary spectator, the world seems only the
theatre of man's labor and suffering. He passes through it as he might
through one of the arsenals of ancient Greece or Rome, where indeed
great works were wrought, but where the hand of the workman was always
as visible as the result produced. A more thoughtful man might see
proofs of some unknown power, just as in an arsenal of our day works,
compared to which the fabled labors of giants and cyclops were as
child's play, are hourly performed by the stroke of huge hammers
welding vast masses of glowing metal, while nothing is seen to cause
or explain their motion. All this is understood by one who has once
been allowed to see at work the engine itself which sets all in
motion. So does the Old Testament history unveil to the eye of faith
the hidden causes, not only of the Jewish history, but of the great
events of secular history. All that seemed before only results without
cause, is seen to be fully accounted for; not that we can always
understand the ends which the Almighty Worker designs to accomplish,
or the means by which he is accomplishing them, but everywhere faith
sees the operation of Almighty power directed by infinite wisdom and
love, and, while able to understand much, it is willing to await in
reverent adoration the development of that which as yet is beyond its
comprehension. It sees that the history of other nations is
distinguished from that of the children of Israel, not so much by the
character of the events which it records (for the extraordinary
manifestations of divine power were chiefly confined to a few special
periods), as to the principle and spirit in which it has been written,
and that secular history viewed by eyes supernaturally enlightened
assumes the same appearance.

In fact, it is not difficult to write a history of the reigns of David
and Solomon and their successors down to the fall of the Hebrew
monarchy which sounds very much like that of any other Oriental
kingdom. The {359} thing has been done of late years, both in Germany
and in England. It was by this that Dean Milman, many years ago, so
greatly shocked the more religious portion of English readers. Nor
were they shocked without cause; for his was a history of the Jews
from which, as far as possible, Almighty God was left out, while the
characteristic of the inspired narrative is, that it is a record not
so much of the doings of men as of the great acts of God by man and
among men. Only Dean Milman was more consistent than those who
condemned him. He was right in perceiving that the greater part of the
history of the Jews is not materially different from that of other
nations. But he went on to infer that, therefore, we may leave God out
of sight in judging of Jewish history, as we do in that of other
nations, instead of learning from the example of the Jews that in
every age God is as certainly working among every nation. That by
which he offended religious Protestants was the application of their
own ordinary principles to the one history in which they had been
taught from childhood to see and acknowledge with exceptional
reverence the working of Almighty God in the affairs of the world.

This it is which gives its peculiar character to many of the
chronicles of the middle ages. It is impossible not to feel that the
writers see no broad distinction between the history of the nations
and times of which they are writing and that of the ancient people of
God. And hence in their annals we have far more of the philosophy of
history, in the true sense of the word, than was possible to any
ancient author. For with all their ignorance of physical causes, which
led them into many mistakes, their main principles were both true and
vitally important, and were wholly unknown to Thucydides and Tacitus.
But the circumstances of their times made it impossible that they
should survey the extensive range of facts which lies before a modern
historian. In many instances, also, they were led by the imperfect
state of physical science to attribute to a supernatural interference
of God in the world things which we are now able to refer to natural
causes. That God has before now interfered with the course of nature
which he has established in the world, and may whenever he pleases so
interfere again, these were to them first principles. And so far they
reasoned truly and justly, although their imperfect acquaintance with
other branches of human knowledge sometimes led them to apply amiss
their true principle. Their minds were so much accustomed to dwell
upon the thought of God, and upon his acts in the world, that they
were always prepared to see and hear him everywhere, and in every
event. When they heard of any event supposed to be supernatural, they
might be awestruck and impressed, but could not be said to be
surprised; and hence, no doubt, they sometimes accepted as
supernatural events which, if examined by a shrewd man who starts with
the first principle that nothing supernatural can really have taken
place, could have been otherwise explained. Beside, their comparative
unacquaintance with physical science led them into errors in
accounting for and even in observing those which they themselves did
not imagine to be supernatural. But their first principles were true.
And the modern who assumes, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the
course of the world is modified and governed only by the passions and
deeds of man, is in his first principles fundamentally wrong. They
fell into accidental error; he cannot be more than accidentally right.

Our author says:

   "In the middle ages, and notably in the thirteenth century, there
   were minds which have left us imperishable memorials of themselves,
   and which would have taken the largest and most philosophical view
   of history had the materials existed ready to their hand. {360}
   Conceive, for instance, a history from the luminous mind of St.
   Thomas with the stores of modern knowledge at his command. But the
   invention of printing, one of the turning points of the human race,
   was first to take place, and then on that soil of the middle ages,
   so long prepared and fertilized by so patient a toil, a mighty
   harvest was to spring up. Among the first-fruits of labors so often
   depreciated by those who have profited by them, and in the land of
   children who despise their sires, we find the proper alliance of
   philosophy with history. Then at length the province of the
   historian is seen to consist, not merely in the just, accurate, and
   lively narrative of facts, but in the exhibition of cause and
   effect. 'What do we now expect in history?' says M. de Barante; and
   he replies, 'Solid instruction and complete knowledge of things;
   moral lessons, political counsels; comparison with the present, and
   the general knowledge of facts.' Even in the age of Tacitus, the
   most philosophic of ancient historians, no individual ability could
   secure all such powers" (p. 12).

Thus philosophical history is one of the results of Christianity.
Professor Max Müller makes a similar remark with regard to his own
favorite study of ethnology. Before the day of Pentecost, he says, no
man, not even the greatest minds, ever thought of tracing the
genealogy of nations by their languages, because they did not know the
unity of the human race. The unity of mankind is naturally connected
in the order of ideas with the unity of God. Those who worshipped many
gods, and believed that each race and nation had its own tutelary
divinity, not unnaturally regarded each nation as a separate race. So
far was this feeling carried by the most civilized races of the old
world, that they thought it a profanation that the worship of the gods
of one race should be offered by a priest not sprung from that race.
The most moderate and popular of the Roman patricians rejected the
demand of the _plebs_ to be admitted to the highest offices of the
state, not as politically dangerous, but as profane. The Roman consul,
in virtue of his office, was the priest of the Capitoline Jove, to
whom, on certain solemn occasions, he had to offer sacrifice. It would
be a pollution that a plebeian, not sprung from any of the tribes of
Romulus, should presume to offer that sacrifice. In fact, the
consulship would hardly have been thrown open to the _plebs_ until the
long continued habit of intermarriage had welded the two portions of
the Roman people so completely into one that the plebeian began, at
last, to be regarded as of the same blood with the Furii, the
Cornelii, and the Julii. The first measure by which the tribunes
commenced their attack upon the exclusive privilege of the great
houses was wisely chosen; it was the Canuleian law, by which marriages
between the two orders were made legal and valid. Before that,
patricians and plebeians were two nations living in one city, and,
according to the universal opinion of the ancient world, this implied
that they had different gods, different priests, a different ritual,
and different temples. But the day of Pentecost blended all nations
into a new unity--the unity of the body of Christ; and its first
effect was, that the preachers of the new law proclaimed everywhere,
that "God had made of one blood all nations of men, to dwell upon the
face of the whole earth." The professor points out what curiously
completes the analogy between the two cases, that while Christianity,
by collecting into one church all the nations of the world, and by
teaching their original unity, naturally suggested the idea that all
their different languages had some common origin, any satisfactory
investigation of the subject was long delayed by the unfounded notion
that the Hebrew must needs be the root from which they all sprang.
Thus, in both cases, the germ of studies, whose development was
delayed for ages by the {361} imperfection of human knowledge, appears
to have been contained in the revelation of the gospel of Christ.

It is important to bring these considerations into prominence, because
the knowledge which would never have existed without Christianity, is,
in many cases, retained by men who forget or deny the faith to which
they are indebted for it. Our author draws comparison between Tacitus
and Gibbon (page 14):

   "The world of thought in which we live is, after all, formed by
   Christianity. Modern Europe is a relic of Christendom, the virtue
   of which is not gone out of it. Gregory VII. and Innocent III. have
   ruled over generations which have ignored them; have given breadth
   to minds which condemned their benefactors as guilty of narrow
   priestcraft, and derided the work of those benefactors as an
   exploded theory. Let us take an example in what is, morally,
   perhaps the worst and most shocking period of the last three
   centuries--the thirty years preceding the great French revolution.
   We shall see that at this time even minds which had rejected, with
   all the firmness of a reprobate will, the regenerating influence of
   Christianity, could not emancipate themselves from the virtue of
   the atmosphere which they had breathed. They are immeasurably
   greater than they would have been in pagan times, by the force of
   that faith which they misrepresented and repudiated. To prove the
   truth of my words, compare for a moment the great artist who drew
   Tiberius and Domitian and the Roman empire in the first century
   with him who wrote of its decline and fall in the second and
   succeeding centuries. How far wider a grasp of thought, how far
   more manifold an experience, combined with philosophic purposes, in
   Gibbon than in Tacitus. He has a standard within him by which he
   can measure the nations as they come in long procession before him.
   In that vast and wondrous drama of the Antonines and Constantine
   Athanasius and Leo, Justinian and Charlemagne, Mahomet, Zenghis
   Khan, and Timour, Jerusalem and Mecca, Rome and Constantinople,
   what stores of thought are laid up--what a train of philosophic
   induction exhibited! How much larger is this world become than that
   which trembled at Caesar! The very apostate profits by the light
   which has shone on Thabor, and the blood which has flowed on
   Calvary. He is a greater historian than his heathen predecessor
   because he lives in a society to which the God whom he has
   abandoned has disclosed the depth of its being, the laws of its
   course, the importance of its present, the price of its futurity."

A very little thought will show that, constituted as man's nature is,
this could not have been otherwise. Man differs from the inferior
animals in that he is richly endowed with faculties which, until they
have been developed by education, he can never use, and appreciates
and embraces truths, when they have been set before him, which he
could never have discovered unassisted. This is the most obvious
distinction between reason and instinct. The caterpillar, hatched from
an egg dropped by a parent whom it never saw, knows at once what food
and what habits are necessary for its new life. Weeks pass away, and
its first skin begins to die; but (as if it had been fully instructed
in what has to be done) it draws its body out of it as from a glove,
and comes forth in a new one. A few weeks later it forsakes the food
which has hitherto been necessary for its life, and buries itself in
the earth, which up to that very day would have been certain death.
There a mysterious change passes upon it, and it lies as if dead till
the time for another change approaches. It then gradually works its
way to the surface, and comes out a butterfly or a moth. It is now
indifferent to the plants which in its former state were necessary to
its existence, but yet it chooses those plants on which to deposit its
eggs. {362} We are so apt to delude ourselves with the notion that we
understand everything to which we give a name, that ninety-nine people
out of a hundred seem to think they account for this marvelous power
of the inferior animals to act exactly right under circumstances so
strangely changed, by calling it "instinct." But, in truth, why or how
the creature does what it does, we no more know when we have called it
"instinct" than we did before. All we can suppose is that as the
Creator has left none of his creatures destitute of the kind and
degree of knowledge necessary to enable it to discharge its appointed
office in creation, the appetites and desires of the insect are
modified from time to time in the different stages of its existence so
that they impel it exactly to the course necessary for it to take,
with much greater certainty than if it understood what the result was
to be. How different is the case of man. Not only is he a free agent,
and therefore to be guided by reason, not by mere propensity, but
neither reason nor speech, nor indeed life itself, could be preserved
or made of any use except by means of training and education received
from others. A man left to shift for himself like the animal whose
changes we have been tracing, would die at each state of his existence
for want of some one to teach him what must be done for his
preservation. This same training is equally necessary for his
physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. But he is so
constituted that the different things needful for him to know for each
of these purposes approve themselves to him as soon as they are
presented to his mind from without, and the things which thus approve
themselves, although he could never have discovered them, we truly
call natural to man, because no external teaching would have made him
capable of learning them unless the faculty had been as much a part of
his original constitution as the unreasoning desires which we call
instinct are part of the constitution of brutes. And therefore, when
once developed by education, they remain a part of the man, even when
he casts away from him those teachers by whom they were developed.
Nero would never have learnt the use of speech if he had not caught it
from his mother; yet when he used it to order her murder he did not
lose what she had taught him, because it was a part of his nature. And
so of higher powers, the result of a superior training. Principles
which men would never have known without Christian training are
retained when Christianity itself is rejected, because they are a part
of the spiritual endowment given to man by his Creator, although
without training he would never have been able to develop them. His
rejection of Christianity results from an evil will. The parts of
Christian teaching against which that will does not rebel he calls and
believes to be the lessons of his natural reason, although the
experience of the greatest and wisest heathen shows that his
unassisted natural faculties never would have discovered them.

Nor is this true only of individuals. Nations trained for many
generations in Christian faith have before now fallen away from
Christianity. But it does not seem that they are able to reduce
themselves to the level of heathen nations in their moral standard,
their perception and appreciation of good and evil, justice and wrong,
or of the nature and destinies of the human race. In some respects
they are morally much worse than heathen. But it does not appear that
in these points they can sink so low, because their nature, fallen
though it be, approves and accepts some of the truths taught it by
Christianity. Hence, in order to judge what man can or cannot do
without the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we must examine him in
nations to which the faith has never been given, rather than in those
which have rejected it. Unhappily, there are at this moment parts of
Europe in which the belief in the supernatural {363} seems wanting. An
intelligent correspondent of the _Times_ a year ago described such a
state of things as existing in parts of northern Germany and
Scandinavia. The population believes nothing, and practises no
religion. Public worship is deserted, not because the people have
devised any new heresy of their own as to the manner in which man
should approach God, but because they have ceased to trouble
themselves about the matter at all. Lutheranism is dead and gone; but
nothing has been substituted for it. The intelligent Protestant writer
was surprised to find a population thus wholly without religion
orderly and well-behaved, hard-working, and by no means forgetful of
social duties. The phenomenon is, no doubt, remarkable; but it is by
no means without example. Many parishes (we fear considerable
districts) in France are substantially in the same state. The
peasantry are sober, industrious, and orderly to a degree unknown in
England. They reap the temporal fruits of these good qualities in a
general prosperity equally unknown here. They are saving to a degree
almost incredible, so that it is a matter of ordinary experience that
a peasant who began life with nothing except his bodily strength,
leaves behind him several hundreds, not unfrequently some thousands,
of pounds sterling. But in this same district whole villages are so
absolutely without religion, that, although there is not one person
for many miles who calls himself a Protestant, the churches are almost
absolutely deserted, and the _curés_ (generally good and zealous men)
are reduced almost to inactivity by absolute despair. Some give
themselves up to prayer, seeing nothing else that they can do; some
will say that they are not wholly without encouragement, because,
after fifteen or twenty years of labor, they have succeeded in
bringing four or five persons to seek the benefit of the sacraments
out of a population of as many hundreds, among whom when they came
there was not one such person to be found.  [Footnote 52]

  [Footnote 52: It should be observed that the morality said to exist
  in those parts of France which have so nearly lost the faith is not
  Catholic morality: in fact, the population in those districts is
  decreasing, and that (it is universally admitted) from immorality.
  It should also be remember that there is a most marked contrast
  between these districts and those Lutheran districts of which the
  _Times_ spoke: In the latter, Lutheranism has died out of itself. In
  the worst districts of France, the Catholic religion has not died
  out, but has been displaced by a systematic infidel education
  inflicted on the people by a godless government. Lastly, even where
  things are the worst, there are a few in each generation who, in the
  midst of a godless population, turn out saints, really worthy of
  that name. It is seldom that a mission is preached in any village
  without some such being rescued from the corrupt mass around them.
  Nothing, in fact, can more strongly mark the contrast between the
  Catholic religion and Lutheranism. The subject is far too large to
  be discussed here, but we have suggested these considerations to
  avoid misconceptions of our meaning.]

Appalling as is this state of things, the natural virtues (such as
they are) of populations which have thus lost faith are themselves the
remains of Christianity. History gives us no trace of any people in
such a state except those who have once been Christians. For instance,
in all others, however civilized, slavery has been established both by
law and practice; no one of them has been without divorce; infanticide
has been allowed and practised. Nowhere has the unity of man's nature
been acknowledged, and, what follows from that, the duties owing to
him as man, not merely as fellow countryman. And hence, nowhere has
there existed what we call the law of nations, a rule which limits the
conduct of men, not only toward those of other nations, but, what is
much more, toward those with whom they are in a state of war, or whom
they have conquered. In the most civilized times of ancient Greece and
Rome no rights were recognized in such foreigners. All these things
are the legitimate progeny of Christianity, and of Christianity alone,
although they are now accepted as natural principles by nations by
whom, but for the gospel of Christ, they would never have been heard
of.

{364}

We have enlarged upon this point because, not only in what he says of
Gibbon, but in many parts of his subsequent chapters, Mr. Allies
attributes to the influence of Christianity things which a superficial
observer may attribute rather to some general progress in the world
toward a higher civilization. We shall see instances of this as we
proceed. We are satisfied that the objection is utterly unfounded. We
see no reason to believe that without Christianity any higher or
better civilization than that of Rome under Augustus and Athens under
Pericles would ever have been attained. That those who lived under
that state, so far from expecting any "progress," believed that the
world was getting worse and worse, and that there remained no hope of
improvement, nor any principles from which it could possibly arise, is
most certain. Nor do we believe that those who thus judged of the
natural tendency of the world were mistaken, although by a stupendous
interference of the Creator with the course of nature an improvement
actually took place.

The philosophy of history then sifts and arranges the facts which it
records, and judges of them by fixed and eternal principles of right
and wrong; drawing from the past lessons of wisdom and virtue for the
future. It will approach nearer and nearer to perfection as the range
of facts investigated becomes wider, and as the principles by which
they are judged are more absolutely true, and applied more correctly,
more practically, and more universally. Hence, it would never have
existed without Christianity, and although in Christian nations it is
found in men partially or wholly unworthy of the Christian name, but
who retain many ideas and principles derived from Christianity alone,
yet even in them it is exercised imperfectly in proportion as they are
less and less Christian.

Mr. Allies thus compares Tacitus and St. Augustine:

  "The atmosphere of Tacitus and the lurid glare of his Rome compared
  with St. Augustine's world are like the shades in which Achilles
  deplored the loss of life contrasted with a landscape bathed in the
  morning light of a southern sun. Yet how much more of material
  misery was there in the time of St. Augustine than in the time of
  Tacitus! In spite of the excesses in which the emperors might
  indulge within the walls of their palace or of Rome, the fair fabric
  of civilization filled the whole Roman world, the great empire was
  in peace, and its multitude of nations were brethren. Countries
  which now form great kingdoms of themselves, were then tranquil
  members of one body politic. Men could travel the coasts of Italy,
  Gaul, Spain, Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, round to Italy
  again, and find a rich smiling land covered by prosperous cities,
  enjoying the same laws and institutions, and possessed in peace by
  its children. In St. Augustine's time all had been changed; on many
  of these coasts a ruthless, uncivilized, unbelieving, or
  misbelieving enemy had descended. Through the whole empire there was
  a feeling of insecurity, a cry of helplessness, and a trembling at
  what was to come. Yet in the pages of the two writers the contrast
  is in the inverse ratio. In the pagan, everything seems borne on by
  an iron fate, which tramples upon the free will of man, and
  overwhelms the virtuous before the wicked. In the Christian, order
  shines in the midst of destruction, and mercy dispenses the severest
  humiliations. It was the symbol of the coming age. And so that great
  picture of the doctor, saint, and philosopher laid hold of the minds
  of men during those centuries of violence which followed, and in
  which peace and justice, so far from embracing each other, seemed to
  have deserted the earth. And in modern times a great genius has
  seized upon it, and developed it in the discourse on universal
  history. Bossuet is worthy to receive the torch from St. Augustine.
  Scarcely could a more majestic voice, or a more {365} philosophic
  spirit, set forth the double succession of empire and of religion,
  or exhibit the tissue wrought by Divine Providence, human free will,
  and the permitted power of evil."

After this estimate of St. Augustine, he speaks of

  "A living author--at once statesman, orator, philosopher, and
  historian of the higest rank--who has given us, on a less extensive
  scale, a philosophy of history in its most finished and amiable
  form. The very attempt on the part of M. Guizot to draw out a
  picture of civilization during fourteen hundred years, and to
  depict, amongst that immense and ever-changing period, the course of
  society in so many countries, indicates no ordinary power; and the
  partial fulfilment of the design may be said to have elevated the
  philosophy of history into a science. In this work may be found the
  moat important rules of the science accurately stated; but the work
  itself is the best example of philosophic method and artistic
  execution, united to illustrate a complex subject. A careful study
  of original authorities, a patient induction of facts, a cautious
  generalization, the philosophic eye to detect analogies, the
  painter's power to group results, and, above all, a unity of
  conception which no multiplicity of details can embarrass; these are
  some of the main qualifications for a philosophy of history which I
  should deduce from these works. Yet, while the action of Providence
  and that of human free will are carefully and beautifully brought
  out, while both may be said to be points of predilection with the
  author, he has not alluded, so far as I am aware, to the great evil
  spirit and his personal operation. Strong as he is, he has been
  apparently too weak to bear the scoff of modern infidelity--"he
  believes in the devil"--unless, indeed, the cause of this lies
  deeper, and belongs to his philosophy; for if there be one subject
  out of which eclecticism can pick nothing to its taste, it would be
  the permitted operation of the great fallen spirit. Nor will the
  warmest admiration of his genius be mistaken for a concurrence in
  all his judgments. I presume not to say how far such an author is
  sometimes, in spite of himself, unjust, from the point of view at
  which he draws his picture. Whether, and how far, he be an eclectic
  philosopher, let others decide. It would be grievous to feel it true
  of such a mind; for it is the original sin of that philosophy to
  make the universe rotate round itself. Great is its complacency in
  its own conclusions, but there runs through them one mistake--to
  fancy itself in the place of God" (p. 31).

Those who have ever made the attempt to analyze in a few lines the
genius of a great writer will best be able to estimate the combination
of keen intellect, patient thought, and scrupulous candor in this
criticism. We must not deny ourselves one more quotation:

  "St. Augustine, Bossuet, Guizot, Balmez, Schlegel: I have taken
  these names not to exhaust but to illustrate the subject. Here we
  have the ancient and the modern society, Africa and France, Spain
  and Germany, and the Christian mind in each, thrown upon the facts
  of history. They point out, I think, sufficiently a common result.
  But amid the founders of a new science, who shall represent our own
  country? Can I hesitate, or can I venture, in this place and company
  [_i.e._, before the Catholic University of Dublin, in the chair of
  which this lecture was delivered], to mention the hand which has
  directed the scattered rays of light from so many sources on the
  wild children of Central Asia, and produced the Turk before us in
  his untameable ferocity--the outcast of the human race, before whom
  earth herself ceases to be a mother--by whom man's blood has ever
  been shed like water, woman's honor counted as the vilest of things,
  nature's most sacred laws publicly and avowedly outraged,--has
  produced him before us for the abhorrence of mankind, the infamy of
  nations? To sketch the intrinsic {366} character of barbarism and
  civilization, and out of common historical details, travel, and
  observation to show the ineffaceable stamp of race and tribe,
  reproducing itself through the long series of ages, surely expresses
  the idea which we mean by the philosophy of history" (p. 38).

We have given a disproportionate space to this inaugural lecture, both
for its intrinsic importance and because it gives a shadow of the
whole plan of Mr. Allies's work, both that part which lies before us
and that which remains to be published; for the volume before us is
"only a portion, perhaps about a fourth, of the author's design." In
the six lectures which it contains, he gives us an estimate, first, of
the physical and political condition of the Roman empire in its palmy
days; then, of the force by which it pleased God to constitute the new
creation in the midst of it. In the last four lectures he compares the
vital principles of these two vast social organizations--the heathen
and the Christian--first in a representative man of each class, then
in the effects produced upon society at large by the influence of
each; then in the primary relation of man to woman in marriage; and,
lastly, in the virginal state; although under this last head there can
hardly be said to be a comparison, as heathen society has simply
nothing to set against that wonderful creation of Christianity--holy
virginity.

We know not where we have met any painting of the Roman empire so
striking as that contained in the first lecture. Of the multitude of
Englishmen who read more or less of the classical Latin authors, a
very small proportion have ever paid any attention to the Roman
empire, as it is displayed by Tacitus and Juvenal. This is the natural
result of the grace and eloquence of Livy and Cicero, much rather than
of any strong preference for republican institutions. Indeed it is
impossible not to be struck with the vast influence which Roman
republicanism exercises in France compared with England. Nor is it
difficult to account for this. France, except to a limited degree
under the monarchy of July, has never enjoyed constitutional liberty.
The Frenchman, therefore, who dreams of liberty at all, places his
dreamland in a Roman republic. Boys who in England would rant about
John Hampden are found in France ranting about Junius Brutus. For what
the Englishman means when he talks about liberty is "English liberty;"
the Frenchman means the Roman republic. So much has this been the
case, that even in America the war of independence began, not in any
aspiration after a republic, but for the rights of English subjects.
The sword had been drawn for a year before the colonies claimed
independence, and very shortly before Washington had declared that
"there was no thought of separation, only of English liberty." What
proves that these were not mere words was, that even after
independence had been achieved, the leaders, who met in congress,
agreed almost to a man in expressing their preference for "an English
constitution," if circumstances had placed it within their reach. All
the world knows that France became a republic chiefly because Rome in
her palmy days had been so called; nay, to this hour all the terms
adopted by the revolutionary party have been borrowed from classical
times. Such was the term "citizen," so appropriate to a people whose
boast was that they were free of a city which had conquered the world,
so absurd as denoting the members of a great nation in which not even
centuries of extreme centralization have prevented political rights
from being exercised by each man in his own province. Such, again, was
that inundation of pagan names which the revolutionary times
substituted for those of the saints, and which are still
characteristic of France--Camille, Emile, Antonine, and even Brute and
Timoleon. This we take to be one great reason why many sensible {367}
persons in France are so greatly afraid of classical studies in
schools and colleges. They say that they turn the heads of boys,
especially French boys. It is highly characteristic of the man, that
the officers of the House of Commons, who made forcible entry into the
house of Sir Francis Burdett when he was committed by order of the
House, found him reading with his little son, not Plutarch's life of
Brutus or Cato, as would assuredly have been the case with a
Frenchman, but "Magna Charta." He was not less theatrical, but he was
a thoroughly English actor.

And yet we strongly suspect that out of a hundred boys who leave a
classical school more than ninety believe that Roman history ends with
Augustus. The university no doubt, gives a somewhat more extended
view. But even there Tacitus is usually about the limit. We wonder how
far this feeling was carried before Gibbon published the "Decline and
Fall."

Hence we especially value the wonderful picture of the empire painted
by our author.

It was in fact a federation of civilized states under an absolute
monarch; the municipal liberties were left so entire that Niebuhr
mentions Italian cities, in the immediate neighborhood of Rome itself,
which retained all through the times of the empire and the middle
ages, down to the wars of the French revolution, the same municipal
institutions under which Rome had found them. They were swept away by
that faithful lover of despotism, Napoleon I., to make way for the
uniform system of a _préfet_ and _souspréfet_ in each district. It is
more important to bear this in mind because, as the revolutionists
aped the manners and names of the Roman republic without understanding
them, the imperialists of France are apt to assume that they
faithfully represent the Roman empire. Now the one striking
characteristic of the French empire is that it raises yearly 100,000
military conscripts, beside the naval conscription, the police, and
the very firemen, all of whom are carefully drilled as soldiers. How
was it under Augustus?

"It is hard to conceive adequately what a spectator called 'the
immense majesty of the Roman peace' (Pliny, 'Nat. Hist,' xxvii. 1).
Where now in Europe, impatient and uneasy, a group of half-friendly
nations jealously watches each other's progress and power, and the
acquisition of a province threatens a general war, Rome maintained,
from generation to generation, in tranquil sway, an empire of which
Gaul, Spain, Britain, and North Africa, Switzerland, and the greater
part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt formed
but single limbs, members of her mighty body. Her roads, which spread
like a network over this immense territory, from their common centre,
the golden milestone of the Forum, under the palace of her emperors,
did but express the unity of that spirit with which she ruled the
earth her subject, levelling the mountains and filling up the valleys
for the march of her armies, the caravans of her merchandise, and the
even sweep of her legislation. A moderate fleet of 6,000 sailors at
Misenum, and another at Ravenna, a flotilla at Forum Julii, and
another in the Black sea, of half that force, preserved the whole
Mediterranean from piracy; and every nation bordering on its shores
could freely interchange the productions of their industry. Two
smaller armaments of twenty-four vessels each on the Rhine and the
Danube secured the empire from northern incursion. In the time of
Tiberius a force of twenty-five legions and fourteen cohorts, making
171,500 men, with about an equal number of auxiliary troops, that is,
in all, an army of 340,000, sufficed, not so much to preserve internal
order, which rested upon other and surer ground, but to guard the
frontiers of a vast population, amounting, as is calculated, {368} to
120,000,000, and inhabiting the very fairest regions of the earth, of
which the great Mediterranean sea was a sort of central and domestic
lake. But this army itself, thus moderate in number, was not, as a
rule, stationed in cities, but in fixed quarters on the frontiers, as
a guard against external foes. Thus, for instance, the whole interior
of Gaul possessed a garrison of but 1,200 men--that Gaul which, in the
year 1860, in a time of peace, thought necessary for internal
tranquillity and external rank and security to have 626,000 men in
arms.  [Footnote 53] Again, Asia Minor had no military force; that
most beautiful region of the earth teemed with princely cities,
enjoying the civilization of a thousand years, and all the treasures
of art and industry, in undisturbed repose. And within its
unquestioned boundaries, the spirit, moreover, of Roman rule was far
other than that of a military despotism, or of a bureaucracy and a
police pressing with ever watchful suspicion on every spring of civil
life. The principle of its government was not that no population could
be faithful which was not kept in leading-strings, but rather to leave
cities and corporations to manage their own affairs themselves. Thus
its march was firm and strong, but for this very reason devoid alike
of fickleness and haste."

  [Footnote 53: Surely the author should have added the Belgian army
  (fixed by the laws of 1853 at 100,000), and that part of the
  Prussian, etc., which is raised west of the Rhine, in comparing the
  military force of ancient Gaul with that of the same district in our day.]

It might have been added, that, as a general rule, the army which
guarded each portion was composed of the natives of the country in
which they were stationed. Roman citizens they were, no doubt, but
citizens of provincial extraction, and posted to guard on behalf of
Rome the very country which their fathers, sometimes but a very few
generations back, had defended against her.  [Footnote 54] This is a
policy the generosity of which France dares not at this day imitate,
even in her oldest provinces. To say nothing of the British army in
Ireland, the Breton conscripts are still sent to serve at Lyons and
Paris.

  [Footnote 54: Champagny, Rome, and Judea.]

The extracts we have given will doubtless lead every reader to study
for himself Mr. Allies's descriptions of Rome, and the life of the
Thermae, and of the colonies, everywhere reproducing the life of Rome.
Every page breathes with the matured thought of a mind of remarkable
natural acuteness, and stored with refined scholarship. There is
nothing of beauty or majesty in that magnificent old world which he
does not seem to have witnessed and mused over.

It is hardly possible to realize all this greatness without being
tempted to repine in the remembrance whither it was all
hastening--that the peace of the Roman world was but "the torrent's
smoothness ere it dash below;" its magnificence only the feast of
Baltassar in that last night of the splendor of Babylon, when the
Medes and Persians were already under her walls, and the river had
been turned away from its course through her quays, and a way left
open for the rush of the destroyer into her streets and palaces.
Already the mysterious impulse had been given which, during so many
centuries, drove down horde after horde of barbarians from the wild
north-east, to overflow the favored lands that surrounded the
Mediterranean. In the early days of Roman history the Gauls had rushed
on, sweeping away those earlier races whose remains we are now
exploring in the shallows of the Swiss lakes, and whose descendants
are probably to be found in the Basques, and in some of those degraded
castes which, in spite of the welding power of the Church, left
proscribed remnants in France and elsewhere until the great
revolution. That mighty wave burst upon the rock of the Capitol,
threatened for a moment utterly to overwhelmed it, and then fell
broken at its feet. But it is not by repelling one wave, however
formidable, that a rising tide is turned back. In the day of Rome's
{369} utmost power her very foundations were shaken by the torrent of
the Cimbri and Teutones. They, too, were broken against the steel-clad
legions of Marius, and fell off like spray on the earth. But the tide
was still advancing. What need to trace its successive inroads? Every
reader of Gibbon remembers how the time came at last when the very
site where Rome had stood had been so often swept by it, that of all
its greatness there remained nothing more than the sea leaves of some
castle of shingles and sand, after a few waves have passed over it.

  "Quench'd is the golden statue's ray;
  The breath of heaven hath swept away
  What toiling earth hath piled;
  Scattering wise heart and crafty hand,
  As breezes strew on ocean's strand
  The fabrics of a child!"

There even came a time when for many weeks the very ruins of ancient
Rome were absolutely deserted, and trodden neither by man nor beast.
No wonder that the world stood by afar off weeping and mourning over
the utter destruction of all that the earth had ever known of
greatness and glory. So the sentence had been passed, in the day of
her greatest glory, by the prophetic voice of the angel, who cried
with a strong voice:

  "Fallen--fallen, is Babylon the great, and is become the habitation
  of devils and the hold of every unclean spirit, and of every unclean
  and hateful bird. And the kings of the earth shall weep and bewail
  themselves over her, when they shall see the smoke of the burning;
  standing afar off for fear of her torments, saying, Alas! alas! that
  great city Babylon, that mighty city; for in one hour is thy
  judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn
  over her, and shall stand afar off from her for fear of her
  torments, weeping and mourning, and saying, Alas! alas! that great
  city which was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and
  was gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls. For in one hour
  are so great riches come to nought." (Apocalypse, chap, xviii.)

It was not the ruin of one city, however glorious, but the sweeping
away of all the accumulated glories of the civilization of the whole
civilized world, during more than a thousand years. All had been
embodied in imperial Rome. In the words of our author--

  "The empire of Augustus inherited the whole civilization of the
  ancient world. Whatever political or social knowledge, whatever
  moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts, 'the
  enterprising race of Japhet' had acquired, preserved, and
  accumulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of
  history had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of
  all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of
  Egypt and of all the East had been stored up. For her Pythagoras and
  Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all the schools beside
  of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought. For her
  Zoreaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated. For her
  Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a
  portion of her empire. Every city, in the ears of whose youth the
  poems of Homer were familiar as household words, owned her sway. The
  magistrates, from the Northern sea to the confines of Arabia, issued
  their decrees in the language of empire--the Latin tongue; while, as
  men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had
  risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a
  world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa
  and the west, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so,
  but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces, from the
  Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength
  and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to
  her senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigor of {370}
  new and the culture of long-polished races were alike employed in
  the vast fabric of her power. Every science and art, all human
  experience and discovery, had poured their treasure in one stream
  into the bosom of that society, which, after forty-four years of
  undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of
  government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius" (p. 41).

No wonder the ancient world had assured itself that, as nothing
greater, nothing wiser, nothing more glorious than Rome could ever
arise upon earth, so its greatness, wisdom, and glory could never be
superseded. It was "the eternal city." It was "for ever to give laws
to the world." The contemporary poets could imagine no stronger
expression of an eternity, than that of a duration while Rome itself
should last. Yet was it at that very time that the eyes of a fisherman
of the lake of Tiberias were opened to see the angel "coming down from
heaven with power and great glory," from whose mighty cry over the
fall of Babylon we have already quoted some words. No wonder when the
time came that his prophecy was fulfilled, the world stood by weeping
and mourning, not over the fall of a single city (such as Scipio
Africanus had forecast as he watched the smoke of old Carthage rising
up to heaven), but over the ruin of the civilization of the whole
world. No wonder that, even in our own age, those whose hearts have so
far sunk back to the level of heathenism as to value only material
prosperity and worldly greatness, still re-echo the cry--

  "Alas! the eternal city, and alas!
  The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day
  When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
  The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away.
  Alas! for earth, for never shall we see
  That brightness in her eye she wore when
       Rome was free."

But the voice of divine wisdom was far different: "Rejoice over her,
thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath judged
your judgment upon her. And a mighty angel took up a stone, as it were
a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, 'With such
violence as this shall Babylon, that great city, be thrown down, and
shall be found no more at all; and the voice of harpers, and of
musicians, and of them that play on the pipe and on the trumpet, shall
no more be heard at all in thee; and no craftsman, of any art
whatsoever, shall be found any more at all in thee; and the sound of
the mill shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of the
lamp shall shine no more in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and
the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants
were the great men of the earth, for all nations have been deceived by
thine enchantments.' And in her was found the blood of prophets, and
of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth."

Thus total, according to the prophecy, was to be the destruction of
the wealth, civilization, greatness, and glory of the ancient heathen
world, gathered together in Rome, that in the utter sweeping away of
that one city all might perish together. How fully the words were
accomplished we know by the lamentation of the whole world over
Babylon, the echoes of which still ring in our ears. But to us
Christians it rather belongs to weigh the words which follow without
any break in the sacred text (although the division of the chapters
leads many readers to overlook the close connection). "After these
things I heard, as it were, the voice of much people in heaven,
saying, 'Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. For
just and true are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot
which corrupted the earth with her fornications, and he hath avenged
the blood of his servants at her hands.' And again they said,
'Alleluia. And her smoke ascendeth for ever and ever.'" Here is the
answer to that cry of the angel, "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and
ye apostles and prophets."

{371}

Were any comment needed upon such prophecies--any explanation of the
sentence passed upon a civilization so great, so ancient, so widely
extended, and so refined--anything to reconcile us to the utter
destruction of so much that was fair and mighty, we may find it in the
latter half of the lecture before us. Not that our author is
insensible to the marvellous beauty of that glow with which classical
literature causes the figures of those days to shine before us. That
would be impossible for a man of his studies. He says:

  "Is not the very language of Cicero and Virgil an expression of this
  lordly, yet peaceful rule; this even, undisturbed majesty, which
  holds the world together like the regularity of the seasons, like
  the alternations of light and darkness, like the all-pervading
  warmth of the sun? If every language reflects the character of the
  race which speaks it, surely we discern in the very strain of Virgil
  the closing of the gates of war, the settling of the nations down to
  the arts of peace, the reign of law and order, the amity and concord
  of races, the weak protected, the strong ruled: in a word,

  'Romanos rerum dominos,
  gentemque togatam.'"

Neither, need it hardly be said, has he set the hideous pollutions of
that civilization fully before us: that is rendered impossible by its
very hideousness. Let those who recoil from the horrors of what he has
said--but a faint outline of the miserable truth, though traced with
singular artistic form and beauty--bear in mind the while the words of
the inspired prophecy, "All nations have drunk of the wine of her
fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication
with her"--"Her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord shall
reward her iniquities"--"In her was found the blood of prophets, and
saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." The crimes, as
well as the civilization of a thousand years, were accumulated at
Rome, and both were swept away together by that overwhelming flood of
fierce barbarians. Little were it worthy of Christians to mourn over a
civilization into whose very heart-strings such unutterable pollution
was intertwined; especially as it was removed, not like Babylon of
old, to leave behind it nothing but desolation, but to make room for
that kingdom of God which was to be enthroned upon its ruins; for such
was the purpose of God, that the very centre of Christendom, the very
seat of the throne of Christ upon earth, on which he would visibly sit
in the person of his Vicar, was there to be established, whence the
throne of the Caesars and the golden house of Nero had been swept away
in headlong ruin. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first
heaven and the first earth was gone. And I heard a great voice from
the throne saying, 'Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will
dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself shall
be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'"
"And he that sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'"
The full accomplishment of these words we expect, in faith and hope,
when "death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow
shall be any more; for the former things are passed away;" yet,
surely, whatever more glorious accomplishment is yet to come, it were
blindness not to see how far they are already fulfilled in the
substitution of Christendom for the civilized pagan world, the setting
up the throne of the Vicar of Christ upon the ruins of the palace of
the Caesars.

First among the causes of that hideous accumulated mixture of blood
and filth in which heathen civilization was drowned, Mr. Allies most
justly places the institution of slavery as it was at Rome, because by
this the springs of human life were tainted. It is certain that during
all the long years of the duration of the Roman {372} empire, there
was among its heathen population no one human being, who lived beyond
the earliest childhood, who was not polluted, and whose very soul was
not scarred and branded, by the marks of that hideous moral
pestilence. We say "its heathen population," because great as must
have been the evil it wrought upon ordinary Christians, we doubt not
that there were those who gathered honey out of corruption, and whose
justice, charity, and purity came out from that furnace of temptation
with a brightness which nothing but the most fiery trial could have
given to them. From slavery the whole of Roman society received its
form. Our author most truly says, "The spirit of slavery is never
limited to the slave; it saturates the atmosphere which the freeman
breathes together with the slave; passes into his nature, and corrupts
it." This miserable truth can never be too often impressed upon men,
because, unhappily, there are still advocates of slavery who think
that they apologize for it if they can prove, as they think, that the
slave is happy. As well might they argue that the introduction of the
plague into London would be no calamity, if the man who brought it in
upon him entered the city dancing and shouting. In ancient Italy
slaves replaced the hardy rustics, that "_prisca gens mortalium_" who,
though doubtless far less virtuous than they appeared in the fevered
dreams of men sick of the vices of Rome in the last days of the
republic, were still among the best specimens of heathen life.
Wherever slavery extends, labor becomes dishonorable as the badge of
servitude, a few masters languish in bloated luxury, but the nation
itself grows constantly poorer, as an ever-increasing proportion of
its population has to be maintained in indolence. At Rome slaves were
the only domestic servants, and after a time the only manufacturers.
And yet even this is nothing compared to the evils of a state of
society in which the great majority of women as well as of men are the
absolute property of their masters. Horrible as was this state of
things, it offered so many gratifications to the corrupt natures of
those whose hands held the power of the world, and without whose
consent it could not be abolished, that it would have seemed to any
one who had ever witnessed the life of a wealthy Roman noble no less
than madness to imagine that any man would ever willingly surrender
them.

As a matter of fact, so far was this state of society from holding out
any hope of its own amendment, whether sudden or gradual, that, as our
author remarks--

  "Of all the minds which have left a record of themselves, from
  Cicero to Tacitus, there is not one who does not look upon the
  world's course as a rapid descent. They feel an immense moral
  corruption breaking in on all sides, which wealth, convenience of
  life, and prosperity only enhance. They have no hope for humanity,
  for they have no faith in it, nor in any power encompassing and
  directing it."

Faithless and hopeless they were; but whatever this world could give
they had in abundance:

  "In the time of heathenism the world of sense which surrounded man
  flattered and caressed all his natural powers, and solicited an
  answer from them; and in return he flung himself greedily upon that
  world, and tried to exhaust its treasures. Glory, wealth, and
  pleasure intoxicated his heart with their dreams; he crowned himself
  with the earth's flowers, and drank in the air's perfume; and in one
  object or another, in one after another, he sought enjoyment and
  satisfaction. The world had nothing more to give him; nor will the
  latest growth of civilization surpass the profusion with which the
  earth poured forth its gifts to those who consented to seek on the
  earth alone their home and their reward; though, indeed, they were
  the few, to whom the many were sacrificed. The Roman noble, with the
  pleasures of a vanquished world at his feet, {373} with men and
  women from the fairest climes of the earth to do his bidding--men
  who, though slaves, had learnt all the arts and letters of Greece,
  and were ready to use them for the benefit of their lords; and
  women, the most beautiful and accomplished of their sex, who were
  yet the property of these same lords--the Roman noble, as to
  material and even intellectual enjoyment, stood on a vantage-ground
  which never again man can hope to occupy, however--

    'Through the ages an increasing purpose runs,
    And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.'

  "Caesar and Pompey, Lucullus and Hortensius, and the fellows of
  their order, were orators, statesmen, jurists, and legislators,
  generals, men of literature, and luxurious nobles at the same time;
  and they were this because they could use the minds as well as the
  bodies of others at their pleasure. Not in this direction was an
  advance possible" (p. 159).

Our author draws with great skill and vigor a picture of the moral
society of the heathen world, and of the beliefs upon which the
practice of the heathen rested. Into these we have no room to follow
him. At the end of this lecture he shows what sights they were which
met the eyes of a stranger coming from the east in the days of
Nero--an execution in which four hundred men, women, and children were
marched through the streets of Rome to the cross, because their master
had been killed by one of his slaves. In all such cases the Roman law
required that every slave in the house, however innocent, however
young or however old--man, woman, or child--should be put to death.
Thence the stranger passed to a scene of debauchery such as the world
has never imagined, in the gardens close to the Pantheon. This
stranger--

  "Why has he come to Rome, and what is he doing there? Poor, unknown,
  a foreigner in dress, language, and demeanor, he is come from a
  distant province, small in extent, but the most despised and the
  most disliked of Rome's hundred provinces, to found in Rome itself a
  society, and one, too, far more extensive than this great Roman
  empire, since it is to embrace all nations; far more lasting, since
  it is to endure for ever. He is come to found a society, by means of
  which all that he sees around him, from the emperor to the slave,
  shall be changed" (p. 101).

What madness can have inspired such a hope, or what miracle, real or
simulated, could fulfil it? And that, not in the golden age of
pastoral simplicity, in which men looked for wonders with an
uncritical eye, but "amid the dregs of Romulus," when all the world
seemed to have fallen together into the "sere and yellow leaf."

"He has two things within him, for want of which society was perishing
and man unhappy: a certain knowledge of God as the Creator, Ruler,
Judge, and Rewarder of men; and of man's soul made after the image and
likeness of this God. This God he has seen, touched, and handled upon
earth; has been an eye-witness of his majesty, has received his
message, and bears his commission. But whence had this despised
foreigner received the double knowledge of God and of the soul, so
miserably lost (as we have seen) to this brilliant Roman civilization?

"In the latter years of Augustus, when the foundations of the imperial
rule had been laid, and the structure mainly raised by his practical
wisdom, there had dwelt a poor family in a small town of evil repute,
not far from the lake of the remote province where this fisherman
plied his trade. It consisted of an elderly man, a youthful wife, and
one young child. The man gained his livelihood as a carpenter, and the
child worked with him. Complete obscurity rested upon this household
till the child grew to the age of thirty years" (p. 104).

Then follows in few words the history of his life, death, and
resurrection. These things the fisherman had {374} seen, and in this
was the power which was to substitute a new life for the corrupt
civilization of a world.

The details of the comparison which follows we may leave to be
considered when the work is continued. They are drawn out with great
spirit, thoughtfulness, and artistic beauty. For the comparison of the
two systems in an individual, Mr. Allies selects on the one side
Cicero, on the other St. Augustine. An able reviewer has maintained
that "Marcus Aurelius was the person to compare with St Augustine."
Mr. Allies has given his reasons for not selecting either Marcus
Aurelius or Epictetus in the defective religious system of both. There
were, however, other grounds which seem to us even stronger. To test
what heathenism can do, it was necessary that the example selected
should, as a chemist would say, present not "a trace" of any other
influence. Now this was impossible in the days of Epictetus or
Aurelius. Christianity had then been taught and professed publicly and
without restraint for many years, with only occasional bursts of
persecution since Nero first declared war upon it. Its theology,
indeed, was fully known only to the faithful, but its moral code was
publicly professed. The Christian teachers came before the people as
philosophers. It is absolutely certain that all the great Stoics, and
especially the emperor, must often and often have heard of the great
moral and religious principles laid down by the Christian teachers,
however imperfect was his knowledge of their religious practices. But
we have already had occasion to remark that men are driven, whether
they will or no, to approve and admit these great principles when they
are only publicly stated and maintained, although certain not to have
discovered them by their unassisted reason. We cannot, therefore, but
regard the religious and moral maxims of the later Stoics as an
imperfect reflection of the full light of Christianity, like the
moonlight illuminating without warming, but still taking such hold of
the minds which have once embraced them, that they could never be
forgotten. The life and practice of the imperial philosopher, we have
every reason to believe, was, for a man without the faith and the
sacraments, wonderfully high. Far be it from us to depreciate it, for
whatever there was in it that was really good we know resulted from
that grace which is given even beyond the bounds of the Church. But
our knowledge of details is most meagre, while Cicero we know probably
more familiarly than any great man in whose intimacy we hare not
lived. The thoughts and speculations which approved themselves to the
deliberate judgment of Marcus Aurelius, these we know, and in many
respects they are wonderful. Of his life we know little more than he
chose publicly to exhibit to his subjects. The failings of Cicero were
petty and degrading; but if he had been firmly seated on the throne of
the Caesars, and if we had possessed no more exact details of his life
than we do of the life of Marcus Aurelius, we much doubt whether we
should have been aware of them. Merivale says: "The high standard by
which we claim to judge him is in itself the fullest acknowledgment of
his transcendent merits; for, undoubtedly, had he not placed himself
on a higher level than the statesmen and sages of his day, we should
pass over many of his weaknesses in silence, and allow his pretensions
to our regard to pass almost unchallenged. But we demand a nearer
approach to the perfection of human wisdom and virtue in one who
sought to approve himself as the greatest of their teachers." He was
condemned indeed by his heathen countrymen, but their censure was
rather of his greatness than his goodness, and they would probably
have been even more severe had he attained what he did not even aim at
--Christian humility.

Considering these things, and especially that Cicero belonged almost
to {375} the last generation, which was wholly uninfluenced by the
reflected light of Christianity and in which, therefore, we can to a
considerable degree measure the real effects of heathen philosophy, we
venture to think that Mr. Allies has judged well in comparing him as
the model heathen with St. Augustine as the model Christian. The
comparison is drawn with a masterly hand.

On the whole, however, we incline to think that the two last lectures
are of the greatest practical value, especially at the present crisis.
The salt by which Christianity acts upon the world seems to be
martyrdom and holy virginity. Both of them have been always in
operation since the days of John the Baptist. But there are periods of
comparative stillness in which martyrdom is hardly seen, or at least
only at the outposts of the Christian host. At such times, it is by
holy virginity that the Church acts most directly and most powerfully
upon the world. This was the case in the Roman empire as soon as
persecution relaxed.

Our author says:

  "A great Christian writer [St. Chrysostom], who stood between the
  old pagan world and the new society which was taking its place, and
  who was equally familiar with both, made, near the end of the fourth
  century, the following observation: 'The Greeks had some few men,
  though it was but few, among them, who, by the force of philosophy,
  came to despise riches; and some, too, who could control the
  irascible part of man; but the flower of virginity was nowhere to be
  found among them. Here they always gave precedence to us, confessing
  that to succeed in such a thing was to be superior to nature and
  more than man. Hence their profound admiration for the whole
  Christian people. The Christian host derived its chief lustre from
  this portion of its ranks.' And, again, he notes the existence, in
  his time, of three different sentiments respecting this institution.
  'The Jews,' he says, 'turn with abhorrence from the beauty of
  virginity; which indeed is no wonder, since they treated with
  dishonor the very Son of the Virgin himself. The Greeks, however,
  admire it, and look up to it with astonishment, but the Church of
  God alone cultivates it.' After fifteen hundred years we find the
  said sentiments in three great classes of the world. The pagan
  nations, among whom Catholic missionaries go forth, reproduce the
  admiration of Greek and Latin pagans; they reverence that which they
  have not strength to follow, and are often drawn by its exhibition
  into the fold. But there are nations who likewise reproduce the
  Jewish abhorrence of the virginal life. And as the Jews worshipped
  the unity of the Godhead, like the Christians, and so seemed to be
  far nearer to them than pagan idolaters, and yet turned with
  loathing from this product of Christian life, so those nations might
  seem, from the large portions of Christian doctrine which they still
  hold, to be nearer to Christianity than the Hindoo and the Chinese;
  and yet their contempt and dislike for the virginal life and its
  wonderful institutions seems to tell another tale. But now, as
  fifteen hundred years ago, whether those outside admire or abhor,
  the Church alone cultivates the virginal life. Now, as then, it is
  her glory and her strength, the mark of her Lord, and the standard
  of his power, the most _special_ sign of his presence and operation.
  'If,' says the same writer, 'you take away its seemliness and its
  continuity of devotion, you cut the very sinews of the virginal
  estate; so when it is possessed together with the best conduct of
  life, you have in it the root and support of all good things: just
  as a most fruitful soil nurtures a root, so a good conduct bears the
  fruits of virginity. Or, to speak with greater truth, the crucified
  life is at once both its root and its fruit'" (p. 382).

We must conclude by expressing our deliberate conviction that no study
{376} can be more important at the present day than that of the change
from heathen civilization to Christendom, the means by which it was
brought about, and the effects which it produced. For in our day, most
eminently, the Protestant falling away is producing its fruits in
restoring throughout all Europe more and more of the special
characteristics of heathen society. We have not room at present to
offer any proofs of this, but we would beg every reader to observe for
himself, and we are confident that his experience will confirm what we
say. Nor is it only Catholics that are aware of this tendency. A
thoughtful writer in the _Saturday Review_, six months back, devoted a
whole article to trace the points of resemblance between an educated
English Protestant of our day and a heathen of cultivated mind. Those
who feel disposed at once to regard the idea as an insult are probably
judging of heathen civilization by Nero and Domitian. Mr. Allies's
book will at least dispel this delusion. In fact, it is only too
obvious that there is, even in our own day, no want of plausibility in
what is at the bottom only revived heathenism; and in consequence of
this remarkable resemblance, nothing could be more strictly practical
at the present moment than any studies which show us the old heathen
civilization as it really was, in its attractive as well as its
repulsive qualities.

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OP THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.


1. Abbot Antony said: Without temptation there is no entrance possible
into the kingdom. Take away temptations, and no one is in the saving
way.


2. Some one asked blessed Arsenius, "How is it that we, with all our
education and accomplishments, are so empty, and these Egyptian
peasants are so full?"

He made answer: We have the world's outward training, from which
nothing is learned; but theirs is a personal travail, and virtue is
its fruit.


3. It was heard by some that Abbot Agatho possessed the gift of
discrimination. Therefore, to make trial of his temper, they said to
him, "We are told that you are sensual and haughty." He answered: That
is just it.

They said again, "Are you not that Agatho who has such a foul tongue?"
He answered: I am he.

Then they said, "Are you not Agatho the heretic?" He made answer: No.

Then they asked him why he had been patient of so much, yet would not
put up with this last. He answered: By those I was but casting on me
evil; but by this I should be severing me from God.


4. Holy Epiphanius was asked why the commandments are ten, and the
beatitudes nine. He answered: The commandments are as many as the
plagues of Egypt; but the beatitudes are a triple image of the Holy
Trinity.


5. It was told to Abbot Theodore, that a certain brother had returned
to the world. He answered: Marvel not at this, but marvel rather that
any one comes out of it.


6. The Abbot Sisoi said: Seek God, and not his dwelling-place.


7. It is told of a certain senior, that he wished to have a cucumber.
When he had got it, he hung it up in his sight, and would not touch
it, lest appetite should have the mastery of him. Thus he did penance
for his wish.

------

{377}

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XVIII.


New Year's Day is always a holiday. And well it is for the girls and
boys of a parish, of a district,  of a county, ay, of all Ireland, if
it should rise upon them in the glowing beauty of a cloudless sun.
Then, indeed, the girls "are drest in all their best." Many a new
bright ribbon has been purchased on the previous market-day, and many
a twist and turn the congregation side of their bonnets has had. A bow
of new ribbon, blue or red, according to their complexion--for these
country girls are no more fools in such a matter than their
betters--has been held first to this side of their bonnet, then to
that; then the long ends have been brought across the top this way,
then that way, temporarily fastened with pins in the first instance,
until it is held at arm's-length, with the head a little to one side,
to test the final position. Their petticoats have been swelled out by
numbers, not by crinoline, which as yet was unknown, even to the
higher orders. But "be this as it may," the girls of the townlands of
Rathcash, Rathcashmore, and Shanvilla made no contemptible turn-out
upon the New Year's day after Tom Murdock had returned from Armagh.
The boys, too, were equally grand, according to their style of dress.
Some lanky, thin-shanked fellows in loose trousers and high-low boots;
while the well-formed fellows, with plump calves and fine ankles,
turned out in their new _corderoy_ breeches, woolen stockings, and
_pumps_. I have confined myself to their lower proportions, as in most
cases the coats and rests were much of the same make, though perhaps
different in color and material, while the well-brushed "_Caroline_"
hat was common to all.

Conspicuous amongst the girls in the district in which our story
sojourns, were, as a matter of course, Winny Cavana and Kate Mulvey,
with some others of their neighbors who have not been mentioned, and
who need not be.

Winny, since the little episode respecting her refusal of Tom Murdock,
and his subsequent departure, had led a very quiet, meditative life.
She could not help remarking to herself, however, that she had somehow
or other become still more intimate with Kate Mulvey than she had used
to be; but for this she could not account--though, perhaps, the
reader can. She had always been upon terms of intimacy with Kate; had
frequently called there, when time would permit, and sat for half an
hour, or sometimes an hour, chatting, which was always reciprocated by
Kate, whose time was more on her own hands. In what then consisted the
increase of intimacy can hardly be said. Perhaps it merely existed in
Winny's own wish that it should be so, and the fact that one and the
other, on such occasions, now always threw a cloak round her shoulders
and accompanied her friend a piece of the way home. Sometimes, when
the day was tempting, a decided walk would be proposed, and then the
bonnet was added to the cloak. What formed the burden of their
conversation in these chats, which to a close observer might be said
latterly to have assumed a confidential appearance, must be so evident
to the reader's capacity, that no mystery need be observed on the
subject. To say the {378} least, Emon-a-knock came in for a share of
it, and, as a matter of almost necessity, Tom Murdock was not
altogether left out.

Kate Mulvey, after the _éclaircissement_ with Winny, believed she
could do her friend some good without doing herself any harm, a
principle on which alone most people will act. With this view she took
an early opportunity to hint something to Emon of the result of the
interview between herself and Winny, and although she did it in a very
casual, and at the same time a clever, manner, she began to fear that
so far as her friend's case was concerned, she had done more harm than
good. The fact of Tom Murdock's proposal and rejection subsequent to
the interview adverted to, had not become public amongst the
neighbors; and before Winny had an opportunity of telling it to Kate,
Emon had left his father's house, to seek employment in the north. It
is not unlikely that he was tempted to this step by something which
had fallen from Kate Mulvey respecting Winny and Tom Murdock, although
the whole cat had not yet got out of the bag.

Hitherto poor Emon's heart had been kept pretty whole, through what he
considered a well-founded belief that Winny Cavana, almost as a matter
of course, must prefer her handsome, rich neighbor to a struggling
laboring man like him. Tom, he knew, she saw almost every day, while
at best she only saw him for a few minutes on Sundays after chapel.
Emon knew the meaning of the word propinquity very well, and he knew
as well the danger of it. He knew, too, that if there were no such
odds against him, he could scarcely dare aspire to the hand of the
rich heiress of Rathcash. He knew the disposition of old Ned Cavana
too well to believe that he would ever consent to a "poor devil" like
him "coming to coort his daughter." He believed so thoroughly that all
these things were against him, that he had hitherto successfully
crushed every rising hope within his breast. He had schooled himself
to look upon a match between Tom Murdock and Winny Cavana as a matter
so natural, that it would be nothing less than an act of madness to
endeavor to counteract it. What Kate Mulvey, however, had "let slip"
had aroused a slumbering angel in his soul. He was not wrong, then,
after all, in a secret belief that this girl did not like Tom Murdock
over-much. Upon what he had founded that belief he could no more have
explained--even to himself--than he could have dragged the moon down
from heaven; but he did believe it; he even combatted it as a fatal
delusion, and yet it was true. But how did this mend the matter as
regarded himself? Not in the slightest degree, except so far as that
the man he most dreaded, and had most reason to dread, was no longer
an acknowledged rival to his heart. Hopes he still had none.

But Emon-a-knock was now in commotion. The angel was awake, and his
heart trembled at a possibility which despair had hitherto hidden from
his thoughts.

For some time past he had not only not avoided a casual meeting with
Winny, but delighted in them with a safe, if not altogether a happy,
indifference. He looked upon her as almost betrothed to Tom Murdock;
circumstances and reports were so dovetailed into one another, and so
like the truth.

Although there was really no difference in rank between him and Winny,
except what her father's well-earned wealth justified the assumption
of, his position as a daily laborer kept him aloof from an intimacy of
which those in circumstances more like her own could boast; and poor
Emon felt that it was a matter for boast. Thus had he hitherto
refrained from attempting to "woo that bright particular star," and
his heart was comparatively safe. But now--ay, _now_--what was he to
do? "Fly, Fly" said he; "I'll go seek for employment in the north.
{379} To America, India, Australia--anywhere! Kate Mulvey may have
meant it as kindness; but it would have been more kind to have let me
alone. This horrible knowledge of that one fact will break my heart."

And Emon-a-knock did fly. But it was no use. There were many reasons
quite unconnected with Winny Cavana which rendered a more speedy
return than he had intended unavoidable. A stranger beyond the
precincts of his own pariah, he found it impossible to procure
permanent employment amongst those who were better known, and who
"belonged to the place"--a great consideration in the minds of the
Irish, high and low. The bare necessaries of life, too, were more
expensive in the north than about his own home; and for the few days'
employment which he got, he could scarcely support himself, while his
father and family would feel the loss of his share of the earnings at
home. No; these two separate establishments would never do. He could
gain nothing by it but the gnawing certainty of never seeing, even at
a distance, her in whom he now began to feel that his heart delighted.
Besides, he could manage to avoid her altogether by going to his own
chapel; yes, he felt it a duty he owed to his father not to let him
fight life's battle alone, and--he returned. We question whether this
_duty_ to his _father_ was his sole motive; and we shall see whether
he did not subsequently consider it a _duty_ to prefer the good
preaching of Father Roche, of Rathcash, to the somewhat indifferent
discourses of good Father Farrell in _his own_ chapel.

Emon had not been more than ten days or a fortnight away, and he was
now following the usual routine, of a day idle and a day working,
which had marked his life before he went.

But we were talking of a New Year's day, and it will be far spent if
we do not return to it at once, and so we shall lose the thread of our
story.

The day, as we had wished a few pages back, had risen in all the
beauty of a cloudless sun. There had been a slight frost the night
before, but as these slight frosts seldom bring rain until the third
morning, the country people were quite satisfied that the promise of a
fine day on this occasion would not be broken. The chapel-bells of
Rathcash and Shanvilla might be heard sounding their dear and cheerful
call to their respective parishioners that the hour of worship had
drawn near, and the well-dressed, happy congregation might be seen in
strings along the road and across the pathways through the fields, in
their gayest costume, laughing and chatting with an unbounded
confidence in the faithfulness of the sky.

Tom Murdock, the reader knows, had returned, but he had not as yet
seen Winny Cavana. One Sunday had intervened; but upon his father's
advice he had refrained from going "for that wan Sunda' to chapel."
Neither, on the same advice, had he gone near old Ned's house. The old
man--that is, old Murdock--had endeavored to spread a report that his
son Tom was engaged to be married to a very rich girl in Armagh. He
took his own views of all matters, whether critical or simple, and had
his own way of what he called managing them. He was not very wrong in
some of his ideas, but he sometimes endeavored to carry them out too
persistently, after anybody else would have seen their inutility.

On this New Year's day, too, he had hinted something about his son's
not going to mass, but Tom would not be controlled, and quickly "shut
up'" that is the _fashionable_ phrase now-a-days--the old man upon the
subject. His opinion, and he did not care to hide it, was, "that he
did not see why he should be made a mope of by Winny Cavana, or any
other conceited piece of goods like her." His father's pride came to
his aid in this instance, and he gave way.

Rathcash chapel was a crowded place of worship that day. Amongst {380}
the congregation, as a matter of coarse, were Winny Cavana and Kate
Mulvey, both conspicuous by their beauty and solemnity. Tom Murdock,
too, was there; doubtless he was handsome, and he was solemn also, but
his solemnity was of a different description. It was that generated by
disappointment, with a dream of villany in perspective.

Tom was not a coward, even under the nervous influence of rejected
love. Physically, he was not one in the matters of everyday life; and
morally, he wanted rectitude to be one when he ought. He therefore
resolved to meet Winny Cavana, as she came out of chapel, as much as
possible as if nothing had happened, and to endeavor to improve the
acquaintance as opportunity might permit. He purposed to himself to
walk home with her, and determined, if possible, that at least a
friendly intercourse should not be interrupted between them.

Emon-a-knock had steadily kept his resolution, notwithstanding our
doubts, and had not gone to Rathcash chapel for the last four or five
Sundays; he was even beginning to think that Father Farrell, after
all, was not quite so much below Father Roche as a preacher.

At length there was a rustling of dresses and a shuffling of feet upon
the floor, which proclaimed that divine worship had ended; and the
congregation began to pour out of Rathcash chapel--men in their dark
coats and Caroline hats, and women in their best bonnets and cloaks.
Tom Murdock was out almost one of the first, and sauntered about,
greeting some of the more distant neighbors whom he had not seen since
his return. At length Winny and Kate made their appearance. Winny
would have hurried on, but Kate "stepped short," until Tom had time to
observe their approach. He came forward with more cowardice in his
heart than he had ever felt before, and Winny's reception of him was
not calculated to reassure him. Kate was next him, and held out her
hand promptly and warmly. Winny could scarcely refuse to hold out
hers; but there was neither promptness nor warmth in her manner. An
awkward silence ensued on both sides, until Kate, with more anxiety on
her own behalf than tact or consideration on her friend's, broke in
with half a score of inquiries, very kindly put, as to his health--the
_very long_ time he was away--how the neighbors _all_ missed him so
much--what he had been doing--how he left his aunt--how he liked
Armagh, etc, ending with a _hope_ that he had come home to _remain_.

Winny was glad she had so good a spokeswoman with her, and did not
offer a single observation in her aid. To say the truth, there was
neither need nor opportunity; for Kate seemed perfectly able, and not
unwilling, to monopolize the conversation. Tom endeavored to be
sprightly and at his ease, but made some observations far from
applicable to the subjects upon which his loquacious companion had
addressed him. He had hoped that when they came to the end of the lane
turning up to their houses, that Kate Mulvey would have gone toward
her own home, and that he must then have had a word with Winny alone;
but the manner in which she hastened her step past the turn, saying,
"Kate; you know we are engaged to have a walk 'our lone' today,"
showed him that no amelioration of her feelings had taken place toward
him; and without saying more than "Well, this is my way," he turned
and left them.

Bully-dhu was standing near the end of Winny's house, looking from
him; and as he recognized his mistress on the road, commenced to wag
his huge tail, as if asking permission to accompany them. "Call him,
Winny," said Kate; "he may be of use to us; and, at all events, he
will be _company_," and she laid a strong emphasis upon the last word.
Winny complied, and called the dog as loud {381} as she could. Poor
Bully wanted but the wind of the word, and tore down the lane with his
mouth wide open, and his tail describing large circles in the air. He
had well-nigh knocked down Tom Murdock as he passed, but he did not
mind that; and bounding out upon the road, cut such capers round Winny
as were seldom seen, keeping up at the same time a sort of growling
bark, until the enthusiasm of his joy at the permission had subsided.


CHAPTER XIX.

Winny and Kate had agreed to take a long walk after mass on the day in
question. This was not a mere trick of Winny's to get rid of Tom
Murdock. Certainly they had not agreed that it should be "their lone;"
this was as chance might have it; and it was a gratuitous addition of
Winny's, as calculated to attain her object; and we have seen how
promptly she succeeded.

The day was fine, and they now wandered along the road, so engaged in
chat that they scarcely knew how far they were from home. They had
turned down a cross-road before they came to Shanvilla, the little
village where Emon-a-knock lived. Kate would have gone on straight,
but Winny could not be induced to do so. Kate had her own reasons for
wishing to go on, while Winny had hers for being determined not; so
they turned down the road to their left, intending, as they had
Bully-dhu with them, to come home through the mountain-pass by
Boher-na-milthiogue. They had chat enough for the whole road. Prayers
had been over early, although it was second mass; and the country
people generally dine later on a holiday than usual. It gives the boys
and girls more time to meet and chat and part, and in some instances
to make new acquaintances. But whether it had been agreed upon or not,
Winny and Kate appeared likely to have their walk alone upon this
occasion; and as neither of them could choose their company, they were
not sorry to find the road they had chosen less frequented than the
one they had left. Bully-dhu scampered through the fields at each side
of them, and sometimes on a long distance in front, occasionally
running back to a turn to see if they were coming.

They were now beyond two miles from home, and two-and-a-half more
would have completed the circle they had intended to take; but they
were destined to return by the same way they came, and in no
comfortable or happy plight.

They were descending a gentle hill when, at some distance below them,
they perceived a number of young men engaged playing at what they call
"long bullets." They would instinctively have turned back, not
wishing, unattended as they were except by Bully-dhu, to run the
gauntlet of so many young men upon the roadside, most of whom must be
strangers; but the said Bully-dhu had been enjoying himself
considerably in advance, and they called and called to no purpose.
They could not whistle; and if Bully heard them call, he did not heed
them. He had seen a large brindled mastiff coming toward him from the
crowd with his back up, and a growl of defiance which he could not
mistake. Bully was no coward at any time; but on this occasion his
courage was more than manifest, being, as he considered, in sole
charge of his mistress and her friend. He was not certain but his
antagonist's attack might be directed as much against them as against
himself; and he stood upon the defensive, with his back up also, the
hairs of which, from behind his ears to the butt of his tail, bristled
"like quills upon the fretful porcupine." An encounter was now
inevitable. The mastiff had shown a determination that nothing but a
death-struggle should be the result, and rushed with open mouth and a
roar of confident superiority upon his {382} weaker rival. It was no
even match; nothing but poor Bully-dhu's indomitable courage and
activity could enable him to stand a single combat with his antagonist
for five minutes. The first snarling and growling on both sides had
now subsided, and they were "locked in each other's arms" in a silent
rolling struggle for life or death. A dog-fight of even the most minor
description has charms for a crowd of youngsters; and of course the
"long bullets" were left to take care of themselves, and all the
players, as well as the spectators, now ran up the road to witness
this contest, which was, indeed, far from a minor concern. Poor Winny
had screamed when she saw her dog first rolled by so furious and, as
she saw at once, so superior a foe. She would have rushed forward but
that Kate restrained her, as both dangerous and useless. She therefore
threw herself against the bank of the ditch by the roadside,
continuing to call out "for God's sake for somebody to save her poor
dog. Was there no person there who knew her, and would save him?"

The crowd had by this time formed a ring round the infuriated animals.
Some there were who would have been obedient to Winny's call for help;
but the case at present admitted of no relief. Notwithstanding poor
Bully-dhu's pluck and courage, he had still the worst of it; in fact,
his was altogether a battle of defence, while that of the mastiff was
one of ferocious attack. He had seized Bully in the first instance at
an advantage by the side of the neck under the ear, meeting his teeth
through the skin, while the blood flowed freely from the wound,
coloring the mud of the road a dark crimson round where they fought,
and nearly choking the mastiff himself, as he was occasionally rolled
under in the strife. Now they were upon their hind-legs again,
wrestling like two stout boys for a fall; now Bully was down, and the
mastiff rolled his head from side to side, tightening his grip, while
the bloody froth besmeared himself and his victim, as he might now
almost be called.

Some men at this point, more humane than the rest, took hold of the
mastiff by the tail, while others struck him on the nose with a stick.
They might as well have struck the rocks love Slieve-dhu or
Slieve-bawn. The mastiff was determined upon death, and death he
seemed likely to have. His master was there, and seemed anxious to
separate them. He even permitted him to be struck on the nose,
claiming the privilege only of choosing the thickness of the stick.

"He's loosening, boys!" said one fellow; "he's tired of that hoult,
an' can do no more with it; stan' back, boys, an' give the black dog
fair play, he's not bet yet; he never got a grip iv th' other dog yet;
give him fair play, boys, an' he'll do good business yet. There!
Tiger's out iv him now, and the black dog has him; be gorra, he's a
game dog any way, boys! I dunna who owns him." This man seemed to be
an "expert" in dog-fighting. Tiger had got tired of the hold he had
had, and, considering a fresh grip would be better, not by any means
influenced by the blows he had received on the nose, had given way;
believing, I do suppose, that he had already so mastered his
antagonist, that he could seize him again at pleasure. But he had
reckoned without his host. Bully-dhu took advantage of the relief to
turn on him, and seized him pretty much in the same way he had been
seized himself, and with quite as much ferocity and determination. Hie
fight did not now seem so unequal; they had grip for grip, and there
was a general cry amongst the crowd to let them see it out. Indeed,
there appeared to be no alternative, for they had both resisted every
exertion to separate them.

"It's no use, boys," said the expert; "you might cut them in pieces,
an' they wouldn't quit, except to get a better hoult; if you want to
part them, hold them by the tails, an' watch for {383} the loosening
of wan or th' other, an' then drag them away."

"Stan' back, boys," said another. "The black dog's not bet yet; stan'
back, I say!"

Bully-dhu had made a great rally of it. It was now evident that he
would have made a much better fight from the first, if he had not been
seized at an advantage which prevented him from turning his head to
seize his foe in return. They had been by this time nearly twenty
minutes in deadly conflict; and the mastiff's superior strength and
size began now to tell fearfully against poor Bully-dhu. He had shaken
himself completely out of Bully, and made a fresh grip, not far from
the first, but still nearer the throat. The matter seemed now coming
to a close, and the result no longer doubtful. Every one saw that if
something could not be done to disengage Tiger from that last grip,
the black dog must speedily be killed.

Here Winny, who heard the verdict from the crowd, could be restrained
no longer, and rushed forward praying for some one, for them all, to
try and save her dog. They all declared it was a pity; that he was a
grand dog, but no match for the mastiff. Some recommended one thing,
some another. Tiger was squeezed, and struck on the nose; a stick was
forced into his mouth, with a hope of opening his teeth and loosening
his hold; but it was all useless, and poor Winny gave up all for lost,
in a fit of sobbing and despair.

Here a man, who had not originally been of the party, was seen running
at full speed down the hill. It was Emon-a-knock, who at this juncture
had come accidentally upon the top of the hill immediately above them,
and at once recognizing _some_ of the party on the road, rushed
forward to the rescue. He cast but a glance at the dogs. He knew them
_both_, and how utterly hopeless a contest it must be for Bully-dhu.
Like an arrow from a bow, he flew to a cabin hard by, and seizing a
half-lighted sod of turf from the fire, he returned to the scene.
"Now, boys," he cried, "hold them fast by the tails and hind-legs, and
I'll soon separate them." Two men seized them--Tiger's own master was
one. Although there were many young men there who would have looked on
with savage pleasure at an even fight between two well-matched dogs,
even to the death, there was not one who could wish to stand by and
see a noble dog killed without a chance by a superior foe, and they
all hailed Emon-a-knock, from his confident and decisive manner, as a
timely deliverer. The dogs having been drawn by two strong men to
their full length, but still fastened by the deadly grip of the
mastiff on Bully-dhu's throat, Emon blew the coal, and applied it to
Tiger's jaw. This was too much for him. He could understand squeezes,
and even blows on the nose and head, or perhaps in the excitement he
never felt them; but the lighted coal he could not stand, and yielding
at once to the pain, he let go his hold. The dogs were then dragged
away to a distance; Emon-a-knock carrying poor Bully-dhu in his arms,
more dead than alive, to where Winny sat distracted on the roadside.

"O Emon! he's dead or dying!' she cried, as the exhausted animal lay
gasping by her side.

"He's neither!" almost roared Emon; "have you a fippenny-bit, Winny,
or Kate? if I had one myself, I wouldn't ask you."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed Winny, taking an old bead-purse from her pocket,
and giving him one. She knew not what it was for, but her confidence
in Emon's judgment was unbounded, and her heart felt some relief when
it was not a needle and thread he asked for.

"Here," said Emon to a gossoon, who stood looking at the dog, "be off
like a hare to Biddy Muldoon's for a naggin of whiskey, and you may
have the change for yourself, if you're back in less than no time;
make her put it in a bottle, not a cup, that you may {384} run the
whole way without spilling it."

The boy started off, not very unlike--either in pace or
appearance--to the animal he was desired to resemble, for he had a cap
made of one of their skins.

Emon-a-knock, although a very steady, temperate young man, was not
altogether so much above his compeers in the district as not to know
"where a dhrop was kept," which, to the uninitiated (English, of
course), means a sheebeen house. Perhaps, _to them_, I am only
explaining one thing by another which equally requires explanation.

During the interval of the boy's absence, Emon-a-knock was examining
the wounds in poor Bully-dhu's neck and throat. The dog still lay
gasping, and occasionally scrubbling with his fore-legs, and kicking
with his hind, while Winny reiterated her belief that he was dying.
Emon now contradicted her rather flatly. He knew she would excuse the
rudeness from the hope which it held forth.

"There will be nothing on him to signify indeed, Winny, after a
little," he said kindly, feeling that he had been harsh but a moment
before; "see, he is not even torn; only cut in four places."

"In four places! O Emon, in four?"

"Yes; but they are only where the other dog's teeth entered, and came
through; see, they are only holes; the dog is quite exhausted, but
will soon come round. Come here, Winny, and feel him yourself."

Winny stretched over, and Emon took her hand to guide it to the spots
where her poor dog had been wounded. Poor Bully looked up at her, and
feebly endeavored to wag his tail, and Winny smiled and wept together.
Emon was a very long time explaining to her precisely where the wounds
were, and how they must have been inflicted; and he found it necessary
to hold her hand the whole time. Whether Winny, in the confusion of
her grief, knew that he did so, nobody but herself can tell. Three or
four persons who knew Winny had kindly come up to see how the dog was,
and the expert amongst them, with so much confidence that he was going
to set him on his legs at once. But Emon had taken special charge of
him, and would not suffer so premature an experiment, nor the
interference of any other doctor.

But here comes the gossoon with the whiskey, like a hare indeed,
across the fields, and his middle finger stuck in the neck of the
bottle by way of a cork.

Emon took it from him, and claiming the assistance of the expert, whom
he had just now repudiated, for a few moments to hold his head, he
placed the neck of the bottle in Bully-dhu's mouth. He poured "the
least taste in life" down his throat, and with his hand washed his
jaws and tongue copiously with the spirits.

With a sort of yelp poor Bully made a struggle and a plunge, and rose
to his feet. Winny held out her hand to him, and he staggered over
toward her, looking up in her face, and wagging his tail.

"I told you so," said Emon; "get me a handful of salt."

The same cabin which had supplied the "live coal" was applied to by
the gossoon (who kept the change), and it was quickly brought.

Emon then rubbed some into the wounds, in spite of Winny's
remonstrances as to the pain, and the dog's own unequivocal objections
to the process.

Matters were now really on the mend. Bully-dhu shook himself, looking
after the crowd with a growl; and even Winny had no doubt that Emon's
prescriptions had been necessary and successful.

"The sooner you get home now with him, Winny, the better," said Emon.

"You are not going to leave us, Emon?" said Winny, doubtingly.

{385}

"Certainly not," he replied; "the poor dog is still very weak, and may
require rest, if not help, by the way." He then took a red cotton
handkerchief from his pocket, and tying it loosely round the dog's
neck, he held the other end of it in his hand, and they all set out
together for Rathcash.

The handkerchief, Emon said, would both keep the air from the wounds,
and help to sustain the dog on his legs. But he may have had some idea
in his mind that it would also serve as an excuse for his accompanying
them to the very furthest point possible on their road home.


TO BE CONTINUED.

------

From London Society.

TENDER AND TRUE AND TRIED.

  Tender and true.
      You kept faith with me,
  As I kept faith with you;--
         Though over us both
         Since we plighted troth
         Long years have rolled:--
         But our love could hold
  Through troubles and trials manifold,
             My darling tender and true!

  Tender and true,
      In your eyes I gazed,
  And my heart was safe, I knew!
         Your trusting smile
         Was pure of guile,
         And I read in sooth
         On your brow's fair youth
  The earnest of loyal trust and truth,
             My darling tender and true!

  Tender and true.
     All my own at last!
  My blessing for all life through--
         In death as life
         My one loved wife--
         Mine--mine at last,
         All troubles past--
  And the future all happiness, deep and vast.
              My darling tender and true!

--------
{386}

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par
des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.


A RIDE THROUGH CALCUTTA AND ITS VICINITY.

LETTER FROM A FATHER OF THE PROVINCE OF BELGIUM,
MISSIONARY AT CALCUTTA.


You ask me for a little information concerning this country and our
ordinary life in this climate. I am entirely at your disposal for this
whole afternoon, if you will come and join me at the college of St.
Francis Xavier, No. 10 Park street, Calcutta.

It is warm there. The thermometer I have just consulted stands 37°
centigrades in the shade. Look where you may from my windows, you see
nothing but white houses which, turned toward the four winds of
heaven, have no other shade but that of their cornice; and a little
further on, in an old cemetery, some fifty obelisks lit up on their
four faces, so vertical is our sun! Hence, though lightly clad--a
white calico soutane, without buttons, a white girdle, white
pantaloons, and white shoe--we still feel enough of the tropical heat
of the dog-star. Happily, we have the breeze, which, although it does
not lower the thermometer any, refreshes us considerably. But it does
not always blow; and when it stops, the floor is watered with drops of
perspiration as big as two-franc pieces. Those who would then make up
for the breeze have themselves _ponka-ed._ _Ponka-ed?_ what is that?
To understand it, you will enter Father Stochman's abode. He is seated
all in white, at his desk, in the middle of a large room; over his
bald head, at a little less than a metre, is hung a large white
triangle, three metres long horizontally, and one metre in height; a
cord is fastened to it there, passes into the hollow of a pulley fixed
to the wall, and terminates at a crouching Indian, clad in his dusky
skin and a strip of stuff around his loins. This human machine has no
other occupation than to pull the cord which balances continually over
Father Stochman's head the other rectangular machine that I have
described to you, which is called a _ponka_. Now, do not suppose that
Father Stochman is a Sybarite. There are _ponkas_ here everywhere: in
the parlor, in the refectory, and many persons have themselves ponkaed
in their bed the whole night long. These instruments are not in use in
Catholic churches, but every parishioner, male and female, continually
uses the fan, which by extension is likewise called a _ponka_. Other
countries, other customs; a _ponka_ is here more necessary than a
coat; whereas, on the other hand, there is not a single chimney in the
whole house. No chimney, you will say; do you, then, eat your rice
quite raw? To that question I have two answers; first, the kitchen,
with us as with our neighbors, is not in the house, but in the
_compound_--that is to say, in the vast inclosure that surrounds the
dwelling. Then I will furthermore observe, that even in the kitchen
there is no chimney. These black Indians, who are our cooks, are
accustomed to make fire without troubling themselves about the smoke,
which escapes wherever it can, through the windows, through the
crevices, anywhere and everywhere. If you were, like me, philosopher
enough to eat whatever comes before you, I would introduce you into
that kitchen; but I think you would not care to enter that dingy {387}
hole, lest you should for ever lose your appetite. Let us leave the
Indians in their den, and go sit down under the _ponka_ in the
refectory. To-day they will serve us with mutton and fowl; to-morrow
with fowl and mutton; now and then with fowl only. As regards
vegetables, yon shall see them successively of all kinds; but, if you
take my advice, you will not touch them; they have no other taste than
that of stagnant water. Beside the morning repast and the dinner,
which is at half-past three o'clock, we have two other meals a day.
One at noon, under the name of _tiffin_, is composed, in the maximum,
of a glass of beer, a crust of bread, and some fruit; for some amongst
us, it is reduced to but one of those three things; for many others,
and myself in particular, to nothing at all. The other repast, at
eight in the evening, consists of a cup of coffee, with or without
bread.

And now let us quit this abode of misery, no more to return. Come and
see my chamber. It has no _ponka_, but four windows, open day and
night; two to the south, where the sun does not enter, and two to the
east, where the Persians forbid him access in the morning. My bed is a
species of large sofa, upon which there is a nondescript article, that
is neither a pattiass nor a mattrass. It is a flat sack, eight or nine
inches thick, and stuffed with hair; over it two linen sheets (a
luxury here, where most people use but one) and a pillow as hard as
the mattrass. But best of all are the four posts supporting a
horizontal rectangle from which is hung the mosquito net. The mosquito
net is used here all the year round. It is a piece of net fastened
below the mattrass. Behind, that frail rampart, if happily there be no
rent in it anywhere, you enjoy the pleasure of hearing the mosquitoes
buzzing about powerless and exasperated. In December and January,
there are clouds of them; but, hearing them, you appreciate that verse
of Tibullus: _Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem!_ What is a
mosquito? It is the cousin-german of your gnats in Europe, generally a
little smaller, but quite the same in form; it _sings_ and stings like
them; only its sting is a little more painful, and is followed by a
larger and more lasting tumor. Nothing can secure you against its
attacks; it can dart its sting even through a double covering of
linen.

These insects are not my only room-mates. There are now, in addition
thereto, some millions of red and black ants, hundreds of which I
every day crush, but all in vain; there are lizards, which are not
dumb as in Europe, but give utterance, now and then, to a short song.
These lizards apply themselves to hunt the insects, so that I am very
careful not to hunt themselves. In my chamber, moreover, there are
horrible beetles--large insects of a dark brown color, four or five
inches long, which have the privilege of inspiring universal disgust.
To love them, one should be as poetical as M. Victor Hugo, who had an
affection for "the toad, poor meek-eyed monger." There are little
_white fishes_, insects that do not live in water, but are
particularly abundant during rainy weather. These _fishes_, little as
they are, contrive to make large holes in cloth and in stuffs. During
the night I sometimes hear rats and mice prowling around; the mosquito
net protects me from their assaults. As for bats, owls, and other such
nocturnal visitors, I do not think they ever come in through our open
windows.

Birds of prey are very numerous here, and wherever I am in my chamber,
I know not how many are watching me from the top of the adjacent
buildings. Crows are another species of bird as interesting as they
are dreary. They inhabit the riversides where the Indians throw their
dead; two, three, or more of them are often seen in the water, looking
as though they were sailing on some invisible bark; that bark is a
dead body, which they slice amongst them as they {388} go. Sometimes
the jackals, along the river, dispute this horrible prey with them,
and you might see these animals, at some distance from the city,
trotting along with human limbs across their mouth. In the city, the
crows live on offal of all kinds; they are often found assembled round
kitchen doors; during our meals there are always twenty or thirty of
them before our refectory. There they seem to beg for crusts of bread,
bones, etc, and willingly receive whatever is thrown to them. The
kites, less numerous and less bold, but much more voracious, mount
guard with them, and often fly away with what the poor crows had
picked up from the ground. In revenge, it is really a pleasure to see
a kite gnaw a bone which he has thus purloined. If he does not take
care to perform that operation high up in the air, he is invariably
flanked by two crows, one of which keeps constantly pulling him behind
to make him angry, whilst the other avails himself of this artifice to
peck at the bone in the very claws of the kite. After a while, the
crows change parts, and each in his turn becomes the assailant. I
perceive at this moment in our court another bird, less common than
the two preceding species, but still not at all rare. The name it
usually bears here is that of _adjutant_; in other places the much
more picturesque name of _philosopher_ is given to it. In order to
form an idea of it, give an ordinary heron the size of a small
ostrich; the bill is ten inches wide and from fifty to sixty long; the
claws and the legs, white and thin, are more than three feet high; the
neck almost always bent, and forming a crop, has a development of from
sixty to seventy inches. Between these two extremities place a big
white body with large wings of a dark-gray color, and you shall have
pretty nearly the _adjutant_ or _philosopher_.

_Apropos_ to the description of my domicile, I have been led to give
you a course of natural history; let us go on to something else. There
is no other curiosity in my chamber, if it be not the two partitions
which, with the walls of the house, form the inclosure. These
partitions are but two yards in height, whilst the ceiling is more
than five; they are generally arranged in this way, so as to give a
free passage to the breeze.

In descending, let us take a look at the bathing rooms, about a dozen
in number, in which there is not a single bath, but large vases of
baked clay, always full of water, and small copper vases, that contain
about a quart. You stand on the pavement, and, dipping the small vase
into the larger one, pour the contents of it fifty times or so on your
head. This is called taking a bath. It is said to be very wholesome;
every one in this country takes their daily bath--except me, who have
no time; so every one has been more or less sick, except me, for the
same reason.

Before going out, a word on the pupils of our college. They are two
hundred and twenty, the great majority of whom are Catholics. Most of
the names have an English aspect; but you will also hear Portuguese,
French, and Armenian names, borne respectively by white, black,
bronze, and brown skins. English is the common language; the French
pupils themselves speak it more fluently than their mother tongue, and
most of them know only as much of Bengalese and Hindostanese as is
necessary to make themselves understood by their Indian domestics. The
costumes are varied enough; but as for the Indians, one may say that
white, and especially white calico, constitutes their wardrobe,
notwithstanding that some dark or pale colors are seen here and there.

Let us set out. Here are our young people coming in for recreation,
and I would spare your ears one of my daily torments. It were
impossible to find on the European continent people more destitute of
all musical judgment than our pupils. It is not taste they want, but
_good_ taste. Several of them have an instrument like the {389}
accordeon which is called the _concertina_. They have the courage to
spend all their recreations, for three months and more, playing always
the same air. I have thus heard "God save the Queen" thousands of
times. Once would have sufficed to disgust you with it for ever; you
may just imagine what liking I have for it. But it is time to go for
our walk.

The English took a very simple way of making Calcutta. They marked out
a broad circular road, to fix its boundary. Three Hindoo villages,
Fort William, and some European factories, were inclosed within it;
time has done the rest. Within the inclosure, the construction of the
houses is subject to police regulations; straw roofs are prohibited,
tiles required, etc; all that annoys the Hindoo, who likes better to
take up his quarters on the other side of the circular road; and in
this way the suburbs are formed. The European city, on its side, has
grown larger every day. Five years ago, our college was at the very
extremity of the city; now, it is nearly in the centre; the new houses
have occupied all the free space, and, in some places even go beyond
the circular road. A year and a half since, a group of Hindoo huts,
situate about one hundred paces from the college, disappeared to make
place for a public tank, which furnishes us with water. The
transformation is slow, but sure. So much for English tact; they have
made Calcutta a palatial city, and such its name implies--_the city
of palaces_. It is, moreover, an immense city; the streets are of
fabulous length, thanks to the mode of construction employed here. I
believe, indeed, that if Paris were built on the same system, it would
extend itself as far as the _natural frontiers_.

In those long streets circulates a numerous and very mixed population,
as in all great maritime places. If you please, we will busy ourselves
to-day with the Indians only.

We distinguish them here into two great classes; the Mohammedans and
the Hindoos. They are easily recognized in the streets. The
Mohammedans wear a beard; they have usually on their head a cap a
little larger than that of the priests in Belgium, but which, having
only one seam forming an edge, is a little less spherical. The rich
have caps embroidered with gold and silver, often very costly; the
poor make theirs of two pieces of grayish-white calico. As for the
women, I know not by what sign to recognize them, unless, perhaps, by
the seams of a portion of their garments. For the rest, no Indian
woman, poor or rich, appears in the streets. The Hindoos, all
idolaters, wear no beard on their chin, but only moustaches and
sometimes whiskers. In case of mourning for the death of a parent,
they shave all, and even the hair from the fore part of the skull. The
rest of the hair is generally drawn back and gathered in a knot. The
men go almost always bareheaded; sometimes they make themselves a
turban of a large piece of calico gracefully enough wound around. The
rich dress in muslin; unbelievers wear leather shoes,  [Footnote 55]
the others wooden sandals. The poor have a cord around their loins,
which the rich replace by a silver chain, that they never leave off.
One or more keys are usually attached to it. Between this cord and the
skin they thrust the edge of a piece of calico as long and as wide as
a bed-sheet, and which goes first round and half round the legs; the
men pass between their legs what remains of the sheet and fasten the
end of it to the cord or to the silver chain; the women throw this
same remainder of the stuff over one shoulder and the head, so as to
cover the chest. All go barefoot; many men have necklaces, the women
wear on their ankles two large rings of copper or silver; they have,
beside, a profusion of necklaces, bracelets, rings in the ears and
even in the {390} nostrils. This costume forms their essential and
ordinary apparel.

  [Footnote 55: Leather is an abomination to a devout Hindoo.]

From the month of November till the month of March, the Indians have a
season which they call winter. At 20° they are cold, at 15° they
shiver, at 12° or 13° they are frozen. You should see, in the morning,
the masons, carpenters, and other workmen, residing usually in the
country, coming into town all muffled up in one or two extra
bed-sheets, their mouth and nose completely hidden, and looking so
much like being cold, that after some years the Europeans themselves
(sad effect of bad example!) end by persuading themselves that it is
cold here in winter, and even catch a little cold here and there. The
domestics also try then to obtain some cast-off garments, in which
they wrap themselves up without any regard for aesthetics. The porter
of the college, who may be recognized by his red skull-cap and small
white band worn as a shoulder-belt, characteristic of the caste of
Brahmins, asked Father Stochman last year for one of his old soutanes.
A little _bera_ (servant) strutted about the other day in his master's
old _paletot_. The master is thirty-five, the _bera_ seven. The
_meteurs_ (room sweepers, etc) cover themselves with everything:
packing-linen, palliasses, etc., etc. The _bossartchi_ (cooks) are the
best off in winter; they keep themselves warm with their masters'
wood.

Now that you have my Indians more or less dressed, let us see how they
act. The best way to do that will be to go in a palanquin from our
college to the railroad station. If we arrive in time for the train,
we shall make a little excursion as far as Serampore or even to
Chandernagor. Here is the palanquin that is waiting for us at the
door: it is a wooden box, about four feet long; two poles a little
bent, and fastened one before, the other behind, seem to be the
continuation of the axle of the parallelepiped (excuse the word: I
teach geometry). Two individuals, clothed just so far as it is
absolutely necessary, place themselves under the front pole, so as to
lay it one over his right shoulder, the other over his left shoulder;
they press one against the other, because union makes strength. Two
other Indians similar to these do as much for the back pole; the
palanquin is raised. I slide the doors sideways, seat myself on the
edge, and with all the elegance given by gymnastic habit I dart in
backwards. The bottom is a sort of mattrass, on which one lies down at
full length: the shoulders are then supported by a back-cushion, the
feet are in front; you cry _Djas!_ and the four _palki-bera_ start
off. Usually, to mark the way, the most intelligent of the bearers
throws out phrases of four or six syllables, in a very monotonous tone
quite unknown in Europe; the other answers, repeating the phrase in
the same tone. In town, they go at the rate of at least six miles an
hour; in longer journeys they go more slowly.

I have already made a journey of five leagues twice in this kind of
box. The first was poetical enough. It was more than fifty leagues
from Calcutta. We were three Europeans; a very light Frenchman (not in
body, but in mind), an Irishman, and myself. The Frenchman had a
considerable sum about him, and the country being in his opinion
somewhat dangerous, he had brought to the starting station arms of
every kind. I had with me in my palanquin a double-barrelled carabine,
a case of ammunition, and a large hunting-knife. To prevent any one
from robbing me of all this, I partly lay down on the carabine, made a
pillow of the case, and slept with the sheath of my knife in one hand
and the handle in the other. The Irishman, travelling on horseback,
with pistols, served us as a scout; but his pistols did not prevent
him from being struck on the face and arms by the greatest brigand in
India: I mean the sun. He had his skin red for several days. For us,
who were shaded in our palanquins, we had, of {391} course, no
adventure; were it not that I dreamed sometimes of brigands and the
Black Forest, crossing a vast desert plain, all white with light. So,
when we came back the same way a fortnight after, we took with us no
other fire-arms than a box of matches and cigars. But this is a
digression; let us continue our journey.

_Daina péro!_ (turn to the right). It is not the ordinary way; but
instead of passing by the broad European thoroughfare, Park street, we
shall turn aside into the dark and winding passages of an Indian
bazaar. A bazaar is a multitude of lanes, exclusively composed of
miserable huts, and blocked up with all sorts of merchandise. You
rarely meet any one there but men; the shop-girl and the "young lady"
of the store are equally unknown here; but in it is found every form
of misery.

See there below that beggar of eighteen or twenty years, scarce half
covered, and without even a rudiment, a shadow, of an arm. He is long
and thin, but appears to be in good health. A French physician told me
that, very probably, his parents cut off his arms when he was a child
to secure him a livelihood. Whilst we are looking at him, a gigantic
hand is thrust trough the opposite door of the palanquin. The fingers
are as big as the arms of a two-year old child; they are long in
proportion. That hand is soliciting alms. We raise ourselves up a
little to see this needy giant, and our eyes fall on a wretched,
emaciated Indian; the rest of his body can weigh but little more than
his two hands, for the left is like unto the right. This case of
hypertrophy is, I think, isolated here; but another very common one,
which is met in every street, is _Elephantiasis_, hypertrophy of the
legs. The unhappy creatures attacked by this malady have, from the
knee to the end of the foot, one, or sometimes two, elephant's legs,
cylindrical, enormous, and seeming to draw to them the nourishment of
all the rest of the body.

But here we are at the _Meïdan_, This is the name given to that
immense esplanade on which stands Fort William, and which bounds the
governor's palace, the city hall, the Protestant cathedral, the
prison, the lunatic asylum, etc. Let us cross it in our palanquin,
coasting along the river, and we shall soon reach the vicinity of the
station. There we find ourselves besieged by the _couli_ (a sort of
porter) of every age. They claim the honor of carrying our
travelling-bag fifty paces for a _pais_--about four centimes. Since
we are there, before going any further, let us say a word of the
_couli_.

Some are in the service of the rich and of Europeans, others are for
hire in the streets. The first are always men; amongst the second,
there are many children: there are few of them very strong. Indeed, as
a general rule, one European has the strength of several Bengalese.
Both carry everything on their head, in a great hemispherical basket;
there it is that they place the traveller's luggage or the provisions
bought in the bazaar. A _couli_ brought me one day two little birds
which an Irishman had shot for me, and sent them to me from his
residence, three leagues from Calcutta. The birds were in the large
basket. On receiving them I wrote a few lines of thanks; the _couli_
put the note in his basket. Here is another anecdote, for the truth of
which I can certify. M. Moyne, a Frenchman settled in Chandernagor,
had ordered his _couli_ to convey some very heavy materials, of I know
not what kind. He saw the poor devil bent under the burden, and as the
journey was to be of several days' duration, he went to his carpenter
and had him construct a wheelbarrow. That done, he comes back quite
pleased with his good work, and, wheeling the barrow himself to the
_couli_, gives it to him, shows him how to use it, and goes his ways
satisfied that he has caused that man to make one step toward
civilization. The pleasure he experiences at this {392} reflection
induces him to turn round to enjoy his work. He turns, therefore, and
sees the _couli_ walking along, the barrow and the burden all on his
head!

We have met by the way a great number of Mohammedans, carrying on
their back an enormous leather flask, and dripping wet. These are the
_bisthi_, water-carriers. Every house has its own; for people here
waste a great deal of water, and there are neither wells nor cisterns.
The _bisthi_ go and fill their leather flasks at the river or at the
public reservoirs, which are to be found in almost all the large
streets, and come and empty it into pitchers of the dimensions of a
hogshead. It is filtered for drinking; for other uses it is merely
left to settle.

Those other individuals, a little cleaner, who carry on their head
large bundles of linen, are _dôbi_, or washers. They wash the linen by
soaking it in water, and then striking it with their whole strength
against a plank or a stone. Happily, notwithstanding the American war,
calico is not very dear here. You understand that in such a mode of
washing it is roughly handled, and wears out before it is old. But why
not teach the _dôbi_ to wash in another way? Remember M. Moyne's
wheelbarrow, when you ask that question!

Mercy on us! whilst we are chatting so about the _couli_, the
_bisthi_, and the _dôbi_, we are missing the train. Since it is gone,
we shall do as others do who are left behind: we shall take a
_Hinghi_, an Indian bark, long, curved, and without a keel. We shall
find four or five Mohammedan _mendjié_ (boatmen), one of whom steers
with a long oar; the others row with bamboos as thick as one's arm,
and terminated by small flat boards. Just as we enter, the crew are
finishing their common prayer, in which, with many protestations and
gesticulations, they thank God and the Prophet for having helped them
to speed well heretofore, and asking them to help them the same for
the future.

Allah! Allah! _mendjié_  row strong; if we arrive in time, you shall
have two _annas_ (30 centimes). What is this floating three paces from
here? The body of a man lying on his back. And yonder? A woman's
corpse. And further off? The carcass of a horse. The crows, the kites,
the vultures, are much interested in it. But we are landing. The
passengers on board the steamboat are not all landed yet. You see
there perhaps forty, fifty European dresses, and hundreds of Indian.
In the second-class car, which we enter, we shall see Indians in
muslin, who are named _babou_ (or townspeople) through politeness.
They are clerks in the Calcutta offices; they reside several leagues
from here, come every day to town, and return home by the railroad.
The compact mass of the poor are penned up in wretched third-class
cars. The bell rings, the whistle blows, we are off.

Thirteen miles north of Calcutta in the third station, the first
important one; we stop two minutes. Let us go down; we are at
Serampore, an old Danish colony sold to England. We shall content
ourselves there with a visit to the Hindoo gods, and we shall have
enough to do if we see them all. There are, I think, more than fifty
temples. Here is one that is no larger than one of the little wayside
chapels we often see at home. At the further end, on a scaffold, is a
god quite black, almost of human form, holding his two hands as though
he were playing the flute. No flute is there, however. The god has the
cut of a French conscript; at his feet there is a little woman a foot
high, and a little god half a foot, an exact copy of the large one.
The priest has observed us, and here he comes to speak to us. He is
clad like the poorest of the Hindoos. What is your god's name? Answer
unintelligible. Who are those two little personages? His wife and son.
What does that god do? He eats. Indeed? Oh yes, _sahib_, he eats much.
If you will give him some rice or flour he will be very thankful {393}
to you, and it will be of great spiritual advantage to you. Oh! oh!
but if we give him rice, will he eat it before us? Oh! of course not.
He does not eat in company. I place the rice before him; I close the
door carefully, and go away; when I come back some time after to open
the door, he has it all eaten up. Thereupon we begin to laugh; the
priest smiles, too, and we move away.

You meet under almost every large tree four or five of these gods, or
even a greater number. Over them the Indians hang cocoa-nuts, full of
a water which escapes drop by drop, from a little hole bored in the
bottom. It is thus that they keep their gods cool. You often see a
regular series of little temples, built one after the other, on the
same base. Usually, there are six on one side, six on the other. In
the centre of each of them there is a black stone, fairly representing
an anvil covered with a hat. That stone is a god. A great number of
them are sold in Calcutta at from ten to twelve rupees a piece
(twenty-five or thirty francs).

But here is a temple of _Kali_, the terrible goddess of destruction,
in honor of whom the sect of _Togs_ has devoted itself to murder for
ages long. They say there are still Togs who kill for killing's sake,
especially in Bengal. The goddess is standing; she is almost black;
has four arms armed with daggers and death's-heads; around her neck is
a double necklace, which hangs to the ground, composed of hundreds of
little figures also representing death's-heads. The best of it is that
her tongue hangs down midway on her chest. To pull the tongue is a
sign of astonishment in Bengal. Now Kali, returning one day from the
war, with her chaplet of skulls round her neck, met a man, whom she
naturally killed first and foremost. That is the dead body that lies
under her feet. She asked the name of the individual, and was much
surprised to find that she had killed her husband. Then she pulled her
tongue, the best thing she could do. Having no other husband to kill,
and even deprived recently of human sacrifices by the English
government. Kali has enormous quantities of black kids sacrificed to
her. I often see flocks of several hundreds of them coming into town;
the votaries of Kali have their heads cut off at a celebrated temple
we have here in Calcutta. For you must know, Calcutta signifies
_temple of Kali!_ I went one day to see these sacrifices. The temple
is a small affair; but all around a great number of other gods,
attracted, doubtless, by the scent of blood, come to establish their
dwelling.

Let us go on. That great straw shed which you see yonder covers an
enormous car, having a great number of very heavy wheels. Many a man
those wheels have crushed. It is the car of Juggernaut, that devil to
whose festivals the English government sent European soldiers only a
few years since; not to maintain order, but to take part in the
procession. _Djaghernatt_ (the Indian name of this idol) remains with
_Bolaraham_ and _Soubâdhra_, his brother and sister, in a temple
opposite the straw shed. A great number of the Indian gods have a
taste for moving about; hence those kiosks that you see everywhere,
and which serve them as resting-places. The prettiest is the shade of
a banyan-tree, with about a hundred stems, a whole wood in itself.

But we must leave the Hindoo gods; we have barely time to pay a short
visit to Chandernagor. Let us take the railroad again, and go on some
minutes' ride further. Another time we shall, if you choose, come by
water, ascending the Hoogly to twenty-one miles north of Calcutta.
There, on the right bank of the broad river, is a strip of land two
miles in length by one in breadth, where some sixty persons live in
European style, with some thousands of Bengalese, who live in Indian
fashion; it is the French colony.

The Indian _employés_ cry with all {394} their might "Chan'nagore!
Chan'nagore!" Let us get down, and out of the terminus, and when we
have crossed that ditch, ten paces before us, we shall be in France.
As the centre of the European habitations is a quarter of an hour's
walk from this point, we throw ourselves here into a four-seated
carriage, and thread our way through roads wretchedly out of repair,
at the risk of upsetting an hundred times, or of getting sea-sick by
the way. I have often passed that place in company with Frenchmen; we
endeavored to feel an impression, by humming

  "Vera les rives de France," etc.   [Footnote 56]

  [Footnote 56: "Toward the shores of France," etc.]

One day when I was making ready to brave those perilous roads in
company with two Irishmen, there came into our carriage a large
gentleman, whose weight would have been formidable to us, had I not
managed to balance his pounds by my kilogrammes.  [Footnote 57] By his
appearance I took him for a _Briton_, and, therefore, took no pains to
enter into conversation. But after a little, one of my Irishmen,
annoyed by the jolting of the carriage, said to me in English: "Faith!
these Frenchmen needn't boast of the way they keep these roads of
theirs." At this remark, you should have seen my stout gentleman leap,
and with a menacing air reply to my interlocutor: "I warn you to say
nothing here against the French. I am a Frenchman."

  [Footnote 57: A kilogramme is equal to 2 lb. 3 oz. and 4 drms.]

This was said in English. I had not yet opened my mouth. I thought I
would appease my irascible fat man by speaking to him in his own
tongue. "Come, come," said I, "no one here has any intention of
laughing at the French." My man instantly drew in his horns,
stammering three or four syllables which I could not understand.
"Magical effect of the mother tongue!" thought I; and ten yards
further on, in order to perfect a good understanding between us, I
began again to address him in French on any subject that presented
itself. He looked at me with mouth and eyes open. Supposing that he
had not heard what I said, I repeated it. He was then forced to
confess that he did not know a word of French; that he was an
Irishman, an old soldier. In short, he was an original, well known in
the country by his eccentricity, and styling himself _the hero of 132
fights_. Now retired from the service, he is writing his exploits in a
little diary full of fun and humor. He detests England, loves France
in general, and attacks all Frenchmen in particular. Once at his ease,
after his candid confession, he took to chatting, and talked so much
and so well that we forgot the jolting of the carriage, and even the
lofty and magnificent trees that, fringe the road.

After some winding about, and after passing a great number of Indian
huts, and meeting hundreds of Hindoos loaded each with a great pitcher
of water, here we are at last in a street. _Rue de Paris_, if you
please: long and dirty, and ill aired; nothing remarkable; let us pass
on. _Rue Neuve,_in ruins. _Rue des Grands Escaliers_, so narrow that
the slightest staircase before a door would block it up completely.
Let us go on, turn to the left, and here we are at the river side.
Here all is large and wide--quay, river, houses, gardens. Without
stopping now, let us go on immediately to the end of the quay, where
we shall rest and refresh ourselves in a friendly house. It deserves
that name in three ways, for, 1st, it was formerly the house of God,
an ancient chapel of the Franciscans. An old plank yet to be seen
there still bears the following inscription in French, nowise
remarkable for good orthography: "_This church is dedicated to St.
Francis of Assissium._" 2nd, It belongs to the venerable pastor,
Father Chéroutre, who is now our neighbor at Bailloul. And, 3rd, It is
occupied by M. Moyne of Lyons, one {395} of our old pupils, of whom I
have already spoken to you. He stands on the threshold, and receives
us with open arms.

The Franciscans were formerly pastors at Chandernagor; this chapel
served as parish church; their convent is now converted into a hotel.
From one of its windows there is a magnificent and extensive view,
thanks to the river and the level character of the ground. That square
tower to the left is the guard-house; for there is here a French army,
composed of thirty Indians, commanded by a European lieutenant. They
pretend, but erroneously, that these thirty soldiers have but twenty
uniforms amongst them, and that often, when the guard is relieved, the
new comers enter, not only into the functions, but also into the
clothes, of their comrades. It is a calumny of "perfidious Albion;" my
information is certain. I have it from the general-in-chief. Close by
is the police station. With their white tunics, their red pantaloons,
these Indian policemen have very much the look of altar-boys. This
fine house to the left is the house of the administrator, or, as he is
styled by courtesy, the governor. Let us go in. We shall see this
governor, a fat little man, born in the colonies. He will speak a
little on everything, but especially on honor and the happiness, to
him so rare, of receiving a visit from a man of learning. It is very
unlucky that his lady has the influenza at this moment; for she is an
astronomer, and had ever so many questions to ask me whatever day I
should have accepted their invitation. Another time will do as well.
The governor himself is a horticulturist; he has his garden kept in
perfect order by Indian convicts, who drag the cannon ball along his
walks.  [Footnote 58]

  [Footnote 58: A military punishment.--TRANS. ]

The sun is setting; let us go home. We shall see in the streets of
Calcutta what is seen there every evening; dogs, fireworks, and
marriages.

The Bengal dog is a wretched and cowardly animal, long muzzled,
red-haired; he barks little, but howls incessantly. Be very sure that
he will assail us persistently in the lanes, as we pass now in the
evening, distance being our only security against him. There are also
in the country, and even in the city, a great number of _paria_ dogs,
that prowl around, especially by night; a species of wild beasts; not
very dangerous, however, because of their cowardice. It is said that
dogs of European race gradually degenerate here.

Those rockets that you see going up from all points of the horizon are
a daily amusement in which the Bengalese take much delight. There is
scarcely ever a fire-work worth seeing; but there is fire, smoke, and
crackers, and that suffices. Sometimes they send up little paper
balloons, with a ball of lighted camphor, which burns a good quarter
of an hour.

But look yonder: is not that a fire? A bright light flashes on the
tree-tops and on the European houses. No, it is not a fire; it is a
marriage. The procession is turning the comer of the street; a score
of Indians carry each on his head a plank, on which some fifty candles
are burning; others carry resinous wood burning on the top of a long
pole; in the centre of the procession trumpets, drums, large and
small, pots and saucepans, produce a frightful din, each musician
having no other rule than that of making the greatest possible noise.
Behind the orchestra come one or two open palanquins containing the
brides, around whom "blue lights" are lit from time to time. I defy
you to form any correct idea of this _cortège_, and especially of the
music. They go about thus from street to street for several hours;
then they will eat rice to satiety, gorge themselves with Indian
pastry, and to-morrow will not have a single sou. We see that from our
terrace several times in the week, and, at certain seasons, every day.

{396}

If I am not mistaken, I have said nothing yet of the character of
these poor Indians. In this respect some reserve is necessary. I hear
it said that there is very little resemblance between Bengal, Maduras,
the Bombay territory, the Punjaub, etc. As for the Bengalese, all
agree in regarding them as the most degraded; they are effeminate,
idle, and cowardly by temperament; liars and thieves by education.
They often dispute amongst themselves, but never fight. That cowardice
encourages many Englishmen, who beat them at random when they have
nothing else to do. My idea is that, unless miracles of grace be
wrought for them, it is scarcely possible to make true Christians of
these poor people. The only means of establishing Christianity amongst
the race would be to buy their children, and bring them up, away from
all contact with the others. There are Christians amongst them, who
are oftenest found as cooks or _kansama_ amongst the Europeans; but
they know not the first rudiments of their religion, go to church only
on Good Friday and All Souls' Day, and are generally admitted to be
worse than the pagan servants.

Our day is now ended. If you are fatigued, come and rest yourself on
the college roof, constructed as a platform, like those of all the
other houses in the country. There, evening and morning, but only
then, the heat is bearable. I sometimes go and sit there to think of
my friends. I look back into the past, forget the present, and, as I
do everywhere else, laugh at what worldlings call _the future_. The
future is heaven. It seems to me that I am nearer to it here than in
Europe. May God grant us grace to gain it one day or another!

T. CARBONNNELLE.

----------

THE ROUND OF THE WATERS.

BY ROBT. W. WEIR

  "All thy works praise thee, O Lord."

  Up, up on the mountains, high up near the sky.
  Where the earth gathers moisture from clouds passing by;
  Where the first drops of rain patter down full of glee,
  As they join hand in hand on their way to the sea;

  There the rills, like young children, go prattling along.
  Full of life, full of joy, full of motion and song;
  And, swelling the brooks, with glad voices they raise,
  To him who made all things, their tribute of praise.

  Then, as they dance onward, half hidden in spray,
  Like bands of young nymphs dress'd in bridal array,
  With shouts of wild laughter they leap the deep linn.
  Where the broad flowing river at once takes them in.

  Now calm their rude mirth as they matronly glide,
  Bearing onward rich freight to the blue briny tide.
  Where the mist of the mountains once more joins the sea
  With its incense, O Lord, ever heaving to thee.

------

{397}


Translated from the German

THE BIBLE; OR, CHRISTMAS EVE,


Christmas Eve had come. The bells of the high towers in majestic and
solemn tones were reminding the faithful that the advent of the Lord
was near. Here and there through the gathering darkness already
glimmered a solitary taper, casting a feeble light upon the streets,
where a throng of people, large and small, young and old, were moving
to and fro with joyful activity, impatiently awaiting the hour when
the treasures and splendor of the Christmas market should be opened to
them. Good mothers were engaged in quietly and secretly baking the
cakes and adorning the Christmas-tree for the children, and shared
beforehand in the delights and surprises of the little ones, while
others, who had perhaps chosen the best part, were preparing
themselves in still devotion and pious meditation for the great
festival.

The young student of theology, Ernest Kuhn, was sitting in his little
upper chamber, watching, with eyes full of deep affection and
sympathy, his dear mother, who, after a confinement to her bed of
several weeks, had been refreshed for the first time by a peaceful
sleep. His countenance was lighted up with an expression of great
interior joy, for on this day the physician had announced to him that
his mother had safely passed through a perilous crisis, and that, with
care, a speedy recovery might be expected.

But he turned his eyes from his dear mother and looked upon the bare
walls, which gave a speaking proof of the poverty of the inmates, then
a cloud of sadness passed over his countenance, his young breast
heaved heavily, as if oppressed by a weight of sorrow. The house-rent
was due, the fire-wood was reduced to a few sticks, hardly enough to
last two days, his little sister needed a new dress, his mother good
strengthening nourishment, the apothecary's bill was to be paid, and
where were the means to be found?

Heavily and slowly he rose from his seat, as if standing would lighten
his burdens, and cast his eyes thoughtfully around the apartment. "The
tables and chairs," he said to himself in an under-tone, "are gone not
to come back, the pictures too are sold, and the clock also; and now
it is your turn, O my books! It cannot be helped; I have spared you
for a long, long time." At these words he stood before the book-case
and gazed on the few but good books by which he had so often been
instructed and counselled, and which had remained with him in joy and
in sorrow. Each of them was dear to him, associated with some dear
remembrance either of joy or sorrow. Sad and wavering, he looked at
them again and again, as if he could never part from them. At last,
after long hesitation, he took down from the shelf a large bound
volume; it was a Bible adorned with beautiful copper-plate engravings.
"I can best spare you," he said sadly, "for I have two more in Greek
and in Latin; I shall meet with the most ready sale and get the most
money for you. My grandfather who is in heaven will forgive me this; I
have other remembrances of him; Agnes will grieve and weep greatly for
the beautiful Bible, but I think I can easily quiet her, and I can
also give my mother a satisfactory explanation."

{398}

He cast a sorrowful glance at the beautiful book which had afforded
him so much enjoyment in his boyhood, and which was so much dearer to
him as a memorial of his pious grandfather, long since dead, whom he
held in great veneration. Then he thought of earlier and better times,
of the present, so full of trouble, and of the blessed future, and his
heart was heavy and his youthful breast heaved painfully.

Then his eye fell as if by chance upon the open Bible, and he read:
"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

And he humbly kissed the consoling words, and a tear of sorrow but
also of the firmest trust flowed down his cheek, and he turned his
true and weeping eyes to heaven as if he would ask pardon of his
Father for his faint-heartedness. He remembered how God had heard his
earnest prayer, and restored his dear mother, how often he had helped
him, and his heart became lighter, and hope once more began to dawn
upon him.



II.

Suddenly the door opened, and his little sister Agnes, a child seven
years old, ran in, joyfully holding up her little writing-book. "Look
here, dear Ernest," she eagerly exclaimed, "only see how beautifully I
have written to-day! That great A is very nice." "Softly, softly, you
noisy little girl," said her brother, putting his hand over her mouth;
"you will wake up mother!" Agnes hastened on tip-toe to her mother's
bedside, softly kissed her white hand, and said beseechingly, as she
watched her slumber, "Do not scold, dear brother, mother is sleeping
so good!"

Ernest smiled and told her that while he attended to some necessary
business she must stay with their mother, and be very quiet and silent
that she might not wake her; but that if she did awake she was to give
her the warm broth upon the stove, and that the bread and butter for
herself was on the window ledge. "Now be very quiet," he added, "for
you know what the doctor said."

The little girl assured him that he might trust her, but, added she,
coaxingly, "When you come back, may I not go with dame Margaret to the
Christmas market?" "That you shall," promised her brother. But Agnes
clung to him, and full of pious simplicity, whispered in his ear: "If
you meet the Christ-child in the street, tell him he must not forget
me, but must look in here."

The brother embraced the little girl with a sad smile, and casting an
affectionate glance upon his mother, left the room.



III.

Ernest had only to turn the corner of the little street to find the
shop of Höss, the antiquary, who had before bought many a book of him,
and to whom he intended to offer the Bible. With a beating heart (for
Höss was a rough, purse-proud man) Ernest entered the shop, which was
crowded with books, maps, and pictures. He greeted the antiquary, who
was busy writing, in a friendly manner, but there was a pretty long
pause before he took any notice of him.

"Ah! it is you, Master Studious," he exclaimed, raising his cap in a
stately manner, "what good thing brings you to me?"

"Something beautiful and good indeed," replied Ernest "See here, you
must buy this of me."

"Always buying," said the antiquary; "when will you begin to buy of
me? I don't like to deal with you. Look at your pictures, that I
bought of you three weeks ago, and for which I paid more than they
were worth on account of your destitute condition; no one will buy
them of me; my good nature played me a trick that time. It shall not
happen again, Master Studious."

"How can you say this, Mr. Höss?" {399} replied Ernest, greatly
disgusted; "did you not have them for a trifle, and was not I present
eight days since when you refused double of what you gave for them,
when it was offered you?"

"You heard wrong," replied the antiquary, displeased and ashamed, "let
me see your articles."

With evident pleasure he turned over the leaves of the book, and
looked at the beautiful and delicately executed engravings.

"Not so bad," thought he. "It is a pity that I have already more than
enough of such trash, as you can see for yourself if you will look at
those shelves. I will take it, however, on account of my regard for
you and your mother, if you don't set your mark too high."

"Only give me," begged Ernest, "the fourth part of what it first
cost."

"And what was that?"

"Six florins, Mr. Hoss."

"You are sharp indeed, young master! Six florins in these hard times!
Such are our young people now-a-days," grumbled the old man.

"Only look at the beautiful pictures, so skilfully and clearly
engraved; I am sure it would bring you double and treble the price you
give for it."

"What do you know of all this, Master Studious? I will give you three
florins and not a penny more, and this only out of pure kindness."

"If you have that, give me more," earnestly pleaded the young man;
"think of my mother's sickness and our poverty."

"Is it my fault that your mother is poor and sick?" sneered the miser;
"why have you not made yourself rich if poverty is so disagreeable to
you? Take your book, or the three florins, whichever you please.
Master Studious; only be quick, for I have something else to do beside
listening to your whining."

It was as if a two-edged sword had pierced the heart of the deeply
distressed young man. He suddenly seized the book; then he thought of
his sick mother, and their extreme need at home, and he strongly
checked the rising words of his just anger. "Take the book, then," he
said, with a look and tone in which the indignation of his deeply
wounded spirit spoke forth--"take it, but you have not dealt with me
as a Christian should deal with a Christian; may God be more merciful
to you in your dying hour than you are now to me." And with these
words he hastened from the shop, and he heard a scornful laugh behind
him.



IV.

He went forth into the street with burning sorrow rankling in his
wounded breast. The December air blew sharp and cold over his glowing
cheeks--he felt it not. People were talking loud and merrily as they
moved up and down the lighted streets, but he heard them not. Sunk in
despondency, he stood motionless in the night air, leaning against the
corner of a house. Never before had he been so wretched. His spirit
was stirred by an indescribable feeling of bitterness, which
threatened to destroy the happiness of his life.

In mild solemn tones the bells sounded anew, and awakened in his soul
the remembrance of him who brought, and is ever bringing to us all,
redemption, help, and consolation; he called to mind the words of
Christ which he a short time before had read, and which had so
wonderfully cheered him; he thought of the resolution he had this day
formed, of his dear mother, of whose entire recovery he had now so
lively a hope. Then he took courage, walked down the street, and went
to the shop of the apothecary Kremer.



V.

The apothecary, a kind, cordial-hearted man, greeted Ernest in a
friendly way as he entered with a "God be with you. Master Theologus.
You want the medicine for your {400} mother? Here it is; and how is
the good woman?"

"Thanks be to God," replied Ernest joyfully, "she is out of danger;
but dear Herr Kremer," added he in an under-tone, '"I cannot pay you
this time; oh! be so good as to bear with me a little longer."

"Have I ever asked anything of you?" said the apothecary; "do not
trouble yourself. I am right glad that your mother is better; I knew
she would recover. But you yourself look so pale and weak! what has
happened to you?"

Then Ernest, encouraged by the kindness of the cordial-hearted man,
related to him how scornfully and hardly the antiquary had dealt with
him.

"Yes, yes," said the apothecary angrily, "that is the way with this
covetous man; I have known him from his youth; it was his pleasure as
a schoolboy to torment us, and, whenever he could, to cheat us. But do
not let this disturb you; sit down at the table out yonder near the
stove," he continued kindly; "after this vexation a drop of wine will
not harm you." Saying this he opened a cupboard, took down a bottle of
wine and a tart, and with good-natured haste filled the glass.

Ernest hardly knew what all this meant. "Oh, sir," he exclaimed,
greatly surprised, "how have I merited such great kindness?"

"You are a brave son, and have acted honorably toward your mother, and
for that I esteem you highly; so drink, drink!" insisted the kind old
man.

"I wish my mother was here in my place," said the good son; "the wine
would do her good."

"Do not let that trouble you," answered the apothecary, deeply moved;
"your mother shall not be forgotten, and your little sister shall not
go without her share; and now eat and drink to your heart's desire."

The kindness of the cordial-hearted old man made Ernest's meal a happy
one; new life flamed through his veins with the wine, his cares began
to lessen, and he felt himself wonderfully refreshed. For a long time
he had not been so light-hearted.

Meanwhile the old man, whose joy was heartfelt at seeing how much the
young student relished his little repast, had taken down a second
bottle of wine from the cupboard, and had made up a parcel of bonbons
and candy for his little sister.

"The wine," said he to Ernest, "is for your mother, and this parcel
for your little sister."

"How can I repay you for all your kindness to us?" asked Ernest,
overpowered with joy and gratitude.

"Oh! that is of no importance," answered the apothecary laughing; "it
is Christmas eve, when the Lord visits all his children, and you have
been a very good child."

"May God reward you for the love you have shown us," said Ernest with
emotion; "my mother and I have nothing but thanks and prayers to
return you."

"Give me the last, dear young man," answered the apothecary, "and
invite me to your first. Remember me to your mother, and freely ask me
for whatever you need. Farewell."

With a heart full of gratitude Ernest pressed die offered hand of the
old man to his heart, took the presents and hastened home.


VI.

Cheered and warmed, refreshed in body and spirit, he entirely forgot
the hard-hearted antiquary. He entertained himself as he went along
with the pleasing surprise he should give his mother and sister, when
they saw the good things he brought them, and raising his eyes to
heaven in gratitude he exclaimed, "Father, there are some good men
still!" When he reached home he found his mother still asleep, his
little sister trying to darn his old socks, but, as yet wholly
unpractised in the art of patching, she {401} more than once pricked
her little fingers till they bled.

"Is it you, dear brother?" she asked affectionately. "Mother has not
waked yet; I have been very good and still."

"For this the little Christ-child has given me something for you,"
said her brother, as he came toward her smiling; "he sends you his
kind greeting, and tells you to study well, never forget to pray, and
love him always!"

Agnes quickly opened the parcel, and, surprised and delighted, beheld
the bonbons, the sugared almonds, and the gingerbread. A flush of joy
lighted up her pretty features, and for some time she could not find
words to speak.

"Oh, brother, only see how good the Christ-child is! Yes, yes, I will
indeed love him, and study and pray hard, that our Heavenly Father and
the good infant Jesus may be pleased with me."

Her brother smiled, moved by her pious joy, but just at this moment
dame Margaret, their good old neighbor, came in, who had shown every
kindness and attention to Ernest's mother during her illness. With joy
he told her the happy news of her recovery; the delighted little Agnes
spread out her sugar-plums and gingerbread, and cordially invited her
to take some. But Margaret thought her teeth were not good enough.
"But come," said she, "when you are ready we will go to the Christmas
market."

"May I go, brother?" asked Agnes. "Yes, indeed you may, only come home
in time," said he; '"and be so good, dame Margaret, as to keep watch
upon the little girl."

"Have no fear, Master Ernest," she replied, "for you know I love her
as if she were my own child."


VII.

Dame Margaret took her way along the street leading to the Christmas
market--holding the Agnes by hand, who every now and then urged her to
make greater haste. From the deep blue sky the stars poured down their
pale silver light upon the dazzling fresh-fallen snow. Crowds of
people were hurrying up and down, talking merrily, or, divided into
groups, stood gazing eagerly and curiously upon the bright display of
the fair. Bright lights were burning in the stands and shops of the
tradesmen, displaying all their treasures to the astonished eye. Here
peeped out the pleasant, friendly faces of dolls with waxen heads,
dressed after the newest fashion in little hoods or Florence hats,
while others stood more retired, like ladies and gentlemen, splendidly
wrapped in cloaks and furs, as if they feared the cold. A varied
medley of hussars in rich embroidered uniform hung there; huntsmen
with, rifle and pouch, chimney-sweeps and Tyrolese, hermits and
friars, Greeks near their mortal enemies the Turks, and Moors,
standing peacefully side by side. The plashing fish swam round in a
glass panel, whilst close by stood a dark oak-wood case, in which
leaden bears and stags were seized by hounds and hunters of the same
metal. Elsewhere was a whole regiment of bearded grenadiers, arranged
in stiff array, with Turkish music. A frightful fortress, with paper
walls and wooden cannon, frowned next a kitchen where was to be seen
the pretty sight of cook, hearth, pans, spits, plates, etc. Here
sweetmeats, choice pastry, tarts, chocolate, almonds, gingerbread,
etc., excited in many a dainty palate long desire and hard temptation.
Golden apples gleamed forth from dark leaves, nuts rattled in silver
bowls, while in another place low cribs, with water, mountain, and
valley, herds and herdsmen, with angels in the air and on the earth,
sweetly represented the new-born child lying in the cradle, carefully
watched by Mary and Joseph.

Little Agnes gazed with delighted eyes upon all this splendor, and
often laid her tender hand upon her youthful breast, as if to repress
its longings {402} and sounds escaped her lips which only too plainly
expressed the joy of her heart.

But at length dame Margaret thought it was time to go home. "Do let us
first go to find Herr Höss," begged Agnes, "his crib is always the
prettiest," and laughing good-naturedly she drew the obliging Margaret
along with her to the antiquary. They found him occupied in attending
upon an elderly lady. Did Agnes see aright? Did her eyes deceive her?
"Yes, yes," she suddenly exclaimed in great distress, "it is my Bible,
my dear picture-book!" and in a moment she released herself from
Margaret and ran up to the lady.

"Oh, dear lady," cried she, eagerly, "do not buy it; you cannot, you
must not buy it; that book belongs to me!" The lady looked at the
little girl in great astonishment.

"What are you dreaming of, you silly little thing?" grumbled the
antiquary, vexed at the unwelcome interruption. "It is mine; I bought
it, and at a high price."

"That cannot be, dear sir," earnestly protested the little girl. "I
beg you give me back my picture-book; I will give you all the money I
have," and saying this she drew out her little purse, which contained,
alas! only four pennies, her little savings. "Take it," said she,
"only give me my picture-book."

"Oh! you little sharper," said the antiquary jeeringly, "that would be
a great profit; I have paid more florins for it than you have
pennies."

"I beg you, for heaven's sake," sobbed Agnes, with folded hands and
tears streaming from her blue eyes. "I tell you, upon my honor, it
belongs to me; only see, there is my name on the title-page, which my
brother wrote there in Latin letters."

The lady turned the leaf over and read aloud, "Frederic Schein!"

"Frederic Schein?" exclaimed suddenly a loud voice, with evident
emotion, and a slender, manly figure wrapped in a cloak, from beneath
which glistened a richly embroidered huntsman's uniform, pressed
through the circle which curiosity had formed around Agnes and the
antiquary. "Frederic Schein?" again he exclaimed, and looked greatly
agitated upon the book. "Permit me, noble lady?" he asked, and hastily
seized the offered Bible. "Good heavens! my suspicions were right, it
is my father's Bible!" and suddenly turning to the little girl: "What
is thy family and baptismal name?"

"Agnes Kuhn," answered Agnes, greatly terrified.

"Is your mother's name Sophia?" he asked urgently and eagerly.

"Yes," answered the child, "my mother's name is Sophia, and my
brother's Ernest."

"Thanks be to God, a thousand thanks!" fervently exclaimed the tall
man, with deep emotion, and ardently pressed Agnes to his heart.
"Agnes," he cried, "I am your uncle; your mother is my sister. Oh!
take me to her."

Agnes, looking at him with astonishment, asked: "Are you my uncle
Frank, of whom my mother has so often told me? Oh! if you are my uncle
Frank," said she coaxingly, "do buy the Bible for me! and then I will
take you to my mother." Her uncle kissed the little girl, and gave her
the book. "I will take the book, sir," said he, "at any price;" and
the antiquary made him a very low bow.

When the bargain was concluded, the tall huntsman moved quickly
through the circle of astonished spectators, leading the little Agnes,
who joyfully pressed the precious picture-book to her heart. Margaret
followed, lost in astonishment.



VIII.

While these things were taking place at the fair, and Agnes
unexpectedly had found the Bible and her uncle, Ernest sat by the
bedside of his mother, enjoying her slumber, which was to him the
sweet pledge of {403} her recovery. Before him lay open the histories
of Holy Writ, and with deep emotion he was reading what the Lord in
his infinite love and mercy had done for sinful men, and how he had
sent them his only begotten Son to redeem and console them, whose
birth-day was now to be joyfully celebrated throughout Christendom.

He had just looked at the fire in the stove, and poured fresh oil into
the expiring lamp, when his mother awoke, and cast a kind,
affectionate glance upon her good son.

"Oh, mother," cried he joyfully, "what a good sleep you have had; you
have been asleep seven whole hours!"

"Yes, I have slept soundly," answered she, "and find myself greatly
strengthened. But what has become of Agnes?"

"I let her go with dame Margaret to the Christmas fair; it is almost
time for her to come back."

"Ah! it grieves me to the heart," sighed his mother, "that I cannot
give you both a little Christmas gift, as I used to do."

"Don't be distressed on that account, dear mother," said Ernest,
soothingly; "you are out of danger, and that is the most beautiful and
best Christmas gift that could be bestowed on us. But the Christ-child
has not forgotten us," and he handed his mother the bottle of wine and
the biscuit.

"Where in all the world did this come from?" asked his astonished
mother.

Ernest now related how he had sold the Bible to the antiquary (whose
unkind treatment he concealed from his mother lest it should disturb
her) for three florins, and how he had called on the apothecary, who
had so hospitably received him, so kindly remembered his mother and
little sister, and had promised not only a larger credit, but every
kind of aid.

His mother could not find words to praise and thank their benefactor.

When Ernest wrapped up the biscuit again as his mother directed, he
remarked upon the cover the hand-writing and name of the apothecary,
and had the curiosity to open the whole paper.

Who can describe his surprise and emotion when he found the wrapper
was a receipt in full, signed by the apothecary, for the eight florins
and thirty pence due to him for medicines delivered.

"God bless our noble benefactor!" prayed his mother with folded hands.

But Ernest shouted, "Mother, we are now relieved of a great care!"



IX.

Dame Margaret just then entered with an unusually quick step, and with
a countenance evidently announcing good tidings, but without little
Agnes.

"Where have you left my Agnes?" inquired the mother anxiously.

"Do not trouble yourself about her; she will soon come, and not alone
either. She is bringing an old acquaintance of yours with her!"

"An old, dear acquaintance?"

"Yes, and from your native place, too."

"From my native place?" asked the mother eagerly.

"He declares that he is very nearly related to you; and he does look
very much like you."

"How does he look?" asked the mother urgently.

"He is tall and slender, with black eyes and black hair, and a scar
over his brow; he looks to me like a huntsman."

"Great God! is it possible? can it be my brother?"

"Yes, it is he," cried the huntsman, as he entered and offered his
hand to his astonished sister. From the arms of his sister he hastened
to embrace his manly nephew, while the joyful Agnes, with the Bible in
her arms, now ran up to her mother, now {404} to her uncle, and then
to her brother, who beheld the book with astonishment, and began
faintly to suspect what happened.

When the first tempest of delight had subsided, and given place to a
more quiet though not less deep joy, question crowded upon question,
and answer upon answer.

The uncle first related how after the marriage of his sister he had
entered into the service of the Count of Maxenstein as upper
game-keeper; how he had often tried to obtain intelligence of his dear
sister; twice had taken a journey himself to their native place, and
could learn nothing of her; how he had searched all the newspapers;
and at length, when all means and efforts had failed, how be
sorrowfully gave up the hope of ever seeing her again. Then he told
her how he had come to this place on business for the count, his
master; had visited the Christmas fair and the stall of the antiquary,
and had there unexpectedly found his father's Bible and Agnes, and
through them his sister and nephew.

Then affectionately clasping Ernest by the hand he begged his sister
to relate her history.

"My history," she replied, "is short, and yet varied with many sorrows
that the Lord has laid upon me. You knew that my husband left his
native place to seek a better living in Eichstadt. But in this he was
deceived. Then, in spite of my entreaties, he entered the French
service as surgeon, and came to Saarlouis, where his regiment lay in
garrison. Soon after his arrival a malignant fever broke out among the
soldiers, which carried away great numbers, and among them my husband.
God give him his kingdom," said she drying her tears. "His death was
the more dreadful for me, because I was alone in a foreign land
without friends or help, and had but just risen from my bed after the
birth of Agnes. In my need I wrote several letters to you and to our
relatives at Settenberg, but received no answer. At first I thought
this was caused by irregularities of the post-route, which was
everywhere embarrassed by the disturbances of the war; but I soon
learned, to my great sorrow, that our Settenberg had been sacked and
burned by the French. Imagine, my dear brother, my condition! What a
happiness for me that, some months after the death of my husband, an
old aunt of his made me the offer to go to her, and she would support
me as well as she was able. I was not terrified by the length of the
way, and received from her a cordial welcome. But, alas! this
happiness was not long to last. My good aunt died, leaving me her
heir, but she had other relations who disputed the will, and, after a
law-suit of three years' continuance, an agreement was made by which
most of the property fell into the hands of the judges and lawyers.
Hardly a fourth part of it remained after the costs were paid. I had
nothing now but care and trouble; but I ever found a firm support in
my dear Ernest. May God reward him! But now, dear brother, now, if I
only have you, again all care will be over." And the good woman,
deeply affected, pressed his hand.

"Oh, my dear ones!" cried he, after listening to his sister's
narrative with lively sympathy, "let us all thank our Heavenly Father
that he has to-day brought us all together again, in so wonderful a
manner, by means of this book; for I had already determined to leave
this place in the morning."

Ernest related how hard it had been for him to part with the precious
book, how he had been encouraged by the passage in Matthew, what mean
treatment he had met with from the antiquary, and how he had almost
made up his mind to take back the book with him.

Little Agnes, on her side, thought it had been no very easy matter to
bring dame Margaret to the antiquary, and she had gone through trouble
and {405} terror enough "until the Christ-child sent my uncle."

He pressed the little one to his heart, but she seized him fast by the
hand, and coaxingly begging him, said: "Now uncle, you never will go
away; you will stay with us?"

"How could I leave you so soon, my dear ones, just as I have found you
again? No, no, we will never separate; we will always remain
together," cried the uncle. "You must go with me to Peinegg, sister,
where I am head-forester; it is a beautiful and splendid place there,
and I have everything in abundance."

"With you and my children I would go to the ends of the earth," said
she cheerfully.

Then Ernest, upon a hint from his mother, brought out the bottle of
wine and the biscuit, and offered them to his uncle. A slight meal,
prepared in haste by dame Margaret, seasoned with cheerful
conversation, enlivened the evening, to which Ernest and his mother
had looked forward only a few hours before with such pain and anxiety.
Joy and deep satisfaction lighted every countenance, but the mother
said with deep feeling: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall
be comforted."

"Amen," responded the uncle, devoutly raising his eyes to heaven.
Ernest and Agnes wept tears of joy and gratitude.



X.

It was not long before their mother was entirely recovered and
accompanied her beloved brother to Peinegg, where he arranged
everything in a manner to make her life agreeable. It may easily be
imagined that the Bible was not forgotten. Every Christmas evening was
passed with far more festivity and joy than the evening which united
again the long separated. At the end of two years Ernest celebrated
his first mass at Peinegg. The good apothecary was invited to be
present, and esteemed this day as the happiest of his life. Sixteen
years after, Ernest was established as parish priest at Peinegg, where
he still exercises his holy office with extraordinary zeal.

------

From The Month.

THOUGHTS ON ST. GERTRUDE.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.


When a voice from the thirteenth century comes to us amid the din of
the nineteenth, it is difficult for those interested in the cause of
human progress not to feel their attention strongly challenged. Such a
voice appeals to us in a work which has now first appeared in an
English version.  [Footnote 59]

  [Footnote 59: "The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude, Virgin and
  Abbess." By a Religious of the Order of Poor Clares.]

We owe it to a religious of the order of Poor Clares; a daughter of
St. Francis thus paying to St. Benedict a portion of that debt which
all the religious orders of the West owe to their great patriarch. The
book possesses a profound interest, and that of a character wholly
apart from polemics. The thirteenth century, the noblest of those
included in the "ages of faith," was a troubled time; but high as the
contentions of rival princes and feudal chiefs swelled, we have here a
proof that

  "Birds of calm sat brooding on the charmèd wave."

Not less quieting is the influence of {406} such records in our own
time. They make their way--music being more penetrating than mere
sound--amid the storm of industrialism and its million wheels.
Controversialists may here forget their strifes, and listen to the
annals of that interior and spiritual life which is built up in peace
and without the sound of the builder's hammer, much less of sword or
axe. There is here no necessary or direct contest between rival forms
of belief. Monasteries have been pulled down and sold in Catholic as
well as in Protestant countries; and in the latter also are to be
found men whose highest aspiration is to rebuild them, and restore the
calm strength and sacred labors which they once protected. Such books
are not so much a protest against any age as the assertion of those
great and universal principles of truth and peace which can alone
enable each successive age to correct its errors, supply its defects,
and turn its special opportunities to account. It is not in a literary
point of view that they interest us chiefly, although they include not
a little which reminds us of Dante, and reveal to us one of the chief
sources from which the great Christian poet drew his inspiration.
Their interest is mainly human. They show us what the human being can
reach, and by what personal influences, never more potent than when
their touch is softest, society, in its rougher no less than in its
milder periods, is capable of being moulded.

The "Revelations of St. Gertrude" were first translated into Latin, as
is affirmed, by Lamberto Luscorino in 1390. This work was, however,
apparently never published; and the first Latin version by which they
became generally known was that put forth under the name of
"_Insinuationes Divinae Pietatis_," by Lanspergius, who wrote at the
close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. The
work has appeared in several of the modern languages; but the French
translation, by which it has hitherto been chiefly known among us, has
many inaccuracies. The present English translation has been  carefully
made from the Latin of Lanspergius and the original is frequently
quoted in the foot-notes. The "_Insinuationes_" consist of five books.
Of these the second only came from the hand of the saint, the rest
being compiled by a religious of her monastery, partly from personal
knowledge and partly from the papers of St. Gertrude. Two works by the
saint, her "Prayers" and her "Exercises," have lately appeared in an
English version.

St. Gertrude was born at Eisleben, in the county of Mansfield, on the
6th of January, 1263, just sixty-nine years after the birth of St.
Clare, the great Italian saint from whose convent at Assisi so many
others had already sprung in all parts of Europe, and whose name had
already become a living power in Germany and Poland, as well as in the
sunny south. [Footnote 60] St. Gertrude was descended from an
illustrious house, that of the Counts of Lackenborn. When but five
years old she exchanged her paternal home for the Benedictine Abbey of
Rodersdorf, where she was soon after joined by her sister, afterward
the far-famed St. Mechtilde. When about twenty-six she first began to
be visited by those visions which never afterward ceased for any
considerable time. At thirty she was chosen abbess; and for forty
years she ruled a sisterhood whom she loved as her children. The year
after she became abbess she removed with her charge to another but
neighboring convent, that of Heldelfs. No other change took place in
her outward lot. Her life lay within. As her present biographer
remarks, "she lived at home with her Spouse."

  [Footnote 60: An interesting life of this saint and of her earlier
  companions has lately been published in English: "St. Clare, St.
  Colette, and the Poor Clares: by a Religions of the Order of Poor
  Clares." J. F. Fowler, Dublin.]

The visions of St. Gertrude are an endless parable of spiritual
truths, as well as a record of wonderful graces. From the days when
our divine Lord himself taught from the hillside and {407} the
anchored ship, it has been largely through parables that divine lore
has been communicated to man. Religious and symbolic art is a parable
of truths that can only be expressed in types. The legends through
which the earlier ages continue to swell the feebler veins of later
times with the pure freshness of the Church's youth are for the most
part facts which buried themselves deep in human sympathies and
recollections, because in them the particular shadowed forth the
universal. It is the same thing in philosophy itself; and that
_Philosophia Prima_ which, as Bacon tells us, discerns a common law in
things as remote as sounds are from colors, and thus traces the "same
footsteps of nature" in the most widely separated regions of her
domain, finds constantly in the visible and familiar a parable of the
invisible and unknown. The very essence of poetry also consists in
this, that not only in its metaphors and figures, but in its whole
spirit, it is a parable, imparting to material objects at once their
most beautiful expression and that one which reveals their spiritual
meaning. So long as the imagination is a part of human intellect, it
must have a place in all that interprets between the natural and the
spiritual worlds.

The following characteristic passage, while it shows that St. Gertrude
made no confusion between allegory and vision, yet suggests to us that
so poetical a mind might, under peculiar circumstances, be more easily
favored with visions than another:

  "Whilst thou didst act so lovingly toward me, and didst not cease to
  draw my soul from vanity to thyself, it happened on a certain day,
  between the festival of the resurrection and the ascension, that I
  went into court before prime, and seated myself near the fountain;
  and I began to consider the beauty of the place, which charmed me on
  account of the clear and flowing stream, the verdure of the trees
  which surrounded it, and the flights of the birds, and particularly
  of the doves--above all, the sweet calm--apart from all,
  considering within myself what would make this place most useful to
  me, I thought it would be the friendship of a wise and intimate
  companion, who would sweeten my solitude or render it useful to
  others; when thou, my Lord and my God, who art a torrent of
  inestimable pleasures, after having inspired me with the first
  impulse of this desire, thou didst will also to be the end of it;
  inspiring me with the thought that if by my continual gratitude I
  return thy graces to thee, as a stream returns to its source; if,
  increasing in the love of virtue, I put forth, like the trees, the
  flowers of good works; furthermore, if, despising the things of
  earth, I fly upward, freely, like the birds, and thus free my senses
  from the distraction of exterior things, my soul would then be
  empty, and my heart would be an agreeable abode for thee" (p. 76).

If in this passage we see how the natural yearning for sympathy and
companionship may rise into the heavenly aspirations from which mere
nature would divert the heart, we find in the following one a type of
that compensation which is made to unreserved loyalty. The religion of
the incarnation gives back, in a human as well as a divine form, all
that human instincts had renounced. "It was on that most sacred night
in which the sweet dew of divine grace fell on all the world, and the
heavens dropped sweetness, that my soul, exposed like a mystic fleece
in the court of the sanctuary, having received in meditation this
celestial rain, was prepared to assist at this divine birth, in which
a Virgin brought forth a Son, true God and man, even as a star
produces its ray. In this night, I say, my soul beheld before it
suddenly a delicate child, but just born, in whom were concealed the
greatest gifts of perfection. I imagined that I received this precious
deposit in my bosom" (p. 85). One of the chief tests as to the divine
origin of visions consists in their tending toward humility; for those
{408} which come from a human or worse than human source tend to
pride. The humility of St. Gertrude was profound as the purity of
which humility is the guardian was spotless. "One day, after I had
washed my hands, and was standing at the table with the community,
perplexed in mind, considering the brightness of the sun, which was in
its full strength, I said within myself, 'If the Lord who has created
the sun, and whose beauty is said to be the admiration of the sun and
moon; if he who is a consuming fire is as truly in me as he shows
himself frequently before me, how is it possible that my heart
continues like ice, and that I lead so evil a life?'" (p. 106).

There can be no stronger argument in favor of the supernatural origin
of St. Gertrude's visions than their subjects. The highest of her
flights, far from carrying her beyond the limits of sound belief, or
substituting the fanciful for the fruitful, but bears her deeper into
the heart of the great Christian verities. She soars to heaven to find
there, in a resplendent form, the simplest of those truths which are
our food upon earth. As the glorified bodies of the blessed will be
the same bodies which they wore during their earthly pilgrimage, so
the doctrines, "sun-clad," in her "Revelations" are still but the
primary articles of the Creed. Her special gift was that of
realization: what others admitted, she believed; what others believed,
she saw. It was thus that she felt the co-presence of the supernatural
with the natural, the kingdom of spirit not to her being a future
world, but a wider circle clasping a smaller one. From this feeling
followed her intense appreciation of the fact that all earthly things
have immediate effect on high. If a prayer is said on earth, she sees
the scepter in the hand of the heavenly King blossom with another
flower; if a sacrament is worthily received, the glory on his face
flashes lightning round all the armies of the blessed. That such
things should be seen by us may well seem wonderful; that they should
_exist_ can appear strange to no one who realizes the statement, that
when a sinner repents there is joy among the angels in heaven.

A vision, from which we learn the belief of one of God's humblest
creatures that something was lost to his honor by her compulsory
absence from choir, but that he was more than compensated for the loss
by the holy patience with which she submitted to illness (p. 180), is
not more wonderful than the fact that God's glory should be our
constant aim, or that God should have joy in those that love him. The
marvel is, that the saint was always believing what we profess to
believe. She lived in an everlasting jubilee of divine and human love:
it was always to her what a beaming firmament might be to one who for
the first time had walked up out of a cave. She was ever seeing in
visible types the tokens of a transcendent union between God and man
--a deification, so to speak, of man in heaven. Is this more wonderful
than the words that bow the foreheads and bend the knees of the
faithful, "He was made man?" If such things be true, the wonder is,
not that a few saints realize them, living accordingly in
contemplation and in acts of love, but that a whole world should stand
upon such truths as its sole ground of hope, and yet practically
ignore them.

Neither in ordinary Christian literature nor in the ordinary Christian
life do we find what might have been anticipated eighteen centuries
ago by those who then first received the doctrines of the incarnation
and the communion of saints. How many have written as if Christianity
were merely a regulative principle, introduced to correct the
aberrations of natural instincts! Yet even under the old dispensation
the sacred thirst of the creature for the Creator was confessed: "As
longeth the hart for the water-springs, so longeth my soul after thee,
O Lord." The royal son of the {409} great Psalmist had sang in the
Book of Canticles the love of the Creator for the creature. What might
not have been expected from Christian times!

How much is not actually found in all those Christian writings the
inspiration of which, in the highest sense of the word, is _de fide!_
How supernatural at once and familiar is that divine and human
relationship set forth by our Lord in his parables! What closeness of
union! what omnipotence of prayer! Some perhaps might say, "If our
Lord were visibly on earth as he was during the thirty-three years,
then indeed the closeness of intercourse between him and his own would
be transcendent." But the exact contrary is the fact. The closest
intercourse is in the spirit, and apart from all that is sensual; the
sense is a hindrance to it. So long as he was visibly with them, the
affection of the apostles themselves for their Lord was too material
to be capable of its utmost closeness. Even earthly affections are
perfected by absence, and crowned by death. Till they are purified by
the immortalizing fire of suffering, sense clings to the best of them
more than we know; not by necessity corrupting them, but limiting,
dulling, depressing, and depriving them of penetration and buoyancy.
While he was with them, the apostles sometimes could not understand
their Master's teaching--where to the Christian now it seems
plain--and replied to it by the words, "Be it far from thee!" When the
feast of Pentecost was come, they loved him so that they did not fear
to die for him; but they no longer so loved him as to see in him but
the restorer of a visible Israel, and to lament his death. But this
Pentecost has continued ever since in the Christian Church! What,
then, was to be expected except a fulfilment of the earlier promises:
"I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;" and as a natural
consequence of perfected love, the development of the spiritual sight:
"Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream
dreams, and your young men shall see visions" (Joel ii. 28)? Such was
the condition of that renewed world for which the apostles wrote, and
to which they promised the spiritual gift and the hidden life. More
plainly than the Jewish king they proclaimed that the union between
the Creator and the creature was no dream, but that the servants of
sense and pride were dreamers; and, in words like a musical echo from
the canticle of Canticles, they affirmed that between Christ and his
Church there exists a union, the nearest type of which is to be found
in the bridal bond. This was the doctrine that made the world in which
St. Gertrude lived. The clear-sighted will see that the charges
brought against her and her Church are charges brought against the
Bible no less.

But all is not said when it is affirmed that the ascetics, like the
apostles, enjoyed a closer union with their Lord in his spirit because
he had withdrawn his visible presence from the earth. Sense may
separate those whom it seems to unite; but there is a nearness
notwithstanding, which has no such paradoxical effect. No one can even
approach the subject of the visions of the saints unless he duly
appreciates the real presence, not only as a doctrine, but in its
practical effects. The saints had a closeness to their Lord denied to
the Jewish prophets. He was absent as regards visibility; but he was
present in the blessed eucharist. If the absence made the love more
reverential, the presence made it more vivid. A large proportion of
the visions of the saints were connected with the blessed sacrament.
In it the veil was not lifted; but the veiled nearness quickened that
love which perfects faith. To sense all remained dark; but the spirit
was no longer enthralled by sense, and it conversed with its
deliverer.

There are those who could not be happy if they did not believe that
the {410} world abounds in persona nobler than themselves. There are
others who are affluent but in cavils. The visions of saints must,
according to them, be illusory, because they are not demonstrably
divine! But are the ordinary graces of Christians distinguished from
illusions by demonstration? Is penitence, or humility, or simplicity
demonstrable? Do we believe that nothing is an object of prayer, or an
occasion for thanksgiving, till it is proved to be such? Those who
know that religion has its vast theological region of certainty know
also that there exists an outward region in which, though credulity is
an evil, yet needless contentiousness is the note of a petty mind. Or
the visions must be fabulous, because the caviller does not understand
the mode of spiritual operation to which they are referable! But how
much do we know as to the separate or joint action of our bodily,
intellectual, and moral powers? We believe in results; but we
understand little of processes.

The only visions received as _de fide_ are those recorded in the Holy
Scriptures. Do we know by what process even these came to exist? Were
they external manifestations, such as, if shown to two persons, must
have worn for both the same semblance; or may they have had an
existence only within the mind of the seer? Is not the real question
this--whether or not they had a divine origin; not whether he who sent
them worked on the mind from without, or stimulated its action from
within? In this case the visions of some event--such as the
crucifixion--possessed by two different saints, might not have been
the less authentic although different from each other in some
particulars. Who can say to what extent habitual grace may not
determine the action of the imaginative faculty, as of other
faculties, so as to produce vision in one man while it produces
prudence or wisdom in another? That grace acts on the mind as well as
on the heart no one will deny, since some of the gifts of the Holy
Ghost are of an intellectual order, and it is through spiritual
discernment that we understand religious truth. It seems, indeed, but
natural to suppose that grace should operate on the imagination, and
thus counterwork the seductions by which an evil power assails that
faculty--a form of temptation often, but not consistently, insisted on
by those who scoff at visions. If this be granted, then, as we can
neither measure the different degrees in which grace is granted, and
increased by co-operation, nor ascertain the intellectual shape and
proportions of those to whom it is accorded, who can affect to
determine to what extent that grace may not suffice, in some cases, to
produce vision, even when accorded mainly for other purposes?

But this is not all. The imagination does not act by itself; the other
faculties work along with it; by them also the vision is shaped in
part; and as they are developed, directed, and harmonized in a large
measure by grace, in the same degree the vision must, even when not
miraculous, be affected by a supernatural influence. Once more: God
works upon us through his providence as well as through his grace; and
the color of our thoughts is constantly the result of some external
trifle, apparently accidental. A dream is modified by a momentary
sound; and a conclusion may be shaped not without aid from a flying
gleam or the shadow of a cloud. Our thoughts are "fearfully and
wonderfully made," partly for us and partly by us, and through
influences internal and external, which we trace but in part. We can
draw a line between the visions which command our acceptance and those
which only invite it; but in dealing with the latter class, it seems
impossible to determine _à priori_ how far they may or may not be
accounted supernatural. It will depend upon their evidence, their
consequences, their character, and the character of those to whom they
belonged.

{411}

"But," the caviller will object, "unassisted genius has visions of its
own." What then? Does that circumstance discredit all visions that
claim to be supernatural? Far from it; the visions of genius are
elevated by virtue. They are not only purified thus, but edged with
insight and enriched with wisdom. Has virtue, then, nothing of the
supernatural? or would Dante have "seen" as much if, instead of
following her voice, he had followed that of the siren? Again,
simplicity of character, and what Holy Scripture calls "the single
eye," have a close affinity with genius; for which reason the poor
possess many characteristics of it denied to the rich--its honest
apprehension of great ideas, for instance, and the inspiration of good
sense; its power of realizing the essential and of ignoring the
accidental; its freshness in impressions and loyalty in sentiment. But
simplicity is a divine gift. Above all, faith communicates often what
resembles genius to persons who would otherwise, perhaps, have narrow
minds and wavering hearts. It appears, then, that the whole of our
moral and spiritual being--which is of course under supernatural
influence--admits of such a development as is favorable to genius,
and may eminently promote that natural "vision" which belongs to it.
Education and life may do the same. What disperses the faculties over
a vast field of heterogeneous knowledge saps genius; what gives unity
to the being strengthens it. It evaporates in vanity; it is deepened
by humility. Society dissipates its energies and chills them; solitude
concentrates and heats them. Indulgence relaxes it; severity
invigorates it. It is dazzled by the importunate sunshine of the
present; its eyes grow wider in the twilight of the past and the
future. All the circumstances, exterior and interior, that favor
genius are thus indirectly connected with grace or with providence.
What, then, is not to be thought in a case like that of St. Gertrude,
in which we find, not genius trained on toward sanctity, but sanctity
enriched with genius?

It is, however, to be remembered that we in no degree disparage the
claim to a divine character possessed by St. Gertrude's visions in
admitting that some of them may not claim that character. In one
favored with such high gifts, it is not unphilosophical to suppose
that the natural qualities, as well as supernatural graces, which lend
themselves to visions would probably exist in a marked decree. We have
no reason, indeed, to conclude that the Hebrew prophets, to whom
visions were sent by God, never possessed, when not thus honored,
anything that resembled them--anything beyond what belongs to ordinary
men. They, too, may have had unrecorded visions of a lower type, in
which the loftiest of their thoughts and deepest of their experiences
became visible to them; and if so, they had probably something
ancillary to vision in their natural faculties and habits,
independently of their supernatural gifts. Among the peculiar natural
characteristics of St. Gertrude may be reckoned an extraordinary
_literalness_ of mind, strangely ignited with a generalizing power.
She had a value for everything as it was, as well as for the idea it
included. There was a minuteness as well as a largeness about her.
These qualities probably belonged to that pellucid simplicity which
kept her all her life like a child. This childlike instinct would of
itself have constantly stimulated her colloquies with him who was the
end of all her thoughts. In the spiritual as in the intellectual life,
the powers seem augmented through this dramatic process, as though
fecundated from sources not their own. The thoughts thus originated
seem to come half from the mind with which the colloquy is held, and
half from native resources.

Let us now pass to another cavil. Devotions such as those of St.
Gertrude have sometimes been censured because they are full of love.
There {412} is here a strange confusion. Most justly might dislike be
felt for devotions in which love is not supplemented by a
proportionate veneration. Among the dissenting bodies devotions of
this sort are to be found, though we should be sorry rudely to
criticise what implies religious affection, and is a recoil from
coldness. The fault is not wholly theirs. An age may be so
characterized that it cannot be fervent, even in its prayers, without
being earthly; but such an age is not religious, and may not judge
those that were. In them reverence and love are inseparable. God
reigns in man's heart through love and fear. True devotion must,
therefore, have at once its fervid affection and its holy awe. Thus
much will be conceded. It does not require much penetration to
perceive also that the more it habitually possesses of awe, the more
it admits of love. If the expression of divine resembles that of human
affection, this results by necessity from the poverty of language.
Those who object to the use of the word "worship" in connection with
God's saints as well as with God (though of course used in a different
sense) see nothing to surprise them in the circumstance that the terms
"love" and "honor" possess equally this double application. Yet when
expressions of real and zealous love are addressed to Almighty God,
they are sometimes no less scandalized than when worship (that is,
honor and veneration) is addressed in a subordinate sense to the
saints! In both cases alike they labor under misconceptions which may
easily be removed.

To abolish the resemblance between the expression of divine and human
affections, it would be necessary to break down the whole of that
glorious constitution of life by which human ties, far from being
either arbitrary things or but animal relations improved upon, are
types of divine ties. The fatherhood in heaven is admitted to be the
antetype of human parentage; and the adoptive brotherhood with Christ,
the second Adam, to be the antetype of the natural brotherhood. Can
any other principle prevail in the case of that tie which is the
fountain whence the other domestic charities flow? Not in the judgment
of those who believe, with St. Paul, that marriage is a type of that
union which subsists between him and his Church. If there be an
analogy between divine and human ties, so there must be between the
love that goes along with them and the blessedness that is inseparable
from love.

In such cavils as we have referred to there is a latent error that
belonged to the earliest times. The caviller assumes that an element
of corruption must needs exist in religious affections which betray
any analogy to human affections, whereas it is but a Manichean
philosophy which affirms the necessary existence of corruption in the
human relations themselves. Human relations are not corrupt in
themselves either before or since the fall; but human beings are
corrupt and weak, and do but little justice to those relations.
Praise, both in heaven and on earth, is held out to us in Holy
Scripture as one of the rewards of virtue. It may not be the less
true, on that account, that few orators have listened to the
acclamations that follow a successful speech without some alloy of
self-love. Possessions are allowable; it may be, notwithstanding, that
few have had "all things" as though they "had nothing." It is not in
the human relations that the evil exists (for they retain the
brightness left on them by the hand that created them), but in those
who abuse them by excessive dependence on them, or by disproportion.
It is mainly a question of due subordination. Where the higher part of
our being is ruled by the lower, or where the lower works apart from
and in contempt of the higher, there evil exists. Where the opposite
takes place--where a flame enkindled in heaven feeds first upon the
spiritual heights of our being and descends by due degrees through the
{413} imagination and the affections--there the whole of our being
works in a restored unity, and there proportionately the senses are
glorified by the soul. This has ever been the teaching of that Church
which encircles the whole of human life with its girdle of sacraments.
It has naturally come to be forgotten in those communities which admit
the legal substitution of divorce, and polygamy for the sanctity and
inviolability of Christian marriage.

That those who do not understand the relation of human to divine ties
should not understand the devotions of saints is far from strange. The
expressions of the saints are bold because they are innocent. They
have no part in that association of ideas which takes refuge in
prudery. The language of St. Gertrude is that of one on whose brow the
fillet had dropped when she was a child, and who had neither had any
experience of earthly love nor wished for any. It is indeed the
excellence of the domestic ties that they are indirect channels of
communication with heaven. But in her case the communication was
direct and immediate--a clear flame rising straight from the altar of
perpetual sacrifice. The beautiful ascent of affections from grade to
grade along the scale of life had in her been superseded by a yet
diviner self-devotion. She had not built upon the things that are
lawful within due measure, but upon those counsels the rewards of
which are immeasurable. She had reaped immortal love in the fields of
mortification. She had begun where others end. She had found the union
of peace with joy. Had there been added to this whatever is best in
the domestic ties, it could to her have been but a rehearsal, in a
lower though blameless form, of affections which she had already known
in that highest form in which alone they are capable of being realized
in heaven.

Expressions associated with human affections are to be found in St.
Gertrude's devotions, because she _had_ human affections. In the
monastic renunciation the inmost essence of them is retained; for that
essence, apart from its outward accidents, is spiritual. What is the
meaning of the incarnation, if God is not to be loved as man? To what
purpose, without this, the helpless childhood, the fields through
which he moved, the parables so homely, the miracles of healing, the
access given to sinners, the tears by the grave of him whom he was
about to restore to life, the hunger and the weariness, the reproach
for sympathy withheld? These domestic memories of the Church are
intended to give the higher direction to human affections before they
have strayed into the lower, in order that the lower may receive their
interpretation from the higher. Nothing is more wonderful than to see
the natural passing into the supernatural in actual life; nothing more
instructive than to see this in devotions. It is not the presence of a
human element in them, but the absence of a divine element, that
should be deplored. The natural may be shunned where the supernatural
is not realized. It can only be realized through love; and love is
perfected through self-sacrifice, the strength and science of the
saints.

It is easy to distinguish between devotions that are really too
familiar and those of the saints. The latter, as has been remarked,
are as full of awe as of love. Their familiarity implies the absence
of a servile fear; but everywhere that filial fear, the seat of which
is in the conscience, reveals itself. Again, if they regard our Lord
in his character of lover of souls, they regard him proportionately in
his other characters, as brother and as friend, as master and as Lord,
as creator and as judge. The manhood in Christ is ever leading the
heart on to his divinity; and the incarnation, as a picture of the
divine character, is the strongest preacher of Theism. Again, the love
that reveals itself in them has no pettiness, no narrowness; it exults
in the thought of that great army of the elect, each member of {414}
which is equally the object of the divine love, as a single drop
reflects the firmament no less than the ocean of which it is a part.
Once more: in such devotions the thirst after the divine purity is as
strongly marked as that for the divine tenderness; and death is ever
welcome, that God may be seen in the spirit.

"But in these devotions," it is said, "we trace the yearnings of a
woman's heart." And why not? With what else is woman to love God? May
not the devotion of a child be childlike, and of a man be manly? Why
are female affections alone to strain themselves into the unnatural,
instead of advancing to the supernatural? In such sneers there is as
little philosophy as charity. The whole structure of our
being--together not only with all its experiences, but with all its
capacities--is that which, yielding to divine grace, constitutes the
mould in which our devotion is cast. It is not religion alone, but
everything--art, science, whatever we take in--that is colored by
whatever is special to the faculties or the dispositions of the
recipient. Religion is the only thing that holds its own in spite of
such modification. It does so on account of its absolute simpleness.
But it does much more than hold its own. It is enriched. Religion is
as manifold as it is simple. The faculties and instincts of the mere
isolated individual are too narrow to allow of his fully accepting the
gifts which it extends to us. But fortunately our incapacities balance
each other; the characteristics of religion least appreciated by one
being often those which will most come home to another. Not only
individuals but nations and ages, both by what they have in common and
by what they have of unlike, unconsciously help to make up the general
store. Christianity has become in one sense to each of us what it was
to an à Kempis as well as what it was to an Aquinas; and why not also
to what it was to a Gertrude or a Theresa? All things subserve this
vast scheme. How much we are enriched by those different aspects of
religion presented to us by the chief authentic architectures! In the
Gothic, which is mystic, suggestive, infinite, it is chiefly the
spirituality of religion that is affirmed. In the Roman basilica,
orderly and massive, it is the "law" that is insisted on. In the
Byzantine style, precious marble and beaming gold, and every device of
rich color and fair form, preach the inexhaustibility of Christian
charity and the beauty of the Eden it restores. These aspects of
religion are all in harmony with each other. The mind that embraces
them is not endeavoring to blend contradictions into a common
confusion, but to reunite great ideas in the unity from which they
started. Still more is the manifold vastness of religion illustrated
by those diversities of the _religious sentiment_ which result from
diversities in the human character.

All modern civilization rests on reverence for woman, both in her
virginal and maternal character; the Mother of God, from whom that
reverence sprang, being in both these relations alike its great type.
In the restored, as in the first humanity, there is an Eve as well as
an Adam; and it has been well remarked, that among the indirect
benefits derived from this provision is the circumstance that there
thus exists a double cord, by which the two great divisions of the
human family are drawn to the contemplation of that true humanity.
From the beginning woman found herself at home in Christianity; it was
to her a native country, in which she fulfilled her happiest
destinies, as paganism had been a foreign land, where she lived in
bondage and degradation. In the days of martyrdom the virgins took
their place beside the youths amid the wild beasts at the Coliseum. In
the days of contemplative monasticism the convents of the nuns, no
less than those of the monks, lifted their snowy standards on high,
and, by the image of purity which they had there exalted, rendered
intelligible the {415} Christian idea of marriage--thus refreshing
with ethereal breath those charities of hut and hearth which
flourished in the valleys far down. In those convents, too, the
scholastic volume, and the psalm sustained by day and night, proved
that the serious belonged to woman as well as the soft and bright.
Since the devastations of later times womanhood has won a yet more
conspicuous crown. Through the active orders religion has measured her
strength with a world which boasts that at last it is alive and
stirring. By nuns the sick have been nursed, the aged tended, the
orphan reared, the rude instructed, the savage reclaimed, the
revolutionary leader withstood, the revolutionary mob reduced to a
sane mind. There are no better priests than those of France; yet they
tell us that it has been in no small part through the Sisters of
Charity that religion has been restored in their land. In how many an
English alley is not the convent the last hope of purity and faith? On
how many an Irish waste does not the last crust come from it?

The part of woman in Christianity might have been anticipated. For it
she is strengthened even by all that makes her weak elsewhere. In the
Christian scheme the law of strength is found in the words, "When I am
weak, then I am strong." It is a creaturely, not self-asserting
strength; it is not godlike, but consists in dependence on God. In
proportion as self is obliterated, a Divine Presence takes its place,
which could otherwise no more inhabit there than the music which
belongs to the hollow shell could proceed from the solid rock. To
woman, who in all the conditions of life occupies the place of the
secondary or satellite, the attainment of this selflessness is perhaps
more easy than to man. Obedience is the natural precursor of faith;
and to those whose hands are clean the clearer vision is granted.
Moreover, religion is mainly of the heart; and in woman the heart
occupies a larger relative place than in man. Paganism, with the
instinct of a clown, addressed but what was superficial in womanhood,
and elicited but what was alluring and ignoble. Christianity addressed
it at its depths, and elicited the true, the tender, and the
spiritual. The one flattered, but with a coarse caress; the other
controlled, but with a touch of air-like softness. In pagan times
woman was a chaplet of faded flowers on a festive board; in Christian,
it became a "sealed fountain," by which every flower, from the violet
to the amaranth, might grow. Even the chosen people had forgotten her
claims;--but "from the beginning it was not so." Christianity
reaffirmed them; it could do no less. It addresses distinctively what
is feminine in man, as well as what is manly. It challenges, at its
first entrance, the passive, the susceptive, the recipient in our
nature; and it ignores, as it is ignored by, the self-asserting and
the self-included.

That which Christianity claims for woman is but the readjustment of a
balance which, when all merit was measured by the test of bodily or
intellectual strength, had no longer preserved its impartiality.
Milton's line,

  "He for God only: she for God in him,"

is more in harmony with the Mohammedan, or at least the Oriental, than
with the Christian scheme of thought. It is as represented both by its
stronger and its gentler half, that man's race pays its true tribute
to the great Creator. The modern poet gives us his ideal of man in the
form of a prophecy:

  "Yet in the long years liker must they grow:
  The man he more of woman--she of man."
  [Footnote 61]

  [Footnote 61: Tennyson's "Princess."]

Singularly enough, this ideal of humanity was fulfilled long since in
the conventual life. The true nun has left behind the weakness of her
{416} sex. The acceptance of her vocation, implying the renunciation
of the tried for the untried, the seen for the unseen, is the highest
known form of courage--

  "A soft and tender heroine
  Vowed to severer discipline."
   [Footnote 62]

  [Footnote 62: Wordsworth's "Ode to Enterprise," ]

Her vow is irrevocable; and thus free-will, the infinite in our
nature, stands finally pledged to the "better part." In her life of
mortification, and her indifference to worldly opinion, she reaches
the utmost to which fortitude may aspire; yet she perfects in herself
also the characteristic virtues of woman--love, humility, obedience.

The true monk also, while more of a man than other men, includes more
of the virtues that belong least often to man. It is pre-eminently the
soul within him that has received its utmost development, and become
the expression of his being. The highest ideal of the antique world,
_mens sana in corpore sano_, implied, not the subordination of the
body to the mind, and of both to the soul, but the equal development
of the former two, the soul being left wholly out of account. Such a
formula, it is true, rises above that of the mere Epicurean, who
subordinates the mind to the body, and makes pleasure the chief good.
It leaves, however, no place for the spiritual. By the change which
Christianity introduced, virtues which paganism overlooked or despised
became the predominant elements in man's being. Purity, patience, and
humility bear to Christian morals a relation analogous to that which
faith, hope, and charity bear to theology. The former, like the
latter, triad of virtues will ever present to the rationalist the
character of mysticism, because they rest upon mysteries--that is,
upon realities out of our sight, and hidden in the divine character.
The earthly basis upon which they are sometimes placed by defenders
that belong to the utilitarian school is as incapable of supporting
them as the film of ice that covers a lake would be of supporting the
mountains close by. These are Christian virtues exclusively, and it
was to perfect them that the convents which nurtured saints were
called into existence.

We know the hideous picture of monastic life with which a morbid
imagination sometimes amuses or frightens itself. Let us frankly
contrast with it the true ideal of a monastic saint. No ideal, of
course, is fully realized; but still it is only when the ideal is
understood that the actual character is appreciated. The monastic life
is founded on the evangelical counsels, the portion of practical
Christianity most plainly _peculiar_ to the Christian system. It is
obedience, but the obedience of love. It is fear, but the fear of
offending, far more than the fear of the penalty. It is dependence
glorified. It is based on what is feminine as well as on what is
masculine in our nature; on a being which has become recipient in a
sacred passiveness. It lives by faith, which "comes by hearing;" and
its attitude of mind is like that indicated by the sweet and serious,
but submitted, face of one who listens to far-off music or a whisper
close by. In the stillness of devout contemplation the soul,
unhardened and unwrinkled, spreads itself forth like a vine-leaf to
the beam of truth and the dews of grace. In this perfected Christian
character we find, together with the strength of the stem, the
flexibility of the tendril and the freshness of the shoot. For the
same reason we find the consummate flower of sanctity--a Bernard or a
Francis--and with the flower the fruit, and the seed which has sown
Christianity in all lands; for monks have ever been the great
missionaries. The soul of the monk who has done most for man has thus
most included the womanly as well as the manly type of excellence. It
has unity and devotedness. It has that purity which is not only {417}
consistent with fervor, but in part proceeds from it. It shrinks not
only from the forbidden, but from the disproportionate, the startling,
and the abrupt. It is humble, and does not stray as far as its limit.
It regards sin, not as a wild beast chained, but as a plague, and
thinks that it cannot escape too far beyond the infection. It has a
modesty which modulates every movement of the being. It has
spontaneity, and finds itself at home among little things. It is
cheerful and genial, with a momentary birth of good thoughts, wishes,
and deeds, that ascend like angels to God, and are only visible to
angels.

Nor is this all. It is in the conventual life that the third type of
human character--that of the child--is found in conjunction with the
other two. In the world even the partial preservation of the child in
the man is one of the rare marks of genius. In the cloister the union
is common. Where the character is thus _integrated_ by harmoniously
blending the three human types--viz., man, woman, and child--then man
has reached his best, and done most to reverse the fall. It is among
those who have most bravely taken the second Adam for their example
that this primal image is most nearly restored. We see it in such
books as the "Imitation," and the "Confessions" of St. Augustine. We
see it in the old pictures of the saints, where the venerable and the
strong, the gracious and the lovely, the meek and the winning, are so
subtly blended by the pencil of an Angelico or a Perugino. We see it
within many a modern cloister. It has its place, to the discerning
eye, among the evidences of religion.

In the north the world now finds it more difficult than in the south
to appreciate such a character as St. Gertrude. If it is sceptical as
to visions and raptures, still more is it scandalized by austerities
and mortification. The temperament of the south tends too generally to
pleasure; but the great natures of the south, perhaps for that reason,
renounce the senses with a loftier strength. They throw themselves
frankly on asceticism, leaving beneath them all that is soft, like the
Italian mountains which frown from their marble ridges over the
valleys of oranges and lemons. The same ardor which so often leads
astray, ministers, when it chooses the soul for its residence, to
great deeds, as fire does to the labors of material science. In the
north, including the land of St. Gertrude, many of the virtues are
themselves out of sympathy with the highest virtue. Men can there
admire strength and industry; but they too often believe in no
strength that is not visible, no industry that is not material.
Mortification is to them unintelligible. Action they can admire; in
suffering they see but a sad necessity, like the old Greeks, to whom
all pain was an intrusion and a scandal.

Christianity first revealed the might of endurance. It was not the
triumph over Satan at the temptation that restored man's race; though
Milton, not without a deep, unintended significance, selected that
victory as the subject of his "Paradise Regained." It was not
preaching, nor miracle, but Calvary. Externally, endurance is passive;
internally, it is the highest form of action--the action in which
there is no self-will, the energy that is one with humility. The
moment the Church began to live she began to endure. The apostles
became ascetics, "keeping the body under," and proclaiming that
between spirit and flesh, between watching and sloth, between fast and
feast, there was not peace but war. While the fiery penance of
persecution lasted, it was easy to "have all things as though one had
nothing." There then was always a barrier against which virtue might
push in its ceaseless desire to advance, and to discipline her
strength by trial. When the three centuries of trial were over,
monasticism rose. In it again was found a place for mortification--
for that detachment which is {418} attachment to God, and that
exercise which makes Christians athletes. There silence matured divine
love, and stillness generated strength. There was found the might of a
spiritual motive; and a fulcrum was thus supplied like that by which
Archimedes boasted that his lever could move the world.

It is difficult to contemplate such a character as that of St.
Gertrude without straying from her to a kindred subject--that
wonderful monastic life, with its rapturous visions and its as
constant mortifications, to which we owe such characters. Without the
cloister we should have had no Gertrudes; and without the
mortification of the cloister the ceaseless chant and the incense
would have degenerated into spiritual luxuries. It is time for us to
return, and ask a practical question: What was this St. Gertrude, who
found so fair a place among the wonders of the thirteenth century, and
whom in the nineteenth so few hear of or understand? What was she even
at the lowest, and such as the uninitiated might recognize? She was a
being for whom nature had done all nature could do. She was a
noble-minded woman, pure at once and passionate, more queenly and more
truly at home in the poverty of her convent than she could have been
in her father's palace. Secondly, she was a woman of extraordinary
genius and force of character. Thirdly, she was one who, the child of
an age when the dialectics of old Greece were laid on the altar of
revealed truth, dwelt habitually in that region of thought which, in
the days of antiquity, was inhabited by none, and occasionally
approached but by the most aspiring votaries of the Platonic
philosophy. This was the human instrumentality which sovereign grace
took to itself, as the musician selects some fair-grained tree out of
which to shape his lyre. There was in her no contradictory past to
retrieve. Without a jar, and almost without consciousness, she passed
with a movement of swanlike softness out of innocence into holiness.
Some have fought their way to goodness, as others have to earthly
greatness, and won the crown, though not without many a scar. But she
was "born in the purple," and all her thoughts and feelings had ever
walked with princely dignity and vestal grace, as in the court of the
great King. Her path was arduous; but it stretched from good to
better, not from bad to good. She did not graduate in the garden of
Epicurus, nor amid the groves of Academus, nor amid the revel of that
Greek society in which the glitter of the highest intelligence played
above the rottenness of the most corrupt life. She had always lived by
faith. The spiritual world had been hers before the natural one, and
had interpreted it. Man's supernatural end had ever for her presented
the clue to his destinies, and revealed the meaning of his earthly
affections. Among these last she had made no sojourn. She had
prolonged not the time, but done on earth what all aspire to do in
heaven: she had risen above human ties, in order to possess them in
their largest manifestations. The faith affirmed that we are to have
all things in God, and in God she resolved to have them. Her heart
rose as by a heavenward gravitation to the centre of all love. A
creature, and knowing herself to be no more, her aspiration was to
belong wholly to her Creator. To her the incarnation meant the union
of the human race, and of the human soul, with God. Her devotions are
the endless love-songs of this high bridal. They passed from her heart
spontaneously, like the song of the bird; and they remain for ever the
triumphant hymeneal chant of a clear, loving, intelligential spirit,
which had renounced all things for him, and had found all things in
him for whom all spirits are made.

{419}{420}

From The Lamp.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

BY BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.

  Christmas comes, Christmas comes.
  Blessing wheresoe'er he roams;
  And he calls the little children
  Cluster'd in a thousand homes.

  "Stand you still, my little children,
  For a moment while I sing,
  Wreath'd together in a ring,
  With your tiny hands embracing
  In a snowy interlacing.
  And your rich curls dropping down--
  Golden, black, and auburn-brown--
  Over bluest little eyes;
  Toss them back in sweet surprise
  While my pretty song I sing.

  I have apples, I have cakes,
  Icicles, and snowy flakes.
      Hanging on each naked bough;
  Sugar strawberries and cherries,
  Mistletoe and holly-berries,
      Nail'd above the glorious show.

  I have presents rich and rare.
  Beauties which I do not spare,
      For my little children dear;
  At my steps the casements lighten,
  Sourest human faces brighten.
  And the carols--music strange--
  Float in their melodious change
      On the night-wind cold and drear.

  Listen now, my little children:
  All these things I give to you,
  And you love me, dearly love me
  (Witness'd in your welcome true).
  Why do I thus yearly scatter.
  With retreating of the sun.
  Sweetmeats, holiday, and fun?
  There must be something much the matter
  Where my wine-streams do not run.

  Once I was no more than might be
  Any season of the year;
  No kind tapers shone to light me
  On my way advancing here;
  No small children rush'd to meet me,
  Happy human smiles to greet me.
  True, it was a while ago;
  But I mind me it was so,
  Then believe me, children dear.

  Till one foggy cold December,
  Eighteen hoary centuries past
  (Thereabouts as I remember),
  Came a voice upon the blast.
  And a strange star in the heaven;
  One said that unto us was given
  A Saviour and a Brother kind;
  The star upon my head shed down
  Of golden beams this living crown.
  The birthday gift of Jesus Christ,
  Whereby my glory might be known.

  You all keep your little birthdays;
  Keep likewise your fathers', mothers',
  Little sisters', little brothers';
  To commemorate _this_ birth,
  Sings aloud the exulting earth!
  Every age and all professions,
  In all distance--parted nations,
  Meet together at this time
  In spirit, while the church-bells chime.
  Little children, dance and play,--
  We will join,--but likewise pray
  At morning, thinking of the day
  I have told you I remember
  In a bleak and cold December,
  Long ago and far away."

------

From The Popular Science Review.

EPIDEMICS, PAST AND PRESENT--
THEIR ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION.

Epidemics, derived from the two Greek words [Greek text], _among_, and
[Greek text], _people_ are those diseases which for a time prevail
widely among the people of any country or locality, and then, for a
longer or shorter period, either entirely, or for the most part,
disappear. There are few diseases to which the human race is liable
that may not, under favorable circumstances, take on the epidemic
form. For example, diseases of the organs of respiration are very apt
to become epidemic in seasons characterized by extreme coldness or
dampness of the atmosphere, or by great and sudden alternations of
temperature. In a strict sense, however, the term {421} epidemics is
not usually employed in reference to the diseases of individual organs
of the body, but is restricted to those derangements of the entire
system depending upon the absorption of some poison, or the action of
some "influence," from without. In the latter class of maladies the
individual organs may become diseased, and the derangement of their
functions may modify the symptoms resulting from the primary poison or
"influence;" but then the local diseases are the secondary result of
the general disorder of the constitution, and not the source and
origin of all the mischief.

Some epidemic diseases possess the power of self-propagation; that is
to say, the poison or influence may be communicated by infected
persons to persons in health, and the disease is then said to be
contagious,  [Footnote 63] while others are entirely destitute of any
such property. Scarlet-fever and small-pox are familiar examples of
the former class; ague and influenza of the latter.

  [Footnote 63: The terms "contagion" and "contagious" are here used
  in their widest signification, and are applied in this essay to all
  diseases capable of propagation by infected individuals to persons
  in health.]

It is still a vexed question whether a disease that is capable of
self-propagation can ever be generated _de novo_. It is maintained, on
the one hand, that such an occurrence is as impossible as the
spontaneous generation of plants or animals; while, on the other hand,
it is argued that the poison of certain diseases capable of
self-propagation may, under certain favorable conditions, be produced
independently of any pre-existing cases of the disease. The comparison
of a fever-poison with a spore or ovum is an ingenious, but a most
delusive, argument. An epidemic disease springing up in a locality
where it was before unknown, and where it is impossible to trace its
introduction from without, is said to be not more extraordinary than
the development of fungi in a putrid fluid. The argument, however, is
founded on a pure assumption, for there is not a tittle of evidence to
show that a fever-poison is of the nature of a spore or ovum. Air
saturated with the poisons of various contagious diseases has been
condensed and submitted to the highest powers of the microscope, but
nothing approaching to a small-pox spore, or a typhus ovum, has yet
been discovered. It is true that certain contagious diseases, such as
scarlet-fever and smallpox, can in most instances be traced to
contagion; but, with regard to others, such as typhoid or enteric
fever, it is in most instances utterly impossible to account for the
_first cases_ in any outbreak on the theory of contagion, while, at
the same time, there is direct evidence that the contagious power of
the disease is extremely. The question is no doubt beset with many
difficulties, and constitutes one of the most intricate problems in
medical science. It is one, however, which can never be solved by
entering on the discussion with a preconceived theory as to the close
analogy, if not identity, of a fever-poison with an animal or
vegetable ovum, nor by assuming that the laws which regulate the
propagation of one contagious disease are equally applicable to all.
Nature's facts are too often interpreted by human laws, rather than by
the laws of nature. In the case before us, the natural history of each
disease must be studied independently, and our ideas as to its origin
and mode of propagation must be founded on the evidence furnished by
that study alone, and irrespective of the laws which seem to regulate
the origin and propagation of other diseases with which it has no
connection whatever, except in the human mind. At the present moment,
when the subject of epidemics is attracting so much attention, it may
be interesting to call attention to the more important diseases
comprised under that head, and to point out some of the main facts
connected with their origin and distribution. {422} The principal
epidemic diseases, then, are: small-pox, scarlet-fever, measles,
typhus, relapsing fever, Oriental plague, yellow fever, diarrhoea,
typhoid or enteric fever, cholera, dysentery, ague and remittent
fevers, influenza, the sweating sickness, and the dancing mania.

1. _Small-pox_ the most loathsome of all diseases, is believed to have
prevailed in India and China from time immemorial. About the middle of
the sixth century it is supposed to have been conveyed by trading
vessels from India to Arabia, and the Arabian army at the siege of
Mecca, in the year 569, was the first victim of its fury. From Arabia
it was imported into Europe by the Saracens, and there is evidence of
its existence in Britain before the ninth century. Before the
introduction of vaccination, small-pox was one of the chief causes of
mortality in all the countries where it prevailed, and even now it
occupies a prominent place in our mortuary returns. During the
twenty-four years 1838-61, 125,352 of the population of England and
Wales, and 21,369 of the population of London, _died_ of small-pox;
or, in other words, one in seventy-five of the total deaths in England
and Wales, and one in sixty-three of the total deaths in London, were
due to this disease. Small-pox is not confined to any race or quarter
of the globe. At the present day its appearance can, in the great
majority of instances, be traced to contagion. It is evident, however,
that it must at one time have had an origin, and it is reasonable to
infer that what happened once may happen again. Small-pox is known to
attack many of the lower animals as well as man, and there are grounds
for believing that it originated among the former, and by them was
communicated to the human species. A careful study of epizootics--our
ignorance of which has been disclosed by the present cattle plague
--may ultimately reveal the mode of origin of the poison of small-pox.
The disease varies greatly in its prevalence at different times. In
other words, it is sometimes epidemic, at others not. Some of these
epidemics are local; others are widely extended. All exhibit a gradual
rise, culmination, and decline, the decline being always less rapid
than the advance. It is difficult to account for the occurrence of
these epidemics. They are independent of hygienic defects, season,
temperature, or any meteorological conditions of which we are
cognizant. They are probably due to causes tending to depress the
general health of the population, and so to predispose it to the
action of the poison. For nearly two centuries it has been a common
observation that epidemics of small-pox have co-existed with epidemics
of other contagious diseases. The gradual accumulation also in a
district of unprotected persons, owing to the neglect of vaccination,
will also predispose to the occurrence of an epidemic, after the
introduction of the poison. In fact, to the neglect, or careless
performance, of vaccination, is entirely due the occurrence of
epidemics of small-pox at the present day.

2. _Scarlet Fever_.--The early history of scarlet fever is obscure,
for the disease was long confounded with measles and small-pox, but it
is generally supposed that, like small-pox, it came originally from
Africa, and was imported into Europe by the Saracens. It has been
known to prevail in Britain for the last two centuries; but although
it is only of late years, from the reports of the Registrar-General,
that we have been able to form an accurate idea of the extent of its
prevalence, there can be no doubt that it has increased greatly during
the present century, and that it now occupies that pre-eminence among
the causes of mortality in childhood which was formerly held by
small-pox. During twenty-four years (1838 to 1861 inclusive) 375,009
of the population of England and Wales, and 58,663 of the inhabitants
of London, died of scarlet fever, or about one in every twenty-four
deaths that occurred in England during the period in question {423}
was due to this disease. The mortality from scarlet fever, in fact,
exceeds the mortality from small-pox and measles taken together.
Scarlet fever is known to prevail over the whole of the continents of
Europe and America, but it is nowhere so common as in Britain. In
France it is a rarer disease than either measles or small-pox. In
India it is said never to occur. In most instances it is not difficult
to trace the occurrence of scarlet fever to contagion; and from the
remarkable indestructibility of the poison and its tendency to adhere
to clothes, furniture, and even to the walls of houses, there can be
little doubt that the disease has a similar origin in many instances,
where the mode of transmission of the poison cannot be traced. How the
poison first originated is yet a mystery; but there is some
probability in the view, which has many able advocates, that it
originated in horses or cattle, and by them was communicated to man.
If this be so, it is reasonable to hope that investigations as to the
occurrence of the disease in the lower animals may lead to a discovery
productive of as great benefits to the human race as vaccination. At
intervals of a few years scarlet fever spreads as an epidemic: but its
ordinary prevalence, in this country is greater than is generally
imagined. The causes of these epidemic outbursts are unknown. Many
circumscribed outbreaks can no doubt be traced to the importation of
the poison into a population of persons unprotected by a previous
attack; but why the poison should be introduced into numerous
localities at one time, and not at others, is difficult to determine.
It is tolerably certain, however, that at all times the prevalence of
the disease is independent of overcrowding, bad drainage, or of any
appreciable hygienic or meteorological conditions.

3. _Measles_ was long confounded with scarlet fever, and, like it, is
supposed to have been originally imported from the East. During
twenty-four years (1838-1861) this disease destroyed 31,595 of the
population of London, and 181,868 persons in England and Wales. It is
known to occur in all parts of the world, and is highly contagious.
There is no evidence that any hygienic defects or meteorological
conditions can generate the poison of measles. Hildenbrand, a great
authority, thought it might arise where numbers of men and cattle were
confined together in close, unventilated buildings; and in later times
American and Irish physicians have described a disease corresponding
in every respect with the measles, which appeared to arise from
sleeping on old musty straw, or from the inoculation of the fungi of
wheat straw. Measles in England is much less of an epidemic disease
than either small-pox or scarlet fever. The number of deaths which it
causes in years when it is most prevalent, is rarely much more than
double what it causes in years when it is at least prevalent. Although
often most fatal in winter, there is no proof that its prevalence is
influenced by season.

4. _Typhus Fever_ has been well known for upward of three centuries,
and there are grounds for believing that from remote ages it has
prevailed in most parts of the world under favorable conditions. It is
impossible to estimate the precise extent of its prevalence, inasmuch
as many other diseases are included under the designation "typhus," in
the reports of the Registrar-General; but it is the acknowledged
scourge of the poor inhabitants of our large towns. There is no
evidence that typhus, such as we see it in this country, has as yet
been observed in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa, or the tropical
parts of America. Even in Britain it is confined, for the most part,
to the large towns, and to the poorest and most densely crowded parts
of them. It is a disease almost unknown among the better classes,
except in the case of clergymen and doctors who visit the infected
poor. {424} It is undoubtedly contagious; but in a spacious dwelling
with a free ventilation, it almost ceases to be so. There is also
ample evidence that the poison may be generated _de novo_; and the
circumstances under which this occurs are overcrowding, with defective
ventilation and destitution. Hence it is that the disease was formerly
so apt to show itself in prisons and ships, and that, even at the
present day, it is so common an attendant on warfare and so prevalent
in the wretched hovels of the poor. This was the disease that before
the days of Howard was never absent from our prisons and hospitals,
and that decimated the armies of the first Napoleon and of the allies
in the Crimea. "If," says an able writer on fever in the last century,
"any person will take the trouble to stand in the sun, and look at his
own shadow on a white plastered wall, he will easily perceive that his
whole body is a smoking dunghill, with a vapor exhaling from every
part of it. This vapor is subtle, acrid, and offensive to the smell;
if retained in the body, it becomes morbid; but if re-absorbed, highly
deleterious. If a number of persons, therefore, are long confined in
any close place not properly ventilated, so as to inspire and swallow
with their spittle the vapors of each other, they must soon feel its
bad effects. Bad provisions and gloomy thoughts will add to their
misery, and soon breed the _seminium_ of a pestilential fever,
dangerous not only to themselves, but also to every person who visits
them or even communicates with them at second-hand. Hence it is so
frequently bred in gaols, hospitals, ships, camps, and besieged towns.
A _seminium_ once produced is easily spread by contagion." But if
overcrowding produces typhus, why is it that the disease prevails in
the epidemic form, and then in a great measure disappears? The
explanation is in this way. All the great epidemics of typhus have
occurred during seasons of famine or of unusual destitution. One of
the most common consequences of general destitution is the
congregation of several families in one house, in consequence of their
inability to pay their rents, and of the concentration in the large
towns of many of the inhabitants of country districts. Famine
pre-disposes to typhus by weakening the constitution; and it also
tends to produce it, in so far as it causes an unusual degree of
overcrowding. It has been the custom with many writers to refer
epidemics of typhus to some subtle "epidemic influence;" and thus,
where a failure of the crops has been followed by typhus, both of
these disasters have been ascribed to a common atmospheric cause. But
of such atmospheric influences, capable of producing typhus, we know
nothing; their very existence is doubtful, and the employment of the
term has too often had the effect of cloaking human ignorance, or of
stifling the search after truth. If typhus be due to any "epidemic
influence," why does this influence select large towns and spare the
country districts? why does it fall upon large towns in exact
proportion to the degree of privation and overcrowding among the poor?
in large towns, why does it indict the crowded dwellings of the poor
and spare the habitations of the rich? and why did the varying
prevalence of typhus among the French and English troops in the Crimea
correspond, exactly to the varying degree of overcrowding in either
army? Moreover, famine _artificially_ induced by warfare, by
commercial failures, by strikes, or by any cause that throws large
bodies of men out of employment, is equally efficacious in originating
epidemics of typhus, as famine from failure of the crops.

5. _Relapsing Fever_ is so called from the fact that after a week's
illness there is an interval of good health for a week, followed by a
second attack. It is contagious, and is epidemic in a stricter sense
than even typhus. Although sometimes more prevalent in this country
than any other fever, it may disappear for so many years that {425} on
its return it has more than once been thought to be a new malady. For
upwards of ten years not a case of it has been observed in Britain,
but it has constitute the chief component of many of the greatest
epidemics of fever which has devastated this country and Ireland, and
it was one of the diseases composing the "Russian Plague," which in
the spring of the present year caused such unnecessary alarm in this
country. It usually prevails in the epidemic form in conjunction with
typhus, and it is connected in its origin more directly with
protracted starvation and the use of unwholesome food than even the
latter disease. Hence, in this country, it is familiarly known as
"Famine Fever," and in Germany as "_Hungerpest_."

6. _Oriental Plague_ is still met with in Egypt and in other eastern
countries; but in the middle ages it frequently overran the whole of
Europe and invaded England, and, from the extent of its ravages, it
was known as the "_Black Death_," and the "_Great Mortality_." The
Great Plague of London, of 1665, is a familiar fact in history. Since
then the disease has not been met with in this country. But British
typhus is merely a modified form of Oriental plague, or, in other
words, plague is merely typhus complicated with numerous abscesses
beneath the skin. Cases of typhus are occasionally met with in this
country, corresponding in every respect with true plague. Both
diseases appear under similar circumstances, but those which generate
plague are of a more aggravated character than those which suffice to
produce typhus. The disappearance of plague from London,
notwithstanding our vastly increased communications with Egypt, has
been chiefly due to the better construction of our dwellings since the
"Great Fire" of 1666. "It is probable," says an able writer on the
plague, "that if this country has been so long forsaken by the plague
as almost to have forgotten, or at least to be unwilling to own, its
natural offspring, it has been because the parent has been disgusted
with the circumstances under which that hateful birth was brought to
light, has removed the filth from her doors in which it was matured,
and has adopted a system of cleanliness fatal to its nourishment at
home. But if ever this favored country, now grown wise by experience,
should relapse into former errors, and recur to her odious habits, as
in past ages, it is not to be doubted that a mutual recognition will
take place, and she will again be visited by her abandoned child, who
has been wandering a fugitive among kindred associates, sometimes in
the mud cots of Egypt, sometimes in the crowded tents of Barbary, and
sometimes in the filthy kaisarias of Aleppo."

7. _Yellow Fever_ is a contagious fever with a limited geographical
range. Its geographical limits, as regards the new world, are from
about 43° N. lat. to 35° S. lat; and in the old world from 44° N. to
8° or 9° S. lat. It is a common disease on board our ships stationed
in the West Indies and off the west coast of Africa. As in the case of
typhus, overcrowded and defective ventilation are the main causes
which favor its origin and propagation, and, indeed, it is still a
subject for investigation whether yellow fever may not be typhus
modified by climate and other circumstances. One of the most recent
and best authorities  [Footnote 64] on the disease thus writes:
"Overcrowding in the between-decks of steamships seems to be the
principal cause of the extreme fatality of the disease in the navy.
What in this respect is true of typhus may with equal force be said of
yellow fever. There is no such powerful adjuvant to the virulence of
the poison, and to its power of propagation, as an unrenewed
atmosphere, loaded with human exhalations."

  [Footnote 64: Dr. Gavin Milroy, President of the Epidemiological
  Society.]

8. _Diarrhoea_ is always more or less prevalent in this country during
the summer and autumn. There is no {426} reason to believe that
epidemic diarrhoea is contagious, but there is a direct ratio between
its prevalence and the temperature of the atmosphere and the absence
of ozone. As the temperature rises the cases increase in number, and
as it falls they diminish, and the disease is always most prevalent in
very hot seasons. Diarrhoea may be due to many different causes, but
its epidemic prevalence in autumn is chiefly accounted for by the
absorption into the system of the products of putrefaction of organic
matter, either in the form of gaseous effluvia or through the vehicle
of drinking-water.

9. _Typhoid or Enteric Fever_ is very commonly confounded with typhus,
with which, however, so far as its origin is concerned, it has nothing
in common. It is not, like typhus, confined to the poor, but it
prevails among rich and poor alike; and, indeed, there are some
reasons for believing that the rich and well-fed are more prone to be
attacked by it than the destitute. It is the fever by which Count
Cavonr, several members of the royal family of Portugal, and our own
Prince Consort, came to their untimely end. It differs also from
typhus in the circumstances that its origin and propagation are quite
independent of overcrowding with defective ventilation, and are so
intimately connected with bad drainage that by some physicians the
fever is now designated _pythogenic_, or fever born of putridity. It
is asserted by some writers that the poison of enteric fever is never
generated in obstructed drains, but that the drains are merely the
vehicle of transmission of the poison from an infected person. But if
this were so, enteric fever must needs be a most contagious disease,
whereas all experience goes to show that it rarely spreads, even under
the most favorable circumstances. The disease, in fact, is so slightly
contagious that many excellent observers have doubted if it be so at
all. It is probable that certain meteorological conditions, such as a
high temperature, a defective supply of ozone, or a peculiar
electrical state, may be necessary for the production of the poison of
enteric fever; and thus, nuisances which are offensive to the senses
may exist for a long time without producing the disease. The necessity
of a high temperature is undoubted, and is itself a strong alignment
against the view which makes drains merely the vehicle of transmission
of the poison. It is well known that enteric fever, like ordinary
diarrhoea, becomes epidemic in this country every autumn, and almost
disappears in spring, while the autumnal epidemics are always greatest
in seasons remarkable for their high temperature. Enteric fever is
much later in commencing and in attaining the acme of its autumnal
prevalence than diarrhoea, showing that a longer duration of hot
weather is necessary for its production; but, when once produced, a
more protracted duration of cold weather seems necessary for its
destruction.

10. _Cholera_.--Epidemic cholera is generally described as having
originated at Jessore, in the delta of the Ganges, in the year 1817,
and as having spread thence over Hindostan, and ultimately to Europe.
Since 1817 Europe has been visited by three great epidemics of
cholera, viz.: in 1832, in 1848-9, and in 1854; and at the present
moment it is threatened with a fourth. During the past autumn the
disease has appeared at Ancona and Marseilles, and at many other
places in the basin of the Mediterranean. In England and Wales cholera
destroyed 53,273 lives in 1849, and 20,097 in 1854. Although the great
epidemics of cholera have appeared to take their origin in India, and
gradually to have spread to Europe, following often the lines of human
intercourse, the evidence in favor of its being a very contagious
malady is small. The attendants on the sick are rarely attacked; and,
on the other hand, the disease has often appeared in isolated
localities, where it was impossible to believe that it was imported.
It is a remarkable {427} circumstance, also, that some of the greatest
epidemics which have occurred in India, as that of 1861, have shown no
tendency to travel to Europe, notwithstanding the constant
communication that exists. Even on the supposition, then, that cholera
is of necessity imported from India, there must be something as yet
unknown to us that favors its transmission at one time and not at
another. But it is very doubtful if the disease is imported in the
manner generally believed. Unequivocal cases of "Asiatic cholera" have
been met with almost every year in the intervals of the great
epidemics; and, as Dr. Farr has observed, it is highly probable that
true cholera has always existed in England. The researches of the late
Dr. Snow render it highly probable that the disease often arises from
drinking water impregnated with the _fermenting_ excreta of persons
suffering from the disease; and if this be so, from what we know of
other diseases, it is not unreasonable to infer that, in certain
conditions of the atmosphere, the poison of cholera may be generated
during the fermentation of the excreta of healthy persons. It can
readily be conceived how the necessary meteorological conditions might
originate in the East and gradually extend to this country, and thus
lead to the supposition that the disease has been propagated by a
specific poison.

11. _Dysentery_.--Epidemics of dysentery are confined to tropical
countries, and need not occupy much attention at present. Atmospheric
states which unduly or suddenly depress the temperature of the surface
of the body are the most common exciting causes. They are most apt to
take effect in the case of persons whose constitutions have been
weakened by long exposure to extreme heat, to malaria, or to other
debilitating causes. There is no positive evidence that dysentery is
contagious.

12. _Agues and Remittent Fevers_ are now but little known, and
scarcely ever fatal, in this country. Many years ago, however, they
were among the most common and the most fatal diseases of Britain.
James I. and Oliver Cromwell both died of ague in London. The
disappearance of ague has been in direct relation to the drainage and
cultivation of the soil, and this remark applies not only to England,
but to all parts of the globe. The fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridge
are almost the only parts of England where agues arc now known; but in
many countries, and particularly in the tropics, where the vegetation
is very rank, they are still the most common of all diseases. Agues
are not contagious, but result from the _malaria_ given off during the
evaporation from marshy uncultivated land. These malaria may be wafted
to a considerable distance by the wind. A high temperature and rank
vegetation seem to favor their production and to increase their
virulence.

13. _Influenza_.--Severe and widespread epidemics of influenza have
been observed in various parts of the world, from time immemorial. In
the present century the disease has been epidemic in this country in
1803, 1831, 1833, 1837, and 1847. On each occasion it has been
particularly fatal in aged and debilitated persons, and it has often
been followed by an increased prevalence of other epidemic diseases.
Influenza is not contagious, but depends on some unknown condition of
the atmosphere. Sudden alternations of temperature have been thought
to favor its origin.

14. _The Sweating Sickness_.--This remarkable and very fatal disease
is happily now unknown in this country; but in the middle ages many
great epidemics of it were observed, and nowhere were they more common
than in England. Many of the epidemics were in fact confined to
England. There are records of five distinct visitations of the disease
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, viz., in 1485, 1506,
1517, 1529, and 1551. The disease attacked all classes alike, and
{428} was often fatal within a few hours. From the accounts handed
down to us it is impossible to form any accurate idea as to the causes
of its origin and extension; but the prevalent opinion at the time
seems to have been that it was due in the first instance to
atmospheric influences.

15. _The Dancing Mania_.--The present brief summary of the principal
epidemic diseases would not be complete without alluding to the
dancing mania of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The effects
of the _Black Death_ of the fourteenth century had not yet subsided,
and the graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when
we are told by Hecker a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took
possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our
nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of the
wildest superstition. It was a convulsion which in the most
extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame, and excited the
astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since
which time it has never reappeared. It was called the dance of St.
John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it
was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whist performing
their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the
appearance of persons possessed. It was propagated by the sight of the
sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and
the neighboring countries. While dancing, the infected persons were
insensible to external impressions, but were haunted by visions, their
fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out. Some
asserted that they felt as if immersed in a stream of blood, which
obliged them to leap so high; while others saw the heavens open, and
the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary. The accounts of the
dancing mania collected by Hecker at first sight seem almost fabulous,
but cease to be so when we recollect the practices of certain modern
religious sects and the accounts of the so-called "revivals" in the
middle of the nineteenth century.

From the preceding summary, it is obvious that epidemic diseases vary
greatly in their nature.

1. First we have diseases, such as small-pox, scarlet fever, and
measles, which at the present day can only be traced to contagion, and
some of which probably took their origin in the lower animals.

2. There are diseases, such as typhus, relapsing fever, enteric fever,
and probably also plague, yellow fever, and cholera, which are capable
of propagation by contagion in varying degrees, but which may also
originate from the neglect of sanitary laws, aided by certain
meteorological conditions.

3. A third class, including agues, remittent fevers, and diarrhoea are
not at all contagious, but arise from malarious exhalations.

4. A fourth class, including influenza, dysentery, and, perhaps, the
sweating sickness, are also not contagious, and, arise from certain
atmospheric conditions.

5. The dancing mania differed from all other epidemic diseases in
being purely mental, and in depending on the mere sight of a
disagreeable nervous malady.

------
{429}

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par
des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

ANGLICANISM AND THE GREEK SCHISM.


In a previous number we made our readers acquainted with a certain
project of union between the Anglican and the Russo-Greek Churches.
[Footnote 65] The Russian as well as the English journals have since
spoken much of this project, and seemed to think that it was on the
eve of ending. There is one difference, however, to be observed in the
language held by the organs of the two countries. The Russian journals
gave us to understand that the Anglicans would renounce the Protestant
doctrines which form a prominent portion of their belief, to adopt
purely and simply the orthodox faith such as it is expressed in the
symbolical books of the Eastern Church. The Anglicans did not place
themselves in the same point of view. They would not change belief;
they admitted that both sides should remain as they now are, but that
there would be _intercommunion_ between the two Churches; that is to
say, that the Anglicans should be allowed to participate in the
sacraments of the Greek Church, and reciprocally.

  [Footnote 65: "_Etudes_" May, 1865. _Vide_ "CATHOLIC WORLD," Vol.
  I., No. 7, October, 1865. ]

A certain Mr. Denton, rector of one of the largest Anglican parishes
in London, was especially animated by these thoughts. He went to
Servia and asked Mgr. Michael, metropolitan of Belgrave, to admit him
to communion in his quality of priest of the Church of England. Mgr.
Michael refused; but Mr. Denton, nowise discouraged, betook himself to
travelling all over Servia, and at last found an archimandrite who
appeared to be more accommodating than the metropolitan. After having
communicated in this way in the Servian Church, the Rev. Mr. Denton
returns to England triumphantly announcing that the _intercommunion_
was an accomplished fact. Great rejoicings there were, to be sure, in
the little coterie. There could be no doubt, whatever, that all was
happily arranged.

But behold, Mgr. Michael, informed of what had taken place, removed
the archimandrite and struck him with ecclesiastical censures. The joy
that had prevailed in Mr. Denton's camp was changed to mourning. On
the other hand, the Anglicans who form no part of the coterie, enjoy
exceedingly the reverend gentleman's discomfiture.

As for us, we are well pleased to see that Mgr. Michael does not seem
disposed to follow the footsteps of Cyril Lucar.

But another check was reserved for the famous project. The archpriest
Joseph Wassilief, chaplain to the Russian embassy in Paris, after
having shown himself rather favorable to the contemplated union, has
just laid down, with as much wisdom as firmness, the conditions of the
proposed treaty. "However much explanations may be avoided, they will
forcibly recur, sooner or later," he justly observes in the _Christian
Union_, 24th September, 1865. And, resting on this principle, he
passes in review the three questions of the procession of the Holy
Ghost, the invocation of saints, and prayer for the dead; he then
shows that it is not possible to establish _intercommunion_ between
the two Churches until they have come to an agreement on all these
points; Among other things, he shows that the Church has always, been
careful {430} to preserve the entire deposit of doctrine, and that she
has not permitted herself to establish a difference between what is
fundamental and what is secondary. He concludes with these wise words:
"Charitable in our explanations, we are bound to be very candid one
with the other. If rigorous discussions on all points of divergence
appear to retard the final agreement, they secure its solidity and
duration; whilst reservations, though accelerating the agreement,
would leave therein a germ of weakness and instability."

We attach the more importance to this declaration because the
authority of the archpriest Joseph Wassilief is enhanced by the
consideration shown him by the synod. Latterly there was a vacancy in
the ranks of that assembly, which forms the supreme council of the
Russian Church. There was question of replacing the chaplain-general
of the armies by land and sea. Three names were proposed to the
sovereign's choice: that of M. Wassilief was one of the three. He has
not been appointed; but, in proposing him, the synod sufficiently
testified that it would have wished to see him seated in its midst,
raised to the highest dignity to which, in Russia, a member of the
secular clergy can pretend.

After the energetic act of the metropolitan of Belgrade and the words
of the archpriest Wassilief, it remains for us to quote the _Levant
Herald_ an English and Protestant journal published at Constantinople.
In its number of the 20th September, 1865, that paper endeavors to
make the Anglican clergy understand that they flatter themselves with
a delusive hope if they believe in the possibility of a union, or even
of an alliance, between the two communions.

It results from all we have just said that if the Anglo-Americans have
entertained the project of Protestantizing the Greek Church, they must
perceive that the enterprise is more arduous than they had supposed.
The Russians, on their side, must see that it is not so easy to make
the Anglican Church enter into the bosom of theirs. As to establishing
the _intercommunion_ between the two churches without having come to
an agreement on questions of faith, it is a dream which the archpriest
Wassilief must have dispelled once and for ever.

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

REASON IN RELIGION.
By Frederic Henry Hedge. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Company, 245
Washington St. 1863. pp. 458.

The author of this work, who is a professor in Harvard University,
enjoys a deservedly high reputation as an accomplished scholar and
writer, and is looked upon by numbers of intelligent and thoughtful
persons, especially in Massachusetts, as their most revered and
trusted guide in religious matters. On that account whatever he writes
is worthy of consideration. In the work before us he has not attempted
a systematic treatise on the topic indicated in his title, but has
thrown together a series of essays touching on it and its kindred
topics, indicating difficulties more than aiming at solving them, and
suggesting a method by which anxious minds may separate a certain
modicum of belief which is practically certain and safe from that
which is doubtful, and wait patiently until they can get more truth by
the slow progress of science.

Any one who looks in this work for metaphysical solutions which are
satisfactory or plausible of the great theological problems will be
disappointed. The author sees too clearly the want of sufficient data,
and the want of a sufficient criterion in his system, to attempt to
dogmatize much. We think this {431} course more sensible and honest
than the opposite. At the same time, it lays open the defects of his
system; but so much the better, and so much the more hope of getting
at the truth. He cannot satisfy, however, either the consistent
rationalist or the consistent believer in revelation. On the
rationalistic side he has received a severe criticism from the
_Christian Examiner_. To a Catholic the positively theological part of
his work has but little interest. Some incidental topics are handled
with considerable acuteness and ability, as, for instance, the quality
of sin and evil, the relation between spirit and matter, the
compensations of providence, etc. The impartial testimony of such a
bold and subtle critic as the author in favor of certain facts and
doctrines--_e.g._, miracles, the resurrection, future punishment,
etc., is of value. There are half truths, incidental thoughts,
scintillations of light, through the book, which show how much the
author's merits are his own, and his defects those of the system he
was trained in. The style in which he writes has many most admirable
and peculiar qualities, fitting it to be the vehicle of the highest
kind of thought. Nevertheless, although we do not question the
author's scholarship in his own proper field of study, what he says of
specially Catholic questions and matters appears to us commonplace,
superficial, and sometimes quite gratuitously introduced. Through a
want of care in studying up the Catholic question, he has made one or
two quite remarkable mistakes. One of these is in speaking of the
synod of Valentia as if it were a general council. Another is the
statement that Pope Hildebrand (St. Gregory VII.) has not been
canonized. These remarks are by the way, for we are not attempting to
follow Dr. Hedge over the area covered by his essays for the purpose
of controverting his positions.

The real point of interest it a work like this is the author's thesis
respecting the source and criterion of religious truth. If we differ
here, there is very little use in discussing the particular
conclusions or inferences we draw respecting doctrine. While the
difference continues, it is better to keep the discussion upon it; if
we ever come to an agreement, it will be comparatively easy to proceed
with the discussion of specific doctrines.

Although Dr. Hedge does not proceed by a formal analytic method, yet
he has a thesis, and states it intelligibly in his chapter on "The
Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith." In philosophy he is a Kantian,
and in theology he adopts the system condemned in the late encyclical
of Pius IX. under the name of "moderate rationalism." According to
him, we cannot get the idea of God, or of spiritual truths, from pure
reason. All we know of these truths comes from revelation, and the
truths of revelation are subject to the critical judgment of reason,
which cannot originate, but can approve or reject, conceptions of
spiritual truth.

There are two rather serious objections to this theory. The first is,
that it destroys reason by denying to it either the original intuition
of God, or the capacity of acquiring the idea of God by reflection;
without which it has no capacity of apprehending or judging of the
conception of God proposed to it by revelation. The second is, that it
destroys revelation, making it identical with the conscience or moral
sense; that is, individual and subjective. What is this revelation or
inspiration in the spiritual nature of an individual? Is it his reason
or intelligence elevated and illuminated? That cannot be; for then
reason and revelation are identical, and the proposition that we know
nothing of spiritual truths by reason would be subverted. What then is
it? We can conceive of nothing in the spiritual nature of man which is
not reducible to intelligence or will. It must be will, then. But will
is a blind faculty. It is a maxim of philosophy, "Nil volitum, nisi
prius cognitum." The will cannot choose the supreme good unless the
intelligence furnishes it the idea of the supreme good. You cannot
have a revelation without first establishing sound rationalism as a
basis. Reason may be indebted for distinct conceptions even of those
truths which it is able to demonstrate to an exterior instruction
given immediately by Almighty God through inspiration. But it must
have the original idea or intuition in itself which is explicated by
this instruction and is its ultimate criterion of truth. If by
revelation is understood merely the outward assistance given to the
mind to develop its own idea and attain the full perfection of reason,
there is no sense in distinguishing revelation from {432} philosophy,
science, or the light of reason itself, since all alike come from God.
A revelation, properly so called, is a manifestation of truths above
the sphere of reason--truths which reason cannot demonstrate from
their intrinsic contents. In this case, reason can only apprehend the
evidence of the fact that they are revealed, that they are not
contrary to any truths already known, and that they have certain
analogies with truths perceived by reason. But they must be accepted
as positively and absolutely true only on the authority of revelation.
You must therefore be a pure rationalist, and maintain that we have no
knowledge of any truth beyond that which the educated intelligence of
man evolves from its own primitive and ultimate idea; or you must
accept revelation in the Catholic sense, as proposed by an extrinsic
authority. Dr. Hedge gives us no basis for either science or faith.
There cannot be a basis for faith without one for science; and give us
a basis sufficient for science, we will demonstrate from it the truth
of revelation.

We conclude by quoting one or two remarkable passages, which show that
the author instinctively thinks more soundly and justly than his
theory will logically sustain him in doing:

  "The mass of mankind must receive their religion at second-hand, and
  receive it on historical authority, as they receive the greater part
  of all their knowledge."

  "We want a teacher conscious of God's inpresence, claiming attention
  as a voice out of the heavens. We want a doctrine which shall
  announce itself with divine authority; not a system of moral
  philosophy, but the word and kingdom of God. Without this stamp of
  divine legitimacy, without the witness and signature of the Eternal,
  Christianity would want that which alone gives it-weight with the
  mass of mankind, and the place it now holds in human things." (pp.
  64, 242.)

Well spoken! spoken like a philosopher, like a Christian, like a
Catholic! Apply now Kant's and Dr. Hedge's principle of _practical
reason_. They say, Mankind feel the need of a God, therefore there is
and has always been a God. So we say, Mankind feel and always did feel
the necessity of an infallible church, of a distinct, positive,
dogmatic faith. Therefore they exist, and always did exist. Only in
the Catholic Church are these wants realized; therefore the Catholic
Church is the true Church of God.


THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, ETC.
Edited by the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles. London: Longmans &
Company. 1864.

This is the most superb work on spiritual subjects in our English
Catholic literature. Mr. Lewis has made his translation in such a
manner as to merit the highest encomium from the late Cardinal
Wiseman, who has written the preface to the edition. The paper,
typography, and mechanical execution are in the highest style of
English typographical art. The fathers of St. Charles deserve the
thanks of the entire English-speaking Catholic and literary world for
this costly and noble enterprise which they have achieved.

It is needless to say that the works of St. John of the Cross are
among the highest specimens of genius and spiritual wisdom to be found
in the Spanish language or any other. St. John was a poet of the first
order, and an equally great philosopher. In this view alone his works
are worthy of profound study. The base of his doctrine is the deepest
philosophy, and its summit is ever varied and enlightened by the glow
of poetic fervor. It is philosophy and poetry, however, elevated,
purified, and hallowed by sacred inspiration, and derived not merely
from human but from divine contemplation. As a book for spiritual
reading and direction, it is most proper for a certain class of minds
only, who have difficulties and inward necessities for which they
cannot find the requisite aid in the ordinary books of instruction. It
is also the best guide for those who have the direction of persons of
this character.



We learn that the Messrs. Appleton have in press, and will soon
publish "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," by the Most Rev. H.
E. Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, which has just been issued by
the Longmans, of London.

----------
{433}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 10--JANUARY, 1866.

----

Translated from Le Correspondant

LEIBNITZ AND BOSSUET.  [Footnote 66]

  [Footnote 66: "_Oeuvres de Leibnitz, publiées pour la prémière fois
  d'après les Manuscrits's, avec des notes et une introduction,_" par
  A. Foucher de Carcil. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Tomes. I. et II.]

Every friend of letters must greet with sincere pleasure the literary
enterprise of M. de Careil in undertaking a complete edition of the
writings of Leibnitz, a large part of which has hitherto remained
unpublished and even unknown, and especially to make that great genius
live anew for us in all his fulness and integrity. No greater literary
undertaking ever seduced the imagination of a young erudite, is better
fitted to attract the sympathy of the European republic, or more
difficult of execution. For it was precisely the peculiarity of
Leibnitz that, while he labored to embrace with a firmness of grasp
never equalled the whole of moral and physical nature, all things
real, ideal, or possible, in one and the same system, he uniformly
abstained from giving, in his writings, to that system its full and
entire development. Possessing the amplest and most complete mind that
ever lived, he took no care to give to any of his works the seal of
completeness and perfection. The inventor of so many methods,
mathematical and metaphysical, he never arranged his ideas in a
methodical order. He leads his readers, with a rapid and firm step,
through a labyrinth of abstract conceptions and boundless erudition,
but he suffers no hand but his own to hold the guiding thread. He has
left us numerous tracts and fragments of great value indeed, but no
work that reveals the unity of his system, and gives us a summary of
his doctrines. There is no _summa_ of the Leibnitzian science and
philosophy. We might say that, by a sort of coquetry, while he sought
to know and explain everything in nature, he took care that the secret
of his own heart should not for a moment escape him.

Hence it becomes important to bring together and arrange in their
natural order his scattered members, so as to give them the cohesion
they lack, to combine his several personages, the philosopher, the
moralist, the geometrician, the naturalist, the erudite, the
diplomatist, and the courtier, in one living being, and present the
giant armed at all points as he came forth from the hands of his
Maker. Hence also the difficulty {434} of the task. It requires to
accomplish it the universality of tastes, if not of faculties,
possessed by the model to be reconstructed. It presents one of those
cases in which to reproduce nature it is almost necessary to equal
nature, and to resuscitate is hardly less difficult than to create.
Only a Cuvier is able to collect and put in their place the gigantic
bones and powerful fins of Leviathan.

_Ab Jove principium_. M. de Careil begins with theology. These two
volumes placed at the head of his edition are taken up with writings
some of which had already been printed, others had remained in
manuscript, but all subjected to a careful revision and enriched by
learned notes, which pertain exclusively to matters of religion. If
the ancient classification, which gave to theology the precedence of
all other matters, had not every claim to our respect, we might,
perhaps, permit ourselves to find fault with this arrangement of the
works of Leibnitz, which will cause, I am sure, some surprise to the
learned public. His theological writings were his first neither in the
order of time nor in the order of merit. He did not open his brilliant
career with religious discussions, nor was it by them that he was
chiefly distinguished, or left his deepest trace. He made in theology,
no discoveries as fruitful as the infinitesimal calculus, and gave it
no problems that have fetched so many and so distant echoes as his
theories of optimism and monadology. Why, then, open the series with
those writings which did not begin it, and which do not give us its
summary, and give the precedence to works, merely accessory and of
doubtful value, over so many others which earlier, more constantly,
and more gloriously occupied his laborious life?

There is still another objection to this distribution of matters which
M. de Careil has made. The theological writings of Leibnitz consist
almost exclusively in his correspondence, and are parts of the
negotiation for the reunion of the different Christian communions of
which, for a brief time, he was the medium. Correspondences are
admirable means of gaining an insight into the private and personal
character of men whose public life and works are already known, but
taken by themselves they are always obscure and difficult to be
understood. The reason is, that people who correspond are usually
mutual acquaintances, and understand each other by a hint or half a
word. They are familiar with contemporary events, and waste no time in
narrating them, or in explaining what each already knows. Facts and
ideas are treated by simple allusions, intelligible enough to the
correspondents, but unintelligible to a posterity that lacks their
information. The correspondence of Leibnitz, which M. de Careil
publishes, is far from being free from this grave inconvenience.
Leibnitz appears in it in the maturity of his age, and the full
splendor of his renown. He speaks with the authority of a philosopher
in full credit, and of a counsellor enjoying the confidence of an
important German court. His correspondents treat him with the respect
due to an acknowledged celebrity, and even a power. In the course of
the discussion he is carrying on he introduces many of his well known
metaphysical principles, but briefly, as ideas familiar to those whom
he addresses, and less for the purpose of teaching than of recalling
them to the memory.

His manner of writing, of rushing, so to speak, _in medias res_, takes
the inexperienced reader by surprise, and appears to conform to the
adventurous habits of dramatic art much more than to the sound rules
of erudition, which proceeds slowly, with measured step, marking in
advance the place where it is to plant its foot. Few among us are
sufficiently acquainted with the facts in detail of the life of
Leibnitz, or know well enough the secret of his opinions, to be able
to render an account to {435} ourselves of the part we see him--a
lay-citizen--playing among emperors, kings, princes, and prelates, or
the relation that subsists between his system of monads and scholastic
theology. Hence it often happens that we neither know who is speaking,
nor of what he is speaking. This frequently causes us an embarrassment
to which M. de Careil is himself too much a stranger to be able
sufficiently to compassionate it. He has lived ten years with Leibnitz
in the Library of Hanover, his habitual residence, and he knows every
lineament of the face of his hero, and--not the least of his
merits--deciphers at a glance his formless and most illegible scrawl.
We are not, therefore, astonished that in his learned introductions
and his notes, full of matter, he makes no account of difficulties
which we in our ignorance are utterly unable to overcome.

But we are convinced that the knowledge the editor has acquired by his
invaluable labors would have been far more available to his readers if
he had condensed it into a detailed biography, such as he only could
write, than as he gives it, scattered at the beginning of each volume,
or in a note at the foot of each page. An historical notice,
comprising the history of the intellect as well as of the life of
Leibnitz, an exposition of ideas as well as of facts, and the
arrangement of the didactic works according to the order of their
subjects and their importance, followed by the fragments and
correspondence, the order adopted by nearly all collectors of great
polygraphs, would, it seems to us, have been much better, and simply
the dictate of reason and experience. Introduced by M. de Careil into
the monument he erects not by the front, through the peristyle, but by
a low, side door, we run at least great risk of not seizing the whole
in its proportions.

I confess that I have also a personal reason for regretting the
arrangement adopted by M. de Careil. I had occasion formerly, among
the sins of my youth, to examine, with very little preparatory study I
admit, and in documents by no means so abundant and so exact as those
which are now placed within our reach, the negotiations pursued by
Leibnitz for the union of Christian communions, which take up the
whole of these two volumes. From that examination, along with that of
a small tract naturally attached to it, I came, on the religious
opinions of the great philosopher, to certain conclusions which I set
forth in the 32d number of the first series of this periodical, which
M. de Careil, even then deeply engaged in this study of Leibnitz, has
felt it his duty, in a discussion marked by great urbanity, to combat.
It is my misfortune to persist in those conclusions, and more
strenuously than ever in consequence of the new light which seems to
me to be furnished by this publication, and to which I cannot dispense
myself from briefly recurring. In so doing I fear that I shall appear
to some readers to have sought or to have accepted too readily an
occasion for resuming a discussion of little importance, and which
probably few except myself remember. M. de Careil, I hope, will do me
the justice to acquit me of a thought so puerile. Nobody would have
been more eager than myself to admire, in the picture he presents us,
the figures which naturally occupy the foreground; but if the eye is
forced to pause at first on some insignificant detail, it perhaps is
not a defect of taste in the spectator; may it not be a defect of
skill in the artist?


I.

These reserves made, we proceed to examine, with some care, the
changes rendered necessary, by this new and complete edition, in the
opinion previously adopted by the biographers of Leibnitz in regard to
the religious negotiation of which he was for a moment the accredited
medium, and in which we find mingled the great name of Bossuet.
Several important {436} points are much modified by the documents now
brought to light for the first time.

We learn, in the outset, that the negotiation for the union of the
Protestant communions with the Holy See was far more important than is
commonly thought, and was continued for a much longer time. The
earliest documents in relation to it published by M. de Careil date
from 1671, whilst the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet suppose
that the first overtures were made only in the year 1690, a difference
of twenty years; and it appears from these documents, hitherto
perfectly unknown, that it was precisely during those twenty years
that success came the nearest being obtained, and that the highest
influences were employed to obtain it.

During this period, from 1670 to 1690, the Catholic revival of the
seventeenth century was at its apogee, and nearly all the German
sovereigns were animated by a strong desire to effect the religious
pacification of their subjects. The wounds caused by the Thirty Years'
War were hardly closed by the peace of Westphalia, and every one felt
the mortal blow which religious dissension had struck to the Germanic
power by breaking the old unity of the empire. Beside, all eyes were
turned toward France, where religion and royalty seemed to move on
together in perfect harmony, and displayed an unequalled splendor.
France, under her young monarch, Louis XIV., was at once the object of
envy and of dread; and the re-establishment of religious unity in
Germany, torn by mutually hostile communions, seemed to the sovereign
princes the only means of resembling France, and at the same time of
resisting her power.

When, therefore, Rogas Spinola, confessor to the empress, the wife of
Leopold I., at first Bishop of Tina, afterward of Neustadt, a man of
mild temperament and sound sense, became the intermediary agent of the
general desire for peace, and after having sounded the leading
Protestant theologians, went to Rome to ascertain the extent of the
concessions to which the maternal authority of the Church could
consent, he was warmly supported not only by his own sovereign, the
emperor, but also by fourteen other reigning sovereigns of Germany,
some of them Catholic and others Protestant. Such was the strange
religious confusion in the German States that in more than one the
sovereign was Catholic and the nation Protestant, or the sovereign was
Protestant and the nation Catholic. In the former condition was the
Elector of Hanover, John Frederic of Brunswick, of whom Leibnitz was
librarian and private secretary. This prince could not fail to enter
with zeal into a plan which promised to fill up the gulf between him
and his Protestant subjects.

If the propositions of which Spinola was the bearer were warmly
supported in Germany, they were no less warmly supported at Rome. The
interest which the chief of the Church could not fail to take in the
re-establishment of Catholic unity, was greatly enhanced at the time
by the special need which that wise and prudent pontiff, Innocent XI.,
felt of creating in Europe allies for the Holy See against the
offensive pretensions of France. At Rome as in Germany Louis XIV. was
the target and the bugbear. That most Christian king, who consented to
protect the faith in his own kingdom on the condition of tacitly
subjecting it to his royal will, took strange liberties, as everybody
knows, with the common Father of the faithful. Innocent XI., almost
besieged in his palace by the arms of France, and seeing his bulls
handed over, by magistrates sitting on _fleurs de lis_, to the common
hangman to be publicly burned, was strongly tempted to seek in
converted schismatics, and in prodigal sons returning to the fold, a
support against the arrogant pretensions of the _elder_ son of the
Church. {437} Spinola, therefore, was everywhere well received. Rome
listened to him, entered into his views, even annotated the bases of
the negotiation he was charged to transmit, and for several years the
winds on both sides of the Alps blew in favor of peace.

Leibnitz, holding relations with both Spinola and the principal
Protestant doctors, serving as the medium of intercommunication
between them, and frequently taking his pen to give precision to their
respective views, was already the king-bolt of the negotiation, and
very early in its prosecution. Bossuet's name began to be mentioned.
The controversies of this great prelate with the French Protestants,
his writings, strongly marked by a doctrine at once so firm and
enlightened, and which placed Catholic truth on so broad and so solid
a foundation, were more than once used to smooth the way to reunion,
either by solving difficulties or by reconciling differences. Twice he
was even directly solicited to give his advice, and to put his own
hand to the work; but he gave vague and embarrassed answers, and
refused to accept the overtures made to him. Wherefore? Is it
necessary to think, as M. Foucher de Careil leaves it to be
understood, that the King of France viewed with an evil eye a reunion
not likely to turn to his profit, or to strengthen his influence, and
that as on other occasions the submission, a little blind, of the
subject to his sovereign, arrested with Bossuet the accomplishment, I
will not say of the duty, but of the desire of the Catholic bishop?

Such was the first phase of this remarkable negotiation, related, or
more properly exhumed, with details very curious and perfectly new.
The characters, the parts, the motives, of the various actors in the
scene are fairly set forth and analyzed by M. de Careil, and we
congratulate him on having added a new and piquant page to the
diplomatic history of the seventeenth century. A single gap, however,
very important and very easy to fill he has left, which renders his
exposition a little obscure and uncertain. We nowhere find the text of
the propositions, the instruments, to speak the language of cabinets,
which made during twenty years the bases of the negotiation. They were
in great number, M. de Careil informs us, drawn up under different
circumstances, and by different authors. The Protestant theologians
assembled at Hanover, and especially the most illustrious of them,
Gerard Molanus, abbot of Lockum, drew up, collectively or
individually, complete plans or _methods_, as they called them, of
reunion, in which they expressed at the same time their views and
their wishes, the sacrifices which they believed their communions
would consent to make, and those which they expected from Rome in
return for the re-establishment of unity. The Bishop of Neustadt, on
his part, produced several compositions of the same kind, the titles
of which, as given by M. de Careil, are, _Regulae circa Christianorum
omnium eccesiasticam reunionem--Media conciliatoria incitantia,
praestanda ad conciliationem._ And, in fine, under the name of
_Propositiones novellorum discretiorum et praecipuorum_, he himself
made a methodical abstract, in twenty-five propositions, or heads of
chapters, of the views and wishes of Protestants, a capital document,
which was discussed and corrected at Rome in a congregation of
cardinals, and sent back to Germany with an approbatory brief of His
Holiness. Leibnitz had it under his eye, and copied it with his own
hand at Vienna, carefully marking the corrections and additions made
by the Sacred College, and we understand M. Foucher de Careil to have
had personal knowledge of the copy taken by Leibnitz.

It is difficult, therefore, to explain why M. de Careil has thought it
necessary to subject our curiosity to the veritable punishment of
Tantalus by simply mentioning the existence of a document of such
great importance {438} without reproducing it. That he should believe
it his duty not to swell his volume--though the previous editors of
Leibnitz and Bossuet did it--by inserting the private lucubrations of
Protestant theologians, we can, in rigor, comprehend, but not approve.
As in almost all the letters he has published, especially those of
Molanus, these writings are discussed and commented on, it would, we
think, have much facilitated the clear understanding of the subject,
to have given at least the more important of them _in extenso._ But
after all, the reformed doctors the most accredited spoke only in
their own private names, for themselves alone, without any authority
to bind their contemporary co-religionists, and _a fortiori_ without
any authority to bind their Protestant posterity. Little imports it to
know what Molanus or any other Protestant in 1680 thought of the
points in controversy between the Church and the Reformation. But an
act of the Court of Rome, discussed in a congregation, and clothed
with the pontifical sign-manual--an official decision defining the
maximum of concessions either as to language or practice which the
Church could make to her separated children in order to bring them
back to her bosom, Protestant propositions in their origin, indeed,
but, as says M. de Careil--in a note written, I know not wherefore, in
Italian--_accommodate secundo il gusto di Roma_(modified to suit the
taste of Rome), is a document of a value very different, and yields in
historical interest only to its dogmatic importance. It would be a
document to place by the side of the most celebrated Professions of
faith, and even above them, and to present, along with the excellent
_Exposition_ by Bossuet, to all those troubled souls, so numerous in
Protestant communions, who discern the truth only through the mists of
prejudice, or misconceive it when stated to them in terms the real
sense of which has for them been distorted or perverted from their
childhood.

What Leibnitz in various places, and M. de Careil after him, show us
of the propositions submitted to Rome, increases not a little our
desire to know precisely what she replied to them. It seems from all
that is told us, that the process or method of affecting reunion
uniformly, or very nearly so, indicated by the Protestant doctors, was
to place in two distinct categories the several points of difference
which separate the Protestant communions from the Catholic Church;
then place in the first category all the questions on which agreement
may be hoped either by way of accommodation, if matters of simple
disciplinary usage, if susceptible of modification; or by way of
explanation, if points of dogmatic dispute turning on words rather
than on ideas. On all these, agreement being easy, it should be
immediately effected and proclaimed. In the second category must be
placed all disputed questions too important, or on which minds are too
embittered, to admit of their settlement by previous explanation.
These must not be treated immediately, but be left in suspense, and
reserved for discussion and final settlement in a future council.
Meanwhile the Protestant doctors, pastors, ministers, and their flocks
must be received into the Roman communion on the simple declaration
that they acknowledge the infallibility of the Church in matters of
dogma, and the promise, beforehand, that when she has freely decided
with certainty, clearness, precision, and without ambiguity or
equivocation, the several points reserved for adjudication, they will
accept her decisions and offer no resistance to her decrees.

Such was the method proposed, which Leibnitz calls by turns the method
of _mutual tolerance, abstraction, suspension,_and to which he reverts
so frequently, and on which he insists with so much complaisance,
under so many forms, and in so many different writings, that it is
hardly possible not to regard him as its inventor. In his {439} view,
this method has the merit of cutting off with a single stroke the
interminable debates in which the sixteenth century was consumed, and
of making the peace of nations no longer depend on the quibbling
spirit of theologians. We shall soon briefly examine whether this
abridgment of controversies might not have the inconvenience of
leaving out the truth, or of spurning it aside; but for the moment we
would simply remark that the method suggested or eagerly adopted by
Leibnitz involved, with him, a grave consequence, so obvious that
nobody can mistake it.

The questions proposed to be placed in the second category, or the
points of controversy too important to be treated in advance, and to
be reserved for discussion and settlement in a council to be convoked
and held after reunion, had every one of them already been examined,
one by one, discussed, and determined without appeal, in the
celebrated assembly whose fame still filled all Europe, and whose
decrees were read from the pulpits of more than half of Christendom.
During twenty-five years, athwart the intrigues of courts, the ravages
of war, and even the unchained plagues of heaven, three times
interrupted, but as often resumed, the whole cause of the Reformation,
dogmas and discipline, had been presented and argued at Trent.
Judgment was there rendered on all the counts in the indictment, and
the Reformation was henceforth _res judicata_. Consequently, to
propose to reserve and open anew for discussion, were it only the
least point of doctrine, was to forfeit the whole work of Trent, and
to declare that great assembly illegal and all its decrees vacated.
The Protestant proposition amounted, then, simply to this: Annul the
Council of Trent, and convoke a new council in which Protestants _en
masse_ will have the right to sit!

Under what form was such a proposition presented to Rome? What
impression on Rome did it make? Was there really found a Catholic
bishop to support it? Was it really discussed in a Congregation of
Cardinals? Was it really included in the list of propositions admitted
to discussion by the Papal brief whose existence is enigmatically
revealed to us? If we understand certain phrases of M. de Careil, all
these questions must be answered in the affirmative. He himself firmly
believes that this project was accepted by the Bishop of Neustadt; he
even believes that it was not discouraged at Rome; and that, the
suspension of the Council of Trent was counted among the concessions
which the bishop returned from Rome authorized to lead the
Protestants, who had charged him with their interests, to hope would
be granted.

It is certainly very embarrassing for us to question an assertion by
M. de Careil, who seems to speak with the documents before him, while
we, in the darkness in which he leaves us, can reason only from
conjecture. We can only express our deep surprise, and ask him, if he
is quite sure of having carefully read what he relates, or duly
reflected on what he asserts? What, the Court of Rome authorized a
bishop to promise Protestants, in its name, the suspension of the
Council of Trent! Rome, with a stroke of the pen, pledged herself to
permit the destruction of the work to which she had, during four
glorious pontificates, devoted the persistent perseverance which she
owed to the Holy Ghost, and all the traditional resources of her
policy--the work which, in reaffirming the immovable foundations of
the Christian faith, had at the same time drawn tighter, to the profit
of the Holy See, the loosened bonds of the hierarchy! Rome exposed
herself to see effaced, on the one hand, those dogmatic decrees in
which the magnificence of the language rivals the depth of the ideas,
and which have taken rank in the admiration of the world by the side
of the Nicaean symbol, and on the other, those canons of discipline
for which she had {440} maintained with the great Catholic powers a
persistent struggle from which nothing could divert her, no, not even
the fear of seeing France follow in the footsteps of England! And for
what this condescension? For a negotiation of doubtful success, and
the success of which, were it certain, would have restored to her
communion only Germany, leaving outside of Catholic unity the
Protestant centres of London, Geneva, and Amsterdam! Moreover, under
what form would such a concession be made? By a confidential act, by a
secret power given to an obscure agent! The Council of Trent would
have been thus disavowed in the shade by one Congregation of
Cardinals, whilst another, instituted expressly to give it vigor,
continued, as it does still at Rome itself, to comment and develop it
in public, and while at the foot of all altars the decisions of that
great council received the solemn adhesion of all those whom the
episcopal investiture raised to the rank of judges of the faith!

M. de Careil must not think us too difficult, if we hesitate to admit
on his bare word, or even on that of Leibnitz, the reality of so
strange a fact. Leibnitz was a party interested, and very deeply
interested, in the success of a project for which he had a paternal
affection, and his testimony is here too open to suspicion of at least
involuntary illusion for us to receive it as conclusive proof.
Leibnitz, beside, whatever was his intimacy with the Bishop of
Neustadt, doubtless did not know thoroughly the confidential
instructions of the plenipotentiary with whom he negotiated. The
slightest affirmation of the bishop himself would have incomparably
more weight with us, but that prelate, from whom M. de Careil
publishes several documents, so far from ever mentioning any such
engagement, takes special care, on the contrary, to avoid giving any
personal opinion of his own on any of the plans presented to him. He
takes care to remark to Leibnitz, in a special letter, that in the
whole matter he acts only as a simple reporter, guards himself from
supporting any proposition made to him, and simply promises the
Protestant theologians to labor to secure a favorable reception to any
overtures they might make consistent with Catholic principles. _Ego_,
says he, _nullibi causae susceptae agam doctorem, sed simplicem apud
utramque partem solicitatorum. . . Nihil aliud polliceor quam quod . .
ego theologicam et tam favorabilem ac principia nostra patiantur,
approbationem procurare laborabo_. Such a promise, which lends itself
indeed to everything, engages assuredly to nothing, and if it in some
measure explains the hopes which Leibnitz cherished, it is far from
sufficing to remove our doubts.

Till a contrary proof--and I mean by a contrary proof an authentic and
official document, not such or such an allusion, or _it is said_,
collected at random from a private correspondence--I shall continue
to believe that the suspension of the Council of Trent, all though
making an essential part, and constituting, as it were, the keystone
of the Protestant plan of pacification, was never conceded in
principle at Rome, probably was never entertained; that Bishop Spinola
was never authorized to treat on that basis, and that if he did not
wholly refuse to converse on that point, it was in order not to
discourage benevolent dispositions which he judged it wise to manage.
He also may have hoped that when the Protestants had taken the great
step of admitting the infallibility of Catholic authority, they would
be led easily, by means of some historical explanations, to agree that
the aid of the Holy Ghost did not fail the sessions of Trent, any more
than any of the grand assizes of the Christian Church. If I am
deceived in this negative conclusion, nothing would have been more
easy for M. de Careil than to prevent my error by a more complete
publication.

The sequel of events will show why I attach so much importance to the
{441} establishment of the truth on this point. Let us resume,
therefore, with M. de Careil the thread of the narrative. In spite of
the general desire in 1670 to effect an understanding between
Protestants and Catholics, and perhaps because of the ardor of that
desire, all parties avoided explaining themselves fully on delicate
points, and the negotiation and the _irénique_, as M. de Careil calls
it, dragged itself along and reached no result. Twenty years after it
continued still, languishing, indeed, but not abandoned. The Bishop of
Neustadt was still living, hoping, laboring, and travelling
constantly, intent on effecting peace; the Protestant doctors
continued to pile up notes upon notes, and blackened any quantity of
paper; but if in the theological world the affair remained on foot,
though not advancing, in the political world the favor which had
sustained it was singularly cooled. The spirit of resistance to the
preponderating influence of Louis XIV., more determined than ever, had
suddenly changed its course, and sought no longer its support in
Catholicity, but, on the contrary, in the most advanced party of the
Reformation, which suddenly raised up a champion of European
independence. The Protestant chief of a petty maritime republic,
elevated by a daring movement to the throne of a great monarchy--the
grandson of William the Taciturn, became master of the heritage of the
Stuarts, rallied around his standard all the hopes of national freedom
and all the animosities caused by oppression. Beside, from the fatal
edict of 1685, which brutally thrust out of France a whole peaceable
people, brought up under the shelter of the laws in the ignorance of
an hereditary error, the armies, the councils, and the large
industrial towns of all Europe became gorged with French exiles, who
united in the same execration Louis XIV. and the Church in which they
saw only the bloody image of her implacable minister. On this stormy
sea of excited passion and intense hatred the humble project of union,
which Spinola and Leibnitz had so much difficulty in keeping afloat in
calm weather, had little chance of surviving.

The princes abandoned it as no longer serving their political
interests. But other auxiliaries, however, offered themselves, endowed
with less power indeed, but hardly less brilliancy. These were no
other than great ladies, delighting in the commerce of the learned,
and retaining in their convents or the interior paths of piety the
habits of a cultivated education, and sometimes pretensions to
political ability. In the seventeenth century, especially in France
after the Fronde, it is well known that theology often became the
refuge of those high-born beauties whom scruples or repentance kept
aloof from the pleasures of the court, whilst the jealous despotism of
the sovereign would no longer permit them to make a figure on the
theatre of public affairs. Several of these elegant, noble, and even
royal lady-theologians were attracted by the report of the negotiation
in which Leibnitz took part, and perhaps by the renown of that
negotiator himself, and in the hope either of aiding in dressing the
wounds of Europe, or at least of securing so precious a conquest in
the net of faith, opened communications and displayed in their
correspondence with him those severe graces of which their piety had
not despoiled them. The Abbess of Maubuisson; Louise Hollandine,
sister of the palatiness, Anne of Gonzaga; that celebrated princess
herself; the sprightly Madame de Brinon, for a long time the confidant
of Madame de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr, but whose enterprising spirit
could not be anywhere contented with a subordinate part; in fine, the
queen of the _Précieuses_, Mademoiselle Scudéry, who neglected no
opportunity of shining in an epistolary correspondence, and who was by
no means sorry to show that her merit could surpass the limits of the
Carte de him, such are the {442} unexpected figures which M. de Careil
makes pass before us, and in painting them he borrows some colors from
the palette of the great philosopher of our days, M. Cousin, who has
devoted himself to the good fame of the ladies of the seventeenth
century. In the train of the ladies appear the literary gentlemen of
their society, accustomed to make with them, in courteous jousts, the
assaults of wit. As the friend of Madame de Brinon, for instance, we
see intervene the historian of the French Academy, the best pen of the
royal cabinet, the celebrated Pellisson. All these epistles, very
numerous, in which the variety of tone relieves the monotony of
subject, form the most agreeable part of the new publication--too
agreeable, indeed, for seriousness is sadly wanting, and more still in
Leibnitz himself than in his graceful correspondents. A tone of subtle
badinage, a mistimed display of literary and philosophical erudition,
the pleasure of discussing without care to conclude, are, unhappily,
but too apparent in everything that emanates from his pen during this
second period. We might say that he took pleasure in prolonging a
situation which procured him advances so flattering, and in which,
without pledging himself to any one, he could let himself be lulled by
sweet compliments from the most beautiful mouths in the world.

However that might be, this slumber, sustained by such sweet words,
was all at once rudely broken. Madame de Brinon, the most active brain
of the feminine congress, seeing that after all they talked much and
said nothing, and that, by a supple and undulating argumentation,
Leibnitz always escaped at the decisive moment, and retarded more than
he advanced a solution, formed the project of calling to her aid a
more vigorous athlete, who could grapple with him body to body. She
addressed herself to Bossuet, and this time the Bishop of Meaux found
more leisure and more freedom of action. The political situation had
changed. Coming out from that cold distrust in which he intrenched
himself in the beginning, he requested to have communicated to him the
documents of the negotiation, especially the writings of Molanus, and
made it his duty to give his own views of the matter. The entrance of
this great man upon the scene, a long time announced, a long time
expected, and who appeared, as in certain tragedies, as the hero of
the third act, has, in M. de Careil's publication, all the effect of a
theatrical surprise.

No sooner, in fact, has he opened his mouth, than a puff of his stiff,
strong speech tumbles down the frail scaffolding on which Leibnitz had
placed his hopes of the peace of Christendom. Placing his finger at
once on the weak spot in the system, he has no difficulty in showing
that, however disguised, the real proposition returns always to the
demand that the Church shall suffer to be called in question points
already adjudicated, and tolerate doubt where she has already defined
the faith. Now, if such condescension is possible in the order of
human decrees, which, providing for local and transitory interests,
may and ought to yield to differences of time and place, it would be
absurd to suppose it possible in the order of eternal truths,
proclaimed by an authority conceded to be infallible. Infallibility
carries with it immutability as a necessary consequence. The mirror of
an unalterable truth can reflect only a single image; the echo can
repeat only a single sound. Comment, explain, as much as you please,
clothe the old faith with new forms if you will, smooth the paths
which conduct to it by removing all offensive terms which are a
stumbling-block to the weak, save self-love the humiliation of a
position disavowed by treating error as a misunderstanding which is
now enlightened, even charity exacts in this respect all that dignity
permits; but to alter, attenuate, or {443} merely to debate the truth
transmitted can in no sense be permitted without killing with the same
blow both the Church and the truth, without either denying the truth
or that the Church has always been its interpreter.

Such was the reasoning, perfectly simple, and the principle of the
infallibility of the Church once admitted, unanswerable, which Bossuet
with his well known majesty, and from the height of his episcopal
dignity, urged in reply to the method supported by Leibnitz. Was
Leibnitz taken by surprise? Had he seriously thought of becoming a
Catholic without submitting in the process to this consequence? Such a
defect of logic in a rival of Newton is not supposable. But he was
neither accustomed to be treated so loftily, nor in a humor to march
so directly to the point. A cry of astonishment and despite
involuntarily escaped him, sharp complaints of _the haughtiness of M.
de Meaux, of the tone of superiority which eloquence and authority
give to great men,_and bitter denunciations of the exclusive spirit
and obstinacy of theologians, betray this sentiment, very natural, and
as it would seem even in some measure contagious, for M. de Careil,
now and then making himself one with his hero, suffers himself to be
gained by it. All good Catholic as he would be, he himself also in his
two introductions regrets that the conciliating spirit and eclectic
methods of Leibnitz were not accepted. Conciliation is an excellent
thing, and pleases me much, some say, pleases me too much, and I have
been more than once accused of carrying in religious matters my love
for it a little too far; but there are limits fixed in the very nature
of things, and which a little common sense will always, I hope,
prevent me from transgressing. Who says _Church_, says permanence in
the truths of faith; and who says _Catholics_, says a union of men who
think alike of those truths. Now what, stripped of all ambiguity of
language, would have been the practical effect of the proposition of
Leibnitz, if it had been carried into execution? The points of
doctrine (and what points! the most important not only for faith but
also for reason, affecting the basis as the supreme destiny of the
soul) touching the accord of grace and free will, the conditions of
eternal salvation, the mysterious operations of the sacraments, taught
in the Christian pulpit from the very cradle of Christian antiquity,
and for more than a hundred years clothed in new and more precise
forms, would have been at a single dash erased from the catechism and
suspended in doubt till the uncertain action of a future council! The
Church would have suffered an interrogation point to be placed
indefinitely before affirmations which she had only the day before
imposed on the faithful under sanction of an anathema! Meanwhile, the
faithful, divided on the very foundations of their belief, would have
met before the same altar to repeat the same prayers while
understanding them in contradictory senses, and to receive the same
sacraments while holding entirely different views of their value and
efficacy! What in this strange _interim_ would have become of the
dignity and stability of Catholic doctrine? And what were the utility
of an external and nominal union which could only cover a real
internal difference?

To sustain himself, if not his firm and piercing genius, in an
illusion which held him captive and would not relax its grasp,
Leibnitz had two, only two, arguments in his repertory; but he had the
art to make them take so many different forms, and to make with these
two arms so many passes and counter-passes of logic and erudition,
that more than an entire volume is taken up by M. de Careil with the
writings which contain them, and which may be read even now without
other fatigue than that produced by their continual dazzle. Faithful
to our task of reporter, we must strip these two arguments of the
brilliant garments with which his luxurious {444} eloquence adorns
them. Divested of their flesh, so to speak, stripped naked, and
subjected to the treatment to which the scholastics subject all
arguments to ascertain their value, these two arguments are very
simple and easily comprehended. In the first place, they consist in
denying the antiquity, and therefore the authority, of the Council of
Trent. Leibnitz in this respect only repeats the allegations of all
Protestant doctors, and which were old even in his time. The number of
prelates present at that assembly was relatively small, and were taken
almost exclusively from the churches of Spain and Italy, and as
several Catholic sovereigns refused to publish the council in their
respective states, because some of its disciplinary canons appeared to
strike at their temporal rights, there had been no opportunity to heal
its original defect by the assent of the Church dispersed.

In the second place, granting that the Council of Trent had the
character and authority which are questioned, it was in good faith and
in the sincerity of their hearts that Protestants refused to
acknowledge them. They in whose names Leibnitz was charged to
negotiate gave manifest proofs of that good faith in adhering
beforehand to the decision of a future council, and consequently in
rendering full homage to the principle of ecclesiastical authority.
Now error, if sincere, is not heresy, and has only its appearance. It
is only voluntary, deliberate, and obstinate rebellion that makes the
heretic. A man who submits in advance to the authority of truth, and
waits only a knowledge of it to arrange himself under its banner,
counts from that moment among those to whom the Church may open her
maternal bosom.

These few sentences embrace--every attentive reader will be convinced
of it--the substance of the whole argumentation, extended by Leibnitz,
enriched and enlivened by a thousand piquant expressions, through many
years, in a series of more than a hundred letters. It needs fewer
words still, after Bossuet, to expose in its poverty and nakedness the
ground-work concealed by the richness and splendor of the ornaments.

What mattered it, in reality, to examine whether the Council of Trent
in its origin or at any moment of its duration had united a full
representation of the universal Church? To what good to seek if it had
received in its text and in every part official promulgation by the
political power in each sovereign state? One fact was certain, and
that was enough. At the time when Leibnitz was writing, the doctrine
defined by the Fathers of Trent on all the points controverted between
Catholics and Protestants was, without a single exception, the law in
all the churches of the Catholic world. From the basilica of Michael
Angelo to the humblest village church, under the purple as under the
serge soutane, every pontiff, every cardinal, every bishop, every
parish priest, in the confessional as in the pulpit, scrupulously
conformed to its language. If the consent of the Church is not
recognizable by such signs, by what signs could it be recognized? Only
they whom Trent condemned persisted in withholding their adhesion to
its decrees. But Arius protested also against Nicaea, and it has never
depended on a few voices raised by spite or chagrin to disturb the
harmony of symbols with which the concert of nations makes resound the
vaults of the universal Church.

What, again, avails it to allege the good faith, the involuntary
ignorance, of Protestants in resisting the Council of Trent? That good
faith, if real, may excuse them in the eyes of God, who reads the
heart; it opens not the doors of the visible Church, which can admit
to her external communion only those who make an explicit profession
of her doctrine. Where, in fact, should we be, what chimera would be
the authority of the {445} Church, and in what smoke would vanish the
obedience of the faithful, if every man could at pleasure retrench
this or that article from the _Credo_, under the pretext that he could
not in his conscience recognize in it the marks of divine revelation?
Certainly it is obstinacy in error that makes the heretic, for a just
God can punish only the adhesion of the will to error. So in that
terrible and solemn day which will rend the veil which covers the
inmost human conscience, not only of those in separated Christian
communions, but even those in the darkness of paganism and idolatry,
many souls may be discovered who for their constant fidelity to the
feeble gleams of light vouchsafed them, will have deserved to have
applied to them the merits of the sacrifice of the Son of God. More
than one Queen of Saba will come up from the desert to accuse the
children of Abraham of a want of faith, and in that supreme moment the
Church will recognize more than one

  "Enfant qu'en sol sein elle n'a point porté."
  (Child which she has not brought forth.)

But it is given to no one to anticipate that hour of mystery and
revelation, and so long as here below, and knowing one another only by
words and external acts, it is, by our beliefs that we must, at least
externally, as to the body, if not to the soul, separate ourselves.
Sole certain guide to salvation, sole confidant of the mysteries of
grace, the Church damns not in advance all those whom she excludes,
any more than she saves all those whom she admits; but she can
relinquish to nobody a single one of the articles of faith, nor
knowingly allow a single farthing to be subtracted from the deposit
confided to her keeping.

Against these two fixed points, imperturbably sustained by the hand of
Bossuet, the inexhaustible dialectics of Leibnitz, always repulsed,
ever returning anew to the charge, beats and breaks, without
relaxation, precisely as the waves of the ocean against the rock. The
contrast between the flexibility of one of the adversaries and the
immobility of the other is about all the interest that, in the midst
of continual repetitions, is offered by this interminable debate. We
subjoin, however, to conclude our analysis, the recital of two
inventions of doubtful loyalty imagined by Leibnitz to give the change
to his adversary, and which out of respect for the memory of so great
a man we will call not artifices, but with M. Foucher de Careil simply
expedients.

The first consisted in passing over the head of Bossuet, in order to
crush him with the heavy hand of his sovereign, Louis XIV.

Europe knew, or at least believed that it knew, both Bossuet and Louis
XIV. It knew that the one suffered from temperament, and the other
from principle, hardly any limit to the royal authority. The
susceptibility of the monarch and the conscience of the subject being
of one accord, Leibnitz thought that by disquieting the monarch he
could easily bring the subject to reason. So in a note, ably and
skilfully drawn up, addressed to the Duke of Brunswick, who was to
send it to the French king, he represented that the work of peace at
the point reached was arrested by an obstacle in reality more
political than religious; that the Council of Trent, which was the
real stumbling-block, interested Rome in her struggle with the
temporal powers far more than in her controversies with heresy. Hence
an intervention of the royal authority to remove that obstacle, so far
from being an invasion of the domain of faith, would be only a very
proper act defensive of the legitimate attributes of the temporal
authority, only a continuation and a consequence of the struggle
against ultramontane pretensions instituted and sustained by all the
parliaments of France, and for the clergy something like a
supplementary article to the declaration of 1682. Let the king make
felt in this languishing {446} negotiation that hand which nothing in
Europe can resist. Let him pronounce one of those sovereign words
which have so often fetched an echo even in the sanctuary, or let him
simply join to the theologians and bishops, too submissive by their
quality to the spiritual authority, an ordinary representative of the
regalian rights--a lawyer, a statesman, or a magistrate, and all will
speedily return to order, and march rapidly toward a solution.
Numerous adulations of the wisdom of the king, and even of his
theological knowledge, followed by honeyed insinuations against the
Bishop of Meaux, terminate this singular appeal to the secular arm,
the discovery of which will hardly count among the titles to glory of
philosophy, and which, moreover, was no more successful than
estimable.

The king, old, weary of those religious discussions which were the
plague of his reign, and even to his last days the chastisement of his
intolerable despotism, communicated the note to Bossuet without
comment, perhaps even without having paid it the least attention.
Bossuet, strong in the solidity of his arguments, declared himself
perfectly willing to receive such lay associate as should be chosen,
and Leibnitz, having no reason after that to desire what Bossuet so
little dreaded, the proposition fell through, and left no trace.

The other snare was not less adroit, but more innocent. In his
attachment to his favorite plan, Leibnitz could not persuade himself
that it could possibly be resisted by any reasons drawn from
conscience alone. The party taken, the point of honor, scholastic
obstinacy, were, it seemed to him, the principal reasons for rejecting
his plan. It was with Catholics a matter of vanity not to yield to
demands made by Protestants. But what they refused from the hand of a
stranger, they would, perhaps, accept more willingly from the hand of
a friend, a member of their own communion. A pious fraud would relieve
the plan of all suspicion of heresy. A consultation, for example, of a
supposed Catholic doctor, who should show himself favorable to it,
would, perhaps, be all that was required to disarm prejudice, and the
flag would pass the merchandise. The great philosopher, therefore, set
himself at work. Assuming the paternal tone and authoritative air of a
Catholic priest, taking care that no expression smacking of heresy
should escape his lips, playing a part, so to say, with all the
gravity in the world, and, without a single smile, produced in eight
or ten pages that little document which he entitled _Judicium Doctoris
Catholici_, and which, proceeding from principles in appearance the
most Catholic, and advancing in ways the most orthodox, arrived at the
foot of the Council of Trent itself, to mine in silence its very
foundation. If M. de Careil had not this time conscientiously printed
the entire text of this discovery, we should find it very hard to
believe that a mind so great could descend to such a puerile game, and
of which we seek in vain the fruit he evidently hoped. With whom,
then, did Leibnitz imagine he had to do? Do people disguise their
ideas, as they counterfeit their voices? Is the Church a citadel so
poorly guarded that one can enter it by stratagem, by simply turning
his cockade or dissembling his uniform? Took he Bossuet for an
imbecile sentinel who could be imposed upon by passports so evidently
forged?

For the honor of Leibnitz and of philosophy we would pass over in
silence this crotchet of misplaced gaiety, if M. de Careil did not
force us to pause on it for a moment longer before including, by
attaching to it an undue importance, by pretending to see in it the
solution of a literary problem, which we formerly made a subject of
some observations. A few words will dispose of this incident, which
beside is not wholly foreign to the principal object of our present
reflections.

{447}

Beyond the controversy with Bossuet, which, during the lifetime of
Leibnitz, made, in fact, very little noise, and the partial
publication of which was already ancient, there exists, as is known,
wholly in the handwriting of that great man, a small work on religious
questions, which remained unknown up to his death and even for a long
time after, and which was discovered and published only at the
beginning of the present century. When this little work, baptized, I
know not by whom, _Systema Theologicum_, for the first time saw the
light, it was perceived, not without surprise, that on all the points,
even those on which in his known writings Leibnitz was the furthest
removed from the doctrines of the Church, his conclusions conformed to
the purest Catholic teaching. From that arose a great discussion among
the learned, all astonished, some agreeably, some disagreeably, to
find in Leibnitz this posthumous and unexpected evidence of orthodoxy.
Commentaries, conjectures, explanations, were called forth in
abundance, often ingenious, but rarely impartial, each writer
interpreting the tract after his own manner--Protestants anxious to
keep Leibnitz in their ranks, and Catholics intent on conquering him
for theirs. I myself hazarded some conjectures on the subject, but
timidly, as was proper on such a matter, and without much expectation
of making them prevail, the first to acknowledge their insufficiency,
and persuaded that the existence of the _Systema Theologicum_, like
the birth-place of Homer, and the name of the author of the
_Imitatione Christi_, would remain a sort of biblical quadrature of
the circle, destined to supply for ever to the learned a subject of
discussion, and to students a thesis.

If we believe M. de Careil, the mystery is now unveiled; the new
discovery explains the old; the _Judicium Doctoris Catholici_ is the
key to the _Systema Theologicum_, of which it is substantially only a
rough sketch, and the first edition. In the one as in the other,
Catholicity is only a borrowed vestment, momentarily worn by Leibnitz
to disguise his uniform of a negotiator. It was a _ruse_ not of war
but of diplomacy. On the plan of pacification the success of which he
was bent on securing, Leibnitz, in order to beguile the malevolent, by
a premeditated design impressed pressed on it the Catholic seal
instead of the Protestant stamp. He was no more a Catholic when he
wrote the _Systema Theologicum_ than he was when he prepared, to
deceive the vigilant eye of Bossuet, the _Judicium Doctoris
Catholici_; he only wished to appear one in order to secure a full
hearing for the conditions on which he could become a Catholic.
[Footnote 67]

  [Footnote 67: A similar view, in some respects, to this is taken and
  urged with much plausibility by Dr. Guhrauer In his German work
  which formed the basis of J. M. Mackie's "Life of Godfrey William
  von Leibnitz," published at Boston by Gould, Kendall & Lincoln,
  1845; and the refutation of it, indirectly given by the Prince de
  Broglie in the text, is by no means unwelcome.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

The natural consequence of such a supposition has been for M. de
Careil to make the _Systema Theologicum_ figure by the side of the
_Judicium Doctoris,_at such a date as he judged the most convenient,
for example, among the documents of the negotiation of which he was
drawing up a statement (_procès verbal_). But since one of these
documents was, in his view, only the detailed reproduction of the
other, it seems to us he should have placed them in face of each
other, so as to facilitate their comparison. We regret that he has not
so placed them, for we are convinced that even he himself, in
re-reading them in connection for the press, would have had no
difficulty in perceiving that the assimilation imagined has not the
least foundation in fact. Although signed by the same hand, the two
documents, which he would confound, do not in any manner whatever bear
witness to the same state of mind, or to having been both designed to
aid a common object. Everything in them differs, not merely in tone,
which in one is {448} grave and full of emotion, subtle and light in
the other, but, above all, in the plan and very substance of the
argument. The _Judicium_ is a series of arguments, very brief, which
tend directly to a foregone conclusion, namely, the pacification of
the schism, and as the means of effecting it, the suspension of the
Council of Trent. Not an idea, not a word, that does not tend directly
to this conclusion, nor the slightest effort to dissemble it. It is a
skilful, but adroit pleading against the Council of Trent. The
_Systema_, on the contrary, is a detailed exposition, often eloquent,
of the entire Catholic faith, point by point, dogma after dogma, of
those which Protestants reject as well as of those which they admit
with the Church. And what authority does this dogmatic exposition
appeal to as its support? The oftenest is to the Council of Trent
itself, openly invoked, on the ground that the voice of the universal
Church is the invariable rule of faith. The Council of Trent in every
line is called holy, venerable, and sometimes even _the Council_, by
way of eminence. After this, what place would M. de Careil give to
this writing in a negotiation, the precise object of which was to
efface that council from the memory of the faithful, and the annals of
the Church? A singular pleasure assuredly Leibnitz must have found in
belying himself, in playing a ridiculous farce, and of doubtful
morality, only to end in yielding to his opponent the ground disputed
between them!

Till M. de Careil responds to this difficulty, to which we had
previously invited his attention, we must continue to guard ourselves
against confounding works so dissimilar in their tone, design, and
substance as the _Judicium_ and the _Systema_, and continue also to
see in the one only a pastime without value, which ought not to have
occupied even the waste moments of a great man, and still less cause
the loss of that time so well filled by his editor; and in the other,
on the contrary, the expression of a sincere conviction, very proper
to throw light on the nature of the beliefs of the soul that conceived
it. It is of the state of that soul, and of those beliefs, that it
remains for us to say a few words, by attempting to enlighten the
confused impressions produced by the voluminous papers of which we
have just finished the analysis.



II.

Three things, I think, must have struck those who have had the
patience to follow me in this long exposition: 1. The singularly
narrow ground on which Leibnitz consented to place the negotiation; 2.
This perseverance in pursuing it; 3. This resistance to bringing it to
a conclusion. Cantoned in very narrow quarters, he maintained himself
there with obstinacy, reanimating the combat whenever it slackened,
but escaping from every solution whenever it approached.

They, for example, who, attracted by the antithesis of the two great
names, should imagine that they were about to hear debated between the
last of the Fathers and the ancestor of modern philosophy the great
question everywhere agitated in the sixteenth century, and on which
the future of society depends--they who should expect to see a mortal
struggle in the listed field between a champion of free inquiry and a
representative of authority, would, I fear, be greatly disappointed.
Not a word of the mutual relations of faith and reason, of the rights
of private judgment, or of the principle of authority, is, I think,
met with in the whole twelve hundred pages comprised in these two
volumes; and for the very simple reason, that the terms to which the
discussion was restricted raised no question of the sort between the
two opponents. Faithful to the constant traditions of the Church, and
imbued with the rules of the Cartesian method, Bossuet contested none
of the prerogatives of {449} reason in the order of our natural
powers; Christian by profession, Leibnitz recognized in faith the
right to reveal and to impose on man knowledge superior to
nature--pretending to become and even to be a Catholic _in potentia_
and _in voto_, Leibnitz declared himself ready to seek the rule of
faith, not in the mute text of a book, but in the living voice of an
organized Church, and this Church he distinctly acknowledged to be in
the hierarchy of pastors whose head is the Roman Pontiff. Consequently
there was and could be no debate either on the existence or the
composition, the mode of action or the seat, of the ecclesiastical
authority. There was between them only a simple and humble question of
fact--of history. Certainly the Church has the plenary right to be
heard and obeyed when she speaks; but did she speak in the Council of
Trent? The contest Leibnitz sustained went no further than this, and
rose no higher. Persons in our day, curious in theology and
metaphysics, those who take an interest in reconciling free will with
grace, or the foreknowledge of God, those who like to carry either the
torch of dogma or the scalpel of analysis into the very depths of the
soul, will find very little satisfaction in reading them. None of the
psychological or moral problems raised by the Reformation, and with
which it had troubled men's minds, and filled the schools with the
_serf_-will of Luther, nor the foreordination of Calvin, nor the
subtle distinctions in regard to the intrinsic nature of moral evil
and the effects of original sin, obtained from Leibnitz, from first to
last, even so much as a simple allusion. On the concurrence of the
divine action and that of the human will in the work of moral progress
and the hope of eternal salvation, he thought and spoke as the Church.
His criticisms affect the form of the Council of Trent rather than the
substance of its decisions. It is the competency of the court to which
he pleads, rather than its decrees. Aside from the canon of the
Scriptures, which, for the Old Testament, he would restrict to the
Hebrew books properly so-called, and exclude therefrom the books in
Greek transmitted only by the Septuagint, I am aware of no dogmatic
point, defined at Trent, which creates with him any serious
difficulty. And even on this subject of the canonicity of the sacred
books, he has nothing that resembles that audacious criticism to which
Richard Simon, in the seventeenth century, opened the way, and which,
a very few years after, all Germany was to rush into and level and
broaden. It was not the criticism of our days, which pretends to an
imprescriptible right over the entire text of the Scriptures, and to
serve as the ground of all certainty, moral and philosophical. The
criticism of Leibnitz takes not such lofty airs. It is restricted to
some accessory parts of the Old Testament, and presumes not to go
beyond. And when Bossuet, adopting a method familiar to logicians
(though not always prudently employed), would push it to the extreme,
to absurdity even, and prove that its principles logically carried out
would ruin entirely the Holy Scriptures, Leibnitz recoils, frightened
at the last word of his own logic.

Leibnitz, having never been accused of a narrow or timid mind, of any
lack of boldness in his principles or of force in deducing from them
their logical consequences, it is necessary to believe that if he
avoided the debate between the Reformation and the Church under its
grander aspects, it was solely because he was separated from Catholic
beliefs only by the narrow trench which he himself has traced, and
because his own Protestantism, so to speak, was neither longer nor
broader. Certainly he can be very little of a Protestant who
acknowledges all the councils _less_ one alone, and even all the
decrees of that one save a single exception--who speaks as a Catholic
of the Church, of tradition, of the priesthood, and of the sacraments.
That to these sentiments, so near to those of a Catholic, {450}
Leibnitz joined the sincere desire to take the final step; that,
having reached the threshold, he was strongly pressed to cross it, we
must believe, in order not only not to throw doubt on his often
repeated protestations, which have every appearance of being made in
good faith, but to account for his perseverance, meritoriously
displayed on more than one occasion to sustain or revive, against all
hope, the flickering flame of the languishing negotiation. Neither the
growing coldness of the powers of the earth, who after having started
it abandoned it midway, nor the haughtiness of Bossuet, a little
contemptuous, which exposed without any mercy the vanity of his
projects, succeeded in discouraging him. He was proof against all
disgusts; he knocked at every door, and the crooked methods he adopted
to open or turn them, not according to the rules of loyal warfare,
attest at least an ardent desire to enter the place. Yet, in spite of
this agreement on principles, this heartfelt desire for union, and the
feeble distance which remained for him to traverse to become a
Catholic, Leibnitz never in his life traversed it. The end of the
discussion found him just where he was at its beginning, always
debating, never advancing. When the reasoning of Bossuet became urgent
and victorious (and it will be admitted that with the choice of
ground, and the advantages conceded him, one needs not to be a Bossuet
to conquer)--whenever it took a turn _ad hominem_, and passed from the
general interests of Protestantism to the particular duties of
individual conscience--whenever the question was no longer of
concluding a treaty of peace between two hostile powers, but of
articulating the submission of a believer, Leibnitz drew back, and
escaped. The tone becomes sharp and sour, recriminations are mingled
with reasoning, subterfuges retract the concessions. Broad and easy in
regard to principles, he haggles at consequences. What are we to think
of that alternation, of those constant advances followed by as
constant retreats? What was the after-thought back of the exterior
motives of that intermittent resistance? For no one can be persuaded
that a man of a serious character, and a mind which stops not at
trifles, admitting in the outset the necessity and the right of an
infallible authority in matters of faith, could remain a Protestant,
that is, a rebel to that acknowledged authority, because the bishops,
united at Trent, admitted _Ecclesiasticus_ and _Macchabees_ into the
canon of the Scriptures.

The moral problem being curious and complex, every one has a right to
offer his own solution. I formerly, in this periodical, offered mine,
and I shall hold to it till a better and a more satisfactory solution
is discovered. In my judgment, all is explained, if we suppose that
Leibnitz became a Catholic in intellect and by study, yet remained a
Protestant by force of habit, interest, and self-love. The first part
is not even a supposition, but a fact. For, waiving the disputed value
of the _Systema Theologicum_, the documents which we have before us
contain alone avowals amply sufficient to prove it. When one admits
the concurrence of free will and the divine will in the work of
salvation, the mysterious virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, the
transubstantiation of the elements in the eucharist--when one
recognizes the sacred character of the priesthood, the Primacy by
divine right of the bishops of Rome, and, above all, the infallibility
of the Church (and Leibnitz accords all this to Bossuet, always by
implication, and often under the form of explicit concession), one is
willingly or unwillingly a Catholic, or at least has lost all right
not to be one. In such a case the defect is in the will, not the
intellect. Let nothing be said here of invincible ignorance, for never
was there ignorance more vincible, more completely conquered,
subjected, drowned in floods of light, than in the case of Leibnitz.

{451}

Remains, then, only the second part of the hypothesis, which I confess
is less clearly demonstrated, as well as less charitable; but it
perfectly meets the facts in the case, and perhaps, when the first
part is once conceded, it, better than any other explanation, saves
the dignity and loyalty of Leibnitz.

If it was true, as we hold, that Leibnitz, agreeing with the Church in
all the fundamental principles of the Catholic faith, was retained
outside of her communion by the fear of losing the high position which
he had gained in the ranks of Protestants and with their princes,
nothing more simple than that, to satisfy at the same time his
conscience and his interests, he should labor earnestly and
perseveringly to effect a reconciliation of his party and his
protectors with the Church. If it was true that he felt himself bound
by strong and respectable ties which attach men to the monuments, and
to the forms of worship, which received their first vows and dictated
their first prayers, it is very natural that he should hesitate to go
alone, to take his seat in churches unknown to his childhood, and that
he should, instead, seek at first to reconstruct the broken down
altars of the temples of the middle ages which had seen his birth. If
finally the _proud weakness_ attached to the royalty of science as to
every other royalty, made him dread to change the part of an
accredited doctor of one party for that of a penitent and neophyte of
another, who can be astonished that, to spare himself the painful
transition, he should wish to pass out with arms, baggage, and all the
honors of war, instead of submitting to conditions, and enter into the
Church with head erect, followed by a retinue of nations, and have
therefore a right to as much gratitude as he gave of submission?

The persistence of Leibnitz in a forlorn negotiation finds in this at
least a probable explanation. His insistence on points of little
importance is less easy to understand. These points, of which he knew
well what to think, are those without which, according to his
knowledge of the Protestant courts and schools, no peace was possible
either to be concluded or even proposed. He knew how completely and
irrevocably Protestant princes and doctors were pledged by their word
and their self-love (_amour-propre_) against the Council of Trent,
from which they fancied they had been unjustly excluded. Many of them
were on the point of reaching by their own reason and study dogmatic
conclusions analogous to those of Trent; but the date and seal of that
council affixed to any formulary presented for their signature made
them instinctively recoil. It was in their name much more than in his
own, or rather to manage their pretensions much more than to
tranquillize his own conscience, as he allows us in more than one
place to perceive, that he insisted with invincible obstinacy that
this obstacle to peace must be removed. He acted as a negotiator who
follows his instructions and speaks for others, much more than as a
doctor who decides, or a philosopher who discusses, on his own
account. In the new council whose convocation he called for, he
thought all low in himself, the dogmas of Trent, after an apparent
discussion, would be re-established on the more solid basis of a more
general agreement, and not having that quick sense of the dignity of
the Church which belongs only to her children, he felt no repugnance
to the adoption of expedients borrowed from political prudence, and
wholly out of place in the Church of God.

Thus may be resolved, it seems to me, in the most simple manner in the
world, the apparent contradictions in the conduct of Leibnitz, and be
discovered the secret of his obstinacy in protracting a fruitless
discussion, instead of either candidly breaking it off or boldly
bringing it to its logical conclusion. He had postponed the day of his
personal conversion to the day constantly hoped, constantly announced
as near, of a general reconciliation. {452} It would have cost him too
much to move before that day came; but it cost him hardly less to own
to himself that come it would not. Hence, with him, a prolonged state
of indecision, which, as human life is short, and death always takes
us by surprise, had naturally no termination but that of his life
itself. We in this have, I think, explained that other problem
presented by the _Systema Theologicum_. If we have rightly seized his
state of mind, nothing was more natural than that we should find among
the papers of Leibnitz a profession of Catholic faith, and there can
be nothing astonishing in the fact that it remained unfinished and
unpublished. From the moment in which the doctrines contained in that
tract became his real belief, it was very natural that he should
reduce them to writing, and, from the moment when he had subjected the
publication of his conversion to a condition always hoped for, but
never realized, it was more natural still that he should keep the
writing by him as the witness of the fact of his conversion. At what
point of his life, therefore, did he confide to paper the interior
state of his mind? It is impossible, but at the same time wholly
unimportant, to determine. Probably it was in one of those moments of
sincerity and recollection in which the soul, detaching herself from
all worldly considerations, places herself face to face with the
problems of her eternal destiny; or, indeed, may have been at a time
when, in the vein of hope, and believing that he was on the eve of
concluding ecclesiastical peace, he wished to draw up before-hand, in
readiness for the event, its manifesto and programme. Little imports
it. As soon as he thought as a Catholic, there were a thousand
circumstances in his life in which he must have spoken and written as
he thought. The moment in which he would have expressed himself with
the least frankness was most likely that in which, being made the
plenipotentiary of the Protestants, and charged to treat for them, he
felt it his duty to put forth in their name pretensions to which in
his own heart he attached no importance. Leibnitz the negotiator must
necessarily have been more difficult, and set a higher price on his
submission, than Leibnitz the philosopher, so that, in opposition to
the assertion of M. de Careil, his sincere work would be the _Systema
Theologicum:_ his diplomatic work would be the correspondence of which
we have made the analysis.

The advantage of Bossuet in the debate is that in his case no such
questions can be raised, and no such subtle distinctions be called
for. Bossuet the bishop and Bossuet the diplomatist are one and the
same person, and speak one and the same language. Knowing perfectly
whence he starts, whither he can go, what he is permitted to abandon,
and what he must hold fast; very liberal in the part which he gives to
reason, very precise in what he asserts in the name of authority;
marking with a steady hand the limits of what can be changed in the
Church, and what is as immutable as she herself, he has no occasion,
when he has once laid down his principles, to withdraw any concession,
or to shrink from any logical consequence; possessing an erudition
less varied, an argumentative ability less flexible than that of
Leibnitz, Bossuet, in his letters, carries the day by his rectitude
and precision. We say, however, and without wrong to the great
prelate, that his cause was too nearly gained in advance. All the
principles are conceded him in the outset, and the slightest logical
pressure suffices to force out the necessary conclusions. Leibnitz
found at times his hand heavy, and complained of it; but he himself
armed that powerful hand with the instrument which it set at work,
without management indeed, but also without forcing its action.

This privileged situation, which gives to Bossuet his preponderance in
the struggle, takes, however, from that struggle a large part of the
interest which otherwise it might have had for {453} us, and deprives
us of the instruction that might have been derived from it. We
assuredly have little chance of seeing pitted against each other
combatants of their stature, and less still, if it be possible, of
seeing a debate carried on under like conditions. There is no longer a
Bossuet in the Church; but still less, perhaps, are there Protestants
and philosophers who, like Leibnitz, recognize infallibility in
principle, and the inspiration of three-fourths of the canon of
Scripture. That kind of enemies is gone, and left no heirs. Those whom
we now encounter make to our forces a less stiff resistance. The very
image and shadow of authority have disappeared from the Protestantism
of our age, each day more and more dissipated in the thousand shades
of private judgment. With unbounded free inquiry and unbridled
criticism, controversy can no longer find a starting-point in any
dogma or in any text, and, in fact, has ceased to be possible. The
enemy escapes by the want of a body to be grappled with. Happily,
another sort of combat can be waged, another sort of victory be hoped
for. Doctrines, remote from one another, to be disputed in their
principles, may still be compared in their effects. It is henceforth
by their respective fruits, rather than by arguments, by their
respective action on society and on souls, that, before an uncertain
public, must be judged the principle of authority in matters of faith
and that of private judgment. On this new soil, as on that of pure
intelligence, God permits the efforts of man to concur in the triumph
of his cause. If he wills, then, for the honor of his Church, to raise
up Bossuets to take his cause in hand, there ought to be, for the
honor of her nature, Leibnitzes to meet them, and measure themselves
with them.

PRINCE ALBERT DE BROGLIE.

--------

From The Month.


SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.


1. Abbot Antony said: I saw the nets of the enemy lying spread out
over the earth; and I cried out, "Alas, who shall escape these?" And a
voice answered, "Humility."


2. It is told of Blessed Arsenius, that on Saturday evening he turned
his back on the setting sun, and, stretching out his arms toward
heaven, did not cease to pray till the sun rose before his face in the
morning.



3. Abbot Agatho was zealous to fulfil every duty.

If he crossed a ferry, he was the first to take an oar.

If he had a visit from his brethren, his hand was first, after prayer,
to set out the table.

For he was full of divine love.


4. The novice of Abbot Sisoi often had to say to him, "Rise, father;
let us eat." He used to make answer, "Are you sure we did not eat just
now, my son?"

The novice replied, "Quite sure, my father." Then the old man said,
"Well, if we did not eat, come, let us eat."


5. A president came to see Abbot Simon; and some clerks, who got to
him first, said to him, "Now, father, get ready! Here comes the
president for your blessing; he has heard a great deal about you."

"_I_ will get ready," said the abbot. So he took some bread and
cheese, and began munching at the door of his cell.

"So _this_ is your solitary!" said the president, and went away again.

------
{454}


From St. James's Magazine.

'TIS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

  Has sorrow cast thy spirit down,
    And crush'd thy hopes Elysian?
  Be not disheartened by her frown.
    Nor heedless of thy mission.
  But go forth gaily on thy way--
    The bonds of care dissever,
  And pluck the roses while you may;
    'Tis better late than never!

  Doth love consume with pensive woe
    Thy heart whence hope has fleeted--
  As sunbeams melt away the snow
    They never could have heated?
  Come, wreathe thy brow with laurel-leaf--
    Be wise as well as clever,
  And learn a nobler lore than grief;
    'Tis better late than never!

  For life's a stand-up fight, I ween.
    With poverty and labor,
  And many a hero there has been
    Who never drew a sabre.
  So buckle bravely to the strife.
    How perilous soever.
  And win some glory for thy life;
    'Tis better late than never!

  Or hast thou, worn in folly's wars,
    Forgot the land that bloometh
  Beyond the cedars and the stars.
    Where sorrow never cometh?
  Oh, do not for a phantom fly
    From Paradise for ever,
  But turn thy trusting eyes on high;
    'Tis better late than never!

  GREAT LORD OF HEAVEN! CREATION'S KING!
    Whose vineyard open lies,
  Thou deemest not a worthless thing
    Man's tardy sacrifice;
  Still sanctify the work we've wrought,
    And every fond endeavor.
  This blessed creed thyself hast taught--
    'TIS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!

--------
{455}


From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD:

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.


CHAPTER XIX.

My first thought, when Muriel had announced to me the coming of the
pursuivants in search of Mistress Ward, was to thank God she was
beyond their reach, and with so much prudence had left us in ignorance
of her abode. Then making haste to dress--for I apprehended these
officers should visit every chamber in the house--I quickly repaired
to my aunt's room, who was persuaded by Muriel that they had sent for
to take an inventory of the furniture, which she said was a very
commendable thing to do, but she wished they had waited until such
time as she had had her breakfast. By an especial mercy, it so
happened that these officers--or, leastways, two out of three of
them--were quiet, well-disposed men, who exercised their office with
as much mildness as could be hoped for, and rather diminished by their
behavior than in any way increased the hardships of this invasion of
domestic privacy. We were all in turns questioned touching Mistress
Ward's abode except my aunt, whose mental infirmity was pleaded for to
exempt her from this ordeal. The one officer who was churlish said,
"If the lady's mind be unsound, 'tis most like she will let the cat
out of the bag," and would have forced questions on her; but the
others forcibly restrained him from it, and likewise from openly
insulting us, when we denied all knowledge of the place she had
resorted to. Howsoever, he vented his displeasure in scornful looks
and cutting speeches. They carried away sundry prayer-books, and
notably the "Spiritual Combat," which Mrs. Engerfield had gifted me
with, when I slept at her house at Northampton, the loss of which
grieved me not a little, but yet not so much as it would have done at
another time, for my thoughts were then wholly set on discovering who
had betrayed Mistress Ward's intervention, and what had been Mr.
Watson's fate, and if Basil also had been implicated. I addressed
myself to the most seemly of the three men, and asked him what her
offence had been.

"She assisted," he answered, "in the escape of a prisoner from
Bridewell."

"In what manner?" I said, with so much of indifferency as I could
assume.

"By the smuggling of a rope into his cell," he answered, "which was
found yet hanging unto his window, and which none other than that
pestilent woman could have furnished him with."

Alas! this was what I feared would happen, when she first formed this
project; but she had assured us Mr. Watson would let himself down,
holding the two ends of the cord in his hands, and so would be enabled
to carry it away with him after he had got down, and so it would never
be discovered by what means he had made his escape.

"And this prisoner hath then escaped?" I said, in a careless manner.

"Marry, out of one cage," he answered; "but I'll warrant you he is by
this time lodged in a more safe dungeon, and with such bracelets on
his hands and feet as shall not suffer him again to cheat the
gallows."

I dared not question him further; {456} and finding nothing more to
their purpose, the pursuivants retired.

When Mr. Congleton, Muriel, and I afterward met in the parlor, none of
us seemed disposed to speak. There be times when grief is loquacious,
but others when the weight of apprehension doth check speech. At last
I broke this silence by such words as "What should now be done?" and
"How can we learn what hath occurred?"

Then Mr. Congleton turned toward me, and with much gravity and unusual
vehemency,

"Constance," quoth he, "when Margaret Ward resolved on this bold
action, which in the eyes of some savored of rashness, I warned her to
count the cost before undertaking it, for that it was replete with
many dangers, and none should embark in it which was not prepared to
meet with a terrible death. She told me thereupon that for many past
years her chief desire had been to end her life by such a death, if it
should be for the sake of religion, and that the day she should be
sentenced to it would prove the joyfullest she had yet known. This she
said in an inflamed manner, and I question not but it was her true
thinking. I do not gainsay the merit of this pining, though I could
wish her virtue had been of a commoner sort. But such being her aim,
her choice, and desire, I am not of opinion that I should now disturb
the peace of my wife's helpless days or mine own either (who have not,
I cry God mercy for it, the same wish to suffer the pains reserved to
recusants, albeit I hope in him he would give me strength, to do so if
conscience required it), not to speak of you and Muriel and my other
daughters, for the sake of unavailing efforts in her so desperate
case, who hath made her own bed (and I deny it not to be a glorious
one) and, as she hath made it, must lie on it. So I will betake myself
to prayer for her, which she said was the whole scope of the favor she
desired from her friends, if she fell into trouble, and dreaded
nothing so much as any other dealings in her behalf; and if Mr. Roper,
or Brian Lacy, or young Rookwood, have any means by which to send her
money for her convenience in prison, I will give it; but other
measures I will not take, nor by any open show of interest in her fate
draw down suspicions on us as parties and abettors in her so-called
treason."

Neither of us replied to this speech; and after that our short meal
was ended, Muriel went to her mother's chamber, and I set myself to
consider what I should do; for to sit and wait in this terrible
ignorance of what had happened seemed an impossible thing. So taking
my maid with me, albeit it rained a little, I walked to Kate's house,
and found she and her husband had left it an hour before for to return
to Mr. Benham's seat. Polly and Sir Ralph, who slept there also, were
yet abed, and had given orders, the servant said, not to be disturbed.
So I turned sorrowfully from the door, doubting whither to apply
myself; for Mr. Roper lived at Richmond, and Mr. and Mrs. Wells were
abroad. I thought to go to Mr. Hodgson, whose boatman had drawn Basil
into this enterprise, and was standing forecasting which way to turn,
when all of a sudden who should I see but Basil himself coming down
the lane toward me! I tried to go for to meet him, but my legs failed
me, and I was forced to lean against my maid till he came up to us and
drew my arm in his. Then I felt strong again, and bidding her to go
home, walked a little way with him. The first words he said were:

"Mr. Watson is safe, but hath broke his leg and his arm. Know you
aught of Mistress Ward?"

"There is a warrant out against her," I answered, and told him of the
pursuivants coming to seek for her at our house.

"God shield," he said, "she be not apprehended! for sentence of death
would then be certainly passed upon her."

{457}

"Oh, Basil," I exclaimed, "why was the cord left?"

"Ah, the devil would have it," he began; but chiding himself, lifted
off his hat, and said, "Almighty God did so permit it to happen that
this mishap occurred. But I see," he subjoined, "you are not fit to
walk or stand, sweetheart. Come into Mr. Wells's house. Albeit they
are not at home, we may go and sit in the parlor; and it may be more
prudent I should not be  seen abroad to-day. I pray God Mr. Watson and
I will sail to-night for Calais."

So we rang the bell at the door of Mr. Wells's house; and his
housekeeper, who opened it, smiled when she saw Basil, for he was a
great favorite with her, as, indeed, methinks he always was with all
kinds of people. She showed us into Mr. Wells's study, which she said
was the most comfortable room and best aired in the house, for that,
for the sake of the books, she did often light a fire in it; and
nothing would serve her but she must do so now. And then she asked if
we had breakfasted, and Basil said i' faith he had not, and should be
very glad of somewhat to eat, if she would fetch it for him. So when
the fire was kindled--and methought it never would burn, the wood was
so damp--she went away for a little while, and he then told me the
haps of the past night.

"Tom Price (Hodgson's boatman) and I," he said, "rowed his boat close
onto the shore, near to the prison, and laid there under the cover of
some penthouses which stood betwixt the river and the prison's wall.
When the clock struck twelve, I promise you my heart began to beat as
any girl's, I was so frightened lest Mr. Watson should not have
received the cord, or that his courage should fail. Howsoever, in less
than one minute I thought I perceived something moving about one of
the windows, and then a body appeared sitting at first on the ledge,
but afterward it turned itself round, and, facing the wall, sank down
slowly, hanging on by a cord."

"Oh, Basil!" I exclaimed, "could you keep on looking?"

"Yea," he answered; "as if mine eyes should start out of my head. He
came down slowly, helping himself, I ween, with his feet against the
wall; but when he got to about twenty or thirty feet, I guess it to
have been, from the roof of the shed, he stopped of a sudden, and hung
motionless. 'He is out of breath,' I said to Tom. 'Or the rope proves
too short,' quoth he. We watched him for a moment. He swung to and
fro, then rested again, his feet against the wall. 'Beshrew me, but I
will climb on to that roof myself, and get nigh to him,' I whispered
to Tom, and was springing out of the boat, when we heard a noise more
loud than can be thought of. 'I'll warrant you he hath fallen on the
planks,' quoth Tom. 'Marry, but we will pick him up then,' quoth I;
and found myself soon on the edge of the roof, which was broken in at
one place, and, looking down, I thought I saw him lying on the ground.
I cried as loud as I durst, 'Mr. Watson, be you there? Hist! Are you
hurt? Speak if you can.' Methinks he was stunned by the fall, for he
did not answer; so there remained nothing left to do but to leap
myself through the opening into the shed, where I found him with his
eyes shut, and moaning. But when I spake to him he came to himself,
'and tried to rise, but could not stand, one of his legs being much
hurt. 'Climb on to my back, reverend sir,' I said 'and with God's help
we shall get out.' Howsoever, the way out did not appear manifest, and
mostly with another beside one's self to carry. But glancing round the
inside of the shed, I perceived a door, the fastening of which, when I
shook it, roughly enough I promise you, gave way; and the boat lay,
God be praised, close to it outside. I gave one look up to the prison,
and saw lights flashing in some of the windows. 'They be astir,' I
said to Tom. 'Hist! lend a hand, man, and take the reverend gentleman
from off my back and into {458} the boat.' Mr. Watson uttered a groan.
He most have suffered cruel pain; for, as we since found, his leg and
also his arm were broken, and he looked more dead than alive.

"We began to row as fast as we could; but now he, coming to himself,
feels in his coat, and cries out:

"'Oh, kind sirs--the cord, the cord! Stop, I pray you; stop, turn
back.'

"'Not for the world,' I cried, 'reverend sir.'

"Then he, in a lamentable voice:

"'Oh, if you turn not back and bring away the cord, the poor
gentlewoman which did give it unto me must needs fall into sore
trouble. Oh, for God's sake, turn back!'

"I gave a hasty glance at the prison, where increasing stir of lights
was visible, and resolved that to return should be certain ruin to
ourselves and to him for whom Mistress Ward had risked her life, and
little or no hope in it for her, as it was not possible there should
be time to get the cord and then escape, which with best speed now
could with difficulty be effected. So I turned a deaf ear to Mr.
Watson's pleadings, with an assured conscience she should have wished
no otherwise herself; and by God's mercy we made such way before they
could put out a boat, landing unseen beyond the next bridge, that we
could secretly convey him to the house of a Catholic not far from the
river on the other side, where he doth lie concealed. I promise you,
sweetheart, we did row hard. Albeit I strove very much last year when
I won the boat-match at Richmond, by my troth it was but child's play
to last night's racing. Poor Mr. Watson fainted before we landed, and
neither of us dared venture to stop from pulling for to assist him.
But, God be praised, he is now in a good bed; and I fetched for him at
daybreak a leech I know in the Borough, who hath set his broken limbs;
and to-night if the weather be not foul, when it gets dark, we will
convey him in a boat to a vessel at the river's mouth, which I have
retained for to take us to Calais. But I would Mistress Ward was on
board of it also."

"Oh, Basil," I exclaimed, "if we can discover where she doth lodge, it
would not then be impossible. If we had forecasted this yesterday, she
would be saved. Yet she had perhaps refused to tell us."

"Most like she would," he answered; "but if you do hit by any means
upon her abode to-day, forthwith despatch a trusty messenger unto me
at Mr. Hodgson's, and I promise you, sweetheart, she shall, will she
nill she, if I have to use force for it, be carried away to France,
and stowed with a good madame I know at Calais."

The housekeeper then came in with bread and meat and beer, which my
dear Basil did very gladly partake of, for he had eat nothing since
the day before, and was greatly in want of food. I waited on him,
forestalling housewifely duties, with so great a contentment in this
quiet hour spent in his company that nothing could surpass it. The
fire now burned brightly; and whilst he ate, we talked of the time
when we should be married and live at Euston, so retired from the busy
world without as should be most safe and peaceful in these troublesome
times, even as in that silent house we were for a short time shut out
from the noisy city, the sounds of which reached without disturbing
us. Oh how welcome was that little interval of peace which we then
enjoyed! I ween we were both very tired; and when the good housekeeper
came in for to fetch away his plate he had fallen asleep, with his
head resting on his hands; and I was likewise dozing in a high-backed
chair opposite to him. The noise she made awoke me, but not him, who
slept most soundly. She smiled, and in a motherly manner moved him to
a more comfortable position, and said she would lay a wager on it he
had not been abed at all that night.

{459}

"Well, I'll warrant you to be a good guesser, Mistress Mason," I
answered. "And if you did but know what a hard and a good work he hath
been engaged in, methinks you would never tarry in his praise."

"Ah, Mistress Sherwood," she replied, "I have known Master Basil these
many years; and a more noble, kindly, generous heart never, I ween,
did beat in a man's bosom. He very often came here with his father and
his brother when both were striplings; and Master Hubert was the
sharpest and some said the most well-behaved of the twain. But beshrew
me if I liked not better Master Basil, albeit he was sometimes very
troublesome, but not techey or rude as some boys be. I remember it
well how I laughed one day when these young masters--methinks this
one was no more than five years and the other four--were at play
together in this room, and Basil had a new jerkin on, and colored hose
for the first time. Hubert wore a kirtle, which displeasured him, for
he said folks should take him to be a wench. So he comes to me,
half-crying, and says, 'Why hath Baz that fine new suit and me not the
same?' 'Because, little sir, he is the eldest,' I said. 'Ah,' quoth
the shrewd imp, 'the next time I be born methinketh I will push Baz
aside and be the eldest.' If I should live one hundred years I shall
never forget it, the little urchin looked so resolved and spiteful."

I smiled somewhat sadly, I ween, but with better cheer when she
related how tender a heart Basil had from his infant years toward the
poor, taking off his clothes for to give them to the beggars he met,
and one day, she said, praying very hard Mrs. Wells for to harbor a
strolling man which had complained he had no lodging.

"'Mistress,' quoth he, 'you have many chambers in your house, and he
hath not so much as a bed to lie in tonight;' and would not be
contented till she had charged a servant to get the fellow a lodging.
And me he once abused very roundly in his older years for the same
cause. There was one Jack Morris, an old man which worked sometimes in
Mr. Wells's stable, but did lie at a cottage out of the town. And one
day in winter, when it snowed, Master Basil would have me make this
fellow sleep in the house, because he was sick, he said, and he would
give him his own bed and lie himself on straw in the stable; and went
into so great a passion when I said he should not do so, for that he
was a mean person and could not lie in a gentleman's chamber, that my
young master cries out, 'Have a care. Mistress Mason, I do not come in
the night and shake you out of your own bed, for to give you a taste
of the cold floor, which yet is not, I promise you, so cold as the
street into which you would turn this poor diseased man.' And then he
fell to coaxing of me till I consented for to send a mattress and a
warm rug to the stable for this pestilent old man, who I warrant you
was not so sick as he did assume to be, but had sufficient cunning for
to cozen Master Basil out of his money. Lord bless the lad! I have
seen him run out with his dinner in his hand, if he did but see a
ragged urchin in the streets, and gift him with it; and then would
slug lustily about the house--methinks I do hear him now--

  'Dinner, O dinner's a rare good thing
  Alike for a beggar, alike for a king.'"

Basil opened then his eyes and stared about him.

"Why, Mistress Mason," he cried, "beshrew me if you are not rehearsing
a rare piece of poesy!--the only one I ever did indite." At the which
speech we all laughed; but our merriment was short; for time had sped
faster than we thought, and Basil said he must needs return to the
Borough to forecast with Mr. Hodgson and Tom Price means to convey Mr.
Watson to the ship, which was out at sea nigh unto the shore, and a
boat must be had to carry them there, and withal such appliances
procured as should ease his broken limbs.

"Is there not danger" I asked, "in moving him so soon?"

{460}

"Yea," he said, "but a less fearful danger than in long tarrying in
this country."

This was too true to be gainsayed; and so thanking the good
housekeeper we left the house, which had seemed for those few hours
like onto a harbor from a stormy sea, wherein both our barks,
shattered by the waves, had refitted in peace.

"Farewell, Basil," I mournfully said; "God knoweth for how long."

"Not for very long," he answered. "In three months I shall have crept
out of my wardship. Then, if it please God, I will return, and so deal
with your good uncle that we shall soon after that be married."

"Yea," I answered, "if so be that my father is then in safety."

He said he meant not otherwise, but that he had great confidence it
should then be so. When at last we parted he went down Holborn Hill
very fast, and I slowly to Ely Place, many times stopping for to catch
one more sight of him in the crowd, which howsoever soon hid him from
me.

When I arrived at home I found Muriel in great affliction, for news
had reached her that Mistress Ward had been apprehended and thrown
into prison. Methinks we had both looked for no other issue than this,
which she had herself most desired; but nevertheless, when the
certainty thereof was confirmed to us, it should almost have seemed as
if we were but ill-prepared for it. The hope I had conceived a short
time before that she should escape in the same vessel with Basil and
Mr. Watson, made me less resigned to this mishap than I should have
been had no means of safety been at hand, and the sword, as it were,
hanging over her head from day to day. The messenger which had brought
this evil news being warranted reliable by a letter from Mr. Hodgson,
I intrusted him with a few lines to Basil, in which I informed him not
to stay his departure on her account, who was now within the walls of
the prison which Mr. Watson had escaped from, and that her best
comfort now should be to know he was beyond reach of his pursuers. The
rest of the day was spent in great heaviness of spirit. Mr. Congleton
sent a servant to Mr. Roper for to request him to come to London, and
wrote likewise to Mr. Lacy for to return to his house in town, and
confer with some Catholics touching Mistress Ward's imprisonment.
Muriel's eyes thanked him, but I ween she had no hope therein and did
resign herself to await the worst tidings. Her mother's unceasing
asking for her, whose plight she dared not so much as hint at in her
presence, did greatly aggravate her sufferings. I have often thought
Muriel did then undergo a martyrdom of the heart as sharp in its kind
as that which Mistress Ward endured in prison, if the reports which
did reach us were true. But more of that anon. The eventful day, which
had opened with so much of fear and sorrow, had yet in store other
haps, which I must now relate.

About four of the clock Hubert came to Ely Place, and found me alone
in the parlor, my fingers busied with some stitching, my thoughts
having wandered far away, where I pictured to myself the mouth of the
river, the receding tide, the little vessel which was to carry Basil
away once more to a foreign land, with its sails flapping in the wind;
and boats passing to and fro, plying on the fair bosom of the broad
river, and not leaving so much as a trace of their passage. And his
boat with its freight more precious than gold--the rescued life bought
at a great price--methought I saw it glide in the dark amidst those
hundred other boats unobserved (so I hoped), unstayed on its course.
Methought that so little bark should be a type of some lives which
carry with them, unwatched, undiscerned, a purpose, which doth freight
them on their way to eternity--somewhat hidden, somewhat close to
their hearts, somewhat engaging their whole strength; and all the
{461} while they seem to be doing the like of what others do; and God
only knoweth how different shall be the end!

"Ah, Hubert," I exclaimed when the door opened, "is it you? Methinks
in these days I see no one come into this house but a fear or a hope
doth seize me. What bringeth you? or hath nothing occurred?"

"Something may occur this day," he answered, "if you do but will it to
be so, Constance."

"What?" I asked eagerly; "what may occur?"

"Your father's deliverance," he said.

"Oh, Hubert," I cried, "it is not possible!"

"Go to!" he said in a resolved manner. "Don your most becoming suit,
and follow my directions in all ways. Lady Ingoldsby, I thank God,
hath not left London, and will be here anon to carry you to Sir
Francis Walsingham's house, where her familiar friend, Lady Sydney,
doth now abide during Sir Philip's absence. You shall thus get speech
with Sir Francis; and if you do behave with diffidency, and beware of
the violence of your nature and exorbitancy of your tongue, checking
needless speeches, and answering his questions with as many words as
courtesy doth command, and as few as civility doth permit, I doubt not
but you may obtain your father's release in the form of a sentence of
banishment; for he is not ill-disposed thereunto, having received
notice that his health is sinking under the hardships of his
confinement, and his strength so impaired that, once beyond seas, he
is not like to adventure himself again in this country."

"Alas!" I cried, "mine eyes had discerned in his shrunken form and
hollow cheeks tokens of such a decay as you speak of; and I pray God
Mr. Secretary may deal mercifully with him before it shall be too
late."

"I'll warrant you," he replied, "that if you do rightly deal with him,
he win sign an order which shall release this very night your father
from prison, and send him safe beyond seas before the week is ended."

"Think you so?" I said, my heart beating with an uncertain kind of
hope mixed with doubting.

"I am assured of it," Hubert confidently replied.

"I must ask my uncle's advice," doubtfully said, "before I go with
Polly."

A contemptuous smile curled his lip. "Yea," he said, "Be directed in
these weighty matters, I do advise you, by your aunt also, and the
saintly Muriel, and twenty hundred others beside, if you list; and the
while this last chance shall escape, and your father be doomed to
death. I have done my part, God knoweth. If he perish, his blood will
not be on my head; but mark my words, if he be not presently released,
he will appear before the council in two days, and the oath be
tendered to him, which you best know if he will take, and his refusal
without fail will send him to the scaffold."

"God defend," I exclaimed, greatly moved, "I should delay to do that
which may yet save him. I will go, Hubert. But I pray you, who are
familiar with Sir Francis, what means should be best for to move him
to compassion? Is there a soft corner in his heart which a woman's
tears can touch? I will kneel to him if needful, yea, kiss his
feet--mind him of his own fair daughter. Lady Sydney, which, if he was
in prison, and my father held his fate in his hands, would doubtless
sue to him with the like ardor, yea, the like agony of spirit, for
mercy. Oh, tell me, Hubert, what to say which shall drive the edge of
pity into his soul."

"Silence will take effect in this case sooner than the most moving
speeches," he answered. "Steel your soul to it, whatever he may say.
Your tears, your eyes, will, I warrant you, plead more mightfully than
your words. He is as obliging to the softer but predominant parts of
the world as he is {462} serviceable to the more severe. To him men's
faces speak as much as their tongues, and their countenances are
indexes of their hearts. Judge if yours, the liveliest piece of
eloquence which ever displayed itself in a fair visage, shall fail to
express that which passionate words, missing their aim, would of a
surety ill convey. And mind you, Mistress Constance, this man is of
extreme ability in the school of policy, and albeit inclined to
recusants with the view of winning them over by means of kindness, yet
an extreme hater of the Pope and Church of Rome, and moreover very
jealous to be considered as such; so if he do intend to show you favor
in this matter, make your reckoning that he will urge you to
conformity with many strenuous exhortations, which, if you remain
silent, no harm shall ensue to yourself or others."

"And not to mine own soul, Hubert?" I mournfully cried. "Methinks my
father and Basil would not counsel silence in such a case."

"God in heaven give me patience!" he exclaimed. "Is it a woman's
calling, I pray you, to preach? When the apostles were dismissed by
the judges, and charged no longer to teach the Christian faith, went
they not forth in silence, restraining their tongues then, albeit not
their actions when once at liberty? Methinks modesty alone should
forbid one of your years from dangerous retorts, which, like a
two-edged sword, wound alike friend and foe."

I had no courage left to withstand the promptings of mine own heart
and his urgency.

"God forgive me," I cried, "if I fail in aught wherein truth or
honesty are concerned. He knoweth I would do right, and yet save my
father's life."

Then falling on my knees, unmindful of his presence, I prayed with an
intense vehemency, which overcame all restraint, that my tongue might
be guided aright when I should be in his presence who under God did
hold my father's life in his hands. But hearing Polly's voice in the
hall, I started up, and noticed Hubert leaning his head on his hand,
seemingly more pitifully moved than was his wont. When she came in, he
met her, and said:

"Lady Ingoldsby, I pray you see that Mistress Constance doth so attire
herself as shall heighten her natural attractions; for, beshrew me, if
grave Mr. Secretary hath not, as well as other men, more pity for a
fair face than a plain one; and albeit hers is always fair, nature
doth nevertheless borrow additional charms from art."

"Tut, tut," quoth Polly. "She is a perfect fright in that hat, and her
ruff hideth all her neck, than which no swan hath a whiter; and I pray
you what a farthingale is that! Methinks it savors of the fashions of
the late queen's reign. Come, Con, cheer up, and let us to thy
chamber. I'll warrant you, Master Rookwood, she will be twice as
winsome when I have exercised my skill on her attire."

So she led me away, and I suffered her to dress mine hair herself and
choose such ornaments as she did deem most becoming. Albeit she
laughed and jested all the while, methinks the kindness of her heart
showed through this apparent gaiety; and when her task was done, and
she kissed my forehead, I threw my arms round her neck and wept.

"Nay, nay!" she cried; "no tears, coz--they do serve but to swell the
eyelids and paint the nose of a reddish hue;" and shaping her own
visage into a counterfeit of mine, she set me laughing against my
will, and drew me by the hand down the stairs and into the parlor.

"How now, sir?" she cried to Hubert "Think you I have indifferently
well performed the task you set me?"

"Most excellently well," he answered, and handed us to her coach,
which was to carry us to Seething Lane. When we were seated in it, she
told {463} me Hubert had disclosed to her the secret of my father's
plight, and that she was more concerned than she could well express at
so great a mishap, but nevertheless entertained a comfortable hope
this day should presently see the end of our troubles. Howsoever, she
did know but half of the trouble I was in, weighty as was the part she
was privy to. Hubert, she told me, had dealt with a marvellous great
zeal and ability in this matter, and proved himself so good a
negotiator that she doubted not Sir Francis himself must needs have
appreciated his ingenuity.

"That young gentleman," she added, "will never spoil his own market by
lack of timely boldness or opportune bashfulness. My Lady Arundel
related to me last night at Mrs. Yates's what passed on Monday at the
banquet-hall at Whitehall. Hath he told you his hap on that occasion?"

"No," I answered. "I pray you, Polly, what befel him there?'

"Well, her majesty was at dinner, and Master Hubert comes there to see
the fashion of the court. His handsome features and well-set shape
attract the queen's notice. With a kind of an affected frown she asks
Lady Arundel what he is. She answers she knows him not. Howsoever, an
inquiry is made from one to another who the youth should be, till at
length it is told the queen he is young Rookwood of Euston, in
Suffolk, and a ward of Sir Henry Stafford's."

"Mistaking him then for Basil?" I said.

Then she: "I think so; but howsoever this inquisition with the eye of
her majesty fixed upon him (as she is wont to fix it, and thereby to
daunt such as she doth make the mark of her gazing), stirred the blood
of our young gentleman, Lady Arundel said, insomuch that a deep color
rose in his pale cheek and straightway left it again; which the queen
observing, she called him unto her, and gave him her hand to kiss,
encouraging him with gracious words and looks; and then diverting her
speech to the lords and ladies, said that she no sooner observed him
than she did note there was in him good blood, and she ventured to
affirm good brains also; and then said to him, 'Fail not to come to
court, sir, and I will bethink myself to do you good.' Now I warrant
you, coz, this piece of a scholar lacked not the wit to use this his
hap in the furtherance of his and your suit to Sir Francis, whom he
adores as his saint, and courts as his Maecenas."

This recital of Polly's worked a tumultuous conflict in my soul; for
verily it strengthened hope touching my father's release; but methinks
any other channel of such hope should have been more welcome. A
jealousy, an unsubstantial fear, an uneasy misdoubt oppressed this
rising hope. I feared for Hubert the dawn of such favor as was shown
to him by her whose regal hand doth hold a magnet which hath
oftentimes caused Catholics to make shipwreck of their souls. And then
truth doth compel me to confess my weakness. Albeit God knoweth I
desired not for my true and noble sweetheart her majesty's gracious
smiles, or a higher fortune than Providence hath by inheritance
bestowed on him, a vain humane feeling worked in me some sort of
displeasure that his younger brother should stand in the queen's
presence as the supposed head of the house of Rookwood, and no more
mention made of him than if he had been outlawed or dead. Not that I
had then reason to lay this error to Hubert's door, for verily naught
in Polly's words did warrant such a suspicion; but my heart was sore,
and my spirits chafed with apprehensions. God forgive me if I then did
unjustly accuse him, and, in the retrospect of this passage in his
life, do suffer subsequent events to cast backward shadows on it,
whereby I may wrong him who did render to me (I write it with a
softened--yea, God is my witness--a truly loving, albeit sorrowing,
heart) a great service in a needful time. Oh, Hubert, Hubert! my heart
acheth for {464} thee. Methinks God will show thee great mercy yet,
but, I fear me, by such means only as I do tremble to think of.


CHAPTER XX.

When we reached Seething Lane, Polly bade me be of good heart, for
that Lady Sydney was a very affable and debonnaire lady, and Sir
Francis a person of toward and gentle manners, and exceedingly polite
to women. We were conducted to a neat parlor, where my Lady Sydney was
awaiting us. A more fair and accomplished lady is not, I ween, to be
found in England or any other country, than this daughter of a great
statesman, and wife at that time of Sir Philip Sydney, as she hath
since been of my Lords Essex and St. Albans. Methinks the matchless
gentleman, noble knight, and sweet writer, her first husband, who did
marry her portionless, not like as is the fashion with so many in our
days carrying his love in his purse, must have needs drawn from the
fair model in his own house the lovely pictures of beauteous women he
did portray in his "Arcadia." She greeted us with so much heartfelt
politeness, and so tempered gay discoursing with sundry marks of
delicate feeling, indicative, albeit not expressive, of a sense of my
then trouble, that, albeit a stranger, methinks her reserved
compassion and ingenious encouragements served to tranquillize my
discomposed mind more than Polly's efforts toward the same end. She
told us Lord Arundel had died that morning; which tidings turned my
thoughts awhile to Lady Surrey, with many cogitations as to the issue
of this event in her regard.

After a short space of time, a step neared the door, and Lady Sydney
smiled and said, "Here is my father." I had two or three times seen
Sir Francis Walsingham in public assemblies, but his features were
nevertheless not familiar to me. Now, after he had saluted Polly and
me, and made inquiry touching our relatives, while he conversed with
her on indifferent topics, I scanned his face with such careful
industry as if in it I should read the issue of my dear father's fate.
Methinks I never beheld so unreadable a countenance, or one which bore
the impress of so refined a penetration, so piercing an
inquisitiveness, so keen a research into others' thoughts, with so
close a concealment of his own. I have since heard what his son-in-law
did write of him, that he impoverished himself by the purchase of dear
intelligence; that, as if master of some invisible spring, all the
secrets of Christendom met in his closet, and he had even a key to
unlock the Pope's cabinet. His mottoes are said to be _video et
taceo_, and that knowledge can never be bought at too high a price.
And verily methinks they were writ in his face, in his quick-turning
eyes, his thin, compressed lips, and his soft but resolved accents,
minding one of steel cased in velvet. 'Tis reported he can read any
letter without breaking the seal. For mine own part, I am of opinion
he can see through parchment, yea, peradventure, through stone walls,
when bent on some discovery. After a few minutes he turned to me with
a gracious smile, and said he was very glad to hear that I was a young
gentlewoman of great prudence, and well disposed in all respects, and
that he doubted not that, if her majesty should by his means show me
any favor, I should requite it with such gratitude as should appear in
all my future conduct.

"God knoweth," I stammered, mine eyes filling with tears, "I would be
grateful to you, sir, if it should please you to move her majesty to
grant my prayer, and to her highness for the doing of it."

"And how would you show such gratitude, fair Mistress Constance?" he
said, smiling in an encouraging manner.

{465}

"By such humble duty," I answered, "as a poor obscure creature can pay
to her betters."

"And I hope, also," he said, "that such dutifulness will involve no
unpleasing effort, no painful constraint on your inclinations; for I
am assured her majesty will never desire from you anything but what
will well accord with your advantage in this world and in the next."

These words caused me some kind of uneasiness; but as they called for
no answer, I took refuge in silence; only methinks my face, which he
did seem carefully to study, betrayed anxiety.

"Providence," Sir Francis then said, "doth oftentimes marvellously
dispose events. What a rare instance of its gracious workings should
be seen in your case, Mistress Constance, if what your heart doth
secretly incline to should become a part of that dutifulness which you
do intend to practice in future!"

Before I had clearly apprehended the sense of his words, Lady Sydney
said to Polly:

"My father hath greatly commended to Sir Philip and me a young
gentleman which I understand. Lady Ingoldsby, to be a friend of yours,
Mr. Hubert Rookwood, of Euston. He says the gracefulness of his
person, his excellent parts, his strong and subtle capacity, do
excellently fit him to learn the discipline and garb of the times and
court."

"Ay," then quoth Sir Francis, "he hath as large a portion of gifts and
endowments as I have ever noticed in one of his age, and I'll warrant
he proves no mere vegetable of the court, springing up at night and
sinking at noon."

Polly did warmly assent to these praises of Hubert, for whom she had
always entertained a great liking; but she merrily said he was not gay
enough for her, which abhorred melancholy as cats do water.

"Oh, fair lady," quoth Sir Francis, "God defend we should be
melancholy; verily 'tis fitting we should be sometimes serious, for
while we laugh all things are serious round about us. The whole
creation is serious in serving God and us. The holy Scriptures bring
to our ears the most serious things in the world. All that are in
heaven and hell are serious. Then how should we be always gay?"

Polly said--for when had she not, I pray you, somewhat to say?--that
certain things in nature had a propensity to gaiety which naught could
quell, and instanced birds and streamlets, which never cease to sing
and babble as long as they do live or flow. And to be serious, she
thought, would kill her. The while this talk was ministered between
them, my Lady Sydney, on a sign from her father, I ween, took my hand
in hers, and offered to show me the garden; for the heat of the room,
she said, was like to give me the headache. Upon which I rose, and
followed her into a court planted with trees, and then on to an alley
of planes strewed with gravel. As we entered it I perceived several
persons walking toward us. When the first thought came into my mind
who should be the tall personage in the centre, of hair and complexion
fair, and of so stately and majestic deportment, I marvel my limbs
gave not way, but my head swam and a mist obscured mine eyes.
Methinks, as one dreaming, I heard Lady Sydney say, "The queen,
Mistress Sherwood; kneel down, and kiss her majesty's hand." Oh, in
the brief moment of time when my lips pressed that thin, white,
jewelled hand, what multiplied thoughts, resentful memories, trembling
awe, and instinctive, homage to royal greatness, met in my soul, and
worked confusion in my brain!

"Ah, mine own good Sydney," I heard her majesty exclaim; "is this the
young gentlewoman your wise father did speak of at Greenwich
yesterday? The daughter of one Sherwood now in prison for popish
contumacy?"

{466}

"Even so," said Lady Sydney; "and your sacred majesty hath it now in
her power to show

  "The quality of mercy is not strained--'"

  "'But droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
  Upon the place beneath,'"

interrupted the queen, taking the words out of her mouth. "We be not
ignorant of those lines. Will Shakespeare hath it,

  'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
  The throned monarch better than his crown.'

And i' faith we differ not from him, for verily mercy is our habit and
the propension of our soul; but, by God, the malice and ingratitude of
recusant traitors doth so increase, with manifold dangers to our
person and state, that mercy to them doth turn into treason against
ourselves, injury to religion, and an offence to God. Rise," her
majesty then said to me; and as I stood before her, the color, I ween,
deepening in my cheeks, "Thou hast a fair face, wench," she cried;
"and if I remember aright good Mr. Secretary's words, hast used it to
such purpose that a young gentleman we have of late taken into our
favor is somewhat excessive in his doting on it. Go to, go to; thou
couldst go further and fare worse. We ourselves are averse to
marriage; but if a woman must needs have a husband (and that deep
blushing betokeneth methinks thy bent thereon), she should set her
heart wisely, and govern it discreetly."

"Alas, madam!" I cried, "'tis not of marriage I now do think; but, on
my knees" (and falling again at her feet, I clasped them, with tears),
"of my father's release; I do crave your majesty's mercy."

"Content thee, wench; content thee. Mr. Secretary hath obtained from
us the order for that foolish man's banishment from our realm."

"Oh, madam!" I cried, "God bless you!"

Then my heart did smite me I should with so great vehemency bless her
who, albeit in this nearest instance pitiful to me, did so
relentlessly deal with others; and I bethought me of Mistress Ward,
and the ill-usage she was like to meet with. And her words touching
Hubert, and silence concerning Basil, weighed like lead on my soul;
yet I taxed myself with folly therein, for verily at this time the
less he was thought of the greater should be his safety. Sir Francis
had now approached the queen, and I did hear her commend to him his
garden, which she said was very neat and trim, and the pattern of it
most quaint and fanciful. Polly did also kiss her hand, and Sir Walter
Raleigh and Sir Christopher Hatton, which accompanied her majesty,
whilst she talked with Sir Francis, conversed with Lady Sydney. I ween
my Lord Leicester and many other noblemen and gentlemen were also in
her train, but mine eyes took scant note of what passed before them;
the queen herself was the only object I could contemplate, so
marvellous did it seem I should thus have approached her, and had so
much of her notice as she did bestow on me that day. And here I cannot
choose but marvel how strangely our hearts are made. How favors to
ourselves do alter the current of our feelings; how a near approach to
those which at a distance we do think of with unmitigated enmity, doth
soften even just resentments; and what a singular fascination doth lie
in royalty for to win unto itself a reverence which doth obliterate
memories which in common instances should never lose their sting.

The queen's barge, which had moored at the river-side of Sir Francis's
garden, was soon filled again with the goodly party it had set down;
and as it went up the stream, and I stood gazing on it, methought the
whole scene had been a dream.

Lady Sydney and Polly moved Sir Francis to repeat the assurance her
majesty had given me touching the commutation of my father's
imprisonment into an order of banishment. He satisfied me thereon, and
did promise to procure for me permission to see {467} him once more
before his departure; which interview did take place on the next day;
and when I observed the increased paleness of his face and feebleness
of his gait, the pain of bidding that dear parent farewell equalled
not the joy I felt in the hope that liberty and the care of those good
friends to whose society he would now return, should prolong and cheer
the remaining days of his life. Methinks there was some sadness in him
that the issue he had so resolutely prepared for, and confidently
looked to, should be changed to one so different, and that only by
means of death would he have desired to leave the English mission; but
he meekly bowed his will to that of God, and said in an humble manner
he was not worthy of so exalted an end as he had hoped for, and he
refused not to live if so be he might yet serve God in obscure and
unnoticed ways.

When I returned home after this comfortable, albeit very sad, parting,
I was too weary in body and in mind for to do aught but lie down for a
while on a settle, and revolve in my mind the changes which had taken
place around me. Hubert came for a brief time that evening; and
methinks he had heard from Polly the haps at Seething Lane. He strove
for to move me to speak of the queen, and to tell him the very words
she had uttered. The eager sparkling of his eyes, the ill-repressed
smilingness of his countenance, the manner of his questioning, worked
in me a secret anger, which caused the thanks I gave him for his
successful dealings in my father's behalf to come more coldly from
mine heart than they should otherwise have done, albeit I strove to
frame them in such kind terms as were befitting the great service he
had rendered us. But to disguise my thoughts my tongue at last
refused, and I burst forth:

"But, for all that I do thank you, Hubert, yea, and am for ever
indebted to you, which you will never have reason, from my conduct and
exceedingly kind sisterly love, to doubt: bear with me, I pray you,
when I say (albeit you may think me a very foolish creature) that I
wish you not joy, but rather for your sake do lament, the new favor
you do stand in with the queen. O Hubert, bethink you, ere you set
your foot on the first step of that slippery ladder, court favor, that
no man can serve two masters."

"Marry," he answered in a light manner, "by that same token or text,
papists can then not serve the queen and also the Pope!"

There be nothing which so chilleth or else cutteth the heart as a
jesting retort to a fervent speech.

I hid my face on my arm to hide some tears.

"Constance," he softly said, seeing me moved, "do you weep for me?"

"Yea," I murmured; "God knoweth what these new friendships and this
dangerous favor shall work in you contrary to conscience, truth, and
virtue. Oh! heaven shield Basil's brother should be a favorite of the
queen!"

"Talk not of Basil," he fiercely cried, "I warrant you the day may be
at hand when his fate shall hang on my favor with those who can make
and mar a man, or ruin and mend his fortunes, as they will, by one
stroke of a pen!"

"Yea," I replied; "I doubt not his fortune is at their mercy. His
soul, God be praised, their arts cannot reach."

"Constance," he then said, fixedly gazing on me, "if you only love me,
there is no ambition too noble, no heights of virtue too exalted, no
sacrifices too entire, but I will aim at, aspire to, resolve on, at
your bidding."

"Love _you_!" I said, raising mine eyes to his, somewhat scornfully I
fear, albeit not meaning it, if I judge by his sudden passion.

"God defend," he cried, "I do not arrive at hating you with as great
fervency as I have, yea, as even yet I do love you! O Constance, if I
should one day be what I do yet abhor to think {468} of, the guilt
thereof shall lie with you if there be justice on Earth or in heaven!"

I shook my head, and laying my hand on his, sadly answered:

"I choose not to bandy words with you, Hubert, or charge you with
what, if I spoke the truth, would be too keen and resentful reproaches
for your unbrotherly manner of dealing with Basil and me; for it would
ill become the close of this day, on which I do owe you, under God, my
dear father's life, to upbraid where I would fain only from my heart
yield thanks. I pray you, let us part in peace. My strength is
well-nigh spent and my head acheth sorely."

He knelt down by my side, and whispered, "One word more before I go.
You do hold in your keeping Basil's fate and mine. I will not forsake
the hope that alone keepeth me from desperation. Hush! say not the
word which would change me from a friend to a foe, from a Catholic to
an apostate, from a man to a fiend. I have gone well-nigh into the
gate of hell; a slender thread yet holds me back; snap it not in
twain."

I spoke not, for verily my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and a
fainting sensation of a sudden came over me. I felt his lips pressed
on my hand, and then he left me; and that night I felt very ill, and
for nigh unto a fortnight could by no means leave my bed.

One morning, being somewhat easier, I sat up in a high-backed chair,
in what had once been our school-room; and when Muriel, who had been a
most diligent nurse to me in that sickness, came to visit me, I
pressed her for to tell me truly if she had heard aught of Basil or of
Mistress Ward; for every day when I had questioned her thereon she had
denied all knowledge of their haps, which now began to work in me a
suspicion she did conceal from me some misfortune, which doubt, I told
her, was more grievous to me than to be informed what had befallen
them; and so constrained her to admit that, albeit of Basil she had in
truth no tidings, which she judged to be favorable to our hopes, of
Mistress Ward she had heard, in the first instance, a report, eight or
ten days before, that she had been hung up by the hands and cruelly
scourged; which torments she was said by the jailors, which Mr. Lacy
had spoken with, to have borne with exceeding great courage, saying
they were the preludes of martyrdom, with which, by the grace of God,
she hoped she should be honored. Then Mr. Roper and Mr. Wells, who was
now returned to London, had brought tidings the evening before that on
the preceding day she had been brought to the bar, where, being asked
by the judges if she was guilty of that treachery to the queen and to
the laws of the realm of furnishing the means by which a traitor of a
priest had escaped from justice, she answered with a cheerful
countenance in the affirmative; and that she never in her life had
done anything of which she less repented than of the delivering that
innocent lamb from the wolves which should have devoured him.

"Oh, Muriel," I cried, "cannot you see her dear resolved face and the
lighting up of her eyes, and the quick fashion of her speech, when she
said this?"

"I do picture her to myself," Muriel answered in a low voice, "at all
hours of the day, and marvel at mine own quietness therein. But I
doubt not her prayers do win for me the grace of resignation. They
sought to oblige her to confess where Mr. Watson was, but in vain; and
therefore they proceeded to pronounce sentence upon her. But withal
telling her that the queen was merciful, and that if she would ask
pardon of her majesty, and would promise to go to church, she should
be set at liberty; otherwise that she must look for nothing but
certain death."

I drew a deep breath then, and said, "The issue is, then, not
doubtful."

"She answered," Muriel said, "that {469} as to the queen, she had
never offended her majesty; that as to what she had done in favoring
Mr. Watson's escape, she believed the queen herself, if she had the
bowels of a woman, would have done as mach if she had known the
ill-treatment he underwent; and as to going to church, she had for
many years been convinced that it was not lawful for her so to do, and
that she found no reason now for to change her mind, and would not act
against her conscience; and therefore they might proceed to the
execution of the sentence pronounced against her; for that death for
such a cause would be very welcome, and that she was willing to lay
down not one life only, but many, if she had them, rather than act
against her religion."

"And she is then condemned to death without any hope?" I said.

Muriel remained silent.

"Oh, Muriel!" I cried; "it is not done? it is not over?"

She wiped one tear that trickled down her cheek, and said, "Yesterday
she suffered at Tyburn with a wonderful constancy and alacrity."

I hid my face in my hands; for the sight of the familiar room, of the
chair in which she was sitting what time she took leave of us, of a
little picture pinned to the wall, which she had gifted me with, moved
me too much. But when I closed mine eyes, there arose remembrances of
my journeying with her; of my foolish speeches touching robbers; of
her motherly reproofs of my so great confidence, and comfort in her
guidance; and I was fain to seek comfort from her who should have
needed it rather than me, but who indeed had it straight from heaven,
and thereby could impart some share of it to others.

"Muriel," I said, resting my tired head on her bosom, "the day you say
she suffered, I now mind me, I was most ill, and you tended me as
cheerfully as if you had no grief."

"Oh, 'tis no common grief," she answered, "no casting-down sorrow, her
end doth cause me; rather some kind of holy jealousy, some over-eager
pining to follow her."

A waiting-woman then came in, and I saw her give a letter to Muriel,
who I noticed did strive to hide it from me. But I detected it in her
hand, and cried, "'Tis from Basil; how hath it come?" and took it from
her; but trembling so much, my fingers could scarce untie the strings,
for I was yet very unwell from my sickness.

"Mr. Hodgson hath sent it," quoth Muriel; "God yield it be good news!"

Then my eyes fell on the loved writing, and read what doth follow:

"DEAR HEART AND SWEET WIFE
soon to be--God be praised, we are now safe in port at Calais, but
have not lacked dangers in our voyage. But all is well, I ween, that
doth end well; and I do begin my letter with the tokens of that good
ending that mine own sweet love should have no fears, only much
thankfulness to God, whilst she doth read of the perils we have
escaped. We carried Mr. Watson--Tom and I and two others--into the
boat, on the evening of the day when I last saw you, and made for the
Dutch vessel out at sea near the river^s mouth. The light was waning,
but not yet so far gone but that objects were discernible; and we had
not rowed a very long time before we heard a splashing of oars behind
us, and turning round what should we see but one of the Queen's
barges, and by the floating pennon at the stem discerned her majesty
to be on board! We hastily turned our boat, and I my back toward the
bank; threw a cloak over Mr. Watson, who, by reason of his broken
limbs, was lying on a mattress at the bottom of it; and Tom and the
others feigned to be fishing. When the royal barge passed by, some one
did shout, railing at us for that we did fish in the dark, and a storm
coming up the river; and verily it did of a sudden begin to blow very
strong. Sundry small craft were coming from the sea into the river for
shelter; and as they did meet as, expressed marvel we {470} should
adventure forth, jeering us for our thinking to catch fish and a storm
menacing. None of us, albeit good rowers, were much skilled in the
mariner's art; but we commended ourselves to God and went onward all
the night; and when the morning was breaking, to our unspeakable
comfort, we discovered the Dutch vessel but a few strokes distant at
anchor, when, as we bethought ourselves nearly in safety, a huge
rolling wave (for now the weather had waxed exceedingly rough) upset
our boat."

"O Muriel," I exclaimed, "that night I tossed about in a high fever,
and saw Basil come dripping wet at the foot of my bed: I warrant you
'twas second sight."

"Read on, read on," Muriel said; "nor delude yourself touching
visions."

"Tom, the other boatman, and I, being good swimmers, soon regained the
boat, the which floated keel upwards, whereon we climbed, but
well-nigh demented were we to find Mr. Watson could nowhere be seen.
In desperation I plunged again into the sea, swimming at hazard, with
difficulty buffeting the waves; when nearly spent I descried the good
priest, and seized him in a most unmannerly fashion by the collar, and
dragging him along, made shift to regain the floating keel; and Tom,
climbing to the top, waved high his kerchief, hoping to be seen by the
Dutchman, who by good hap did espy our signal. Soon had we the joy to
see a boat lowered and advance toward us. With much difficulty it
neared us, by reason of the fury of the waves; but, God be thanked, it
did at last reach us; and Mr. Watson, insensible and motionless, was
hoisted therein, and soon in safety conveyed on board the vessel. I
much feared for his life; for, I pray you, was such a cold, long bath,
succeeding to a painful exposed night, meet medicine for broken limbs,
and the fever which doth accompany such hurts? I wot not; but yet, God
be praised, he is now in the hospital of a monastery in this town,
well tended and cared for, and the leeches do assure me like to do
well. Thou mayest think, sweetheart, that after seeing him safely
stowed in that good lodgment, I waited not for to change my clothes or
break my fast, before I went to the church; and on my knees blessed
the Almighty for his protection, and hung a thank-offering on to our
Lady's image; for I warrant you, when I was fishing for Mr. Watson in
that raging sea, I missed not to put up Hail Marys as fast as I could
think them, for beshrew me if I had breath to spare for to utter. I do
now pen this letter at my good friend Mr. Wells's brother's, and Tom
will take it with him to London, and Mr. Hodgson convey it to thee.
Thy affectionate and humble obedient (albeit intending to lord it over
thee some coming day) servant and lover, BASIL ROOKWOOD.

"Oh, how the days do creep till I be out of my wardship! Methinks I do
feel somewhat like Mrs. Helen Ingoldsby, who doth hate patience, she
saith, by reason that it doth always keep her waiting. I would not be
patient, sweet one, I fear, if impatience would carry me quicker to
thy dear side."

"Well," said Muriel, sweetly smiling when I had finished reading this
comfortable letter, "the twain which we have accompanied this past
fortnight with our thoughts and prayers have both, God be praised,
escaped from a raging sea into a safe harbor, albeit not of the same
sort--the one earthly, the other heavenly. Oh, but I am very glad,
dear Constance, thou art spared a greater trial than hath yet touched
thee!" and so pure a joy beamed in her eyes, that methought no one
more truly fulfilled that bidding, "to rejoice with such as rejoice,
as well as to weep with such as weep."

This letter of my dear Basil hastened my recovery; and three days
later, having received an invitation thereunto, I went to visit the
Countess of Surrey, now also of Arundel, at Arundel House. The trouble
she was in by {471} reason of her grandfather's death, and of my Lady
Lumley's, who had preceded her father to the grave, exceeded anything
she had yet endured. The earl her husband continued the same hard
usage toward her, and never so much as came to visit her at that time
of her affliction, but remained in Norfolk, attending to his sports of
hunting and the like. Howsoever, as he had satisfied her uncles, Mr.
Francis and Mr. Leonard Dacre, Mr. James Labourn, and also Lord
Montague, and his own sister Lady Margaret Sackville, and likewise
Lord Thomas and Lord William Howard, his brothers, that he put not in
any doubt, albeit words to that effect had once escaped him, the
validity of his marriage, she, with great wisdom and patience, and
prudence very commendable in one of her years, being destitute of any
fitting place to dwell in, resolved to return to his house in London.
At the which at first he seemed not a little displeased, but yet took
no measures for to drive her from it. And in the ordering of the
household and care of his property manifested the same zeal, and
obtained the same good results, as she had procured whilst she lived
at Kenninghall. Methought she had waxed older by some years, not
weeks, since I had seen her, so staid and composed had become the
fashion of her speech and of her carriage. She conversed with me on
mine own troubles and comforts, and the various and opposite haps
which had befallen me; which I told her served to strengthen in me my
early thinking, that sorrows are oftentimes so intermixed with joys
that our lives do more resemble variable April days than the cloudless
skies of June, or the dark climate of winter.

Whilst we did thus discourse, mine eyes fell on a quaint piece of work
in silk and silver, which was lying on a table, as if lately unfolded.
Lady Arundel smiled in a somewhat sad fashion, and said:

"I warrant thou art curious, Constance, to examine that piece of
embroidery; and verily as regards the hands which hath worked it, and
the kind intent with which it was wrought, a more notable one should
not easily be found. Look at it, and see if thou canst read the
ingenious meaning of it."

This was the design therein executed with exceeding great neatness and
beauty: there was a tree framed, whereon two turtle-doves sat, on
either side one, with this difference, that by that on the right hand
there were two or three green leaves remaining, by the other none at
all--the tree on that side being wholly bare. Over the top of the tree
were these words, wrought in silver: "Amoris sorte pares." At the
bottom of the tree, on the side where the first turtle-dove did sit by
the green leaves, these words were also embroidered: "Haec ademptum,"
with an anchor under them. On the other side, under the other dove,
were these words, in like manner wrought: "Illa peremptum," with
pieces of broken board underneath.

"See you what this doth mean?" the countess asked.

"Nay," I answered; "my wit is herein at fault."

"You will," she said, "when you know whence this gift comes to me.
Methought, save by a few near to me in blood, or by marriage
connected, and one or two friends--thou, my Constance, being the
chiefest--I was unknown to all the world; but a sad royal heart having
had notice, in the midst of its own sore griefs, how the earl my
husband doth, through evil counsel, absent and estrange himself from
me, partly to comfort, and partly to show her love to one she once
thought should be her daughter-in-law, for a token thereof she sent me
this gift, contrived by her own thinking, and wrought with her own
hands. Those two doves do represent herself and me. On my side an
anchor and a few green leaves (symbols of hope), show I may yet
flourish, because my lord is alive; though, by reason of his absence
and unkindness, I mourn as a {472} lone turtle-dove. But the bare
boughs and broken boards on her side signify that her hopes are wholly
wrecked by the death of the duke, for whom she doth mourn without hope
of comfort or redress."

The pathetic manner in which Lady Arundel made this speech moved me
almost to tears.

"If Philip," she said, "doth visit me again at any time, I will hang
up this ingenious conceit where he should see it. Methinks it will
recall to him the past, and move him to show me kindness. Help me,
Constance," she said after a pause, "for to compose such an answer as
my needle can express, which shall convey to this royal prisoner both
thanks, and somewhat of hope also, albeit not of the sort she doth
disclaim.'"

I mused for a while, and then with a pencil drew a pattern of a like
tree to that of the Scottish queen's design; and the dove which did
typify the Countess of Arundel I did represent fastened to the branch,
whereon she sat and mourned, by many strings wound round her heart,
and tied to the anchor of an earthly hope, whereas the one which was
the symbol of the forlorn royal captive did spread her wings toward
the sky, unfettered by the shattered relics strewn at her feet. Lady
Arundel put her arm round my neck, and said she liked well this
design; and bade me for to pray for her, that the invisible strings,
which verily did restrain in her heavenward motions, should not always
keep her from soaring thither where only true joys are to be found.

During some succeeding weeks I often visited her, and we wrought
together at the same frame in the working of this design, which she
had set on hand by a cunning artificer from the rough pattern I had
drawn. Much talk the while was ministered between us touching
religion, which did more and more engage her thoughts; Mr. Bayley, a
Catholic gentleman who belonged to the earl her husband, and whom she
did at that time employ to carry relief to sick and poor persons,
helping her greatly therein, being well instructed himself, and
haunting such priests as did reside secretly in London at that time.

About the period when Basil was expected to return, my health was
again much affected, not so sharply as before, but a weakness and
fading of strength did show the effects of such sufferings as I had
endured. Hubert's behavior did tend at that time for to keep me in
great uneasiness. When he came to the house, albeit he spake but
seldom to me, if we ever were alone he gave sundry hints of a
persistent hope and a possible desperation, mingled with vague
threats, which disturbed me more than can be thought of. Methinks
Kate, Polly, and Muriel held council touching my health; and thence
arose a very welcome proposal, from my Lady Tregony, that I should
visit her at her seat in Norfolk, close on the borders of Suffolk,
whither she had retired since Thomas Sherwood's death. Polly, who had
a good head and a good heart albeit too light a mind, forecasted the
comfort it should be to Basil and me, when he returned, to be so near
neighbors until we were married (which could not be before some months
after he came of age), that we could meet every day; Lady Tregony's
seat being only three miles distant from Euston. They wrote to him
thereon; and when his answer came, the joy he expressed was such that
nothing could be greater. And on a fair day in the spring, when the
blossoms of the pear and apple-trees were showing on the bare
branches, even as my hopes of coming joys did bud afresh after long
pangs of separation, I rode from London, by slow journeys, to Banham
Hall, and amidst the sweet silence of rural scenes, quiet fields, and
a small but convenient house, where I was greeted with maternal
kindness by one in whom age retained the warmth of heart of youth, I
did regain so much strength and good looks, that when, one day, a
{473} horsemen, when I least thought of it, rode to the door, and I
turned white and red in turns, speechless with delight, perceiving it
to be Basil, he took me by both hands, looked into my face and cried:

"Hang the leeches! Suffolk air was all thou didst need, for all they
did so fright me."

"Norfolk air, I pray you," quoth my Lady Tregony, smiling.

"Nay, nay," quoth Basil. "It
doth blow over the border from Suffolk."

"Happiness, leastways, bloweth thence," I whispered.

"Yea," he answered; for he was not one for to make long speeches.

But, ah me! the sight of him was a cure to all mine ailments.


CHAPTER XXI.

It is not to be credited with how great an admixture of pleasure and
pain I do set myself to my daily task of writing, for the thought of
those spring and summer months spent in Lady Tregony's house doth stir
up old feelings, the sweetness of which hath yet some bitterness in
it, which I would fain separate from the memories of that happy time.

Basil had taken up his abode at Euston, whither I so often went and
whence he so often came, that methinks we could both have told (for
mine own part I can yet do it, even after the lapse of so many years)
the shape of each tree, the rising of each bank, the every winding of
the fair river Ouse betwixt one house and the other. Yea, when I now
sit down on the shore, gazing on the far-off sea, bethinking myself it
doth break on the coast of England, I sometimes newly draw on memory's
tablet that old large house, the biggest in all Suffolk, albeit homely
in its exterior and interior plainness, which sitteth in a green
hollow between two graceful swelling hills. Its opposite meadows
starred in the spring-tide with so many daisies and buttercups that
the grass scantily showeth amidst these gay intruders; the ascending
walk, a mile in length, with four rows of ash-trees on each side, the
tender green of which in those early April days mocked the sober tints
of the darksome tufts of fir; and the noble deer underneath the old
oaks, carrying in a stately manner their horned heads, and darting
along the glades with so swift a course that the eye could scarce
follow them. But mostly the little wooden bridge where, when Basil did
fish, I was wont to sit and watch the sport, I said, but verily him,
of whose sight I was somewhat covetous after his long absence. And I
mind me that one day when we were thus seated, he on the margin of the
stream and I leaning against the bridge, we held an argument touching
country diversions, which began in this wise:

"Methinks," I said, "of all disports fishing hath this advantage, that
if one faileth in the success he looketh for, he hath at least a
wholesome walk, a sweet air, a fragrant savor of the mead flowers. He
seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, and many other fowls with their
broods, which is surely better than the noise of hounds, the blast of
horns, and the cries the hunters make. And if it be in part used for
the increasing of the body's health and the solace of the mind, it can
also be advantageously employed for the health of the soul, for it is
not needful in this diversion to have a great many persons with you,
and this solitude doth favor thought and the serving of God by
sometimes repeating devout prayers."

To this Basil replied: "That as there be many men, there be also many
minds; and, for his part, when the woods and fields and skies seemed
in all one loud cry and confusion with the earning of the hounds, the
gallopping of the horses, the hallowing of the huntsmen, and the
excellent echo resounding from the hills and valleys, he did not think
there could be a {474} more delectable pastime or a more tuneable
sound by any degree than this, and specially in that place which is
formed so meet for the purpose. And if he should wish anything, it
would be that it had been the time of year for it, and for me to ride
by his side on a sweet misty mornings to hear this goodly music and to
be recreated with this excellent diversion. And for the matter of
prayers," he added, smiling, "I warrant thee, sweet preacher, that as
wholesome cogitations touching Almighty God and his goodness, and
brief inward thanking of him for good limbs and an easy heart, have
come into my mind on a horse's back with a brave westerly wind blowing
about my head, as in the quiet sitting by a stream listing to the
fowls singing."

"Oh, but Basil," I rejoined, "there are more virtues to be practised
by an angler than by a hunter."

"How prove you that, sweetheart?" he asked.

Then I: "Well, he must be of a well-settled and constant belief to
enjoy the benefit of his expectation. He must be full of love to his
neighbor, that he neither give offence in any particular, nor be
guilty of any general destruction; then he must be exceeding patient,
not chafing in losing the prey when it is almost in hand, or in
breaking his tools, but with pleased sufferance, as I have witnessed
in thyself, amend errors and think mischances instructions to better
carefulness. He must be also full of humble thoughts, not disdaining
to kneel, lie down, or wet his fingers when occasion commands. Then
must he be prudent, apprehending the reasons why the fish will not
bite; and of a thankful nature, showing a large gratefulness for the
least satisfaction."

"Tut, tut," Basil replied, laughing; "thinkest thou no patience be
needful when the dogs do lose the scent, or your horse refuseth to
take a gate; no prudence to forecast which way to turn when the issue
be doubtful; no humility to brook a fall with twenty fellows passing
by a-jeering of you; no thankfulness your head be not broken; no love
of your neighbor for to abstain in the heat of the chase from treading
down his corn, or for to make amends when it be done? Go to, go to,
sweetheart; thou art a dextrous pleader, but hast failed to prove thy
point. Methinks there doth exist greater temptations for to swear or
to quarrel in hunting than in fishing, and, if resisted, more
excellent virtues then observed. One day last year, when I was in
Cheshire, Sir Peter Lee of Lime did invite me to hunt the stag, and
there being a great stag in chase and many gentlemen hot in the
pursuit, the stag took soil, and divers, whereof I was one, alighted
and stood with sword drawn to have a cut at him."

"Oh, the poor stag!" I cried; "I do always sorely grieve for him."

"Well," he continued, "the stags there be wonderfully fierce and
dangerous, which made us youths more eager to be at him. But he
escaped us all; and it was my misfortune to be hindered in my coming
near him, the way being slippery, by a fall which gave occasion to
some which did not know me to speak as if I had failed for fear; which
being told me, I followed the gentleman who first spoke it, intending
for to pick a quarrel with him, and, peradventure, measure my sword
with his, so be his denial and repentance did not appear. But, I thank
God, afore I reached him my purpose had changed, and in its stead I
turned back to pursue the stag, and happened to be the only horseman
in when the dogs set him up at bay; and approaching near him, he broke
through the dogs and ran at me, and took my horse's side with his
horns. Then I quitted my horse, and of a sudden getting behind him,
got on his back and cut his throat with my sword."

"Alack!" I cried, "I do mislike these bloody pastimes, and love not to
think of the violent death of any living creature."

{475}

"Well, dear heart," he answered, "I will not make thee sad again by
the mention of the killing of so much as a rat, if it displeaseth
thee. But truly I mislike not to think of that day, for I warrant
thee, in turning back from the pursuit of that injurious gentleman,
somewhat more of virtue did exist than it hath been my hap often to
practice. For, look you, sweet one, to some it doth cause no pain to
forgive an injury which toucheth not their honor, or to plunge into
the sea to fish out a drowning man; but to be styled a coward, and yet
to act as a Christian man should do, not seeking for to be revenged,
why, methinks, there should be a little merit in it."

"Yea," I said, "much in every way; but truly, sir, if your thinking is
just that easy virtue is little or no virtue, I shall be the least
virtuous wife in the world."

Upon this he laughed so loud that I told him he would fright all the
fishes away.

"I' faith, let them go if they list," he cried, and cast away his rod.
Then coming to where I was sitting, he invited me to walk with him
alongside the stream, and then asked me for to explain my last speech.

"Why, Basil," I said, "what, I pray you, should be the duty of a
virtuous wife but to love her husband?"

So then he, catching my meaning, smiled and replied,

"If that duty shall prove easy to thy affectionate heart, I doubt not
but others will arise which shall call for the exercise of more
difficult virtue."

When we came to a sweet nook, where the shade made it too dark for
grass to grow, and only moss yielded a soil carpet for the feet, we
sat down on a shelving slope of broken stones, and I exclaimed,

"Oh, Basil, methinks we shall be too happy in this fair place; and I
do tax myself presently with hardness of heart, that in thy company,
and the forecasting of a blissful time to come, I lose the sense of
recent sorrows."

"God doth yield thee this comfort," he answered, "for to refresh thy
body and strengthen thy soul, which have both been verily sorely
afflicted of late. I ween he doth send us breathing-times with this
merciful intent."

By such discourses as these we entertained ourselves at sundry times;
but some of the sweetest hours we spent were occupied in planning the
future manner of our lives, the good we should strive to do amongst
our poor neighbors, and the sweet exercise of Catholic religion we
should observe.

Foreseeing the frequent concealing of priests in his house, Basil sent
one day for a young carpenter, one Master Owen, who hath since been so
noted for the contriving of hiding-places in all the recusants' houses
in England; and verily what I noticed in him during the days he was at
work at Euston did agree with the great repute of sanctity he hath
since obtained. His so small stature, his trick of silence, his
exceeding recollected and composed manner filled me with admiration;
and Basil told me nothing would serve him, the morning he arrived,
when he found a priest was in the house, but to go to shrift and holy
communion, which was his practice, before ever he set to work at his
good business. I took much pleasure in watching his progress. He
scooped out a cell in the walls of the gallery, contriving a door such
as I remembered at Sherwood Hall, which none could see to open unless
they did know of the spring. All the time he was laboring thereat, I
could discern him to be praying; and when he wot not any to be near
him, sang hymns in a loud and exceeding sweet voice. I have never
observed in any one a more religious behavior than in this youth, who,
by his subtle and ingenious art, hath saved the lives of many priests,
and procured mass to be said in houses where none should have durst
for to say or hear it if a refuge of this kind did not exist, wherein
a man may lie ensconced for years, and none can find him, if he come
not forth himself.

{476}

When he was gone, other sort of workmen were called in, for to make
more habitable and convenient a portion of this large house. For in
this the entire consenting of our minds did appear, that neither of us
desired for to spend money on showy improvements, or to inhabit ten
chambers when five should suffice. What one proposed, the other always
liked well; and if in tastes we did sometimes differ, yet no
disagreement ensued. For, albeit Basil cared not as much as I did for
the good ordering of the library, his indulgent kindness did
nevertheless incline him to favor me with a promise that one hundred
fair, commendable books should be added to those his good father had
collected. He said that Hubert should aid us to choose these goodly
volumes, holy treatises, and histories in French and English, if it
liked me, and poetry also. One pleasant chamber he did laughingly
appoint for to be the scholar's room, in the which he should never so
much as show his face, but Hubert and I read and write, if we listed,
our very heads off. The ancient chapel was now a hall; and, save some
carving on the walls which could not be recovered, no traces did
remain of its old use. But at the top-most part of the house, at the
head of a narrow staircase, was a chamber wherein mass was sometimes
said; and since Basil's return, he had procured that each Saturday a
priest should come and spend the night with him, for the convenience
of all the neighboring Catholics who resorted there for to go to their
duty. Lady Tregony and her household--which were mostly Catholic, but
had not the same commodities in her house, where to conceal any one
was more hard, for that it stood almost in the village of Fakenham,
and all comers and goers proved visible to the inhabitants--did repair
on Sundays, at break of day, to Euston. How sweet were those rides in
the fair morning light, the dew bespangling every herb and tree, and
the wild flowers filling the air with their fresh fragrance! The pale
primroses, the azure harebell, the wood-anemone, and the dark-blue
hyacinth--what dainty nosegays they furnished us with for our Blessed
Lady's altar! of which the fairest image I ever beheld stood in the
little secret chapel at Euston. Basil did much affection this image of
Blessed Mary; for as far back as he could remember he had been used to
say his prayers before it; and when his mother died, he being only
seven years of age, he knelt before this so lively representation of
God's Mother, beseeching of her to be a mother to him also; which
prayer methinks verily did take effect, his life having been marked by
singular tokens of her maternal care.

In the Holy Week, which fell that year in the second week of April, he
procured the aid of three priests, and had all the ceremonies
performed which do appertain to that sacred season. On Wednesday,
toward evening began _Tenebrae_, with the mysterious candlestick of
fifteen lights, fourteen of them representing, by the extinguishing of
them, the disciples which forsook Christ; the fifteenth on the top,
which was not put out, his dear Mother, who from the crib to the
cross, was not severed from him. On Thursday we decked the sepulchre
wherein the Blessed Sacrament reposed with flowers and all such jewels
as we possessed, and namely with a very fair diamond cross which Basil
had gifted me with, and reverently attended it day and night. "God
defend," I said to Basil, when the sepulchre was removed, "I should
retain for vain uses what was lent to our Lord yester eve!" and
straightway hung on the cross to our Lady's neck. On Friday we all
crept to the crucifix, and kissing, bathed it with our tears. On
Saturday every fire was extinguished in the house, and kindled again
with hallowed fire. Then ensued the benediction of the paschal candle,
and the rest of the divine ceremonies, till mass. At mass, as soon as
the priest pronounced "Gloria in excelsis," a cloth, contrived by Lady
Tregony and me, {477} and which veiled the altar, made resplendent
with lights and flowers, was suddenly snatched away, and many little
bells we had prepared for that purpose rung, in imitation of what was
done in England in Catholic times, and now in foreign countries. On
Easter Sunday, after mass, a benediction was given to divers sorts of
meat, and, in remembrance of the Lamb sacrificed two days before, a
great proportion of lamb. Nigh one hundred recusants had repaired to
Euston that day for their paschal communion. Basil did invite them all
to break Lent's neck with us, in honor of Christ's joyful
resurrection; and many blessings were showered that day, I ween, on
Master Rookwood, and for his sake, I ween, on Mistress Sherwood also.
The sun did shine that Easter morning with more than usual brightness.
The common people do say it danceth for joy at this glorious tide. For
my part, methought it had a rare youthful brilliancy, more cheering
than hot, more lightsome than dazzling. All nature seemed to rejoice
that Christ was risen; and pastoral art had devised arches of flowers
and gay wreaths hanging from pole to pole and gladdening every
thicket.

Verily, if the sun danced in the sky, my poor heart danced in my
bosom. At Basil's wishing, anticipating future duties, I went to the
kitchen for to order the tansy-cakes which were to be prizes at the
hand-ball playing on the next day. Like a foolish creature, I was
ready to smile at every jest, howsoever trifling; and when Basil put
in his head at the door and cried, "Prithee, let each one that eateth
of tansy-cake to-morrow, which signifieth bitter herbs, take also of
bacon, to show he is no Jew," the wenches and I did laugh till the
tears ran down our cheeks. Ah me! when the heart doth overflow with
joy 'tis marvellous how the least word maketh merriment.

One day late in April I rode with Basil for to see some hawking, which
verily is a pleasure for high and mounting spirits; howsoever, I wore
not the dress which the ladies in this country do use on such
occasions, for I have always thought it an unbecoming thing for women
to array themselves in male attire, or ride in fashion like a man, and
Basil is of my thinking thereon. It was a dear, calm, sun-shiny
evening, about an hour before the sun doth usually mask himself, that
we went to the river. There we dismounted and, for the first time, I
did behold this noble pastime. For is it not rare to consider how a
wild bird should be so brought to hand and so well managed as to make
us such pleasure in the air; but most of all to forego her native
liberty and feeding, and return to her servitude and diet? And what a
lesson do they read to us when our wanton wills and thoughts take no
heed of reason and conscience's voices luring us back to duty's perch.

When we had stood a brief time watching for a mallard, Basil perceived
one and whistled off his falcon. She flew from him as if she would
never have turned her head again, yet upon a shout came in. Then by
degrees, little by little, flying about and about, she mounted so high
as if she had made the moon the place of her flight, but presently
came down like a stone at the sound of his lure. I waxed very eager in
the noticing of these haps, and was well content to be an eye-witness
of this sport. Methought it should be a very pleasant thing to be
Basil's companion in it, and wear a dainty glove and a gentle tasel on
my fist which should never cast off but at my bidding, and when I let
it fly would return at my call. And this thought minded me of a
faithful love never diverted from its resting-place save by heavenward
aspirations alternating betwixt earthly duties and ghostly soarings.
But oh, what a tragedy was enacted in the air when Basil, having
detected by a little white feather in its tail a cock in a brake, cast
off a tasel gentle, who never ceased his circular motion till he had
recovered his place. Then suddenly {478} upon the flushing of the cock
he came down, and missing of it in that down-come, lo what working
there was on both sides! The cock mounting as if he would have pierced
the skies; the hawk flying a contrary way until he had made the wind
his friend; what speed the cock made to save himself! What hasty
pursuit the hawk made of the fugitive! after long flying killing of
it, but alack in killing of it killing himself!

"Ah, a fatal ending to a fatal strife!" exclaimed a known voice close
unto mine ear, a melodious one, albeit now harsh to my hearing. Mine
eyes were dazzled with gazing upward, and I confusedly discerned two
gentlemen standing near me, one of which I knew to be Hubert. I gave
him my hand, and then Basil turning round and beholding him and his
companion, came up to them with a joyful greeting:

"Oh, Sir Henry," he exclaimed, "I be truly glad to see you; and you,
Hubert, what a welcome surprise is this!"

Then he introduced me to Sir Henry Jemingham; for he it was who,
bowing in a courteous fashion, addressed to me such compliments as
gentlemen are wont to pay to ladies at the outset of their
acquaintanceship.

These visitors had left their horses a few paces off, and then Sir
Henry explained that Hubert had been abiding with him at his seat for
a few days, and that certain law-business in which Basil was concerned
as well as his brother, and himself also, as having been for one year
his guardian, did necessitate a meeting wherein these matters should
be brought to a close.

"So," quoth he then, "Master Basil, I proposed we should invade your
solitude in place of withdrawing you from it, which methought of the
two evils should be the least, seeing what attractions do detain you
at Euston at this time."

I foolishly dared not look at Hubert when Sir Henry made this speech,
and Basil with hearty cheer thanked him for his obliging conduct and
the great honor he did him for to visit him in this amicable manner.
Then he craved his permission for to accompany me to Lady Tregony's
house, trusting, he said, to Hubert to conduct him to Euston, and to
perform there all hospitable duties during the short time he should be
absent himself.

"Nay, nay," quoth Sir Henry, "but, with your license, Master Basil, we
will ride with you and this lady to Banham Hall. Methinks, seeing you
are such near neighbors, that Mistress Sherwood lacketh not
opportunities to enjoy your company, and that you should not deprive
me of the pleasure of a short conversation with her whilst Hubert and
you entertain yourselves for the nonce in the best way you can."

Basil smiled, and said it contented him very much that Sir Henry
should enjoy my conversation, which he hoped in future should make
amends to his friends for his own deficiencies. So we all mounted our
horses, and Sir Henry rode alongside of me, and Basil and Hubert
behind us; for only two could hold abreast in the narrow lane which
led to Fakenham. A chill had fallen on my heart since Hubert's
arrival, which I can only liken to the sudden overcasting of a bright
sun-shiny day by a dark, cold cloud.

At first Sir Henry entered into discourse with me touching hawking,
which he talked of in a merry fashion, drawing many similitudes
betwixt falconers and lovers, which he said were the likest people in
the world.

"For, I pray you," said he "are not hawks to the one what his mistress
is to the other? the objects of his care, admiration, labor, and all.
They be indeed his idols. To them he consecrates his amorous ditties,
and courts each one in a peculiar dialect. Oh, believe me, Mistress
Sherwood, that lady may style herself fortunate in love who shall meet
with so much thought, affection, and solicitude from a lover or a
husband as his birds do from a good ostringen."

{479}

Then diverting his speech to other topics, he told me it was bruited
that the queen did intend to make a progress in the eastern counties
that summer, and that her majesty should be entertained in a very
splendid manner at Kenninghall by my Lord Arundel and also at his
house in Norwich.

"It doth much grieve me to hear it," I answered.

Then he: "Wherefore, Mistress Sherwood?"

"Because," I said, "Lord Arundel hath already greatly impaired his
fortune and spent larger sums than can be thought of in the like
prodigal courtly expenses, and also lost a good part of the lands
which his grandfather and my Lady Lumley would have bequeathed to him
if he had not turned spendthrift and so greatly displeased them."

"But and if it be so," quoth he again, "wherefore doth this young
nobleman's imprudence displeasure you, Mistress Sherwood?"

I answered, "By reason of the pain which his follies do cause to his
sweet lady, which for many years hath been more of a friend to my poor
self, than unequal rank and, if possible, still more unequal merit
should warrant."

"Then I marvel not," replied Sir Henry, "at your resentment of her
husband's folly, for by all I have ever seen or heard of this lady she
doth show herself to be the pattern of a wife, the model of high-born
ladies; and 'tis said that albeit so young, there doth exist in her so
much merit and dignity that some noblemen confess that when they come
into her presence they dare not swear, as at other times they are wont
to do before the best of the kingdom. But I have heard, and am verily
inclined to believe it, that he is much changed in his dispositions
toward his lady; though pride, it may be, or shame at his ill-usage of
her, or fear that it should seem that, now his favor with the queen
doth visibly decline, he should turn to her whom, when fortune smiled
upon him, he did keep aloof from, seeking her only when clouds gather
round him, do hinder him from showing these new inclinations."

"How much he would err," I exclaimed, "and wrong his noble wife if he
misdoubted her heart in such a case! Methinks most women would be
ready to forgive one they loved when misfortune threatened them, but
she beyond all others, who never at any time allowed jealousy or
natural resentments to draw away her love from him to whom she hath
vowed it. But is Lord Arundel then indeed in less favor with her
majesty? And how doth this surmise agree with the report of her visit
to Kenninghall?"

"Ah, Mistress Sherwood," he answered, "declines in the human body
often do call for desperate remedies, and the like are often required
when they occur in court favor. 'Tis a dangerous expedient to spend
two or three thousands of pounds in one or two days for the
entertainment of the queen and the court; but if, on the report of her
intended progress, one of such high rank as Lord Arundel had failed to
place his house at her disposal, his own disgrace and his enemies'
triumph should have speedily ensued. I pray God my Lord Burleigh do
not think on Cottessy! Egad, I would as lief pay down at once one
year's income as to be so uncertainly mulcted. I warrant you Lord
Arundel shall have need to sell an estate to pay for the honor her
majesty will do him. He hath a spirit will not stop half-way in
anything he doth pursue."

"Then think you, sir," I said, "he will be one day as noted for his
virtues as now for his faults?"

Sir Henry smiled as he answered, "If Philip Howard doth set himself
one day to serve God, I promise you his zeal therein will far exceed
what he hath shown in the devil's service."

"I pray you prove a true prophet, sir," I said; and, as we now had
reached the door of Lady Tregony's house, I took leave of this
courteous gentlemen, and hastily turned toward {480} Basil--with an
uneasy desire to set him on his guard to use some reserve in his
speeches with Hubert, but withal at a loss how to frame a brief
warning, or to speak without being overheard. Howsoever, I drew him a
little aside, and whispered, "Prithee, be silent touching Owen's work,
even to Hubert."

He looked at me so much astonished, and methought with so great a look
of pain, that my heart smote me. We exchanged a brief farewell; and
when they had all ridden away, I felt sad. Our partings were wont to
be more protracted; for he would most times ask me to walk back with
him to the gate, and then made it an excuse that it should be
unmannerly not to see me home, and so three or four times we used to
walk to and fro, till at last I did laughingly shut the door on him,
and refused to open it again. But, ah me! that evening the chill I
spoke of had fallen on our simple joys like a blight on a fair
landscape.

On the next day two missives came to me from Euston, sent by private
hand, but not by the same messenger. I leave the reader to judge what
I felt in reading these proofs of the dispositions of two brothers, so
alike in features, so different in soul. This was Basil's letter:

"MINE OWN DEAR HEART--
The business which hath brought Sir Henry and Hubert here will, I be
frightened, hold me engaged all to-morrow. But, before I sleep, I must
needs write thee (poor penman as I be) how much it misliketh me to see
in thee an ill opinion of mine only and dear brother, and such
suspicion as verily no one should entertain of a friend, but much less
of one so near in blood. I do yield thee that he is not as zealous as
I could wish in devout practices, and something too fond of worldly
pleasures; but God is my witness, I should as soon think of doubting
mine own existence as his fidelity to his religion, or his kindness to
myself. So, prithee, dear love, pain me not again by the utterance of
such injurious words to Hubert as that I should not trust him with any
secrets howsoever weighty, or should observe any manner of restraint
in communicating with him touching common dangers and interests.
Methinks he is very sad at this time, and that the sight of his
paternal home hath made him melancholy. Verily, his lot hath in it
none of the brightness which doth attend mine, and I would we could
anyways make him a partaker in the happiness we do enjoy. I pray God
he may help me to effect this, by the forwarding of any wish he hath
at heart; but he was always of a very reserved habit of mind, and not
prone to speak of his own concernments. Forgive, sweetheart, this
loving reproof, from thy most loving friend and servant,"
"BASIL ROOKWOOD."

Hubert's was as followeth:

"MADAM--My presumption toward you hath doubtless been a sin calling
for severe punishment; but I pray you leave not the cause of it
unremembered. The doubtful mind you once showed in my regard, and of
which the last time I saw you some marks methought did yet appear,
should be my excuse if I have erred in a persistency of love, which
most women would less deserve indeed, but would more appreciate than
you have done. If this day no token doth reach me of your changed
mind, be it so. I depart hence as changed as you do remain unchanged.
It may be for mine own weal, albeit passion deems of it otherwise, if
you finally reject me whom once you did look upon with so great favor,
that the very thought of it works in me a revived tenderness as should
be mine own undoing if it prevailed, for this country hath laws which
are not broken in vain, and faithful loyal service is differently
requited than traitorous and obstinate malignity. I shall be the
greater for lacking your love, proud lady; but to have it I would
forego all a sovereign can bestow--all that ambition can desire.
These, then, are my last words. If we meet not to-day, God {481}
knoweth with what sentiments we shall one day meet, when justice hath
overtaken you, and love in me hath turned to hatred!"

"HUBERT ROOKWOOD."

"Ay," I bitterly exclaimed, laying the two letters side by side before
me, "one endeth with love, the other with hate. The one showeth the
noble fruits of true affection, the other the bitter end of selfish
passion." Then I mused if I should send Basil, or show him later
Hubert's letter, clearing myself of any injustice toward him, but
destroying likewise for ever his virtuous confidence his brother's
honor. A short struggle with myself ensued, but I soon resolved, for
the present at least, on silence. If danger did seem to threaten
Basil, which his knowledge of his brother's baseness could avert, then
I must needs speak; but God defend I should without constraint pour a
poisoned drop into the dear fount of his undoubting soul. Passion may
die away, hatred may cease, repentance arise; but the evil done by the
revealing of another's sin worketh endless wrong to the doer and the
hearer.

The day on which I received these two letters did seem the longest I
had ever known. On the next Basil came to Banham Hall, and told me his
guests were gone. A load seemed lifted from my heart But, albeit we
resumed our wonted manner of life, and the same mutual kindness and
accustomed duties and pleasures filled our days, I felt less secure in
my happiness, less thoughtless of the world without, more subject to
sudden sinkings of heart in the midst of greatest merriment, than
before Hubert's visit.

In the early part of June, Mr. Congleton wrote in answer to Basil's
eager pressings that he would fix the day of our marriage, that he was
of opinion a better one could not be found than that of our Lady's
Visitation, on the 2d of July, and that, if it pleased God, he should
then take the first journey he had made for five-and-twenty years; for
nothing would serve Lady Tregony but that the wedding should take
place in her house, where a priest would marry us in secret at break
of day, and then we should ride to the parish church at Euston for the
public ceremony. He should, he added, carry Muriel with him, howsoever
reluctant she should be to leave London; but he promised us this
should be a welcome piece of constraint, for that she longed to see me
again more than can be told.

Verily, pleasant letters reached me that week; for my father wrote he
was in better health, and in great peace and contentment of mind at
Rheims, albeit somewhat sad, when he saw younger and more fortunate
men (for so he styled them) depart for the English mission; and by a
cypher we had agreed on he gave me to understand Edmund Genings was of
that number. And Lady Arundel, to whom I had reported the conversation
I had with Sir Henry Jemingham, sent me an answer which I will here
transcribe:

"MY WELL-BELOVED CONSTANCE
--You do rightly read my heart, and the hope you express in my regard,
with so tender a friendship and solicitous desire for my happiness,
hath indeed a better foundation than idle surmises. It hath truly
pleased God that Philip's disposition toward me should change; and
albeit this change is not as yet openly manifested, he nevertheless
doth oftentimes visit me, and testifies much regret for his past
neglect of one whom he doth now confess to be his truest friend, his
greatest lover, and best comfort. O mine own dear friend! my life has
known many strange accidents, but none greater or more strange than
this, that my so long indifferent husband should turn into a secret
lover who doth haunt me by stealth, and looking on me with new eyes,
appears to conceive so much admiration for my worthless beauty, and to
find such pleasure in my poor company, that it would seem as if a new
face and person had been given to me wherewith {482} to inspire him
with this love for her to whom he doth owe it. Oh, I promise thee this
husbandly wooing liketh me well, and methinks I would not at once
disclose to the world this new kindness he doth show me and revival of
conjugal affection, but rather hug it and cherish it like a secret
treasure until it doth take such deep root that nothing can again
separate his heart from me. His fears touching the queen's
ill-conception of him increase, and his enemies do wax more powerful
each day. The world hath become full of uneasiness to him. Methinks he
would gladly break with it; but like to one who walketh on a narrow
plank, with a precipice on each side of him, his safety lieth only in
advancing. The report is true--I would it were false--of the queen's
progress, and her intended visit to Kenninghall. I fear another fair
estate in the north must needs pay the cost thereof; but avoidance is
impossible. I am about to remove from London to Arundel Castle, where
my lord doth will me for the present to reside. The sea-breezes on
that coast, and the mild air of Sussex, he thinks should improve my
health, which doth at this time require care. Touching religion, I
have two or three times let fall words which implied an increased
inclination to Catholic religion. Each time his countenance did very
much alter, and assumed a painful expression. I fear he is as greatly
opposed to it as heretofore. But if once resolved on what conscience
doth prescribe, with God's help, I hope that neither new-found joys
nor future fears shall stay me from obeying its voice.

"And so thou art to be married come the early days of July! I' faith
thy Basil and thou have, like a pair of doves, cooed long enough, I
ween, amidst the tall trees of Euston; which, if you are to be
believed, should be the most delectable place in the whole world. And
yet some have told me it is but a huge plain building, and the country
about it, except for its luxuriant trees, of no notable beauty. The
sunshine of thine own heart sheddeth, I ween, a radiancy on the plain
walls and the unadorned gardens greater than nature or art can bestow.
I cry thee mercy for this malicious surmise, and give thee license,
when I shall write in the same strain touching my lord's castle at
Arundel to flout me in a like manner. Some do disdainfully style it a
huge old fortress; others a very grand and noble pile. If that good
befalleth me that he doth visit me there, then I doubt not but it will
be to me the cheerfullest place in existence. Thy loving servant to
command,
    "ANN ARUNDEL AND SURREY."

This letter came to my hand at Whitsuntide, when the village folks
were enacting a pastoral, the only merit of which did lie in the
innocent glee of the performers. The sheep-shearing feast, a very
pretty festival, ensued a few days later. A fat lamb was provided, and
the maidens of the town permitted to run after it, and she which took
hold of it declared the lady of the lamb. 'Tis then the custom to kill
and carry it on a long pole before the lady and her companions to the
green, attended with music and morisco dances. But this year I
ransomed the lamb, and had it crowned with blue corn-flowers and
poppies, and led to a small paddock, where for some time I visited and
fed it every day. Poor little lamb! like me, it had one short happy
time that summer.

In the evening I went with the lasses to the banks of the Ouse, and
scattered on the dimpling stream, as is their wont at the lamb-ale, a
thousand odorous flowers--new-born roses, the fleur-de-luce,
sweet-williams, and yellow coxcombs, the small-flowered
lady's-slipper, the prince's-feather and the clustered bell-flower,
the sweet-basil (the saucy wenches smiled when they furnished me with
a bunch thereof), and a great store of midsummer daisies. When, with
due observance, I threw on the water a handful of these golden-tufted
and {483} silver-crowned flowerets, I thought of Master Chaucer's
lines:

  "Above all the flowers in the mead
  These love I most--these flowers white and red.
      And in French called _la belle Marguerite_.
  O commendable flower, and most in mind!
  O flower and gracious excellence!
      O amiable Marguerite."

The great store of winsome and graciously-named flowers used that day
set me to plan a fair garden, wherein each month should yield in its
turn to the altar of our secret chapel a pure incense of nature's own
furnishing. Basil was helping me thereto, and my Lady Tregony smiling
at my quaint devices, when Mr. Cobham, a cousin of her ladyship,
arrived, bringing with him news of the queen's progress, which quickly
diverted us from other thoughts, and caused my pencil to stand idle in
mine hand.


TO BE CONTINUED.

----------

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

THE SIEGE OF MALTA.


When Solymon, sultan of Turkey, had resolved to extirpate the Knights
of Malta, pursuant to his ultimate design of taking vengeance on
Philip II. of Spain for the loss which he had suffered in the
reduction of the (as he supposed) impregnable Penon de Valez, and for
the hostility which the Spaniards had visited upon the Morescoes, to
which may be added the incentive of radical religious differences, for
the depredations which those famous warriors had visited upon his
commerce, he gave the command of his fleet to Piali, and that of his
land forces to Mustapha. Having equipped all of the ships in his
empire, to which were united the corsairs of Hascem and Dragut,
viceroys of Algiers and Tripoli, he ordered them to repair to the
siege of Malta.

The Christian powers on the Mediterranean, having heard of his
extensive preparations, were in doubt as to the destination of the
Turkish fleet; but it appearing from the report of spies that it was
bound for Malta, the grand master called immediately upon the Catholic
king, the Pope, and the other Christian princes for their aid in
withstanding their common enemy, the infidels. These powers were under
no small obligation to the Knights, who had made it a part of the
faith which they held in unity with these powers, to destroy them upon
every occasion which presented the opportunity. But, to their
disgrace, these powers discovered an ungrateful hesitancy in
responding to this demand, save Philip, and even he, the historian
relates, was actuated by motives not wholly engendered by a sense of
honor, and whose tardiness was well-nigh fatal to the cause which he
professed to zealously espouse, and upon which the Knights of Malta
relied for success.

About the middle of May, three hundred years ago, the Turkish fleet
arrived in sight of Malta, with a strength of upward of 40,000,
composed chiefly of janissaries and serapis, the bravest troops of the
Ottoman empire.

John de la Valette, the master-spirit of the defence, commands our
highest admiration for his intrepid efforts in inspiring every aspect
with the buoyancy of hope. The troops at his disposal to stay this
tide of destruction, which set so furiously against his little
sea-washed isle, amounted to only 700 knights and 8,500 soldiers,
which flattered Solymon into the egregious error that it was an easy
conquest to {484} His janissaries and serapis, who, under their
distinguished commanders, were accustomed to victory.

The Turks landed at some distance from Il Borgo, and, unresisted,
devastated the defenceless territory; but they now drew near a goal
which was calculated to deceive those who entertained the fantasy that
an easy victory waited them.

Mustapha, in view of the Spanish forces daily expected to relieve the
enemy, counselled an immediate attack upon St. Elmo. This was a fort
deriving much of its strength, as well as importance, from its natural
advantages. It was situated on a narrow neck of land which was washed
on either side by important harbors; it was accessible only over a
road which was either bare rock or thinly covered with gravel, and, in
the rear, communications with Il Borgo were protected by the forts St.
Angelo and St. Michael.

The basha, to secure himself a safer approach to St. Elmo, caused to
be erected a parapet of heavy timber, covered toward the fort with a
mixture of earth, straw, and rushes, to receive the enemy's missiles.
Here he planted his heaviest guns and prepared for the siege.

The governor of St. Elmo delegated a member of the fort to convey
intelligence to La Valette, the grand master, that the place could not
sustain an action for a great length of time; the messenger
represented, in exaggerated coloring, the information that the fort
could not withstand the siege for more than a week. La Valette, in his
reply, administered a rebuke, although convinced that it could not,
with its limited capacity for sustaining troops, remain long in the
possession of the order; but he was none the less impressed with the
policy of holding it, even at a great sacrifice, till the arrival of
the Viceroy of Sicily, who had been instructed by the King of Spain to
represent the kingdom, in response to the call of the grand master. He
concluded, in view of the necessities of the case, to head in person a
body of reinforcements; but being dissuaded by the importunities of
the Knights, he consented to intrust its charge to De Medran, in whom
he placed implicit confidence.

Stung by the rebuke, and encouraged by their new accessions, the
garrison sallied forth upon the offensive, dealing consternation to
the unwarned foe; but having recovered from their surprise, the Turks
turned upon their assailants, who were discomfited by a perverse wind
which blew the smoke so as to obscure the enemy, and drove them within
the walls. When the smoke cleared away, what was the dismay of the
Knights to discover that the Turks had planted a battery in such
juxtaposition as to compromise much the security of the fort. It was,
unquestionably, a doubtful advantage which the Christians obtained by
quitting their works, as they now found it necessary for a greater
vigilance to be called into action.

The tireless infidels having discovered a gun-port but a few feet from
the ground, well-nigh made themselves masters of the cavaliers by
means of ladders. But after slaughtering many Christians, the
garrison, aroused from sleep and inspired by their sense of danger,
compelled, by the fury of their assault, the Turks to retire into the
ravelin. The conflict was now renewed upon the part of the
janissaries, and the contest raged with unabated vigor from daylight
till noon, when the besiegers were forced to withdraw. About a hundred
and twenty soldiers and Knights were killed, at a cost of nearly three
thousand to the enemy.

The situation of the fort was now grown critical. Mustapha held the
ravelin, and, conscious of its significance to the foe, whose attempts
to regain it were strenuous, filled up the ranks as fast as the
desperate struggles thinned them. La Valette sent reinforcements;
still the infidels persevered in battering breaches in the walls.
Fearing lest Mustapha would attempt to effect his purpose by {485}
storming, the faltering Knights applied a second time to the grand
master, recommending a desertion of the works.

La Valette, in opposition to the majority of his council, held, though
regretting the fate which awaited his brothers in the order, that the
place must not be evacuated, and called upon the defenders to execute
their vow, if necessary, which bound them to sacrifice their lives for
the welfare and perpetuity of the order. He also determined to follow
soon his reply in person, and fall in the common cause of
Christianity. Such was the grand master who withstood, alone and
unsupported, as we might say, the whole infidel forces, and who
declared his fealty to the cause in so determined a manner--a manner
not weakened by faltering acts--as to inspire courage into the most
craven heart.

Some murmured at this response, and fifty-three of the malcontents
addressed him a letter, in which they expressed the purpose that,
unless on the next night he sent boats to take them away, they would
seek sudden death without the shelter of the fort. To this letter he
replied by sending three commissioners to examine the tenability of
the works, and explaining to the disaffected soldiery their paramount
duty to the organization, and the futility of sacrificing their lives
to no good end, which were now so needful to sustain the defence
against the enemies of their holy faith. Two of these commissioners
concurred in pronouncing it untenable, but the third, Constantine
Gastriot, esteemed the fort far from being reduced. To guarantee his
good faith he offered to attempt its defence with what soldiers the
dangerous post would voluntarily command.

La Valette gladly accepted the offer, and, with consummate address,
informed the hitherto clamorous Knights that they might now obtain
their discharge; that he would relieve them by another garrison; and
also promising them facilities for transportation to II Borgo. "You my
brethren," concluded he, "may be in greater safety here, and I shall
then feel less anxiety for the preservation of the fort."

Conscious of the infamy that would await them upon their return, and
stung by the latent expression of the letter, they resolved to only
quit the fort when called to face the enemy. The grand master, to try
their feelings, intimated that willing troops were preferable to those
who were mutinous. This answer greatly affected the Knights, and they
humbled themselves still more till La Valette gladly receded from his
rigor.

Having now consecrated themselves for the immolation, and more troops
having come to their relief, operations were resumed. An invention
productive of great mischief to the enemy was resorted to by the
fertile genius of the besieged. Hoops were constructed of very
combustible material, and ignited and thrown among the Turks as they
were crowding to the assault. These were calculated to clasp a few of
them together, and, in confusion, to render relief impossible, and a
horrid death probable.

For a month the engagement was daily renewed, and Mustapha was as
frequently repulsed. On the 16th of July, intent upon a grand,
overwhelming assault, the Turkish fleet was drawn up near the fort,
supported by 4,000 musketeers and archers in the earthworks. The Turks
attempted to rush in at the breaches, now filled up with the
invincible Christian soldiery. But the immense number of the former
defeated the end they sought by so great a force. The cannon belched
forth a broad-sweeping desolation among the assailants for six hours;
the enemy were terrified almost beyond control of the officers, till,
at length, Mustapha was mortified in having, without gaining any
advantage by the slaughter which his command had sustained, to recall
them.

Mustapha despairing, after this sanguinary resistance to his arms, of
subduing the garrison so long as communication was kept open with the
town, by which the attenuated ranks were {486} supplied with fresh
troops, resolved, as his surest resort, to extend his works across the
neck and connect with the harbor in the rear. This work was executed
with much difficulty and loss. At this time Dragut, the most
accomplished naval officer of the Ottoman empire, was killed. Great as
was this loss, Mustapha did not hesitate, but seemed with every new
adversity to strengthen in his purpose of encompassing the Christians
with ruin.

Having rendered, by this precautionary expedient, the reception of
supplies from the town impossible, he again renewed the assault. The
four spirited attacks which were made upon the 31st of July were
repulsed by the Knights and soldiers, displaying, in the words of our
author (Watson), "a degree of prowess and fortitude which almost
exceeds belief, and is beyond the power of description."

Intelligence having been conveyed to the grand master of the perilous
situation of the fortress, troops were despatched to the rescue; but
they were forced to return, leaving the little garrison weak but
determined, faced with certain destruction, yet prepared to meet it
heroically. It commands our deepest admiration to see, even through
the film of distance, that little band, undaunted, cooped up within
that fiery furnace awaiting that doom which was drawing nearer and
nearer, and which heralded its dreadful approach with a pageantry at
once terrible and sublime; to see them with the blazing canopy
showering death down upon their uncovered heads; to see them, having
only to regret their former cowardice, adding to their already
resplendent laurels. A prouder moment does not come to the
historian--a moment more replete with the fulness of joy than can ever
be known to the fictionist, as he lingers with enchanted pen upon such
scenes; and yet, when followed by those which are revolting to our
more refined sense of enlightenment, he painfully discharges his duty.

Having spent the night which witnessed the blasting of every hope of
relief in prayer, they bade each other affectionate adieus, and
repaired to their death posts. To throw themselves upon the mercy of a
foe which indeed knew no mercy, was not for a moment entertained by
those who were wedded to the Catholic Church. The wounded and
disabled, at their request, were placed where sure death might meet
them. St. Elmo was attacked upon the 23d of July, 1505, which day saw
the infidel flag flaunting triumphantly over its ramparts, so soon to
be struck in disgrace and be replaced by the standard of St. John. The
resistance which its handful of defenders made provoked rather the
rage of the Turks than incited their admiration, and, after an
unparalleled struggle of four hours, nothing was left but the broken
walls to urge resistance to the overwhelming foe. Supremely grand was
the terrific display which its heights commanded amidst the fiercest
of the strife! A multitude of swaying human beings, actuated by a
maddened revenge, hurtling one against the other, stretching away,
whilst those more closely drawn to its sides were in numbers joined in
fiery chains, and in the embrace of their blazing bonds expired with
the wildest shrieks of agony! St. Elmo, wrapped in fire, arrayed in
its funereal pall of lowering smoke, became the prey of the Turks.

Mustapha surveyed the scene of his dear-bought victory with feelings
no doubt adverse to those which flattered him upon his arrival.
Brutal, indeed, were the means by which he sought to carry
consternation to Il Borgo; all that had been found yet alive were
ripped open, and, with the holy symbol of their faith gashed upon
their bodies, they were thrown into the harbor, and winds and tides
invoked to beat these messengers to the gates, to inform the town of
the fall of St. Elmo.

But a period awaited the siege of Malta which reflected more disgrace
upon Mustapha than one hundred victories could efface.

La Valette looked out upon the harbor now filled with the floating
bodies, {487} horribly gashed, of the gallant defenders of St Elmo,
but no one could read his reflections as he viewed those
dead-freighted waves depositing their burden upon the beach; no matter
what his acts may have been when suggested by such an inspiration, for
they were no index by which to read his heart.

We are informed by the historian that he dissembled his true feelings
that the Knights and soldiers might not see in him a cowardly
exemplar. But it is not impossible that the grand master looked
unmoved upon those whose dress and sacred wounds alone betrayed them
to have been bound to him by the endearing ties of the order. His
retaliation, however, is not in accordance with our finer conceptions
of right, but who will question the justness of _war_-expedients? La
Valette was the master-spirit of the defence, and he evinced himself
not unworthy his station. For had he been less decided, and succumbed
to the importunities of his subordinates, indeed the siege of Malta
would have been of short duration; no Spanish forces that would have
been sent could have retrieved the advantages that would have been
lost by a cowardly precipitation. And thus to him may we ascribe the
glory of the long masterly defence which kept an enemy, thirsting for
Christian blood, at bay, and which made an ultimate recovery
practicable; which, indeed, made the Turkish triumph but preparatory
to an indelible disgrace. La Valette's emotions of sorrow soon
hardened, and he ordered his captives to be decapitated and their
heads shot from the cannon's mouth into the enemy's camp. The
significance of this act, in part, may justify its commission, though
it would be more in harmony with our ideal to believe him incapable of
perpetrating such an offence. The object which Mustapha aimed to
accomplish in forwarding those ghastly dead to Il Borgo was to
intimidate the place into submission; the return which La Valette made
was designed to bespeak an unwavering disposition, and to hurl
defiance in the face of the infidels.

Mustapha, incensed at the undaunted response made to his white flag,
and the message sent back by his Christian slave, that they hoped soon
to bury him and his janissaries in the only ditch which they could
consistently surrender, immediately invested the town and re-commenced
the carnage. Subsequent to the fall of St. Elmo, the basha had been
strengthened by the arrival of Hascem with the bravoes of Alters,
amounting to 2,500 choice troops.

Il Borgo and St. Michael were now continuously under fire; but, to
expedite his purposes, Mustapha adopted the suggestion of Piali, to
make the Christian slaves draw their shipping across the neck upon
which stood St. Elmo, into the harbor, that there might be a
simultaneous charge from both land and Naval forces. This hardship was
rendered necessary because the grand master had caused a heavy chain
to be swung across the mouth of the harbor, to which impediment were
added the resources of St. Angelo, which commanded its entrance.

Having mastered this difficulty, Mustapha consented to the pompous
demands of Hascem to intrust to him the assault of St. Michael,
promising to support him if necessary. Hascem shared his command with
Candelissa, an experienced corsair, who was to sustain the attack by
sea.

With much display Candelissa proceeded to perform his part. Meeting
with unexpected resistance in the staccato which had been erected to
perplex his landing, he suffered great loss from the fort, which did
not delay in improving so cardinal an advantage, He resolved to
abandon this and attempt the intrenchments under the care of Gulmaran;
the Christians reserved their fire until it might be spent
effectively, and, at their first discharge, cut down 400 of the
assailants. Candelissa pushed vigorously on whilst Gulmaran was
reloading, and gained the shore; the latter, having prepared {488} for
such an emergency, now threw from his cannon grapeshot, which did
overwhelming execution, and Candelissa, seeing with dismay his
wavering troops, ordered his boats to be put off a little from the
shore.

The Algerines, seeing no avenue of escape, were conscious that through
success alone could they secure their safety. They therefore marched
forward with maddened resolution upon the earthworks. Before their
irresistible charge the Knights fell back in confusion. But stung with
shame upon seeing the infidel colors planted upon their works, they
rushed to the rescue, having been reinforced; the ardor of their
charge struck terror to the hearts of the assailants, and Candelissa
was among the first that fled. Of 4,000 only a fifth escaped. The
Christians continued firing upon the boats, sinking many, and covering
the waters with wrecks. Amidst this vast devastation, dying and dead
bodies were mingled in the wildest confusion. This defeat was decided,
and Candelissa's untimely exultation, which characterized his
reparation to the contest, was of a marked contrast to his inglorious
return as his craft ploughed their way through the thickly strewn
waters. The Knights were in nowise discouraged in this sudden turn in
the fortunes of the day.

In the meantime the attack was also going on by land. Hascem had
well-nigh expiated in disgrace his taunting threat; having led his
troops to the charge, he was confounded with the confusion which the
fearful havoc wrought among the ranks. Being driven back, he renewed
the assault in the face of the belching cannon roaring defiance to his
arms in vindication of the sanctity of invaded rights, but to no
purpose. His mortification was extreme in being compelled by the
intrepid garrison to sound a retreat. The basha now advanced with his
janissaries, and the united forces compelled the Knights to retire
from the beach, where, with undaunted spirits, they had proceeded to
meet the fresh troops. But they did not yield without the most
strenuous exertions, and the invaders had paid a dear price for the
dreadful spot. Though exhausted by fatigue, their  determination knew
no abatement, and they awaited within the breach the renewal of the
conflict. Their hopes were now reinspired by the addition of those
forces which had contributed so largely to the discomfit of
Candelissa. The janissaries, unable to withstand their onslaught, were
forced to retire amidst the showering missiles and cheers of the
gallant Christians.

Mustapha, enraged beyond control by the obstinate defence, employed
one-half of his troops under Piali against the town, and with the
remainder resolved to reduce the fort at any cost. To secure every
chance of success he raised more batteries, dug new trenches, sprung
mines, and prepared in every way possible to facilitate his design.
But upon every hand did the valiant Christians, animated by the
presence of the grand master, baffle his arms. Mustapha's principal
engineer constructed a machine, upon the efficacy of which they
entertained high hopes; it was a huge cask, firmly made, and filled
with powder, chains, bullets, and everything calculated to work
mischief which the place could command. This was projected into the
midst of the Christians, who, ere it exploded, managed to roll it back
upon its artificers, which did fearful execution among them. Whilst
yet the Turks were paralyzed by the effect of its report, the Knights
rushed out and engaged them hand to hand. Many of the infidels were
killed, and the remainder made good their escape. But Piali was not
idle. Though coping with superior strength, he was more successful
against Il Borgo than his rival against St. Michael. He had gained
great advantages, and, as night terminated his operations, he prepared
the minds of his intimates for the glorious entry which he proposed to
make on the morrow. He had, by a piece of stratagem in calling off the
{489} attention of the garrison by a furious assault, managed in
another and important position to erect a platform of earth and
stones. It was upon this that night closed his work, and which
inflamed within his breast lively hopes of speedily terminating the
siege, and of reaping new laurels.

A council of the Knights was now held, and an abandonment of the works
advised by the principal part; but La Valette was inexorable, and
defeated every such proposition by his superior wisdom. He employed
all available hands in digging trenches during the night, and by a
master-stroke gained possession of the cavalier which had so excited
the exultation of the Turkish basha. He detailed a select body of
troops to steal along the foot of the wall, and who, when arrived at
the spot designated, raised a loud shout and rushed upon the guard;
these, supposing that the whole garrison were upon them, precipitately
fled. The Christians were not slow in securing this advantage beyond
any hope of recovery which the Turks might entertain.

The delay of the Spanish troops was inexplicable to La Valette, who
attributed it to the treachery of the Viceroy of Sicily, but which
historians impute to the infidelity of Philip. Now, the grand master
was aware that their only hope was to hold out till they brought
relief; and the bashas were fearful lest they should arrive after so
long a delay at this very opportune moment.

Piali, receiving intelligence that the Spanish forces were to be
landed at St. Angelo, lay in wait there, after interposing every
obstacle practicable to impede their progress. Resolved to urge every
possible resistance, the infidels awaited the Spanish sail, and were
ill prepared for the tidings which came, to the effect that they were
already landed in another part of the island. Thus was accomplished by
the duplicity of the Catholic king a result which was not anticipated;
his object in landing his forces at the extreme of the island was to
shield, as far as possible, his subjects from the rigors of the siege.
But Mustapha no sooner learned of their approach than he withdrew all
of the Turkish forces into the shipping. In his haste he had deserted
St. Elmo, manned with his best cannon. Ere long he was informed by a
deserter that he had thus disgracefully fled before a force of 6,000
poorly officered Spaniards, the same being only little more than
one-third of his own numbers. His rage knew no bounds. From this
indelible disgrace he knew his only escape was to disembark and
retrieve his fallen fortunes; but his command was shared by those
whose personal considerations and jealousies prevented them from
extending any sympathy to him.

La Valette improved the interim in taking every precaution to prevent
the fort from again falling into the hands of the Turks. The grand
master was now looked upon as the one to whom too much credit could
not be given, and whose orders were obeyed with cheering alacrity by
all who were able in any way to assist. A stronger affection was
generated toward him, to which his merits entitled him, as the most
fitting reward which the Knights could return.

Mustapha having convened a council of his principal officers, they
determined with little dissent to land and renew the siege. The
soldiery, greatly disheartened at their late reverses, were very
reluctant to obey, and frequently force was resorted to to compel
them. But it must have been patent to the commanders that thus, being
forced to use compulsory means, they could not expect them to effect
what willing and eager troops could easily accomplish. Mustapha was
unable to stay the current of flying soldiers, and was hurled along
with it; twice was he jostled from his horse, and was with difficulty
rescued from being captured. Such was the overwhelming defeat visited
upon Mustapha's command, who, we doubt not, would have welcomed even
captivity rather than face the sultan, whose arms he had {490} thus
signally disgraced. What the reflections were that this destiny
animated in his mind, we are left to infer--a destiny so different
from what he anticipated for the thousands who were to destroy the
Knights of Malta, only as an insignificant incident collateral to the
brilliant career which awaited them at the hands of the larger
Christian powers. When he saw the mere skeleton of his army returning,
he might well be impressed with the vanity of human calculations.

The siege of Malta continued four months, and it, amid the general
destruction, worked no little benefit to the Knights of Malta. This
success created joy throughout Christendom, which was expressed in the
most gratifying manner. If they were left to fight their battles
alone, it was only to achieve the greater glory. And thus ended the
famous siege of Malta, whose valorous defence is unparalleled in the
records of history.

------

From The Literary Workman.

A SONG OF THE YEAR.

  Solemnly comes thy last hour, Old Year,
  Mercy and love were thy dower, Old Year;
  Though with thy gifts came the sigh or tear.
  Parting, we'll bless thee, Old Year, Old Year.

  With thy best gifts in thy hand, Old Year!
  Dying while blessing the land, Old Year!
  Welcoming Christians again, again.
  Joyous Old Year, how we loved thee, then!

  Softly thou com'st in the night, New Year!
  Robed all in pure virgin white, New Year!
  Deeds all unknown of shall fill thy days.
  Songs now unheard of will sound thy praise.

  Meeting, we fear thee almost, New Year,
  Welcome might sound like a boast, New Year
  When thou art old, like the year just past,
  Then let us bless thee, New Year, at last.

{491}

Translated from the Civiltà Cattolica.

THE RELIGIOUS STATISTICS OF THE WORLD.

1. NUMBER OF CATHOLICS IN FIVE DIVISIONS OF THE WORLD.

2. CLASSIFICATION OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH AFTER THE
DIFFERENT RELIGIONS.

3. PROGRESS OF CATHOLICITY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

4. IN HOLLAND.

5. IN THE UNITED STATES.

6. MISSIONS OF ASIA.

7. ITALIAN MISSIONARIES.


I. Let us, at first, take a comprehensive view of the number of
Catholics scattered over the globe. In this very year some writers
have limited their number to _one hundred and fifty millions_, with
the remark that the figure is rather above a real census. Mr. Balbi, a
writer of fame in statistics and in geography, gave, as far back as
1827, in his work published in Paris, his own estimate of the various
populations of the world, classifying them under the heading of
Religions Professed; and, according to his calculations, he allotted
to the Catholic Church only _one hundred and thirty nine
millions_(139,000,000), his figures exceeding those of many
geographers who had preceded him. The _eleven millions_ by some
authors allowed this day to the Catholic denomination, are rather a
restitution than an augmentation. The  former reckoning was a mistake,
and new statistics, when accurately put together, have exhibited a far
larger number both of inhabitants and of Catholics. But we still take
this restitution as very inadequate. From an accurate investigation of
the matter, we aver that the _minimum_ of Catholics, over the world,
amounts to _two hundred millions_ (200,000,000). To afford the reader
the means of testing the accuracy of our opinion, we shall here give
the number of Catholics found in the different states of every part of
the world. We have taken for our guide official statistics, either
civil or ecclesiastical, whenever we could obtain them, or, otherwise,
statements of modern geographers and of most trustworthy national
writers. We have only omitted such fractions which were under _five
hundred_ (500); but when they were above the _half thousandth_ we have
set them down at _one thousand_. Thereby, in a computation, which
cannot be but approximate, omissions will counterbalance the
additions, and the final result will not undergo any material change.
Let it, moreover, be borne in mind that we have not been actuated by
any desire to attain large figures. We have only aimed at fixing the
surest, or, at least, the most probable amount. Thus, for example, we
have accepted only _six hundred and ninety thousand_ (690,000)
Catholics for the Portuguese possessions in Africa, although national
authors, by no means exaggerating, have reckoned them at _two
millions_.

With such preamble, here is the result of our investigations:

[Transcriber's note: View these tables with a fixed pitch font.]

NUMBER OF CATHOLICS.

I. EUROPE.

Papal States                     900,000
Two Sicilies                   9,500,000
Tuscany                        1,900,000
Sardinian States and Lombardy  7,700,000
Modena                           660,000
Parma                            560,000
Monaco and San-Marino             10,000
Spain                         17,000,000
Portugal                       4,300,000
Andorra                           12,000
Switzerland                    1,120,000
Great Britain                  7,500,000
France                        36,000,000

Carried forward               89,462,000

{492}

Brought forward  89,462,000

Belgium  4,800,000
Netherlands  1,300,000
Austrian Empire  30,000,000
Bavaria  3,500,000
Prussia  7,000,000
Baden                     960,000
Brunswick                   6,000
Bremen                      5,000
Frankfort                 12,000
Hamburg                     8,000
Grand Duchy of Heese      240,000
Hesse Electoral           200,000
Würtemberg                580,000
Mecklenburg-Schwerin  +
   Mecklenburg-Strelitz     4,000
Nassau                    226,000
Oldenburg                  86,000
Lesser Duchies of
  Sachsen-Weimar,
  Sachsen-Coburg,
  Sachsen-Altenburg, etc.  60,000
Lubeck                      3,000
Hanover                   256,000
Luxemburg                 209,000
Saxony                     65,000
Denmark                     5,000
Sweden and Norway           7,000
Poland                  4,000,000
Russia                  3,000,000
European Turkey
   and Montenegro       1,000,000
Greece                    100,000

Catholic population
  in Europe           147,194,000



H. ASIA AND OCEANIA.

Asiatic Turkey           600,000
Moldavia and Wallachia   130,000
Asiatic Russia           100,000
British India          1,100,000
Netherland India          25,000
French India             170,000
Portuguese India,
  Islands, and Macao     546,000
Spanish India and
  Philippine Islands   4,750,000
Persia                   120,000
Anam                     600,000
Siam                      25,000
China                  1,000,000
New Holland              300,000
Tasmania                  40,000
New Zealand               60,000
New Caledonia and
  adjoining islands       70,000
Sandwich Islands          80,000

Catholic population in Asia and Oceania 9,666,000


III. AFRICA.

Egypt                            172,000
Abyssinia                      2,000,000
Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco       30,000
Spanish Possessions               25,000
Canaries                         260,000
Portuguese Possessions           690,000
Madeira and islands              260,000
Continental French Possessions   250,000
Reunion and other islands        180,000
Continental British Possessions   30,000
Mauritius and other islands      150,000
Liberia                            4,000
Madagascar                        10,000
Gallas                            10,000

Catholic population in Africa  4,071,000


IV. AMERICA.

United States  5,000,000
Mexico                  8,500,000
Guatemala               1,200,000
San Salvador              700,000
Honduras                  400,000
Nicaragua                 500,000
Costa Rica + Panama       200,000
New Granada             3,000,000
Venezuela               2,000,000
Ecuador                 1,500,000
Bolivia                 2,200,000
Peru                    2,800,000
Chili                   1,800,000
Argentine Republic      1,500,000
Paraguay                1,600,000
Uruguay                   360,000
Brazil                  3,500,000
British Guiana             60,000
Netherland Guiana
   and Islands             40,000
French Guiana
  and Islands             305,000
Jamaica, Trinidad,
 and other British Isles  150,000
Spanish Islands         2,260,000
Danish Islands             34,000
Canada and British
   Possessions          1,560,000
Hayti                     800,000

Catholic population
  in America           46,970,000


RECAPITULATION.

I. Catholic population in Europe            147,194,000

II. Catholic population In Asia and Oceania   9,666,000

III. Catholic population in Africa            4,071,000

IV. Catholic population in America           46,930,000

Catholic population in the four
parts of the globe                          207,801,000


Thus we reach the sum of nearly _two hundred and eight millions_; nor
do we fear exaggeration in the number. But were even some one
reluctant to accept our results, such attenuating doubts could never
diminish our total  beyond _eight millions_. Thus when we asserted
that there are _two hundred millions_ of Catholics in the world, we
gave a figure far under our calculations, in order to place it above
all doubt.

II. We will now exhibit, in very simple tables, the grand division of
the inhabitants of the world, according to the different religious
creeds:


_Christianity_                      344,000,000
Catholic Church                     208,000,000
Eastern Churches,
  schismatic or heretical            70,000,000
Protestantism                        66,000,000
Total                               344,000,000

{493}

_Judaism_                               4,000,000
_Islamism_                            100,000,000
_Brahminism_                         60,000,000
_Buddhism_                          180,000,000
_Worship of Confucius, Sinto,
  of Spirits_, etc.                 152,000,000

Total of inhabitants of the world   840,000,000


These  results are not from data as certain as those which we were
enabled to obtain for the Catholic Church; yet they are founded on
great probability. There is a remarkable increase in all, owing to the
fact that more reliable researches have given a larger number of
inhabitants on the globe.

Let us now compare our own results with those of the most celebrated
geographers. Malte-Brun wrote in 1810, Pinkerton and Balbi in 1827,
and yet, although so near to one another, they are not of one accord
as to the inhabitants of the earth, and consequently they do not agree
in their divisions. More recent geographers admit a number far larger
than that allowed by Balbi, and seem to hesitate between _eight
hundred and a thousand millions_. We are of opinion that the grand
total cannot, with any good reason, be reckoned beyond _eight hundred
and forty millions_ (840,000,000); at the same time it cannot be set
at any figure much below it. The following figures represent
_millions_:


Malte-Brun.   Pinkerton.  Balbi.  Civ. Catt's.

_Christianity_   228   235   260   344
_Judaism_          5     5     4     4
_Islamism_       110   120    96   100
_Brahminism_      60    60    60    60
_Buddhism_       150   108   170   180
_Other creeds_   100   100   147   152
Total            653   700   737   840


III. A glance at some particular countries will show how much the
Catholic Church has gained in numbers and influence within a few
years. Let us begin from two Protestant countries in Europe.

The "Catholic Directory," annually issued in England for the last
hundred years, will, by comparing a few data, exhibit the progress of
Catholicity in Great Britain's most Protestant sections--we mean
England and Scotland. We limit ourselves to the official returns given
within the last nine years. We mass them in two tables, which will
place our assertion upon the strongest basis of truth. The _first_
will show that in these two kingdoms, so totally averse to
Catholicity--nay, intensely hostile to it--England and Scotland, the
number of clergymen has increased, within _twenty-five_ years, at the
rate of 137 per centum; that of churches 30; religious houses for men
222, for women 105. The _second_ table will give the same numbers, but
divided in the various dioceses, in varied ratio indeed, but
everywhere with the same tokens of increase:

GENERAL STATISTICS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Years |Clergymen|  Churches | Relig Men | Relig Women | Colleges
                   &Chapels
1856    1142          849        17           91          12
1857    1162          894        23          106          11
1858    1204          902        27          109          11
1859    1222          926        34          110          11
1860    1236          950        37          123          12
1861    1342          993        47          155          12
1862    1388         1019        50          162          12
1863    1417         1065        55          177          12
1864    1445         1098        56          186          12

But if we draw our figures from earlier dates, the comparison will be
even more striking. Behold the result within the last twenty-five
years:

1839    610   513   0   17  10
1849    897   612  13   41  10
1864   1445  1098  56  186  12

Limiting our researches only to England, we find the increase within
_eight_ years, between 1856 and 1864, stated in the official returns
of the several dioceses, at the following rates:

              Churches   Clergyman   Convents   Monasteries
Dioceses    1856  1864  1856  1864  1856  1864  1856 1864
Westminster  56   117   129   214     5    15    18   31
Beverly      75    90    93   116     3     6     7   19
Birmingham   96   100   132   141     3     3    19   27
Clifton.     37    49    50    62     2     3     5   13
Hexham       63    81    72    99   --    1     4   11
Liverpool    94   110   166   195     2     5    12   25
Newport      35    42    29    47   --    3     3    6
Northampton  30    36    25    31   --  --    2    5
Nottingham   42    52    47    59     3     5     5    5
Plymouth     26    35    28    34   --  --    3    8
Salford      47    70    72   107     1     5     9   14
Shrewsbury   53    59    52    71     1     3     3    7
Southwark    79   100    90   147     3     9    10   15

Total       730   941   985  1321    23    58   100  187
                -730      -985         -23      -100

Increase          211        336           35         87

{494}

IV. Let us now step over to the Continent, and investigate the
increase of Catholicity in a province where Protestantism has had it
all its own way since the beginning of the Reformation--we allude to
Holland. To understand the progressive development of Catholicity in
the Low Countries, we need only compare the figures of two years, with
an interval of half a century intervening between them:

Years      |Catholic population   | Parishes  | Clergyman  |  Churches
1864           1,300,000              941         1725         976
1814             850,000              814         1216         898
Increase
  in 50 years    450,000              127          310          78

The amount expended in repairing the old and building new churches is
reckoned, during this lapse of time, at _thirty_ millions of Dutch
florins, a little more than _sixty-four_ millions of francs [over
$18,560,000--Ed. CW.] All that government has contributed of its own
toward this sum amounts only to _two_ millions of florins. In the
above sum of _thirty_ millions no account is taken of what has been
expended in churches and chapels belonging to religious communities,
or for convents, hospitals, charitable institutions, orphan asylums,
and the like. Add to this what has been contributed for the endowments
of those places, and the original sum of sixty-four millions of francs
becomes well-nigh double its amount.


V. But nowhere has the Catholic Church increased so prosperously,
within the last fifty years, as in the United States of America. Above
two thousand churches and chapels built; an increase of one thousand
and eight hundred clergymen; one hundred and sixty schools
established, for the Catholic training of 18,000 boys and 34,600
girls. Moreover, there existed in 1857 _sixty-six_ asylums, with 4,963
orphans of both sexes; _twenty-six_ hospitals, with _three thousand_
beds; _four_ insane asylums, with _eighty-two_ patients, beside many
other charitable institutions, all established and supported by the
private charity of Catholics. Here we copy a comparative table from
the "Metropolitan Catholic Almanac" of 1857:



Year  Dioceses  Vicariates  Bishops  Clergyman  Churches   Ecclesiastic  Colleges  Schools
                Apostolic                      & Stations  Institutions            for Girls
1808     1      --           2        68         80         2              1         2
1830    11      --          10       232        230         9              6        20
1840    16      --          17       482        812        13              9        47
1850    27      --          27      1081       1578        29             17        91
1854    41        2           39      1574       2458        34             20       112
1857    41        2           39      1872       2882        35             29       134

1861    43        3           45      2317       3795        49            --      -- [Ed. Cath. World]


VI. Canon Joseph Ortalda, in a work of great value,  [Footnote 68] the
result of much labor and accurate investigations, supplies us with two
very interesting documents. One is a _Synoptic Table_ of the
_missions_ in Asia, exhibiting both the number of Catholics in each
_mission_ and that of missionaries employed in them; a number, by the
way, generally very inadequate, especially when we take into
consideration the vast territories over which every mission is
extended.

  [Footnote 68: "Italian Apostolic Missionaries in the Foreign
  Missions, over the Four Parts of the World." Turin: G. Marietti,
  1864. Ortalda's intent is to prove before the Senate of the Kingdom
  of Piedmont how the suppression of religious orders would be
  injurious to the Church and to civilization, whilst from their
  bosoms go forth so many missionaries to all parts of the world.]

APOSTOLIC VICARATES         MISSIONARIES   CATHOLICS
Aleppo                            25         80,000
Asia Minor                        70        100,000

China and adjacent kingdoms:
Xensi                             16         30,000
Xansi                             12         20,000
Hu-pè, in the Hu-quang,
   native missionaries, 14        11         15,865
Hu-nan, in the Hu-quang            7         10,000
Sut-chuen, North-west vicariate   15         23,000
Sut-chuen, Eastern Vicariate      12         17,000
Sut-chuen, Southern Vicariate     14         20,000
Konein-kon                         7         10,000
Lassa                              5          7,000
Jun-nan                            6          8,000
To-chien                          14         30,000
Nankin                            36         73,000
Pekin, Western Vicariate          17         30,000
Pekin, Southwestern Vicariate     15         26,600
Pekin, Eastern Vicariate          12         13,000
Tse-Kiang                          6          5,000
Kiang-si                           8         10,000
Lenotung                           9         11,000
Mongolia                           8         10,000
Xan-tung                          11         12,000
Ho-nan                             6         5,000
Siam, Western Vicariate           12        10,000
Siam, Eastern Vicariate           20        30,000
Cochin, Eastern Vicariate         29        32,000
Cochin, Northern Vicariate        21        25,000
Cochin, Western Vicariate         19        30,000
Camboge, and the people of Laos   10        15,000
Tonchin,  Eastern Vicariate       13        54,000
Tonchin,  Western Vicariate       85       135,000
Tonchin,  Southern Vicariate      49        80,000
Tonchin,  Central Vicariate       62       150,000
Corea                             12        15,000

East Indies:
Japan                             10        12,060
Ava and Pegu                      11         8,000
Bombay, South Mission             20        15,000
Bombay, North Mission             15        13,000
Bengal, Western Vicariate
   (Calcutta)                     12        15,000
Bengal, Eastern Vicariate          6         9,000
Ceylon--Colombo                   18        84,900
Ceylon--Safnapatam                17        60,000
Madras                            18        44,880
Hyderbad                           7         4,000
Visagapatam                       15         7,130
Pondicherry                       53       100,000
Mayssour                          16        17,110
Coimbatour                        11        17,200
Sardhana                          12        15,000
Agra                              25        20,000
Patna                             10         4,000
Verapolis--native priests,
  Latin rite 28, Syriac 340        7       330,000
Canara, or Mangalor--
   Native priests 24               7        40,000
Quilon--Native priests 17          8        50,000
Madura                            37       140,000

APOSTOLIC DELEGATIONS

Persia, Mesopotamia,
  Kurdistan, and Armenia Minor    30        25,000
Syria--Holy Land alone counts    54        28,986

APOSTOLIC PREFECTURES
Aden, in Arabia                    3         1,300
Hong-Kong, in China                7         5000
Hai-noou, Quan-tong,
  Quan-si, China                  31        40,000
For the French colonies in India  12         7,000
For the Dutch colonies in
   India and Oceania               7         1,000
Laboan and adjacent places         6         3,000

{495}

VII. The chief object of Ortalda's work is to show how many
missionaries Italy gives to the Catholic Church. He gives the name,
the grade in the hierarchy, and the residence of each, adding such
items of information as will aid him in the object he has in view. We
draw from his laborious work the following table, which, by way of
conclusion, gives the final result of all his researches:



_Italian Apostolic Missionaries in
Foreign Missions over the Whole World._

MISSIONARIES                  Europe Asia Africa America Oceania Total

Bishops                         14     21     4      2      --    41
Secular priests                 33     45    11     65        8    162
Benedictines                     7      9   --     5        3     24
Minor Conventuals                9      2   --     2      --    13
Minor Observants                31    115    30    184        8    368
Minor Capuchins                369    108    35    130        5    447
Minor Reformed                  60     58    29     67        1    215
Dominicans                      22     11   --     1      --    34
Carmelites                     --    39   --   --     --    39
Augustinians                     1    --  --     1      --     2
Jesuits                        106    118    46    207       13    490
Lazarists                        8     22     9     12      --    51
Alcantarines                   --   --  --     1      --     1
Barnabites                      24     12     3     10        8     57
Friars of St. Bonaventure        5      6   --   --     --    11
Redemptorists                  --   --  --   --       3      3
Servite                        --   --  --   --       1      1
Oblates                        --    16   --   --     --    16
Pallottines (of A. Pallotta)     2    --  --   --     --     2
Rosminians                      16    --  --     4      --    20
From the Seminary of Milan       4     22   --   --       3     29
From the seminary
  of Brignole Sale              17      6   --     5      --    23
                               529    610   167    696       53   2055

----------

BOOKS.

  Welcome, my books, my golden store!
  Your leaves my eyes, my hands explore;
  With you my sweetest hours have flown--
  My best of life with you alone.
  When none in the wide world could cheer,
  Your wisdom dried the bitter tear;
  When summer skies were fresh and blue,
  None could rejoice with me like you.
  What living voice may speak among
  Your silent and time-hallowed throng?
  For you, the best of every age,
  I quit the world's degenerate stage.
           _Translation from Ranzan._


------
{496}


From The Month.

THE ANCIENT FACULTY OF PARIS.


At the corner of the Rue de la Bûcherie and the old Rue des Rats, now
known by the more dignified appellation of the Rue de l'Hôtel Colbert,
may still be seen, unless the unsparing hand of "modern improvement"
has very recently swept it away along with so many other memorials of
the past, a dirty, dilapidated building topped by a round tower, which
you might take for some old pigeon-house. The half-obliterated
inscription upon an escutcheon on one of the facades of the edifice
indicates, however, some heretofore high and venerable
destination--_Urbi et orbi salus_. If curiosity lead you to penetrate
into the interior of this dismal edifice, you find yourself, after
mounting a damp staircase, in a great circular hall, divided into four
irregular compartments. Above some empty niches hollowed in the
thickness of the wall runs a wide cornice, the now-defaced sculptures
of which represent alternately the cock--Esculapius's bird and emblem
of vigilance--and the pelican nourishing its young, the type of
self-sacrifice--watchfulness and unselfish charity, the two great
duties incumbent on the professor of the healing art. You stand, in
fact, in the midst of the ancient amphitheatre of the Faculty of
Medicine. There studied, and there, in their turn, taught, the great
anatomists of the seventeenth century, Bartholin, Riolan, Pecquet,
Littre, Winslow. This building was an old adjunct to a large and
handsome hotel belonging to the medical body, containing their chapel,
library, laboratory, a vast hall for solemn disputations, with minor
saloons for the daily lectures, etc., with the addition of a large
court and botanical garden. It was abandoned long before the
Revolution, and not a trace of all this corporate glory of the medical
faculty now remains. The quarter of Paris in which it stood, known
formerly as the Latin quarter, long preserved a peculiar stamp and
physiognomy. Here were the colleges of St. Michel, of Normandy and
Picardy, of Laon, Presles, Beauvais, Cornouailles, and that long
succession of churches, convents, colleges, and high toppling houses,
filled with a studious youth, which formerly crowded the Rue St.
Jacques and the Rue de la Harpe. All these and many other sanctuaries
of religion and of science, so intimately connected in the middle
ages, clustered around the faculty. Here, in fact, was the centre of
the university of Paris, whose origin is lost in the obscurity
investing the early mediaeval period. The methodical classification
under the head of faculties of the different studies pursued at that
celebrated institution dates, however, from the close of the twelfth
century. These faculties formed independent companies, attached to
their common mother, the university, like branches to the parent stem.

Disregarding all apocryphal pretensions to antiquity, we cannot assign
an earlier date for the formation of the medical body into an
independent corporation than the year 1267. About that time we find
the faculty in possession of its statutes, keeping registers and
affixing to documents its massive silver seal. The term Faculty of
_Medicine_, it must be observed, is modern. The title _Physicorum
Facultas_, or _Facultas in Physica_, was long preserved. Whatever we
may think of the empirical practice and dogmatic character of the
medical art in those times, we cannot but see in this an {497}
indication that natural science was even then the recognized basis of
medicine. We have here, if not a principle clearly understood and
habitually followed, at least an intuition and a kind of programme of
the future. A memorial of the old designation survives in our own
country in the title of physician, while in the land where it
originated it has been discontinued.

Born in the cloister, medicine long retained an ecclesiastical
character. Most of the doctors in early times were canons; and those
who were neither priests nor even clerks were still bound to celibacy;
a regulation which remained in force long after councils had decreed
the incompatibility of the exercise of the medical profession with the
ecclesiastical state.

The general assemblies of the faculty were held sometimes round the
font of Notre Dame, sometimes at St. Geneviève des Ardents, sometimes
at the Priory of St. Eloi; while, for the ordinary purposes of
instruction, it shared fraternally with the faculty of theology the
alternate use of some common room with a shake-down of straw in the
Quartier St. Jacques. But by-and-bye riches began to pour in, chiefly
through the means of the legacies of members of the medical corps or
other well-wishers; and, thanks to the liberality of Jacques Desparts,
physician to Charles VIl., the corporation of doctors was finally
installed in the abode we have just described. To the general worth
and respectability of the body in the fifteenth century we have the
testimony of Cardinal d'Estoutteville, who, in 1452, was deputed by
the Pope to reorganize the university of Paris, and who found less to
reform in the faculty of medicine than in any other department.
Indeed, no change of much importance was introduced, with the
exception of the revocation of the law of celibacy, which the cardinal
pronounced to be both "impious and unreasonable."

Independence of spirit and great reverence for its own traditions were
characteristic of the medical body from its earliest beginnings. It
loved to describe itself as _veteris disciplinae retentissima._ In
those days men gloried in their respect for antiquity. In common with
all the different bodies which composed the university of Paris, the
medical corporation possessed great privileges--exemption from all
taxation, direct or indirect, from all public burdens, from all
onerous services or obligations. When we sum up all the advantages
enjoyed by this and other favored bodies and classes in the middle
ages, the reflection naturally suggests itself--what must have been
the condition of the poor, who possessed no privileges and bore all
the financial burdens? In the days, however, when standing armies in
the pay of government had no existence, when the king himself was a
rich proprietor with large personal domains, when national debt and
its interest were things unheard of, the ordinary imposts, as
distinguished from all arbitrary and accidental exactions, were, of
course, very much lighter than those of modern times. Liberty in those
days assumed the form of privilege; and its spirit was nursed and kept
alive within the bosom of these self-ruling corporations, and in none
more remarkably than in that of medicine. The _esprit de corps_
naturally existed with peculiar strength in a body not merely
organized for purposes of instruction, but exercising a liberal
profession, of which it had the monopoly.   [Footnote 69] Hence a
minute internal legislation imposed upon all its members, and
willingly accepted in view of the interests of the body. Its _alumni_
were aspirants to a life-long membership; whereas with us the medical
man's dependence upon the faculty virtually ceases the day he takes
his doctor's degree. He has nothing more to ask or to receive from it;
his affair is now with the public; {498} and the sense of brotherhood
with his colleagues in the profession is lost, it is to be feared, not
unfrequently in a feeling of rivalry. But it was otherwise in the
olden time. The day which now sends forth the full-fledged doctor to
his independent career drew the tie closer which bound him to his
order, in which then only he began to take his solemn place. The honor
and the interest of each member thus became common property, and
unworthy conduct was punished by summary exclusion from the body.

  [Footnote 69: It is probably this peculiarity which caused the
  medical to be considered as pre-eminently _the_ faculty. Its
  practice brought it into intimate contact with the world at large;
  and this has also doubtless led to the exclusive retention, in this
  instance, of a designation common in its origin to other departments
  of learning.]


Unfortunately this _esprit de corps_ had its bad as well as its good
results. It produced a certain narrowness of mind, a love of routine,
and no slight attachment to professional jargon. It is not that the
faculty was actually the enemy of all progress, but progress must come
from itself. As no association of men, however, can enjoy a monopoly
of genius, useful and brilliant discoveries emanating from other
quarters had to encounter the hostility of the chartered body. This
spirit was exemplified in its animosity toward surgery, long a
separate profession, in its prejudice against the doctrine of the
circulation of the blood, because an English discovery; against
antimony, because it originated with the rival Montpelier school;
against quinine, because it came from America. To these subjects we
may hereafter recur; in the meantime we note them as instances of
medical bigotry, which exposed the profession to just ridicule, but
which has drawn down upon it censure and disesteem of perhaps a
somewhat too sweeping character. It would be unfair to judge the
ancient faculty solely from its exhibitions of foolish pedantry and
blind prejudice; and it is our object on the present occasion to give
a slight sketch of its constitution and internal government, such as
may enable the reader to form a juster and more impartial view both of
its faults and of its substantial merits. Indeed, without some solid
titles to general esteem, it would seem improbable that the faculty
should have attained to the high position which we find it occupying
in the seventeenth century.

One accidental cause, no doubt, of the importance of the doctors
during the whole period which we are considering was their small
relative number. From a computation made by a modern member of the
medical profession in France,  [Footnote 70] to whom we are indebted
for our facts, the average number of doctors in the capital from the
year 1640 to the year 1670 did not exceed 110. Compared with the
population of Paris, which is reckoned at 540,000 souls, this gives
one doctor for every 4,900 of the inhabitants. The medical corps is
now 1,830 strong, while the population has risen only to 1,740,000.
Great as is this increase of population, greater, we see,
proportionally has been that of the medical practitioners, who are at
present as 1 to 940. If sickness was as prevalent in the seventeenth
century as it is now, and recourse to physic and physicking as
frequent, we can imagine that the faculty must have necessarily
occupied a distinguished position. Many offices now undertaken by
public institutions or by government devolved, also, at that time on
the faculty, which to the best of its ability supplied the want of
sanitary regulations, and exercised a kind of medical police,
including the supervision of articles of diet. All this must have
helped to swell their importance. A large proportion of the doctors
received during this selected period of thirty years were Parisians;
and nothing is more common than the perpetuity of the profession in
certain families. This circumstance must have combined with the
corporate reverence for their traditions to intensify their attachment
to a received system, and to strengthen that spirit of union which is
a source of power. The respect which the lower bench paid to the
upper, and the young to the ancient {499}--and by "young" we mean
young in their degree, not in years--must have contributed toward the
same result. It required ten years of doctorate to qualify a man to
take his place amongst this venerable class; and the statutes are
prolix on the subject of the respect due to the ancients from their
juniors on the bench; a respect which was to be marked by every
external act of deference.

  [Footnote 70: Maurice Raynaud, Docteur en Médecine, Docteur ès
  Lettres. _Les Médecins au temps de Molière.--Moeurs, Institutions,
  Doctrines_. Paris, 1862.  Didler.]

But the first and great tie which bound all the members together was
religion. To profess the Catholic faith was long an essential
condition of admission to the examinations. The faculty gave an
energetic proof in 1637 of the importance it attached to this
fundamental rule, when it withstood the pressing solicitations of the
king's brother, the Duke of Orleans; in favor of a certain Brunier,
the son of his own physician and a Protestant, although the prince
condescended to address a flattering letter to the dean of the
faculty, signing himself "Votre bon ami, Gaston," and although his
request was backed by a royal injunction. The sovereign must needs bow
to the authority of the statutes, respectfully but firmly urged in
contravention of his regal pleasure. Yet this would seem to have been
a closing effort, for in 1648 we find four Protestant doctors on the
lists. Every year there was a solemn mass on St. Luke's day, at which
all the members were bound to be present, and which even at the
commencement of the seventeenth century was still sung by the doctors
of the faculty. After mass the statutes were publicly read. There was
a like obligation, with a penalty for its neglect, to attend an annual
mass for deceased doctors, and another for benefactors, as also to
accompany the bodies of their brethren to the grave.

The head of the corporation was the dean. His powers were extensive,
and the honor paid to him unbounded. He was the "guardian of the
discipline and statutes" of the faculty, _vindex disciplinae et custos
legum_; he was at once its foremost champion and its highest
dignitary. He was also its historian, entering in its great registers
all facts interesting to the corporation which occurred during the
course of his administration. The account of each diaconate is headed
thus:

  [Illustration: Latin Cross]

"_In Nomine Omnipotentis Dei, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
Incipit commentarius rerum in decanatu . . . gestarum._"

Amongst other topics judged worthy of registration is a necrologic
notice of members deceased during the period. Take as a specimen,
which marks at the same time the high estimation in which the
diaconate was held, the account given of Merlet's death in 1663. He
was the "ancient of the company," and had been remarkable for the zeal
he exercised in its behalf. The then dean, the illustrious Antoine
Morand, pays the venerable doctor a visit just before he expires; and
the dying man breaks out in a kind of _Nunc dimittis_--"Now I can die
contented, since it has been given me to behold once more the dean of
the faculty." Valot, the king's physician, who had come to see the
patient, expresses in language of much reverence his hope that Merlet
may still live to illustrate the supreme dignity in which he stands
amongst them. The "patriarch" with his last breath energetically
refuses such excessive honors. He confesses that he holds a high rank
as ancient of the school, but not the highest. "To the dean alone," he
says, "belongs supreme honor." "Sublime words," observes Morand in his
funeral notice: "veritable song of the dying swan, proceeding from a
man truly wise and endowed with all perfection! May he rest in the
peace of the Lord." Of course, it is a dean who is speaking. The
charge was indeed a weighty one, both externally and internally; for
in spite of general respect, the medical corporation, like most
privileged bodies, had active enemies. Every two years a fresh
election took place on the first Saturday after All Saints'. The dean
deposed the insignia of his dignity and gave a report of the state of
affairs to {500} the assembled doctors, who, as usual on all solemn
occasions, had previously attended mass. All their names were then
placed in two urns; one containing those of the ancients, the other
those of the juniors. The dean shook the urns, and drawing three names
from the first and two from the second, proclaimed them aloud. The
five doctors thus chosen by lot as electors, and, as such, themselves
ineligible, swore to nominate the worthiest, and retired to the chapel
to implore the divine aid. They then elected by a majority of their
number three doctors, two ancients and one junior. Amidst solemn
silence, the dean once more drew the lot, and the name which came
forth was proclaimed dean for the next two years. The professors, who
for long years were but two in number, were also chosen biennially,
and by a similar combination of lot and election. Some good must have
arisen from the liability under which every practitioner of the
medical art lay of being called on to teach it. Another not unwise
regulation was that which, reversing the order observed in the case of
the dean, placed in the professional urn two junior names against one
ancient. Long practice of teaching is apt to wear out the powers of
the most able. Considering the times, the elements of instruction were
abundantly supplied. The bachelors were not permitted to do more than
comment upon and expound the ancients, and their programme was
furnished to them. The professors took the higher and more original
branches; they alone could dogmatize from the great pulpit of the
amphitheatre (_ex superiore cathedrâ_). The teaching embraced,
according to the quaint phraseology of the day: 1. natural things,
viz., anatomy and physiology; 2. non-natural things--hygiene and
dietetics; 3. things contrary to nature--pathology and therapeutics.
In the year 1634 a course of lectures on surgery, delivered in Latin,
and exclusively for the medical students, was added--a practical
course of surgery in French already existed for the barber
apprentices; and the faculty began to perceive that if they would keep
their supremacy over the barber-surgeons, it would be as well to know
as much as their disciples.

The oath taken by the professors is remarkable, especially the
exordium: "We swear and solemnly promise to give our lessons in long
gowns with wide sleeves, having the square cap on our heads, and the
scarlet scarf on our shoulders." This we see was their first duty.
Their second engagement was to give their lessons uninterruptedly, and
never by deputy, save in case of urgent necessity; each lecture to
last an hour at least, and to be delivered daily, except in vacation
time, which extended from the vigil of St. Peter and St. Paul, the
28th of June, to that of the exaltation of the cross, the 13th of
September, and on festival days, which were pretty numerous, including
also certain other solemnities, as well as the vigils of the greater
feasts, when the schools were closed, _causa confessionis_, as the
statutes have it.

Practical instruction was much more meagre than the oral, but this is
hardly to be imputed as a fault. Anatomy cannot be learned except by
dissection, and no bodies but those of criminals were procurable. The
faculty had to look to crime to help on its progress in this study.
When an execution took place, the dean received formal notice, and
convoked the doctors and students on the occasion "to make an
anatomy," as it was called. When the faculty was at peace with the
surgeons, the latter were favored with an invitation. By a strange
prejudice, theory and practice, as we have noticed, were kept
distinct. The learned professor would have demeaned himself by
becoming an operator, while the acting surgeon was condemned to be a
mere intelligent machine, and was formally interdicted from being
initiated in the higher mysteries of the profession. It was a barber
who generally filled this inferior office, and he not unfrequently
would display more knowledge than his masters; for which {501} offense
he was sure to be severely reprimanded. "_Doctor non sinat dissectorem
divagari, sed contineat in officio dissecandi_"--"Let not the doctor
suffer the dissector to stray beyond his province, but keep him to his
duty of dissecting." This is one of the rules laid down in the
statutes. He was to work on and hold his tongue. But not only was the
barber condemned to silence--a hard sentence, some will say, on one of
his loquacious profession--but he was to receive no pay. For
remuneration he was to look to his brethren of the razor. There were
more facilities for the study of botany than for any other practical
branch of the medical science. Beside the garden in the Rue de la
Bûcherie, the doctors had afterward the use of the Jardin Royal
founded by Richelieu; and these advantages do not seem to have been by
any means neglected. Clinical instruction was peculiarly defective.
Absorbed by erudition, philosophy, and the interminable disquisitions
of the schools, our medical forefathers seem to have forgotten that
experimental knowledge can be obtained only by the bedside of the
sick. Most of the students had never seen a single patient before they
reached the honors of the baccalaureate. After this they attached
themselves to some doctor, whom they followed on his rounds, in order
to learn the application of what they had theoretically mastered, and
were by him introduced to his clients, much as was the practice in the
days of ancient Rome. The poor sufferer's room was thus not
unfrequently turned into a pedantic lecture-hall. We instinctively
recall to mind Molière's two Diafoiruses, father and son, stationing
themselves each on one side of the unhappy patient, and discoursing in
pompous medical phraseology of the character of his pulse and of the
humors of his body.  [Footnote 71] The practical and, as such, the
most important department of medical science received, it must be
confessed, the least attention. All the prizes, whether of honor or
emolument, which the future held out, tended to concentrate zeal and
emulation on dialectics. It seemed as if the medical art were designed
for the benefit of the doctors rather than the doctored, and that it
was of more importance to be able to descant learnedly upon a malady
than to cure it. To figure advantageously at one of those solemn
public sittings of the medical body, which were often graced with the
presence of members of the high aristocracy and of the magisterial
body; to be able to deliver a brilliant harangue, and confound an
opponent by a well-timed and well-chosen quotation--such was the
highest ambition of the student. To preside with distinction over the
discussion of a thesis--such was the battle-field on which the doctor
hoped to win his laurels. If he acquitted himself with applause, he
had gained a victory which raised him higher in his own esteem, and in
that of the world at large, than the most successful practice of his
profession could possibly do. The first two articles of the statutes
contain this spirit in a condensed form, and may be regarded as the
abridged decalogue of the faculty, summing up their duty toward God
and toward man: 1. the divine offices shall be celebrated with the
customary forms, and in the usual places, at the same hours and on the
same days as heretofore; 2. the medical students shall frequently
attend public disputations and dissertations.

  [Footnote 71: "_Duriuscule repoussant, et même un peu capricant."
  "L'intempérie de son parenchyme splénique et l'état de ses méats
  cholidoques_."]

The process through which the student had to pass in order to make his
way to his degree of licentiate was a trying ordeal. The examination
for the bachelor's degree, after a few previous solemnities, including
the usual attention first to religion, next to dress and formal state,
lasted a week, during which the candidate might be questioned not only
by the regular examiners on the usual round of the natural, the
non-natural, and the unnatural, but by any doctor present, each having
the right to propose a certain number of questions. In conclusion, the
aspirant {502} had to comment on some aphorism of Hippocrates. When
the examiners gave in their report, votes were taken, and a favorable
majority, secured to the aspirant his degree. The new bachelors swore
to keep the honorable secrets, and observe all the practices, customs,
and statutes of the faculty; to pay homage to the dean and to all the
masters; to aid the faculty against all opponents and all illicit
practitioners, and to submit to the punishments which it might
inflict; to assist in gown at all the masses ordered by the faculty,
coming in at least before the epistle, and remaining till the end;
and, finally, to assist at all the academic exercises and disputations
of the schools during two years, where they were to maintain some
theses on medicine or hygiene, observing good order and decorum in
conducting their argument.

Their great ordeal was now to come. One is amazed to read of the
succession of tilts they had to run in the intellectual tourney of
these two probationary years; how from St. Martin to the Carnival they
had to maintain, always in full dress and before a large assembly,
their _quodlibetary_   [Footnote 72] theses of physiology or medicine;
how from Ash-Wednesday to vacation time it was the turn of the
Cardinal theses, so called from their institution by Cardinal
d'Estoutteville. These chiefly related to hygienic questions. It is
from among these latter that most of those puerile and absurd queries
have been extracted which have drawn down so much ridicule on the
faculty. It is scarcely possible to imagine that such questions as the
following can have been intended for serious discussion: Are heroes
the children of heroes? Are they bilious? Is it good to get drunk once
a month? Is woman an imperfect work of nature? Is sneezing a natural
act? It is only fair, however, to remember that by far the greater
number of the subjects proposed were of a very different character,
and such as might profitably be considered at the present day. But if
the frequent occurrence of these intellectual jousts was trying to the
combatant, their interminable length was perfectly appalling. From six
o'clock to eight he had to stand a preliminary skirmish with the
bachelors. For the next three hours he had to encounter nine doctors,
who successively entered the lists, each bringing his fresh vigor to
bear on the exhausted candidate. The sitting ended with a general
assault, in which all present had liberty to take a share and
overwhelm the poor bachelor with a very hail-storm of interrogatories,
to which he had to reply single-handed. During the Cardinal theses the
debate was still hotter and more prolonged. From five in the morning
till midday, the candidate was plied with questions by the bachelors,
all ready to pounce upon him at the slightest flaw in his argument or
the merest slip of his tongue. As a climax of cruelty, during the
_quodlibetary_ examinations he was bound to furnish his persecutors
with refreshment in an adjoining apartment, of which he alone was
forbidden to partake. The sound of the great clock striking twelve
must have been a joyful reprieve to the athlete in the ring; the
wonder is that any constitution could stand the probationary two years
during which this process was energetically kept up.

  [Footnote 72: So called because selected at pleasure.]

At the close of this period the candidates were subjected to private
examination before the doctors, in order to ascertain their practical
capacity and personal qualifications for exercising the medical art.
Great strictness prevailed on all points which nearly concerned the
honor and interests of the faculty; and if the candidate had ever
practiced any manual art, including surgery, he was bound on oath to
renounce it for the future. Then followed a separate private
examination by each individual doctor as to a thousand personal
details affecting the competence of the applicant. A secret scrutiny
then decided on the admissibility, not as yet the admission, of {503}
the candidates to the honors and privileges of actual members of the
faculty. The spirit of the old days was preserved even in the
seventeenth century, and the licentiates had to receive ecclesiastical
sanction and a quasi-ordination. They proceeded accordingly in
procession to the house of the chancellor of the academy, to whom they
were presented by the dean, who, on their request, fixed a day for
their reception. This form was one of the most cherished traditions of
the university. Gallican as was the spirit of that body, it gloried in
tracing its privileges and constitution to the Holy See; a cheap
homage, which entailed no inconvenience, and of which at times it knew
how to avail itself in its contests with the king and the parliament.
The chancellor, who was a canon of the metropolitan see of Paris, had
long enjoyed sovereign jurisdiction over the schools; and although in
the seventeenth century his power was purely nominal, no one disputed
his right upon this occasion to represent the sovereign Pontiff, the
supreme teacher of the Catholic world. Other curious ceremonies
attended the solemn admittal to the licentiate. All the high
functionaries of state, and other important personages, were invited
to attend the schools on an appointed day, in order to learn from the
paranymph the names and titles of the medical practitioners whom the
faculty were about to present to the city--nay, to the whole world:
"_Quos, quales, et quot medicos urbi, alque adeo universo orbi,
medicorum collegium isto biennio sit suppeditaturum._" The paranymph,
as is well known, was, among the Greeks, the friend of the bridegroom,
who accompanied him in his chariot when he went to fetch home the
bride. Now it was held that the new licentiate was about to espouse
the faculty, much as the Doge of Venice married the sea. The friend of
the spouse, the paranymph, was in fact the dean, who presented the
young spouses to the chancellor with a complimentary address. That
dignitary invited the assembly to repair on a fixed day to the great
archiepiscopal hall, which upon this occasion was thrown open to all
the notabilities of the capital, who attended to add honor to the
solemnity. Then the list of the candidates was read out in their order
of merit, as previously decided after a strict inquiry by the doctors.
They immediately fell on their knees, bareheaded, in an attitude of
deep recollection, to receive the apostolic benediction given by the
chancellor in these terms: "_Auctoritate Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae,
qua fungor in hoc parte, do tibi licentium legendi, interpretandi, et
faciendi medicinam hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris, et Filii,
et Spiritus Sancti_." A question was then proposed by this dignitary
to the licentiate first in the order of merit, who was bound to give
proof of his competency by solving it on the spot. As the chancellor
was not a doctor, and as the assembly was miscellaneous, this query
was usually religious or literary, and, to judge from the recorded
questions, rather curious and subtle than profitable. The whole
assembly forthwith repaired in a body to the cathedral to thank our
Blessed Lady for the happy conclusion of a work begun under her
auspices. With his hand stretched over the altar of the martyrs, the
chancellor murmured a short prayer, the purport of which was
calculated to remind the newly-elected that, belonging henceforth as
they did specially to the Church, they ought to be prepared to
sacrifice themselves in all things, even to their very life: _usque ad
effusionem sanguinis_. It depended entirely upon the licentiates
themselves whether or no they were ultimately decorated with the
doctor's cap, which conferred the full privileges at once of the
medical corporation and of the university to which it belonged; and
although a few, from modesty or other causes, declined to aim at this
honor, with by far the greater number it was the consequence and
complement of the licentiate. The degree of licentiate introduced the
recipient to the public; {504} that of doctor admitted him into the
very sanctuary of the faculty. Accordingly it was conferred, not less
ceremoniously, but more privately. It was, so to say, a family affair.
Although, as we have said, there was no further examination respecting
medical competency, another minute inquiry was made into the life and
morals of the applicant, which was followed, if the scrutiny proved
satisfactory, by a preparatory act called the Vesperie, because it
took place in the afternoon. At this sitting, the president addressed
the candidate in a solemn discourse, intended to impress him with a
high sense of the dignity of the healing art, and of the maxims of
honor and probity which ought to guide its professors. The ordeal of
questions was not altogether closed; for we find the president
proposing a query, and entering into a discussion with the candidate,
who had thus still something to undergo before he passed on from the
class of the questioned to the more enviable rank of the questioners.

Upon the great day, the doctor in _posse_, preceded by the
mace-bearers and bachelors, with the president on his left, and
followed by the doctors _in esse_ selected to argue with him,
proceeded to the hall of the great school. The grand apparitor then
addressed him thus: "Sir candidate for the doctorate, before you are
initiated, you have to take three oaths,"--"_Domine doctorande,
antequam incipias, habes tria juramenta_." The three oaths were: 1. to
observe the rights, statutes, laws, and venerable customs of the
faculty; 2. to assist the day following the feast of St. Luke at the
mass for deceased doctors; 3. to combat with all his strength against
the illicit practitioners of medicine, whatever might be their rank or
their condition in life. "Will you swear to observe these
things?"--"_Vis ista jurare?_"--asked the grand apparitor; and the
candidate replied with that memorable _Juro_ ("I swear") which was
Molière's last word.   [Footnote 73] The president, after a brief
address, turned toward him with the doctorial square cap in his hand,
and making with it the sign of the cross in the air, placed it on the
head of the candidate, to which he then administered a slight blow
with two of his fingers, and forthwith bestowed upon him the
_accolade_. The recipient was now duly dubbed doctor. He made
immediate use of his new powers by asking a question of one of the
doctors present. The president had then a tilt with the doctor who had
presided at the Vesperie, and the sitting was closed by the new
doctor's delivering a discourse of thanksgiving to God, to the
faculty, and to his friends and relations present. The statutes enjoin
that this speech should be _elegant_. We may conceive that the notion
of elegance entertained by the faculty differed considerably from that
which the word suggests to our minds. On the St. Martin's Day
following the recently-chosen doctor did the honors of his new grade
by presiding over a _quodlibetary_ thesis. This was a sort of bye-day,
being out of course. It was called the "_acte pastillaire_," in
allusion probably to the sugary wafers presented to the dean stamped
with his likeness, or to the _bonbons_, of which there was a general
distribution on the occasion. The next day the new doctor was entered
on the registers, and took his place on the junior bench for ten
years.

  [Footnote 73: The great comic dramatist played the part of Argan on
  the first representation of his play of the _Malade Imaginaire_, now
  always performed on the anniversary of his death. He had probably
  long had within him the seeds of a mortal complaint; and after
  pronouncing the word _Juro_ in his character of Bachelor of Medicine
  taking his degree, which is the object of the famous ceremonial
  ballet succeeding the comedy, he was seized with a suffocating
  attack, and left the playhouse only to expire shortly afterward.]

Every one must be struck with the close resemblance which the famous
ceremony in Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_ bears to those scholastic
solemnities. Who, indeed, would now remember these antiquated customs
of an age from which we are drifting more rapidly in habits of thought
and {505} in manners than even the stream of time is carrying us, if
the comic dramatist had not conferred upon them the immortality of
ridicule? Yet it may well be questioned if it were not for Molière's
ludicrous picture, from which we have formed our notions and judgment
of the old faculty, whether, did we now for the first time discover in
some old forgotten document the record of these proceedings, our
impression might not be widely different; whether we might not see as
much in them to command our respect as to provoke us to laughter.
Old-fashioned ways--that is, ways which no longer reflect the ideas
and feelings of the day--always lend themselves specially to ridicule.
In Molière's time society was beginning to divest itself of its
mediaeval garb, and men's minds were being formed, not always to their
advantage, on a new type. The old type, however, was so strongly
impressed on the medical corporation--in which the traditionary spirit
was peculiarly powerful--that the garb, which, as we know, follows
rather than precedes a change, still sat naturally on the venerable
body of doctors. So entirely was this the case, that where, as
individuals, they were more or less under the influence of the Spirit
of the day, in their professional capacity they had as it were a
second self, clinging tenaciously in all that concerned the faculty to
ancient ideas and forms. Of this combination the well-known Guy Patin,
to whom we may hereafter have occasion to allude, was a curious
example. It is difficult to look upon men performing acts, to them
most serious, however absurd in our eyes, as purely ridiculous.
Assuredly they have their respectable side. Neither is it easy to
believe that all these good doctors, indefatigable as we have seen
them, and enthusiastically devoted as they were to their calling, were
all such pedantic idiots as Molière has painted them. It is a
well-known fact that the inimitable piece of buffoonery to which we
have alluded was concocted in the salon of Madame de la Sablière, a
noted rendezvous of the "_beaux esprits_" of the day. Molière
furnished the canvas and laid-in the colors of the first painting; but
his witty friends had each some lively touch to contribute. It is
probable that two or three of the medical profession--men who were
more or less sceptical as to the perfection of every saying and doing
of the faculty, and with whom Molière is known to have lived in habits
of intimacy--were present at these meetings, and supplied many of the
technical expressions. It does not follow that these physicians were
actuated by any spite against their order, any more than Cervantes
hated chivalry, to which, while quizzing its eccentricities and
exaggerations, he unwittingly gave a fatal blow.

One remark forcibly suggests itself, when we consider the hyperbolical
praise which the medical body so liberally administered to itself, and
with which Molière has made us familiar in passages of his comedies
which can scarcely be considered as caricatures. We are apt severely
to censure as grossly servile and almost idolatrous the flattery with
which the men of letters and courtiers of Louis XIV.'s reign dosed the
monarch. But some abatement must be made of this harsh judgment when
we find the reception of an obscure bachelor to his degree made the
occasion of a prodigal expenditure of the most exaggerated metaphors.
He is a new star, a pharos destined to shed its light on the latest
posterity; he is the compendium of all virtue, talent, and glory; he
equals, if he does not surpass, all the heroes of antiquity. And if
such were the eulogies bestowed on a successful candidate for the
honors of the faculty, what was the laudation reserved for the faculty
itself, the source of all this splendor? Hyperbole went mad. We find,
for instance, an orator taking as his text, "The physician is like to
God." He sets forth this resemblance in the attributes of power,
beneficence, mercy: physicians are {506} the ministers and the
"colleagues" of God. But this is not enough. The orator kindles as he
proceeds: all comes from God; _ergo_, evil as well as good. "But from
you, medical gentlemen," he exclaims, "comes nothing but good.
Doubtless God is just in afflicting us, and has his reasons. But still
evil is evil, and medicine is always salutary." (Rather a bold
assertion!) The conclusion is, that we should owe more to the
physician than to God, seeing that, while the Lord wounds, the
physician heals, did we not after all owe to him the physician
himself.

One lost trait to complete this sketch of the old customs of the
faculty. Molière has hinted at it in the closing line of the exordium
of his comic president:

  "Salus, honos, et argentum,
  _Atque bonum appetitum_."

The culinary and gastronomic side of the medical physiognomy is not
the least curious. Brillat-Savarin, who has made a classified
catalogue of gourmands, places physicians under the head of gourmands
by virtue of their profession. It is, he says, in the nature of
things. Everything contributes to make them gluttons. The hopes and
the gratitude of patients combine to pamper them. They are crammed
like pigeons, and at the end of six months have become irretrievable
gourmands. There seem to be reasonable grounds for this accusation. In
what may be called the heroic age of the faculty--the palmy days of
medical ceremonial, which had already begun to decline in Molière's
time, although the ancient forms were in the main
preserved--corporation repasts were frequent. After every examination
the doctors dined; after every thesis they dined--on this latter
occasion at the expense of the successful candidate. On St. Luke's Day
they dined; and again when the accounts were given in, and when a dean
was elected. When a chair of botany was erected; a "botanic banquet"
ensued as a matter of course. But it would be too tedious to enumerate
all these feastings, since almost everything furnished the pretext for
an entertainment. At one time, the faculty even officially appointed
two of their number to taste the wines before their repasts. Under the
pretence of hygienic considerations, questions appertaining to what
may be styled transcendental cookery were of frequent occurrence; and
it was gravely debated whether salad ought to be eaten at the first
course, and potatoes at the second; whether it were good to eat nuts
after fish, cheese after meat, etc.

We will conclude with some reflections of a more pleasing character as
to the spirit which animated the old faculty. Some of its statutes are
memorials of the virtuous principles which, in spite of all
absurdities of form, were held in honor by their body. For instance,
the doctors were enjoined to cultivate friendship with one another.
They were never to visit a patient without an express invitation. The
juniors were always to rise before the ancients, and the ancients were
to protect the juniors, and treat them with kindness. The secrets of
the sick were sacred; and no one was to reveal what he had seen,
heard, or so much as suspected in a patient's house. Gravity,
mildness, and decorum were to reign in their assemblies, where each
was to speak in his proper order and without interrupting others.
Disorderly behavior, recriminations, and abusive language are to be
banished for ever from the faculty. These regulations are admirable;
and at any rate bear witness to the sound views of the body of whose
collective wisdom they were the expression. Indeed the great strength
of the faculty resided in its attachment to its salutary moral laws.
Mere formalism would never have possessed such vitality and endurance.
When we penetrate into the life of this old society, we meet with a
tone of genuine uprightness, manliness, and candor quite refreshing to
the mind. We may add that {507} most of the great liberal
professions--the bar, the magistracy, and the educational bodies of
the seventeenth century--make the same favorable impression upon us.
They exhibit the _bourgeoisie_ of the day in a respectable light, as
manifesting in no ordinary degree the qualities of probity,
disinterestedness, and the family spirit, with all the sober virtues
and homely charities which appertain to it.

We naturally know less of the life of the students; but it was
probably moulded upon that of their elders and superiors. Even
Molière's pompous Thomas Diafoirus, with whose rejection by Angélique
for the handsome, rich, and agreeable Cléante the reader of course
heartily sympathizes, is by no means a contemptible personage; and
when divested of his priggish solemnity, and of all those ludicrous
accidental qualities which go to make up the caricature, it cannot be
denied that he is a well-principled, sober, and industrious youth. It
is, therefore, no unreasonable conclusion to draw, that such was the
general character of the body of aspirants to the honors of the
venerable doctorate.

------

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XX.

For many hundred yards total silence prevailed among our pedestrians.
Even Kate Mulvey seemed at a loss what first to say, or whether she
ought to be the first to say anything.

Winny, seeing that her poor dog was getting on famously, was rather
pleased, "since the thing did happen," that it had been brought to so
satisfactory an end after all; and by whom? Her poor dog might have
been killed, and would, undoubtedly, but for Emon-a-knock's fortunate
arrival at the last moment, and his prompt and successful assistance.
There was poor Bully-dhu now, walking to all appearances almost as
well as ever, and tied up in _his_ handkerchief. She was glad that the
road had become by this time comparatively deserted, for she was timid
and frightened, she knew not why. Perhaps she was afraid she might
meet her father. She was thinking with herself, too, how far Emon
would come with them, and who they might meet who knew them, before he
turned back. Emon-a-knock's heart was wishing Kate Mulvey at "_Altha
Brashia_," but his head was not sorry that she was one of the party,
for common-sense still kept his heart in subjection.

Thus it was that silence prevailed for some time. Bully-dhu was the
first to break it. Whether it was that the whiskey had got into his
head, or, as the present fashion would say, that he was "screwed," I
know not; but he felt so much better, and had so far recovered his
strength and spirits, that he had almost pulled the handkerchief from
Emon's hand, and cut an awkward sort of a rigadoon round Winny,
barking, and looking up _triumphantly_ in her face. Could it have been
that while the others had been thinking of these other things, he had
been deluding himself with the notion that he had been the victor in
the battle?

"Poor fellow," said Winny, patting him on the head, "I do think
there's nothing very bad the matter with you {508} after all. Emon, I
am beginning to believe you."

"I hope you will always believe me, Winny Cavana," was his reply, and
he again sunk into silence.

She could not think why he called her Cavana, and "yet her color
rose;" I believe that is the way your experienced novelists would
express it in such a case.

A longer silence now ensued. None of the three appeared inclined to
talk--Emon less than either. Kate Mulvey, who had always plenty to
say for herself, seemed completely dumb--foundered, I was going to
add, but I find the word will do as well, perhaps better, in its
purity. But, notwithstanding their silence, they were shortening the
road to Rathcash. Winny was framing some pretty little speech of
thanks to Emon for the _trouble_ he had taken, and for his _kindness_;
but she had so often _botched_ it to her own mind, that she determined
to leave it to chance at the moment of parting. Kate had no such
excuse for her silence, and yet she was not without one, which to
herself quite justified it.

Some few desultory remarks, however, were made from time to time,
followed by the still "awkward pause," until they had now arrived at
the turn in sight of Kate Mulvey's house.

Emon was determined to go the whole way to the end of the lane turning
up to Winny Cavana's. He had not sought this day's happiness; he had
studiously avoided such a chance; but circumstances had so far
controlled him, that he could not accuse himself of wilful imprudence.
Emon knew very well that if a fair opportunity occurred, he would in
all probability betray himself in an unequivocal manner to Winny, and
he dreaded the result. Up to the present he was on friendly and
familiar terms with her; but once the word was spoken, he feared a
barrier would be placed between them, which might put an end to even
this calm source of happiness. That he loved Winny with a
disinterested but devoted love, he knew too well. How far he might
hope that she would ever look upon his love with favor, he had never
yet ventured to feel his way; and yet his heart told him there was
something about herself, which, if unbiassed by circumstances, might
bid him not despair. But her rich old father, who had set his heart
upon a marriage for his daughter with Tom Murdock, and a union of the
farms, he knew would never consent. Neither did he believe that Winny
herself would decline so grand a match when it came to the point.

Emon had argued all these matters over and over again in his mind; and
the fatal certainty of disappointment, added to a prudent
determination to avoid her society as much as possible, had enabled
him hitherto to keep his heart under some control.

Kate Mulvey, though "book-sworn" by Winny, if she did not exactly
repeat any of the confidential chat she had with her friend about Tom
Murdock and himself, felt no hesitation in "letting slip" to Emon, for
whom she had a very great regard, a hint or two just casually, as if
by accident, that Tom Murdock "was no great favorite" of Winny
Cavana's--that the neighbors "were all astray" in "giving them to one
another"--that if she knew what two and two made, it would all "end in
smoke;" and such little gossiping observations. Not by way of
_telling_ Emon, but just as if in the mere exuberance of her own love
of chat. But they had the desired effect, now that Emon was likely to
have an opportunity of a few words with Winny alone, for Kate was
evidently preparing to turn up to her own house when they came to the
little gate.

Emon had heard, even in his rank of life, the aristocratic expression
that "faint heart never won fair lady;" and a secret sort of
self-esteem prompted him to make the most of the fortuitous
circumstances which he had not sought for, and which he therefore
argued Providence might have thrown {509} in his way, "What can she
do," thought he, "but reject my love? I shall know the worst then; and
I can make a start of it. I'm too long hanging about here like a fool;
a dumb priest never got a parish; and barring his acres and his
cash--if he has any--I'm a better man than ever he was, or ever will
be."

These were his thoughts as they approached the gate, and his heart
began to tremble as Kate Mulvey said:

"Winny, dear, I must part with you here. I saw my father at the door.
He came to it two or three times while we were coming up the road; and
he made a sign to me to go in. I'm sure and certain he's half-starved
for his dinner, waiting for me!"

"Well, Kitty, I suppose I can't expect you to starve him out-and-out,
and I'll bid you good-bye. I'm all as one as at home now, I may say.
Emon--I--won't bring you any further."

"You're not bringing me, Winny; I'm going of my own free will."

"Indeed, Emon, you have been very kind, and I'm entirely obliged to
you for all your trouble; but I won't ask you to come any further
now."

Kate's father just then came to the door again; and she, thinking that
matters had gone far enough between Emon and her friend in her
presence, bid them a final good-bye, and turned up to her father, who
still stood at the door, and who really did appear to be starving, if
one could judge by the position of his hands and the face he made.

The moment had now arrived when Emon must meet his fate, or call
himself a coward and a poltroon for the remainder of his natural life,
be it long or short.

He chose the least degrading and the most hopeful alternative--to meet
his fate.

As Winny held out her hand to him, and asked him to let out the dog,
he said:

"No, Winny; I'll give him up to you at the end of the lane; but not
sooner."

Winny saw that remonstrance would be no use. She did not wish to
quarrel with Emon, and she knew that at all events that was no time or
place to do so.

They had not advanced many yards alone, when Winny stopped again, as
if irresolute between her wishes and her fears. She had not yet spoken
unkindly to Emon, and she had tact enough to know that the first
unkind word would bring out the whole matter, which she dreaded, in a
flood from his heart, and which she doubted her own power to
withstand.

"Emon," she said, "indeed I will not let you come any further--don't
be angry."

"Winny, you said first you would not ask me, and now you say you will
not let me. Winny Cavana, are you ashamed of _any_ one about Rathcash,
or Rathcash_more_, seeing you walking with Emon-a-knock?"

"You are very unjust and very unkind, Emon, to say any such thing. I
never was ashamed to be seen walking with you; and I'm certain sure
the day will never come when you will give me reason to be ashamed of
you, Emon-a-knock;--there now, I seldom put the two last words to your
name, except when I wish to be kind. But there is a difference between
shame and fear, Emon."

"Then you are afraid, Winny?"

"Yes, Emon, but it is only of my father--take that with you now, and
be satisfied, but don't fret me by persevering further. Let the dog
go--and good-bye."

All this time she was counting the pebbles on the road with her eyes.

"No, Winny, I'll not fret you willingly; but here or there it is all
the same, and the truth must come out. Winny, you have been the
woodbine that has twined itself and blossomed round my heart for many
a long day. Don't wither it, Winny dear, but say I may water and
nourish it with the dew {510} of your love;" and he would have taken
her hand.

"Not here, Emon," she said, releasing it; "are you mad? Don't you see
we're in sight of the houses? and gracious only knows who may be
watching us! Untie your handkerchief and give be the dog. For goodness
sake, Emon dear, don't come any further."

"No, Winny, I'd die before I'd fret you. Here's the dog, handkerchief
and all: keep it as a token that I may hope."

"Indeed, Emon, I cannot--don't ask me."

Emon's heart fell, and he stooped to untie the handkerchief in
despair, if not in chagrin, at Winny's last words.

But Bully-dhu appeared to know what his mistress ought to have done
better than she did herself. It was either that, or Emon's hand shook
so, that when endeavoring to untie the knot, the dog got loose,
"handkerchief and all," and, turning to his mistress, began to bark
and jump up on her, with joy that he had gained his liberty, and was
so near home. Winny became frightened lest Bully-dhu's barks might
bring notice upon them, and she endeavored to moderate his ecstacy,
yet she felt a sort of secret delight that she was in for the
handkerchief in spite of herself. She was determined, therefore, not
to send poor Emon-a-knock away totally dejected.

"There, Emon dear; for God's sake, I say again, be off home. I'll keep
it in memory of the day that you saved my poor dog from
destruction--there now, will that do?" and she held out her hand.

"It is enough, Winny dear. This has been the happiest day of my life.
May I hope it has only been the first of a long life like it?"

"Now, Emon, don't talk nonsense, but be off home, if you have any wit
--good-bye;" and this time she gave him her hand and let it lie in
his.

"God bless you, Winny dearest, I oughtn't to be too hard on you. Sure
you have raised my heart up into heaven already, and there is
something now worth living for." And he turned away with a quick and
steady step.

"She called me 'dear' twice," he soliloquized, after he thought she
had fairly turned round. But Winny had heard him, and as she took the
handkerchief from Bully-dhu's neck, she patted him upon the head,
saying, "And you _are_ a dear good fellow, and I'm very fond of you."

Emon heard every part of this little speech except the first word, and
Winny managed it to perfection; for though she had used the word "and"
in connection with what she had heard Emon say, she was too cunning to
let him hear that one small word, which would have calmed his beating
heart; and the rest she would fain have it appear had been said to the
dog, for which purpose she accompanied the words with those pats upon
his head. She spoke somewhat louder, however, than was necessary, if
Bully-dhu was alone intended to hear her.

Emon saw the transaction, and heard some of the words--only some. But
they were sufficient to make him envy the dog, as he watched them
going up the lane, and into the house.

It might be a nice point, in the higher ranks of life, to determine
whether, in a "breach of promise" case, the above passages could be
relied on as unequivocal evidence on either side of a promise; or
whether a young lover would be justified in believing that his suit
had been successful upon no other foundation than what had then taken
place. But in the rank of life in which Winny Cavana and Edward Lennon
moved, it was as good between them as if they had been
"book-sworn"--and they both knew it.

Before Winny went to her bed that night she had washed and ironed the
handkerchief, and she kept it ever after in her pocket, folded up in a
piece of newspaper. It had no mark {511} upon it when she got it, but
she was not afraid, after some time, to work the letters E. A. K. in
the comer, as no one was ever to see it but herself, not even Kate
Mulvey.

Old Ned Cavana, after returning from prayers, determined to rest
himself for some time before taking a tour of the farm, and lay down
upon an old black sofa in the parlor. There is no shame in the truth
that an old man of his age soon fell fast asleep. The servant-girl
looked in once or twice to tell him that the spotted heifer had cut
her leg jumping over a wall, as Jamesy Doyle was turning her out of
the wheat; but she knew it would not signify; and not wishing, or
perhaps not venturing, to disturb him, she quietly shut the door
again. He slept so long, that he was only just getting the spotted
heifer's leg stuped in the farm-yard while the scene already described
was passing between Winny and young Lennon upon the road. Were it not
for that same heifer's leg he would doubtless have been standing at
the window watching his daughter's return. Upon such fortuitous
accidents do lovers' chances sometimes hang! This was what Winny in
her ignorance of her father's employment had dreaded; and hence alone
her anxiety that Emon should "be off home, if he had any wit."

On this point she found, however, that all was right when she entered.
Her father was just coming in from the farm-yard, "very thankful that
it was no worse;" a frame of mind which we would recommend all persons
to cultivate under untoward circumstances of any kind.

Of course Winny told her father of the mishap about poor Bully-dhu's
battle; she "nothing extenuated, nor set down aught in malice," but
told the thing accurately as it had occurred; and did not even hide
that young Lennon--she did not call him Emon-a-knock--had ultimately
rescued the poor dog from destruction. She did not think it necessary
to say how far he had accompanied them on their way home.

"He's a smart young fellow, that Lennon is, an' I'm for ever obliged
to him, Winny, for that same turn. There would be no livin' here but
for Bully-dhu. I believe it was Emon himself gev him to us, when he
was a pup."

"It was, father; and a very fine dog he turned out."

"The sorra-betther, Winny. If it wasn't for him, as I say, betune the
fox an' the rogues, we wouldn't have a goose or a turkey, or a duck,
or a cock, or a hen, or so much as a chikin, in the place, nor so
much, iv coorse, as a fresh egg for our breakfast. Poor Bully, I hope
he's not hurt, Winny;" and he stooped down to examine him. "No, no,"
he cried, "not much; but I'm sure he's thirsty. Here, Biddy, get Bully
a dish of _bonnia-rommer_, and be sure you make him up a good mess
afther dinner. That Emon-a-knock, as they call him, is a thundering
fine young man; it's a pity the poor fellow is a pauper, I may say."

"No, father, he's _not_ a pauper, and never will be; he's well able to
earn his living."

"I know that, Winny, for he often worked here; an' there's not a man
in the three parishes laves an honester day's work behind him."

"And does not spend it foolishly, father. If you were to see how
nicely he was dressed to-day; and--beside all the help he gives his
father and mother."

She was about to add a remark that work was just then very slack, as
it was the dead time of the year, but that there was always something
to be done about the farm; but second thoughts checked the words as
they were rising to her lips; and second thoughts, they say, are best.

Old Ned here turned the conversation by "wondering was the dinner near
ready."

Winny was not a little surprised, and a good deal delighted, to hear
her father talk so familiarly and so kindly {512} of Emon. There never
was a time when her father's kind word of him was of more value to her
heart. Perhaps it would be an unjust implication of hypocrisy on the
old man's part to suggest that he might have only been "pumping" Winny
on the subject. She felt, however, that she had gone far enough for
the present in the expression of her opinion, and was not sorry when a
touch of the _faire gurtha_ put her father in mind of "the dinner."

We, who, of course, can see much further than any of our _dramatis
personae,_and who are privileged to be behind the scenes, could tell
Winny Cavana--but that we would not wish to fret her--that Tom Murdock
was looking on from his own window at the whole scene between her and
young Lennon on the road; and that from that moment, although he could
not hear a word that was said, he understood the whole thing, and was
generating plans of vengeance and destruction against _one_ or both.


CHAPTER XXI.

Matters were now lying quiet. They were like a line ball at billiards
which cannot be played at, and there was nothing "to go out for" by
any of the players in this double match. But occasionally something
"comes off," in even the most remote locality, which creates some
previous excitement, and forms the subject of conversation in all
ranks. Sometimes a steeple-chase, "five-sovereigns stakes, with fifty
or a hundred added," forms a speculation for the rich; with a farmer's
class-race for twenty pounds, without any stakes, for horses _bona
fide_ the property, etc.

A great cricket-match once "came off" not very far from the locality
of our story, when Major W--n lived at Mount Campbell, between the
officers of the garrison at Boyle and a local club. We belonged to the
major's province of constabulary at the time, and, as members, were
privileged to take part therein. The thing was rather new in that part
of the world at the time, but had been well advertised in the
newspapers for the rich, and through the police for the poor; and the
consequence was--the weather being very fine--that a concourse of not
less than a thousand persons were assembled to witness the game. There
can be little doubt that some of the younger portion, at least, of our
_dramatis personae_ in this tale were spectators upon the occasion. It
was within their county, and not an unreasonable distance from the
homes we are now writing of.

January and February had now passed by in the calm monotony of nothing
to excite the inhabitants of the Rathcashes. Valentine's Day, indeed,
had created a slight stir amongst some of the girls who had bachelors,
or thought they had; and many a message was given to those going into
C.O.S., to "be sure and ask at the post-office for a letter for me,"
"and for me," "and for me." A few, very few indeed, got valentines,
and many, very many, did not.

It was now March, and even this little anxiety of heart had subsided
on the part of the girls; some from self-satisfaction at what they
got, and others from disappointment at what they did not.

During this time Tom Murdock had seen Winny Cavana occasionally. It
would be quite impossible, with one common lane to both houses, and
those houses not more than three hundred yards apart, that any plan of
Winny's, less than total seclusion, could have prevented their
sometimes "coming across" one another; and total seclusion was a thing
that Winny Cavana would not subject herself to on account of any man
"that ever stepped in shoe-leather." "What had she to him, or to be
afraid of him for? Let him mind his own business and she'd mind hers.
But for one half hour she'd never shut herself up {513} on his
account. Let him let her alone."

Tom Murdock was not without a certain degree of knowledge of the
female heart, nor of a certain amount of tact to come round one, in
the least objectionable way; at all events, so as not to foster any
difference which might have taken place. He did not appear to seek her
society, nor did he seek to avoid it. When they met, which was really
always by accident, he was civil, and sufficiently attentive to show
that he harbored no ill-will against her, and respected her enough to
make it worth his while not to break with her. He was now certain of a
walk home with her on Sundays from mass. On these occasions her father
was generally with her, but this Tom considered rather to be wished
for than otherwise, as he could not venture, even if alone, to renew
the forbidden subject. But he knew the father had approved of his
suit, and his wish was now to establish a constant civility and
kindness of manner, which would keep him at least on his side, if it
did not help by its quietness to make Winny herself think better of
him.

What had passed between Winny and Emon was not likely in a human heart
to keep up the constrained indifference which that young man had
burdened himself with toward her. He had, therefore, upon two or three
Sundays ventured again to go to the chapel of Rathcash.

It is not very easy to account for, or to explain how such minor
matters fall out, or whether they are instinctively arranged
impromptu; but upon each occasion of Emon having re-appeared at
Rathcash chapel, Tom Murdock's walk home with Winny was spoiled; more
particularly if it so happened that her father did not go to prayers.

Emon-a-knock was never devoid of a considerable portion of self-esteem
and respect. Though but a daily laborer, his conduct and character
were such as to have gained for him the favorable opinion and the good
word of every one who knew him; and apart from the innate goodness of
his disposition, he would not lose the high position he had attained
in the hearts of his neighbors for the consideration of any of those
equivocal pleasures generally enjoyed by young men of his class. He
felt that he could look old Ned Cavana or old Mick Murdock straight in
the face, rich as they were. He felt quite Tom Murdock's equal in
everything, mentally and physically. In riches alone he could not
compare with him, but these, he thanked God, belonged to neither mind
nor body.

Thus far satisfied with himself, he always stopped to have a few words
with Winny, when chance--which he sometimes coaxed to be propitious--
threw him in her way. Even from Rathcash on Sundays he felt entitled
now, perhaps more than ever, to join her as far as his own way home
lay along with hers, and this although her father was along with her.
If Tom Murdock had joined them, which was only natural, living where
he did, Emon was more determined than ever to be of the party,
chatting to them all, Tom included; thus showing that he was neither
afraid of them nor ashamed of himself.

The first Sunday after the dog-fight was the first that Emon had gone
to the chapel of Rathcash for a pretty long time. But, as a matter of
course, he must go there on that day to inquire for poor Bully-dhu,
and to ascertain if Winny Cavana had recovered her fright and fatigue.
We have seen that Winny had told her father sufficient of the
transaction of poor Bully's mishap to make it almost a matter of
necessity that he should allude to it to Emon, if it were merely to
thank him for "the trouble he had taken" in saving the dog. When Winny
heard the words her father had used, she thought them cold--"the
trouble he had taken!" her heart suggested that he might have said,
and said truly, "the risk he had run."

But, Winny, there had really been no risk; and recollect that you had
{514} used the very same word "trouble" to Emon yourself, when you
knew no more of his mind than your father does now.

Tom had walked with them on this occasion, and old Ned's civility to
"that whelp"--a name he had not forgotten--helped to sour his temper
more than anything which had passed between Winny Cavana and him. But
all these things he was obliged to bear, and he bore them well, upon
"the-long-lane-that-has-no-turning" system.

But now a cause of anticipated excitement began to be spoken of in the
neighborhood; how, or why, or by whom the matter had been set on foot,
was a thing not known, and of no consequence at the time. Yet Tom
Murdock was at the bottom of it--and for a purpose.

There existed not far from about the centre of the locality of our
story a large flat common, where flocks of geese picked the short
grass in winter, and over which the peewit curled with a short
circular flap, and a timid little hoarse scream, in the month of May.
It consisted of about sixty acres of hard, level, whitish sod,
admirably adapted for short races, athletic sports, and manly
exercises of every kind. It formed a sort of amphitheatre, surrounded
by low green hills, affording ample space and opportunity for
hundreds, ay thousands, of spectators to witness any sport which might
be inaugurated upon the level space below.

Upon one or two occasions, but not latterly, hurling-matches had come
off upon Glanveigh Common. At one time these hurling-matches were very
common in Ireland, and were considered a fair test of the prowess of
the young men of different parishes. Many minor matches had come off
from time to time, but they were of a mixed nature, got up for the
most part upon the spot, and had not been spoken of beforehand--they
were mere impromptus amongst the younger lads of the neighborhood. The
love of the game, however, had not died out even amongst those of
riper years; and there were very many men, young and old, whose hurls
were laid up upon lofts, and who could still handle them in a manner
with which few parts of Ireland could compare. Amongst those Tom
Murdock was pre-eminent. He had successfully led the last great match,
when not more than twenty years of age, between the parishes of
Rathcash and Shanvilla, against a champion called "Big M'Dermott," who
led for the latter parish. He was considered the best man in the
province to handle a hurl, and his men were good; but Tom Murdock and
the boys of Rathcash had beaten them back three times from the very
jaws of the goal, and finally conquered. But Shanvilla formally
announced that they would seek an early opportunity to retrieve their
character. The following Patrick's Day would be three years since they
had lost it.

Tom Murdock thought this a good opportunity to forward a portion of
his plans. A committee was formed of the best men in Rathcash parish
to send a challenge to the men of Shanvilla to hurl another match on
Glanveigh Common upon Patrick's Day. Tom Murdock himself was not on
the committee; he had too much tact for that. "Big M'Dermott" had
emigrated, leaving a younger brother behind him--a good man, no doubt;
but as the Shanvilla boys had been latterly bragging of Emon-a-knock
as their best man, Tom had no doubt that the challenge would be
accepted, and that young Lennon, as a matter of course, would be
chosen as their champion. Had he doubted this last circumstance, he
might not have cared to originate the match at all. He had not
forgotten the poker-and-tongs jig about four months before. His
humiliation on that occasion had sunk deeper into his heart than any
person who witnessed it was aware of; and although never afterward
adverted to, had still to be avenged. If, then, at the head of his
hundred men, he could beat back young Lennon with an equal number
twice out of thrice before the assembled parishes, it would in {515}
some degree wash out the humiliation of his defeat in the dance.

Upon the acceptance of this challenge not only the character of the
Shanvilla boys depended, but their pride and confidence in
Emon-a-knock as their best man.

At once, upon the posting of the challenge, with the names of the
committee, upon the chapel-gate of Rathcash, a counter-committee was
formed for Shanvilla, and, taking a leaf from their opponents' book,
their best man's name was left out. But he at the same time accepted
the leadership of the party, which was unanimously placed upon him.

Thus far matters had tended to the private exultation of Tom Murdock,
who was determined to make Patrick's Day a day of disgrace to his
rival, for since the scene he had witnessed with the dog and the
handkerchief he could no longer doubt the fact.

The whole population of the parishes were sure to be assembled, and
Winny Cavana, of course, amongst the rest. What a triumph to degrade
him in her eyes before his friends and hers! Surely he would put forth
all his energies to attain so glorious a result. He would show before
the assembled multitude that, physically at least, "that whelp" was no
match for Tom Murdock--his defeat Pat the poker-and-tongs jig was a
mere mischance.

The preliminaries were now finally settled for this, the greatest
hurling-match which for many years had come off, or was likely to come
off, in the province. Rathcash had been victorious on the last great
occasion of the kind, just three years before, when Tom Murdock had
led the parish, as a mere stripling, against "Big M'Dermott" and his
men. The additional three years had now given more manliness to Tom's
heart, in one sense at least, and a greater development to the muscle
and sinew of his frame than he could boast of on that occasion. He was
an inch, or an inch and a half, over Emon-a-knock in height, upwards
of a stone-weight heavier, and nearly two years his senior in age. His
men were on an average as good men, and as well accustomed to the use
of the hurl, as those of Shanvilla--their hurls were as well seasoned
and as sound, and their pluck was proverbially high. What wonder,
then, if Tom Murdock anticipated a certain, if not an easy, victory?

As hurling, however, has gone very much out of fashion since those
days, and is now seldom seen--never, indeed, in the glorious strength
of two populous parishes pitted against each other--it may be well for
those who have never seen or perhaps heard of it, to close this
chapter with a short description of it.

A large flat field or common, the larger the better, is selected for
the performance. Two large blocks of stone are placed about fifteen or
twenty feet apart toward either end of the field. One pair of these
stones forms the goal of one party, and the other pair that of their
opponents. They are about four hundred yards distant from each other,
and are generally whitewashed, that they may the more easily catch the
attention of the players. A ball, somewhat larger than a cricket-ball,
but pretty much of the same nature, is produced by each party, which
will be more fully explained by-and-bye. The hurlers assemble, ranged
in two opposing parties in the centre between the goals. The hurls are
admirably calculated for the kind of work they are intended to
perform--viz., to _puck_ the ball toward the respective goals. But
they would be very formidable weapons should a fight arise between the
contending parties. This, ere now, we regret to say, has not
unfrequently been the case--leading sometimes to bloodshed, and on, a
few occasions to manslaughter, if not to murder. The hurl is
invariably made of a piece of well-seasoned ash. It is between three
and four feet long, having a flat surface of about four inches broad
and an inch thick, turned at the lower end. Many and close searches in
those days have been made through the woods. {516} and in cartmaker's
shops, for pieces of ash with the necessary turn, grown by nature in
the wood; but failing this fortunate chance, the object was pretty
well effected by a process of steaming, and the application of cramps,
until the desired shape was attained. But these were never considered
as good as those grown _designedly_ by nature _for the purpose_.

The contending parties being drawn up, as we have said, in the centre
of the ground, the respective leaders step forward and shake hands,
like two pugilists, to show that there is no malice. Although this act
of the leaders is supposed to guarantee the good feeling of the men as
well, yet the example is generally followed by such of the opposing
players as are near each other.

"A toss" then takes place, as to which side shall "sky" their ball.
These balls are closely inspected by the leaders of the opposite
parties, and pronounced upon before the game begins. There is no
choice of goals, as the parties generally set them up at the end of
the field next the parish they belong to. Whichever side wins "the
toss" then "skies" their ball, the leader throwing it from his hand to
the full height of his power, and "the game is on." But after this no
hand, under any circumstances, is permitted to touch the ball; an
apparently unnecessary rule, for it would be a mad act to attempt it,
as in all probability the hand would be smashed to pieces. The game
then is, to puck the ball through the opponents' goal. Two
goal-masters are stationed at either goal, belonging one to each
party, and they must be men of well-known experience as such. Their
principal business is to see that the ball is put fairly between the
stones; but they are not prohibited from using their hurls in the
final struggle at the spot, the one to assist, the other to obstruct,
as the state of their party may required.

Sometimes a game is nearly won, when a fortunate young fellow on the
losing side slips the ball from the crowd to the open, where one of
his party curls it into the air with the flat of his hurl, and the
whole assembly--for there is always one--hears the puck it gets,
sending it half-way toward the other goal. The rush to it then is
tremendous by both sides, and another crowded clashing of hurls takes
place.

When the ball is fairly put through the goal of one party by the
other, the game is won, and the shouts of the victors and their
friends are deafening.


CHAPTER XXII.

A hurling match in those days was no light matter, particularly when
it was on so extensive a scale as that which we are about to
describe--between two large parishes. They were supposed, and intended
to be, amicable tests of the prowess and activity of the young men at
a healthy game of recreation, as the cricket-matches of the present
day are that of the athletic aristocracy of the land. In all these
great matches, numbers of men, women, and children used to collect to
look on, and cheer as the success of the game swayed one way or the
other; and as most of the players were unmarried men, it is not to be
wondered at if there were many young women amongst the crowd, with
their hearts swaying accordingly.

It had been decided by the committees upon the occasion of this great
match, that a sort of distinguishing dress--they would not, of course,
call it uniform--should be worn by the men. To hurl in coats of any
kind had never in this or any other parish match been thought of. The
committee left the choice of the distinguishing colors to the
respective leaders, recommending, however, that the same manner should
be adopted of exhibiting it. It was agreed that sleeves of different
colors should be worn over the shirt sleeves, with a broad piece of
ribbon tied at the throat to match.

Tom Murdock had chosen green for his party, and not only that, but
{517} with a determination to make himself popular, and to throw his
rival as far as possible into the background, had purchased a
sufficient quantity of calico and ribbon to supply his men gratis with
sleeves and neck-ties.

Poor Emon-a-knock could not afford this liberality, and he felt the
object with which it had been puffed and paraded on the other side for
a whole week previous. He was not afraid, however, that his men would
think the less of him on that account. They knew he was only a
laboring man, depending upon his day's wages; and many of those who
would wield the hurl by his side upon the 17th of March were
well-to-do sons of comfortable farmers. Many, no doubt, were laboring
boys like himself, and many servant-boys to the farming class.

A deputation of Shanvillas had waited on Emon-a-knock to ascertain his
choice of a color for their sleeves and ribbon.

He thought for a few moments, and then taking a red
pocket-handkerchief from his box he said, "Boys, this is the only
color I can think of. It is as good as any."

"I don't like it, Emon," said M'Dermott, the next best man in the
parish.

"Why so, Phil?" said another.

"Well, I hardly know why. It is too much the color of blood. I'd
rather have white."

"Don't be superstitious, Phil _a-wochal_," said Emon; "white is a
cowardly color all over the world, and red is the best contrast we can
have to their color."

"So be it," said Phil.

"So be it," re-echoed the rest of the deputation; "sure, Emon has a
right to the choice. Lend us the handkerchief, that we may match it as
near as possible."

"And welcome, boys; here it is; but take good care of it for me, as it
is the only one I have _now_."

The deputation did not know, but the readers do, that he had given the
fellow to it--off the same piece--to Winny Cavana with the dog. Hence
his emphasis upon the last word.

No time was lost by the deputation when they left Emon. They had
scarcely got out of hearing, when Phil M'Dermott said, "Boys, you all
know that Tom Murdock has bestowed his men with a pair of sleeves, and
half a yard of ribbon each. Now if he was as well liked as he lets on,
he needn't have done that; and in my opinion he done it by way of
casting a slur upon our man's poverty. Tom Murdock can afford a
hundred yards of green calico and fifty yards of tuppenny ribbon very
well;--at least he ought to be able to do so. Now I vote that amongst
the best of us we bestow our man with a pair of silk sleeves, and a
silk cap and ribbon, for the battle. There's my tenpenny-bit toward
it."

"An' I second that vote, boys; there's mine," said another.

"Aisy, boys, an' listen to me," broke in a young Solon, who formed one
of the deputation. "There's none of us that wouldn't give a tenpenny
bit, if it was the last he had, to do what you say, Phil; but the
whole thing--sleeves, ribbon, and cap--won't cost more than a couple
of crowns; an' many's the one of the Shanvilla boys would like to have
part in it. I vote all them that can afford it may give a fippenny-bit
apiece, an' say nothing about it to the boys that can't afford it. If
we do, there isn't a man of them but what id want to put in his penny;
and I know Emon would not like that. It wouldn't sound well, an' might
be laughed at by that rich chap, Murdock. Here's my fippenny, Phil."

There was much good sense in this. It met not only the approbation of
the whole deputation, but the pockets of some, and was unanimously
adopted. The necessary amount of money was made up before an hour's
time; and a smart fellow--the very Solon who had spoken, and who was
as smart of limb as he was of mind--was despatched forthwith to C.O.S.
for three yards of silk and two yards of ribbon, to match as nearly as
possible {518} Emon-a-knock's handkerchief, which was secured in the
crown of his cap.

The very next afternoon--for Shanvilla did not sleep on its resolve--
there was no lion in the street for them;--the same deputation walked
up to Emon's house at dinner-hour, when they knew he would be at home.
He had just finished, and was on his way out, to continue a job of
planting "a few gets" of early potatoes on the hill behind the house,
when he met them near the door.

M'Dermott carried a paper parcel in his hand.

"Well, boys," said Emon, "what's the matter now? I thought we settled
everything yesterday morning."

"You did, Emon _a-wochal_; but we had a trifle to do after we left
you. I hope you done nothing about your own sleeves as yet."

"No, Phil, I did not; but never fear, I'll be up to time. But I don't
wish to change the color, if that's what brought you."

"The sorra change Emon; it is almost too late for that now. But some
of the boys heerd that Tom Murdock is givin' his men, every man of
'em, sleeves an' ribbon for this match. We don't expect the likes from
you, Emon; and we don't mind that fellow's puffery and pride. We think
it better that the Shanvilla boys should present their leader with one
pair of sleeves than that he should give a hundred pairs to them. We
have them here, Emon _a-wochal_; an' there isn't a boy in the parish
of Shanvilla, or a man, woman, or child, that won't cheer to see you
win in them."

"An' maybe some one in the parish of Rathcash," whispered Solon to
Phil.

Here Phil M'Dermott untied his parcel and exhibited the sleeves,
finished off in the best style by his sister Peggy. What would fit
Phil would fit Emon; and she was at no loss upon that point.

"Here they are, made and all, Emon. Peggy made them on my fit; and we
wish you luck to win in them. Faix, if you don't, it won't be your
fault nor ours. Here's your hankicher; you see there isn't the differ
of a _milthiogue's_ wing in the two colors."

Perhaps it was the proximity to Boher-na-milthiogue that had suggested
the comparison.

"Indeed, boys, I'm entirely obliged to you, and I don't think we can
fail of success. It shall not be my fault if we do, and I'm certain it
won't be yours. But I'm sorry--"

"_Bidh a hurst_, Emon; don't say wan word, or I'll choke you. But thry
them on."

Emon's coat was forthwith slipped off his back and thrown upon the end
of a turf-stack hard by, and Phil M'Dermott drew the sleeves upon his
arms, and tied them artistically over his shoulders.

"Dam' the wan, Emon, but they were med for you!" said Phil, smoothing
them down toward the wrists.

"Divil a word of lie in _that_, any way, Phil," said Solon. "Tell us
something we don't know."

"Well, I may tell them that you have too much wit in your head to have
any room for sense," replied M'Dermott, seemingly a little annoyed at
the remark.

Solon grinned and drew in his horns.

"They are, indeed, the very thing," said Emon, turning his head from
one to the other and admiring them. He could have wished, however,
that it had been a Rathcash girl who had made them instead of Peggy
M'Dermott. "But I cannot have everything my own way," sighed he to
himself.

M'Dermott then quietly removed Emon's hat with one hand, while with
the other he slily placed die silk cap jauntily upon his head. There
was a general murmur of approbation at the effect, in which Emon
himself could not choose but join. He felt that he was looking the
thing.

After a sufficient time had been allowed for the admiration and
verdict of the committee as to their fit and appearance, Phil
M'Dermott took them {519} off again, and, folding them up carefully in
the paper, handed it to Emon, wishing him on his own part, and that of
the whole parish, health to wear and win in them on Patrick's Day--
"Every man of as will have our own colors ready the day before," he
added.

Emon then thanked them heartily, and turned into the house, to show
them to his father, and the deputation returned to their homes.


TO BE CONTINUED.

------

Translated from the German.

MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.


SKETCH OF THE CATHOLIC CONGRESSES HELD AT MALINES AND WÜRZBURG.

BY ANDREW NIEDERMASSER.


CHAPTER IV.

CHARITY


Himioben, in a speech delivered at the convention of Salzburg,
September 24, 1857, spoke as follows: "All grumblers and pessimists
should strive to understand that we live in a great age--great because
it is destined to witness the triumph of the truth. I feel that it is
a great age, and I thank God for the happiness of living in the
nineteenth century. Except the age of the apostles and that of
Constantine, no period in the history of the Church can compare with
the present."

Notwithstanding my frequent and intimate intercourse with some of the
most extreme pessimists in Germany, I own I am convinced of the
correctness of Himioben's opinion. The first and principal reason of
this conviction is the heroic achievements of Christian charity, of
which every part of the globe has been the scene in our days. Where
such deeds are done as those which we have witnessed and heard of so
often, God's kingdom on earth must flourish. The rays of Christian
charity illuminate the whole world.

We cannot deny that the century beginning with the year 1764 and
closing in 1864 has been an age of spoliation for the Church. The
suppression of the Society of Jesus by King Joseph Emmanuel, of
Portugal, in 1759, was followed by a similar measure in France in
November, 1764. On April 3, 1767, the Spanish, and on the 20th of
November, 1767, the Neapolitan, Jesuits met with the same fate. Joseph
II. of Austria, who was chosen Emperor of Germany in 1764, suppressed
700 monasteries in his hereditary dominions, whilst the champions of
the French Revolution were still more ruthless in the work of
destruction. In Germany most of the Church property was secularized,
under circumstances of great cruelty, in 1803. On May 28, 1824, the
King of Portugal decreed the suppression of all religious orders in
his kingdom. In 1835 the Spanish government confiscated the property
of 900 monasteries, and a royal decree, dated March 9, 1836,
pronounced the same doom on all the remaining religious houses in
Spain. Since 1860 the Sardinians have suppressed at least 800
convents, and the remaining Church property will doubtless fare in the
same manner, for the rapacity of these sacrilegious robbers is never
appeased. On the 28th November, 1864, the Czar of Russia ordered 125
of the 155 Polish convents to be {520} closed, and the monks were
treated with great cruelty.

Truly this age of enlightenment can boast of glorious exploits.
Sacrilegious robbery has been the order of the day throughout Europe,
and civilized governments have trampled under foot rights that have
been sanctioned during many successive ages. But their efforts have
proved abortive, for the Church flourishes more and more, and develops
new seeds of life. The religious orders and congregations of the
nineteenth century rival in purity, austerity, and holy zeal the monks
of the most prosperous ages of the Church, and devoted disciples of
Christian charity are countless as the stars of the firmament, whilst
their activity cannot fail to elicit the admiration of every impartial
witness. Charity has engaged, in a particular manner, the attention of
the Catholic re-unions; it is their proper province--even more so than
science and art. It is the culminating point of their activity; for
what is religion but practical love of God and our neighbor? Art is
the proper object of our fancy; science, of our intellect; and
charity, of the will--and free will is the distinguishing
characteristic of the human soul. Art requires facility; science,
thought; but charity supposes action, the real living act which always
turns the balance. Truth must not only be proved, but felt; science
and art are the necessary fruits of true religion; science is not the
light, but is to give testimony of the light. The object of art is the
beautiful; of science, the true; and of charity, the good; but the
beautiful, the true, and the good are the three highest
categories--the indispensable conditions of intellectual activity--the
connecting links between the intellect and God, who is the
fountain-head and prototype of all being, as well as the last end of
human investigation and aspirations. If it is true that the intellect
can find repose only in the unity of three relations, and that we meet
with the emblem of the Trinity in all places, then I know not where
this trinity finds a more perfect expression than in art, science, and
charity. Whoever has comprehended these three, has grasped everything
of which man is capable, and an assembly of men who occupy themselves
with art, science, and charity is at all times of great importance,
for it bears a truly universal character.

Let not the reader expect that I will enter into all the details of
the proceedings of the general conventions concerning the subject of
Christian charity. To do this would require a book even more
voluminous than Bishop Dupanloup's work on Christian charity. At
Malines alone how many great and weighty questions were discussed by
the first and second sections ("OEuvres Religieuses" and "Economic
Chrétienne"), not to speak of the fifth section, which treated of
similar subjects. We shall mention a few of the questions proposed.
"What," it was asked, "can a layman do to preserve the people in the
faith of their ancestors, to induce them to observe the laws of God
and the Church, and to teach them to resist strenuously every attack
of infidelity?" It was recommended to establish in every city
conferences of men, and to explain for them the principal truths of
our faith. It was further agreed that, during Lent, the people should
have an opportunity of following some spiritual exercises and thus
refreshing their souls. Good books, likewise, are to be furnished to
the poor at a moderate price. The assembly next debated what measures
should be taken to revive pilgrimages not only to Rome and Jerusalem,
but also to the places of pilgrimage existing in every country--
shrines with the history of which the people should be made familiar.
Then followed a discussion on the prevention of abuses, so that every
pilgrimage may preserve its religious and edifying character. It was
decided to foster all societies whose object is the assembling,
edification, and instruction of apprentices and journeymen. How, {521}
it was asked, are the meetings in the evenings to be carried on? how
the religious exercises on Sundays? how are sick members to be
visited? etc. The Malines congress also declared that it is the duty
of the state to fix by law the age at which children may be allowed to
work in factories and mines; to procure healthy dwellings for the
workmen; to determine the duration of a day's work; and to see that
males and females work in _separate_ apartments. The congress sought
to impress on owners of factories the obligation devolving on them to
take care of the children of their employees, to provide for their
laborers when sick, not to force women suckling infants to work--in
short, to treat their employees in a Christian manner. Jean Dollfus,
of Mühlhausen, and Lowell in America, were proposed as models worthy
of imitation. Amietus Digard and Audigaime, of Paris, placed at the
disposition of the central committee the results of their long
experience. De Riancey, of Paris, was the zealous advocate of the
"Patronage," which he wishes to be founded on charity and freedom, and
to spread over every country. It was urgently recommended to establish
clubs for journeymen in Romanic countries. Count Lemercier and
Marbeau, of Paris, submitted to the consideration of the central
committee an elaborate paper on the amelioration of the social
condition of the laboring classes, insisting particularly on the
necessity of providing them with suitable dwellings; this paper proved
of great value in preparing the programme. The debate on the best way
of checking the habits of intemperance which are now unfortunately
becoming so general among all classes of the laborers, was unusually
interesting. During the present century no one has done more to attain
this desirable end than Father Matthew in Ireland, who has probably
thereby conferred even greater benefits on his countrymen than the
great O'Connell. Nor were the prisoners neglected at Malines; the
congress declared itself in favor of solitary confinement, and at the
same time recommended most earnestly societies for aiding discharged
convicts. In short, these men were occupied with all that might prove
beneficial to their neighbor.

Among the most prominent speakers in the second section were de
Riancey, Count Lemercier, Perin, Jacobs, of Antwerp, Dognée,
Lenormant, Digard, Beslay, Jean Casier, F. de Robiano, Count Legrelle,
de Richecourt, de Gendt, Vandenest, and especially Viscount de Melun,
who, together with Marbeau and Baudon, is the leading spirit of every
charitable undertaking in Paris.

In the first section, of which, as before mentioned, Count Villermont
was chairman, the proceedings were very animated, nay, at times solemn
and grand; the most active members were de Hemptinne, of Ghent, the
jurist Wauters, of Ghent, Lamy, of Louvain, de Haulleville, of
Brussels, O'Reilly, of Ireland, the Bollandist fathers Gay, Boone, and
de Buck, Lemmens, Abel Le Tellier, Count Edgar du Val de Beaulieu,
Abbé Kestens, of Louvain, Abbé Géandre, Abbé Geslin, of Kersolon in
France, editor of "L'Ouvrier," F. Van Caloen, F. Antoine, Demulliez,
Terwecoren, Abbé Gaultier, of Brussels, Fassin, of Verviers, Chevalier
Van Troyen, Bosaerts, Verspeyen, Abbé Battaille, de Caulincourt, Paga
Sartundur, of Madrid, Malengié, Peeters Beckers, de la Royère,
Viscount d'Authenaisse, Devaux, Putsaert, and some others whose names
have escaped my memory--all of them edifying Christians, men of strong
and sound intellect, seeing the realities of life, and of feeling
hearts, sympathizing with the joys and loves of their fellow-men, and
taking cognizance of their necessities. They will long be remembered
and blessed by the posterity of those to whose spiritual and corporeal
wants they have attended.

The religious orders, which in modern times have been so often mocked
at and slandered, found many warm {522} defenders at Malines. Baron
von Gerlache devoted the most brilliant passage of his opening speech
to their defence. Woeste, a lawyer of Brussels, delivered a masterly
discourse on religious communities before a full meeting of the
congress. Many speakers touched on the same theme, and Count
Villermont made it the special order of the day. This subject was
exhausted by the able speeches of de la Royère, Verspeyen, O'Reilly,
Count du Val de Beaulieu, Viscount d'Authenaisse, Lamy, Viscount de
Kerckhove, Ducpetiaux, and others.

The Würzburg general convention passed a resolution in favor of
religious orders, and at Frankfort the "Broschürenverein" will shortly
publish a pamphlet on this subject. The Malines congress also resolved
to encourage popular works on the origin, the nature, and the spread
of religious orders, and to give a fair exposition of the manifold
benefits they have conferred on mankind. It was also recommended to
publish the lives of the founders of these societies, to give an
account of their history in schools and other educational
institutions, and, by means of the pulpit and the press, to make known
as widely as possible the principles of religious orders. In this way
the members of these societies will be compensated to some extent for
the countless slanders and calumnies which are continually heaped on
them. The laymen present at Malines pledged themselves to pass no
opportunity of rendering them a service, and defending their rights;
of showing them reverence, and of spreading more and more their
communities.

For the sake of completeness, I shall mention the names of a few who
spoke at Malines in the fifth section, Religious Liberty, where many
important questions were discussed. It is impossible to enter into
details concerning all, for who can be present in five places at the
same time? Beside, there were assembled at Malines and Würzburg more
than 7,000 delegates, so that I cannot give even the names of all. In
a grand painting the artist does not represent all his figures in
full; he contents himself with giving us an outline of their features.
Dechamps and Neut, men of great merit and able to control the most
animated debate, presided in this section. Dumortier, of Brussels, and
Coomans, of Antwerp, both veteran members of the Belgian parliament,
managed admirably the details of business. Senator Della Faille and
Count de Thenx, as well as Cardinal Sterex, made many valuable
suggestions from the rich fund of their experience. The young and able
jurist, Woeste, of Brussels, Digard, of Paris, and the journalist
Lasserre were the most active members of this section. Here, too,
spoke Don Almeida, of Portugal, an orator sweet and strong as the
wines of his native country, and one of the most handsome men in the
congress. Here, also, we renew our acquaintance with Ducpetiaux,
Dognée, of Villers, Verspeyen, Geslin, of Kersolon, and Abbé Géandre.
To these names we may add those of Don Ignatio Montes de Oca, grand
almoner of the Emperor of Mexico, Abbé Pacquet, professor of the
University of Quebec, in Canada, Canon Rousseau, Jalheau, Stoffelt,
Collinet, Landrien, de Smedt, Baron von Montreuil, Chevalier
Schouteste, Nellaroya, Wigley, of London, Ch. Thellier, of
Poncheville, and Abbé Huybrechts. Abbé Mullois, of Paris, is well
known in Germany. In this section we also noticed Generals de
Capiaumont, Baron Grindl, and Lamoy, whose remarks were always
received with applause.

Le Camus, of Paris, represented the "Society for the Diffusion of Good
Books," founded in 1862 by Viscount de Melun. More than 12,000 good
books have already been distributed. The executive committee consists
of eighteen members, who are assisted in their charitable labors by
another committee of fifty.

And now we shall bid farewell to Malines.

{523}

The German conventions have called into existence many charitable
institutions. Foremost among these is the Society of St. Boniface,
founded at Regensburg in 1849. Even long before, Count Joseph von
Stolberg had visited every part of the German empire to enlist the
sympathies of high and low for the noble object of this society, and
had thus prepared the way for its establishment. At Regensburg he was
elected president, and thus crowned his labors. Since its institution
the society has founded 67 missionary parishes, 114 chapels, and 98
schools for about 100,000 Catholics in northern Europe. Forty-two of
these stations are entirely maintained by the association, whilst most
of the remaining ones receive considerable pecuniary assistance. Much,
however, remains to be done; many stations will go to ruin unless
speedy aid is afforded them. All Catholic Germany must contribute, by
its exertions, its prayers, and its sacrifices, to bring to a
successful issue the greatest of our national undertakings, the
reunion of all Germany in the one true faith.

An annual report of the results achieved by this society is presented
to the general conventions. At Würzburg Canon Bieling spoke in the
name of Bishop Conrad Martin, of Paderborn, who by his great work has
created an immense sensation among the German Protestants. Great
exertions are making to spread the society of St. Boniface; may they
prove successful.

At Würzburg the Hungarian Society of St. Ladislaus was represented by
Canon Kubinszky, and the Bavarian Missionary Society by Monsignore
Baron von Overkamp.

I must next speak of the St Joseph's Society. It was founded at
Aix-la-Chapelle for the purpose of enabling the German Catholics
living at Paris, London, Havre, and Lyons to secure places of divine
worship. Canon Prisac, of Aix-la-Chapelle, is the business manager of
the society, and is assisted in his labors by Laurent Lingens and
others. During the first two years of its existence the society
accomplished very little.

The missionaries of the poor Catholic Germans in the great emporiums
of England and France have already been three times in our midst. For
years the pastor of the Germans in London, Rev. Arthur Dillon Purcell,
has done everything in his power to establish the German mission in
that city on a sure basis, and his efforts have at last been crowned
with success. Although an Englishman by birth, he speaks our mother
tongue very fluently and without fault. His speeches will not inspire
enthusiasm, but will convince and obtain their end. At
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1862, the German mission in London was represented
by Adler, missionary priest of the diocese of Würzburg, and at
Frankfort, in 1863, by Böddinghaus, of Münster. The Jesuit father
Modeste has thrice urged the claims of the Germans in Paris. He is a
native of Lorraine, and, therefore, speaks French and German equally
well. His speeches are carefully prepared, and produce a great
sensation, for they are addressed not only to the mind but also to the
heart. The Lazarist Müllijans, a native of Cologne, spoke for the
German mission in the Quartier St. Marceau, which has been committed
to his care. Abbé Braun, who has done much for the Germans in Paris,
was likewise present at the Würzburg meeting. Father Lambert, of
Havre, a pious and devoted priest, privately represented to us the
misery of the German emigrants in the French seaport. But of what use
are these cries for help, unless we are willing to make some
sacrifice? Will not twenty-five million German Catholics do something
for their poor forlorn brethren?

In the third place, I must mention the journeymen associations. There
are at present more than 400 of these in Germany, and a few in
Switzerland and Belgium. Of late, similar {524} societies have been
established at Bucharest, Rome, Paris, London, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
and Milwaukee. The prefects of the society at Cologne, Vienna, and
Munich have lately received special marks of esteem from the Holy
Father in recognition of their services, whilst the Emperor Francis
Joseph has honored the Vienna association by his presence, and the
young King of Bavaria, Louis II., has accepted the protectorship of
all the Bavarian associations. The second general convention at
Mayence earnestly recommended these societies, but Kolping of Cologne
was the instrument chosen by God to undertake and carry out the great
work. Of Kolping it may truly be said that he has the welfare of
mankind at heart, and thousands will bless his name. In his own way,
he is one of the foremost social reformers of the nineteenth century.
At Würzburg he convened many of the prefects from every part of
Germany, and secured the future of the societies by the introduction
of the religious element. Kolping is not only a powerful speaker, but
also a journalist, and one of the most popular writers in Germany.
Gruscha, of Vienna, has often taken Kolping's place at the general
conventions. As an orator, Gruscha seems to exert a magic power over
his hearers, and it is useless to combat his views, for he carries
everything before him. Gruscha is general-prefect of all the
journeymen associations in Austria. Alban Stolz, the founder of the
Freiburg association, has spared no pains to promote Kolping's
undertaking. He is the most eminent and successful popular writer in
Germany. His pamphlets attract universal attention, and his almanacs
are read by thousands. Stolz does not approve of everything done by
the Catholic conventions, still he has been present at several of
them; for instance, at Aix-la-Chapelle and Frankfort. Müller, of
Berlin, is one of the most energetic prefects; he succeeded in
founding for the Catholics at Berlin a splendid club-house. He
publishes an able religious weekly, and an excellent almanac, founds
new missions every day, and does all in his power to extend the
kingdom of Christ in the north of Germany. He is a talented and
interesting speaker, although his style is not very harmonious or
elegant. George Mayr, of Munich, general-prefect of more than a
hundred associations in Bavaria, and a general favorite, has built,
probably, the finest club-house in Germany. The most zealous promoter
of this enterprise was Dr. Louis Merz, of Munich, who spared neither
labor nor sacrifice whenever there was question of furthering the
interests of the Church: his memory is enshrined in the hearts of all
his friends.

The memorial submitted by Kolping to the German bishops was signed by
the following diocesan prefects: Beckert, of Würzburg, Pohholzer, of
Augsburg, J. Weizenhofer, of Eichstädt, Benkcr, of Bamberg, Schaeffer,
of Treves, G. Arminger, of Linz, B. Hölbrigl, of St. Pölten, Max
Jäger, of Freiburg, F. Riedinger, of Spires, F. Nacke, of Paderborn,
and the prefects, Jos. Mayr, of Innsbruck, F. Höpperger, of Agram, and
C. Ziegler, of Rottenburg.

To mention more names would be tedious, but I hope and trust that God
will reward in a special manner the prefects of these societies. For
the last few years the social question has occupied the attention of
the Catholic conventions, and Rossbach, of Würzburg, Vosen, of
Cologne, and Schüren, of Aix-la-Chapelle, have delivered interesting
discourses on this subject.

The reading-room associations and social clubs or casinos next demand
a notice. We are justly proud of possessing four hundred Catholic
journeymen associations, but we will have more reason to boast when
there will be in Germany two or three hundred casinos, all united
together by the closest ties, and particularly when we will again
possess several purely Catholic universities, and when our {525}
scholars and educated men will form reunions such as that established
by five hundred students of Louvain in Belgium previous to the
congress of 1864.

Adams, a lawyer of Coblenz, has, so to say, identified himself with
these clubs. The affairs of the casino in his own native city are
conducted by him with extraordinary skill, and to his exertions
chiefly the Rhenish Casino Union, which will be shortly joined by many
cities in the Rhenish countries, owes its existence. Adams is an able
and pleasing speaker, full of confidence in the future and in the
power of sound principles. May Adams become to the social clubs in
Germany what Kolping is to the journeymen associations.

Falk, of Mayence, has accomplished very much for the social club of
his native city. To him belongs the credit of securing for the Mayence
Reading-room Association the celebrated "Frankfurter Hof." On the
twentieth of November, 1864, when the casino of the "Frankfurter Hof"
was solemnly inaugurated, President Falk delivered his most successful
speech, for Falk, although a mechanic, is an orator by no means to be
despised by the enemies of the Church. His words are like the blows of
a hammer, and his voice sounds like the rolling thunder. Falk's
speeches are not distinguished by any artistic merit, but there is
something in them which calls forth immense applause, and he generally
leaves the tribune amidst deafening cheers.

In Belgium more than twenty casinos have been established since 1863.
At the beginning of 1865, Germany could boast of almost fifty similar
associations. Let us spare no exertions to promote the welfare of
these clubs, and we will soon have a league of Catholic gentlemen
extending not only from the Danube to the Rhine, but from the Adriatic
to the German ocean.

We must also devote a few words to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
Among its most energetic members are Lawyer Lingens, of
Aix-la-Chapelle, one of the most regular and active Members of the
German conventions, and Von Brentano, a merchant of Augsburg, who is a
very eloquent speaker. I must not forget to mention Baudon of Paris,
general-president of all the societies of St. Vincent de Paul in
France; Legentil also and Meniolle, of Paris, deserve to be noticed.

The energetic and pious Capuchin, Father Theodosius of Chur, in
Switzerland, a powerful man of immense stature, will close this array
of the champions of charity. He has made many attempts to solve the
social question from a Christian point of view, and has displayed
incomparable ingenuity in alleviating the miseries of his fellow-men.
He has founded congregations, built convents, for them, and
established seminaries and colleges which are model institutions; but,
above all, he has brought the blessing of God on the Swiss factories,
and has introduced contentment and happiness among the working
classes. His success in prevailing upon the Swiss capitalists to
conduct their factories upon Catholic principles is certainly one of
the sublimest triumphs of Christian charity.

The congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, founded by Father
Theodosius about twelve years ago in Chur-Ingenbohl, numbers already
112 houses, spread over Switzerland, Bohemia, Austria, Sigmaringen,
and Baden.

Among the most prominent Catholics of Switzerland are Sigwart Müller,
of Uri, the venerable Councillor Haudt, of Lucerne, Charles von
Schmid, of Bödstein, the leader of the Catholics in Aargau, Von Moos,
of Lucerne, Engineer Müller, of Altorf, Dean Schlumpf, of Zug, Canon
Fiala, of Solothurn, an excellent archaeologist, Canons Winkler and
Tanner, of Lucerne, both eminent theologians, P, Segesser, of Lucerne,
Canon Keller, of St. Gall, James Baumgartner, the {526} ablest Swiss
statesman, F. Gallus-Morel, of Einsiedeln, the journalists Schleineger
in Aargau, Reding and Eberle in Schwyz, the historian Kopp, of
Lucerne, Muelinen, and Burgener, the learned Dr. Schmeitzl, pastor in
Glarus, Director Greith, of St. Gall, the painter Deschwander, and the
publisher Benzigcr. Count Theodore von Scheerer is the leading spirit
of the Catholic societies in Switzerland, and admirably fitted to be
the president of the general conventions of the Swiss "Piusverein."
'Mermillod, of Geneva, who for the past eighteen years has incessantly
toiled in the vineyard of the Lord, has lately been appointed bishop
by Pope Pius IX. Bishop Marilley, of Lausanne, is a modern confessor
of the Church, whilst Bishop Greith, of St. Gall, is an eminent
scholar.



CHAPTER V.

CONCLUSION.

Not all the doings of the Catholic conventions deserve our
approbation, nor is all that is said there worthy of praise. At the
sixteen general conventions held since 1848, many absurd and trifling
measures have been proposed. Silence is a virtue unknown to many
delegates, and conciseness is a quality not to be found in the remarks
of many a speaker. These gentlemen should remember the wise old saw,
"_Ne quid nimis_," especially when about to address an assembly.
Braggadocio should be mercilessly put down. Some persons there are who
every year regale the convention with the self-same concretions;
others speak when there is no occasion whatever for opening their
mouths; whilst others again are unacquainted with parliamentary rules,
and cannot clothe their ideas in suitable language. Many a speaker has
been carried away by his enthusiasm, and exposed himself to ridicule;
others were mercilessly hooted from the tribune; whilst not a few
delivered productions which bore a strange resemblance to an _ignis
fatuus_ or an over-done beefsteak. At Malines many words were wasted
in mutual compliments, and there was a tendency in several of the
orators to court applause by piquant and exaggerated expressions. We
must expect that among several thousand delegates there will be many
insignificant men, whose chief merit consists in opening now and then
the floodgates of their trashy eloquence. Were I to permit myself to
indulge in malicious remarks, I might enumerate a long list of
singular characters, who were living examples of the faults in
question.

For these and other reasons the duties of the presiding officer at the
general conventions are by no means easy, still, thus far there has
been no want of able presidents, and many of them were chosen from
among the nobility. The following gentlemen were honored with this
office: Chevalier von Buss; Count Joseph von Stolberg; Baron von
Andlaff, who presided both at Linz and at Munich; Baron Wilderich von
Ketteler, who was chosen chairman at Münster and at Frankfort; Maurice
Lieber, who was elected president at Breslau and at Salzburg;
Chevalier von Hartmann presided at Mayence; Count O'Donnell, of
Vienna, at Linz and at Prague; Count Brandis, at Aix-la-Chapelle and
Freiburg; Councillor Zell at Vienna; A. Reichensperger at Cologne; and
Baron von Moy at Würzburg. Germany may justly be proud of these
men--men of agreeable manners, distinguished not only by their social
position but also by their literary taste and nobility of character,
each of whom can boast of an honorable career.

It may not be inappropriate to mention in this place some of the
noblemen who graced by their presence the Catholic conventions.
Prominent among these were Don Miguel, duke of Braganza, and the young
prince, Don Miguel, Prince Charles of Loewenstein-Werthheim, and
Prince Charles of {527} Isenburg; Count von Hompesch, of Rurich, Count
Augustus von Spee, of Heltorf, Count Schaesberg, Baron Felix von Leë,
of Missen, Count Hoensbroich, and Baron von Halberg-Broich, of
Aix-la-Chapelle, represented the Rhenish nobility; whilst Westphalia
was represented by Count von Vischering, the Counts Max and Ferdinand
von Galen, the Barons von Schorlemer, the Count von Stolberg, Baron
von Twickel, Baron von Ketteler, Baron von Hereman, Baron von Oer,
Baron von Drüffel, and others.

Of the Austrian nobles I shall mention Count von Migazzi, Baron von
Mayerhofer, a field-marshal of the empire, Count Adolphus Lewis von
Barth-Barthenheim, Count Maurice von Fries, Count Henry von
Hoyos-Sprenzenstein. Count Henry von O'Donnell, Chevalier von
Hartmann, Baron von Stillfried, of Salzburg, a very zealous and
energetic man, and Count Frederick von Thun. Count von Thun was chosen
vice-president at Würzburg, and delivered a speech. Tall and of a
commanding figure, a thorough-bred nobleman, a diplomat well
acquainted with the ways of the world, a man of refined manners, a
Catholic distinguished by his living faith and his ardent love for the
Church, as well as by his intimate knowledge of every shade of
religious life, Count Thun appeared as the representative of the
Austrian nobility, which, for the most part, is still animated by
truly Catholic sentiments, and of the mighty empire, as a delegate
from imperial Vienna, where Catholicity is daily acquiring new vigor,
and as the bearer of an illustrious name, which reminds every Catholic
of the concordat between Francis Joseph and the Pope, which has been
so beneficial to the Church in its results. Among the German Church
dignitaries Dr. Baudri, coadjutor-bishop of Cologne, is especially
distinguished by his zeal for the success of the conventions, many of
which he has opened by a glowing discourse. Archbishop Gregory and
Bishop Ignatius, of Regensburg, spoke at Munich, and Bishop Wedekind,
of Hildestein, at Aix-la-Chapelle. The apostolic words of Bishop von
Stahl will always ring in the memory of his hearers. The Bishop of
Limburg, Peter Joseph Blum, was represented at Frankfort by his
vicar-general, Dr. Klein. Dr. Götz, dean of the cathedral at Würzburg,
deserves great praise for his efficient arrangements at the last
general convention. I may still notice Buchegger, vicar-general at
Freiburg, Canon Broix, of Cologne, Krabbe, dean of the cathedral at
Münster, Dean Schiedemayr, of Linz, Canon Wiery, of Salzburg, Canon
Freund, of Passau, Schmitt, vicar-general at Bamberg, Abbot Mislin, of
Groswardein, Provost Pelldram, of Berlin, Canon Henry Szajbely, of
Gran, Abbot Michael von Fogarasy, of Grosswardein, Canon Michael
Kubinsky, of Kalocza, Canon Dr. Molitor, of Spires, Canon Dr. Malkmus,
of Fulda, Provost Nübel, of Soest, Dr. Stadler, dean of the Augsburg
cathedral, Provost Kalliski, of Gnesen, Canon Büchinger, of Gratz,
Strehle, of Freiburg, Dr. Häusle, of Vienna, and Müller, of Munich.
The general conventions were also attended by Bishop Mermillot, of
Geneva, one of the best pulpit orators in Europe, and by the Roman
prelate, Monsignore Nardi, who is able to speak in four languages. The
Catholic congresses were marked by several grand and imposing scenes.
It was a glorious sight to behold 5,000 men, from every part of the
known world, walk in procession to the cathedral of St. Rombau at
Malines, but it was no less edifying to see hundreds of delegates
making a pilgrimage from Salzburg to Maria Plain, and paying their
devotions to the Mother of God. We can never forget the dedication of
the column erected in honor of the Blessed Virgin, which took place at
Cologne on the 8th of September, 1858, in presence of the whole
congress. The enthusiastic welcome extended to the Bishop of Orleans
at Malines defies all description, but the reception of the Hungarian
prelates by the Viennese convention (Sept. 21, 22, 1853) was still
more solemn. By {528} his speech delivered on the evening of Sept 2,
1864, Father Felix produced a profound impression. Döllinger, too, at
the Munich convention in 1861, called forth a storm of applause by his
well-known declarations. Unique in its kind was the scene in the
Kaiser-saal at Aix-la-Chapelle already described. When, after the
discourse of Father Felix on Sept 2, 1864, the Redemptorist father
Dechamps, and the Carmelite, F. Hermann, weeping tears of joy,
thankfully embraced the Jesuit, and a Belgian bishop, joining the
group, shook hands with the three religious, no heart remained
unmoved. At Würzburg, also, on the 14th Sept., 1864, a solemn,
touching scene took place, which joined in bonds of the sincerest
friendship the Catholic Hungarians and Germans. Von Majer, a Hungarian
lawyer and land-owner, had charmed all of us; his manly and chivalrous
appearance, the romantic costume of his country, and his able speech,
did not fail to produce an overpowering effect; Vice-President Adams
expressed the opinion of the assembly, and then followed cheer upon
cheer for the noble Hungarian.

Now and then there appears a speaker who possesses the talent of a
demagogue, and causes a great though transient sensation. A Tyrolese,
Greuter, now a member of the Austrian "Reichsrath," is an orator whom
I delight to hear; he spoke at Salzburg and Aix-la-Chapelle. At
Würzburg, likewise, a speaker of the same class, Brummel, a lawyer of
Baden, addressed the assembly. I transcribe an account of his speech,
which I wrote at the time. "After F. Modeste had left the tribune,
amid thundering applause, a tall, stately figure, betraying at once
the military career of the speaker, took the floor. The hero who now
confronts us fought at the side of Pimodan and La Moricière for the
Holy Father; distinguished himself at Castelfidardo; took part in the
defence of Ancona; and for six months was held a captive by the
Piedmontese. It is Brummel, of Baden. His voice sounds like the
clarion's shrill tones summoning an army to battle. His speech is a
violent attack on the shameful abuses existing in Baden. He combines
force of expression with warmth of feeling, unflinching bravery, and a
burning hatred of everything base, with a childlike love for the
Church and the truth. He was the Tancred in the crusade against the
self-styled saviors of the people of Baden, and nobly did battle for
the venerable and much persecuted Archbishop of Freiburg, Hermann von
Vicari."

Having thus concluded these unpretending sketches, those of my readers
who have been disappointed will indulgently consider that it was
written to assist a Catholic congregation to build a church. But thus
to extend the divine worship is more pleasing to the Almighty than to
write a good book.

------

{529}

From The Literary Workman.

ST. ELIZABETH.

"Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my
brethren, you have done it to me."


  A shrill and joyous summons
    At Wartburg's postern rang.
  And lightly from his panting steed
    The princely Landgrave sprang.
  Comes forth his stately mother
    To meet him in her pride,
  But the quick glance of Louis seeks
    The sweet face of his bride.

  Then scornful spoke the Landgravine,
    "Fair son, thy lady sweet
  Hath cares too urgent thus in haste
    Thy coming step to greet.
  Upon thy couch so stately,
    Within thy chamber fair,
  A vile and loathsome leper
    She tends with pious care."

  A wrathful man was Louis,
    Yet not a word he said,
  But up the castle's echoing stair
    In quivering haste he sped--
  Within her silent chamber,
    As o'er the couch she hung,
  Her lord's returning bugle
    Had all unheeded rung.

  In silent ecstacy she knelt,
    Her heart so hushed in prayer.
  It thrilled not at his longed-for step,
    Now echoing on the stair.
  With hasty hand young Louis tore
    The coverlid aside--
  The lifeless form before him lay
    Of Jesus crucified,
  Bleeding and pale, as in the hour
    When for our sins he died.

  "See, mother, see the Leper
    She brings to be our guest,
  Whom only she prefers to me--
    May his dear name be blest
  Elizabeth, sweet sister.
    Still bring such guests to me;
  Sinful and all unworthy
    I am of him and thee;
  Yet train me in thy patient love
    His guest in heaven to be."

----
{530}


From The Month.

DR. PUSEY ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.


It is just twenty years since the great movement in the Anglican
Church, which took its rise and its name from the University of Oxford
and the "Tracts for the Times," was broken, as it were, into two
streams of very different direction by the submission of Mr. Newman to
the Catholic Church. It happens that the circumstances of the last
year and a half have brought the history of the movement prominently
before the world; and they have occasioned an interesting set of
publications from men of eminent position, whose names were at the
time hardly less watchwords than at present. No one of the few most
conspicuous Oxford leaders of thought who belonged in any sense to the
Tractarian party has yet been removed by death. Dr. Pusey is still at
Christ Church, Mr. Keble still at Hursley; but Mr. Newman has become
the founder of the English Oratory of St. Philip Neri, and Archdeacon
Manning is the present Catholic archbishop of Westminster. These four
names were more than any others in the mouths of the adherents of the
Oxford movement twenty years ago. Archdeacon Wilberforce lived in the
country, and had, we believe, hardly begun to publish that series of
theological treatises which soon after made his name second to none in
the Anglican Church as a writer on doctrine: Isaac Williams, loved and
venerated by all who knew him, had left Trinity and was occupied on
his "Commentary on the Gospels" without taking any further part in the
movement: the influence of Charles Marriott was hardly felt except by
his immediate acquaintance. There were of course others whose
position--such as that of Mr. Oakeley and Mr. Dodsworth in London
--gave them much influence in particular places; but, speaking
broadly, and without reference to the actual connection of individuals
with the "Tracts"--in which, we think, Archdeacon Manning took no
part at all--the four names we have just mentioned might be said to
constitute the High-Church Quadrilateral. It must be remembered,
moreover, that among the Anglicans, whose church had at that time not
even so much liberty to speak in convocation as has since been allowed
to it, and whose bishops were probably unanimous in nothing except in
suspicion of Tractarianism, personal influence went for far more than
is ever the case among Catholics. Whether they liked it or not, the
position and responsibilities of party leaders were thrust upon the
persons we have named; veneration and confidence haunted them, and
their words were made into oracles. A little later than the time of
which we are speaking, an enthusiastic admirer--now a colonial
bishop--dedicated a volume of sermons to the three first, under the
name of the three valiant men of David's band, who had broken through
the ranks of the enemy to fetch water from the well of Bethlehem, the
fountain of ancient doctrine; one of the three, he plaintively added
in his dedication, was taken prisoner by the enemy in the attempt!
This was after the submission of Dr. Newman.

Recent circumstances, as we have said, have drawn from three of these
four distinguished persons declarations of opinion and feeling with
regard to the Anglican establishment which it may well be worth while
to place {531} side by side. The first in point Of time was Dr.
Newman, in his celebrated "_Apologia pro Vita suâ_," in the appendix
to which he had occasion to speak his mind about Anglicanism. The
passage will be fresh in the memories of most of our readers; and it
has been preserved as part of a note in the second edition of the
"Apologia" lately published by Dr. Newman as the "History of my
Religions Opinions." It contains, as a passage from Dr. Newman was
sure to do, most that can be said for or against the establishment in
the happiest words:

"When I looked back upon the poor Anglican Church" [after becoming
acquainted with Catholicism], "for which I had labored so hard, and
upon all that appertained to it, and thought of our various attempts
to dress it up doctrinally and aesthetically, it seemed to me to be
the veriest of nonentities."

He then says that, looked at as a human institution, it is great:

"I recognize in the Anglican establishment a time-honored institution,
of noble historical memories--a monument of ancient wisdom, a
momentous arm of political strength, a great national organ, a source
of vast popular advantage, and, _to a certain point, a witness and
teacher of religious truth_: . . . . but that it is something sacred;
that it is an oracle of revealed doctrine; that it can claim a share
in St. Ignatius and St Cyprian; that it can take the rank, contest the
teaching, and stop the path of the Church of St. Peter; that it can
call itself 'the Bride of the Lamb'--this is the view which simply
disappeared from my mind on my conversion, and which it would be
almost a miracle to reproduce. I went by, and, lo! it was gone; I
sought it, but its place could nowhere be found, and nothing can bring
it back to me. And as to its possession of an episcopal succession
from the time of the apostles--well, it may have it; and if the Holy
See ever so decide, I will believe it, as being the decision of a
higher judgment than my own; but for myself, I must have St. Philip's
gift, who saw the sacerdotal character on the forehead of a
gaily-attired youngster, before I can by my own wit acquiesce in it;
for antiquarian arguments are altogether unequal to the urgency of
visible facts."

Dr. Newman then expresses his sense of the benefits he received by
being born an Anglican, not a Dissenter, and so having been baptized
and sent to Oxford:

  "And as I have received so much good from the Anglican establishment
  itself, can I have the heart, or rather the want of charity,
  considering that it does for so many others what it has done for me,
  to wish to see it overthrown? I have no such wish while it is what
  it is, and while we are so small a body. Not for its own sake, but
  for the sake of the many congregations to which it ministers, I will
  do nothing against it. While Catholics are so weak in England, it is
  doing our work; and though it does us harm in a measure, the balance
  is in our favor" (p. 342).

Here is a plain, definite view about the establishment--giving it
certainly not less than its full meed of praise as a human
institution, and acknowledging benefits providentially received in it
with all the warmth of a most affectionate heart, which never lets a
single touching memory fade away. But its claim to a divine origin and
supernatural character is set aside as a palpably absurd one. Without
questioning whether it be heretical or schismatical or both, Dr.
Newman declares that he cannot even believe its orders to be valid
unless the Holy See declares them so to be. But Dr. Newman does not
wish for the destruction of the establishment until the Catholic
ministry is numerous enough to supply its place as the teacher of the
mass of the population--an office at present discharged by Anglicans,
not indeed adequately, not without many shortcomings and some errors,
but still better {532} than might be the case if no such institution
existed.

In expressing his own views about the establishment, Dr. Manning was
obliged in the course of last year to speak at greater length, and to
explain more in detail the Catholic doctrine with regard to baptized
persons involuntarily outside the pale of the visible Church. The
occasion of his declaration was the judgment of the Privy Council on
the case of the "Essays and Reviews." This last of the series of
similar decisions of the same tribunal, the ultimate court of appeal
for Anglicans in matters of doctrine, naturally gave an opportunity
for reviewing the gradual retirement of the High-Church party from the
bold ground which they had taken up in 1850, at the time of the Gorham
case. The facts only required to be pointed out; the mere narrative
spoke more forcibly than any possible commentary. History, either
political or ecclesiastical, scarcely contains such another example of
a set of high-minded and earnest men having so ostentatiously to
shrink from their implied pledges, and belie their most solemn
declarations. Immediately after the Gorham decision the leaders of the
High-Church party published a series of resolutions, the purport of
which was that the Church of England would be "eventually" committed
to heresy unless she "openly and expressly" rejected the erroneous
doctrine sanctioned by the decision. The consequences were drawn out,
involving the loss on the part of the Church of England of the office
and authority to witness and teach as a member of the universal
church; and it was said that she would thus become "formally separated
from the Catholic body, and be no longer able to assure to her members
the grace of the sacraments and the remission of sins." Dr. Manning's
task was therefore easy; here were men who had pledged themselves in
this way in 1850, and, as far as in them lay, pledged the party of
which they were leaders. What were they doing in the Church of England
in 1864, after fourteen years in which she had not only not cleared
herself from the Gorham judgment, but acquiesced in it? She had spoken
in convocation on a number of subjects, never on this; she had
moreover seen a controversy on the Lord's Supper within her pale, the
issue of which was thought a triumph to the High-Church party--not
because it proscribed the heretical doctrine held by the larger number
of clergy in the Church, but because it just shielded their own
doctrine from being proscribed in turn; finally, the "Essays and
Reviews" had appeared, and their writers also had been protected from
proscription by the crown in council. Dr. Manning might well say that
it seemed as if Providence had been mercifully striving to open men's
eyes to the position of the Church of England. On the ground taken by
the resolutionists of 1850, she had forfeited whatever claim she ever
had to allegiance over and over again.

This is hard truth; but it was not urged by Dr. Manning in a hard way,
nor with the intention of taunting with their inconsistencies men of
whom he has always spoken with respect and affection. The only
important matter, after all, is, whether the High-Church party, whose
opinions were expressed by the resolutions lately referred to, have in
reality receded from their former ground. This is a very serious
question; because, unless it can be answered in the negative, it
involves an abandonment on their part, not of this or that particular
doctrine, but of the whole Catholic idea of a church. The resolutions
of 1850 proceeded on the hypothesis that a church that _tolerated_
heresy became itself guilty of it; and that the Church of England was
responsible for the acts of the courts to which she submitted without
protest. From a Catholic point of view, a very grave change must have
come over a set of men who held this principle, if they afterward
contented themselves with a church that tolerates heresy on {533} the
ground that it also tolerates orthodoxy; that its prayers are
orthodox, that its formularies _admit_ of an orthodox sense. Yet it
seems quite impossible to draw from the declarations of Dr. Pusey and
others anything but an acknowledgment that such a change has taken
place. It is not therefore a question as to their view of the present
effect of the Gorham decision or any other, but as to their view of
the character of the Church in which they hope to be saved.

Dr. Manning's pamphlet was noticed by Dr. Pusey, in a preface placed
by him before a legal statement as to the immediate effect of Lord
Westbury's decision in the case of the "Essays and Reviews." This
preface, like many of Dr. Pusey's _brochures_, was marked by
considerable strength of language against those whom he was assailing,
and contained distinct threats that he and his friends might set up a
free church if their demands for a reconstitution of the court of
appeal were disregarded. It was implied that the chancellor had acted
from "the pure love of the heresy, and the desire of throwing open to
unbelief an article of faith against which rationalism rebels," at the
price "of breaking off churches of the colonies from the Mother
Church" (no colonial churches are named), "and familiarizing devoted
minds among us at home to thoughts of organic severance from the
Church whose discipline is fettered by such a tribunal;" and so on.
"The Church of England has necessarily more tenacity than the Scotch
establishment. For, having a divine original" [origin?], "it is an
organic body, and knows more of the value of intercommunion, not
_indeed as a condition absolutely necessary_, but as the natural fruit
of divine unity. It is then the more remarkable when members of the
Church of England begin to speak (_as they have_) of a free church.
Our extension in the colonies, which has so enlarged the Church and
its episcopate, makes such a rent possible, even though not one bishop
in England should join it. And 'if ever there should be a rent in the
Church of England,' said one, 'the rent in Scotland would be nothing
to it.'" At the end of the preface, men were urged to league together
as in the days of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation: no candidate was to
receive support at the next election who would not pledge himself to
do his best to bring about a change in the court of appeal. And a note
was appended, suggesting that "no church should be offered for
consecration, no sums given for the building of churches, which by
consecration should become the property of the present Church of
England, no sums given for endowment in perpetuity, until the present
heresy-legalizing court shall be modified."

It must surely have occurred to Dr. Pusey, as it did to so many of his
readers, that this threatening language accorded very ill with another
passage in his pamphlet, in which he avowed his retirement from the
threats he had joined in making in 1850. No fair-minded man can doubt
that the resolutions to which we have alluded implied a threat of
secession from Anglicanism, unless the Church of England cleared
herself from the Gorham decision. Unless she cleared herself, the
resolutionists declared she would "eventually" be bound. Dr. Pusey in
explanation says that he wished the word to be "ultimately." We can
see no great difference between the two. He then (p. 17, note) says
that the resolutions were modified so as to be made acceptable to him;
all the more, we suppose, is he responsible for their wording, having
signed them. He also says that the difference between the line of
action adopted by the different persons who signed them is to be
accounted for by the fact that some of them thought that the judgment,
in _itself_, committed the Church of England; others, that it did not.
Surely men must be judged by their words. We may think as we please of
the conduct of those who afterward left {534} the Church of England,
or of those who remained in it; but it cannot be doubted that, as far
as these resolutions are concerned, the former acted consistently, the
Latter inconsistently, with them. Moreover, in the page we are
quoting, Dr. Pusey seems to us to retire altogether from his position,
without saying so openly. He tells us that when he signed the
resolutions, "not having a parochial cure, and worshipping mostly in a
cathedral where baptism did not enter into the service, I felt the
value of the baptismal office as a witness to truth rather than as a
teacher of it." Since that time he has come to realize more distinctly
"the value of the Prayer-book, speaking, as it does, to the hearts of
the people in their own tongue, in teaching and impressing on the
people the doctrines which it embodies." This seems to us to imply,
that as long as the formularies used in public offices speak an
orthodox language, the Church may in other ways be committed to heresy
without losing her character. On the same ground, as long as the words
of consecration are used in the "Lord's Supper," any doctrine whatever
may be taught concerning it. At all events, this is all that Dr. Pusey
says as to his adherence to or disavowal of the resolutions of 1850.
He cannot be surprised if his threats in 1864 have been taken as worth
no more than his declarations fourteen years ago--if the politicians
on whose will the decision of these questions depends have found out
that the bark of the High-Church leaders is worse than their bite.

  "Hi motus animorum, atque haec certamina tanta
  Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt."

So long as the Bible is read and the Prayer-book used, they will
impress on the people the doctrines which they embody; and the
Essayists and Reviewers and Dr. Colenso will labor so entirely in vain
to pervert them, that no court at all will be necessary to punish the
propagators of false doctrines. At all events, it may fairly be
presumed that the threats about a free church are worth just as much,
and no more, as the threats about secession.

But our immediate subject is the course of the controversy about the
Anglican establishment. Some expressions in Dr. Pusey's preface, in
which he said that some Catholics "seemed to be in an ecstasy at this
victory of Satan" (the decision of the Privy Council as to the "Essays
and Reviews") appear to have suggested attacks on Dr. Manning with
reference to his "Crown in Council," in which he was said to have
rejoiced in the troubles of his former friends, and to be merry over
the miseries of the Church of England. The same kind of charge has
often been made against Catholics, especially converts; and it is in
the nature of things that it should be made. Every "trouble" in the
Church of England of the kind of which we are speaking, while it
weakens it as a teacher of fragments of Catholic truth, weakens also
its hold on the minds of many who have hitherto been in the habit of
making it the object of that allegiance and that obedience which the
instincts of every Christian heart urge it to pay to the one mother of
the children of God. So far, therefore, as the Gorham case or the
Denison case, or the question of the "Essays and Reviews" and the
Colenso decision, tend to expose the true and simply human character
of the institution that calls itself the Church of England, so far,
many good and loyal souls are set free from a delusion, and their
affections transferred to their right and legitimate object. This, in
the case of individuals, is a matter of rejoicing. On the other hand,
on the grounds stated so clearly by Dr. Newman, it is no matter of
rejoicing that a body which has to teach so large a number of baptized
souls all that they will ever know of Catholic truth should have the
truths that it yet retains diminished in number and in certainty, and
should lose all power of preserving them from corruption.

{535}

Dr. Manning's letter to Dr. Pusey contains a clear and calm statement
of the doctrines on which the feelings of Catholics toward bodies like
the Church of England are based. Dr. Pusey had declared that he knew
that "a very earnest body of Roman Catholics rejoice in all the
workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England," and had
contrasted them with others who are in "ecstasy at the victory of
Satan." It became necessary therefore to state in what sense a
Catholic can admit that the Holy Ghost works in the Church of England.
No Catholic, then, by denying utterly and entirely anything like the
character of a church to the Church of England, denies thereby the
workings of the Holy Ghost or the operations of grace among those who
are its members; nor when these operations are affirmed and rejoiced
in is any affirmation thereby made that the Church of England is in
any sense whatever a church at all. Dr. Manning states in full the
reasons why we affirm the workings of the Holy Ghost among the English
people; and these parts of his pamphlet--indeed, the whole of it--are
extremely valuable, as a clear statement of truths which it is very
difficult to get Englishmen generally to understand, on account of
their prevalent ignorance or misconception of the doctrine of grace.
The truths in question, we need hardly say, enable Catholics to
rejoice heartily in the effects of grace among the Dissenters, not
less than among Anglicans. Dr. Manning has a few pages also on the
specific truths that have been preserved by Anglicanism, and the fear
with which he regards the process of undermining the Christianity of
England which is going on. He also explains how naturally he rejoices
at conversions, which are to him the bringing of souls from the
imperfect to the perfect knowledge of the truth; and sums up by an
argument to prove that the Anglican establishment, instead of being,
as Dr. Pusey had called it, "the great bulwark against infidelity in
this land," is in reality responsible for that infidelity; as having
been the source of the present spiritual anarchy in England; as having
weakened even those truths which it retains by detaching them from
others and from the divine voice of the Church, which is the guarantee
of their immortality; and as being a source of unbelief by the denial
of the truths it has rejected and also of the perpetual and
ever-present assistance of the Holy Ghost to preserve the Church from
error. We may add, having quoted Dr. Newman on the subject of Anglican
orders, that Dr. Manning speaks with equal clearness as to their
entire invalidity.

Dr. Pusey's controversial appearances are generally rather late in the
day: the method of his mind is inductive, and he rejoices above all
things in the accumulation of a vast amount of materials, which he
does not always succeed in clearly arranging or lucidly epitomizing.
He has taken a year to answer Dr. Manning's short pamphlet of less
than fifty pages, or rather a part of it. The volume teems with
undigested learning; and a very large share of it is taken up with a
long postscript and a set of notes. It will not be our business at
present to do more than state concisely in what the answer to Dr.
Manning consists, and endeavor to draw out from the pages of Dr. Pusey
what _his_ idea is of the Anglican Church, and what his own position
in her.

There is nothing in direct answer to Dr. Manning's explanation of the
doctrine as to the working of the Holy Ghost outside the visible
Church--an explanation which of course places the Anglican Church on
the same ground with the Dissenting sects. The satisfactory answer to
this would of course be some proof that the Anglicans have orders and
sacraments, and that grace is given _through_ them, not merely to the
dispositions of the individual who receives it. Dr. Pusey, of coarse,
maintains the {536} validity of Anglican orders, but he adds nothing
to the controversy, except the remark that the form of consecration
used in the case of Parker was taken from that used in the case of
Chichele a century before. As the controversy does not turn solely
upon the form used in Parker's consecration, the fact adduced by Dr.
Pusey has little to do with it.   [Footnote 74]

  [Footnote 74: Practically speaking, it is surely a matter of
  surprise that so few Anglicans should have interested themselves in
  ascertaining what is thought about their orders by others than
  themselves. No portion of the Catholic Church (as they consider it)
  has ever been persuaded to acknowledge them in any way. It is of
  course their business to obtain their acceptance, not ours to
  disprove them; all the more, as so very large a number of those who
  have borne these orders have never believed in their sacramental
  character. Dr. Pusey says (p. 278), "I do not believe that God
  maintains the faith where there is not the reality." He is speaking
  directly of the real presence. By how large a proportion of the
  bishops and clergy and laity of the Church of England since the
  Reformation has it been believed, even with all the force of the old
  Catholic traditions to maintain it? And as to the priesthood and its
  correlative, the sacrifice, a strong argument, on Dr. Pusey's own
  ground, against their existence in Anglicanism, might be found in
  the fact that all practical belief in them has so completely died
  out in the mass of the people. If there had been the reality, there
  would have been the faith; and so it is with Eastern heretics and
  schismatics.]

With regard to the other point, it is of course impossible, or very
difficult, to prove the connection between the effect of a supposed
means of grace and that supposed means itself, independent of the
subjective dispositions and belief of the recipient. Dr. Pusey has no
proofs which would not equally show that any one who thought himself a
priest was one, and that any one who thought he received a sacrament
from him would receive it. But the statement of Dr. Manning on which
Dr. Pusey fastens more particularly is that which accuses the Anglican
establishment of being the "cause and spring of the prevailing
unbelief." Dr. Pusey remarks first that there is plenty of unbelief
everywhere. That is true; and everywhere it can be traced to some
cause; the charge is, that the Reformation has produced it in England,
which was free from it before. Dr. Manning's first proof--that
Anglicanism rejects much Christian truth--is met by a statement of the
amount of truth which both communions hold. In this part of his
argument Dr. Pusey seems to us to avoid the real question at issue.
Dr. Manning speaks of the formularies of the Church of England, no
doubt, as well as of her practical teaching, such as it has been for
the last three hundred years, and such as it is throughout the length
and breadth of England at this day. But in a question as to the amount
of truth with which she claims to be "the great bulwark against
infidelity," it is obvious that her formularies must be judged
according to the sense commonly attached to them, and according to the
interpretation of them supplied by the ordinary teaching of her
clergy. Every one knows that various senses have been applied to the
Anglican formularies; and it was the object of the celebrated No. 90
of the "Tracts for the Times" to prove that, in some cases, it was the
intention of the compilers of the articles to allow men of various
schools to sign them. Still, it is going far beyond this to put
forward the so-called "Catholic" interpretation of the formularies as
_the_ sense of the Church of England. It would be untrue even if we
consider the matter as a simply literary question; much more is it in
the highest degree unfair to put forward this interpretation in a
controversy which turns upon what actually has been and is taught by
her. If a foreigner--as unacquainted with the real teaching of
Anglicanism as Dr. Pusey is with that of Catholicism--were to take up
this book and believe what he finds in it, he would, we venture to
say, derive a totally false impression of the doctrine of the English
Church as it lies on the face of her formularies, and as it has always
been understood and acted upon by nine-tenths of her clergy and
people. He would find an assurance that she holds the three creeds,
which would give him to understand that she interpreted them in the
same sense as the Catholic Church. {537} He would learn with surprise
that there is no difference between Anglicans and Catholics on
justification. "There is not one statement in the elaborate chapters
on justification in the Council of Trent which _any of us_ could fail
in receiving," says Dr. Pusey. He would find that Dr. Manning had
quite falsely said that "the Church of England sustains a belief in
two sacraments, but formally propagates unbelief in the other five."
In fact, that the Church of England holds all seven to be sacraments,
with only a difference in dignity. Still more to his astonishment, he
would read that the Church of England does not, in particular, object
to extreme unction; she "_only_ objects to the later abuse of it,"
which is not the Catholic practicer--namely, the custom of not
administering it except to the dying. Then, if some one told him that
the Church of England has discontinued the practice altogether, and
that any one would be called a simple papist who attempted to
introduce it in any way, he might naturally be inclined to find fault
with the treacherous guide who had so misled him. It is the same with
other points. Dr. Pusey tells us that the Church of England does _not_
deny the infallibility of general councils or of the Church. His
reasoning on this last head is so good a specimen of his method, that
we may dwell on it for a moment. One of the articles teaches, that as
the other churches have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred
--even in matters of faith. Dr. Manning sums this up, very naturally,
as a statement that all churches have erred. "The article," says Dr.
Pusey, "was a puzzle to me when young." He supposed, it seems, that
the condemnation must have been meant to fall on doctrinal decrees.
"The two clauses, being put antithetically, must correspond. On
further information, I found that there were no canons of Jerusalem,
Alexandria, and Antioch that were intended; then it followed--the
same principle of the correspondence of the two clauses--that neither
were canons of the Church of Rome spoken of. The article moreover does
not say that the Church of Rome _is_ in error in the present, but
_hath_ erred in time past."

It is strange to see so much ingenuity wasted in a hopeless cause. Dr.
Pusey remembers perfectly that the attempt to put forward the
interpretations for which he contends, not as _the_ sense or teaching
of the Church of England, but as a sense of her articles barely
tolerated by her in certain individuals of Catholic opinions whom she
wished to retain, as others, in her service, was met many years ago by
an outcry such as has not been heard in our day in England, save in
the case of the Catholic hierarchy. And yet he thinks it fair and just
to argue as if the Church of England not only allowed such
interpretations, but as if the views which they embody were her
regular teaching, so that she has a right to claim that she has put
forward boldly in face of the infidelity around her those portions of
Christian truth to which they relate. Her people then are, and always
have been, really taught that there are seven sacraments, that there
is a real presence on the altar, that there is a eucharistic
sacrifice, that the Church is infallible, and so on. And as he speaks
of her ministers being vowed to banish and drive away strange
doctrine, his position implies that any heresy which might contradict
these great Catholic truths could not be permitted within her pale.
And now, suppose he was taken at his word; suppose, in consequence of
this so-called _Eirenicon_, negotiations were opened and emissaries
sent from Rome to the bishops and convocation of the English Church to
treat of reunion. What would be the first step of the Anglican
authorities, those who really have a right to speak for their
communion, and who would be backed by the great body of the clergy and
laity in the country? It would certainly be to repudiate the false
face put upon their teaching by Dr. Pusey, and to {538} declare that
their Church had always been, and meant to be, thoroughly and simply
Protestant on the points at issue.

If, therefore, Dr. Pusey cannot answer Dr. Manning's charge except by
attributing to the Church of England the ordinary and regular
teaching, as against infidelity, of doctrines which she practically
disclaims--even if it be allowed that she does not formally proscribe
them--it is clear that he thinks little better of that ordinary and
regular teaching as it is in fact than Dr. Manning himself. His book
is in reality more a long excuse of himself and others for remaining
in her than anything else. This is quite a different question. She
_may_ tolerate Catholic opinions in her ministers, and Catholic
interpretations of her articles. Her defenders have then to give an
account of what sort of church it is which can compromise truth by
purposely ambiguous formularies, and allow side by side in her pulpits
men who must consider each other as heretics. But Dr. Manning's
question relates to her actual teaching as a "bulwark against
infidelity;" and Dr. Pusey knows very well that for every clergyman
who teaches more sacraments than two, or the eucharistic sacrifice,
there are twenty who deny them.

Perhaps the most elaborate part of Dr. Pusey's volume is that in which
he endeavors to prove that the unity of the visible church need not be
visible, and that it is sufficiently secured by orders and sacraments,
"through its union with Christ, as head, by the sacraments, and the
indwelling of God the Holy Ghost." He naively asks, How can we be said
to deny the indissoluble unity of the Church when we cannot approach
communion without repeating the Nicene Creed? Certainly, few people
could ever be convicted of false doctrine if the repetition of the
creed in public service was enough to absolve them. In this part of
the work, however, Dr. Pusey more than ever leaves out of sight the
real nature of the charge which he has undertaken to answer--the
charge of having denied the indissoluble unity of the Church, its
visible head, and its perpetual voice. The question is, whether these
truths can be considered as a part of the system which the Church of
England teaches and defends. Here, of course, there is more divergence
as to the doctrine between the two controversialists; and Dr. Pusey
answers only by a theory of his own. But in fact, even if he fairly
represents Anglicanism, he cannot escape the charge, as to the unity
of the Church, any more than that as to its infallibility. He really
maintains that for all practical purposes the Church _was_ infallible
up to the division of East and West--we meet in his pages that phrase
of which his friends are so fond, the "Holy Undivided Church." _Now_
it is difficult to find what infallible teacher Dr. Pusey
acknowledges; to what he would submit a conclusion, we will say, as to
the Immaculate Conception, which he has drawn by his own reason from
his study of Scripture or the fathers. His position may be understood
from the following passage:

  "This, I understand, is a favorite formula with Dr. Manning--'By
  whom does God the Holy Ghost speak? By the Roman Church? or by the
  Eastern? or by the Anglican?' I have been wont to say, by all
  concurrently, in so far as they teach the same faith which was from
  the beginning, which is the great body of all their teaching; and,
  if need require, they could at this day declare concurrently any
  truth, if it should appear that it had not as yet been sufficiently
  defined, against some fresh heresy which should emerge" (p. 84).

The faith of Christians is therefore proposed to them by an authority
on which they are bound to receive it; but that authority has in the
first place to be tested by Christians themselves, who must decide by
their own reason--for they can have no other guide--whether in any
particular point the three churches teach the same faith which was
from the beginning. {539} Further this authority cannot speak at all
precisely on those points as to which Christians must most desire its
guidance--those points on which these three churches differ. Dr.
Pusey speaks of his reciting the Nicene Creed. On what authority does
he believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son?
He may _think_ that the Eastern faith comes to much the same thing as
the Western; but that is a conclusion of his own reason. And we must
leave to our readers to make out for themselves the way in which he
tries to show that the churches could still act concurrently, if the
occasion were to arise; especially in the very obvious and, according
to the Anglican teaching, perfectly possible case, that one of these
three churches themselves should be the victim of the new heresy,
which, according to him, would constitute the occasion for a new
definition.  [Footnote 75]

  [Footnote 75: We are not, of course, answering Dr. Pusey's book; but
  we cannot help quoting a single passage from the treatise "On the
  Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," lately published by his grace
  the Archbishop of Westminster, which simply destroys the whole
  theory on which Dr. Pusey reasons. Few things of the kind can be
  more refreshing than to turn from the pages of Dr. Pusey to the
  clear, bright, simple, and precise statements of Dr. Manning. It is
  like breathing pure country air after groping about in a London fog;
  and the fanciful and unsubstantial images that bewilder the readers
  of the _Eirenicon_ vanish like so much mist and vapor as the
  majestic outlines of the Church, as sketched by the archbishop, take
  possession of the mind. No one who reads this book will need any
  other answer to that of Dr. Pusey. On the point before us the
  archbishop says: "There are some who appeal from the voice of the
  living Church to antiquity, professing to believe that while the
  Church was united was infallible; that when it became divided it
  ceased to speak infallibly; and that the only certain rule or faith
  is to believe that which the Church held and taught while yet it was
  united, and therefore infallible. Such reasoners fail to observe
  that since the supposed division and cessation of the infallible
  voice there remains no divine certainty as to what was then
  infallibly taught. To affirm that this or that doctrine was taught
  then where it is now disputed, is to beg the question. The
  infallible Church of the first six centuries--that is, before the
  division--was infallible to those who lived in those ages, but is
  not infallible to us. It spoke to them; to us it is silent. The
  infallibility does not reach to us; for the Church of the last
  twelve hundred years is by the hypothesis fallible, and may
  therefore err in delivering to us what was taught before the
  division. And it is certain that either the East or the West, as it
  is called, must err in this, for they contradict each other as to
  the faith before the division. I do not speak of the protests of
  later separations, because no one can invest them with an
  infallibility which they not only disclaim for themselves, but deny
  anywhere to exists" (pp. 74, 75).]

It is clear that, according to Dr. Pusey, we must ascertain what the
"Undivided Church" taught for ourselves, and then receive it on her
authority. Far more than this in reality; for we are to find out for
ourselves negative conclusions as well as positive. There is what he
speaks of as a vast practical system in the Catholic Church, the honor
paid to our Blessed Lady, and other things of that kind, which
penetrate the daily life and the ordinary thoughts of the great mass
of her children. On this Dr. Pusey sits in judgment, and declares it
to be alien to the teaching of the "Undivided Church," because he does
not find it himself in the fathers. We do not see that he places his
objections to it on the authority of his own Church. This leads us to
our question, what, to him, is Anglicanism? Is he content to be its
dutiful child, to catch its genuine spirit, to echo without further
question its definitions, to "rest and be thankful" with whatever it
may give him? We believe that no one who has ever known anything about
the subject has suspected Dr. Pusey of any intention to secede from
the Anglican Church: this makes it all the more strange that he should
give it so wavering and niggardly an allegiance. Other people openly
avow that they simply put up with it as a convenient lodging-place for
men of no particular opinions; it exacts little, leaves them pretty
much alone, and yet furnishes them handsomely with the outward
paraphernalia of a church. Like the Roman Senate in the old story
about Tiberius, it admits the gods of all nations easily into its
Pantheon. One set of opinions alone it objects to, because they are so
exclusive! Except in that case, its courts always shield the
persecuted. Mr. Gorham is attacked for a heresy, and they shield him;
Mr. Denison for a truth, and they absolve him; even the "Essays and
Reviews" do not deprive their authors of this comprehensive
protection. Its toleration gives, as a statesman expressed it,
"general {540} satisfaction." Who can refuse to be loyal, when the
yoke is so light?

  "Quod si nec nomen, nec me tua forma teneret,
  Posset servitiam mite tenere tuum;"

and so Dr. Pusey himself seems to feel, save in those moods of
rebelliousness which now and then come over him. We have seen how he
once almost pledged himself to secede if the Gorham judgment was not
disavowed. He was too old then to be excused on the plea of youthful
impetuosity; at all events, the fit passed away: the baptismal service
contents him. We have seen the threats he threw out more than a year
ago about a free church if the court of appeal were not modified: that
mood too has passed away. His present book speaks in the most
contented manner: "Essay and Reviewism a passing storm," is the title
that runs along the top of one of his pages; and he speaks of "the
bright promise of the year of ingathering which the Lord has blessed!"
He has forgotten his despair of last year, and boldly proposes to the
Catholic Church terms on which reunion may be made,--terms, we
venture to say, which would be rejected at once by every authority of
the Church of England itself. Still, with all this, we do not see in
his book any indication that, except as to the validity of Anglican
orders, he really thinks much better of Anglicanism than Dr. Manning
or Dr. Newman. Its authority is nothing to him; and they, on the other
hand, do not deny that, though a mere human institution, it teaches
many truths which might otherwise be untaught. He is ready to leave it
if it "accepts heresy;" but it seems that _what_ is heresy, and what
is its acceptance, must be left to himself to decide. This is the
language of one party in a contract or a compromise to another; not
that of a pupil to a teacher, a child to a parent--above all, not that
of a Catholic to his Church. He does not aver that "the Church of
England is the best possible bulwark against infidelity," but only "as
a matter of fact, that it is at this moment, under God's providence, a
real and chief bulwark against it." He complains of Dr. Manning's
statement that she "rejects _much_ Christian truth" in a way that
looks very much as if he thought she rejected _some_ and he only
defends her even then by putting an entirely strange face upon her. He
hoists a false flag, and fights for her under it.

We are unwilling to speak personally of an amiable and excellent man;
but Dr. Pusey, if there are few exactly like him, is still in his way
a representative man; and his work shows thus the position of many
others beside himself. It is obvious that he is really in the Church
of England because he has nowhere else to go. He is loyal to her, not
because he loves and admires her, but because he thinks he can find no
other resting-place. Deeply versed in the Scriptures, especially of
the Old Testament, and with a large acquaintance with some of the
fathers, he has studied them under that fatal disadvantage which
consists in the entire ignorance of the living system in which the
authors whom he has read lived and breathed. The fathers especially,
if they are studied without a knowledge of the ever-living Church, are
certain to be misunderstood and to convey inadequate ideas of their
own practice and belief. The Church alone explains and completes their
testimony. It is exactly the everyday life, the things and customs and
ideas that are too familiar to be chronicled, that must ever be
unknown to those who have a merely literary knowledge of any system or
any set of men. The strange thing is that any reasonable man should
suppose it to be otherwise. Dr. Pusey, if we may judge from the
opening of his postscript, really seems to think that if St. Augustine
were to arrive to-morrow in London, he would go to worship in St.
Paul's or Westminster Abbey, rather than at Moorfields or Warwick
Street--St. Augustine, who, in a well-known passage, {541} has pointed
out the unfailing mark which the common sense of mankind has fixed
upon the true Church by the simple popular use of the name Catholic!

The result of Dr. Pusey's thought and study may be summed up in two
simple heads. The first is an attitude of mind utterly and entirely
alien from that which is the first condition of the relation of a
Catholic to the Church. He has never been taught by a church, guided
by a church, moulded by a church; he is self-educated and
self-reliant; he has made his own teacher for himself, and has never
sat at the feet of any other, except of the author of a book of which
he was himself the interpreter. Speaking of the possibility of
"secession" in his own case, he tells us, "I have always felt that I
could have gone in on no other way than that of closing my eyes and
accepting whatever was put before me" (p. 98). What a revolution that
would be! This attitude of simple, uncriticising, ungrudging docility
and obedience, is a thing which to him is a perfect novelty. It is one
thing to take our faith from an abstraction of our own brain; quite
another to receive it from a living reality, outside and independent
of ourselves. This is the first thing that strikes us in men like Dr.
Pusey, as their minds are reflected in books such as that before us.
The second is an amount of misconception, misunderstanding, and
positive ignorance of the Catholic system, which would be simply
unintelligible did we not consider the great disadvantages under which
any one in his position must have studied it. He is not one of the
more rabid school of Anglican controversialists; his character and
habits of mind are quite alien from wilful misrepresentation and
conscious unfairness. And yet there is hardly a fair statement in his
book on matters which belong to Catholicism; and there are many most
provoking misstatements, as well as many most ludicrous and childish
blunders. The book presents an easy victory to any moderately-informed
Catholic theologian who may take the trouble to refute it. This has
not been our purpose at present. We have been content with pointing
out that his defence of Anglicanism really condemns it, because it
implies that he cannot defend it without misrepresenting it. In a
future article we may deal with him as a controversialist, and point
out, by way of specimen, some few of the mistakes into which he has
fallen in his attack on the Catholic Church.

------

From The Literary Workman.


IRELAND BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.


The ignorance of true Irish history that prevails, and the absurdity
of the things given as facts to a large mass of moderately educated
people, is painfully surprising. For instance, it is generally
believed among a great number of people, and it is taught to them in
books, that Ireland was a land of desolate bogs, and forests filled
with wolves, and inhabited by lawless savages, till converted to a
"sort of Christianity" by the English, of which Christianity the
remarkable part was that it had nothing to do with the Pope. Many
people believe St. Patrick to have been an Englishman; others think he
was a Welshman, and a few bold spirits of the present day declare that
they can prove him to have been an excellent Protestant. Savages,
bogs, wolves, and desolation, having been taken {542} compassion upon
by the English, they subjugated the people, taught them, gave them
laws, and in the reign of Henry II. of England attached Ireland to the
British crown, when that country began to have a history. Before that
date, that is, before the twelfth century, for Henry II. ascended the
throne in 1154, Ireland had had no history worth remembering or worth
noting. This is a short summary of the chief points of the Protestant
belief on that matter. And although true knowledge concerning many
things has struck root and spread amazingly of late years, there is so
much still to learn about Ireland, and the history of that country is
at once so interesting and so edifying, that "Papers on Irish History"
are offered to the readers of the "Workman" with a conviction that
they will find a welcome both in that country and in England.

In looking back to the earliest years of the history of Ireland, our
instructor is tradition. It is a very curious thing, however, to see
that the old tales, which have passed with many for poetic fables,
have assumed in these days a remarkable importance, because in so many
instances science is proving tradition to be truth. Speaking of
Ireland, Camden says: "If what the Irish historians relate be true,
this island was not without reason called _Agygia_ or _most ancient_,
by Plutarch. For they begin their histories from the remotest period
of antiquity, so that compared with them all other nations are of
modern date, and but in a kind of infancy. They tell us that one
_Caesarea_, granddaughter to Noah, lived here before the flood, and
that afterward came _Bartholanus_ (_Partholanus_), a Scythian, 300
years after the flood, and waged fierce war with the giants. Long
after this, Nemethus, the Scythian, landed, and was presently driven
off by the giants. Afterward, Dela, with some Greeks, made themselves
masters of the island; then _Gaothelus_ with his wife _Scota_,
daughter of Pharaoh, arrived here, and called the island from her
Scotia, and from him _Gaothela_, and this at the time of the
Israelites' departure out of Egypt. A few ages after, _Hiberus_ and
_Hermione_ (or as the Irish called them, _Ever_ and _Erimon_), sons of
_Milesius_, king of Spain, led some colonies into this island, which
had been depopulated by a plague. These stories I neither mean to
affirm nor refute, making all due allowance for antiquity." Then
Camden gives his own opinion in these words: "That this island was
originally inhabited upon the general dispersion of mankind, I have
not the least doubt." And at this date, no one who may be quoted as
understanding the subject, has any doubt of the immense antiquity of
the Irish; an antiquity which, in fact, defies calculation. But it is
in some measure proved by the discovery in Ireland of those weapons
which are the earliest weapons of defence used by man. They are flints
chipped into a shape like the head of a spear. They were used before
men knew how to use metal; and they belong to that earliest time which
geologists have called by the name of the stone age. Geologists have
divided the early ages into three: the stone, the bronze, and the iron
period. In the stone age, Ireland had a people, and the celts, or
flint stones chipped into a form like a spear head, were their
weapons.

The debated point of whether or not Ireland was peopled from England,
is one which is of little interest. There was a time in the history of
man when people could have walked over from France to England, and
when Ireland was joined to Wales. Strange as this may read to some
persons, it is less strange than the greater instance of, for example,
Australia being found peopled, and yet parted from the rest of the
world by a great sea. The people of Australia had not gone there in
vessels. They had got there by land; and whether, by the gradual work
of time, during which the land sunk, and the sea {543} flowed in over
it, and by this means gave islands to the world, or whether by
enormous convulsions rocks shivered, and the land was rent apart and
sunk, as between us and France, where the chasm may be said to be
filled in by the water that makes the Straits of Dover--however it was
done, whether suddenly or not, the researches of modern science have
settled that these things occurred, and that the people who were our
forefathers in this manner were separated from each other. Accepting
this theory as a truth, it is idle to ask whether Ireland was peopled
from this country or not. But in the presence of such a theory, no
person can any longer laugh at Ireland's traditional antiquity; it is
more reasonable to accept it, and to allow that they have proved their
ancient and hereditary intelligence by preserving history.

And this theory of the manner in which islands were divided from
continents is, in fact, constantly proving itself before our eyes. Not
to go out of England, we may see the progress of such a change now in
Lincolnshire. The reason why the great embankments against the sea are
necessary there, and have become more than ever necessary of late
years, is, that the land is sinking; and but for the preventions that
science and labor effect, a part of Lincolnshire would become an
island.

There are now a few words to be said about the name Scotia, as applied
to Ireland. The Romans called all the far "western people" Scots, or
Scythians. It meant a people who sailed--a maritime people--they
learnt the word in these countries, for it is _Teutonic_, or northern
Celtic; and we use the word ourselves when we speak of a boat
_scudding_ over the waves.

That the people from Spain came to Ireland, and that the existing
Irish are their descendants, is not disputed. Hiberus and Hermione,
called by the Irish Ever and Erimon, left their names in _Hibernia_,
from the Spanish for one brother, and in the Irish _Erin_ for the
other. But yet Hibernia is a comparatively modern name; and Ireland is
the ancient _Scotia_, called Ierne by the Roman poet Claudian and
other Roman writers, and Ivvorna by Diodoms Siculus, and many beside.

One word more about the rude flint weapon called everywhere a celt. It
took its name undoubtedly from the people who used it. It was the
weapon of the northern or Celtic nations. When Celts are found they
indicate to us the existence of the men who used them, and their state
of civilization. Wherever they are found they are called by this name,
and their name is derived from the northern people.

Ireland has always been considered a most healthy country, and in
Campbell's Philosophical Survey of Ireland, Dr. Rutty tells us, "The
bogs are not injurious to health, and agues are very unfrequent here."
And again, these "bogs are not, as may be supposed from their
blackness, masses of putrefaction, but, on the contrary, are of such a
texture as to resist putrefaction above any other substance we know
of." Of such assertions we have now constant proof, and the durability
of the beautiful and often highly polished ornaments made out of Irish
bogwood is too well known to dwell upon.

The people seem to have been, in very early times, great feeders of
sheep, cattle, and pigs. But the richness of the soil of this
beautiful island yields to the labor of the scientific former great
gain.

Very curious speculations have arisen as to the gold that has been
found in Ireland. It remains a mystery. Mr. O'Connor, in his
dissertations on the history of Ireland, says, "that, soon after the
arrival of the Scots from Spain, we read of Uchadan of Cuala, who
rendered himself famous by his skill in the fabrication of metals."
This places the civilization of Ireland very far back; and taken
together with the early renown of the Irish in music, puts them at
once in a {544} position of their own. When a people are musicians and
workers in gold, Silver, and other metals, they have advanced a good
way in what is meant by the word civilization. Their music is
described as being of the most affecting and tender kind; and they
seem to have met together, as afterward at Tara, for such accomplished
recreations before anything of that kind would have been understood in
England.

It will be interesting to give, from "Gough's Additions" to Camden's
account of Ireland, some notes of the buried gold that has been found:

"In the bog near Cullen, in the county of Tipperary, in 1732, a
laborer found a piece of worked gold, a little less than half the size
of a small egg. It weighed 3 ozs. 4 dwts. and 7 grs."

"In 1739, a boy found a circular plate of beaten gold, about eight
inches in diameter, which, lapped up in the form of a triangle,
enclosed three ingots of gold, which they say could not weigh less
than a pound; for the boy no sooner brought them home than his mother,
a poor widow, gave them to a merchant, on whose land she had a cabin,
as brass to make weights."

This is one of the great many instances in which large pieces of gold
were sold as brass. Gold was found in these lumps, and in thin plates,
as follows:

"1742. A child found on the brink of a hole a thin plate of gold.
1747. A girl found in the turf-dust a thin plate of gold, rolled on
another, which when extended was 14 inches long, and a quarter of an
inch broad; of which a fellow standing by took about half from her;
what he left weighed 6 dwts. 13 grs. Soon after, an apprentice girl
found 1 oz. 5 dwts. of the same kind, rolled after the same manner, in
a sod of turf as she made the fire."

Vessels of a "yellow metal," as the people said, were frequently found
in this bog. They used to sell them for brass. One was four-sided, and
8 inches high, with a handle on each side; the sisters who possessed
it sold it to a tinker, who mended a pot and gave thirteenpence for
it. The page of Irish history which the sight of these vessels, and
the consideration of their shape and workmanship, might have revealed,
has been, doubtless, lost with them in the melting pot.

------

From The St. James Magazine.

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.


In the elementary works for the instruction of young people we find
every day frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is
always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the
enormous rocks which face both sides of the entrance to the principal
port of the island of Rhodes, and ships in full sail pass easily, it
is said, between its legs; for Pliny the ancient tells us that its
height was seventy cubits.

This colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the
six others being, as is well known, the suspended gardens of Babylon,
devised by Nitocris, wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt;
the statue of Jupiter Olympicus; the mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the
temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the pharos of Alexandria, erected in
the year of Rome 470, and completely destroyed by an earthquake A.D.
1303.

{545}

Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the
Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the island, and admitted
the passage of vessels in fall sail between its wide-stretched limbs.
No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet
supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but
they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the
curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of
the ignorant.

A century ago, the Comte de Cayius, a distinguished French
archaeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this
fiction into the schoolbooks [Footnote 76] for young people; but he
sought in vain to trace its origin.

  [Footnote 76: "_Memoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_," t. xxiv.,
  p. 369]

Vigenère, in his "_Tableaux de Philostrate_," is supposed to have been
the first who ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the colossus.
He was followed by Bergier and Chevreau,  [Footnote 77] the latter
adding a lamp to the hand of the statue.

  [Footnote 77: "_Histoire du Monde_," iv., p. 319.]

The greater number of French dictionaries, Rollin, in his "Ancient
History," and even some encyclopaedic dictionaries, have adopted the
fiction of their predecessors.

A fictitious Greek manuscript, quoted by the mythologist Dachoul,
[Footnote 78] further adorns the colossus by giving him a sword and
lance, and by hanging a mirror round his neck.

  [Footnote 78: "_Religion des Anciens Romains_," p. 211.]

The Comte Ghoisel-Grouffier, in his picturesque "Journey through
Greece," published about the year 1780, declares the colossus with the
outstretched legs to be fabulous. He says: "This fable has for years
enjoyed the privilege so readily accorded to error. It is commonly
received, and discarded only by the few who have made ancient history
their study. Most people have accepted, without investigation, an
assertion which is unsupported by any authority from ancient authors."
Nevertheless, the Belgian, Colonel Rottiers, and the English
geologist, Hamilton,  [Footnote 79] do not yield to this respectable
authority, but endeavor to place the site of the statue at the
entrance to one of the smaller harbors of the island, scarcely forty
feet wide. Rottier goes still further, and gives a superb engraving of
the colossus under the form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver on his
shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, and holding a
beacon flame above his head.

  [Footnote 79: "Researches in Asia Minor," etc. London,  1842.]

Polybius is the first among the ancient writers who mentions the
Colossus of Rhodes, in enumerating the donations received by the
inhabitants of the island after the fearful earthquake they
experienced in 222 or 224 b.c. We quote the passage: "The Rhodians
have benefited by the catastrophe which befel them, owing to which not
only the huge colossus, but also a number of houses and a portion of
the surrounding walls, were demolished." Then follows a list of the
rich gifts they received from all parts. Among the benefactors
Polybius mentions the three kings, Ptolemy III. of Egypt, Antigone
Doson, of Macedonia, and Seleucus, of Syria, father of Antiochus. The
ancient Pliny records that the colossus, after having stood for
sixty-six years, was overthrown by an earthquake, and that it took the
artist Charès de Lindos, to whom the Rhodians had intrusted its
construction, twelve years to complete his task.

The tendency in art to produce grand effects by colossal works became
perceptible twenty-five year's before Phidias; for we find that 463
years before Christ the inhabitants of Syracuse caused a huge statue
to be erected to Jupiter Eleutherius, after the death of the tyrant
Thrasybulus. This tendency was an indication of the decline of art,
traceable during and after the period of Alexander the Great.

But to return to the colossus. One Philo-Byzantius wrote a short
treatise on the seven wonders of the ancient world, about 150 years
B.C.   [Footnote 80] In it he {546} gives an explanation of the
construction of the colossus, but nowhere speaks of the extended legs,
under which vessels in full sail entered the port. On the contrary, he
mentions one sole pedestal, which was of white marble. Moreover, the
statue was said to be 105 feet in height, and the harbor entrance,
according to modern researches, was 350 feet wide; it could not,
therefore, possibly reach across this space. Lastly, if the statue had
stood at the entrance of the port, the earthquake must have overthrown
it into the sea; whereas Strabo and Pliny tell us that its fragments
remained for a considerable time imbedded in the earth, and attracted
much attention by their wonderful size and dimensions.

  [Footnote 80: It was reprinted with a Latin translation, by J. C.
  Orelli, at Leipzic, in 1816. Strabo also mentions the colossus as
  one of the seven wonders of the world.]

Now this is the real truth concerning the colossus:

Toward the year 305 B.C., Demetrius Poliorcetes laid siege to Rhodes,
and the inhabitants defended themselves with so much bravery that,
after a whole year of struggle and endurance, they forced the enemy to
retire from the island. The Rhodians, by whom the sun-god (Helios) was
worshipped as their patron (having emerged from the waves of the
AEgean Sea), inspired by sentiments of devotion, and excited by
fervent gratitude for so signal a proof of the divine favor, commanded
Charès de Lindos to erect a colossal statue to the honor of their
deity. An inscription explained that the expenses of its construction
were defrayed out of the sale of the materials of war left by
Demetrius on his retreat from the island of Rhodes. This statue was
erected on an open space of ground near the great harbor, and near the
spot where the pacha's seraglio now actually stands; and its fragments
for many years after its destruction were seen and admired by
travellers. This explanation is still further supported by the fact,
that a chapel built on this ground in the time of the Knights of
Rhodes is named _Fanum Sancti Joannis Colossensis_.

We have seen that Strabo, who wrote and travelled during the reigns of
the first two Roman emperors, was the earliest author after Polybius
who mentioned the fall of the Colossus of Rhodes, and that very
concisely. Pliny enters into somewhat fuller details, and speaks of
the dimensions of the mutilated limbs. "Even while prostrate," says
he, "this statue excited the greatest admiration. Few men could span
one of its thumbs with his arms; and each of its fingers was as large
as an ordinary full-sized statue. Its broken limbs appeared to
strangers like caverns, in the interior of which enormous blocks of
stone were seen."

From this time we find no further mention whatever of these fragments;
but it is curious that toward the end of the second century several
writers speak of a colossal statue at Rhodes as still existing. It is
possible that one was again constructed, but of smaller dimensions.
Indeed, Leo Allazzi tells us that the Colossus of Rhodes was
reconstructed and completed under the Emperor Vespasian; but later
Greek authors give us nothing in support of this opinion.

A long time after the fall of the Roman empire the island of Rhodes
was conquered by the general-in-chief of the Caliph Othman, in the
seventh century of the Christian era; and then mention is once more
made of a colossus in metal. "This last memorial of a glorious past
was not respected by the conqueror," says the Byzantine history. "The
general took down the colossus which stood erect on the island, and
transported the metal into Syria, and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980
camels with the materials of his purchase."

We should refer any who may be curious for further details on the
Colossus of Rhodes to a remarkable work on the subject by Carl
Ferdinand Lüders, in which the fiction of the gigantic outstretched
limbs is completely disposed of; but with such an array of learned
accessories, _more germanico_, that few will perhaps read it
throughout.

------

{547}


From The Month.


PUBLIC LIFE OF ST. CATHARINE OF SIENA.


No one can expect to find the history of the Church free from
vicissitude; as it has its bright and glorious periods, so also it has
its times of gloom and darkness, when a superficial observer might
almost interpret the disastrous character of the more salient facts
that meet his eye, as the evidence of a suspension of the vital
activity and healthy vigor of the whole body. But the life of the
Church is essentially internal, and depends on the free action of
divine grace, penetrating and animating the whole community--an action
that is perpetually kept up by the most common and unobtrusive
ministrations of sacramental strength, which are going on in full
frequency and efficacy, while the political fortunes of the hierarchy,
or of the supreme power, are crushed by oppression or persecution; or
even while scandals are seen in high places--when bishops become
courtiers, when cardinals are truckling to kings and emperors, and
popes are in captivity or exile. And it often happens that these dark
times are most prolific of the noblest fruits of the interior life;
and that at such seasons the choicest treasures of the Church--the
souls on whom great and special graces have been bestowed--are
providentially brought out into unusual prominence, so as to exercise
great influence and give a character to the period, or a direction to
some of its most important transactions. Even if it be not so, at all
events we have only to go a little below the surface in order to find
plentiful indications of the rich veins that are contained in no soil
but one. Thus, in Italy, at the time in which this paper treats, there
were a number of saintly souls, whose names have since taken rank in
the calendar of the Church. The secular historian sees little more
than a set of quarrelsome states, restless in their mutual discord and
aggressive ambition, and distracted, ever and anon, by the most
furious domestic strife, which would slake itself with nothing but
blood. St. Andrew Corsini once showed his audience, as he was
preaching in the Piazza of Fiesole, looking down on Florence, an
immense flight of hawks, kites, and other ravenous birds, battling
with one another over the city. They represented, he told them, the
number of evil spirits that were engaged in stirring up the
inhabitants to intestine discord. Florence was not worse, but rather
better, and more thoroughly Catholic, than its neighbors; yet when we
take up such a life, for instance, as that of St. Giovanni Colombini,
of Siena, the founder of the Gesuati, we find ourselves at once in an
atmosphere of calm and fresh simplicity, of happy peace, fervent
devotion, and loving faith; and it is only by the chance mention of
public calamities--the sufferings of the peasants, whose fruit-trees
had been cut down by the German "company"' of marauders, and the
like--that we are reminded of the Italy of the day, with its endless
disturbances and hopeless insecurity. We have not merely the beautiful
picture of Giovanni himself, and his immediate followers and friends;
of his good wife, for instance, who begged him to read her pious book
while she kept him waiting a few minutes for his dinner, and who,
though he had at first thrown it on the floor in a fit of impatient
anger, could not persuade him to leave it, when all was ready, till he
had read to the end the story of St. Mary of {548} Egypt. She had
prayed that he might be more given to almsgiving than he was, and then
had to complain that she had prayed for a shower, not for a deluge,
when he began to give away everything in the house; and she had to
yield at last to his saintly fervor, and release him altogether from
the obligations of the married life. It is not only Francesco
Vincenti, the other rich and noble gentleman of Siena, who caught up
the example of Giovanni, began to give great alms, dress shabbily, and
serve the poor, and at last joined him in giving up the world
altogether, and placing himself under religious obedience; or
Giovanni's cousin Catarina, the first of the nuns whom he established,
whom he could not persuade to embrace the state of poverty, though she
had given up the idea of marriage, till he called her to a little
window in the wall between their two houses, one night, as she was
going up to bed with her lamp lit, and talked to her in so heavenly a
strain that her heart was perfectly changed; and when she turned to go
away at last, she found that she had been listening all night, and the
morning rays were streaming through the shutters, though, as he bade
her observe, the little stock of oil in her lamp was unconsumed. These
might be accidents of piety and simple faith in particular families;
but we cannot so account for the great number of followers that
enlisted themselves under Giovanni--so many, that the worthy
magistrates of Siena thought fit for a time to banish him and his
companions from the city, lest every one should join them; nor for the
ready and enthusiastic welcome that he met with wherever he went
throughout Tuscany, the joy with which his preaching was received, and
the rapid fruit that it produced. The beautiful account of him and his
early followers, written in the century after his death by Feo
Belcari, is full of details and anecdotes that seem to prove the
powerful hold that faith and religion retained upon the mass of the
population in those seemingly black and miserable days. The mere
number of his followers, as we have said, is an evidence of this, the
proofs to which the novices were put were very severe indeed; yet when
Urban V. came from France to Italy, Giovanni went to meet him at
Corneto with a company of seventy, all of whom had joined him within
two years. The same conclusion is forced upon us when we take up the
life or the letters of the still more famous child of the same fair
city, St. Catharine of Siena, of whose public influence we hope to
give presently some short account. The family of religious disciples
whom she collected around her in the course of her short life, from
all ranks and classes, could never have been furnished save by a
population thoroughly penetrated with religious feeling, and familiar
with the loftiest principles of faith. Her own home, too, is a
charming picture. There is the good pious father, "a man simple and
without guile," as Father Raymond tells us, "fearing God, and keeping
free from vice;" a man so moderate in speech, that for no occasion
whatever, of disturbance or trouble that was given him, did unbecoming
words escape his lips; rather, when others of his family felt
bitterly, and he heard them break out into angry words, he set himself
at once, with a joyous countenance, to comfort them, saying, "Ah, God
give you good luck! don't fret yourself, or say things like that,
which don't befit us." He let himself be injured and brought to the
brink of ruin by a false charge, and yet would never allow any one in
his presence to speak against his accuser, leaving his cause entirely
to God; and in due time all was wonderfully set right. His large
family of children were brought up with so much modesty, and with so
great a hatred of anything licentious, though only in word, that one
of the daughters, whom he had given in marriage to a young man who had
lost his parents when a child, and learnt bad language from the chance
companions he had picked up, made herself ill with {549} grieving over
her husband's bad habit in this respect, and could never be well or
happy till he had given it up. We hear less of the rest of the family.
Catharine was one of twenty-five children; but though they opposed for
a while her resolution not to marry, and tried to make her give up her
excessive penances, they seem to have been good, fervent Christians;
and her mother, with her natural love for her child, struggling
against the sacrifice of giving her up entirely to the service of God,
is delightful in her simplicity, and her character gives a charming
air of truthfulness and reality to the whole picture. But there is no
reason for supposing that the family of the good Jacomo and Lapa were
far above the level of their neighbors in virtue and piety, except in
the instance of the one chosen soul whose wonderful graces and history
have alone saved them from being altogether forgotten, like the mass
of their daily companions in the streets and the churches of Siena.
What we are told of them reveals that which escapes the notice of the
superficial historian--the daily life of a Catholic people, however
politically unsettled, and subject to violent outbreaks natural to its
hot temperament and passionate disposition--though the character of
the Siennese was said to be comparatively gentle and sweet--still
thoroughly leavened and penetrated by the faith that had been handed
down through an unbroken succession of generations, since the city's
first martyr consecrated its soil by his blood. Such, in general, was
the population of Italy, and, of course, of great parts of Europe, at
that time; and such a population constitutes a resource, as it were,
for the Church, that it must take, it would seem, many generations
thoroughly to corrupt or to destroy. From the depths of such a people
springs ordinarily the ever-fresh crop of eminent saints, who form the
chief glories and supports of the Church in their successive
generations; and the wide extent to which the principles of Christian
faith and practice influence the mass from which they themselves rise,
makes it possible for them to gather followers around them, to touch
the springs of public action and thought, and to exercise the
wonderful influence upon the men of their day which is so strange an
enigma to the uncatholic historian.  [Footnote 81]

  [Footnote 81: Thus Dr. Milman ("Latin Christianity," t. v., p.
  891-2) is fairly upset by what he calls a "most extraordinary
  letter" of St Catharine. It is that in which she relates her
  assistance of Nicola Tuldo, when under sentence of death and on the
  scaffold. He adds at the end of his note: "St. Catharine had the
  stigmata. And this woman interposed between popes, princes, and
  republics." We may see, perhaps, whether she "interposed," or was
  entreated to do so; whether her influence was sought by herself, or
  forced on her by others. ]

The singularly beautiful life of St. Catharine of Siena, written by
her friend and confessor, Raymond of Capua, gives us as perfect an
account as we could wish to have of the personal and, as it were,
private history of the saint, and sets her character before us in the
freshest colors, like a picture of Fra Angelico. But it is deficient
in that very part of her life to which it is our purpose more
particularly to attend. The public influence exercised by St.
Catharine was fresh in the recollection of those for whom Fr. Raymond
wrote: they wished to be told the antecedents, as it were, of a person
whom they had seen brought forward by Providence in so remarkable a
manner to support the papacy in an hour of severe trial. A complete
life of St. Catharine would have to include a great many points which
have been omitted by Raymond; and much that he has mentioned or
alluded to would have to be fixed more accurately as to time and
place. Nor could any one hope to draw up such a work with success
without the fullest acquaintance with the ample collection of her
letters. It is from these last that many most important features of
her public life would have to be drawn.  [Footnote 82] We owe them,
probably, to {550} the care with which her disciples or secretaries
copied them before they were sent, for it is hardly likely that they
could have been otherwise recovered from the persons to whom they were
addressed.

  [Footnote 82: One of the best sketches of St Catharine's action on
  public matters with which we are acquainted is contained in the
  introduction to M. Caltier's recent translation of her letters into
  French. The "_Histoire de Ste. Catharine_," published many years ago
  by M. Chavin de Malan, contains a great deal of extraneous matter,
  and does not scene to as to use the letters as they might have been
  used. M. Christophe, in his "_Histoire de la Papauté pendant le XlVe
  Siècle_," falls entirely in giving sufficient importance to the
  saint. There is a good Italian "_Storia di Sta. Catarina da Siena_,"
  by Fr. Capecelatro, an Oratorian, published a few years ago, in
  which much use is made of the admirable notes of Fr. Buramacchi to
  Gilgli's edition of the letters.]

It is not easy to say at what precise time the public action of
Catharine began. She was in the twenty-fourth year of her age at the
time of the death of Urban V. She had already passed, for about four
years, from that life of prayer, mortification, and contemplation with
which her saintly career had begun, to one of greater intercourse with
others; and she had already brought about some very wonderful
conversions, of which Fr. Raymond has given us an account. She had in
several cases been successful in obtaining reconciliations between
families hostile to one another through the hereditary feuds and
traditions of revenge which have always had so baneful an effect on
Italian society; but it does not appear that she had had any personal
intercourse with Urban V., or any of the great prelates or princes of
the time; and perhaps her fame had not travelled far beyond the
frontiers of Tuscany. Giacomo Orsini, who passed through Siena in the
year following the death of Urban to receive the dignity of cardinal
from Gregory XI., may have made her acquaintance in her native town,
and carried the report of her wonderful sanctity to the court of
Avignon. The next year, 1372, we find her already in correspondence
with important persons. War had again broken out between the Holy See
and the restless Barnabo Visconti. Barnabo had usurped the dominion of
Reggio, a fief of the Church, and had proceeded to other excesses,
such as to force Gregory XI. to excommunicate him in 1371. War was now
declared; but it was at first favorable to the Milanese tyrant. A
league was then organized against him, in which the emperor, the King
of Hungary, and the Count of Savoy took part. John Hawkwood, moreover,
with his famous English lances, was engaged on the Pontifical side.
The success was now chiefly on the side of the league, and Visconti
once more betook himself to intrigues and negotiations at Avignon,
where he obtained a truce in 1374. We find St. Catharine writing, in
1372, to two great French prelates, the Cardinal Pierre d'Estaing, who
had just been appointed legate at Bologna; and the Abbot of
Marmontier, a relation of the Pope, who was sent at the same time to
govern Peragia and discharge the office of nuncio in Tuscany. Her
letters to the cardinal seem to show that she was already known to
him. The first contains little but spiritual exhortation, though there
is a hint at the end to the saints favorite subject at this time, the
crusade against the infidels. In the second she speaks strongly for
peace among Christians. The letter to the abbot--who afterward became
a cardinal, and died on the schismatical side--is evidently an answer
to a letter from him, asking advice for himself and also for the Pope.
St. Catharine urges him to prevail on the Holy Father to put down the
nepotism that prevailed among high ecclesiastics, to discourage the
luxurious worldliness of the prelates, and to choose good and virtuous
men as cardinals. A little later we find her writing to the truculent
Barnabo himself, the man who made papal legates eat the missives of
excommunication which they were charged to deliver to him--who
declared that he was Pope in his own dominions, and dressed up a mad
priest in mock vestments to excommunicate the Pope in return, and made
the monasteries under his rule take charge of his hounds. This letter,
again, was in answer to a message brought to Siena from Barnabo by
{551} one of his servants. Catharine sets before him the crime he has
been guilty of in going to war with the Pope, and exhorts him to make
amends for it by taking part in the crusade. The letter seems to have
been written after the peace granted to Visconti in 1374. The same
date, or perhaps an earlier one, seems to belong to a long letter of
the saint to Beatrice della Scala, the wife of Barnabo, in which that
lady is urged to become more religious herself, and thus to influence
her husband, especially to peace and obedience toward the Holy Father.
This letter, also, is in answer to a message.

Catharine's life became still more active than before about this time.
She was sent for to Florence by the general of her order, and seems to
have gone about to several other cities, such as Pisa and Lucca, and
to have exercised great influence everywhere. Her presence had before
this begun to attract crowds wherever she went: they came to speak to
her, to consult her about the affairs of their souls or their family
troubles; and her burning words wrought numberless conversions. The B.
Raymond, speaking of this part of her life, tells us in his simple
way, "If all the limbs of my body were turned into so many tongues,
they would not be enough to relate the fruit of souls which this
virgin plant, that the heavenly Father hath planted, did produce. I
have sometimes seen a thousand persons or more, men and women, come at
the same time, as if drawn by the sound of some unseen trumpet, from
the mountains or from the villages in the territory of Siena, to see
or to hear Catharine. 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, bewailed their sins, and ran to the confessors, of
whom I was one; and so great was the contrition with which they made
their confessions, that no one could doubt that a great abundance of
grace had descended from heaven upon their hearts. This happened not
once or twice only, but very often. For this reason Pope Gregory XI.,
of happy memory, who was both consoled and rejoiced at this great
fruit in souls, granted letters apostolic to me and to my two
companions, giving us power to absolve all those who came to see
Catharine and to confess their sins, in all the cases for which the
bishops of the dioceses had faculties. And that truth, that neither
deceives nor can be deceived, knows well that many came to find us out
who were laden with great sins, and who had never before made
confession, or never received as it ought to be received the sacrament
of penance. We--that is, my companions and myself--often remained
fasting till evening, and were too few to hear all those who wished to
confess; and indeed, to declare my own imperfection, and the influence
of this holy virgin, so great was the throng of people wishing to
confess that many times I found myself quite worn out and wearied by
the excess of fatigue. But Catharine went on praying incessantly; and
when the holy prey was won, she rejoiced fully in the Lord, as one who
had won a victory, ordering her other sons and daughters to wait upon
us, who were tending the nets that she had spread. No pen can express
the abundance of the joy in her mind, nor even the signs of gladness
that she gave, which indeed gave us so much internal delight as to
make us forget the recollection of any sadness whatever we had to
undergo."  [Footnote 83]

  [Footnote 83: _Legenda_, ii. ch., 7.]

Gregory XI. seems before his election to have been well acquainted
with St. Bridget, for he was the cardinal through whom she had wished
to communicate to Urban V. the message that she had received to
deliver to him. He kept up a correspondence with her as long as she
lived, and received some tremendous warnings from her about the return
of the Holy See to Rome. At the time of which {552} we are speaking,
1374, in the fifth year of his reign, he sent St. Bridget's confessor
to Catharine to recommend himself to her prayers. This may have been
the opening of the intercourse between them. Of the fourteen letters
to Gregory that remain to us, none seem to bear an earlier date than
1376.  [Footnote 84] It does not appear certain, therefore, whether
she had any direct influence upon the Pope's desire to set on foot a
new crusade, which he urged on with much vigor about the time of the
peace granted to Visconti. But it was one of St. Catharine's three
darling projects; the other two being the reform of the prelacy and
the restoration of the papacy to Rome. The fact that her confessor and
friend, Fr. Raymond, was appointed to preach the crusade seems to
imply that she had been in communication with Gregory upon the
subject. We have already said that she proposed to Barnabo himself to
take the cross. The idea of sending all the turbulent spirits in
Europe to fight against the Turks was not a new one; Urban V. had
proposed it to the "companies" who ravaged France and even insulted
him by exacting a ransom for Avignon; but the freebooters naturally
preferred the less dangerous, though less glorious, life that they
were living in France. They were at last persuaded to enlist against
Peter the Cruel. In St. Catharine's time there was a proposal of the
same kind, with regard to the "bands" in Italy, whom we shall
presently see the instruments of the greatest possible mischief to
that unhappy country. We have a letter from her to Sir John Hawkwood,
from which it appears that he and his followers had actually Engaged
to serve in the crusade. Other letters on the subject of the same
expedition show that she was now in a position to address herself with
effect to the sovereigns of great states. She writes at this time to
Queen Joanna of Naples, and to the queen-mother of Hungary, in hopes
of her assistance in persuading her son, King Louis. But if the peace
with Barnabo had made the crusade once more possible, fresh troubles
soon ensued in Italy which prevented it, and which occasioned the
still greater prominence of St. Catharine as an earnest advocate of
peace.

  [Footnote 84: Four of these letters (7-10) were written while
  Catharine was at Avignon, and were only to be found in Latin among
  the papers of B. Raymond, who was, it appears, interpreter between
  the saint and the Pope, who did not understand her Tuscan dialect.
  M. Chavin de Malan (ii., 369) conjectures that the first three of
  them may be summaries of _conversations_ that passed at Avignon,
  taken down afterward by B. Raymond. But internal evidence is against
  this supposition; and it is not at all unlikely, as the opposition
  to her influence was so strong, that the Pope preferred that she
  should communicate with him by letter.]

The disturbances were not, this time, the work of the Visconti.
Barnabo turned them to his own advantage, but he was not their author.
Historians concur in attributing a feeling of general discontent with
the internal administration and external policy of the pontifical
government in Italy to the conduct of the French legates. We find very
strong charges against them; for example, in the chronicle of St.
Antoninus, written in the following century; but it may be questioned
whether he did more than repeat what he found in other Florentine
writers; and, in this case, the testimony of a Florentine is hardly to
be admitted without suspicion. But it is very likely that many of the
charges of tyranny, ambition, extortion, and luxury are not unfounded.
Still, the internal administration of the States of the Church had
been settled by Albornoz, and his system might have carried the
government through without an  outbreak, even under the trial of
administrators quite unworthy to succeed him, had it not been for the
suspicions that arose, in cities external to the pontifical territory,
that its governors aimed at the subjugation of their neighbors. It
thus seemed to become their interest not only to defend themselves,
but to anticipate the danger by raising revolts in the States of the
Church. It is quite clear that Gregory XI. had no such design {553}
himself, and that he would not have tolerated it in his subordinates.
Neither are the acts of the latter such as cannot be explained on
other grounds. But what is clear to us at a distance was not
necessarily so clear to the contemporaries of St. Catharine. Certain
measures of the legate at Bologna, and of the governor of Perugia, had
an unfortunate look. In the first place, it seems that the diplomacy
of that time did not insist, in the case of a confederacy of a number
of powers against a common enemy, that peace should not be made by one
member of the league without the consent of the remainder. The peace
with Barnabo had been made, it appears, without the concurrence of
Florence, Pisa, Siena, and the other allies of the Pope. Another cause
of soreness was a measure adopted about the same time by the Cardinal
Legate of Bologna, which pressed hardly upon Tuscany. The last two
years had been years of great scarcity in that part of Italy, and he
now forbade the exportation of grain from the Legation. He was no
doubt afraid of relieving his neighbors at the risk of suffering
himself. But there was more to come. Sir John Hawkwood and his
followers had to be discharged on account of the peace; they were no
sooner dismissed than they invaded the Florentine territory, attempted
to make themselves masters of Prato, and ravaged the country up to the
gates of Florence itself. Thus soldiers, only a few days before in the
pay of the Holy See, were attacking one of its allies with fire and
sword. It looked very like an attempt to enslave Tuscany. At the same
time Siena had a complaint of the same sort against the abbot of
Montmajor at Perugia. The powerful family of the Salimbeni were at
that time in exile from Siena, the last revolution of which city had
put the supreme power into the hands of the popular party. The
pontifical governor of Perugia leagued himself with the exiles, and
thus appeared to be aiming at the destruction of the liberties of
Siena.

_Ergo omnis furiis surrexit Etruria justis._Nothing had indeed been
done which did not admit of explanation; And, if his legates had
really been guilty of aggression, Gregory XI. could, have readily
disavowed them. Indeed, he ordered the edict against the exportation
of grain from the Romagna to be revoked; in which, however, the
cardinal at Bologna refused to obey him. But this conciliatory order
came too late. Under such provocation men, and especially Italians,
would not wait for explanations. They were jealous of their liberties,
and they hated the idea of foreign domination; the representatives of
the pontifical government at the time were foreigners to them, and
seemed to be seeking to enslave them. Florence flew to arms: she had
been long devoted to the Holy See; now she gave herself over to the
rule of the faction within her, who had ever been the minority,
because they were the enemies of the Pope; and these men, feeling
themselves still in reality the weaker party, lost no time in plunging
into the most frantic excesses, that they might alienate their country
from the Holy Father beyond hope of reconciliation, and wreak their
own vengeance on their personal enemies so fully as to leave them no
chance of again recovering their power. Hawkwood was soon disposed of;
he was bought off for a large sum. The movement in Florence became a
revolution, with all its accompaniments of blood, spoliation, and
terror. The inquisitors were massacred, the prisons destroyed; the
prior of the Carthusians, who presented himself as papal envoy with
overtures of reconciliation, was torn to pieces, and his flesh thrown
to the dogs. The clergy were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the
Pope; the nomination of benefices assumed by the magistrates of the
republic. These, however, were all changed; a committee of eight, a
sort of Comité du Salut Publique--called, in derision, the Eight
Saints--seized the helm of government; it was a {554} complete reign
of terror. But they were not content with turning Florence against the
Pope; they sent envoys throughout the whole of Tuscany and Umbria,
inviting all the cities to join in league against the pontifical
government, and bearing with them red banners inscribed with the word
"Libertas." The conduct of the French governors had but too well
prepared the subjects of the Pope for these invitations. Citta di
Castello led the way; Perugia, Narni, Viterbo, Montefiascone followed;
before the end of 1375 nearly the whole of the pontifical territory,
the Patrimony, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the March of Ancona, were in
open revolt. All that Albornoz had done for the Holy See seemed to
have been done in vain. Bologna, almost alone, remained faithful; but
even there the government of the legate was very insecure.

It was felt at Avignon that something was now to be dealt with very
different even from a war against the Visconti. Some "companies" of
Bretons were then ravaging or ransoming cities in the south of France,
under two famous captains of the day, Jean de Malestroit and Silvestre
de Bude; they were enlisted under the flag of the Church, and prepared
to descend on Italy. But Gregory XI. determined to try the method of
conciliation before letting them loose. He sent envoys to Florence,
who offered terms to which no prudent person could make objection.
Perugia and Citta di Castello were to be free, but the Florentines
were to cease in their revolutionary propaganda in the States of the
Church, and particularly in Bologna. The "eight saints" had all that
was reasonable and good in Florence against them, and they dared not
openly refuse to entertain terms such as these. But they sent secret
instructions to their commander in the field while the negotiations
were being carried on; he marched on Bologna, raised the people in
revolt, and made the legate a prisoner. They succeeded in their
ulterior object: the Papal envoys left Florence without concluding any
peace.

After this fresh provocation, nothing remained for the Pope but to
attack the Florentines with every weapon at his disposal. The Breton
companies were ordered to march, under the general command of the
Cardinal Robert of Geneva, a man, it seems, with more of the soldier
than the priest about him, who was to be, within three years from the
time that he began his expedition, the first of the miserable line of
Antipopes who opposed themselves to the legitimate successors of
Gregory XI. His present campaign was distinguished chiefly by two
events, neither of which cast credit on the pontifical cause: a treaty
he made with Visconti (who had before allied himself with the
Florentines), by which the Guelfic party in the north of Italy were
sacrificed to the enmity of the tyrant; and the awful sack and
massacre of Cesena by the Breton troops. But the Pope used spiritual
weapons also against offenders like the Florentines; and in their case
the temporal consequences of the solemn excommunication under which
they fell made themselves far more swiftly and keenly felt than in
that of a great seigneur like Barnabo. Their merchants and agents were
in every country of Europe: the sentence of the Pope exposed them
everywhere to confiscation, imprisonment, and slavery; their commerce
was ruined, and it is said that the immediate loss to the city
amounted to three million florins. At all events, early in the year
1376, and but a few weeks aft«r they had chosen not to avail
themselves of the moderate overtures made by the Papal envoys, the
Florentines began to desire peace. It is probable that there had
always been but a narrow majority in favor of the violent measures of
which we have spoken; now, the great misfortunes of the state made
even its revolutionary rulers look about them for a mediator, for
their first attempt at negotiation had proved a failure. They had sent
two {555} ambassadors to Avignon; but instead of apologizing for their
undeniable aggressions, they laid all the blame on the pontifical
delegates, and were dismissed by Gregory with a confirmation of their
sentence. A mediator, therefore, was necessary; and instead of asking
the kind offices of the emperor, or the king of France, or some other
of the sovereigns of Europe, they determined to seek the help of
Catharine of Siena.

Catharine had  been in the midst of the tumult, doing what she could
to maintain peace. It seems that Gregory XI. had begged her to go to
Lucca, where she was held in great veneration, to keep that city from
joining the league against the Church. She had also exerted her
influence at Pisa, and seems to have succeeded in both places, though
with some difficulty. From Pisa she wrote the first of her series of
letters to the Pope. She was still there when the magistrates of
Florence invited her to undertake their cause. She visited the city,
conversed with the principal men of all parties, and it was agreed
that they should send another and a humbler embassy to Avignon, on
condition that she should precede the envoys, and endeavor to soften
the heart of the Holy Father toward his rebellious children. She was
already sending letters to Avignon imploring peace, and urging the
Pope to return to Rome, and to raise the standard of the crusaders, in
order to unite all discordant elements by directing them to a common
object. She had sent her most intimate confidant and confessor, Father
Raymond, to plead the cause of the Florentines; and soon followed him
herself, accompanied by a number of her "disciples," arriving at
Avignon about the middle of June, 1376.

As is so often the case in the lives of the chosen instruments of
Providence, Catharine was to do a great work at Avignon, but not the
work for which she apparently went there. She was received by the Pope
with the greatest kindness and distinction; she was even intrusted by
him with full powers to make peace with the Florentines. But Gregory
XI. knew the men with whom he was dealing better than she. The
government of Florence was still in the hands of the eight; they did
not really desire peace, at least on any terms that the Pope could
grant them. They had yielded to the vast majority of their
fellow-citizens in seeming to wish for what would be in reality the
end of their own power. The envoys delayed their journey to Avignon:
when they did arrive, and Catharine proposed to use the full powers
the Pops had given her, they replied that they had no authority to
treat with _her_; nor were they more honest in their dealings with the
Pope himself. The time, then, for the particular task that Catharine
had undertaken was not yet come; but she was at Avignon now, at the
side of Gregory XI., and she was to decide him to a step far more
important than the granting a peace to Florence.

The character of Gregory XI. is so constantly represented in the same
colors by historians of every grade, that it would seem almost rash to
suppose that they could all have been mistaken in the picture. It has
a softness and beauty about it that are extremely touching, when
viewed in the light of his many misfortunes and early death,
overshadowed as it was by the threats of the still greater troubles
from which it saved him. He had been marked out for high
ecclesiastical dignity from the very first, and was but eighteen when
his uncle, Clement VI., made him cardinal. His career after his
elevation justified his premature advancement; he made himself famous
for learning, and even more so for his tender piety and the unsullied
purity of his life. His humility and sweetness won all hearts: perhaps
the more because his frail health, his pale countenance, and evident
delicacy of constitution, gave a kind of plaintive charm to his very
{556} appearance. Though he was barely forty years of age at the death
of Urban V., he had been elected Pope after the conclave had lasted
but a single night. He had refused at first, but at last had been
forced to accept the crown of St. Peter as a matter of duty. He was
then only in deacon's orders. No one has ever questioned the purity of
his aims, or even the rightness of his views and the soundness of his
judgment. We have already said, with regard to one great paramount
question of the time, that he had secretly vowed to take back the
papacy to Rome, if he ever should be elected pope. But, inheriting as
he did the traditions of Clement VI., surrounded in France by noble
and powerful relatives, and by cardinals almost exclusively his
fellow-countrymen, and with health and constitution that were almost
sure to be ruined at once by the air of Rome, everything seemed to
forbid him to make the effort that was required. The earlier years of
his reign had passed away, not indeed without many thoughts and even
declarations on the subject, but without any steps being taken to put
the design in execution. In 1374 he had announced his intention of
visiting Rome to the emperor; in the following January he had written
in the same sense to Edward III. and to other kings of Europe. But
that summer and autumn saw the outbreak at Florence, and the great
revolution that arrayed almost the whole of the Ecclesiastical States
in rebellion against the Church; and the advocates of the French
residence of the papacy must have thought themselves safe now that
Italy had risen against Gregory. He was not, like Urban V., a pope
elected from outside the College of Cardinals, with little sympathy
and but few ties with them. He was of one of the great Limousin
families, the nephew of the most brilliant of the Avignon popes,
surrounded by powerful relatives, all of whom were interested in
keeping him where he was. The quiet security of Provence suited him,
and he was one of those gentle characters, not wanting in ordinary
firmness and decision, which still are more fitted for tranquil times
than for days of disturbance, and are more capable of suffering and of
patience than of initiating bold measures and breasting the waves of a
great emergency. Family and personal influence had much weight with
him; not from any active ambition or spirit of nepotism, so much as
that it had become at Avignon a matter almost of course that many of
the splendid prizes in the gift of the Popes should be bestowed on
their relatives. He himself owed his position originally to that
custom. At a time when reform was much needed in the prelacy, and many
abuses and scandals existed which required to be sternly rebuked and
punished, he could see what was wanting more easily than carry it out
with a severity alien to his nature. He was influenced by the
atmosphere around him. In the same way, notwithstanding his own strong
inclination to grant peace on any terms to the Florentines, he seems
to have yielded as to his actual policy to the more violent and
relentless counsels of the French cardinals, headed by Robert of
Geneva, who led the Breton companies over the Alps. It might well have
been thought that such a pontiff would not now act against the advice
and the wishes of all around him, and that the actual state of Italy
would be enough to make him adjourn indefinitely his promised journey
to Rome.

To such a character it is sometimes everything to have support and
companionship--the mind and the voice of another, however inferior,
that seem to give body and life to thoughts and designs not new
indeed, but which seemed before to belong rather to the world of
dreams and imaginations than of possible realities; to change wishes
and longings into practical resolutions; to chase away phantom
difficulties, and nerve the will to efforts and sacrifices which the
conscience {557} has long prompted. With all of us our own ideas and
designs seem sometimes to date their real existence from the moment
that we found they were shared by some one else. In the case of
Gregory XI., he seems, before the arrival of Catharine at Avignon, to
have been almost alone in his wish to return to Italy; and he had
already seen something of St. Bridget, and learnt from intercourse
with her what the personal influence of great sanctity might be.
Catharine at once won his perfect confidence, and her presence gave
him the courage to follow out the course which he had long felt to be
the right one. It is this which makes it historically true that she
had so great a part in the final return of the Holy See from Avignon.
It is easy to find reasons why Gregory should have returned; it is
easy to show that there was danger that an attempt might be made by
the Romans to give their city a bishop of their own creation; or, on
the other hand, that Gregory had intended to take the step long before
he took it. If these things are alleged to show that the influence of
St. Catharine has been exaggerated by her historians, they are beside
the point. Her providential mission at Avignon was not to put new
considerations before the mind of Gregory, but to strengthen his will
to act upon considerations already familiar to him.

The esteem in which the Pope held her was not only manifested by the
reception he gave her, and by his inviting her even to speak in public
as to what she thought to be required for the best interests of the
Church; it also shielded and defended her from the dislike with which
her unwelcome presence was viewed by many a magnificent prelate and
many a brilliant official of the court of Avignon. The reforms that
she spoke of as so necessary, and the return to Rome that she
recommended, were equally distasteful to them. Three of the most
learned prelates asked leave of the Pope to visit her, and began to
catechise her most severely both as to her presumption in coming as
the envoy of Florence, and as to her preternatural gifts of prayer and
her extraordinary mode of life. But they left her overwhelmingly
convinced of her sanctity and wonderful gifts. The fine ladies about
the court--the sisters, nieces, and relations of the Pope and the
cardinals--looked on her with instinctive dread. Some of them even
tried to patronize and make her the fashion; but she either exhorted
them plainly to conversion, or turned from them with that stern
silence with which her Master received the overtures of the
blood-stained paramour of Herodias. One of them--a niece of the Pope--
knelt beside her in apparent devotion, as she was rapt in prayer
before communion, and plunged a needle or bodkin into her bare foot,
to see whether she could feel it. When her state of abstraction
ceased, Catharine could hardly walk, and her sandal was full of
congealed blood. The French king heard of her influence with the Pope,
and sent his brother, the Duke of Anjou, to dissuade Gregory from
listening to her; but Catharine won the respect and admiration of the
duke, prevailed on him to offer himself for the crusade, and suggested
him to the Pope as its captain-in-chief. Then an attempt was made to
influence Gregory by means of the deference that he paid to the advice
of saintly souls. A forged letter was sent him--as it appears, in the
name of the holy Peter of Aragon--telling him that if he went to Italy
he would be poisoned. Catharine showed him that the letter was not
such as a servant of God would write, and that poison could be given
him in France as well as in Italy. After all, the Pope still
hesitated; he made preparations and issued orders, but it was with
slowness and reluctance; and at any time a change might come over the
state of affairs in Italy that might be the occasion of indefinite
delay. One day again he asked her opinion. She said she was a poor
weak woman; how should she {558} give advice to the sovereign Pontiff?
"I do not ask you to counsel me," he replied, "but to tell me what is
the will of God." Again she excused herself; and Gregory again urged
her, commanding her at last, by virtue of her obedience, to tell him
what she knew of God's will as to the matter. She bowed her head--"Who
knows the will of God better than your holiness, who have promised him
by vow to return to Rome?" Gregory had never revealed his vow to
living soul; and from that moment his determination was taken. Still
the opposition was great and powerful. The cardinals urged him with
the example of an excellent Pope, Clement IV., who had never done
anything without the approval of the Sacred College. Catharine met
their arguments, she even went so far as to urge the Pope to depart
secretly, so obstinate and so influential was the party that wished to
retain him in France. At length, on September 13, 1376, amid the
remonstrances of his family and the tears of his aged father, as well
as the sullen complaints of the whole court, Gregory XI. left Avignon.
Catharine had remained to the last, and then went on foot with her
companions to Genoa, whither the Pope was to pass by sea. It seemed as
if every kind of influence that could beat down his courage was to be
allowed to work upon the failing heart of Gregory. Everything that
could be turned into a bad omen was carefully noted. His horse refused
to let him mount; then it became so restive that another had to be
brought. As he passed by Novis, Orgon, and Aix to Marseilles,
everywhere the inhabitants were in tears and gloom. Marseilles itself,
when he came to embark, was the scene of a grand explosion of grief.
Then there came the terrors of a dangerous voyage, from the extremely
severe weather encountered by the fleet. The grand master of the
Knights of St. John himself took the helm of the galley in which the
Pope sailed--a weather-beaten veteran, accustomed to perils of all
sorts, who had to exert all his skill under the storm that came on as
they made across toward Genoa. They were obliged to put into
Villafranca for some days. It was not till the 18th of October,
sixteen days after leaving Marseilles, that Genoa was reached. Here
the Pope was met by bad news from Rome and from Florence; the
Florentines, alarmed at his approach, were preparing for the most
desperate hostilities; the Romans seemed quite unwilling to put the
government of the city into his hands. A consistory was held (the
greater number of the cardinals were with the Pope), and the
resolution was adopted not to proceed further with the journey. All
seemed lost; but Catharine with her company was in Genoa. The Pope
sought her out--it is said, by night; and from her calm and fervent
words gained fresh strength and courage to pursue his journey to the
end.  [Footnote 85]

  [Footnote 85: See Capecelatro, "_Storia di Santa Catarina_," lib.
  v., p. 222, 2d ed.]

So, after ten days spent at Genoa, the fleet once more put to sea, to
be driven again into Porto Fino, where the feast of All Saints was
kept. It arrived at Leghorn on the 7th of November, and there again
lingered ten or eleven days. As far as Piombino all went well. When
the galleys left that port, another storm--the most violent of all
they had met with--arose, and drove them back shattered and disabled;
three cardinals were seriously ill, one of whom died at Pisa a few
days later. At last Corneto was reached on December 6, more than two
months after the departure from Marseilles. Gregory remained there for
several weeks to regain his strength, and then sailed up the Tiber,
landing near the basilica of St. Paul on January 17, 1377, the day
before the feast of the Roman Chair of St Peter. His entrance was a
triumph that seemed to promise him every security for peace and
tranquillity; and the joy and devotion of the Romans may {559} have
taken away for the moment the mournful feelings with which he had
turned his back on France. Thus, a year and a half after the
revolution at Florence, which, had caused so rapid and widespread a
defection among the cities of the Pontifical States, and seemed to
threaten the very existence of the temporal power of the Church, these
very events, which might have seemed likely to furnish reason for the
prolonged exile of the papacy, brought about, under the providence of
God, the fulfilment of the resolution to return to Rome which the Pope
had so long delayed to accomplish. The instrument of the deliverance
of the Holy See from its dangerous position was the envoy of its
rebellious children, the humble maiden from Siena.

------

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.


  Primeval night had repossess'd
    Her empire in the fields of peace;
  Calm lay the kine on earth's dark breast;
    The earth lay calm in heaven's embrace.

  That hour, where shepherds kept their flocks,
    From God a glory sudden fell;
  The splendor smote the trees and rocks.
    And lay like dew along the dell.

  God's angel close beside them stood:
    "Fear naught," that angel said, and then,
  "Behold, I bring you tidings good:
    The Saviour Christ is born to men."

  And straightway round him myriads sang
    Loud song again, and yet again,
  Till all the hollow valley rang
    "Glory to God, and peace to men."

  The shepherds went and wondering eyed,
    In Bethlehem born, the heavenly stranger.
  Mary and Joseph knelt beside:
    The Babe was cradled in the manger!

------

{560}

From The St. James Magazine.

LAW AND LITERATURE.


Notwithstanding the seeming incongruity, there subsists a very
intimate connection between law and literature. To the legal
profession, more than any other, we are indebted for the magnitude and
splendor of our literature. Nor is it only with one or two branches or
divisions of literature that the connection exists. On the contrary,
there is scarcely a single department in which the legal profession is
not represented. History, biography, philosophy, metaphysics, poetry,
the drama, fiction, oratory, criticism, and even theology, have all
been contributed to by men who at one time or other were connected
with the legal profession. Nor is the literature which has emanated
from that source of a superficial or evanescent nature. Much of it has
passed away, and is now almost unknown; but a great deal still
remains, forming some of the best and most endurable of our classics.
And these contributions have been--and still are being--made in spite
of the opposition and discountenance of the legal profession itself.

There is an opinion very prevalent among the public generally, and the
legal profession in particular, that the study of literature is at
variance and inconsistent with the study of law; that the more the
former is indulged in, the more the latter will decline. In support of
this opinion we are told that very few men have distinguished
themselves in both avocations; that men of great literary attainments
have seldom risen to eminence in the legal profession. That is, no
doubt, true; but I attribute it to a very different cause. I consider
that the study of literature must have a beneficial effect upon a
lawyer, provided that it is made subservient to the business of his
profession.

The duties which lawyers are called upon to discharge are many and
various, and consequently a vast deal of general knowledge is
indispensable to the formation of a really good lawyer. It is not
sufficient that he is well versed in legal principles and precedents.
Without these he cannot succeed in his profession; but they are not
the only requisites. There are many cases in which legal principle and
precedent are only of secondary importance. It is when he is called
upon to deal with such cases that the lawyer feels the advantages of
varied information. If he is ignorant of almost everything but law, he
must be painfully aware of his utter incompetence to do justice to his
client. He is compelled to grope his way like a man in the dark; he
wanders at random, stumbling over everything that lies in his path,
and ends, it may be, by falling into a ditch from which he vainly
attempts to extricate himself--every attempt only causing him to sink
deeper--and is at last compelled to call for help. But it is different
with the man who, in addition to his legal knowledge, is possessed of
much general and varied information. He can always see his way, and,
if assistance is necessary, he knows where to seek for, and seldom
fails in obtaining it. It is only to a lawyer of this latter stamp
that any man with his eyes open would intrust the care of interests
which involved other than strictly legal questions.

Now if it be true that a large amount of general knowledge is
necessary to the formation of a really good lawyer, then it must be
admitted that the study {561} of literature is an indispensable part
of his professional education. The arts and sciences are all
represented in literature; and it is only in the study of literature
that the requisite general information can be gained. The error
appears to me to consist in confounding the term _literature_ with
_amusing literature_. This confusion of terms is very common; but it
is also very absurd. When I speak of "literature," I use the word in
its most comprehensive sense; and if I were to be understood as
meaning solely "amusing literature," my meaning would be grossly
perverted. There is no ground for accepting a limited interpretation
unless the term used is expressly qualified.

Ease, fluency, and polish, not only in speaking, but also in writing,
are likewise indispensable to a lawyer, particularly in the higher
walks of the profession. In order to attain these requisites,
conciseness, concentration, and arrangement of thought must be
diligently studied. There is nothing which tends more to the
acquirement of such qualities than the careful examination of them as
displayed in the writings and speeches of others, and the frequent
expression of our own thoughts, both in writing and in speech. Law
treatises, it need scarcely be said, are not conspicuous as models of
either ease, fluency, or polish; and therefore the lawyer who aspires
to these accomplishments must seek elsewhere for his models. In this
respect, also, the study of literature is beneficial to the lawyer;
and if attentive reading be accompanied with frequent careful writing
and speaking, he cannot fail ultimately to gain the objects of his
desire. If the members of the legal profession would bestow more pains
than they do to the acquisition of a good style of writing and
speaking, the advantages which would accrue to them would greatly
outweigh all the trouble incurred. I have seen letters and even
pleadings written, and heard speeches delivered, by men of eminence in
the legal profession, which displayed either the grossest carelessness
or the most lamentable ignorance of the rules, not only of
composition, but also of grammar; and such as would have been almost
inexcusable in a schoolboy. It is a common notion that elegance is not
required, and is out of place in law papers and in letters. I for one
cannot agree in that opinion. An elegant style is always desirable. It
is preposterous to assert--as many people do--that attention to style
begets a habit of neglecting the substance for the sake of the shadow.
On the contrary, an elegant style adds to the effect both of speech
and writing; and therefore it ought to be cultivated by every lawyer.

So much for the general objection that the study of literature is
incompatible with the study of law. I think I have said quite
sufficient to show that it ought to form a part of the education of
every lawyer. But with reference to the proof of the assertion, that
men of distinguished literary attainments have seldom risen to
eminence in the legal profession, I could name many men who have
rendered themselves conspicuous for their literary abilities, and, at
the same time, gained the highest honors of their profession. Yet I
admit that overwhelming evidence of a contrary nature might easily be
adduced; but I do not admit the reason to be that the one profession
is incompatible with the other. I maintain the reverse. The reason why
comparatively few lawyers have risen to eminence, both in literature
and in law, appears to me to be simply this, that whenever their
literary leanings became known, the opportunity was denied them of
distinguishing themselves in their profession; the consequence of
which was that they abandoned the study of law altogether, and betook
themselves to the more agreeable and less laborious occupation of
literature. And it must also be borne in mind that law is not always
studied with the view of engaging in its practice; but often with the
{562} sole purpose of gaining admission to the bar for the sake of its
social advantages, or with the aim of acquiring such a knowledge as
will be useful in legislative discussion.

I now proceed to consider the causes which lead to the intimate
connection between law and literature. I do not think they are
difficult of explanation. Speaking generally, it may be said that the
lawyers who have distinguished themselves in literature have been for
the most part members of the bar. Comparatively few have been members
of the other branches of the profession. In England intending
barristers must be students of an inn of court for three years,
[Footnote 86] during which time they are not permitted to engage in
any business. In Scotland, too, every applicant for admission into the
faculty of advocates must have graduated either in arts or in laws; or
undergo an examination in Latin, Greek (or in his option, in lieu of
Greek, two of the following languages, viz., French, German, Italian,
and Spanish), ethical and metaphysical philosophy, and logic or (in
his option) mathematics, beside an examination in the civil law and
the law of Scotland; and one year must be passed without an
occupation. Having been called to the bar, a few years generally
elapse before much business is intrusted to them, and often it never
comes at all. During all this time something must be done--An
occupation of some kind must be found either for pleasure or to kill
time; or it may be to earn a means of subsistence. Literature--to
which their previous training inclines them--is the only employment
which is available; and accordingly literature is resorted to. A taste
for letters is thus fostered. Its gratification has a twofold
advantage, it affords both pleasure and profit. It becomes a habit,
and is indulged in on every available occasion. There is always plenty
of leisure, at least for many, years, and that leisure is devoted to
literature. The employment is so seductive that in many cases its
legal votaries are drawn away from their regular studies--which
unfortunately often happen not to be profitable in a pecuniary sense--
and adopt literature as a profession. Even lawyers with a large
practice can occasionally find time for indulging in literary
pursuits. During vacation they have plenty of leisure, and as they are
accustomed to constant hard work in session, they experience a want
and a craving whenever the have nothing to do, and this they endeavor
to satisfy by devoting themselves to literature. Many of the most
eminent men at the bar occupy the greater portion of their spare time
in literary studies.

 [Footnote 86: Now, before being admitted as _students_ they must have
 passed a public examination at an university, or undergo an
 examination in Latin, English language, and English history.]

The practice of law eminently qualifies a man for attaining
distinction in literature. It engenders rapidity of thought,
systematic arrangement of arguments and ideas, and facility of
expression. Lawyers in the enjoyment of any considerable practice are
almost constantly called upon to form their opinion and give it
expression, apparently without time for even the most superficial
reflection. Continual exercise renders these easy to them. In setting
forth their arguments both in written and in oral pleadings they are
trained to habits of carefulness and close reasoning; because they
know very well that any inconsistencies or false reasoning will at
once be discovered by the judges whom they are addressing, or by the
opposite counsel. What would impose upon a jury, or upon an ordinary
reader or listener, will not impose either upon the judges or opposing
counsel. They are thus led to say what they wish to say in the
clearest manner, and in the way which is most likely to succeed in
gaining the object in view. As they are compelled to avoid false
reasoning and inconsistencies themselves, so they are ever on the
outlook for them on the part of {563} an opponent--it becomes, in
fact, a habit. Again, the various duties which they are called upon to
discharge enable them to pass from one subject to another with ease
and readiness, and compel them to acquire a vast amount of general
information which is carefully stored up for future use. The habits
thus engendered and constantly exercised, either in written pleading
or in oral debate, are easily transferred to literature when that is
indulged in. As perspicuity, arrangement, and close reasoning are the
very qualities which lead to literary success, and as these are more
exercised and consequently more perfect among lawyers than among any
other class of men, the reason why they occupy such an eminent
position in literature is easily understood.

There are two departments of literature to which the foregoing
observations are applicable only to a limited extent--poetry and
fiction. In many respects poetry and fiction are analogous: and the
old adage, "_Poeta nascitur, non fit_," may, therefore, with almost
equal propriety, be applied to the writer of fiction. However true it
may be that the poet _is born_, there can be no doubt that the
development of the poetic faculty is quite as much a matter of hard
study and practice as the development of any other inborn faculty. The
study of law is the opposite of poetical; but this very antagonism
begets in the lawyer, by comparison, a keener relish for and
appreciation of poetry, when he turns to it in his hours of leisure.
And if he is gifted with the "faculty divine," the delight taken in
its cultivation will be greater, because it is to him a relief from
the dry details of his ordinary pursuits. He sees, too, so much of
human life--of character and passion--in the course of his
professional career, that he is enabled to delineate with truth, with
strict adherence to reality, the feelings and emotions which he
attempts to exhibit in the creatures of his imagination. These,
combined with the habits of continuity of thought and forcible
expression engendered by his professional studies, must contribute in
no slight degree to his success as a poet or novelist. I do not mean
to say that any lawyer may write a good novel or poem if he will only
apply himself to the task. All I assert is that if he is gifted with
the poetic faculty, his professional studies, when properly attended
to, will contribute materially to his success as a poet or novelist.

------

MISCELLANY.


_Fossil Wood in Flint_.--An interesting specimen of this kind, which
is in the Oxford collection, has lately been described and figured in
a paper by Professor Phillips. The nodule of flint, which, when broken
across, disclosed the contained wood, was of an elongated oval form,
and had the uneven and knotted surface which frequently indicates
aggregation on a sponge. The fractured surface showed partial change
of color by watery action from without, and many variations of tint
within, arising from some original differences in the composition of
the mass. The color was, on the whole, somewhat lighter than is common
in flints of the "Upper Chalk." Examined with a lens, it showed traces
of spicula and other organic bodies; but it was impossible to trace
through the mass a distinct spongy structure. The wood lay in the
centre, and the figure of the flint was, in a general sense, conformed
to it, and embraced it equally on all sides. There was a certain
distinctness of color in the flint {564} where it lay in contact with
the wood. The wood was a fragment worn and rounded in some of the
prominent parts, and looked like a small portion of a pine branch
which had been exposed to rough treatment, so as to present a wasted
surface deprived of the bark. It was entirely siliceous, and exhibited
its vegetable structure most perfectly. Traversing the woody fibres
were several short, tubular masses swollen at the end, and marked more
or less plainly with transverse rings. These Professor Phillips
supposed to be flint moulds of cavities left by boring shells,
probably _Teredinidae_. It would appear that these animals must have
begun their operations in a young state on the wood, when it was
reduced to its present form and size; for the moulds which remain in
their holes appear to be quite small at the surface, and to expand
internally. The writer of the paper becomes absolutely poetical in his
speculations upon the remnant of extinct vegetation which he
described. He writes: "Far away from the Cretaceous Sea of Albion,
among the mountains previously uplifted in the West, from which had
flowed the great river of the Wealden, we see a forest of coniferous
trees. Whirled and broken to fragments by the rushing stream which
received their decaying stems, the ruins of the forest reach the sea,
and some few pieces float far from the shore beyond the area of
deposited mud and drifted sand. Attacked by xylophagous mollusks, and
sinking to the ocean bed, one, at least, serves as the nucleus for
organic growth and accretion." Professor Phillips does not here refer
to ordinary accretion; he conceives of the block as first surrounded
by organic matter, and then, when buried in the cretaceous deposit,
serving as a centre of attraction for siliceous solutions, such as
have more than filled to solidity the tissues of sponges.--_Popular
Science Review_.



_The Removal of Neuralgic Pain_.--It has lately been stated in some of
the French journals that Dr. Caminiti, of Messina, has discovered a
remedy for certain forms of neuralgia. A patient of his had long been
suffering from trifacial neuralgia; she could not bear to look at
luminous objects, her eyes were constantly watering, and she was in
constant pain. Blisters, preparations of belladonna, and hydrochlorate
of morphine, friction with tincture of aconite, pills of acetate of
morphine and camphor, subcarbonate of iron, etc., had been employed
with but partial success, or none whatever. At length Dr. Caminiti,
attributing the obstinacy of the affection to the variations of
temperature so frequent in Sicily, adopted the expedient of covering
all the painful parts with a coating of collodion containing a certain
proportion of hydrochlorate of morphine. This treatment was perfectly
successful; the relief was instantaneous and permanent, and the
coating fell off in the course of one or two days.



_The Maltese Fossil Elephant_.--The curious pigmy pachyderm whose
remains were some time ago discovered in the Maltese bone-caves, has
been indefatigably investigated by its original discoverer, Dr. Leith
Adams. This gentleman has recently met with further relics of the
fossil elephant in several new localities. He met with its teeth in
great quantities in a cavern near Crendi. In a gap, evidently at one
time the bed of a torrent, he has discovered the teeth and bones of
thirty more individuals. The skeletons are met with jammed between
large blocks of stone in a way which shows clearly that the carcases
must have been hurled into their present situations by violent floods
or freshets. Dr. Adams has now almost completed the skeleton of this
wonderful little representative of an order which, till this discovery
was recorded, had been commonly termed gigantic. Dr. Adams concludes,
from his numerous inquiries, that the Maltese elephant did not exceed
the height of a small pony.



_The Volcanic District of Chili_.--Some short time since, M. Pissis,
the great explorer of South American geology, transmitted to M. Elie
de Beaumont an elaborate description of the volcanic regions of Chili.
He found the volcano of Chillans again in a state of eruption. This is
a very rare circumstance in the volcanoes of the Andes, where the
eruptions generally succeed each other only at very long intervals.
The present eruption, which is much more extensive than the last one,
commenced toward the end of last November, at a new point, situated
about 200 metres below the summit of the grand cone, the new cone
having toward the end of January attained a height of fifty {565}
metres. The lava, escaping by two apertures near the summit, had
already reached the vast glacier surrounding this massive volcano. The
grand cone, which was covered with snow during the eruption, had the
appearance of being completely bare, yet the snow had not been melted,
but was covered with a great quantity of projected substances, which
formed a layer over the snow of many decimetres in thickness. The
alternation of glaciers with layers of scoriae are frequently met with
in the volcanic cones of the Andes; wherever natural clefts occur, a
great number of these layers may be seen successively superposed. The
volcano of Antuco, visited last year, had been in eruption on a small
scale in 1863. As no solid bodies were being projected at the time of
his visit, M. Pissis was enabled to examine the interior of the
crater, and, favored by a strong westerly wind, to observe it without
being annoyed by the acid vapors which escape in abundance. The
principal column of vapor proceeded from an aperture nearly circular,
being recognized as that through which the lava had escaped. Its
diameter was only from four to five feet.


_Transferring Photographs to Metal for Printing_--Some months since we
called attention to some very promising experiments in this direction,
conducted by Mr. Woodbury, of Manchester. These have resulted in a
process recently patented, which is likely to assume a very important
position in the arts. Mr. Fox Talbot has the merit of first pointing
out the facta upon which it is based. This gentleman, to whom
photographers too often forget how much they owe, discovered in
connection with one of his photo-engraving processes that gelatine
when dissolved in hot water, if mixed with bichromate of potash or
ammonia, dried, and exposed to the action of light, would become
insoluble--a result due to the decomposition of the alkaline
bichromate and the liberation of chromic acid. It will at once,
therefore, be seen that a coat of the bichromated gelatine on a glass
or metal plate placed under a negative and exposed to light, would,
when subjected to the action of hot water, be dissolved away in some
parts, and in other parts unaffected, thus producing a photographic
positive _in relief_. Acting on these facts, Mr. Woodbury takes the
image in relief so produced, and either by mechanical pressure with
some soft metal, such as type metal, or by the usual process of
electrotyping, produces an _intaglio_ impression therefrom. A properly
prepared ink, formed with gelatine and some black or other colored
pigment, is then passed over the plate, with which the impression is
filled up even to the surface. Of course the gradations of _relief_ in
the bichromatic gelatine print form gradations of _depth_ in the metal
intaglio, in which again the ink, being transparent, forms gradations
of blackness proportioned to its varying thicknesses. When this ink is
transferred to paper, delivered as a jelly is from its mold, the
delicate tints, the deepest shadows, and the intermediate gradations
of the photographic negative are faithfully reproduced. In preparing
the relievo, two ounces of gelatine are dissolved in six of water, and
to this is added three-quarters of an ounce of lump sugar. Four ounces
of a solution containing sixty grains of bichromate of ammonia to the
ounce being added to this, the whole is then, while quite warm,
strained. A plate of glass is next covered with a sheet of talc
temporarily fixed by a few drops of water; the talc is coated with the
above, and being sensitive to light, is placed in the dark to set.
This done, the coated talc is removed, a negative laid over the talc,
and exposed to light in the usual way, the only change being that of
causing the light to pass through a glass condenser and fall on it in
a parallel direction. The hot water is then applied as above stated.
In order to insure perfect flatness while the cast is being taken, the
talc side of the film should be again fastened to a plate of glass
with Canada balsam. Mr. Woodbury calculates that with three or four
presses going, these mechanically printed photographs could be
produced at the rate of 120 per hour. Apart from ordinary purposes,
the process can be applied to glass for transparencies; to china for
burning in with enamel colors; to the production, at a cheaper rate,
of porcelain transparencies, etc., etc. At present the prints
exhibited are said to lack clearness; and the high relief of the
extreme darks is also objected to.--_Popular Science Review_.

{566}

NEW PUBLICATIONS.


MEMOIR AND SERMONS OF THE REV. FRANCIS A. BAKER,
Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul. Edited by the Rev. A. F.
Hewit. Crown octavo, 504 pp. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.

Now and then, in our way through this world, we encounter persons of a
peculiar character, so placidly gentle in their manners, so unworldly
in all their ways, that they do not seem fairly to belong to this
world at all. Not that they are melancholy, reserved, and unsocial. On
the contrary, they play their own part in society thoroughly and well;
so well, indeed, so thoroughly do they harmonize in every circle where
they may be thrown, so little they display of that roughness and
rudeness, that froward importunity, that obstinate self-will,
self-conceit, and self-devotion which are so common among us, although
we acknowledge them as blemishes upon our nature--in fine, so much
more perfectly do they wear the garment of humanity than we ourselves,
and so easily, that they seem like better creatures from a better
world, mingling among us like good angels sent hither to exhibit
before our eyes the perfect type of a true manhood. Of course, all men
have their temptations and imperfections, but the ordinary life of
some rare men is such as we have described; so they appear before the
world, and so they live in the memories of their friends. So will
Father Baker long live in many memories. That joyous face, that sweet
smile, that gentle voice, that soft step, have passed away. One may
visit the Paulists still in their convent, and a thousand attractions
lead us there, but we shall miss Father Baker. So quietly, so easily,
so naturally he dropped into his place--and everyplace was his that
charity, and courtesy, and Christian zeal found open--no one could
appreciate how much he did, what large areas he occupied on this scene
of life, until he was taken away. Who will now make up the loss to his
brethren? Who will take his place in the missions? Who will comfort
and sustain that long line of penitents? Who will guide the feet of
those converts? Who will supply in the churches that silver voice, now
soft as the flute, now thrilling like the trumpet, that roused us and
warned us, that pierced our hearts betimes as with a sword, and yet so
kindly that we would not wish to escape unwounded? Our sorrow for such
a loss can find no refuge but in resignation. "The Lord gave, And the
Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

In this volume of memoirs F. Hewit has undertaken a far greater task
than merely to respond to the fond recollection of friends, or to pay
a tribute to the memory of a good priest. He has made a most valuable
contribution to the Catholic literature of this country. One of the
most pregnant periods in the history of our American Church is that
during which Father Baker was either a student or a Protestant
preacher. That aspiration toward Catholicism called Puseyism
(although, in truth, Dr. Pusey was not its chief ruling and guiding
spirit) which swelled in the hearts of so many members of the Church
of England, so called, who struggled for a reformation, or
restoration, until their great water-logged craft, timbered, and
tinkered, and coppered by so many sovereigns and parliaments, shook
and trembled in every joint, and which finally burst forth in a flood
of conversions to the Catholic Church--that memorable movement gave
birth to a parallel agitation here, and with the same results. In no
part of the country perhaps, New York excepted, was the storm greater
than in the diocese of Baltimore, where Father Baker and his
biographer then resided. In these memoirs we see graphically portrayed
the rising, the swelling, and the various fluctuations of that storm.
All this belongs to Catholic history, and Catholics ought to know it.
Episcopalians are glad to forget those days, and no writer of theirs
will dare to recall the stirring scenes which displayed their own
religion in its poverty and helplessness, and drove so many gallant
but tempest-weary souls into the haven of the true Church. Those,
however, who like Father Hewit participated in this revival of true
faith, and had the courage to follow the truth which it {567}
unfolded, have no reason to be ashamed of the history, and he gives it
in life-like colors. This part of his task is charmingly done. We have
here descriptions of Baltimore and its churches, both Anglican and
Catholic; early rambles of the author with Father Baker through the
city, when a secret impulse led them so often to visit the Catholic
sanctuaries, especially that quiet little Sulpician church of St.
Mary's--sweet and holy spot it is indeed; the amusing efforts of the
Protestant bishop and his disciples to ape Catholicism, at least in
its exterior dress, with their long cassocks, crosses, their profound
bows before naked altars draped in broadcloth or velvet, like
drawing-room tables; the very natural wrath of the Low-Churchmen--all
this is placed before us very naturally, and with a life-like
simplicity. Our biographer has had, moreover, the good judgment to
recognize what great questions are involved in the life of a convert
such as Father Baker, and he takes them up directly and boldly. The
pretensions of Anglicanism to be a branch of the universal Church, and
a representative to the world of Catholicism, are exposed with a
straightforward, nervous logic which leaves poor donkey little room to
sport the lion's skin.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of these valuable memoirs is that
which contains a series of letters, written by Father Baker to an
intimate friend, during the last ten years before his conversion.
There are chasms in this correspondence, but they are well filled up
by the explanations of his biographer. We have here a glimpse of his
inner life, and a chart is given us, imperfect, of course, but deeply
interesting, of that pathway by which he was led to the Church. It
commences with the pleasing delusions of a young _Puseyite_ who looked
upon his own insulated communion as the great Church Catholic, and his
little table within the chancel as an altar of sacrifice, and his
cross, and candlesticks, and other clandestine playthings, as
legitimate heirlooms of Anglican devotion. Thus he writes: "Your
brother told me of his intended repairs in his church. I am delighted
to hear it. It will not be long, I hope, before such is the universal
arrangement of our churches. Only one thing will be lacking (if he has
a cross), the candlesticks. I have come to the conclusion that we have
a perfect right to them, for they will come in by the Church
common-law, as the surplice did" (p. 71). By-and-bye comes a change.
"The workings of a mind and heart struggling with doubt and
disquietude, weary of a hollow and unreal system, weaned from all
worldly hopes, detaching itself from all earthly ties, and striving
after truth and after God, become more and more manifest, until at
last, after seven long years, the result is reached." The result is
announced in the following brief and startling communication to his
friend:

  BALTIMORE, April 5, 1858.
  MY DEAR DWIGHT: The decision is made. I have resigned my parish, and
  am about to place myself under instruction preparatory to my being
  received into the Catholic Church. I can write no more at present.
  May God help you. "Your affectionate friend,
    "FRANCIS A. BAKER."

Three years after this, namely, in the summer of 1856, commenced
Father Baker's career as a Catholic priest and missionary, which
continued until his death. During this time his active life was bound
up with that of his associates, first in the Redemptorist order, and
then in the new congregation of St. Paul, formed by himself and his
fellow-missionaries. His biographer, therefore, furnishes us a
description of those protracted spiritual exercises called "Missions,"
with a brief history of their introduction into this country. Then
follows an account of those missions in which Father Baker took part,
or rather it is a portfolio of pictures in which the more serious
labors of the mission are shadowed in the perspective, while gay
groups of various kinds and colors are made to figure in the
foreground. Father Hewit has given himself a great latitude,
accommodating himself to the literary tastes of our day, and his
readers will certainly thank him for it. When these missionary
campaigns were actually going on, it was hard toil all the year round,
and little play; but in retracing their course with us our author
avoids the dry details, which would involve much repetition, and
recalls in preference the sunshiny hours of relaxation, and the
pleasing incidents which befel them on their way and relieved their
labors. Turning away, therefore, boldly from the regular highway of
biography, we are conducted hither and {568} thither in a professional
ramble around the United States. "Follow my leader" is the word, and
down the lanes we go, and over the fences, and into the green fields.
Now we find ourselves in Savannah, chatting with the old negro
preacher as he sits "in the sun, on a little stool, holding his cow by
a rope around her horns, while she nibbles the grass that grows along
the streets." Now we are gazing on the gentleman hermit of Edgefield,
in rags, and bare-footed, fasting on bread and water, and reading the
"Fathers of the Desert," "Brownson's Review," and other ascetical
books good for hermits. Now, again, we mingle with a motley company on
a coasting steamer, while the philosopher and the spiritualist are
discussing the question, "Can God annihilate space?" The next moment
we are at St. Augustine, in the casemates of the old fort or castle of
St. Marco, and take a look at the narrow loop-hole through which,
after a course of rigid fasting, the Seminole chief Wild Cat was
enabled to escape to his home in the everglades. Presently we follow
Father Baker and his comrades to Charleston, where, then, "all was
peace, Sumter solitary and silent, untenanted by a single soldier."
Soon, again, we are in New York, then in New Jersey, then among the
coal mines of Pennsylvania, and then (seriously and not profanely be
it said) we go to Halifax. Kalamazoo, Covington, Quebec, St. Louis,
are visited in their turn, and a host of other places huddled together
in that small area to which these wandering apostles restrict their
labors. We like this seven-year trip with Father Baker and the
Paulists, and we like the free, off-hand, and original way in which F.
Hewit curries us through it, with all his digressions. These
digressions may be sins against the rules of biographical composition,
but if so they are "capital" ones.

The last fifteen pages of the memoirs contain the story of Father
Baker's sickness and death; a sad story, indeed, but sadly sweet to
those who knew him well. Their eyes will be watered with tears as they
read it, but happy tears, such drops as form the rainbow when the sun
smiles on the summer shower. There was a light from heaven on the
death-bed of Father Baker that is stronger than our grief.

The volume contains twenty-nine sermons of Father Baker, chiefly
parochial discourses, with a few others selected from those he was
accustomed to preach on the missions. It is unnecessary for us to make
any comment on these. His eloquence and his style are well known. He
was a model preacher, as well as a model Christian and a model priest.
The art of sacred eloquence is little understood among us, and
therefore we hail this contribution to it with enthusiasm. It will
show the young pulpit orator how the Word of God will admit of
legitimate ornament, which is neither derived from the theatre, the
lecture-room, nor the political rostrum. We never listened to a
preacher of whom it can be more appropriately said: _"How beautiful
upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, and
that preacheth salvation."_

This work is well printed on super-fine paper and handsomely bound. We
have no doubt that the numerous friends of Father Baker will be glad
to obtain this delightful memoir of his life and labors.


THE TEMPORAL MISSION OF THE HOLY GHOST.
By Henry Edward Manning, D.D., Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D.
Appleton & Co.

The Messrs. Appleton have again rendered a great service to the
reading public, especially the Catholic portion of it, by republishing
a standard work in English Catholic literature. The author of this
work, Archbishop Manning, was formerly a dignified clergyman of the
Established Church of England, and one of the leaders of the Oxford
movement. He was the Archdeacon of Chichester, a position in the
English Church next in rank to the episcopate, and conferring a
quasi-episcopal dignity and jurisdiction. He is said to have possessed
in the highest degree the confidence of the English government, and to
have been the person most frequently consulted concerning political
measures relating to the interests of the ecclesiastical
establishment. The _London Weekly Register_ states, on what it claims
to be authentic information, that he was marked for promotion to the
episcopal bench. But, far beyond the distinction conferred on him by
hierarchical position, was the influence which he wielded by the
simple force of his intellectual and moral superiority. His writings,
especially a treatise {569} on "The Unity of the Church," raised him
to the first rank as an advocate of the principles of the High-Church
party. In the first stage of the Oxford movement, he was considered a
more safe and judicious advocate of its principles than Dr. Pusey and
Mr. Newman, and his name and opinions had more weight with the bishops
and the superior clergy on account of the calm, moderate, and
thoroughly ecclesiastical spirit and tone of his character and
writings. After Mr. Newman's conversion, Archdeacon Manning succeeded
in a great measure to his vacant throne, and held it for about six
years. He led the second great movement from Oxford to Rome, and his
conversion, which occurred in 1851, made nearly as great a sensation,
on both sides of the Atlantic, as that of Mr. Newman had done in 1845.
Six months after his reception into the Catholic Church he was
ordained priest. Some time after he joined the "Oblates of St.
Charles," a religious congregation founded by St. Charles Borromeo,
and established a house in London, of which he was appointed the
superior. He received also the appointment of provost of the Cathedral
of Westminster and was decorated by the Holy Father with the title of
a Roman prelate. During the thirteen years of his priesthood he has
been most actively and zealously employed in laboring for the
advancement of the Catholic faith, chiefly by preaching, writing
books, and privately instructing converts from the educated classes,
in which latter work he has been remarkably successful. It is probably
for this reason that, in spite of his remarkable amenity of mind and
character, and the extreme courtesy and gentleness which characterize
his controversial writings, he has been regarded and spoken of by the
English in so hostile a manner, and that his appointment to the see of
Westminster seemed to awaken a feeling of resentment. The mind and
character of Archbishop Manning are sure, however, to command, in the
long run, the respect of all classes of men, however widely they may
differ from him in their theological opinions; and although certain
English susceptibilities may have been unpleasantly irritated by his
elevation, yet the general verdict will agree that the Holy Father has
placed a most worthy successor in the vacant chair of the illustrious
Cardinal Wiseman.

In the book before us the author treats of the office of the Holy
Ghost, as sent by the Father and the Son in the temporal order; that
is, in the order established in time, through which the principal
operation _ab extra_ of the Blessed Trinity is accomplished, viz., the
redemption of the human race. In a very interesting introduction he
takes occasion to explain in part the motives of his conversion, by
pointing out the connection between the Catholic doctrines which he
held as an Anglican and their complements in the full system of
Catholicism. In the body of the work he discusses the office of the
Holy Ghost in relation to the Church, to Reason, to Holy Scripture,
and to the Divine Tradition of the Faith. This includes a very wide
scope of doctrine, embracing revelation, the medium through which
revealed truths are proposed, explicated, and defined; the formation
of Christian theology and philosophy; the relation of faith to
science, and the whole subject of the inspiration and interpretation
of Scripture.

If we may be allowed to express a modest opinion on the subject, we
should say, that the principal merit of Dr. Manning, as a theological
writer, lies in his ability to unfold the analogy of faith, and expose
the _inter-communion_, so to speak, of the great truths of natural and
revealed religion with one another. He shows pre-eminently in his
writings that gift which is denominated in theology "the gift of
intelligence;" that is, the gift by which the mind penetrates the
interior essence of the doctrines of faith, and their interior
relations. His exposition is in the highest degree luminous, and his
style corresponds in this regard to his thought, so that his treatment
of the great doctrines declared by the Church appears like a statement
of self-evident propositions, or a geometrical demonstration in which
the problem is proved by simply describing the figure. We have never
read anything which has given us more satisfaction than his statement
of the four grand fundamental propositions on which the entire fabric
of the Catholic doctrine rests. It appears to our mind that in his
statement of the nature of the evidence by which reason apprehends the
{570} being of God, and the credibility of revelation, and afterward
the real meaning and contents of the revelation, he has marked out the
outlines of a sound and correct philosophy of religion, which is so
much needed, and without which the antagonists of revelation cannot be
adequately refuted on rational principles. We desire to quote one
sentence, short but pregnant, in illustration of our meaning. After
stating that he always uses the word "rationalism" in an ill sense, he
proceeds to say:

  "By rationalism, I do not mean the use of the reason in testing the
  evidence of a revelation alleged to be divine.

  "Again, by rationalism I do not mean the perception of the harmony
  of the divine revelation with the human reason. It is no part of
  reason to believe that which is contrary to reason, and it is not
  rationalism to reject it. As reason is a divine gift equally with
  revelation--the one in nature, the other in grace--discord between
  them is impossible, and harmony an intrinsic necessity. To recognize
  this harmony is a normal and vital operation of the reason under the
  guidance of faith; and the grace of faith elicits an eminent act of
  the reason, its highest and noblest exercise in the fullest
  expansion of its powers." (Introd., p. 4.)

The eliciting of this eminent act of the reason to the utmost possible
extent is at present the great desideratum in theology. It involves
the exhibition of the intrinsic harmony between faith and science;
that is, of the conformity of revelation, not only as to its extrinsic
motives of credibility, but also as to the intrinsic credibility of
its doctrines to reason. It appears to us that Dr. Manning appreciates
the first half of the desideratum more perfectly than the second; and
that, in regard to the second, he appreciates more completely what is
necessary to convince Anglicans and Orthodox Protestants than what is
requisite for rationalists, with whom the chief contest has to be
carried on. The main drift of his reasonings goes to establish, in an
admirable manner, that Christianity is credible, and that Catholicism
is identical with Christianity. Orthodox Protestants already believe
the first, and whatever difficulties they may have on the subject are
easily answered by a lucid statement of the grand external proofs of
that which they have been educated to accept as a first principle. Of
the second, they can be convinced by the exposition of the analogy and
harmony of the special Catholic dogmas which they have not been taught
with those they already believe. Difficulties raised on the side of
human science against the intrinsic credibility of revelation, they
can easily dismiss by reverting to their first principle of the
well-established verity of divine revelation, as resting on extrinsic
evidence. Establish in their minds the infallible authority of the
Church, and they are content to receive a doctrinal exposition of all
that she teaches which is made by way of deduction from revealed
principles, without seeking for a reconciliation of this exposition
with the deductions of purely rational principles. This is no doubt a
very sound and Christian method, and it were to be wished that all
would be willing to follow it. Experience has shown, however, that
those who have been brought up in the more advanced and rationalistic
Protestantism, are with difficulty induced to adopt it. They exact an
answer to the difficulties and objections lying in their minds against
the intrinsic reasonableness of revealed doctrines, before they will
attend to their extrinsic evidence. The exposition of this intrinsic
conformity between revealed and rational principles forms for them a
part of the requisite moral demonstration of the credibility of the
Christian revelation. Nor is it altogether without reason that they
require this. They are obliged to learn a great deal which a
High-Church Anglican has already received from his early education.
They have the same incapacity of apprehending correctly the most
fundamental Catholic verities which the Anglican has of apprehending
certain specific dogmas. Both must have these misapprehensions removed
in the same way, only it is a shorter and more restricted process for
the one than for the other. The account given by our illustrious
author of his own interior history shows that the extrinsic proof of
the claims of the Roman Church to supremacy over all portions of the
Christian fold did not convince him before they were illuminated by
the discovery of the intrinsic relation between this supremacy and the
essential spiritual unity of the Church in {571} Christ. His mind
demanded an apprehension of the _rationale_ of strict, external,
organized unity of administration under one ecclesiastical head. It
was enough for him that this _rationale_ was made evident from
revealed principles, because he already possessed these principles as
a part of his intellectual life. Those who have lost in great measure
the Christian tradition, or who have never had, must find the
_rationale_ further back in their reason.

A Jew, for instance, apprehends the doctrines of the Trinity and the
Incarnation as follows: "God is divided into three portions, one of
which became inclosed in human flesh." A Unitarian will apprehend
these doctrines, and others, such as original sin, atonement, etc., in
some form almost equally repugnant to reason. Many Protestants
apprehend the doctrine of the real presence to be that God is made a
piece of bread, or that a piece of bread is made God. It is evident,
according to the rule laid down by Dr. Manning in the passage above
cited, that it is impossible for the human mind to assent to such
irrational propositions on any extrinsic authority. Even supposing
that a person admits the proofs of divine revelation and the authority
of the Church to be irrefragable, he cannot submit to either while he
believes that they require him to assent to such absurdities. Hence
the necessity of exhibiting the Catholic dogmas in their analogy to
the truths of reason, as a part of the evidence of their credibility.
A large portion of nominal Christians are so completely imbued with
rationalistic and sceptical notions, and so full of misconceptions of
Catholic ideas, that they are persuaded of the validity of a thousand
objections derived from reason, science, history, etc., against the
Catholic religion. They cannot be reached by a line of argument which
lays the principal stress on the extrinsic proof of the Christian
revelation proposed by the Catholic Church, and rules out their
objections and difficulties by the principle of the obedience due to
legitimate authority. It seems to us, for this reason, requisite to
make every effort to exhibit the interior conformity between faith and
reason, theology and science, and to prove that faith is really "an
eminent act of reason." All Catholics must agree in this general
statement, for all the advocates of the Catholic religion have from
the beginning of Christian literature aimed at this result. In regard
to the method of doing it, however, there is some diversity of
opinion. Dr. Newman, for instance, regards the progress of theological
science as a movement from below upward, and from the circumference to
the centre. That is, science is elaborated by the reflection of
individual minds, especially the gifted and learned, on the dogmas of
faith, under the supervision and subject to the judgment of authority.
Dr. Manning, if we understand him correctly, regards the movement as
one which proceeds in a reverse order; he represents the Church as
proceeding in a more direct, positive, and magisterial manner; not by
collecting the accumulated, elaborated, and clarified products of
study, thought, reasoning, and meditation, and giving them her implied
or express approbation, but by continually giving forth utterances of
inspired wisdom received from a divine source. He apprehends that in
adopting the other view, there is danger or subordinating the Ecclesia
Docens to the Ecclesia Discens, and making reason a critic on divine
revelation. Those who adopt the latter view have a tendency to elevate
theological opinions and arguments which have gamed a wide acceptance
to a species of authority binding on the mind and conscience, and
limiting the freedom of investigation. They desire that all arguments
on doctrine should follow the traditional track and merely emulate and
elucidate what has been already taught by the great doctors of
theology. They extend the sphere of authority and infallibility to the
utmost possible limits, and many of them seek to extend the protecting
aegis of the Church over philosophical systems. Those who adopt the
other may often err in an opposite extreme. Yet, we think, they have a
principle which is justified by sound reasons, and by the actual
history of the formation of doctrine and theology in the Church. That
principle is stated by Möhler in these words: "For a time _even a
conception of a dogma_, or an opinion, may be tolerably general,
without, however, becoming an integral portion of a dogma, or a dogma
itself. There are here eternally changing individual forms of an
universal principle which may serve . . . for mastering that universal
principle by way of reflection {572} and speculation." (Symb. Introd.,
p. 11, London Edit.)

On this principle, they seek continually to scrutinize more deeply the
inner essence of dogmatic truths, and to investigate its relation and
conformity to the principles and deductions of philosophy and science.
We think history shows that this is the way in which theology has
actually advanced, and the Catholic Church herself attained more and
more to that reflective consciousness of her own dogmas by which she
is enabled to enunciate from time to time her solemn definitions. St.
Thomas made an immense advance, beyond St. Augustine and the other
fathers. The great Jesuit theologians, Bellarmine, Suarez, and Molina,
struck out a new and bold path in theology. Take, for instance, the
great doctrines of original sin, predestination, and efficacious
grace. The conception of these dogmas, and the scientific explication
of their contents, has been greatly modified in the process of time,
and chiefly through the influence of a few original thinkers. These
have generally met with a strong opposition from the established
schools of theology, and the most strenuous efforts have been made to
decry them as unorthodox and to procure their condemnation by
authority. The names of Catharini, Sfondrati, and Molina will serve as
a sufficient illustration. Yet, their method of stating Christian
doctrine on important points has gained a great predominance in the
Church, and the supreme authority has frequently intervened, not to
enforce these opinions, but to protect those who hold and advocate
them from censure. Not only theologians, but even teachers of natural
science, have brought about great changes in current theological
opinions. For instance, Galileo, and those who followed him, have, by
the force of scientific demonstration, compelled theologians to modify
their interpretation of Scripture where it speaks of natural
phenomena. Geology has caused a similar general change of the method
of interpreting the Scriptural accounts, of the creation and the
deluge. The old Swiss proverb is verified in the perpetual effort to
discover the harmony between faith and science: "God gives us plenty
of nuts to crack, but does not crack them for us." One of these hard
nuts, not yet cracked, is the question concerning the extent of the
influence of inspiration in preserving the sacred writers from error
in matters of purely human knowledge. The well-known opinion of Holden
on this subject, it appears to us, is a little too summarily condemned
by our learned author. The opinions of Bellarmine and Lessius were
severely censured in their time, but nevertheless are now acknowledged
to be tenable and probable. We think the opinion of Holden deserves at
least a very thorough examination and discussion before it is put
under the ban. Dr. Manning admits that "it is evident that Holy
Scripture does not contain a revelation of what are called physical
sciences," and that "no system of chronology is laid down in the
sacred books" (p. 165, Eng. Ed.) Nevertheless the sacred writers speak
of physical phenomena and of chronological dates. The Holy Spirit
allowed them to speak of the former in accordance with their own and
the common opinion even, when that was erroneous. He has allowed their
statements respecting the latter to fall into such inextricable
confusion, through accidental or intentional alterations either in the
Hebrew or Greek text, that we cannot tell with certainty what they
intended to record on the subject. Does not this show that revelation
was not intended to teach chronology? And if it was not, how does it
militate against the Catholic doctrine of inspiration to maintain that
the sacred writers were originally left to follow the best human
authority they could find in chronology as well as in science? If the
end of revelation did not require that an infallible system of dates
should be _preserved_ in the sacred text, why should it have been
given at first? Why are minor historical facts, relating to the
numbers who fell in particular battles, etc., within the cope of
infallibility any more than matters of science and chronology? It
appears to us, that until some authoritative decision is made, this
question is open to discussion, and the opinion of Holden tenable
without prejudice to orthodoxy. Very probably the distinguished author
meant to express simply his judgment as to what is the sounder view of
inspiration, without denying that the other is within the limits of
orthodoxy. However this may be, this is the only instance in which
there is any appearance of {573} severity toward those whose
theological opinions on matters _extra fidem_ differ from his own. It
were to be wished that some other writers, who are disposed to censure
their brethren severely and throw suspicion upon their loyalty to the
Church, on account of theological differences, would imitate the
admirable model placed before them by the illustrious chief of the
English hierarchy. We commend to their attention the following extract
from the _London Weekly Register_, which is a portion of an excellent
and well written review of' Dr. Pusey's _Eirenicon_. When severely
pressed by an able antagonist, one frequently finds himself driven to
defend the Catholic cause upon the common, certain ground where all
Catholics stand together, and to sink domestic controversies. This is
very well; but the same language ought to be used _toward_ opponents
in these domestic controversies, when they are discussed _inter nos_,
which is used _respecting_ them when we are fighting the exterior
enemy. If one takes certain ground because it is available against
non-Catholics, he ought to allow other Catholics to stand upon that
ground at all times in peace without having his fidelity to the Church
called in question. We give the quotations now, without further
comment, and leave the intelligent reader to make his own reflections
on them:

  "The greater part of the remainder of the volume is taken up with
  proving what most Catholics would be ready to admit, that many
  exaggerated things have been said by Catholic writers of name
  concerning the Pope's personal infallibility, on the prerogatives of
  the Blessed Virgin, and on many other subjects. No doubt, viewed
  from without, there is much matter for perplexity in this whole
  subject. We know that many persons, now Catholics, have been kept
  back from seeing the Church's claims on their absolute allegiance,
  because of the hold these exaggerated statements had obtained on
  their imagination, and the repugnance they felt to the aspect of
  doctrine thus presented. This, we think, has arisen partly from
  their having attributed to such statements an authority which they
  did not possess, and from their not distinguishing between matters
  of faith and matters of pious opinion. . . . . Catholics, on the
  other hand, . . know that the Church, while requiring _unitas in
  necesaariis_, is most free in conceding _libertas in dubiis_; . . .
  does not aim at creating a dead and soulless level of uniformity,
  but tolerates great liberty of opinion in matters of opinion," etc.

  "Even though we might ourselves hold that what are commonly called
  the Ultramontane opinions are the more logical, the legitimate
  deduction from Scripture, the true development of patristic
  teaching; and however much we might wish for a union of all
  Christians on this basis, we should nevertheless hold most strongly,
  until otherwise taught, that a reunion on the principles of Bossuet
  would be better than perpetuated schism."

Archbishop Manning's work will, of course, take its place in our
standard Catholic literature, and we earnestly recommend it to all our
readers.



THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. Vol lxxix.

We observe by a notice appended to its last number, for November,
1865, that this long-established periodical has been transferred from
Boston to New York, and will hereafter be conducted under the
editorship of the Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. This is a significant
fact, but precisely what it signifies time only can reveal to the
uninitiated. So far as we can conjecture its significance, the change
of location and editorship bodes a change in its prevailing tone and
spirit. It is, however, announced that the former editors will
co-operate with the new one in the conduct of the Review, which leads
us to suppose that the different schools of Unitarians will be allowed
fair scope for expressing their views in its pages. Those who are
acquainted with the writings of Dr. Bellows may fairly expect that if
he devotes his time and energies to the task of contributing articles
on the great topics which are just now occupying the attention of
Unitarians, there will be a great improvement in the general spirit
and tendency of the Review. It will become less extreme in its
rationalism, and more positively Christian. Dr. Bellows has come the
nearest to Catholic doctrine in some of the fundamental points of
religion of any rationalist with whose writings we have happened to
meet. We shall look with {574} interest for the result of the movement
which has placed this powerful medium for influencing minds and
shaping the course of events in the sphere to which he belongs under
his control. Meanwhile, we have some criticisms to make on certain
portions of the number which closes the Boston series of "The
Examiner."

The first article contains a critique upon Mill's "Examination of the
Philosophy of Hamilton." We are delighted to have that overrated and
inconsistent disseminator of sceptical principles, Sir William
Hamilton, demolished, no matter who does it. One of his pupils, Mr.
Calderwood, has attacked him on the side of positive philosophy,
showing his sceptical tendencies. Mr. Mill has countermined him by a
more subtle scepticism than his own, and has shown the baselessness of
the positive and dogmatic portion of his philosophy. Very good! The
most dangerous of all errors is semi-scepticism. It defends all that
it retains of philosophical and theological truth in such an illogical
manner that it brings it into doubt and discredit with logical
thinkers. It covers up its scepticism so adroitly that the unwary are
deceived and poisoned by it unawares. Let the contradiction between
its two elements be shown, let both be pushed to their legitimate
consequences, and a great advantage is gained. Those who push through
the sceptical principle, like Mr. Mill, bring it to such a patent
absurdity, that every right-thinking mind will reject it at once.
Those who take the other side, are forced upon a better and more solid
basis for both science and faith. The reviewer of Mr. Mill seems to
have given himself up completely to his sway, and to be unable to do
more than echo his thoughts. He gives up transcendentalism, the grand
philosophy of Boston and Cambridge which was to supersede
old-fashioned Christianity and inaugurate a new epoch, as an exploded
and obsolete system. This formidable iron-clad has blown up and gone
under, like the famous _Merrimac_; and it appears that Dr. Brownson
need not have levelled his artillery against her, but might have
waited patiently for her own magazine to be set fire to by her crew.
We are no longer even sure that two and two do not make five, or that
two parallel lines cannot inclose a space! The writer anxiously
endeavors to show that in spite of this Mr. Mill will still allow him
to believe in a God, and in the difference between right and wrong.
Let him, however, if he will persist in believing something, do it
_with trembling_. For, if two and two might, for anything we know,
make five, one might possibly become equal to nothing, and then some
day we may all find ourselves annihilated. Mr. Mill's mine can be
countermined as easily as Sir William Hamilton's; for, when once the
perception of absolute and necessary truth is questioned, there is no
stopping short of nihilism.

The article on Dr. Newman's "_Apologia_" is well written, and shows a
candid and respectful appreciation of the intellectual and moral
greatness of the illustrious convert. The author, however, makes a
sweeping, wholesale charge of having adopted a system of equivocation,
chicanery, and sophistry upon the Jesuits, and the whole Catholic
Church, which has nothing to sustain it but an _on dit_. The charge is
false. But apart from that, in saying it the writer struck a foul
blow, unworthy of an honorable critic. Here is a great question, on
which men's minds are divided, and on which there are most weighty and
important testimonies to be examined. The writer does not profess to
enter the lists for the discussion of it, but merely to criticise the
particular statements of Dr. Newman. If he had anything to say about
it, he should have taken up Dr. Newman's statements and arguments, and
made some rejoinder. It is always a sign that a man is either weak or
disingenuous, when he throws a wholesale assertion of the general
badness of your cause in your face, because you have successfully
defended it in respect to one particular item. It is also very
_schoolboyish_ to repeat continually the stale generalities that one
has read in his books or in the newspapers about the Jesuits. Cannot
our antagonists "_invint some other little bit of truth?_" We are
tired of hearing this one so often.

The writer fairly admits that if any other guide to truth is
necessary, beside the individual reason, that guide must be the
Catholic Church. There is no alternative except to follow your own
light, or be a Roman Catholic. Every man, he thinks, has for himself a
light, which is infallible for himself {575} alone, and only for the
time being. We would like to ask him whether this is a certain,
necessary, and universal truth, true for all times, and every
individual? Is it so? Then by the same process which proves it to be
so, you can establish a complete system of universal truths, and among
them the universal or Catholic principles of the Catholic Church. We
admit the infallible light of reason, excluding his limitations, which
are _ipso facto_ destroyed if he answers our question in the
affirmative. If in the negative, the assertion he has made is true
only for himself, as a kind of provisional arrangement--a sort of dark
lantern borrowed for the evening. It is quite probable that by-and-bye
the sun may rise, and the dim rays of his lantern blend with its
brighter beams. The infallible light within may tell him that he needs
the revelation of God, and the instruction of the Catholic Church.

Decidedly the most valuable article in the number is the one on
"English Schools and Colleges." It is evidently written by one who is
perfectly familiar with the English system of education, and contains
many valuable hints and suggestions for the improvement of our own
colleges. We recommend all those who are engaged in the higher
branches of instruction to procure and read it; and, indeed, the
author would do them a great service by publishing it separately as a
pamphlet, with such additions as he might think suitable to enhance
its value.



OUR FAITH, THE VICTORY; OR, A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL
DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
By Rt. Rev. John McGill, D.D., Bishop of Richmond. Baltimore: Kelly &
Piet. 1865.

This new edition of a work already noticed in our pages is well
printed, and, if the paper were of somewhat finer quality and the
binding a little better, would be a very handsome volume. The
extravagant price of paper at present is a very fair excuse for the
first defect, although we cannot help regretting that a work of such
high merit and permanent value should not be brought out in a style
completely worthy of it. If our copy is a fair specimen, however,
there is no excuse for the binding, which, though handsome enough, is
so loosely and carelessly executed as to endanger already some of the
leaves falling out. We recommend our Catholic publishers to show a
little more of the enterprise and thoroughness requisite in
first-class houses. Mr. O'Shea has given them a good example in Dr.
Brownson's "American Republic," which we trust will not be without a
good effect. We again recommend this admirable work to our readers as
one of the best in the English language on the great topics of which
it treats.


THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny.
By O. A. Brownson, LL.D. 8vo. New York: P. O'Shea. pp. 435. 1866.

This is a work brought out in a very superior style of typography
which does great credit to the enterprise of the young publisher, Mr.
O'Shea, and is worthy of its great subject and its equally great
author. We have only had time to read the preface, which breathes the
exalted philosophical wisdom, the noble, magnanimous spirit, and the
pure Christian faith of the illustrious Catholic publicist and
American patriot who wrote it. A more extended notice of the work
itself will appear in our next number.


HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL
OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OP ELIZABETH.
By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
Vols. III. and IV., 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

The fourth volume of Mr. Froude's work ends with the death of his
hero, Henry VIII. The portion of the history embraced in the
instalment now before us includes, therefore, many picturesque
incidents, which the author narrates with his most charming and
brilliant pen, and with that quick eye for dramatic effect which lends
such a fascination to his style. In a notice of the first and second
volumes we expressed with sufficient clearness our judgment of Mr.
Froude's faults and merits, and we see no reason to modify our
previous statements. He professes to have originally approached his
subject without prejudice or any purpose of running counter {576} to
the commonly received opinions of the world; but he does not deny that
he has come to take a very different view of Henry and his times from
that accepted by the rest of mankind. He has this advantage over his
critics--that, as he makes use of state papers and other manuscript
records which are not accessible to the world at large, it is not
always possible to test the correctness of his quotations or the
justness of his inferences from official documents. We can only say
that in the few instances in which it has been in our power to follow
him in his researches, we have learned to distrust not only his
accuracy but his honesty. We must wait until some other and
dispassionate historian shall have explored the same fields before we
can detect all his misrepresentations and rectify all his errors.


HUMOROUS POEMS.
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, with illustrations by Sol. Eytinge, Jr.
Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865.

A cheap but neat edition, bound in pamphlet form, forming one of a
series of "Companion Poets for the People, illustrated." Dr. Holmes is
our Thomas Hood, in some respects more to our taste than his English
compeer. His humorous poems, though steeped in the double distilled
oil of wit, have no poison in them, and are wholesome and delicious,
when taken laughing in small doses.


THE PRACTICAL DICTATION SPELLING-BOOK,
in which the spelling, pronunciation, meaning, and application of
almost all the irregular words in the English language are taught in a
manner adapted to the comprehension of youth. For the use of schools.
By Edward Mulvany. New York: P. O'Shea.

The plan of this book is excellent, and will, we have no doubt, be
generally adopted in our schools. It has evidently been compiled with
much care and attention. The scholar that masters its various sections
will not be apt to make those ridiculous mistakes in spelling and
writing which are so prevalent m the community. In the next edition
the typographical errors ought to be attended to. The present one
contains too many such errors.



LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, announce for publication at an early
day the following works: A new improved and enlarged edition of
Archbishop Spalding's "Miscellanea;" a new edition of "The Evidences
of Catholicity," by the same author; "The Apostleship of Prayer," a
translation from the French of the Rev. H. Ramière, S.J.; "The Manual
of the Apostleship of Prayer;" new editions of "Ellen Middleton,"
"Lady Bird and Grantly Manor," by Lady Fullerton; and of "Pauline
Seward."

P. O'Shea, New York, announces: "The Life of St. Anthony of Padua;"
"The Life and Miracles of St. Philomena;" "The Christian's Daily
Guide," a new prayer-book; the second volume of "Darras' History of
the Church."

P. Donahoe, Boston, announces the publication of a new illustrated
magazine for the young folk. It is to be called "Spare Hours," and is
to appear early in December. There is room for such a publication, and
we hope it will prove a success, and that Mr. Donahoe will make it
equal to anything of the kind published in this country. A good
magazine for the young has been a want long felt. The subscription
price is two dollars per year.



BOOKS RECEIVED.

From THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY,
New York: "Aurora Floyd," by M. E. Braddon. 12mo., pp 372. "The Ordeal
for Wives." A novel, by the author of "The Morals of Mayfair." 12mo.,
pp. 448. "Rebel Brag and British Bluster: A record of unfulfilled
prophecies, baffled schemes, disappointed hopes, etc., etc. By
Owls-Glass." Paper, pp. 111.

We have also received a neat little pamphlet, of twenty-four pages,
entitled: "Notes on Willson's Readers," by S. S. Haldeman.

From the Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington:
"Diplomatic Correspondence for 1864. Parts 3 and 4."

From CHARLES SCRIBNER, New York: "Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects," a
series of popular lectures. By J. G. Holland. 12mo., pp. 835.

From P. O'SHEA, New York: Numbers 14, 15, and 16 of "Darras' History
of the Church."

From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York: Parts 5, 6, and 7 of
"D'Artaud's Lives of the Popes."

--------

{577}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


VOL. II., NO. 11.--FEBRUARY, 1866.


Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par
des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.


CHARLES II. AND HIS SON, FATHER JAMES STUART.


Of all the Stuarts who reigned over Great Britain only one, if
historians can be trusted, abandoned Anglicanism and became a child of
the Catholic Church. It is true that to the name of James II. that of
his elder brother, Charles II., has sometimes been added; but the
general opinion is that Charles had no religion whatever, and scoffed
at all creeds alike. Documents, however, which have lately been
brought to light, enable us to prove that both the sons of Charles I.
abandoned Protestantism, and that in their persons Catholicism
occupied for more than an twenty years the throne of Henry VIII.

To understand how the religion of Charles II. could remain so long an
historical enigma, we must recall to mind the peculiar circumstances
in which he was placed. Surrounded by fanatical sectaries, who yielded
him a kind of insubordinate obedience, and kept him in continual fear
of the axe by which his unfortunate father had suffered, he felt
constrained to observe in public the forms of worship which he had
solemnly renounced before the altar. And to this we must add another
reason. Far from reforming the disorders of a licentious youth, he
prolonged his excesses to the very eve of death, and his unbridled
passions tended to extinguish in his naturally weak and timid soul all
the energy alike of the man and of the Christian. So, though a
Catholic at heart, Charles never had the courage during his whole
reign to avow his sentiments. Some thought him a zealous Presbyterian;
others, a devoted Anglican. Those who knew him better declared he was
nothing but a bad Protestant, and for that declaration they had more
reason than they supposed.

There is no question that he died in the bosom of the Church; but that
he had returned to it long before he died is a fact which has only
lately {578} been established. After lying for two hundred years among
the dusty archives of a religious order in Rome, a remarkable
correspondence has been brought to light between the sixth successor
of Henry VIII. and Father Paul Oliva, the general of the Jesuits. The
occasion of this singular interchange of letters between Whitehall and
Rome was the presence in the Jesuit house, in the last named city, of
a young novice whom all the fathers, even the general himself,
believed to be a French gentleman. Charles informed Father Oliva who
this young man was. By the right of paternal authority he demanded
that James Stuart, the eldest of his natural sons, should be sent back
to him. He wished to keep him for some time about his person, and by
his assistance to instruct himself more thoroughly in the Catholic
faith, and so finish the work which he had long ago commenced. After
reading these letters, and penetrating the hidden thoughts and mental
tortures of the conscience-stricken king, who knows his duty, and
fears, yet wishes, to fulfil it; a crowned slave, bearing beneath his
royal robes a yoke of iron, and sighing in vain for liberty to believe
and worship after the dictates of his heart, we cannot resist the
conclusion that Charles II. was neither a deist nor a waverer; he was
a Catholic--a timid and a bad one, if you will but firm in his
convictions.

But, you may say, a conversion such as this is not much for the Church
to brag of. Here you have a prince born a heretic, and becoming a
Catholic so quietly that his people know nothing about it. The Church
declares that faith without works is dead. Well, it is true that
Charles's life was in perpetual discord with his faith. We certainly
do not propose our neophyte as a model penitent; it is enough if the
reasons which led to his conversion afford his countrymen another
proof of the divine origin of Catholicism. It is surely a startling
circumstance that this slave to voluptuousness should turn his back
upon the easy-going Anglican Church, so complacent even to the
monstrous passions of Henry VIII., and choose the most inflexible of
all Christian communions, the one which preferred losing her hold upon
the glorious and powerful Island of Saints to conniving at adultery;
which defended the innocent Catharine of Aragon against her ferocious
spouse, and might, one hundred and forty years later, have protected
Catharine of Portugal also had a royal caprice again attempted to
displace a virtuous queen in order to raise a vicious favorite to the
throne of England. This monarch, timid by nature, and surrounded by
sanguinary fanatics, knew that the bare accusation of "popery" would
be enough to stir up his whole kingdom against him; yet he did not
hesitate to become a "papist"--he upon whom the laws conferred the
title, so much coveted by his predecessors, of supreme head of the
Established Church. Do we not see in this a signal triumph of God over
man, of truth over falsehood?

Should it be asked why this correspondence has remained so long
unpublished, we answer that it was by its nature strictly
confidential. So long, too, as the Stuarts maintained their
pretensions to the English crown the publication of such letters would
have seriously compromised them. Then came the suppression of the
society, after which it would appear that all trace of the
correspondence was lost, until it was recently brought to light by the
learned Father Boero.   [Footnote 87] The original letters form part
of a collection of autograph manuscripts of Charles II., Father Paul
Oliva, Christina of Sweden, James II., the queen-mother, Henrietta of
France, Catharine of Braganza, and other celebrated persons of the
time. The letters of Charles are impressed with the Royal seal.

  [Footnote 87: _Istoria della conversione alla Chi?? Cattolica di
  Carlo II., Re d'Inghilterra, caveta da ???trure autentiche ed
  originali_.]

{579}

II.

It is easy enough to mention circumstances which would naturally have
prepossessed Charles in favor of the Church. In the first place, he
was indebted for his life, after the defeat of Worcester, almost
entirely to Catholics, who at great risk to themselves concealed him
from the soldiers of Cromwell and enabled him to escape to France. In
Paris he must have seen many things to influence his religious
sentiments. The most profound impression, however, was made upon him
by the venerable M. Olier, the founder of St. Sulpice. "God opened to
him," says his biographer, the Abbé Faillon, "the English monarch's
heart. In the new conferences which he had with this prince, he showed
him the beauty and truth of the Catholic religion with so much grace,
force, and energy that Charles II. was constrained to acknowledge
afterward to one of his friends that although many distinguished
persons had spoken to him about these matters, there was none of them
who had enlightened him so much as M. Olier; that in his words he
recognized and felt an extraordinary virtue; in fine, that he had
fully satisfied him. There can be little doubt that M. Olier had
persuaded the king to abjure his errors and to take the first step
toward a return into the bosom of the Church; that is to say, by
sending a secret abjuration to the Pope, who, as has been said above,
required nothing more. For, in the first place, it was rumored all
through France and England that Charles had sent to the Pope a secret
abjuration; and beside, M. de Bretonvilliers, after mentioning that
his majesty recognized and felt an extraordinary virtue in his
conversations with M. Olier on the truth of the Catholic religion,
adds these significant words: 'At present, I can say no more.' This
reticence naturally leads us to infer that Charles had taken some step
toward becoming a Catholic which it was not then prudent to make
known."

III.

Two years after his restoration to the throne, and under the
influence, probably, of the queen-mother and the queen-consort, he
resolved to open with the Holy See a negotiation which he hoped might
lead to the restoration of the English people to religious unity. It
was necessary to proceed with the greatest caution. He chose for his
envoy Sir Richard Bellings--the same to whom he afterward intrusted
the most secret and delicate of his missions to the court of Louis
XIV. Sir Richard set out for Italy under pretext of attending to
affairs of his own; and as soon as he could do so safely, he quietly
went to Rome. His first business was to ask for a cardinal's hat for
Louis Stuart, duke of Richmond and Lennox, better known under the name
of the Abbé d'Aubigny. He was a near relative of the king's, and had
been summoned from Paris to fulfil the functions of grand almoner to
Queen Catharine. Charles wished to place under his charge the affairs
of the Church in Great Britain. A memoir on this subject was drawn up
for Bellings by Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and copied by Clarendon's
son. It is dated October 25, 1662. Each leaf is authenticated by the
royal signature. A minute of the instructions given by Charles to his
ambassador is preserved at Rome. It can only have been drawn up by Sir
Richard himself:

  "1. His majesty solicits this promotion for the advantage of his
  kingdom, and in order to give the Catholic party an authorized
  chief, intimately united with the sovereign by the ties of blood,
  and upon whom he can depend securely under all circumstances. The
  king, to quote his own words, sees in the elevation of the Abbé
  d'Aubigny to the cardinalship an essential condition to the good
  understanding which ought to exist between {580} the Pope and his
  majesty; he deems this a measure of the last importance for the
  welfare of his Roman Catholic subjects throughout his dominions.'

  "2. The cardinal once appointed, his majesty engages to support him
  in the style which his dignity and his relationship to the sovereign
  demand."

The Holy Father summoned a secret congregation of cardinals to
consider the matter, and also appointed a council of theologians, who
were instructed to draw up their opinion in a careful report. In this
document we find a careful resume of the "Benefits which the Catholics
of England have received from his Britannic majesty."' They approved
of the proposed appointment; but unfortunately the Abbé d'Aubigny was
given to the errors of the Port Royalists, and the Pope felt compelled
to refuse Charles's request. He refused, however, with so much
delicacy, and gave such good reasons for the refusal, that the king,
instead of breaking off intercourse with the Holy See, as he had
threatened to do, ordered Bellings to proceed to the second object of
his mission. This was nothing less than the conversion of the king and
the reconciliation of his realms to the Roman Church.


IV.

Sir Richard was instructed to treat directly with the Holy Father, and
the number of counsellors whom the Pope might call to his assistance
was to be strictly limited. On the side of the English there is every
reason to believe that nobody was in the secret except the king, the
two queens, the envoy, and the person--whoever he may have been--who
drew up the document which we shall presently have occasion to quote.
Clarendon certainly knew nothing about it; he was ready to assist in
the promotion of d'Aubigny; but he was a stern enemy of the Catholics,
and even before Sir Richard's return we find him opposing in
parliament a proposal of his sovereign's for granting liberty of
conscience to dissenters.

There is no doubt that Charles II. himself made known to the Holy
Father his intention of becoming a Catholic and re-establishing
Catholicism as an authorized form of worship in his kingdom. There is,
moreover, no doubt that Pope Alexander VII. replied to him. This is
all that we can now affirm with certainty; and we should not have
known even this if the king had not mentioned it incidentally in one
of his letters to Father Paul Oliva.

The absence of these two letters is much to be regretted; but we have
fortunately at hand a document of still greater value. This is the
profession of faith presented in the name of the English monarch as
the basis of a concordat:

  "Proposition on the part of Charles II., king of Great Britain, for
  the much-to-be-desired reunion of his three kingdoms of England,
  Scotland, and Ireland with the apostolic and Roman see.

  "His majesty, the king, and all who aspire to the unity of the
  Catholic Church, will accept the profession of faith drawn up by
  Pope Pius IV. after the decisions of the Council of Trent, and with
  it all the other decrees respecting faith or discipline enacted
  either by the aforesaid council or by any other general council, as
  well as the decisions of the last two pontiffs in the affair of
  Jansenius; reserving to himself, however, as is done in France and
  some other places, certain special rights and certain customs which
  usage has sanctioned in our own particular Church. These various
  decrees are to be understood with the restrictions which other
  oecumenical councils have, prudently no doubt and after mature
  consideration, imposed upon them, as the aforesaid profession of
  faith proves. Whence it follows that, except within these limits,
  nothing may henceforth be imposed upon or prescribed to either the
  king or any of his Catholic subjects; and {581} that it shall not be
  imputed to them as a crime or a favoring of heresy should they have
  occasion to declare their mind upon matters of this sort. Under
  these conditions his majesty is ready to break at once with all
  Protestant societies and all sects separated from the Roman Church,
  and to withdraw from their communion. He declares his detestation in
  particular of the schism and deplorable heresies originated by
  Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Memnon, Socinus, Browin, and other equally
  perverse sectaries. Better than any one else, he knows by sad
  experience in his own kingdom what a deluge of calamities, what
  revolutions, what a Babel-confusion this pretended Reformation
  (which might better be called a _de_formation) has entailed in
  politics as well as in religion; so much so that these three
  kingdoms, and especially England, are, in both secular and sacred
  affairs, nothing but a theatre of frightful disturbances, which hold
  the entire world chained with attention and dismay."

This profession of faith is followed by twenty-four "notes" or
"declarations," in which the king indicates more in detail the course
which he proposes to follow in his difficult task of religious
restoration. The reconciliation with Rome once effected, he would
grant the Protestants complete toleration. The hierarchy should be
re-established as it was in the time of Henry VIII., before the
schism. Parishes should be established and seminaries founded. The
king also described in what manner he would arrange for the
introduction of the Roman liturgy, the preaching of the divine word,
the teaching of the catechism, the administration of the sacraments,
the celebration of provincial synods, and the admission of the
religious orders of both sexes into Great Britain; he spoke of the
festivals, beside Sunday, which it would be possible to make days of
obligation, and of the precautions which ought to be adopted in
bringing the people back to the veneration of the saints and their
relics.

It may be suggested that Charles was not sincere; but it is difficult
to understand what he could have hoped to gain by these
representations, made in strictest confidence to the Pope, if he did
not really intend to return to the bosom of the Church and hope to
bring his people with him. Lingard says that he used to feign an
inclination toward Catholicism, in view of the subsidies which he
received from the king of France; but we must remember that at this
time it was Louis who made all the overtures and evinced all the
eagerness for an alliance between the two countries, and that Charles
held back. Louis XIV. was ready to pay almost any price for his
neighbor's friendship, and Charles was under no necessity of periling
his crown and arousing all the fanaticism of his subjects in order to
obtain what Louis was so ready to give him.

Just about the time of the departure of Sir Richard Bellings for Italy
Charles made an attempt to obtain from parliament an act of indulgence
in favor of the Presbyterians, Independents, and Roman Catholics. He
met with the most violent resistance, even from his own ministers. Far
from carrying this equitable measure, he soon found himself compelled,
by the clamors of parliament, to issue a proclamation ordering all
Catholic priests to leave the country under penalty of death.
Disheartened by this ignominious defeat, he seems to have rushed more
madly than ever into debaucheries, and stifled the voice of conscience
until a providential incident, in 1668, aroused his better feelings.

V.

About the month of April, 1668, the king received a piece of news
which awakened in his heart at once remorse and hope. A natural son
whom he loved tenderly--a young man of great {582} intelligence and
acquirements--had abjured Protestantism and consecrated himself to
God's service in the Society of Jesus. This personage, who was
destined to play a part in Charles's conversion as important as it was
mysterious, is not unknown to our readers alone: no memoir of the time
makes any mention of him. We must go back a little way to find out who
he was.

The son of Lucy Walters, the intriguing and factious Duke of Monmouth,
born in 1649, is generally regarded as the first fruit of Charles's
illicit amours; but this is a mistake. It was not in the Netherlands,
nor in Paris, but in the isle of Jersey, that the heir to the English
crown began the career of licentiousness which ultimately proved so
disastrous to his reign. This little island, rich and populous, had
always remained faithful to the royal house; and it was probably with
the hope of obtaining succor for the royal cause that Charles, while
Prince of Wales, went there in 1647. But unfortunately he encountered,
under the roof of one of the most illustrious, families of Great
Britain, a temptation which extinguished all his warlike ardor. The
young soldier reposed in the gardens of Armida, and gave not a thought
to the terrible morrow which might follow his careless sleep.
[Footnote 88]

  [Footnote 88: In the multiplicity of more important events, English
  historians have lost site of this abortive Jersey expedition; but if
  they do not confirm, they at least do not contradict our statement.
  After the battle of Naseby, Prince Charles fled to the Scilly Isles
  and afterward to Jersey. The next three years he passed chiefly at
  the Hague. He does not reappear in history until 1648, when he made
  a fruitless demonstration with a royalist fleet at the mouth of the
  Thames. In the meanwhile he used to pay occasional visits to his
  mother at Paris, and what more likely than at her instigation he
  should have made a trip to Jersey in the hope of doing something for
  his father?]

The child born of this connection, who afterward was called James
Stuart, was taken, in infancy, we know not by what name, to the
continent. He was educated by the best masters in France and Holland,
and as he grew up manifested great quickness of intellect, together
with the most estimable qualities of the heart. Charles was proud of
him and loved him; but when he came to the throne he durst not
publicly recognize him. He was afraid of his parliament and afraid of
the factions which encompassed him. Beside, the child's mother was
still living, and no doubt had obtained from the monarch a promise not
to compromise the honor of her noble family by acknowledging the son
until there should no longer be any danger of her being suspected as
the mother. So, when the young man, then about eighteen years of age,
was summoned to London in 1665, he was commanded to present himself
under the name of Jacques de la Cloche du Bourg de Jersey; and though
he received from his father the most unequivocal marks of affection,
he soon grew tired of his false position, and begged permission to
return to the continent and resume his studies. Charles reluctantly
consented. He gave his son at parting a document written in French
with his own hand and impressed with the royal seal, which is still
preserved at the Gesù in Rome. It runs thus:

  "Charles, par la grâce de Dieu Roy d'Angleterre, de France, d'Ecosse
  et d'Hibernie, confessons et tenons pour nostre fils naturel le
  sieur Jacques Stuart qui, par nostre ordre et commandement a vescu
  en France et auttres pays jusques à mil six cent soixante cinq où
  nous avons daigné prendre soin de Luy. Depuis, la même année,
  s'étant treuvé à Londres de nostre volonté expresse et pour raison.
  Luy avons commandé de vivre sous auttre nom encore, sçavoir, de la
  Cloche du Bourg de Jarzais.  [Footnote 89] Auquel, pour raisons
  importantes qui regardent la paix du Royaume que nous avons toujours
  recherchée, deffendons de parler qu' après nostre mort [_i.e._, of
  the secret of his birth]. En ce temps, Luy soit lors permis de
  présenter au parlement cette nostre {583} déclaration que, de plein
  gré et avec équité, nous Luy donnons à sa requeste, et en sa langue,
  pour lui oster occasion de la monstrer à qui que ce soit pour en
  avoir l'interpretation.--A Wthall, le 27 de septembre 1665. Escry et
  signé de nostre main, et cacheté du cachet ordinaire de nos lettres
  sans auttre façon.
     L. S.  CHARLES."

  [Footnote 89: Charles wrote indifferently Jarzais, Jersais, or
  Jersé]

(TRANSLATION.)

  We Charles, by the grace of God king of England, France, Scotland,
  and Ireland, acknowledge and hold as our natural son Sir James
  Stuart, who by our order and commandment has lived up to the year
  1665 in France and other countries, where we have seen fit to take
  care of him. Thence after, on the same year, he resided in London by
  our express will and for good reasons, we having commanded him to
  live under a new name, to wit, La Cloche du Bourg de Jarzais. Whom,
  however, for important reasons touching the peace of the realm,
  whereof we are ever regardful, we forbid to speak _concerning the
  secret of does birth_ until after our death. At that time be it then
  permitted him to present to parliament this our declaration, which
  of our own free will and in justice we grant him at his request and
  in his language, in order to remove all occasion of his exhibiting
  it to any one whatsoever for its better interpretation. At
  Whitehall, the 27th of September, 1665. Written and signed by our
  hand and sealed with the ordinary seal of our letters, without other
  fashion.
       L. S. CHARLES


With this acknowledgment of parentage, the young man returned to the
Netherlands; but he soon reflected that in the event of his father's
death the document was not likely to be of much service to him, for it
mentioned no provision for his support. The English Parliament would
be very apt, on one pretext or another, to refuse him any sum
whatever. So he prevailed upon Charles to give him another paper,
assigning to him £500 a year, "subject to the good pleasure of the
next successor to the crown and of the Parliament." Coupled with this
legacy were the conditions that James should live in London and remain
faithful to the Anglican Church. This document, dated Feb. 7, 1667, is
also preserved at the Gesù:

  "Charles, by the grace of God king of England, France, Scotland, and
  Ireland. The Sieur James Stuart, whom we have heretofore recognized
  as our natural son, living under the name of La Cloche--having
  represented to us that, should he survive our death, he would be
  without means of support, if not recognized by parliament, beside
  other difficulties which might occur in this affair; for this
  reason, bending to his entreaties, we have seen good to assign him
  and to leave him from our domain, if such be the good pleasure of
  our successor to the crown and of our parliament, the sum of £500
  sterling per annum. Which legacy it will not be lawful for him to
  enjoy, except in so far as he shall reside in London, living
  according to the religion of his fathers and the Anglican liturgy.

  At Whitehall, the 7th Feb. 1667. Written and sealed by our proper
  hand.
       L. S. CHARLES"

When the king imposed the second condition he little imagined that his
son was already on the point of abandoning the Established Church; but
so it was; and on the 29th of the next July he was received into the
Catholic communion at Hamburg. Very soon afterward he determined to
enter the Society of Jesus; but there was one great obstacle in the
way. He could not be received without telling the secret of his birth,
for illegitimacy was an impediment from which it was necessary to
obtain a dispensation. And if he told it, with no other {584} proof to
show than the two papers just cited, which it would be impossible for
an Italian Jesuit to verify, who would believe him? In this perplexity
he had recourse to the ex-queen Christina of Sweden, who was then at
Hamburg. There was a dash of romance in the story which pleased the
eccentric princess; she was well acquainted personally with Charles
II., and having obtained from him a confirmation of all that James
Stuart had told her, she gave the young man a letter which secured a
ready belief for the account that he gave of himself at Rome. This
letter, written in Latin, is also among the documents lately
discovered at the Gesù:

  "James Stuart, who was born in the isle of Jersey, and of his own
  free will assumed the name of La Cloche du Bourg, is the natural son
  of Charles II., king of England, and so much has been secretly
  confirmed to us by his Britannic majesty. Renouncing the sect of
  Calvin, to which his birth and education had up to this time
  attached him, he joined the Holy Roman Church at Hamburg July 29,
  1667. In faith of which, contrary to our custom, we have written by
  our own hand this declaration, to the end that James Stuart can, in
  an extraordinary circumstance, open his conscience entirely to his
  confessor and receive from him the necessary counsels for the
  salvation of his soul.
      L. S. CHRISTINA ALEXANDRA."

James Stuart was accordingly received into the Society in April, 1668,
under the name of Jacques de la Cloche. The inventory of his personal
effects, to which the novice, according to custom, affixed his
signature on entering, gives us a curious idea of the wardrobe of a
king's son. Here it is: "One hat; one ecclesiastical habit and mantle;
one pair of breeches and a waistcoat of black cloth; one vest trimmed
with yellow fur; a sword-belt of green leather; white silk stockings;
two shirts and one undershirt; one pair of linen drawers," etc.


VI.

It was on the 11th day of April, 1668, that James Stuart commenced his
religious life. On the 23d of April, 1668, the Marquis de Ravigny, the
French ambassador at London, sent to the court of St. Germain an
account of a conversation he had just had with Charles II. The King of
England had said to him: "I am very desirous of effecting a strong
union with France, but I must have help; for there are many people
about me who are not of that way of thinking. As to myself, I have
always been so disposed, as you know better than anybody..." Charles,
after having repeated these words several times, had added more than
once--"Leave it to me. I will speak with you about it before many
days." M. de Ravigny, whose efforts toward the political unity of the
two cabinets had, up to this time, been without result, received the
overture with apparent coldness. Louis XIV. was equally incredulous,
and M. de Lionne replied to the representative of France in England in
these terms: "The king is of the opinion that your response was
exceedingly judicious, when the King of Great Britain signified his
desire of making a strong alliance with him, and hinted to you to make
advances. His majesty has already made so many, and has been so poorly
responded to, when requested to enter into the matter, that the
prudence and dignity of his majesty forbid his committing himself
further. . . ."

Charles waited to receive the propositions of the court of St.
Germain; but the court of St. Germain was dumb. Driven to declare
himself, therefore, he renewed the assurances he had already given,
and the letter of the French ambassador, bearing date of May 21, 1668,
describes the interview, and closes with these significant words: "It
looks as though this will {585} come to something; for this reason I
most humbly beg your majesty to send further instructions."

Thus, only a few days after the humble novice of the Quirinal had
assumed the robes of his order, Charles and Louis were busily engaged
in cementing that family pact which broke the Triple Alliance, and
delayed, for many years, the formation of that formidable coalition
under which France finally succumbed. Are we too bold in suspecting
something more than a simple coincidence in the simultaneousness of
these two events?

Hume, in his "History of the House of Stuart," attributes the action
of the English monarch to his admiration for the gaiety, wit, and
elegance of the French court. Let those who will, accept this
frivolous explanation! The curious conjuncture of dates, together with
a vast assemblage of other facts looking in the same direction, have
convinced us that the true motive of this sudden change was the
religions convictions of the king. The conscience of Charles had long
been troubled. Even before assuming the crown, he had resolved to
introduce larger religious liberty into the realm. Baffled in all his
attempts, completely, disconcerted, he learns one day that his eldest
son--a mind thoroughly serious and earnest--had separated himself
utterly from the errors of Protestantism, and had deliberately devoted
himself to a life of prayer, of silence, and of mortification. Then
Charles took heart, and convinced that he could not attain his object
without the help of France, he resolutely set aside all the obstacles
of national sentiment, and entered at once upon the completion of the
compact. While this was pending, the British sovereign was employed,
for the three months which followed the entrance of his son upon the
novitiate of the Jesuits, in strengthening himself against the
insurrections and the civil war to which his conversion was certain to
give rise. It is not, however, by political precautions alone that
heresy is made to yield to the true faith. There must also be the
discreet theologian, the wise master, the spiritual guide--assistance
difficult to avail one's self of when Anglican intolerance watches
menacingly at the gates of all the royal palaces! Such a guide, such
an instrument of the divine pity, the prince felt that he possessed
to-day in the novice of St. André. Resuming the dress of a gentleman,
James Stuart, known by nobody at court, might readily obtain access to
the king without exciting suspicion. To him Charles would joyfully
become a disciple, joyfully become a penitent; from him he could
receive the necessary religious instruction and absolution for his
sins. In concert with the two queens, he therefore decided to write to
the father-general of the Jesuits and request the immediate return of
the novice to England. The prince wrote to Rome five autograph
letters, all in French; four to P. Oliva, one to his son. The
different envelopes have perfectly preserved the stamp of the royal
seal. It is for the reader now to determine whether the author of
these pages--so truthful, so ingenuous--was, as has been a thousand
times asserted, only an accomplished cheat. It is for the reader to
declare whether the brother of James II. merits those odious epithets
of deist and atheist with which Protestantism has so freely
bespattered him, doubtless in recompense for the scorn and aversion
which Charles always felt in his deepest heart for the Establishment
of Henry VIII.

Scarcely five months had elapsed since James Stuart began to practise
the rules of St. Ignatius, when a stranger placed in the hands of Paul
Oliva, father-general of the order, the following letter:

  TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS:

  REVEREND FATHER,--We write this to your reverence as to a person
  whom we believe to be most prudent and judicious, inasmuch as the
  {586} principal charge which you have of an institute so famous will
  not permit us to think otherwise. We address you in French, a
  language common to all persons of quality, wherewith we believe that
  your reverence is not unacquainted, preferring this language to bad
  Latin, in which we could with difficulty write so as to be
  understood; it being our principal aim in this that no Englishman
  may intrude himself as a translator--a thing which would otherwise
  be exceedingly prejudicial to us, for the reason that we wish this
  letter to be a secret between you and us.

  And to commence, your reverence ought to know that for a long time,
  amid the embarrassments of the crown, we had prayed God to grant us
  the opportunity of finding at least one person in our realm in whom
  we could confide touching the affair of our salvation without giving
  our court grounds for suspecting that we are Catholic. And although
  there have been here a multitude of priests, both in the service of
  the queen (a portion of whom have dwelt in our palace of St. James
  and at Somerset House) and also scattered throughout our whole city
  of London; nevertheless we could not avail ourselves of any because
  of the suspicion we should give to our court by conversation with
  such people, who, whatever disguises of clothing they may assume,
  are always known for what they are. Yet despite so many
  difficulties, it seems as if the providence of God had provided for
  and seconded our desires, by causing to be born to us in the
  Catholic religion a son to whom alone we could confide ourselves in
  an affair so delicate. And although many persons, perhaps better
  versed than himself in the mysteries of the Catholic religion, might
  be found for our service in this exigency; nevertheless we could not
  make use of others as well as of him, who would be always capable of
  administering to us in secret the sacraments of the confession and
  of the communion which we desire to receive as soon as possible.

  This our son is a young gentleman whom we know you have received
  with you at Rome under the name of the Sieur La Cloche de Jersay,
  for whom we have always had a peculiar tenderness, as much because
  he was born to us when we were scarcely sixteen or seventeen years
  old, of a young lady of the highest rank in our realm (rather from
  the frailty of our early youth than from a bad heart), as also
  because of the excellent nature we have ever remarked in him and of
  that eminence in learning wherein he has advanced through our means.
  For this makes us all the more esteem his conversion to the Catholic
  religion, since we know that he has been led to it through judgment,
  reason, and knowledge. Many important reasons touching the peace of
  our realm have prevented us, up to the present time, from publicly
  recognizing him as our son; but this will be for a brief time only,
  because we presently design to make a kind of public recognition of
  him ere many years, having, however, provided him, in 1665, with the
  necessary assurances, in case we should come to die, so that he may
  make use of them in due time and place. And as he is not known here
  in anywise, saving by the queens--this affair having been managed
  with great secresy--we could in all safety converse with him, and
  exercise in secret the mysteries of the Catholic religion, without
  exciting in any one of our court the suspicion that we are Catholic,
  which we could not do with any other missionary; in addition to the
  confidence that we should have in opening to him our conscience in
  all freedom and sincerity as to a part of ourselves. Thus we see
  that, although he was born in our tender youth against the
  ordinances of God, the same God has seen fit to preserve him for our
  salvation, since it pertains to himself alone to know how to bring
  good out of evil.

  We believe that the need we have {587} of him has been sufficiently
  explained to your reverence, and if your reverence write us, you
  will intrust your letters to our son alone, when he comes to us. For
  although we do not doubt but that you would find secret ways enough to
  do it, nevertheless you would disoblige us excessively by intrusting
  your letters to anybody but to this our son, for many considerable
  reasons whereof your reverence can conjecture apart, but especially
  from the mischief which it would bring upon us, as we were subjected
  to great hazard on account of our receiving a letter which we had from
  Rome in reply to one we had written to the deceased Pope; and although
  it was presented to us with all necessary circumspection and by a
  Catholic person, nevertheless it could not be managed with
  sufficient prudence to prevent the suspicion of our most
  keen-sighted courtiers. But having found means to stifle the
  suspicion which was abroad respecting our being Catholic, we were
  obliged, through fear of renewing it in men's minds, to consent on
  several occasions to many things that turned to the disadvantage of
  numerous Catholics in our kingdom of Ireland. This is the reason
  why--although we had written with all possible secresy to His
  Holiness respecting our conversion to the Catholic Church at the
  same time that we besought His Holiness to make our very dear
  cousin, my Lord d'Aubigny, a cardinal, whereof we were refused for
  good reasons--we have not been able to pursue our point.

  And although the Queen of Sweden is very wise and discreet,
  nevertheless it is enough that she is a woman to lead us to fear
  that she cannot keep a secret, and, as she believes that she alone
  knows the origin of our well-beloved son, we have written her again
  and have confirmed her in that opinion. This is done in order that
  your reverence shall manifest to her, upon occasion, that you have
  no knowledge of his birth, if she should inquire of you. As also, we
  pray your reverence not to make known to her or to anybody else, be
  it whom it may, the design we have of becoming Catholic, or that we
  send for our son for this object. If the Queen of Sweden asks where
  he is gone, your reverence will find some pretext, either that he is
  gone on a mission to our island of Jersey or to some other part of
  our realm, or still another pretext, until we make our desires and
  wishes in this matter again known to you.

  We pray you, then, to send to us as soon as possible our very dear
  and well-beloved son--that is to say, at the first time that this
  season or the next permit. We believe that your reverence is too
  zealous for the salvation of souls, and has too much respect for
  crowned heads, not to accord to us a request so just. We had had
  some thought of writing to His Holiness and disclosing to him what
  we have in soul, and by the same means to pray him to send our son
  to us. But we have believed that it would be sufficient for us this
  time to make a declaration to your reverence, reserving for another
  occasion--which we shall bring to pass as soon as possible--the
  writing and declaring ourselves to the Pope by a very secret courier
  sent post by us.

  If our dear and well-beloved son, is not a priest, and if he cannot
  become one without making publicly known his true name and origin,
  or from other circumstances (which we say because we do not know
  your mode of acting in these matters), in that case let him rather
  not be made a priest at Rome than that he communicate aught of what
  he is to the bishops or priests; but let him pass through Paris and
  present himself to our very dear cousin the King of France, or, if
  he prefer, to our very honored sister the Duchess d'Orleans, to whom
  he can make manifest on our part our good desire in all safety. They
  know well enough what is the wish of our soul, and will readily
  recognize our very dear and well-beloved son by the tokens which we
  gave to him in London in 1665, and, perceiving that he is Catholic,
  they would endeavor {588} and would be able to make him a priest
  without any one's knowing what he is, and with all possible secresy
  as we believe. If, however, without so many crooks and turns, he
  prefer to come to us without being a priest--which is, perhaps, the
  better course--then we would do the same thing by means of the queen
  our very honored mother, or of the queen-consort, who would have at
  their service bishops, missionaries, or others to perform the
  ceremony without any one's perceiving or knowing anything about it.
  We say this in the event of his encountering difficulties in
  effecting this at Rome.

  And although we wish our very dear son to come to us, it is,
  nevertheless, not our design to draw him away from your society. On
  the contrary, we should rejoice if he remain in it all his life if
  God inspire him to that vocation, and, after having put our
  conscience in order by his means, we shall not prevent him from
  returning to Rome, to live according to the society to which he has
  attached himself; and even during the time that he shall be at our
  service we shall not prevent him, if he so will, from pursuing, with
  those of your body that are in our realm, the life commenced in
  conformity with the religious vocation which he has embraced,
  provided that it be not in London, but in some city or village not
  far off from our city of London, to the end that when we need him he
  can come with the greatest promptitude and facility. And the reason
  why we do not wish him to reside in London among your people is
  because of the danger of his being suspected as a Jesuit, from his
  being seen to enter those places which are the residences of your
  people, already too well known by many--a thing that would turn to
  our prejudice. Now we are well content, after being absolved by him
  of heresy, and after we are reconciled to God and to the Church,
  that he return to Rome to lead the religious life which he has
  begun, awaiting further orders from us--a scheme which seems to us
  quite to the point, and we believe that your reverence will be of
  our opinion and counsel in this last particular. Thus doing, when he
  shall have been here some weeks or months, we will send him back to
  Rome under the government of your reverence, to the end that, under
  your care, he may the better fit himself for our service. And during
  the short time that he shall be at London, when he speak to any one
  of yours let him guard himself well in discoursing upon the object
  of his coming. He can say that it is for some affair of importance
  in our court, of which only your reverence and himself should have
  cognizance.

  In the meanwhile, though we cannot openly manifest to your
  illustrious society the affection and the good-will we have toward
  it, this does not prevent your reverence from making known to us, by
  our very dear and well-beloved son, if there be any way in which we
  can aid it, which we should do all the more willingly because we
  know that everything which we can contribute will be employed in the
  service of God for the remission of our offenses. For the rest, we
  recommend to your prayers our realm and ourselves.

    CHARLES, King of England.
    At Whitehall, the 3d of August, 1668.

Enclosed in the communication addressed to the father-general was a
second letter of the king's, which reads as follows:

  TO OUR VERY HONORED SON
  THE PRINCE STUART,
  RESIDENT WITH THE JESUIT FATHERS UNDER
  THE NAME OF SIEUR DE LA CLOCHE, AT ROME:

  MONSIEUR,--We have written very fully to your reverend
  father-general; he will tell you our pleasure. The Queen of Sweden
  has asked of us, as a loan, the sum of money that we had taken care
  to provide for your maintenance, which was sufficient for {589} many
  years. We have ordered what was necessary in the matter; and this is
  a reason why you need not put yourself to the trouble either of
  writing to her about it, or of speaking more thereof.

  If the autumn season be too disagreeable to get out on your journey
  to us, and if you cannot venture upon it without putting yourself in
  imminent danger of falling ill, wait till the commencement of next
  spring, having especial care for the preservation of your health,
  and keeping yourself in all quiet, writing us nothing, for we are
  not a little suspected of being Catholic.

  The queens are very eager to see you, as we have communicated to
  them privately the news of your conversion to the Roman religion.
  They have counselled us to tell you that we do not forbid your
  living in the institute to which you have attached yourself, and we
  should be rejoiced if you remain in it all your life; but desire you
  to measure well your powers and your constitution, which has
  appeared to us very feeble and delicate. One can be a good Catholic
  without being a religious, and you ought to consider that we design,
  before many years, to publicly recognize you as our son. But as
  neither parliament nor the state of affairs has permitted it up to
  the present moment, we have always been constrained to defer it. You
  ought, moreover, to consider that you can aspire to the same titles
  from us as the Duke of Monmouth, and perhaps to more ample ones.
  Beside, we are without children by the queen and those of the Duke
  of York are very feeble; while, for every reason and because of the
  rank of your mother, you can lay claim on ourselves and on
  parliament to be preferred to the Duke of Monmouth. In that case,
  being young, as you are, if liberty of conscience and if the
  Catholic religion be restored to this realm, you would have some
  hope of the crown. For we can assure you that if God permit that we
  and our very honored brother the Duke of York die without children,
  the crown will belong to yourself and parliament cannot legitimately
  oppose it, unless that the fact of your being a Catholic exclude
  you; as liberty of conscience is not yet established, and since, at
  present, only Protestant kings are eligible. This, then, we are
  advised by the queens to tell you. If, in the meantime, all things
  considered, you prefer to serve God in the Society of Jesus, we do
  not wish to offer any resistance to the will of God, whom we have
  already grieved too much by our offences. We do not, therefore,
  forbid your pursuing that vocation, if God inspire you to it; but we
  desire only that you think well of it.

  We do not wish to write to the Pope until we have spoken to you by
  our own mouth. We had written to the late Pope, to the end that he
  should make our very dear and well-beloved cousin, my Lord
  d'Aubigny, a cardinal; whereof we have not had the satisfaction that
  we demanded. However, we are not offended in this. His Holiness
  having made known to us manifold reasons why he could not
  conscientiously create a cardinal in our realm, the affairs of
  religion and other things being as they are.

  Not long since we wrote to the Queen of Sweden, and advised her not
  to write to you, and to treat you henceforth as simply a gentleman,
  without manifesting that she has any knowledge of your birth. This
  is a reason why you should not take it amiss if her majesty treat
  you after that manner. It is a no light burden to us to see you
  always constrained to live unknown, but have patience yet a little,
  for before many years we shall try to so conduct affairs and
  parliament that all the world will know who you are. You will no
  longer live in these hindrances and restraints, and it will depend
  only on yourself to live in the liberty and the pleasure of a person
  of your birth, unless that God strongly inspire you and that you
  should wish to continue absolutely the {590} religious life which
  you have commenced.

  Although we cannot, and ought not, to openly show the good-will that
  we have for the Society of Jesus, who have received you, yet in the
  meanwhile if we cannot publicly favor them with our royal
  munificence, there may still be some place, room, or occasion
  wherein they might need our aid, and where we could contribute
  somewhat. We would do it all the more because we know that all will
  be employed for the service of God and the remission of our
  offences, and because, also, we could desire that no one of your
  lineage should remain with them without founding something as a
  memorial suitable to one of your extraction. We will talk about this
  matter in London, if you persist in your design of living with them.

  In the meanwhile, believe that we have always had you in our
  peculiar affection, not only because you were born to us in our
  tenderest youth, when we were scarcely sixteen or seventeen, but
  particularly because of the excellent nature that we have always
  remarked in you, because of that eminence of knowledge in which you
  have been advanced through our means, because you have always borne
  yourself as a virtuous man, and because you have been especially
  obedient to our commands: the which, joined to the paternal love
  that we have felt toward you, strongly governs our desires in
  wishing all kinds of benefits for you, beside the pity that moves us
  in seeing you so unknown and disregarded--a thing which shall
  continue as brief a space as possible.

  It is not easy for us to send privately to Rome a sum of money
  adequate for a person of your birth and sufficient to put you in the
  condition and estate of appearing before us, being, as we are, neither
  willing nor able to noise it abroad that we have any one at Rome with
  whom we have communication. It is not possible that you are not
  everywise modest enough to come to us, if not in the condition of
  one of your rank, at least as a simple gentleman when you put foot
  in England. Finally, pray God for ourselves, the queen, and our
  realm.
       I am your affectionate father,
       CHARLES
       King of Eng., Fr., Scot, and Ire.
       At Whitehall, 4th of Aug., 1668.

Charles II., in the letters we have just given, left his son at
liberty to set out at the end of autumn or even at the winter season.
Twenty-five days have not elapsed when his resolution changes. He
wishes the novice at Rome to make haste to precipitate his departure.
What was the cause of this serious disquietude? It was this: Queen
Christina, repenting of her abdication and hating the north, resolved
to seek an asylum for her remaining days in the shadow of the Vatican.
Charles was informed of her intention, and at once took alarm.
Christina would then witness the departure of James Stuart; entangling
the inexperienced novice in a network of cunning questions, what
secret could escape her? Everything would be discovered. Little by
little the rumor would spread from Italy to England. Charles already
saw his kingdom in revolution and himself reduced to the most grievous
extremity. Such was the object of the second letter to the
father-general:

  TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL
  OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME:

  REVEREND FATHER,--We send, with the greatest diligence and with the
  greatest secresy, an express to Rome charge with two letters, one to
  your reverence to the end that our well-beloved son set out as soon as
  possible; the other to the Queen of Sweden--having commanded the
  messenger to await the arrival of her majesty in any Italian town
  through which she may pass, not wishing even that the aforesaid
  express should appear at your house, through fear of {591} being
  recognized by some of your order who are English. As he is a person
  of rank, we have in like manner forbidden his delaying more than one
  day at Rome, fearing lest he should be recognized by certain
  Englishmen who are at Rome.

  We say, then, to your reverence that, since the first letter that we
  wrote you, we have received trustworthy news that the Queen of Sweden
  returns to Rome, contrary to the anticipations which we had
  formed--the which has not a little embarrassed us in the matter of
  our salvation. This is the reason that, upon this new accident,
  having taken counsel with the queens, we have determined to write in
  haste to the Queen of Sweden, feigning to her and persuading her
  that our very dear and well-beloved son has represented to us that
  he wishes assigned to him something fixed for life, to the end that
  in case he should not pursue the religious calling he has commenced,
  being now a Catholic, he may have something to fall back upon; and
  that even if he should pursue it, he prays us to settle a sum of
  money upon him which he may dispose of according to his devotion,
  which petition we have granted him; but since this cannot be
  effected at Rome, we have ordered him to go to Paris to find certain
  correspondents of ours, and after that to proceed to Jersey or to
  Hanton,  [Footnote 90] where he will receive from us forty or fifty
  thousand crowns in total, which may be deposited in some bank; and
  that we have instructed him not to tell his superior of his birth;
  but that he shall simply feign to your reverence that he is the son
  of a rich preacher, who, being deceased some time since, his mother,
  moved with a desire of becoming a Catholic and to give him the goods
  which belong to him, has written to him, and that your reverence,
  desirous of the salvation of this person, and of making her a
  Catholic, and perceiving also that he can come by his estate, has
  readily permitted him to go. This we have arranged in order that she
  shall thus believe that she alone has the secret, and will therefore
  not break the matter to your reverence from the friendship she bears
  him. Thus we counteract any suspicion she might have of your letting
  him come to us and of our being Catholic. But above all it is
  necessary that our very dear son do not wait, but that he set out as
  soon as possible; for, as she needs money (and so needs it that she
  demanded at the last Swedish diet 35,000 crowns in advance), she
  would embarrass him in such a way that the drama which we wish to
  play would come off but illy. This we have arranged touching the
  Queen of Sweden.

    [Footnote 90: Now Southhampton.--Ed. C. W.]

  Your reverence will not be astonished then if this fear has led us
  to dread the evils by which we are besieged; a fear all the more
  lively in us, because these evils are greater and bear in their
  train consequences more dangerous. Now it is a truth received
  without dispute among our wisest statesmen, that of all the temporal
  evils which can befal us, the proof that we are Catholic is the
  greatest, since it would infallibly cause our death, and at the same
  time many convulsions in our realm. Your reverence ought not,
  therefore, to be astonished if we take so many precautions and if we
  have judged proper to write him this second letter also, as well in
  the matter of the Queen of Sweden as to supply omissions which we
  made in the first, and at the same time to retract some things
  contained therein--that our very dear and honored son do not present
  himself to our very dear cousin the King of France, nor to our very
  honored sister the Duchess of Orleans, as we advised before; but
  only that he come to us, be it through France or through Paris or by
  other ways, as it shall please your reverence to determine. He will
  abstain during the journey from writing to the Queen of Sweden, lest
  she see that those things are not carried out which, as we have
  heretofore said, have been pretended to her. This we have decided
  upon with the aid of the queens, fearing a discovery or some
  accident.

{592}

  Moreover, we pray your reverence (who are secretly acquainted, as
  are her most christian majesty the queen, and our very dear sister,
  Madame the Duchess of Orleans, with the warm disposition for
  becoming a Catholic which we have for a long time shown),--we pray
  you, nevertheless, to abstain from writing to them in any fashion
  touching these matters, but to keep everything quite secret until
  the providence of God has otherwise disposed of affairs.

  Now as we desire, with all requisite prudence in an affair of so
  great consequence to ourselves and the peace of our realm, that our
  very dear and well-beloved son find everything which is necessary in
  the business of our salvation made easy for him, and to avoid the
  inconveniences which might spring upon this side, we have taken
  counsel with the queen to this effect, that when he shall arrive
  alone in London--for such is our good will and pleasure--he take
  time to clothe himself, and dress himself as quickly as possible, if
  he be not sufficiently well-dressed--not having been willing to do
  so for fear of soiling his garments by the bad weather and muddy
  roads, which soil a carriage and also all who are in it; and having
  put himself in order and rendered himself presentable, let him take
  occasion to address himself to the reigning queen, either when she
  is dining at our palace of St. James or when her majesty shall go to
  visit the queen, our very dear and honored mother. To whom, without
  causing any suspicion, he will present a sealed letter in the form
  of a supplication, in which he will say in a few words who he is.
  Her majesty has directions from us to manage everything which is
  necessary for an introduction to ourselves, with all possible
  prudence, and we are assured that there shall arise no disorder nor
  suspicion. He has nothing else to do but to let himself be directed
  according to what shall be advised him, and we command him to
  observe punctually everything we have written to him, especially
  what we have put within the envelope.

  In the meanwhile, we renew to your reverence the prayer which we
  made to you from the first, which is, not to write us, nor to make
  any response saving by the hands of our very dear and well-beloved
  son, whom we order to set out from Rome as soon as possible, not
  wishing that the Queen of Sweden speak to him for the aforesaid
  reasons. Having departed from Rome, he will take his ease in coming
  to us. We pray, however, your reverence, if this be necessary, to
  move him to come as soon as possible, representing to him the need
  we have of him. For we know that he has no little repugnance to
  England, which we attribute to the fact of his not having been
  educated there, and also of his finding himself compelled to live
  there alone, so that we have never been able to induce him to live
  there more than a year. And even before that year was finished, he
  presented us so many reasons that we were constrained to let him go
  to Holland, where he bore himself with great praise and to our great
  satisfaction in the belles lettres and other studies, in which he
  made admirable progress.

  We believe he has too much judgment to wish to disobey us, and not
  come as we desire. As soon as he comes we shall endeavor, by means
  of the queens, to have him made a priest in all secresy. And if
  there be anything that the bishop ordinary cannot do without
  permission of His Holiness, let him not fail to provide for it, but
  very secretly, so that no one shall know who he is: which will be
  done if possible before he set out from Rome. Meanwhile we beseech
  you, reverend father, to pray God for the queens, our realm, and
  ourselves, who are
     CHARLES, King of England.
     At Whitehall, the 29th Aug., 1668.

Yet even these numerous and urgent recommendations did not quite
pacify the timid monarch. One feature in the rule of St. Ignatius, of
{593} which his queen's had just advised him, suddenly upset all his
ideas. He snatches up the pen. He countermands the orders he has just
given. He traces a new plan of campaign in which the clearness of
exposition, the ability of conception, the facility of execution, are
about on a level. This third letter, we must confess, does little
credit to the geographical knowledge and above all to the courage of
Charles II. In another point of view, however, it merits the attention
of the reader. Precisely because of the trouble which reigns in his
thoughts, we detect more than once the cry of the soul. More than at
any time hitherto, the unhappy prince lets us discover the cruel
anguishes which torture his conscience, and the incontestable
sincerity of his desires.

  TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL
  OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME:

  REVEREND FATHER,--We have never felt so many embarrassments, though
  we have had enough of them in our life, as at present, when we wish
  to think seriously of our salvation. We have but just sealed this
  other letter, which we pray you to read before the one which is
  open, that you may better learn our intention and the order in which
  we hold to the writing. The queens have advised us and counselled us
  not to press his [our son's] coming, because they wish to arrange
  and bring about certain very necessary and notable precautions, to
  render the arrival of our very dear and well-beloved son to England
  very prudent and secret.

  For this end their majesties, having found means of learning
  accurately and with judgment the ways of your society regarding
  those who have but recently joined them, inform us that they have
  ascertained from a good source that the novices of your holy
  society, not less than with others, are never sent off without some
  member of the fraternity accompanying them, as much to be advised of
  their actions and deportment as to render an account to the
  superior--the which we admire as a very holy prudence and which can
  only spring from the divine spirit with which so holy a society is
  animated. But nevertheless in this matter we beseech your reverence
  to dispense with this companionship in the case of our very dear
  son; because we command him absolutely, in virtue of the power which
  God has given us over him, to come to us by himself, partly because
  this will properly accord with the letter which we have sent to the
  Queen of Sweden, who should believe that he has gone alone--that is
  to say, unaccompanied by any member of the fraternity; but
  principally because of the dangerous inconveniences whereof we
  should be constantly in fear if he came in the company of any of the
  fraternity. We have already, with great secresy, pretended to some
  very safe persons in a great number of the English ports, and by
  ways entirely concealed, that a foreign prince, of such a carriage,
  such a mien, alone by himself, is flying to us, and much more indeed
  which we could not explain to your reverence without going too far
  into detail. We do this, partly that if we come to be anywise
  suspected of being too familiar with him (Father James Stuart) we
  may have something to say to remove the suspicion.

  Your reverence can see by this that if he should bring an Italian
  with him who was recognizable as an Italian, be it by his accent or
  otherwise, this might be the occasion of overthrowing all our
  designs and of interrupting the scheme which we wish to work out in
  order to come most surely to our just desires. Even in case he can
  have some one other than an Italian with him, we should forbid his
  bringing any one into England, of whatever nation he might be, for
  many very considerable reasons, which it would take too long to
  recount.

   Your reverence ought not to be surprised if we are so cautious,
   because we learned in the time of Cromwell {594} what misery is,
   and what are the things of this world, what it is to be prudent and
   to hide one's self in order to succeed in our undertaking. We doubt
   not that, as our very dear and well-beloved son is young, he is far
   from eager for company and conversation, and that he does not
   desire to have intercourse with any one by letter or by discourse;
   for we know that he does not love the court any too well. But he
   must needs have patience, inasmuch as it is not reasonable that for
   a pleasure so brief and of so little consequence, he should put
   himself in danger of ruining all our designs. Beside, he ought to
   know that when he shall put foot in our palace, he is not to
   converse with any one saving with ourselves and the queen, who will
   give the necessary orders in the matter. Nor will he write any
   letters saving to you, reverend father, and these letters that he
   shall write to you we shall despatch by an express in great secresy
   to Rome, to the end that your reverence relieve us in the
   necessities which may arise touching our soul.

  We have made inquiries respecting the seaports nearest to Rome.
  Among many which have been named to us, we recall Civita Vecchia and
  Gênes. We command him, then, to go to Gênes. We have ascertained,
  with all necessary prudence, that your society has at that place a
  house of your order. Being then at Gênes, we wish him to seek out
  some ship or English shallop, but in such wise that we do not wish
  any of the fraternity to recommend him to the master nor to those
  who manage the ship, not showing their acquaintanceship with him,
  for very considerable reasons; but especially because these
  seafaring men will repeat it all as soon as they come to port.
  Moreover, we desire that he put off and lay aside his religious
  robes in the house of his friends and brother Jesuits of Gênes. He
  will assume them again in the same place on his return to Rome, when
  we send him back to pursue there the religious life he has
  commenced.

  He will land then in our realm solitary and in disguise. He will
  call himself everywhere he may go Henry de Rohan, which is the name
  of the family of a certain French prince, a Calvinist, and very well
  known and intimate with us. We are in such fear lest some accident
  occur, that in these different ports we at present take cognisance,
  both very secretly and with the requisite prudence, of ships which
  have arrived or are due, and even so far as we can of persons, under
  pretence of a zeal for the well-being of our realm, and under
  pretence of maintaining the Protestant religion, to which we pretend
  to be attached more than ever, although, before God, who knows the
  heart, we abhor it as very false and pernicious.

  Moreover, we forbid our very dear and honored son to pass through
  France and by the other passages and ports which lie in that part,
  for he could not bring about our intentions with sufficient secresy
  sailing from that coast, and therefore we have found no place more
  proper than Gênes for his embarkation. And, in the meanwhile,
  awaiting his return to Rome, your reverence shall noise it abroad
  that he has gone to Jersey or Hanton to see his pretended mother,
  who desires to become a Catholic, as we have suggested and feigned
  in that other letter, and that, to make the greater haste, he went
  by sea.

  This then we command him to observe, point by point, through the
  authority that God has given us over him, and we promise him, on the
  faith of a king, that we seek nothing else in his coming but the
  salvation of our souls, his good, and that of the society to which
  he has attached himself, which, sooner or later, we shall find means
  to notably favor with our royal magnificence. And so far from
  forbidding his pursuing his calling, both for the Catholic religion
  and your society, we and the queens will urge it upon him better
  than any _director_ he {595} can have. It is very true that when the
  season and affairs permit us to write and make known to His Holiness
  the veneration we hold him in as the vicegerent of God, we hope that
  he will be too well disposed toward us to refuse him the cardinal's
  hat, inasmuch as the conditions which could forbid his having this
  dignity for the honor of our person and of our realm are not
  fulfilled in his case, viz., residence in England, since we can send
  him to dwell at Rome, as we promise, and with the royal magnificence
  requisite for his birth. Nevertheless, if in time he prefer to live
  according to the religious life he has commenced, we would readily
  abandon what would be to the honor of our crown and of our person,
  rather than to urge and procure such dignities against his will.

  We have made discreet inquiries of our physician whether
  sea-sickness cause any dangerous accidents to those of a feeble
  constitution, who has answered us that sea-sickness never killed any
  one, but on the contrary has been the means of greater health.
  Nevertheless, if it be too painful for him to make one trip of it,
  he shall contrive that the bark or shallop in which he sails rest
  from time to time in some port. He might easily come at once to
  London; but we do not wish it for good reasons. Let him land at some
  other port of England, from whence he can come by land in a carriage
  to London.

  We once again entreat your reverence not to write to us nor to make
  any reply, saving by the hand of our very dear and honored son, when
  he comes to us. And, if there be a need for anything which he does
  not possess in making the voyage to London, we beseech you, reverend
  father, to have particular care in the matter, furnishing him with
  whatever he requires, whereof he will keep account.

  We firmly believe it is God who has inspired us to all these
  above-mentioned ways for bringing us in secret our very honored son,
  because of what he has said in his word--that when two or three are
  gathered together in his name, he will be in the midst of them. For
  it is exactly ourselves, and the queen, our very dear mother, and
  the reigning queen, who decree all these things, not without having
  invoked, first of all, the Holy Spirit. Beside that, the queens have
  commanded their priests to celebrate many masses in accordance with
  their intention, which is nothing other than that this affair
  succeed as well as all our other projects above mentioned, which
  tend not only to our good, but to that of the Roman Catholic Church
  and of our realm. We are,
     CHARLES, King of England.

These last two letters were a sad revelation to Father Oliva, and no
doubt very much diminished the hopes which he had before conceived.
However, the order was given to the novice to set out without delay.

If James Stuart could easily obey his father by departing from Rome
before the arrival of Queen Christina, it was certainly more difficult
for him to conform to the frequently contradictory injunctions
concerning the route to be taken and the precautions to be guarded
against which had been successively transmitted to him. Everything
which was rational and practicable the young man respected. He set
sail from Leghorn about the middle of October, a fact which we learn
from a brief letter of Father Oliva to the King of England. It is of
course unnecessary to explain to the reader why the father-general has
dated his note from a Tuscan port rather than from the city of the
Roman pontiffs at which he wrote:

  SIRE,--The French gentleman who is charged with the delivery of this
  letter will inform you of my utter carefulness in fulfilling the
  commands of your three letters and my unlimited devotion to your
  royal person. Your majesty will always see me execute with the same
  promptness and the {596} same zeal everything which he shall deign
  to impose on me. I shall endeavor to be such in reality as he deigns
  to believe that I am; such as the confidence with which he honors me
  obliges me to show myself.

  I throw myself respectfully at the feet of your majesty.
    Leghorn, Oct 14, 1668.

In one very important respect it was found necessary to abandon, or
rather to violate, the royal programme. Charles, a perfect stranger to
ecclesiastical laws, always supposed that, at his request, his son
could be made priest either at Rome or in London. But James Stuart was
only twenty-one years old, and was without theological studies. Even
if these serious objections had not existed, it would not have been
prudent to elevate to the sacred office a novice whose religious
experience extended scarcely over a space of six months. Thus, despite
the repugnance of the king, Henry de Rohan, as our young traveller
must now be called, took as his companion a priest of the society, a
Frenchman, as far as we can judge, who, disguised like himself, was
presented to their Britannic majesties in the quality of a friend of
the refugee prince. This wise measure, imposed by the timidity of
Charles, was attended by so little inconvenience, that we shall find
the monarch himself, on the occasion of his son's second voyage to
England, earnestly requesting of the father-general the return of this
same _religious_ whose talents and virtues he had come to appreciate.

VII.

This is not the place to describe the warmth with which Charles opened
his arms to his first-born, whom he had always peculiarly cherished,
nor the joy of the two pious princesses, nor the tender emotions of
the youth upon whom beamed, at length, the sympathy and affection he
had never known before. In the isolation of his earlier life, James
Stuart had sadly felt the void which the absence of that sweetest tie
on earth, the family, creates. This grief had eaten into him like a
cancer, till the day when he resolved to renounce the world. When the
victim has immolated himself, when he has said to flesh and blood, I
will know you nevermore! behold in a royal palace, by one of the first
thrones on earth, the humble novice finds again a home--venerable
queens are mothers to him. His father caresses him, and, emulating the
example of his brother, the Duke of York, who was also preparing to
embrace Catholicism, receives the child of St. Ignatius as an angel
from heaven.

But it was not for such pleasures that the young Jesuit had quitted
his solitude. Guided by the wise counsels of Father Oliva, and
assisted by his own studies and the able co-operation of his
companion, he engaged without delay in the religious instruction of
the king. Of these conferences, surrounded with so much mystery, two
fragments have come down to us. One word upon the nature and upon the
history of this double document.

It consists of two divisions, and is a resumé of a great theological
discussion which, at once, establishes the divine authority of the
Roman, and saps the foundation of the Anglican, Church. The original
piece is in the French language and in the handwriting of the king. He
was not, however, the author. The primitive text has disappeared,
probably through fear that a paper of this nature, if it should get
abroad, would furnish material proof that a sovereign of Great Britain
had held communication with a "papist" priest. These pages of
religious controversy Charles carefully concealed. While he lived
probably no one, save the Duke of York, had any knowledge of them.
After the death of Charles, James II. found these writings again, one
in the private chest, the other in the cabinet of the dead monarch,
and in spite of the {597} storm which they were certain to produce, he
did not fear to make them public. In 1700 he presented them solemnly,
as a proof of the faith which animated his brother, to the general
assembly of the clergy of France convened at St. Germain-en-Laye. Of
the many thousand copies which, during the reign of the last of the
crowned Stuarts, were circulated on both sides of the Channel, there
exists at the present day only one. The Jesuit College at Rome still
possess the edition of 1685, and in addition a manuscript copy of the
two papers, both bearing, as a guarantee of their perfect
authenticity, the autograph signature of King James. All the English
historians speak of these two celebrated writings; but only to declare
that the real convictions of Charles had nothing in common with these
fragments of a controversy transcribed by him they know not why.

James II. in his "Memoirs" gives us a short anecdote, which from its
connection with this subject we will reproduce. One day, finding
himself alone in his cabinet with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he
availed himself of the opportunity to place in his hands the two
papers.

"He, the archbishop, appeared surprised, and remained for a quarter of
an hour without making any reply. Then he said that he had not
supposed the deceased king was so learned in the matter of
controversy, but he nevertheless thought the arguments could be
refuted. Upon which the king begged him to make the trial, telling him
that if he accomplished it by means of reasons both solid and honestly
expressed, he would probably succeed in converting him to his church.
The archbishop replied that it would, perhaps, be evincing a want of
respect for the deceased king, should he seek to contradict him; but
his majesty relied by urging on him that the hope of converting
himself ought to override every other consideration. He besought him
then to occupy himself at once with a refutation of these papers, and
to employ his pen if he thought proper. Whatever the reason may have
been, neither this authorization nor the pressing instance of my Lord
Dartmouth could engage him to write, and there appeared no reply
during the four years that his majesty reigned in England."  [Footnote
91]

  [Footnote 91: "_Vie de Jacques II., roi d'Angleterre, d'apres les
  Memoirs écrite de sa Main. T. iii., p. 12. Paris, 1819_."]

Here then are these dogmatic pages, almost as unknown in our century
as in the time when Charles concealed them in the most secret places
in his palace. We publish them exactly as they saw the light.


FIRST WRITING.

  The conversation that we had the other day will have satisfied you,
  as I hope, upon the principal point, which was that Jesus Christ can
  have, here upon the earth, but one church only, and I believe that
  it is as clear as it is that the Scripture is printed, that this
  church does not exist unless it be what is called the Roman Catholic
  Church.

  I believe that there is no need of your troubling yourself with
  entering upon a sea of particular disputes, since the principal, and
  in truth the only and simple question, consists in ascertaining
  where this church is which, in the two creeds, we profess to believe
  in. We declare, in the two creeds, that we believe in only one
  catholic and apostolic church, and it does not belong to each
  individual member to believe everything that comes into his head
  according to his fancy; but it belongs to the church to whom on
  earth Jesus Christ has left the power of governing us in matters of
  faith, and has made these creeds to serve us as a rule.

  It would be a most unreasonable thing to make laws for a country,
  and then to permit the inhabitants to be the interpreters and the
  judges. For then, {598} each individual would be a judge in his own
  cause, and consequently, there would be no standard whereby to
  distinguish justice from injustice. Can we then suppose that God has
  abandoned us to such uncertainties as to give us a rule for our
  conduct, and then to permit each individual to be his own judge? I
  demand of every honest man if this be not the same thing as
  following our own imaginations, or of making use thereof in the
  interpretation of Scripture?

  I could wish that some one would show me in what passage the power
  of deciding upon matters of faith is given to each individual. Jesus
  Christ has left this power to his Church, even for the remission of
  sins, and he has left his spirit there. This power has been
  exercised since his resurrection, first by the apostles in their
  creed, and many years after by the Council of Nice, where the creed
  was made that bears its name.

  By the power which has been received of Jesus Christ, the Holy
  Scripture itself was judged many years, after the apostles, in
  determining which were the canonical books and which were not. If we
  had the power then, I would like to know how it has come to be lost,
  and by what authority men can separate themselves from this Church.
  The only pretence I have ever heard advanced is because the Church
  has fallen into error, interpreting the Scripture after a forced
  manner and contrary to its true sense, and that it has imposed on us
  articles of faith which are not authorized by the word of God. I
  would like to know who is to be the judge of all this, whether it is
  the whole Church whose succession has continued up to to-day without
  any interruption, or is it to be the individuals who have excited
  schisms for their own interest?

  This is the true copy of a paper which I have found in the private
  chest of the deceased king, my brother, written by his own hand.

    JAMES R.


SECOND WRITING.

  It is a most sad thing to see the infinite number of heresies which
  have spread themselves over this nation. Each one believes himself
  as competent a judge of the Scripture as the apostles themselves.
  And no wonder, for that part of the nation which has most
  resemblance to a church does not dare employ the true arguments
  against the other sects, through fear lest they should be turned
  against themselves, and they should thus find themselves confounded
  by their own proper arguments. Those of the Anglican Church, as it
  is called, are willing enough to be regarded as judges in matters
  spiritual. They dare not, however, positively assert that their
  judgment is without appeal. For it would be necessary for them to
  assert that they are infallible, which they dare not pretend, or to
  avow that while they decide upon in matters of conscience ought not
  to be followed further than as it accords with the judgment which
  each one may make in his own mind.

  If Jesus Christ has left a church here on earth, and if we were all
  at one time in this church, how, and by what authority, are we
  separated from it? If the power of interpreting Scripture resides in
  the brain of each individual, what need have you of a church or of
  churchmen? Why did Jesus Christ--having given to his apostles power
  to bind and to unbind on earth and in heaven--_add that he would be
  with them till the end of the world?_ These words were not spoken
  figuratively nor in the manner of a parable. Jesus Christ was
  ascending into glory, and he left his power to his church, until the
  end of the world.

  For one hundred years we have known the sad effects of this
  doctrine, which takes away from the church the power of judging
  without appeal in matters spiritual. What country could remain at
  peace if there were not a supreme judge from whom there {599} could
  be no appeal? Can any justice be done where the culprits are their
  own judges and interpreters of the law, equally with those who are
  set on high to render justice?

  It is to this condition that we are reduced in England in spiritual
  affairs. For the protestants are not of the Anglican Church because
  it is the true church from which there can be no appeal; but because
  the discipline of this church is conformable to their present
  imaginations. And as soon as it shall run counter or swerve from it,
  they will embrace almost the first congregation of those whose
  discipline and religion accord at that time with their opinions.
  Thus, accepting this doctrine, there is no other church nor any
  other interpretation of Scripture than that which each extravagant
  individual shall hit upon in his brain. I would then like
  exceedingly to know of all those who have seriously reflected on
  these things, if the great work of our salvation ought to rest on
  such a sandy foundation as this? Has Jesus Christ ever said to
  secular magistrates, still less to the people--_that he will be
  with them till the end of the world?_--or has he given them power of
  pardoning sins? St. Paul has said in Corinthians--_We are God's
  husbandry, we are God's building, we are laborers in the house of
  God together with God._ This shows us who they are who labor--which
  is the field, which the edifice. In the whole of this and in one of
  the preceding chapters, St. Paul takes great pains to establish the
  doctrine that they (that is to say, the clergy) _have the spirit of
  God, without which no one can penetrate the profound mysteries of
  God;_ and he concludes the chapter with this verse, _"For who hath
  known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the
  mind of Christ."_ If then we consider merely in the light of
  probability and human reason the power that Jesus Christ left to his
  church in the gospel, and which St. Paul explains afterward so
  distinctly, we cannot believe that our Saviour has said all these
  things for nothing.

  I entreat you to consider, on the other hand, that those who resist
  the truth, and who do not wish to submit to his church, draw their
  arguments from so-called contradictions and far-fetched
  interpretations, while at the same time they deny verities expressed
  in clear and positive words, a thing so contrary to good faith that
  it is difficult to think that they believe what they say.

  Is there any other foundation of the Protestant Church if it be not
  this, that should the civil magistrate judge it fit, he can summon
  together such persons of the clergy, according as he believes it to
  be for his interest, for the time being; and can change the form of
  the church to Presbyterianism or to Independency, and finally make
  it just what he pleases? Such has been the method which they have
  pursued here in our so-called English Reformation, and by the same
  rule and by the same authority it can be still further diversified
  and changed into as many forms and figures as there are different
  imaginations in the heads of men.

  This is a true copy of a paper written by the hand of the late king,
  my brother, which I found in his cabinet.
   JAMES R.


But why, it may be asked, do we arbitrarily date from the epoch of
Father James Stuart's, appearance in London these papers, otherwise
without date, and which were not publicly known till seventeen years
later, in 1685? Let us set forth, as briefly as possible, the
arguments by which we support our position.

In the first place, we agree with the English historians that these
two fragments of controversy are not from the pen of Charles II. A
comparison of the rugged and often inaccurate French of his majesty
with that of the present text, settles this question at once. To whom,
then, must we look for the authorship? {600} They proceed from an
ecclesiastic, from a theologian consulted by the King of England. The
very for which they assume argues the teaching of a master. But are
not these two papers the offspring of two authors, of two teachers? By
no means. There is a perfect resemblance between them, a perfect
consanguinity of thought and of argument. There is the same turn of
mind, the same style, often the same expressions. Still further. The
tenor of the two pieces, which present in an abridged and condensed
form many points of doctrine, presupposes in our opinion a whole
series of lessons given to the royal disciple. Observe that, at the
beginning of the first resumé, we have the phrase "the principal
point;" there were then secondary points. The peaceful and at the same
time simple, almost familiar tone of the master on entering upon the
subject, is exactly the tone of a man who is conversing neither for
the first nor for the last time. "The conversation" of which he speaks
had not been, you would say, the only conversation. Everything, in
fact, shows that these two fragments made part of a very considerable
series of religious conferences.

But could these conferences, which, as we have seen, Charles might
have held in all secresy at the end of the year 1668 and at the
commencement of the year 1669, have taken place at any other period of
his reign? By no means. For the first eight years, the king himself is
our witness, since we have only to study the terms in which he
complains to Father Oliva of his lamentable state of spiritual
destitution. After the departure of the two Jesuits and the conversion
of the Duke of York, the Anglican hatred and bitterness did not cease
to rage about the throne of the Catholic Stuarts. During this second
period, the only name which stands in our way is that of Father Claude
de la Colombière, who sojourned in England a little more than two
years, from 1676 to 1679. Now in this unhappy time, so great was the
terror which ruled Charles II. that, despite his sincere esteem for
the preacher of the Duchess of York, he dared not accord him, by the
very confession of Father de la Colombière, more than two or three
audiences, and not one of them secret. Whence it follows that these
two famous documents are very probably, we had almost said certainly,
the work of Father James Stuart and of his learned companion. Beside,
does not such an origin explain the almost religious care with which
these arid pages of theology were guarded for nearly twenty years by a
prince to whom history points as the perfect type of carelessness?
They called back to him the day when, in the presence of his mother,
who was no more, and who now prayed for him in heaven, under the
direction of a saint whose father he was, he had made his most
powerful effort to abjure odious errors; they remained in his hand as
a consolation for the past, a light in the future, a pledge of pardon
and of hope in the hour when, cited before him who judges kings, he
should at last render a severe account for the scandals of his life
and the deficiencies of his faith.

Had the difficulties which these two devout ecclesiastics were forced
to encounter been merely spiritual, had it been a question of logic,
history, and truth, their mission would have been a fruitful one. But
in actual life events are seldom simple, and history becomes a problem
of complex forces. The heart of Charles II. led him toward his God.
The pleasures of court life, and a natural unwillingness to sacrifice
his throne, made him hesitate, falter, invent subtleties. It happened,
at this time, that a wide-spread opinion prevailed in England, which
had not been without its influence on the king. A Catholic, it was
claimed, could procure a dispensation from Rome, could disguise his
faith without scruple, and conform himself externally, at least, to
the rites of the Anglican Church. Nor was the British monarch
destitute of a plausible {601} precedent. When sojourning at Paris, in
the days of the Protectorate, he had promised the venerable Father
Oiler to renounce Protestantism, and Alexander VII., at the urgent
instance of the crownless prince, had authorized him to conceal his
abjuration until his affairs took a more favorable turn. This
concession was made in no absolute sense. It stopped at the limits
which the divine law has fixed for kings as well as for the humblest
of Christians. Unquestionably, a convert whose abrupt publication of a
change of faith would subject him to grave perils ought to use
prudence. But in no respect would this permission extend so far as
that the disciple should be "ashamed of" his Master. In this latter
case dissimulation would be a crime.

Yet, in the delicate situation in which Charles was placed, what was
he to do? The French alliance remained at this moment a state secret,
and was thus far without result. Much was anticipated from the war
which Louis XIV. was about to wage with Holland. Amid the triumph of
the confederate arms, and the glory which would redound to his own
person, the English monarch hoped to discover some means of
strengthening the royal power and of breaking at last the Anglican
tyranny. Not one of these things, however, had reached the vantage
point of a _fait accompli_; not a domestic difficulty which did not
subsist in all its force. In his extremity, the unfortunate prince
naturally returned to his dreams of an accommodation with the Pope, of
a compromise with the law of God: and one might say that circumstances
invited it. Had he not now, in the general of the Jesuits, a powerful
advocate with the sovereign pontiff? His son, a novice of the
fraternity of Jesus, his son, called from the bosom of Italy and so
tenderly received--would he not serve in the Vatican as a guarantee
for the integrity of the father? Recourse to the Holy See, so far as
to ascertain the precautions which would be permitted to the King of
Great Britain in order to avoid exposing himself, his family, all the
Catholics of England, to the extremest dangers--such was, we think the
final determination of Charles II. This conjecture, authorized by the
well-known sentiments of the prince and the whole sequence of facts,
is specially based on a letter which Father James Stuart will shortly
bear to Rome, and which appears to us scarcely susceptible of any
other interpretation. Beside, one very authentic feature in the
conversion of the Duke of York, to which we shall presently allude,
falls in so perfectly with our theory, that it will be exceedingly
difficult, in our opinion, to find any other satisfactory explanation
for the ambiguous denouement which the end of this recital affords.

There are no historical indications to guide us in ascertaining the
attitude assumed by the two pious queens when the monarch arrived at
this resolution. Probably the princesses partook of the illusion of
the Duke of York and of most of the Catholics of the court: they
placed an exaggerated hope on the powerful intervention of the King of
France. Relying upon this, and on the probable complaisance of the
Pope, they supported in his unhappy course the son, the husband, whose
safety lay so closely to their heart.

It would do our two missionaries a cruel injustice to suppose that
they saw no deeper or clearer. In so elementary a question of
theology, these vigorous controversialists, whose learning and keen
reasonings we have appreciated, could have had but one opinion--that
of their confrère Father Symons, of whom we shall shortly speak. James
Stuart, we may fearlessly affirm, fulfilled respectfully but firmly
the duty of his ministry. He strove to convince his father that no
pontifical letter would authorize either king or emperor to reconcile
in his person what the Son of God by his divine lips had declared
eternally irreconcilable, to be ashamed of him before men, and yet to
find favor in his sight. Two things are certain. On {602} the one
hand, the holy novice failed to convince the king; on the other,
filial love, happily combined with apostolic prudence, preserved his
zeal from all bitterness.

Charles persisted in seeking, through the intervention of Father
Oliva, to draw from Clement IX. impossible concessions. Despite the
recent fatigues of his late voyage, the young enthusiast offered to be
himself the bearer of his father's despatches. The proposition was
accepted, and Charles wrote these lines, upon which we have already
commented, and which are unfortunately the only source from which the
historian can draw a correct judgment upon the results of the secret
mission completed in 1668 in the palace of the kings of England by
Father J. Stuart.

  TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME
  (intrusted to the hand of Mons. de la Cloche, Jesuit at Rome):

  REVEREND FATHER,--You are too necessary for us in the position where
  your merit has raised you, not to be frequently troubled by us, in
  that condition where the misfortune of our birth obliges us to be.

  Our very dear and honored son will tell you, on our part, all our
  proceedings, and as we were perplexed in deciding upon some one who
  should be our messenger once again to your reverence touching our
  affairs, he represented to us the urgent desire he had of returning
  himself to Rome on a secret embassy from us to you, reverend
  father--which desire we have granted him, under the condition that
  he come back to London as soon as he shall have had an interview
  with your reverence, and obtained those things which we entreat of
  you, and which our aforesaid very dear and honored son will explain
  from us personally, bringing us, on his return through France, the
  reverend father whom he left there.

  At the request of our very dear and honored son afore-mentioned, who
  has represented to us that the place where he has been received into
  your fellowship is burdened heavily with debts, and that there is
  need of some buildings and other things, we have arranged that your
  house, in which he has been received, shall obtain from us, as soon
  as possible, a notable sum for the expiation of our offences.
  Waiting, if it please you, till your reverence can advise us of the
  measures which you will take for its reception, which shall be
  within a year. If you write to us, it will be by our very dear and
  honored son, who will tell your reverence all our intentions not
  intrusted to this paper. We are
      Charles, King of England.
     At Whitehall, London, the 18th Nov., 1668.

If it happen that our very dear and honored son be in need of
anything, whatever it may be, we beseech you, reverend father, to
attend to it, and we will keep an account of all.

The sense of the fourth and last letter of Charles II. to Father Oliva
does not appear to us doubtful. If the royal disciple of Father Stuart
had shown himself unconditionally and generously disposed to every
sacrifice, what could have been this business with the Holy See which
he committed to the father-general? Had no difficulty existed, the
abjuration ought to have taken place without delay. For the rest, the
Duke of York helps us. His illusions, his doubts, avowed by himself in
his memoirs, and which very probably he shared with his brother,
confirm, point by point, our conjectures upon the nature of the
obstacles opposed to the self-sacrifice of the two apostles of
Whitehall.

In the closing months of the year 1668, the king renewed his
intercourse with his brother, toward whom he had been momentarily
estranged by the intrigues of Buckingham. The author of the Life of
James II. recalls this fact, and immediately after he adds:

{603}

  "It was about this time (toward the commencement of the year 1669)
  that his royal highness, convinced hitherto that the English was the
  only true church, experienced lively compunctions of conscience and
  began to reflect seriously upon his salvation. He therefore sent for
  a Jesuit named Symons, who was reputed a very wise man, to the end
  that he might converse with him upon this subject. When the Jesuit
  made his appearance, the duke set forth his intention of becoming a
  Catholic, and spoke with reference to his reconciliation with the
  Church. After a long conversation, the father told him frankly that
  he could not be received into the Catholic Church unless he entirely
  abandoned the Anglican communion. The duke replied that, according
  to the belief he had always held, this could be done by means of a
  papal dispensation. He alleged the singularity of his position, and
  the advantage which would inhere to the Catholic religion in
  general, and especially to the Catholics of England, if by a
  dispensation he could be permitted to follow externally the rites of
  the Anglican Church, until an occasion offered for declaring himself
  with greater safety both for his own person and for the Catholics.
  But the good father insisted, saying that even the Pope himself had
  no right to grant such a dispensation, seeing that it was the
  unalterable doctrine of the Catholic Church never to do evil that
  good might come. The duke having written upon this subject to the
  Pope, received from the Holy Father confirmation of what the good
  Jesuit had told him. Up to this time his royal highness had always
  thought, following the opinion or at least the expressed words of
  the Anglican theologians, that dispensations of this kind were
  readily accorded by the Pope; but the remarks of Fr. Symons and the
  letter of His Holiness caused the duke to conclude that it was high
  time to make every effort to obtain liberty to declare himself, that
  he might no longer live in the embarrassing and perilous situation
  in which he then was."  [Footnote 92]

    [Footnote 92: "The Life of James the Second, etc., vol. i., p.
    440-441. London, 1816. Quarto." (After several attempts to find
    this work, the translator has been compelled to rely on the French
    version.--ED. C.W.)]

What relation does this historical passage bear to the sojourn of
Father Stuart in London? Notice, in the first place, that the date,
"at the commencement of the year 1669," cannot be taken literally. We
shall find mention, a few lines further on, of a secret council held
Jan. 25, in reference to "a declaration of their Catholicism;" the
Duke of York being already converted, and the king almost decided to
take, like his brother, the last step. Now let us suppose that, on the
1st of Jan., the duke, hitherto a staunch Anglican, "experienced
lively compunctions of conscience." With his characteristic caution,
he studies into the matter, and finally comes at the truth. Then
occurs his interview with Fr. Symons; next he writes to the Pope. The
Pope sends his decision. The prince is startled, makes an irrevocable
resolution, and thus on the twenty-fifth day of the same month we find
him deliberating with Charles II. and three of his ministers upon the
political measures necessary to empower them both to practise freely
the religion of their choice! A promptness certainly very strange and
inexplicable even in this day of express trains and telegraph wires!
Evidently the supposition is impossible, and the expressions of the
writer must be interpreted very broadly. Glancing back, it will be
observed that these events followed closely upon the reconciliation of
the two brothers, which occurred, as the English historians inform us,
toward the end of 1668, during the autumn when Henrietta of France,
the queen-mother, came to England in order to bid her children a final
adieu.

If now we confront the whole series of Father Stuart's proceedings in
London with the circumstances attending the Duke of York's conversion,
these {604} two categories of facts, separate in appearance, unite and
coalesce so naturally that it will be almost impossible not to
recognize their intimate correlation, or, so to speak, their perfect
identity.

Setting out from Leghorn Oct 14, the son of Charles II. after a voyage
of twenty-fire or twenty-six days, arrives in the Thames about Nov. 1,
O.S. Henrietta of Bourbon, not less jealous for the salvation of her
second son than for that of the king, hastens to put the Duke of York
in communication with Father James Stuart and the eminent ecclesiastic
who accompanied him. Our two apostles divide their days between
Charles and his brother. It is in their school that the prince
received those strong lessons which in the short space of twenty days
overturned and created anew the entire structure of his belief. It was
from them that he heard with surprise that the pretended papal
permissions were only a ridiculous fable, and that the profession of
the Catholic faith obliged him to sacrifice everything, to suffer
everything, for the eternal life. Situated as James then was, this
declaration was of startling import. It affected his hopes of the
crown, his family, his entire future. At this juncture he consults
with Fr. Symons; and, still dissatisfied, he resolves to appeal to the
Pope. Our argument now takes form; it speaks to the eye. Suppose that
the courier of the Duke of York spent twenty-six days each way in his
journey to Rome, and remained only eight in that city; to have
returned to London six or seven days before the council of Jan. 25, he
would have had to quit England the 19th or 20th of Nov. And these are
the very dates for the departure of the novice of St. Andrew, upon the
close of the conferences, and for his return to the capital of Great
Britain after his journey to Italy!

Consider the subject in another light. According to every English
historian, the facts relative to the conversion of the Duke of York
have their extreme limits in Nov. 1, 1668, and Jan. 25, 1669. They
cannot be fixed earlier, nor later. But these are the precise points
at which the apostolic mission of Father Stuart at the court of
Whitehall commences and ends. Examine this in detail, measure the time
necessary to instruct and convert a heretic, to carry a message to
Rome, to confer with the Pope, to return to London--there is not a
feature which does not present a coincidence almost mathematical.

The novice of St. Andrew left behind him in France the priest whose
co-operation had been so useful, and on his return to Rome he made
known to the father-general the results of his apostolic labors at the
court of the Stuarts. What impression did the royal letter produce
upon Father Oliva? It would not be surprising if he thought that he
discovered, what many readers will perhaps have felt, in these brief
lines, a reserve, a constraint, in perfect contrast with the joy of a
soul that has found, after long and sad errors, the Way, the Truth,
and the Life.

Charles II. also wrote on a matter completely apart from the religious
question. In a former postscript, the king had engaged to recompense
the Roman fraternity for all the extraordinary expenses to which they
had been subjected on account of his son. Unfortunately, when the year
expired, the funds of the civil list were found empty. It was one of
those financial crises not unusual under a prince who never knew the
worth of money until it was gone. Charles was therefore forced to
subscribe to an obligation payable in six months for the sum of £800
sterling. This note will close the series of inedited pieces that
Father J. Stuart has left for two centuries in the hands of Father
Paul Oliva:

  "We Charles, by the grace of God King of England, France, Scotland,
  and Ireland, acknowledge ourselves debtors to the reverend
  father-general {605} of the Jesuit Fathers to the amount of £800
  sterling, viz., 800 pistoles for the maintenance and journeyings of
  our very dear and honored son the Prince James Stuart, a Jesuit
  living under the name of La Cloche, the which 800 pistoles the said
  reverend father-general, Jean Paul Oliva, has furnished him with,
  and which sum we acknowledge ourselves indebted for, and promise to
  pay him at his pleasure after six months have passed from the day
  and date, of the said obligation.

  In witness whereof, we have given both our sign-manual and our
  ordinary seal.

    CHARLES, King of England,
    L.S. France, Scotland, and Ireland.

Clement IX. was now, for the first time, informed of the secret
movement which was drawing into the bosom of the Church the posterity
of Mary Stuart. The pontiff received a letter from the Duke of York,
and it does not appear improbable that the young traveller had also
some words to communicate from the king himself: such at least was the
intention of Charles three months previous. But whatever was the
monarch's desire, there was only one course open to the Pope. The
Master had said to the highest ecclesiastic as to the humblest
disciple, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall not
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." There was then no response
to be made but a _non possumus_, tempered by all those considerations
of a charity the most tender which were fitting upon so important an
issue. And such, as we know from history, was the nature of the reply
of Clement IX. to the Duke of York.

The general of the Jesuits, in his turn, owed thanks for the royal
benefactions to the fraternity of Mont Quirinal. This letter, which
the commonest dictates of courtesy would have enjoined, is not,
however, to be found in the archives of the Jesuits at Rome. One loves
to think that it was written, that the son of Charles II. bore it to
Whitehall, but that the author, for weighty motives, destroyed it to
the last syllable. Fr. Oliva was a man of note. He was the chief of a
great apostolic order; he had grown old amid important services
rendered to the Church. Italy could justly pride itself for its
orators; but in Italy itself his rank for eloquence was high. He had
been official "_predicateur_" to four sovereign pontiffs, and the
sermons which he has left behind still attest the vigor, the fire, and
the opulence of his rhetoric. It was not in such a nature to leave so
significant an event as the conversion of a great monarch to the
unaided efforts of a novice. Through all the previous conduct of the
mission, he bore a vital part; and now when the supreme moment had
come, the king hesitating, the eternal life of a nation in the
balance, we cannot doubt that he was moved to write with all the
energy and persuasiveness of his being. He must have seen that
something more than an Anglican Church or a suspicious parliament
stood in the way of the monarch's conversion; that, in the scandalous
licentiousness of the English court, there was a stumbling-block
equally as great. If the father-general had the courage to mingle with
the language of gratitude a sincere but gentle reproof for these
delinquencies, it is easy to understand why not a trace of his message
remains to us.

Father Stuart was in haste to return to England, where at any moment
the great interests which Providence had intrusted to him might
unexpectedly be compromised. His stay at Rome was therefore brief. As
soon as he had received the verbal or written replies of Fr. Oliva,
and in addition (according to our opinion) those that the Pope sent to
the court at Whitehall, he set out at once on his return. He quitted
Rome never to return. Without doubt, in the course of the following
years, he communicated by letter with his superior, who {606} did not
die till 1681, four years before Charles II.; but the very nature of
this correspondence precluded its being deposited in the archives of
the society. From this moment, therefore, we must rely upon English
history for our details. Fr. Stuart drops into obscurity; but the work
for which he labored still gleams above the darkness.

It was on Jan. 18, 1669, if our previous calculation be accepted, that
the pretended Prince Henry de Rohan appears again at the court of
London, bringing with him his old companion in accordance with the
wish expressed by the king in his last letter to Fr. Oliva. The
pontifical letters, touching, energetic, full of the wisdom of God,
have then been remitted; the emphatic opinions of the general of the
society are known. James Stuart and the French Jesuit have had their
interview with Charles; they have aroused anew in his heart those
earnest and holy impressions which swayed him two months before; and
the venerable Henrietta de Bourbon is waiting anxiously and in tears
the moment when she may say, in the language of the gospel, "Now thou
dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace."
Such is the situation of affairs at Whitehall. Recurring to the "Life
of James II." we find that the historian, after speaking of the Duke
of York, his interview with Fr. Symons, and his letter to the Pope,
continues as follows:

  "This is why his royal highness, knowing that the king was of the
  same mind, and had already opened himself to Lord Arundel, to Lord
  Arlington, and to Sir Thomas Clifford, seized an opportunity to
  converse with his majesty on this subject. He found him fully
  decided to become a Catholic, and penetrated with the danger and the
  constraint of his position. The king added that he desired to have,
  in the cabinet of the duke, a secret interview with the persons we
  have just named, in order to consult with them upon the means which
  it would be necessary to employ in order to extend the Catholic
  religion in the state. This interview was fixed for Jan. 25, the day
  on which the Church celebrates the conversion of St Paul:

  "When they had come together, the king declared his sentiments upon
  matters of religion; he repeated what he had said to the duke
  regarding the embarrassments which he had experienced in being
  prevented from the profession of the faith to which he was attached,
  and told them that he had summoned them to consult upon the measures
  necessary to be employed in the re-establishment of the Catholic
  religion in his realm, and upon the most favorable measure for
  declaring himself openly. He remarked that there was no time to
  lose; that he expected to find great difficulties in the execution
  of his project; and that for himself he preferred to enter upon it
  while, like his brother, he was in the prime of life, and capable of
  supporting the greatest fatigues, rather than put it off later, when
  he would no longer have the energy to successfully manage so great a
  design. His majesty spoke with much force; tears filled his eyes,
  and he besought the gentlemen to do all that was fitting wise men
  and good Catholics.

  "The consultation was protracted, and the ultimate decision was to
  act in concert with France, and to demand the assistance of his very
  christian majesty: the house of Austria being no longer in a
  condition to co-operate."

The Duke of York at once abjured with great secresy; but did Charles
II. also abjure? Our opinion is that the two brothers separated from
the Anglican Church at the same time; and that on the same day, at the
foot of the same altar, in the hands of the same priest, they made the
same profession of faith. Only one remained unchangeable in his
fidelity. The other, sincere but feeble, made an honest effort to give
his country liberty of conscience, was defeated at every point by the
united mass of the {607} English factions, and finally fell back upon
dissimulations and hypocrisies. It was Fr. Stuart who presided at this
abjuration--a fact which the following considerations prove.

On the 5th of Jan., 1685, Fr. Huddleston, an English Benedictine, and
a chaplain to the queen, summoned, says Lingard, in the absence of a
foreign ecclesiastic in London, administered at evening the last
sacraments to the king without demanding from him that act which
should have preceded all others--abjuration. Charles throughout the
rest of the night had full consciousness, and it would be perfectly
absurd to suppose that neither Fr. Huddleston, a priest for
twenty-five or thirty years, nor any of the queen's almoners, nor the
Duke of York, as well as the other Catholics present, nor the sick man
himself, should have thought, for five hours, of satisfying this most
necessary of all conditions for admitting one among the children of
the true Church.

Clearly, then, Charles had made his abjuration before his last
illness. Studying the sequence of his reign, we remark that the year
1669 closes the period of calm which the brother of James II. enjoyed.
Immediately after the French alliance exasperated the nation; and the
rage and fury of Anglicanism were excited by the known conversion of
the Duke and the Duchess of York, by that of Sir Thomas Clifford, by
the second marriage of the Duke with the princess of Modena, by all
that movement of Catholic activity the signs of which multiplied
around the palace of the Stuarts. Presently persecution began anew,
and Charles, incapable of holding head against the storm, yielded in
everything; he signed the decrees of proscription, he permitted the
flow of innocent blood. What priest, in such a conjuncture, would have
consented to receive his abjuration? But in Jan., 1669, the presence
of Henrietta of Bourbon, the pious joy of all that royal family, the
hope which might reasonably be founded on the probable influence of
Fr. James Stuart, united in urging forward so desirable a
consummation. Charles, whose good faith we cannot justly suspect
without satisfactory proof,--Charles persuaded himself that, assisted
by the French monarch, and supported by his brother the duke, there
was no domestic coalition which could defeat him, and he brought over
the rest to his opinion by that seductive eloquence which, with him,
was almost irresistible. The priest doubtless had many fears; but the
priest, when there was the appearance of security, inclined toward
indulgence, and on the present occasion so many reiterated assurances,
so many moving supplications, so many marvellous advantages in
perspective, finally disarmed him. Nothing in the duke's account
prejudices this conclusion. His delicate sense of family honor, the
reproach which would have attached to Charles and ultimately to all
the Stuarts if the act were known, the reticence necessary to maintain
regarding the king's eldest son--each and all explain the silence of
that prince. Beside the offer to take the sword in hand, and to run
the chances of a long and perilous civil war, would indicate less a
future step than a step in the past. In our opinion, therefore, the
council of Jan. 25 followed the abjuration of Charles rather than
preceded it.

------

{608}


From The Argosy.


THE INFIORATA OF GENZANO.


If you are ever in Rome at Corpus Christi (a thing not likely to
happen, by the way, as it must fall in the months when northerners
shun the Campagna) do not let anything induce you to miss the
Infiorata of Genzano--the gem of village festivals. We were fortunate
enough to witness it last year, the first time it has been celebrated
since the troubles of 1848.

All Rome turned out to assist at it. Many days before every available
vehicle and beast had been bespoken, and _yet_ there was a demand.

Our mount, "Master Pietro," of half Italian, half English race, as his
name symbolizes, came to fetch us punctually at the unearthly hour of
seven--to get his work done ere the noontide heat. He had carried us
through many lovely scenes before, and his hardy qualities adapted him
well for the three days' excursion we intended to make of it, through
a land where hay is scarce and oats almost unattainable. But we knew
he had one idiosyncracy, of kicking violently at the approach of any
mule--a frequent customer in the neighborhood of Rome--and as the
crowded state of the road on that day would render it particularly
unsuited for such pranks, we elected to travel along the solitary
Appian Way. It was a brilliant morning of early June. A light trot
soon brought us to the grand old Arch of Drusus. We could not help
stopping to admire the play of light and shade on its time-worn
stones, and through the fairy tracery with which nature loves to deck
art. It could not have appeared more worthy of admiration the first
day that--oldest of triumphal arches--its noble proportions were
completed, and the imperial father saw immortalized in it the triumphs
of his son. The "stern round tower of other days" demanded another
pause. Often as we had passed it before, the romance with which "the
Childe's" speculations have invested it make it ever an object of
fresh interest. If it be the object of "huge tombs" to set all
posterity wondering about their tenants, the tomb of Caecilia Metella
certainly has fulfilled its mission. Who passes the massive structure
and does not long to know something about the lady to whom, nearly two
thousand years ago, this lasting memorial was raised? The ground-plan
is a square of seventy feet, and the walls are twenty-five feet thick.
In the small interior space thus formed, Caecilia's ashes reposed in a
white marble sarcophagus. The inscription is of the simplest
description--"Caeciliae Q. Cretici F. Metaelle Crassi;" in the
neighborhood even her name is untold, and the tower is only called the
"Capo di Bove," from the ornaments of the frieze.

We pushed on vigorously for a mile or two, and then came patches of
the old Roman pavement, to stop Master Pietro's cantering, and give
leisure to be again examining the tombs on either hand; little temples
erected to house ashes--their own ruins now the subject of fostering
care--and to set one wondering how mortal horses ever pranced, or ran,
or drew weights over those stony blocks. "Let us hope" they were not
left for an uncovered pavement, but that they served for the
foundation of a coating of tufa, or something equally grateful to
weary hoofs.

The lizards, bewildered with our clatter, shot madly across our path,
and "the merry brown hares came leaping" from their retreat, defying
{609} with their swiftness the vain attempts of our brave little
lupino to run them to ground. We were thankful they all escaped with
their lives, so blithe and gay among the tombs. Some ten miles of
this, and then a mile through a newly-mown field, the fragrant hay
most tantalizing to our probably breakfastless steeds. Some of our
party knew a cut through Duke Torlonia's ground which was to save us a
mile or two, but in anticipation of the festive crowd an iron chain
had been made to bar the passage. It was an easy leap for Master
Pietro, however, and for one or two of his companions; the others had
to go round. The rise is steep, and, though in places rocky, generally
good. We pass, on our rights the ancient town of Bovillae, and then on
our left comes the lovely lake of Albano, and Castel Grandolfo with
the Popes' modest summer palace. Another trot brings us to the
"Galeria di Sopra," a delicious, gently ascending path, soft as Rotten
Row, under the flickering shade of massive ilexes. It is just the
place for a canter, and Master Pietro evidently thinks so as he sniffs
the morning air. To our regret it comes to an end at last, and we wait
behind the sheltering gateway of the Chigi palace while some of our
party go in and secure beds at l'Ariccia. We have allowed little short
of three hours to the seventeen miles, but still we are nearly the
first to arrive, so we get the best rooms the _Locanda_ can afford,
and are well satisfied with them and with our collation of pastry and
wine. Our own hunger satisfied, we determine to leave Master Pietro
and his brethren to their oats (if they can get any), and we walk on
to Genzano. Three noble bits of viaduct save us the terrible up and
down hill through which our predecessors of a few years ago had to
toil.

During the few minutes we were in the hotel, "all the world" has
arrived, and we are soon in the midst of a vast train of people, all
following the same object, all talking earnestly, and of course very
loud. A gun sounds. There is a rush. We are just too late for the
start of the first race. It is _a' fantini_. Gaily dressed but
clownish jockeys bestride the contending chargers, without stirrups or
saddles, guiding them only by a red woollen rope. The next is _à
vuoto_. The rough but ready steeds career riderless along the way
lined out for them by the living hedge of spectators; and it is hard
to say whether they are first brought to a stand by the roar
which--suppressed by the very intensity of excitement during the
race--bursts into a deafening peal as they near the goal, or by the
black curtain suspended across their path, which forms the legitimate
"_ripresa dei barberi_." The horse who has won the contest by his own
_unridden_ impetuosity is decked with flowers and streamers, and
marched through the admiring crowds, giving a knowing and majestic nod
to the plumes which form his crest. A file of soldiers escorts him,
and the band agitates his triumphant "progress;" he has borne all his
other honors meekly, but this one chafes him. As soon as he is marched
off, the crowd, breaking up as Roman crowds do into couples, soon
manoeuvres itself into picturesque groups round the various stalls of
the village fair. How they enjoy themselves! How gladsome and light of
heart they seem!--and on what mild conditions. Does it not do one
good to see their easy contentment? What strange wares form the
attractions of dark, glancing eyes and generous purses! Staple
commodity of the fairs of all the Roman _paesi_ is the unfailing pork,
boned and rolled, and stuffed with rosemary: we did wrong not to taste
it, for the eager thousands find it "very good." The Genzano wine--and
the Cesarini and Jacobini cellars are open to-day--affords a more
congenial temptation. It is a luscious wine, with more body and more
delicate flavor than the generality of Roman wines, but lacks the
sparkle of the surpassing Orvieto.

The gay scene is full of attractive interest, but, finding a couple of
hours to spare, we trot back to l'Ariccia to {610} dine. Others have
adopted the same course, and the _Locanda_ is all astir. What to have
is always a difficult question for the most _un_fastidious anywhere in
the Papal States out of Rome. A provoking waiter, who thinks he can
speak French, and on all occasions comes out with his one broken
sentence, "_Aspetti oon petti momenti_," finds us impracticable, and
sends us the _chef de cuisine_. The _chef_, with a profusion of
_issimos_, assures us there is no _cuisine_ in the world like his, and
rings the changes on the well-known names we abominate. _Minestra_ we
refuse, it is always water bewitched; the _lesso_ is sure to be
tasteless and stringy; the _pasta_, the Roman rendering of maccaroni,
underdone and indigestible; the _arrosto_, hard and tough--we will
none of them. Well, a _fritto?_ If the oil is good, we have nothing to
say against that; we allow you excel there. If something else we must
have, we will take you on your own ground; bring us an _agro-dolce_,
that is a culinary curiosity with which, after the palate has been
once annealed to its compound of wine, vinegar, bacon, butter,
parsley, spices, sugar, oil, chocolate, and wild boar or porcupine,
you may be always glad to renew acquaintance. The wind-up of
_pasticcieria_ and _frutte_ we say nothing about; we know it is
useless to argue against the inevitable.

While this repast is preparing, we are driven to occupy ourselves with
a study of the room and the guests. The former presents a strange
mixture of primitiveness and pretension: the build is clumsy, the
window-shutters cover only the glass panes, the fittings are rude, the
floor is bare. But the walls have been painted in
(millions-of-miles-off) imitation of Raphael's much-sinned-against
Loggie! And over the mantelpiece hangs a landscape, into which a piece
of looking-glass is inserted to represent a lake. The principal piece
of furniture is a large glass cupboard, in which is stowed away--we
know not for what grand occasion, for it is not even brought into use
to-day--a set of common English willow-pattern earthenware! We cannot
but smile to see our humble friend in such grand plight; and we
moralize to ourselves on the subjectivity of the human mind, to which
its changed estimation testifies. The angularity of the fall of the
table-cloth "accuses" a table composed of a literal "board," supported
on tressels; and though there are a few chairs, the majority of the
guests have to be content with backless benches. At one end of our
board an English artist, not unknown to fame, and his party are going
through the regular routine of an Italian hotel dinner with
praiseworthy patience. At another board sits a large family of
natives, and we forget all note of time as we watch with astonished
eyes the masses of _pasta_ they contrive to stow away, half-cooked as
it is sure to be. The sight is not new to us, but every time we see it
it has the same attraction, derived from the reminiscence of a
delicious early surprise such as the performance of Punch and Judy
always exercises on any number of Londoners. A vacant space near them
is soon filled by another native, a young exquisite, who appears quite
oppressed by the mild heat we northerners had been enjoying. Throwing
himself at full length on the bench, he commences a violent fanning
with his handkerchief; but after a minute or two his hand requires a
cooler instrument, and he changes it for his hat, which in turn is
exchanged for his dinner-napkin, and, finally, he completes the
operation with his plate! At last the one-sentence-of-French waiter
directs his steps toward our party, but, to the indignation of every
individual of it, he bears the _minestra_ we forbade him to name. This
has been our universal experience. The Italian mind cannot take in the
idea of the possibility of dining without broth; it is useless to
countermand it, it is sure to be sent to table. We explode,
nevertheless, and desire the dishes we ordered to be brought without
further delay. "_Aspetti oon petti momenti_," says Nicolò; {611} and
better than, his word this time, it is really only _un petit moment_
before we are duly served.

Dinner despatched, we have still time to stroll over the neighborhood
before we are wanted at Genzano. A walk of less than a mile, starting
over the magnificent new viaduct, takes us to the straggling _paese_
(we cannot bring ourselves to call it a town) of Albano. A
good-natured old fellow, always recognizable by the extreme whiteness
of his stockings, hails us as we pass, in memory of old acquaintance,
and is sure we must want donkeys; we cannot refuse him, and hoping
Master Pietro won't see us out of his stable window, we suffer the
sure-footed but ignoble substitutes to take us down the difficult
descent which the viaduct was built to spare us--so wayward is woman!
But the viaduct itself has created a reason for making the descent, as
the sight of its noble proportions amply repays the journey.

It was completed during the reign of the present Pope, from the
designs of a local engineer--one of the Jacobini family. It is formed
of "arches on arches" in three ranges, six on the lowest tier, twelve
in the next, and eighteen in the highest; they are each forty-nine
feet wide between the piers, and sixty feet in height; the whole
length of roadway, including the approaches, is nearly a quarter of a
mile, and the height to top of parapet just two hundred feet. It is
built of massive blocks of peperino, cut to fit each other without
mortar, and the appearance is solid and grand, worthy of the models of
ancient masonry by which it is surrounded. There is no attempt at
ornament. The entire cost was 140,000 scudi (£33,000),  [Footnote 93]
and the halfpenny toll has already gone far toward repaying it.

  [Footnote 93: We drove, the other day, under the viaduct of the
  Brighton Railway for the sake of comparing it with our memory of
  l^Ariccia, and were disappointed to find it a slender brick affair,
  for which the meaningless display of stone at the top had not
  prepared us. It consists of thirty-seven arches, sixty feet high,
  and is a little over a quarter of a mile in length. We were informed
  its cost was £58,000.]

Close under it lies the old ruined tomb commonly called of the Horatii
and Curiatii but now determined to be that of Aruns, son of Porsenna.
It has all the appearance of being of Etruscan work, and the remains
are very peculiar. It is a square structure, forty-six feet every way
and twenty feet high; at the four corners are the remains of four
small cones, one being nearly perfect; in the centre is a cylinder,
twenty-three feet across, made to contain the urn.

Our donkeys carried us bravely up the rugged hill, and then we found,
to our regret, we must leave the Chigi palace, Duke Sforza's infant
schools, and other objects of interest for another visit; we had only
time to get back to Genzano. A great deal of business had been done at
the fair, and many hearts won by the fair. The booth-keepers, having
sold off their stock, had shut up shop and gone away, and the merry
couples were circulating freely. The rosemaried pork and Genzano wine
had given them strength and vigor and gaiety--let it not be understood
that we see any trace of excess; all is mirth and good humor and
picturesqueness. At last six o'clock strikes, and, like an army
marshalled by the word of command, the spontaneous and unanimous will
of the thousands of sightseers brings them in serried procession up
the broad street, where the Infiorata lies sparkling and rendering up
its varied and gorgeous reflections to the sun's rays which bathe it.

Beautiful and delicate tribute of a poetical people! The occasion is
the festival of the Blessed Sacrament; and as it is carried among them
in solemn procession the custom of all Catholic countries is to strew
flowers along the way; but here the idea has taken a development of a
surpassing order, if not unique--as if no care could be too great: not
only are the most brilliant flowers planted months before, and
collected from distant contributors, but when the day arrives all
these are made to form the most exquisite {612} mosaics. What is a
Gobelins carpet to this weft of nature's own materials! A cord is
drawn up both sides of the road to keep the flowered centre clear, and
no one thinks of infringing the slight barrier. The rising ground is
most favorable for displaying in two lines, ascending and descending,
the endless variety of elaborate devices of tesselation. Costly
marbles of different hues fitly pave the basilica; the glazed
_axulejos_ cooled the Moslem's feet at the same time that they pleased
his eye; the velvet-pile tapestries of British looms carpet the bleak
floors of our northern homes; and the stiff geometrical tiles, angular
and uncomfortable as everything Gothic is, suit very well to our
Gothic churches. Each and all have their fitness; and what is the
Infiorata? It is the tribute of a simple and poor, but imaginative and
loving, people "preparing to meet their God."

  "O earth, grow flowers beneath his feet,
  And thou, O sun, shine bright this day!
  He comes, he comes,--O heaven on earth!
  Our Jesus comes upon his way,"

sings one of their hymns for the occasion. And, poor tillers of the
earth, the only offering they _can_ make is of the flowers which "her
children are." We looked on with an artist's and humanitarian's
enjoyment. And delicious enjoyment it was! It was the fresh enjoyment
of our childhood over again to trace the rich mosaic designs spread
before us; and we pity him who does not know the enjoyment of the
sensation of color. There were the arms of the Stato Pontificio, and
of the _paese_, and of the Cesarini and Jacobini, with all their
bearings and all their tinctures and then, as it were, the arms of the
blessed sacrament--the symbols under which it is figured. The herald
must find a new nomenclature; already he has a separate one for
commonalty, nobility, and royalty, but now, for a "greater than
Solomon," he must devise another. To his "sol, topaz, or," he must add
the marigold; and to his "luna, pearl, argent," the lily. Then came
arabesques in perplexing mazes of tracery; every line true, and every
harmony or contrast of tint faultless. By a refinement least of all to
be expected, in the centre of some of the compartments a tiny fountain
had been introduced, "flinging delicious coolness round the air, and
verdure o'er the ground." Nothing that poets have fabled of fairyland
or paradise ever exceeded it in imaginative luxuriance.

  "O what a wilderness of flowers!
  It seemed as though from all the bowers
  And fairest fields of all the year
  The mingled spoils were scattered here.
  The pathway like a garden breathes
    With the rich buds that o'er it lie,
  As if a shower of fairy wreaths
    Had fallen upon it from the sky."

A crowd of Romans is not surrounded by a savory atmosphere. We are
never in one without finding that the thing Cleopatra exceedingly
feared had fallen upon us--

  "In their thick breath.
  Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded.
  And forced to drink their vapor."

Their baths are things of the past; their picturesque costume looks as
if it were never renewed during a whole life; their houses are dingy,
and bare, and comfortless; yet we have before us the proof that they
possess a delicacy of both feeling and taste which it would be
impossible to find surpassed anywhere.

Meantime the procession from the church approaches, and a hush
succeeds the merry din which has stunned us so long; the last
pertinacious "_Ecco! zigari!_" and "_Acqua fresca_!" is sung out. And
in their harsh nasal intonation the appropriated hymns are begun by
the priests and taken up by the whole population, very much after the
fashion of a horse running away; without any regard for time and very
little for tune, but with a heartiness and earnestness which we try to
persuade ourselves ought to compensate for the "skinning" of our ears.
The untidy choristers precede and follow in due numbers, and the
quaint confraternities, in various dresses, bearing unwieldy,
misshapen {613} banners, waddle and hobble behind. Slovenly men with
unwashed hands carry great yellow tapers, and a ragged urchin runs by
the side of each catching the droppings into a piece of stiff paper.
The whole thing is disenchanting and disedifying; but we see so
plainly the impression that they think they are doing their best
reflected from so many hundred beaming countenances, that we end by
exhausting our squeamishness, and learn to look on the Genzanese modes
of devotion from their own standing-point. By the time it has taken to
effect this, however, the procession has regained the church, where we
find it impossible to penetrate, and so we turn to take a last look at
the Infiorata. Alas! it has all vanished, as completely as if it had
been the emanation of fairyland it appeared to be. As soon as the
procession had passed the people broke in, eager to possess themselves
of the flowers as a sort of relic. From what we saw of the process of
undoing, it appeared that the mosaics were not composed of whole
flowers, except in some instances where their form adapted them to
form special designs, but the generality were made with shred petals,
by which means masses of color were obtained in the most manageable
quantities. There was, in most cases, a board or oil-cloth for a
foundation, with the patterns marked out in chalk; but the blending of
colors seemed to have been left to the individual taste of the
workers.

We get back to our narrow rooms at l'Ariccia in time to escape the
firing of the _mortaletti_ and _botti_ (small guns and crackers)
without which an Italian _festa_ is seldom considered complete.

Nicolò is much disappointed that we will not again trust to the
resources of his cuisine, and exclaims "_Aspetti con petti momenti_,"
as he goes in quest of our bed-lamps. While we wait, we hear our
Italian fellow-diners angrily complaining that mine host had taken
advantage of the throng of visitors to cheat them of their due
proportion of _pasta!_ The quantity sent up for four was only the due
mess of one, _selon_ them. What a spectacle we should have had if it
had been dealt out to them according to their own measure!

------

From Chamber's Journal.

BROADCAST THY SEED.

  Broadcast thy seed!
  Although some portion may be found
  To fall on uncongenial ground,
  Where sand, or shard, or stone may stay
  Its coming into light of day;
  Or when it comes, some pestilent air
  May make it droop or wither there--
  Be not discouraged; some will find
  Congenial soil and gentle wind,
  Refreshing dew and ripening shower,
  To bring it into beauteous flower,
  From flower to fruit, to glad thine eyes,
  And fill thy soul with sweet surprise.
  Do good, and God will bless thy deed--
  Broadcast thy seed!

------

{614}


From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD:

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.


CHAPTER XXII.

"Ah, ladies," exclaimed Mr. Cobham--pleased, I ween, to see how
eagerly we looked for his news--"I promise you the eastern counties do
exhibit their loyalty in a very commendable fashion, and so report
saith her majesty doth think. The gallant appearance and brave array
of the Suffolk esquires hath drawn from her highness sundry marks of
her approval. What think you, my Lady Tregony, of two hundred
bachelors, all gaily clad in white-velvet coats, and those of graver
years in black-velvet coats and fair gold chains, with fifteen hundred
men all mounted on horseback, and Sir William le Spring of Lavenham at
their head. I warrant you a more comely troop and a nobler sight
should not often be seen. Then, in Norfolk, what great sums of money
have been spent! Notably at Kenninghall, where for divers days not
only the queen herself was lodged and feasted, with all her household,
council, courtiers, and all their company, but all the gentlemen also,
and people of the country who came thither upon the occasion, in such
plentiful, bountiful, and splendid manner, as the like had never been
seen before in these counties. Every night she hath slept at some
gentleman's seat. At Holdstead Hall I had the honor to be presented to
her highness, and to see her dance a minuet. But an unlucky accident
did occur that evening."

"No lives were lost, I hope?" Lady Tregony said.

"No lives," Master Cobham answered; "but a very precious fan which her
majesty let drop into the moat--one of white and red feathers, which
Sir Francis Drake had gifted her with on New Year's day. It was
enamelled with a half-moon of mother-o'-pearl and had her majesty's
picture within it."

"And at Norwich, sir?" I asked. "Methinks, by some reports we heard,
the pageants there must have proved exceeding grand."

"Rare indeed," he replied. "On the 16th she did enter the town at
Harford Bridge. The mayor received her with a long Latin oration, very
tedious; and, moreover, presented her with a fair cup of silver,
saying, 'Here is one hundred pounds pure gold.' To my thinking, the
cup was to her liking more than the speech, and the gold most of all;
for when one of her footmen advanced for to take the cup, she said
sharply, 'Look to it: there is one hundred pounds.' Lord! what a
number of pageants were enacted that day and those which followed!
Deborah, Judith, Esther at one gate; Queen Martia at another; on the
heights near Blanche-flower Castle, King Gurgunt and his men. Then all
the heathen deities in turn: Mercury driving full speed through the
city in a fantastic car; Jupiter presenting her with a riding-rod, and
Venus with a white dove. {615} But the rarest of all had been designed
by Master Churchyard. Where her majesty was to take her barge, at the
back-door of my Lord Arundel's town-house, he had prepared a goodly
masque of water-nymphs concealed in a deep hole, and covered with
green canvas, which suddenly opening as if the ground gaped, first one
nymph was intended to pop up and make a speech to the queen, and then
another; and a very complete concert to sound secretly and strangely
out of the earth. But when the queen passed in her coach, a
thunder-shower came down like a water-spout, and great claps of
thunder silenced the concert; which some did presage to be an evil
omen of the young lord's fortunes."

"I' faith," cried Basil, "I be sorry for the young nobleman, and yet
more for the poor artificer of this ingenious pageant, to whom his
nymphs turned into drowned rats must needs have been a distressing
sight."

"He was heard to lament over it," Master Cobham said, "in very
pathetic terms: 'What shall I say' (were his words) 'of the loss of
velvets, silks, and cloths of gold? Well, nothing but the old
adage--Man doth purpose, but God dispose.' Well, the mayor hath been
knighted; and her majesty said she should never forget his city. On
her journey she looked back, and, with water in her eyes, shaked her
riding whip, and cried, 'Farewell Norwich!' Yesterday she was to sleep
at Sir Henry Jerningham's at Cottessy, and hunt in his park to-day."

"Oh, poor Sir Henry!" I said laughing. "Then he hath not escaped this
dear honor?"

"Notice of it was sent to him but two days before, from Norwich,"
Master Cobham rejoined; "and I ween he should have been glad for to be
excused."

Lady Tregony then reminded us that supper was ready, and we removed to
the dining-hall; but neither did this good gentleman weary of relating
nor we of listening to the various haps of the royal progress, which
he continued to describe whilst we sat at meat.

He was yet talking when the sound of a horse gallopping under the
windows surprised us, and we had scarce time to turn our heads before
Basil's steward came tumbling into the room head foremost, like one
demented.

"Sir, sir!" he cried, almost beside himself; "in God's name, what do
you here, and the queen coming for to sleep at your house to-morrow?"

Methinks a thunder-clap in the midst of the stilly clear evening
should not have startled us so much. Basil's face flushed very deeply;
Lady Tregony looked ready to faint; my heart beat as if it should
burst; Master Cobham threw his hat into the air, and cried, "Long live
Queen Elizabeth, and the old house of Rookwood!"

"Who hath brought these tidings?" Basil asked of the steward.

"Marry," replied the man, "one of her majesty's gentlemen and two
footmen have arrived from Cottessy, and brought this letter from Lord
Burleigh for your honor."

Basil broke the seal, read the missive, and then quietly looking up,
said, "It is true; and I must lose no time to prepare my poor house
for her majesty's abode in it."

He looked not now red, but somewhat pale. Methinks he was thinking of
the chapel, and what it held; and the queen's servants now in the
house. I would not stay him; but, taking my hand whilst he spoke, he
said to Lady Tregony,

"Dear lady, I shall lack yours and Constance's aid to-morrow. Will you
do me so much good as to come with her to Euston as early before
dinner as you can?"

"Yea, we will be with you, my good Basil," she answered, "before ten
of the clock."

"'Tis not," he said, "that I intend to cast about for fine silks and
cloths of gold, or contrive pageants--God {616} defend it!--or ransack
the country for rare and costly meats; but such honorable cheer and so
much of comfort as a plain gentleman's house can afford, I be bound to
provide for my sovereign when she deigneth to use mine house."

"Master Cobham, I do crave the honor of your company also," he added,
turning to that gentleman, who, with many acknowledgments of his
courtesy, excused himself on the plea that he must needs be at his own
seat the next day.

Then Basil, mounting his horse which the steward had brought with him,
rode away so fast that the old man could scarce keep up with him.

Not once that night did mine eyes close themselves. Either I sat bolt
upright in my bed counting each time the clock struck the number of
chimes, or else, unable to lie still, paced up and down my chamber.
The hours seemed to pass so slowly, more than in times of deep grief.
It seemed so strange a hap that the queen should come to Euston, I
almost fancied at moments the whole thing to be a dream, so fantastic
did it appear. Then a fear would seize me lest the chapel should have
been discovered before Basil could arrive. Minor cares likewise
troubled me; such as the scantiness and bad state of the furniture,
the lack of household conveniences, the difficulty that might arise to
procure sufficient food at a brief notice for so great a number of
persons. Oh, how my head did work all night with these various
thinkings! and it seemed as if the morning would never come, and when
it did that Lady Tregony would never ring her bell. Then I bethought
myself of the want of proper dresses for her and myself to appear in
before her majesty, if so be we were admitted to her presence.
Howsoever, I found she was indifferently well provided in that
respect, for her old good gowns stood in a closet where dust could not
reach them, and she bethought herself I could wear my wedding-dress,
which had come from the seamstress a few days before; and so we should
not be ashamed to be seen. I must needs confess that, though many
doubts and apprehensions filled me touching this day, I did feel some
contentment in the thought of the honor conferred on Basil. If there
was pride in this, I do cry God mercy for it. As we rode to Euston,
the fresh air, the eager looks of the people on the road--for now the
report had spread of the queen's coming--the stir which it caused, the
puttings up of flags, and buildings of green arches, strengthened this
gladness. Basil was awaiting us with much impatience, and immediately
drew me aside.

"I have locked," he said, "all the books and church furniture, and our
Blessed Lady's image, in Owen's hiding place; so methinks we be quite
secure. Beds and food I have sent for, and they keep coming in.
Prithee, dear love, look well thyself to her majesty's chamber, for to
make it as handsome and befitting as is possible with such poor means
thereunto. I pray God the lodging may be to her contentation for one
night."

So I hasted to the state-chamber--for so it was called, albeit except
for size it had but small signs of state about it. Howsoever, with the
maids' help, I gathered into it whatsoever furniture in the house was
most handsome, and the wenches made wreaths of ivy and laurel, which
we hung round the bare walls. Thence I went to the kitchen, and found
her majesty's cook was arrived, with as many scullions as should have
served a whole army; so, except speaking to him civilly, and inquiring
what provisions he wanted, I had not much to do there. Then we went
round the house with Mr. Bowyer, the gentleman-usher, for to assign
the chambers to the queen's ladies, and the lords and gentlemen and
the waiting-women. There was no lack of room, but much of proper
furniture; albeit chairs and tables were borrowed on all sides from
the neighboring cottages, and Lady {617} Tregony sent for a store from
her house. Mr. Bowyer held in his hand a list of the persons of the
court now journeying with the queen; Lord Burleigh, Sir Francis
Walsingham, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Walter Raleigh, and many other
famous courtiers were foremost in it. When their lodgings were fixed,
he glanced down the paper, and, mine eyes following his, I perceived
among the minor gentlemen there set down Hubert's name, which moved me
very much; for we did not of a surety know at that time he did belong
to the court, and I would fain he had not been present on this
occasion, and new uneasy thoughts touching what had passed at Sir
Francis Walsingham's house, and the words the queen had let fall
concerning him and me, crossed my mind in consequence. But in that
same list I soon saw another name which caused me so vehement an
emotion that Basil, noticing it, pulled me by the hand into another
room for to ask me the cause of that sudden passion.

"Basil," I whispered, "mine heart will break if that murthering
Richard Topcliffe must sleep under your roof."

"God defend it!" he exclaimed. But pausing in his speech leant his arm
against the chimney and his head on it for a brief space. Then raising
it, said, in an altered tone, "Mine own love, be patient. We must
needs drink this chalice to the dregs" (which showed me his thoughts
touching this visit had been from the first less hopeful than mine).
Taking my pencil out of mine hand, he walked straight to the door
before which Mr. Bowyer was standing, awaiting us, and wrote thereon
Master Topcliffe's name. Methought his hand shook a little in the
doing of it. I then whispered again in his ear:

"Know you that Hubert is in the queen's retinue?"

"No, indeed!" he exclaimed; and then with his bright winning smile,
"Prithee now, show him kindness for my sake. He had best sleep in my
chamber to-night. It will make room, and mind us of our boyish days."

The day was waning and long shadows falling on the grass when tidings
came that her majesty had been hunting that morning, and would not
arrive till late. About dusk warning was given of her approach. She
rode up on horseback to the house amidst the loud cheering of the
crowd, with all her train very richly attired. But it had waxed so
dark their countenances could not be seen. Her master of the horse
lifted her from the saddle, and she went straight to her own
apartments, being exceeding tired, it was said, with her day's sport
and long riding. Notice was given that her highness would admit none
to her presence that evening. Howsoever, she sent for Basil, and,
giving him her hand to kiss, thanked him in the customary manner for
the use of his house. It had not been intended that Lady Tregony and I
should sleep at Euston, where the room did scarcely suffice for the
queen's suite. So when it was signified her majesty should not leave
her chamber that night, but, after a slight refection, immediately
retire to rest, and her ladies likewise, who were almost dead with
fatigue, she ordered our horses to be brought to the back-door. Basil
stole away from the hall where the lords and gentlemen were assembled
for to bid us good-night. After he had lifted me on the saddle, he
threw his arm round the horse's neck as if for to detain him, and
addressing me very fondly, called me his own love, his sole comfort,
his best treasure, with many other endearing expressions.

Then I, loth to leave him alone amidst false friends and secret
enemies, felt tenderness overcome me, and I gave him in return some
very tender and passionate assurances of affection; upon which he
kissed mine hands over and over again, and our hearts, overcharged
with various emotions, found relief in this interchange of loving
looks and words. But, alas! this brief interview had an unthought
{618} of witness more than good Lady Tregony, who said once or twice,
"Come, children, bestir yourselves," or "Tut, tut, we should be off;'"
but still lingered herself for to pleasure us. I chanced to look up,
whilst Basil was fastening my horse's bit, and by the light of a lamp
projecting from the wall, I saw Hubert at an open window right over
above our heads. I doubt not but that he had seen the manner of our
parting, and heard the significant expressions therein used; for a
livid hue, and the old terrible look which I had noticed in him
before, disfigured his countenance. I am of opinion that until that
time he had not believed with certainty that my natural, unbiassed
inclination did prompt me to marry Basil, or that I loved him with
other than a convenient and moderate regard, which, if circumstances
reversed their positions, should not be a hindrance to his own suit.
Basil having finished his management with my bridle stepped back with
a smile and last good-night, all unconscious of that menacing visage
which my terrified eyes were now averted from, but which I still
seemed pursued by. It made me weep to think that these two brothers
should lie in the same chamber that coming night; the one so confiding
and guileless of heart, the other so full of envy and enmity.

I was so tired when I reached home that I fell heavily asleep for some
hours. But, awaking between five and six of the clock, and not able to
rest in my chamber, dressed myself and went into the garden. Not far
from the house there was an arbor, with a seat in it. Passing
alongside of it, I perceived, with no small terror, a man lying asleep
on this bench. And then, with increased affright, but not believing
mine own eyes, but rather thinking it to be a vision, saw Basil, as it
seemed to me, in the same dress he wore the day before, but with his
face much paler. A cry burst from me, for methought perhaps he should
be dead. But he awoke at my scream, looked somewhat wildly about him
for a minute, rubbed his eyes, and then with a kind of smile, albeit
an exceeding sad one, said,

"Is it you, my good angel?"

"O Basil," I cried, sitting down by his side, and taking hold of his
chilled hand, "what hath happened? Why are you here?"

He covered his face with his hands. Methinks he was praying. Then he
raised his pale, noble visage and said:

"About one hour after your departure, supper being just ended, I was
talking with Sir Walter Raleigh and some other gentlemen, when a
message was brought unto me from Lord Burleigh, who had retired to his
chamber, desiring for to speak with me. I thought it should be
somewhat anent the queen's pleasure for the ordering of the next day,
and waited at once on his lordship. When I came in, he looked at me
with a very severe and harsh countenance. 'Sir,' he said in an abrupt
manner, 'I am informed that you are excommunicated for papistry. How
durst you then attempt the royal presence, and to kiss her majesty's
hand? You--unfit to company with any Christian person--you are fitter
for a pair of stocks, and are forthwith commanded not to appear again
in her sight, but to hold yourself ready to attend her council's
pleasure.' Constance, God only knoweth what I felt; and oh, may he
forgive me that for one moment I did yield to a burning resentment,
and forgot the prayers I have so often put up, that when persecution
fell on me I might meet it, as the early Christians did, with
blessings, not with curses. But look you, love, a judicial sentence,
torture, death methinks, should be easier to bear than this insulting,
crushing, brutal tone, which is now used toward Catholics. Yet if
Christ was for us struck by a slave and bore it, we should also be
able for to endure their insolent scorn. Bitter words escaped me, I
think, albeit I know not very well what I said; but {619} his lordship
turned his back on the man he had insulted, and left the room without
listening to me. I be glad of it now. What doth it avail to
remonstrate against injuries done under pretence of law, or bandy
words with a judge which can compel you to silence?"

"Basil," I cried, "you may forgive that man; I cannot'.'

"Yea, but if you love me, you shall forgive him," he cried. "God
defend mine injuries should work in thee an unchristian resentment!
Nay, nay, love, weep not; think for what cause I am ill-used, and thou
wilt presently rejoice thereat rather than grieve."

"But what happened when that lord had left you?" I asked, not yet able
to speak composedly.

Then he: "I stood stock-still for a while in a kind of bewilderment,
hearing loud laughter in the hall below, and seeing, as it did happen,
a man the worse for liquor staggering about the court. To my heated
brain it did seem as if hell had been turned loose in my house, where
some hours before--" Then he stopped, and again sinking his head on
his hands, paused a little, and then continued without looking up:
"Well, I came down the stairs and walked straight out at the front
door. As I passed the hall I heard some one ask, 'Which is the master
of this huge house?' and another, whom by his voice I knew to be
Topcliffe, answered, 'Rookwood, a papist, newly crept out of his
wardship. As to his house, 'tis most fit for the blackguard, but not
for her gracious majesty to lodge in. But I hope she will serve God
with great and comfortable examples, and have all such notorious
papists presently committed to prison.' This man's speech seemed to
restore me to myself, and a firmer spirit came over me. I resolved not
to sleep under mine own roof, where, in the queen's name, such
ignominious treatment had been awarded me,' and went out of my house,
reciting those verses of the Psalms, 'O God, save me in thy name, and
in thy strength judge me. Because strangers have risen up against me,
and the strong have sought my soul.' I came here almost unwittingly,
and not choosing to disturb any one in the midst of the night, lay
down in this place, and, I thank God, soon fell asleep."

"You did not see Hubert?" I timidly inquired.

"No," he said, "neither before nor after my interview with Lord
Burleigh. I hope no one hath accused him of papistry, and so this time
he may escape."

"And who did accuse you?" I asked.

"I know not," he answered; "we are never safe for one hour. A
discontented groom or covetous neighbor may ruin us when they list."

"But are you not in danger of being called before the council?" I
said.

"Yea, more than in danger," he answered. "But I should hope a heavy
fine shall this time satisfy the judges; which, albeit we can ill
afford it, may yet be endured."

Then I drew him into the house, and we continued to converse till good
Lady Tregony joined us. When I briefly related to her what Basil had
told me, the color rose in her pale, aged cheek; but she only clasped
her hands and said,

"God's holy will be done."

"Constance," Basil exclaimed, whilst he was eating some breakfast we
had set before him, "prithee get me paper and ink for to write to
Hubert."

I looked at him inquiringly as I gave him what he asked for.

"I am banished from mine own house," he said; "but as long as it is
mine the queen should not lack anything I can supply for her comfort.
She is my guest, albeit I am deemed unworthy to come into her
presence; I must needs charge Hubert to act the host in my place, and
see to all hospitable duties."

My heart swelled at this speech. Methought, though I dared not utter
{620} my thinking for more reasons than one, that Hubert had most like
not waited for his brother's licence to assume the mastership of his
house. The messenger was despatched, and then a long silence ensued,
Basil walking to and fro before the house, and I embroidering, with
mine eyes often raised from my work to look toward him. When nine
o'clock struck I joined him, and we strolled outside the gate, and
without forecasting to do so walked along the well-known path leading
to Euston. When we reached a turn of the road whence the house is to
be seen, we stopped and sat down on a bank under a sycamore tree. We
could discern from thence persons going in and out of the doors, and
the country-folk crowding about the windows for to catch a glimpse of
the queen, the guard ever and anon pushing them back with their
halberds. The numbers of them continually increased, and deputations
began to arrive with processions and flags. It was passing strange for
to be sitting there gazing as strangers on this turmoil, and folks
crowding about that house the master of which was banished from it. At
last we noticed an increased agitation amongst the people which seemed
to presage the queen's coming out. Sounds of shouting proceeded from
inside the building, and then a number of men issued from the front
door, and pushing back the crowd advanced to the centre of the green
plot in front and made a circle there with ropes.

"What sport are they making ready for?" I said, turning to Basil.

"God knoweth," he answered in a despondent tone. Then came others
carrying a great armed-chair, which they placed on one side of the
circle and other chairs beside it, and some country people brought in
their arms loads of fagots, which they piled up in the midst of the
green space. A painful suspicion crossed my mind, and I stole a glance
at Basil for to see if the same thought had come to him. He was
looking another way. I cast about if it should be possible on some
pretence to draw him off from that spot, whence it misgave me a
sorrowful sight should meet his eyes. But at that moment both of us
were aroused by loud cries of "God save the queen!" "Long live Queen
Elizabeth!" and we beheld her issue from the house bowing to the
crowd, which filled the air with their cries and vociferous cheering.
She seated herself in the armed-chair, her ladies and the chief
persons of her train on each side of her. On the edge of this
half-circle I discerned Hubert. The straining of mine eyes was very
painful; they seemed to burn in their sockets. Basil had been watching
the forth-coming of the queen, but his sight was not so quick as mine,
and as yet no fear such as I entertained had struck him.

"What be they about?" he said to me with a good-natured smile. Before
I could answer--"Good God!" he exclaimed in an altered voice; "what
sound is that?" for suddenly yells and hooting noises arose, such as a
mob do salute criminals with, and a kind of procession issued from the
front door. "What, what is it?" cried Basil, seizing my hand with a
convulsive grasp; "what do they carry?--not Blessed Mary's image?"

"Yea," I said, "I see Topcliffe walking in front of them. They will
burn it. There, there--they do lift it in the air in mockery. Oh, some
people do avoid and turn away; now they lay it down and light the
fagots." Then I put my hand over his eyes for that he should not see a
sort of dance which was performed around the fire, mixed with yells
and insulting gestures, and the queen sitting and looking on. He
forced my hand away; and when I said, "Oh, prithee, Basil, stay not
here--come with me," he exclaimed.

"Let me go, Constance! let me go! Shall I stand aloof when at mine own
door the Blessed Mother of God is outraged? Am I a Jew or a heretic
that I should endure this sight and not smite this queen of earth,
which dareth {621} to insult the Queen of Saints? Yea, if I should be
torn to pieces, I will not suffer them to proceed."

I clung to him affrighted, and cried out, "Basil, you shall not go.
Our Blessed Lady forbids it; your passion doth blind you. You will
offend God and lose your soul if you do. Basil, dearest Basil, 'tis
human anger, not godly sorrow only, moves you now." Then he cast
himself down with his face on the ground and wept bitterly; which did
comfort me, for his inflamed countenance had been terrible, and these
tears came as a relief.

Meantime this disgusting scene ended, and the queen withdrew; after
which the crowd slowly dispersed, smouldering ashes alone remaining in
the midst of the burnt-up grass. Then Basil rose, folded his arms, and
gazed on the scene in silence. At last he said:

"Constance, this house shall no longer be mine. God knoweth I have
loved it well since my infancy. More dearly still since we forecasted
together to serve God in it. But this scene would never pass away from
my mind. This outrage hath stained the home of my fathers. This
people, whose yells do yet ring in mine ears, can no longer be to me
neighbors as heretofore, or this queen my queen. God forgive me if I
do m in this. I do not curse her. No, God defend it! I pray that on
her sad deathbed--for surely a sad one it must be--she shall cry for
mercy and obtain it; but her subject I will not remain. I will
compound my estate for a sum of money, and will go beyond seas, where
God is served in a Catholic manner and his Holy Mother not dishonored.
Wilt thou follow me there, Constance?"

I leant my head on his shoulder, weeping. "O, Basil," I cried, "I can
answer only in the words of Ruth: 'Whithersoever thou shalt go, I will
go; and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God.'"

He drew my arm in his, and we walked slowly away toward Fakenham.
Wishing to prepare his mind for a possible misfortune, I said: "We be
a thousand times happier than those which shall possess thy lands."

"What say you?" he quickly answered; "who shall possess them?"

"God knoweth," I replied, afraid to speak further.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed: "a dreadful thought cometh to me; where
was Hubert this morning?"

I remained silent.

"Speak, speak! O Constance, God defend he was there!"

His grief and horror were so great I durst not reveal the truth, but
made some kind of evasive answer. To this day methinks he is ignorant
on that point.

The queen and the court departed from Euston soon after two of the
clock; not before, as I since heard, the church furniture and books
had been all destroyed, and a malicious report set about that a piece
of her majesty's plate was missing, as an excuse for to misuse the
poor servants which had showed grief at the destruction carried on
before their eyes. When notice of their departure reached Banham Hall,
whither we had returned, Basil immediately went back to Euston. I much
lamented he should be alone that evening, in the midst of so many sad
sights and thoughts as his house now should afford him, little
forecasting the event which, by a greater mishap, surmounted minor
subjects of grief.

About six of the clock, Sir Francis Walsingham, attended by an esquire
and two grooms, arrived at Lady Tregony's seat, and was received by
her with the courtesy she was wont to observe with every one. After
some brief discoursing with her on indifferent matters, he said his
business was with young Mistress Sherwood, and he desired to see her
alone. Thereupon I was fetched to him, and straightway he began to
speak of the queen's good opinion of me, and that her highness had
been well contented {622} with my behavior when I had been admitted
into her presence at his house; and that it should well please her
majesty I should marry a faithful subject of her majesty's, whom she
had taken into her favor, and then she would do us both good.

I looked in a doubtful manner at Sir Francis, feigning to misapprehend
his meaning, albeit too clear did it appear to me. Seeing I did not
speak, he went on:

"It is her majesty's gracious desire, Mistress Sherwood, that you
should marry young Rookwood, her newly appointed servant, and from
this time possessor of Euston House, and all lands appertaining unto
it, which have devolved upon him in virtue of his brother's recusancy
and his own recent conformity."

"Sir," I answered, "my troth is plighted to his brother, a good man
and an honorable gentleman, up to this time master of Euston and its
lands; and whatever shall betide him or his possessions, none but him
shall be my husband, if ten thousand queens as great as this one
should proffer me another."

"Madam," said Sir Francis, "be not too rash in your pledges. I should
be loth to think one so well trained in virtue and loyalty should
persist in maintaining a troth-plight with a convicted recusant, an
exceeding malignant papist, who is at this moment in the hands of the
pursuivants, and by order of her majesty's council committed to
Norwich gaol. If he should (which is doubtful) escape such a sentence
as should ordain him to a lasting imprisonment or perpetual banishment
from this realm, his poverty must needs constrain him to relinquish
all pretensions to your hand: for his brother, a most learned,
well-disposed, commendable young gentleman, with such good parts as
fit him to aspire to some high advancement in the state and at court,
having conformed some days ago to the established religion and given
many proofs of his zeal and sincerity therein, his brother's estates,
as is most just, have devolved on him, and a more worthy and, I may
add, from long and constant devotion and fervent humble passion long
since entertained for yourself, more desirable candidate for your hand
could not easily be found."

I looked fixedly at Sir Francis, and then said, subduing my voice as
much as possible, and restraining all gestures:

"Sir, you have, I ween, a more deep knowledge of men's hearts and a
more piercing insight into their thoughts than any other person in the
world. You are wiser than any other statesman, and your wit and
sagacity are spoken of all over Christendom. But methinketh, sir,
there are two things which, wise and learned as you are, you are yet
ignorant of, and these are a woman's heart and a Catholic's faith. I
would as soon wed the meanest clown which yelled this day at Blessed
Mary's image, as the future possessor of Euston, the apostate Hubert
Rookwood. Now, sir, I pray you, send for the pursuivants, and let me
be committed to gaol for the same crime as my betrothed husband, God
knoweth I will bless you for it."

"Madam," Sir Francis coldly answered, "the law taketh no heed of
persons out of their senses. A frantic passion and an immoderate
fanaticism have distracted your reason. Time and reflection will, I
doubt not, recall you to better and more comfortable sentiments; in
which case I pray you to have recourse to my good offices, which shall
ever be at your service."

Then bowing, he left me; and when he was gone, and the tumult of my
soul had subsided, I lamented my vehemency, for methought if I had
been more cunning in my speech, I could have done Basil some good; but
now it was too late, and verily, if again exposed to the same
temptation, I doubt if I could have dissembled the indignant feelings
which Sir Francis's advocacy of Hubert's suit worked in me.

Lady Tregony, pitying my unhappy plight, proposed to travel with me to
{623} London, where I was now desirous to return, for there I thought
some steps might be taken to procure Basil's release, with more hope
of success than if I tarried in the scene of our late happiness. She
did me also the good to go with me in the first place to Norwich,
where, by means of that same governor to whom Sir Hammond l'Estrange
had once written in my father's behalf, we obtained for to see Basil
for a few minutes. His brother's apostasy, and the painful suspicion
that it was by his means the secret of Owen's cell at Euston had been
betrayed, gave him infinite concern; but his own imprisonment and
losses he bore with very great cheerfulness; and we entertained
ourselves with the thought of a small cottage beyond seas, which
henceforward became the theme of such imaginings as lovers must needs
cherish to keep alive the flame of hope. Two days afterward I reached
London, having travelled very fast, and only slept one night on the
road.

It sometimes happens that certain misfortunes do overtake us which,
had we foreseen, we should well-nigh have despaired, and misdoubted
with what strength we should meet them; but God is very merciful, and
fitteth the back to the burthen. If at the time that Basil left me at
four of the clock to return to Euston, without any doubt on our minds
to meet the next day, I should have known how long a parting was at
hand, methinks all courage would have failed me. But hope worketh
patience, and patience in return breedeth hope, and the while the soul
is learning lessons of resignation, which at first would have seemed
too hard. At the outset of this trouble, I expected he should have
soon been set at liberty on the payment of a fine; but I had forgot he
was now a poor man, well-nigh beggared by the loss of his inheritance.
Mr. Swithin Wells, one of the best friends he and myself had--for,
alas! good Mr. Roper had died during my absence--told me that, when
Hubert heard of his brother's arrest, he fell into a great anguish of
mind, and dealt earnestly with his new patrons to procure his release,
but with no effect. Then, in a letter which he sent him, he offered to
remit unto him whatever moneys he desired out of his estates; but
Basil steadfastly refused to receive from him so much as one penny,
and to this day has persisted in this resolve. I have since seen the
letter which he wrote to him on this occasion, in which this
resolution was expressed, but in no angry or contumelious terms,
freely yielding him his entire forgiveness for his offence against
him, if indeed any did exist, but such as was next to nothing in
comparison of the offence toward God committed in the abandonment of
his faith; and with all earnestness beseeching him to think seriously
upon his present state, and to consider if the course he had taken,
contrary to the breeding and education he had received, should tend to
his true honor, reputation, contentment of mind, and eternal
salvation. This he said he did plainly, for the discharge of his own
conscience, and the declaration of an abiding love for him.

For the space of a year and two months he remained in prison at
Norwich, Mr. Wells and Mr. Lacy furnishing him with assistance,
without which he should have lacked the necessaries of life; leastways
such conveniences as made his sufferings tolerable. At the end of that
time, it may be by Hubert's or some other friend's efforts, a sentence
of banishment was passed upon him, and he went beyond seas. I would
fain have then joined him, but it pleased not God it should be at that
time possible. Some moneys which were owing to him by a well-disposed
debtor he looked for to recover, but till that happened he had not
means for his own subsistence, much less wherewith to support a wife
in howsoever humble a fashion. Dr. Allen (now cardinal) invited him to
Rheims, and received him there with open arms. My father, during the
last years of his life, found in him a most dutiful and affectionate
son, {624} who closed his eyes with a true filial reverence. Our love
waxed not for this long separation less ardent or less tender; only
more patient, more exalted, more inwardly binding, now so much the
more outwardly impeded. The greatest excellency I found in myself was
the power of apprehending and the virtue of loving his. If his name
appear not so frequently in this my writing as it hath hitherto done,
even as his visible presence was lacking in that portion of my life
which followed his departure, the thought of him never leaves me. If I
speak of virtue in any one else, my mind turns to him, the most
perfect exemplar I have met with of self-forgetting goodness; if of
love, my heart recalls the perfect exchange of affection which doth
link his soul with mine; if of joy, the memory of that pure happiness
I found in his society; if of sorrow, of the perpetual grief his
absence did cause me; if of hope, the abiding anchor whereon I rested
mine during the weary years of separation. Yea, when I do write the
words faith, honor, nobility, firmness, tenderness, then I think I am
writing my dear Basil's name.


CHAPTER XXIII.

The year which followed Basil's arrest, and during which he was in the
prison at Norwich, I wholly spent in London; not with any success
touching the procuring of his release, as I had expected, but with a
constant hope thereof which had its fulfilment later, albeit not by
any of the means I had looked to. I shared the while with Muriel the
care of her now aged and very infirm parents, taking her place at home
when she went abroad on her charitable errands, or employed by her in
the like good works when my ability would serve. A time cometh in most
persons' lives, when maturity doth supplant youthfulness. I say most
persons, because I have noticed that there are some who never do seem
to attain unto any maturity of mind, and do live and die with the same
childish spirit they had in youth. To others this change, albeit real,
is scarcely perceptible, so gradual are its effects; but some again,
either from a natural thoughtfulness, or by the influence of
circumstances tending to sober in them the exuberance of spirits which
appertaineth to early age, do wax mature in disposition before they
grow old in years; and this befel me at that time. The eager temper,
the intent desire and pursuit of enjoyment (of a good and innocent
sort, I thank God) which had belonged to me till then, did so much and
visibly abate, that it caused me some astonishment to see myself so
changed. Joyful hours I have since known, happy days wherein mine
heart hath been raised in adoring thankfulness to the Giver of all
good; but the color of my mind hath no more resembled that of former
years, than the hues of the evening sky can be likened to the roseate
flush of early morning. The joys have been tasted, the happiness
relished, but not with the same keenness as heretofore. Mine own
troubles, the crowning one of Basil's misfortune, and what I continued
then to witness in others of mine own faith, wrought in me these
effects. The life of a Catholic in England in these days must needs, I
think, produce one of two frames of mind. Either he will harbor angry
passions, which religion reproves, which change a natural indignation
into an unchristian temper of hatred, and lead him into plots and
treasons; or else he becomes detached from the world, very quiet,
given to prayer, ready to take at God's hands, and as from him at
men's also, sufferings of all kinds; and even those as yet removed
from so great perfection learn to be still, and to bethink themselves
rather of the next world than of the present one, more than even good
people did in old tunes.

The only friends I haunted at that time were Mr. and Mrs. Swithin
Wells. {625} In the summer of that year I heard one day, when in their
company, that Father Edmund Campion was soon to arrive in London.
Father Parsons was then lodging at Master George Gilbert's house, and
much talk was ministered touching this other priest's landing, and how
he should be conducted thither in safety. Bryan Lacy, Thomas James,
and many others, took it by turns to watch at the landing-place where
he was expected to disembark. Each evening Mr. Wells's friends came
for to hear news thereof. One day, when no tidings of it had yet
transpired, and the company was leaving, Mr. James comes in, and
having shut the door, and glanced round the room before speaking,
says, with a smile,

"What think you, sirs and ladies?"

"Master Campion is arrived," cries Mistress Wells.

"God be praised!" cries her husband, and all giving signs of joy do
gather round Mr. James for to hear the manner of his landing.

"Well," quoth he, "I had been pacing up and down the quay for
well-nigh five hours, when I discerned a boat, which (God only knoweth
wherefore) I straightway apprehended to be the one should bring Master
Campion. And when it reached the landing-place, beshrew me if I did
not at once see a man dressed in some kind of a merchant suit, which,
from the marks I had of his features from Master Parsons, I made sure
was the reverend father. So when he steps out of the boat I stand
close to him, and in an audible voice, 'Good morrow, Edmund,' says I,
which he hearing, turns round and looks me in the face. We both smile
and shake hands, and I lead him at once to Master Gilbert's house. Oh,
I promise you, it was with no small comfort to myself I brought that
work to a safe ending. But now, sir," he continued, turning to Mr.
Wells, "what think you of this? Nothing will serve Master Campion but
a place must be immediately hired, and a spacious one also, for him to
begin at once to preach, for he saith he is here but for that purpose,
and that he would not the pursuivants should catch him before he hath
opened his lips in England; albeit, if God will grant him for the
space of one year to exercise his ministry in this realm, he is most
content to lay down his life afterward. And methinks he considers
Almighty God doth accept this bargain, and is in haste for to begin."

"Hath Master Gilbert called his friends together for to consider of
it?" asked Mr. Wells.

"Yea," answered Mr. James. "Tomorrow, at ten of the clock, a meeting
will be held, not at his house, for greater security, but at Master
Brown's shop in Southwark, for this purpose, and he prayeth you to
attend it, sir, and you, and you, and you," he continued, turning to
Bryan Lacy, William Gresham, Godfrey Fuljambe, Gervase Pierpoint, and
Philip and Charles Bassett, which were all present.

The next day I heard from Mrs. Wells that my Lord Paget, at the
instigation of his friends which met at Mr. Brown's, had hired, in his
own name, Noel House, in the which one very large chamber should serve
as a chapel, and that on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, which
fell on the coming Sunday, Father Campion would say mass there, and
for the first time preach. She said the chief Catholics in London had
combined for to send there, in the night, some vestments, some
ornaments for the altar, books, and all that should be needful for
divine worship. And the young noblemen and gentlemen which had been at
her house the night before, and many others also, such as Lord Vaux,
William and Richard Griffith, Arthur Cresswell, Charles Tilvey,
Stephen Berkeley, James Hill, Thomas de Salisbury, Thomas Fitzherbert,
Jerom Bellamy, Thomas Pound, Richard Stanyhurst, Thomas Abington, and
Charles Arundel (this was one of the Queen's pages, but withal a
zealous Catholic), had joined themselves in a {626} company, for to
act, some as sacristans of this secret chapel, some as messengers, to
go round and give notice of the preachments, and some as porters,
which would be a very weighty office, for one unreliable person
admitted into that oratory should be the ruin of all concerned.

Muriel and I, with Mr. Wells, went at an early hour on the Sunday to
Noel House. Master Philip Bassett was at the door. He smiled when he
saw us, and said he supposed he needed not to ask us for the password.
The chamber into which we went was so large, and the altar so richly
adorned, that the like, I ween, had not been seen since the queen had
changed the religion of the country.

Mass was said by Father Campion, and that noble company of devout
gentlemen aforementioned almost all communicated thereat, and many
others beside, an ladies not a few. When mass was ended, and Father
Campion stood up for to begin his sermon, so deep a silence reigned in
that crowded assembly--for the chamber was more full than it could
well hold--that a pin should have been heard to drop. Some thirsting
for to hear Catholic preaching, so rare in these days, some eager to
listen to the words of a man famous for his learning and parts, both
before and after his conversion, beyond any other in this country. For
mine own part, methought his very countenance was a preachment. When
his eyes addressed themselves to heaven, it seemed as if they did
verily see God, so piercing, so awed, so reverent was their gaze. He
took for his text the words, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
My whole soul was fastened on his words; and albeit I have had but
scant occasion to compare one preacher with another, I do not think it
should be possible for a more pathetic and stirring eloquence to flow
from human lips than his who that day gave God's message to a
suffering and persecuted people. I had not taken mine eyes off his
pale and glowing face not for so much as one instant, until, near the
close of his discourse, I chanced to turn them to a place almost
hidden by the curtain of an altar, where some gentlemen were standing,
concealing themselves from sight. Alas! in one instant the fervent
glowing of my heart, the staid, rapt intentness with which I had
listened, the heavenward lifting up of my soul, vanished as if a
vision of death had risen before me. I had seen Hubert Rookwood's
face, that face so like--oh, what anguish was that likeness to me
then!--to my Basil's. No one but me could perceive him, he was so hid
by the curtain; but where I sat it opened a little, and disclosed the
stern, melancholy, beautiful visage of the apostate, the betrayer of
his own brother, the author of our ruin, the destroyer of our
happiness. I thank God that I first beheld him again in that holy
place, by the side of the altar whereon Jesus had lately descended,
whilst the words of his servant were in mine ears, speaking of love
and patience. It was not hatred, God knoweth it, I then felt for
Basil's brother, but only terror for all present, and for him also, if
peradventure he was there with an evil intent. Mine eyes were fixed as
by a spell on his pale face, the while Father Campion's closing words
were uttered, which spoke of St. Peter, of his crime and of his
penance, of his bitter tears and his burning love. "If," he cried,
"there be one here present on whose soul doth lie the guilt of a like
sin; one peradventure yet more guilty than Peter; one like Judas in
his crime; one like Judas in his despair--to him I say, There is mercy
for thee; there is hope for thee, there is heaven for thee, if thou
wilt have it. Doom not thyself, and God will never doom thee." These
or the like words (for memory doth ill serve me to recall the fervent
adjurations of that apostolical man) he used; and, lo, I beheld tears
running down like rain from Hubert's eyes--an unchecked, {627}
vehement torrent which seemed to defy all restraint. How I blessed
those tears! what a yearning pity seized me for him who did shed them!
How I longed to clasp his hand and to weep with him! I lost sight of
him when the sermon was finished; but in the street, when we
departed--which was done slowly and by degrees, for to avoid notice,
four or five only going out at a time--I saw him on the other side of
the pavement. Our eyes met; he stopped in a hesitating manner, and I
also doubted what to do, for I thought Mistress Wells and Muriel would
be averse to speak to him. Then he rapidly crossed over, and said, in
a whisper:

"Will you see me, Constance, if I come to you this evening?"

I pondered; I feared to quench, it might be, a good resolve, or
precipitate an evil one by a refusal; and building hopes of the former
on the tears I had seen him shed, I said:

"Yea, if you come as Basil's brother and mine."

He turned and walked hastily away.

Mistress Wells and Muriel asked me with some affright if it was Hubert
who had spoken to me, for they had scarce seen his face, although from
his figure they had judged it was him; and when I told them he had
been at Noel House, "Then we are undone!" the one exclaimed; and
Muriel said, "We must straightway apprise Mr. Wells thereof; but there
should be hopes, I think, he came there in some good disposition."

"I think so too," I answered, and told them of the emotion which I had
noticed in him at the close of the sermon, which comforted them not a
little. But he came not that evening; and Mr. Wells discovered the
next day that it was Thomas Fitzherbert, who had lately arrived in
London, and was not privy to his late conformity, which had invited
him to come to Noel House. Father Campion continued to preach once a
day at the least, often twice, and sometimes thrice, and very
marvellous effects ensued. Each day greater crowds did seek admittance
for to hear him, and Noel House was as openly frequented as if it had
been a public church. Numbers of well-disposed Protestants came for to
hear him, and it was bruited at the time that Lord Arundel had been
amongst them. He converted many of the best sort, beside young
gentlemen students, and others of all conditions, which by day, and
some by night, sought to confer with him. I went to the preachments as
often as possible. We could scarce credit our eyes and ears, so
singular did it appear that one should dare to preach, and so many to
listen to Catholic doctrine, and to seek to be reconciled in the midst
of so great dangers, and under the pressure of tyrannic laws. Every
day some newcomer was to be seen at Noel House, sometimes their faces
concealed under great hats, sometimes stationed behind curtains or
open doors for to escape observation.

After some weeks had thus passed, when I ceased to expect Hubert
should come, he one day asked to see me, and having sent for Kate, who
was then in the house, I did receive him. Her presence appeared
greatly to displease him, but he began to speak to me in Italian; and
first he complained of Basil's pride, which would not suffer him to
receive any assistance from him who should be so willing to give it.

"Would you--" I said, and was about to add some cutting speech, but I
resolved to restrain myself and by no indiscreet words to harden his
soul against remorse, or perhaps endanger others. Then, after some
other talking, he told me in a cunning manner, making his meaning
clear, but not couching it in direct terms, that if I would conform to
the Protestant religion and marry him, Basil should be, he could
warrant it, set at liberty, and he would make over to him more than
one-half of the income of his estates yearly, which, being done in
secret, the law could not then touch him. I made no answer thereunto,
but fixing mine eyes on him, said, in English:

{628}

"Hubert, what should be your opinion of the sermon on St. Peter and
St. Paul's Day?" He changed color. "Was it not," I said, "a moving
one?" Biting his lip, he replied:

"I deny not the preacher's talent."

"O Hubert," I exclaimed, "fence not yourself with evasive answers. I
know you believe as a Catholic."

"The devils believe," he answered.

"Hubert," I then said, with all the energy of my soul, "if you would
not miserably perish--if you would not lose your soul--promise me this
night to retrace your steps; to seek Father Campion and be
reconciled." His lip quivered; methought I could almost see his good
angel on one side of him and a tempting fiend on the other. But the
last prevailed, for with a bitter sneer he said:

"Yea, willingly, fair saint, if you will marry me."

Kate, who till then had not much understood what had passed, cried
out, "Fie, Hubert, fie on thee to tempt her to abandon Basil, and he a
prisoner."

"Madam," he said, turning to her, "recusants should not be so bold in
their language. The laws of the land are transgressed in a very daring
manner now-a-days, and those who obey them taunted for the performance
of their duty to the queen and the country."

Oh, what a hard struggle it proved to be patient; to repress the
vehement reproaches which hovered on my lips. Kate looked at me
affrighted. I trembled from head to foot. Father Campion's life and
the fate of many others, it might be, were in the hands of this man,
this traitor, this spy. To upbraid him I dared not, but wringing my
hands, exclaimed:

"O Hubert, Hubert! for thy mother's sake, who looks down on us from
heaven, listen to me. There be no crimes which may not be forgiven;
but some there be which if one doth commit them he forgiveth not
himself, and is likely to perish miserably."

"Think you I know this not?" he fiercely cried; "think you not that I
suffer even now the torment you speak of, and envy the beggar in the
street his stupid apathy?" He drew a paper from his bosom and unfolded
it. A terrible gleam shot through his eyes. "I could compel you to be
my wife."

"No," I said, looking him in the face, "neither man nor fiends can
give you that power. God alone can do it, and he will not."

"Do you see this paper?" he asked. "Here are the names of all the
recusants who have been reconciled by the Pope's champion. I have but
to speak the word, and to-morrow they are lodged in the Marshalsea or
the Tower, and the priest first and foremost."

"But you will not do it," I said, with a singular calmness. "No,
Hubert; as God Almighty liveth, you will not. You cannot commit this
crime, this foul murther."

"If it should come to that," he fiercely cried, "if blood should be
shed, on your head it will fall. You can save them if you list."

"Would you compel me by a bloody threat to utter a false vow?" I said.
"O Hubert, Hubert! that you, you should threaten to betray a priest,
to denounce Catholics! There was a day--have you forgot it?--when at
the chapel at Euston, your father at your side, you knelt, an innocent
child, at the altar's rail, and a priest came to you and said,
'_Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam ad vitam
aeternam_.' If any one had then told you"--

"Oh, for God's sake speak not of it!" he wildly cried; "that way
madness doth lie."

"No, no," I cried; "not madness, but hope and return."

A change came over his face; he thrust the paper in my hand. "Destroy
it," he cried; "destroy it, Constance!" And then bursting into tears,
"God knoweth I never meant to do it."

"O Hubert, you have been mad, dear brother, more mad than guilty.
Pray, and God will bless you."

"Call me not brother, Constance Would to God I had been _only_ mad!
But it is too late now to think on it."

{629}

"Nay, nay," I cried, "it never is too late."

"Pray for me then," he said, and went to the door: but, turning
suddenly, whispered in a scarce audible manner, "Ask Father Campion to
pray for me," and then rushed out.

Kate had now half-fainted, and would have it we were all going to be
killed. I pacified and sent her home, lest she should fright her
parents with her rambling speeches.

Albeit Hubert's last words had seemed to be sincere, I could not but
call to mind how, after he had been apparently cut to the heart and
moved even to tears by Father Campion's preaching, he had soon uttered
threats which, howsoever recalled, left me in doubt if it should be
safe to rely on his silence; so I privately informed Mr. Wells, and he
Master George Gilbert and Father Parsons, of what had passed between
us. At the same time, I have never known whether by Hubert's means, or
in any other way, her majesty's council got wind of the matter, and
gave out that great confederacies were made by the Pope and foreign
princes for the invasion of this country, and that Jesuits and
seminary priests were sent to prepare their ways. Exquisite diligence
was used for the apprehension of all such, but more particularly the
Pope's champion, as Master Campion was called. So in the certainty
that Hubert was privy to the existence of the chapel at Noel House,
and that many Protestants were also acquainted with it, and likewise
with his lodging at Master Elliot's, where not a few resorted to him
in the night, he was constrained by Father Parsons to leave London, to
the no small regret of Catholics and others also which greatly admired
his learning and eloquence, the like of which was not to be found in
any other person at that time. None of those which had attended the
preachments at Noel House were accused, nor the place wherein they had
met disclosed, which inclineth me to think Hubert did not reveal to
her majesty's government his knowledge thereof.

About two months afterward Basil's release and banishment happened. I
would fain have seen him on his way to the coast; but the order for
his departure was so sudden and peremptory, the queen's officers not
losing sight of him until he was embarked on a vessel going to France,
that I was deprived of that happiness. That he was no longer a
prisoner I rejoiced; but it seemed as if a second and more grievous
separation had ensued, now that the sea did divide me from the dear
object of my love.

Lady Arundel, whose affectionate heart resented with the most tender
pity the abrupt interruption of our happiness, had often written to me
during this year to urge my coming to Arundel Castle; "for," said she,
"methinks, my dear Constance, a third turtle-dove might now be added
to the two on the Queen of Scotland's design; and on thy tree, sweet
one, the leaves are, I warrant thee, very green yet, and future joys
shall blossom on its wholesome branches, which are pruned but not
destroyed, injured but not withered." She spoke with no small
contentment of her then residence, that noble castle, her husband's
worthiest possession (as she styled it), and the grandest jewel of his
earldom. For albeit (thus she wrote) "Kenninghall is larger in the
extent it doth cover and embrace, and far more rich in its decorations
and adornments, I hold it not to be comparable in true dignity to this
castle, which, for the strength of its walls, the massive grandeur of
its keep, the vast forests which do encircle it, the river which
bathes its feet, the sea in its vicinity and to be seen from its
tower, the stately trees about it, and the clinging ivy which softens
with abundant verdure the stern, frowning walls, hath not its like in
all England." But a letter I had from this dear lady a few months
after this one contained the most joyful news I could receive, as will
be seen by those who read it:

"My good Constance" (her ladyship wrote), "I would I had you a
prisoner in this fortress, to hold and detain at {630} my pleasure.
Methinks I will present thee as a recusant, and sue for the privilege
of thy custody. Verily, I should keep good watch over thee. There be
dungeons enough, I warrant you, in the keep, wherein to imprison
runaway friends. Master Bayley doth take great pains to explain to me
the names and old uses of the towers, chapels, and buildings within
and without the castle, which do testify to the zeal and piety of past
generations: the Chapel of St. Martin, in the keep, which was the
oratory of the garrison; the old collegiate buildings of the College
of the Holy Trinity; the b Maison-Dieu, designed by Richard, Earl of
Arundel, and built by his son on the right bank of the river, for the
harboring of twenty aged and poor men, either unmarried or widowers,
which, from infirmity, were unable to provide for their own support;
the Priory of the Friars Preachers, with the rising gardens behind it;
the Chapel of Blessed Mary, over the gate; that of St. James ad
Leprosos, which was attached to the Leper's Hospital; and St.
Lawrence's, which standeth on the hill above the tower; and in the
valley below, the Priory of St. Bartholomew, built by Queen Adeliza
for the monks of St. Austin. Verily the poor were well cared for when
all these monasteries and hospitals did exist; and it doth grieve me
to think that the moneys which were designed by so many pious men of
past ages for the good of religion should now be paid to my lord, and
spent in worldly and profane uses. Howsoever, I have better hopes than
heretofore that he will one day serve God in a Christian manner. And
now, methinks, after much doubting if I should dare for to commit so
weighty a secret unto paper, that I must needs tell thee, as this time
I send my letter by a trusty messenger, what, if I judge rightly, will
prove so great a comfort to thee, my dear Constance, that thine own
griefs shall seem the lighter for it. Thou dost well know how long I
have been well-affected to Catholic religion, increasing therein daily
more and more, but yet not wholly resolved to embrace and profess it.
But by reading a book treating of the danger of schism, soon after my
coming here, I was so efficaciously moved, that I made a firm purpose
to become a member of the Catholic and only true Church of God. I
charged Mr. Bayley to seek out a grave and ancient priest, and to
bring him here privately; for I desired very much that my
reconciliation, and meeting with this priest to that intent, should be
kept as secret as was possible, for the times are more troublesome
than ever, and I would fain have none to know of it until I can
disclose it myself to my lord in a prudent manner. I have, as thou
knoweth, no Catholic women about me, nor any one whom I durst acquaint
with this business; so I was forced to go alone at an unseasonable
hour from mine own lodging in the castle, by certain dark ways and
obscure passages, to the chamber where this priest (whose name, for
greater prudence, I mention not here) was lodged, there to make my
confession--it being thought, both by Mr. Bayley and myself, that
otherwise it could not possibly be done without discovery, or at least
great danger thereof. Oh, mine own dear Constance, when I returned by
the same way I had gone, lightened of a burthen so many years endured,
cheered by the thought of a reconcilement so long desired,
strengthened and raised, leasts ways for a while, above all worldly
fears, darkness appeared light, rough paths smooth; the moon, shining
through the chinks of the secret passage, which I thought had shed
before a ghastly light on the uneven walls, now seemed to yield a mild
and pleasant brightness, like unto that of God's grace in a heart at
peace. And this exceeding contentment and steadfastness of spirit have
not--praise him for it--since left me; albeit I have much cause for
apprehension in more ways than one; for what in these days is so
secret it becometh not known? But whatever now shall befal me--public
dangers or private sorrows--my {631} feet do rest on a rock, not on
the shifting sands of human thinkings, and I am not afraid of what man
can do unto me. Yea, Philip's displeasure I can now endure, which of
all things in the world I have heretofore most apprehended."

The infinite contentment this letter gave me distracted me somewhat
from the anxious thoughts that filled my mind at the time it reached
me, which was soon after Hubert's visit. A few days afterward Lady
Arundel wrote again:

"My lord has been here, but stayed only a brief time. I found him very
affectionate in his behavior, but his spirits so much depressed that I
feared something had disordered him. Conversation seemed a burthen to
him, and he often shut himself up in his own chamber or walked into
the park with only his dog. When I spoke to him he would smile with
much kindness, uttering such words as 'sweet wife,' or 'dearest Nan,'
and then fall to musing again, as if his mind had been too oppressed
with thinking to allow of speech. The day before he left I was sorting
flowers at one end of the gallery in a place which the wall projecting
doth partly conceal. I saw him come from the hall up the stairs into
it, and walk to and fro in an agitated manner, his countenance very
much troubled, and his gestures like unto those of a person in great
perplexity of mind. I did not dare so much as to stir from where I
stood, but watched him for a long space of time with incredible
anxiety. Sometimes he stopped and raised his hand to his forehead.
Another while he went to the window and looked intently, now at the
tower and the valley beyond it, now up to the sky, on which the last
rays of the setting sun were throwing a deep red hue, as if the world
had been on fire. Then turning back, he joined his hands together and
anon sundered them again, pacing up and down the while more rapidly
than before, as if an inward conflict urged this unwitting speed. At
last I saw him stand still, lift up his hands and eyes to heaven, and
move his lips as if in prayer. What passed in his mind then, God only
knowcth. He is the most reluctant person in the world to disclose his
thoughts.

"When an hour afterward we met in the library his spirits seemed
somewhat improved. He spoke of his dear sister Meg with much
affection, and asked me if I had heard from Bess. Lord William, he
said, was the best brother a man ever had; and that it should like him
well to spend his life in any corner of the world God should appoint
for him, so that he had to keep him company Will and Meg and his dear
Nan, 'which I have so long ill-treated,' he added, 'that as long as I
live I shall not cease to repent of it; and God he knoweth I deserve
not so good a wife;' with many other like speeches which I wish he
would not use, for it grieveth me he should disquiet himself for what
is past, when his present kindness doth so amply recompense former
neglect. Mine own Constance, I pray you keep your courage alive in
your afflictions. There be no lane so long but it hath a turning, the
proverb saith. My sorrows seemed at one time without an issue. Now
light breaketh through the yet darksome clouds which do environ us. So
will it be with thee. Burn this letter, seeing it doth contain what
may endanger the lives of more persons than one.--Thy loving, faithful
friend,
   "ANN, ARUNDEL AND SURREY."

A more agitated letter followed this one, written at different times,
and detained for some days for lack of a safe messenger to convey it.

"What I much fear," so it began, "is the displeasure of my lord when
he comes to know of my reconcilement, for it cannot, I think, be long
concealed from him. This my fear, dear Constance, hath been much
increased by the coming down from London of one of his chaplains, who
affirms he was sent on purpose by the earl to read prayers and to
preach to me and my family; and on last {632} Sunday he came into the
great chamber of the castle, expecting and desiring to know my
pleasure therein. I thought best for to send for him to my chamber,
and I desired him not to trouble himself nor me in that matter, for I
would satisfy the earl therein. But oh, albeit I spoke very
composedly, my apprehensions are very great. For see, my dear friend,
Philip hath been but lately reconciled to me, and his fortunes are in
a very desperate condition, so that he may think I have given the last
blow to them by this act, which his enemies will surely brave at.
Think not I do repent of it. God knoweth I should as soon repent of my
baptism as of my return to his true Church; but though the spirit is
steadfast, the flesh is weak, and the heart also. What will he say to
me when he cometh? He did once repulse me, but hath never upbraided
me. How shall I bear new frowns after recent caresses?--peradventure
an eternal parting after a late reunion? O Constance, pray for me. But
I remember I have no means for to send this letter. But God be
praised, I have now friends in heaven which I may adjure to pray for
me who have at hand no earthly ones."

Four or live days later, her ladyship thus finished her letter:

"God is very merciful; oh, let his holy name be praised and magnified
for ever! Now the weight of a mountain is off my heart. Now I care not
for what man may do unto me. Phil has been here, and I promise thee,
dear Constance, when his horse stopped at the castle-door, my heart
almost stopped its beating, so great was my apprehension of his anger.
But, to my great joy and admiration, he kissed me very tenderly, and
did not speak the least word of the chaplain's errand. And when we did
walk out in the evening, and, mounting to the top of the keep, stood
there looking on the fine trees and the sun sinking into the sea, my
dear lord, who had been some time silent, turned to me and said, 'Meg
has become Catholic.' Joy and surprise almost robbed me of my breath;
for next to his reconcilement his sister's was what I most desired in
the world, and also I knew what a particular love he had ever shown
for her, as being his only sister, by reason whereof he would not seem
to be displeased with her change, and consequently he could not in
reason be much offended with myself for being what she was; so when he
said, 'Meg has become Catholic,' I leant my face against his shoulder,
and whispered, 'So hath Nan.' He spoke not nor moved for some minutes.
Methinks he could have heard the beatings of my heart. I was comforted
that, albeit he uttered not so much as one word, he made no motion for
to withdraw himself from me, whose head still rested against his
bosom. Suddenly he threw his arms about me, and strained me to his
breast. So tender an embrace I had never before had from him, and I
felt his tears falling on my head. But speech there was none touching
my change. Howsoever, before he left me I said to him 'My dear Phil,
Holy Scripture doth advise those who enter into the service of
Almighty God to prepare themselves for temptation. As soon as I
resolved to become Catholic, I did deeply imprint this in my mind; for
the times are such that I must expect to suffer for that cause.' 'Yea,
dearest Nan,' he answered, with great kindness, 'I doubt not thou hast
taken the course which will save thy soul from the danger of
shipwreck, although it doth subject thy body to the peril of
misfortune.' Then waxing bolder, I said, 'And thou, Phil--' and there
stopped short, looking what I would speak. He seemed to struggle for a
while with some inward difficulty of speaking his mind, but at last he
began, 'Nan, I will not become Catholic before I can resolve to live
as a Catholic, and I defer the former until I have an intent and
resolute purpose to perform the latter. O Nan, when I {633} think of
my vile usage of thee, whom I should have so much loved and esteemed
for thy virtue and discretion; of my wholly neglecting, in a manner,
my duty to the earl my grandfather, and my aunt Lady Lumley; of my
wasting, by profuse expenses, of great sums of money in the following
of the courts, the estate which was left me, and a good quantity of
thine own lands also; but far more than all, my total forgetting of my
duty to Almighty God--for, carried away with company, youthful
entertainments, pleasures, and delights, my mind being wholly
possessed with them, I did scarce so much as think of God, or of
anything concerning religion or the salvation of my soul--I do feel
myself unworthy of pardon, and utterly to be contemned.'

"So much goodness, humility, and virtuous intent was apparent in this
speech, and such comfortable hopes of future excellence, that I could
not forbear from exclaiming, 'My dear Phil, I ween thou wilt be one of
those who shall love God much, forasmuch as he will have forgiven thee
much.' And then I asked him how long it was since this change in his
thinking, albeit not yet acted upon, had come to him? He said, it so
happened that he was present, the year before, at a disputation held
in the Tower of London, between Mr. Sherwin and some other priests on
the one part, Charles Fulk, Whittakers, and some other Protestant
ministers on the other; and, by what he heard and saw there, he had
perceived, he thought, on which side the truth and true religion was,
though at the time he neither did intend to embrace or follow it. But,
he added, what had moved him of late most powerfully thereunto was a
sermon of Father Campion's, which he had heard at Noel House, whither
Charles Arundel had carried him, some days before his last visit to
me. 'The whole of those days,' he said, 'my mind was so oppressed with
remorse and doubt, that I knew no peace, until one evening, by a
special grace of God, when I was walking alone in the gallery, I
firmly resolved--albeit I knew not how or when to accomplish this
purpose--to become a member of his Church, and to frame my life
according to it; but I would not acquaint thee, or any other person
living, with this intention, until I had conferred thereof with my
brother William. Thou knowest, Nan, the very special love I bear him,
and which he hath ever shown to me. Well, a few days after I returned
to London, I met him accidentally in the street, he having come from
Cumberland touching some matter of Bess's lands; and taking him home
with me, I discovered to him my determination, somewhat covertly at
first; and after I lent him a book to read, which was written not long
ago by Dr. Allen, and have dealt with him so efficaciously that he has
also resolved to become Catholic. He is to meet me again next week,
for further conference touching the means of putting this intent into
execution, which verily I see not how to effect, being so watched by
servants and so-called friends, which besiege my doors and haunt mine
house in London on all occasions.'

"This difficulty, dear Constance, I sought to remedy by acquainting my
lord that his secretary, Mr. Mumford, was Catholic, and he could,
therefore, disclose his thought with safety to him. And I also advised
him to seek occasion to know Mr. Wells and some other zealous persons,
which would confirm him in his present resolution and aid him in the
execution thereof. It may be, therefore, you will soon see him, and
fervently do I commend him to thy prayers and whatever service in the
one thing needful should be in thy power to procure for him. My heart
is so transported with joy that I never remember the like emotions to
have filled it. My most hope for this present time at least had been
he should show no dislike to my being Catholic; and lo, I find him to
be one in heart, and soon to be so in effect; {634} and the great gap
between us, which so long hath been a yawing chasm of despair, now
filled up with a renewed love, and yet more by a parity of thinking
touching what it most behoveth us to be united in. _Deo gratias!_"

Here this portion of my lady's manuscript ended, but these few hasty
lines were written below, visibly by a trembling hand, and the whole
closed, I ween, abruptly. Methinks it was left for me at Mr. Wells's,
where I found it, by Mr. Mumford, or some other Catholic in the earl's
household:

"The inhabitants of Arundel have presented me for a recusant, and Mr.
Bayley has been committed and accused before the Bishop of Chichester
as a seminary priest. He hath, of course, easily cleared himself of
this; but because he will not take the oath of supremacy, he is forced
to quit the country. He hath passed into Flanders."

And then for many weeks I had no tidings of the dear writer, until one
day it was told us that when the queen had notice of her reconcilement
she disliked of it to such a degree that presently she ordered her,
being then with child, to be taken from her own house and carried to
Wiston, Sir Thomas Shirley's dwelling-place, there to be kept prisoner
till further orders. Alas! all the time she remained there I received
not so much as one line from her ladyship, nor did her husband either,
as I afterward found. So straitly was she confined and watched that
none could serve or have access to her but the knight and his lady,
and such as were approved by them. Truly, as she since told me, they
courteously used her; but special care was taken that none that was
suspected for a priest should come within sight of the house, which
was no small addition to her sufferings. Lady Margaret Sackville was
at that time also thrown into prison.


CHAPTER XXIV.

During the whole year of Lady Arundel's imprisonment, neither her
husband, nor her sister, nor her most close friends, such as my poor
unworthy self, had tidings from her, in the shape of any letter or
even message, so sharply was she watched and hindered from
communicating with any one. Only Sir Thomas Shirley wrote to the earl
her husband to inform him of his lady's safe delivery, and the birth
of a daughter, which, much against her will, was baptized according to
the Protestant manner. My Lord Arundel, mindful of her words in the
last interview he had with her before her arrest, began to haunt Mr.
Wells's house in a private way, and there I did often meet with him,
who being resolved, I ween, to follow his lady's example in all
things, began to honor me with so much of his confidence that I had
occasion to discern how true had been Sir Henry Jerningham's
forecasting, that this young nobleman, when once turned to the ways of
virtue and piety, should prove himself by so much the more eminent in
goodness as he had heretofore been distinguished for his reckless
conduct. One day that he came to Holborn, none others being present
but Mr. and Mrs. Wells and myself, he told us that he and his brother
Lord William, having determined to become Catholics, and apprehending
great danger in declaring themselves as such within the kingdom, had
resolved secretly to leave the land, to pass into Flanders, and there
to remain till more quiet times.

"What steps," Mr. Wells asked, "hath your lordship disposed for to
effect this departure?"

"In all my present doings," quoth the earl, "the mind of my dear wife
doth seem to guide me. The last time I was with her she informed me
that my secretary, John Mumford, is a Catholic, and I have since
greatly benefited by this knowledge. He is gone to Hull, in Yorkshire,
for to take {635} order for our passage to Flanders, and I do wait
tidings from him before I leave London."

Then, turning to me, he inquired in a very earnest manner if my
thinking agreed with his, that his sweet lady should be contented he
should forsake the realm, for the sake of the religious interests
which moved him thereunto, joined with the hope that when he should be
abroad and his lands confiscated, which he doubted not would follow,
she would be presently set at liberty, and with her little wench join
him in Flanders. I assented thereunto, and made a promise to him that
as soon as her ladyship should be released I would hasten to her, and
feast her ears with the many assurances of tender affection he had
uttered in her regard, and aid her departure; which did also Mr.
Wells. Then, drawing me aside, he spoke for some time, with tears in
his eyes, of his own good wife, as he called her.

"Mistress Sherwood," he said, "I do trust in God that she shall find
me henceforward as good a husband, to my poor ability, by his grace,
as she has found me bad heretofore. No sin grieves me anything so much
as my offences against her. What is past is a nail in my conscience.
My will is to make satisfaction; but though I should live never so
long, I can never do so further than by a good desire to do it, which,
while I have any spark of breath, shall never be wanting."

And many words like these, which he uttered in so heartfelt a manner
that I could scarce refrain from weeping at the hearing of them. And
so we parted that day; he with a confident hope soon to leave the
realm; I with some misgivings thereon, which were soon justified by
the event. For a few days afterward Mr. Lacy brought us tidings he had
met Mr. Mumford in the street, who had told him--when he expressed
surprise at his return--that before he could reach Hull he had been
apprehended and carried before the Earl of Huntingdon, president of
York, and examined by him, without any evil result at that time,
having no papers or auspicious things about him; but being now
watched, he ventured not to proceed to the coast, but straightway came
to London, greatly fearing Lord Arundel should have left it.

"He hath not done so?" I anxiously inquired.

"Nay," answered Mr. Lacy, "so far from it, that I pray you to guess
how the noble earl--much against his will, I ween--is presently
employed."

"He is not in prison?" I cried.

"God defend it!" he replied. "No; he is preparing for to receive the
queen at Arundel House; upon notice given him that her majesty doth
intend on Thursday next to come hither for her recreation."

"Alack!" I cried, "her visits to such as be of his way of thinking
bode no good to them. She visited him and his wife at the Charterhouse
at the time when his father was doomed to death, and now when she is a
prisoner her highness doth come to Arundel House. When she set her
foot in Euston, the whole fabric of my happiness fell to the ground.
Heaven shield the like doth not happen in this instance; but I do
greatly apprehend the issue of this sudden honor conferred on him."

On the day fixed for the great and sumptuous banquet which was
prepared for the queen at Arundel House, I went thither, having been
invited by Mrs. Fawcett to spend the day with her on this occasion,
which minded me of the time when I went with my cousins and mine own
good Mistress Ward for to see her majesty's entertainment at the
Charterhouse, wherein had been sowed the seeds of a bitter harvest,
since reaped by his sweet lady and himself. Then pageants had charms
in mine eyes; now, none--but rather the contrary. Howsoever, I was
glad to be near at hand on that day, so as to hear such reports as
reached us from time to time of her majesty's behavior to the earl.
From all I could find, she seemed very well {636} contented; and Mr.
Mumford, with whom I was acquainted, came to Mrs. Fawcett's chamber,
hearing I was there, and reported that her highness had given his
lordship many thanks for her entertainment, and showed herself
exceeding merry all the time she was at table, asking him many
questions, and relating anecdotes which she had learnt from Sir Fulke
Greville, whom the maids-of-honor were wont to say brought her all the
tales she heard; at which Mrs. Fawcett said that gentleman had once
declared that he was like Robin Goodfellow; for that when the
dairy-maids upset the milk-pans, or made a romping and racket, they
laid it all on Robin, and so, whatever gossip-tales the queen's ladies
told her, they laid it all upon him, if he was ever so innocent of it.

"Sir," I said to Mr. Mumford, "think you her majesty hath said aught
to my lord touching his lady or his lately-born little daughter?"

"Once," he answered, "when she told of the noble trick she hath played
Sir John Spencer touching his grandson, whom he would not see because
his daughter did decamp from his house in a baker's basket for to
marry Sir Henry Compton, and her majesty invited him to be her gossip
at the christening of a fair boy to whom she did intend to stand
godmother, for that he was the first-born child of a young couple who
had married for love and lived happily; and so the old knight said, as
he had no heir, he should adopt this boy, for he had disinherited his
daughter. So then, at the font, the queen names him Spencer, and when
she leaves the church, straightway reveals to Sir John that his godson
is his grandson, and deals so cunningly with him that a reconciliation
doth ensue. Well, when she related this event, my lord said in a low
voice, 'Oh madame, would it might please your majesty for to place
another child, now at its mother's breast, a first-born one also, in
its father's arms! and as by your gracious dealing your highness
wrought a reconciliation between a father and a daughter, so likewise
now to reunite a parted husband from a wife which hath too long
languished under your royal displeasure.'"

"What answered her grace?" I asked.

"A few words, the sense of which I could not catch," Mr. Mumford
answered; "being placed so as to hear my lord's speaking more
conveniently than her replies. He said again, 'The displeasure of a
prince is a heavy burden to bear.' And then, methinks, some other talk
was ministered of a lighter sort. But be of good heart. Mistress
Sherwood; I cannot but think our dear lady shall soon be set at
liberty."

Mr. Mumford's words were justified in a few days; for, to my
unspeakable joy, I heard Lady Arundel had been released by order of
the queen, and had returned to Arundel Castle. It was her lord himself
who brought me the good tidings, and said he should travel thither in
three days, when his absence from court should be less noted, as then
her majesty would be at Richmond. He showed me a letter he had
received from his lady, the first she had been able to write to him
for a whole year. She did therein express her contentment, greater,
she said, than her pen could describe, at the sight of the gray ivied
walls, the noble keep, her own chamber and its familiar furniture, and
mostly at the thought of his soon coming; and that little Bess had so
much sense already, that when she heard his name, nothing would serve
her but to be carried to the window, "whence, methinks," the sweet
lady said, "she doth see me always looking toward the entrance-gate,
through which all my joy will speedily come to me. When, for to cheat
myself and her, I cry, 'Hark to my lord's horse crossing the bridge,'
she coos, so much as to say she is glad also, and stretcheth her arms
out, the pretty fool, as if to welcome her unseen father, who,
methinks, {637} when he doth come, will be no stranger to her, so
often doth she kiss the picture which hangeth about her mother's
neck."

But, alas! before the queen went to Richmond, she sent a command that
my Lord Arundel should not go anywhither out of his house (so Mr.
Mumford informed me), but remain there a prisoner; and my Lord
Hunsdon, who had been in former times his father's page, and now was
his great enemy, was given commission to examine him about his
religion, and also touching Dr. Allen and the Queen of Scots. Now was
all the joy of Lady Arundel's release at an end. Now the sweet cooings
of her babe moved her to bitter tears. "In vain," she wrote to me
then, "do we now look for him to come! in vain listen for the sound of
his horse's tread, or watch the gateway which shall not open to admit
him! I sigh for to be once more a prisoner, and he, my sweet life, at
liberty. Alas! what kind of a destiny does this prove, if one is free
only when the other is shut up, and the word 'parting' is written on
each page of our lives?"

About a month afterward, Mr. Mumford was sent for by Sir Christopher
Hatton, who asked him divers dangerous questions concerning the earl,
the countess, and Lord William Howard, and also himself--such as, if
he was a priest or no; which indeed I did not wonder at, so staid and
reverend was his appearance. But he answered he never knew or ever
heard any harm of these honorable persons, and that he himself was not
a priest, nor worthy of so great a dignity. He hath since told me that
on the third day of his examination the queen, the Earl of Leicester,
and divers others of the council came into the house for to understand
what he had confessed. Sir Christopher told them what answers he had
made; but they, not resting satisfied therewith, caused him, after
many threats of racking and other tortures, to be sent prisoner to the
Gate-house, where he was kept for some months so close that none might
speak or come to him. But by the steadfastness of his answers he at
last so cleared himself, and declared the innocency of the earl, and
his wife and brother, that they were set at liberty.

Soon after her lord's release, I received this brief letter from Lady
Arundel:

"MINE OWN GOOD CONSTANCE,--I have seen my lord, who came here the day
after he was set free. He very earnestly desires to put into execution
his reconciliation to the Church now that his troubles are a little
overpast. I have bethought myself that, since Father Campion hath left
London, diligence might be used for to procure him a meeting with
Father Edmonds, whom I have heard commended for a very virtuous and
religious priest, much esteemed both in this and other countries.
Prithee, ask Mr. Wells if in his thinking this should be possible, and
let my lord know of the means and opportunities thereunto. I shall
never be so much indebted, nor he either, to any one in this world, my
dear Constance, as to thee and thy good friends, if this interview
shall be brought to pass, and the desired effect ensue.

"My Bess doth begin to walk alone, and hath learned to make the sign
of the cross; but I warrant thee I am sometimes frightened that I did
teach her to bless herself, until such time as she can understand not
to display her piety so openly as she now doeth. For when many lords
and gentlemen were here last week for to consider the course her
majesty's progress should take through Kent and Sussex, and she,
sitting on my knee, was noticed by some of them for her pretty ways,
the clock did strike twelve; upon which, what doth she do but
straightway makes the sign of the cross before I could catch her
little hand? Lord Cobham frowned, and my Lord Burleigh shook his head;
but the Bishop of Chichester stroked {638} her head, and said, with a
smile, _'Honi soit qui mal y pense;'_ for which I pray God to bless
him. Oh, but what fears we do daily live in! I would sometimes we were
beyond seas. But if my lord is once reconciled, methinks I can endure
all that may befal us. Thy true and loving friend,
  "ANN, ARUNDEL AND SURREY."

I straightway repaired to Mr. Wells, and found him to be privy to
Father Edmonds's abode. At my request, he acquainted Lord Arundel with
this secret, who speedily availed himself thereof, and after a few
visits to this good man's garret, wherein he was concealed, was by him
reconciled, as I soon learnt by a letter from his lady. She wrote in
such perfect contentment and joy thereunto, that nothing could exceed
it. She said her dear lord had received so much comfort in his soul as
he had never felt before in all his life, and such directions from
Father Edmonds for the amending and ordering of it as did greatly help
and further him therein. Ever after that time, from mine own hearing
and observation, his lady's letters, and the report of such as haunted
him, I learnt that he lived in such a manner that he seemed to be
changed into another man, having great care and vigilance over all his
actions, and addicting himself much to piety and devotion. He procured
to have a priest ever with him in his own house, by whom he might
frequently receive the holy sacrament, and daily have the comfort to
be present at the holy sacrifice, whereto, with great humility and
reverence, he himself in person many times would serve. His visits to
his wife were, during the next years, as frequent as he could make
them and as his duties at the court and the queen's emergencies would
allow of; who, albeit she looked not on him with favor as heretofore,
did nevertheless exact an unremitting attendance on his part on all
public occasions, and jealously noted every absence he made from
London. Each interview between this now loving husband and wife was a
brief space of perfect contentment to both, and a respite from the
many cares and troubles which did continually increase upon him; for
the great change in his manner of life had bred suspicion in the minds
of some courtiers and potent men, who therefore began to think him
what he was indeed, but of which no proof could be alleged.

During the year which followed these haps mine aunt died, and Mr.
Congleton sold his house in Ely Place, and took a small one in Gray's
Inn Lane, near to Mr. Wells's and Mr. Lacy's. It had no garden, nor
the many conveniences the other did afford; but neither Muriel nor
myself did lament the change, for the vicinity of these good friends
did supply the place of other advantages; and it also liked me more,
whilst Basil lived in poverty abroad, to inhabit a less sumptuous
abode than heretofore, and dispense with accustomed luxuries. Of
Hubert I could hear but scanty tidings at that time--only that he had
either lost or resigned his place at court? Mr. Hodgson was told by
one who had been his servant that he had been reconciled; others said
he did lead a very disordered life, and haunted bad persons. The truth
or falsity of these statements I could not then discern; but methinks,
from what I have since learnt, both might be partly true; for he
became subject to fits of gloom, and so discomfortable a remorse as
almost unsettled his reason; and then, at other times, plunged into
worldly excesses for to drown thoughts of the past. He was frightened,
I ween, or leastways distrustful of the society of good men, but
consorted with Catholics of somewhat desperate character and fortunes,
and such as dealt in plots and treasonable schemes.

Father Campion's arrest for a very different cause--albeit his enemies
did seek to attach to him the name traitor--occurred this year at
Mrs. Yates's house in Worcestershire, and {639} consternated the
hearts of all recusants; but when he came to London, and speech was
had of him by many amongst them which gained access to him in prison,
and reported to others his great courage and joyfulness in the midst
of suffering, then, methinks, a contagious spirit spread amongst
Catholics, and conversions followed which changed despondency into
rejoicing. But I will not here set down the manner of his trial, nor
the wonderful marks of patience and constancy which he showed under
torments and rackings, nor his interview with her majesty at my lord
Leicester's house, nor the heroic patience of his death; for others
with better knowledge thereof, and pens more able for to do it, have
written this martyr's life and glorious end. But I will rather relate
such events as took place, as it were, under mine own eye, and which
are not, I ween, so extensively known. And first, I will speak of a
conversation I held at that time with a person then a stranger, and
therefore of no great significancy when it occurred, but which later
did assume a sudden importance, when it became linked with succeeding
events.

One day that I was visiting at Lady Ingoldsby's, where Polly and her
husband had come for to spend a few weeks, and much company was going
in and out, the faces and names of which were new to me, some
gentlemen came there whose dress attracted notice from the French
fashion thereof. One of them was a young man of very comely appearance
and pleasant manners, albeit critical persons might have judged
somewhat of' the bravado belonged to his attitudes and speeches, but
withal tempered with so much gentleness and courtesy, that no sooner
had the eye and mind taken note of the defect than the judgment was
repented of. What in one of less attractive face and behavior should
have displeased, in this youth did not offend. It was my hap to sit
beside him at supper, which lasted a long time; and as his behavior
was very polite, I freely conversed with him, and found him to be
English, though from long residence abroad his tongue had acquired a
foreign trick. When I told him I had thought he was a Frenchman, he
laughed, and said if the French did ever try to land in England, they
should find him to be a very Englishman for to fight against them; but
in the matter of dinners and beds, and the liking of a dear sunny sky
over above a dim cloudy one, he did confess himself to be so much of a
traitor as to prefer France to England, and he could not abide the
smoke of coal fires which are used in this country.

"And what say you, sir," I answered, "to the new form of smoke which
Sir Walter Raleigh hath introduced since his return from the late
discovered land of Virginia?"

He said he had learnt the use of it in France, and must needs confess
he found it to be very pleasant. Monsieur Nicot had brought some seeds
of tobacco into France, and so much liking did her majesty Queen
Catharine conceive for this practice of smoking, that the new plant
went by the name of the queen's herb. "It is not gentlemen alone who
do use a pipe in France," he said, "but ladies also. What doth the
fair sex in England think on it?"

"I have heard," I answered, "that her majesty herself did try for to
smoke, but presently gave it up, for that it made her sick. Her
highness is also reported to have lost a wager concerning that same
smoking of tobacco."

"What did her grace bet?" the gentleman asked.

"Why, she was one day," I replied, "inquiring very exactly of the
various virtues of this herb, and Sir Walter did assure her that no
one understood them better than himself, for he was so well acquainted
with all its qualities, that he could even tell her majesty the weight
of the smoke of every pipeful he consumed. Her highness upon this
said, 'Monsieur {640} Traveller, you do go too far in putting on me
the license which is allowed to such as return from foreign parts;'
and she laid a wager of many pieces of gold he should not be able to
prove his words. So he weighed in her presence the tobacco before he
put it into his pipe, and the ashes after he had consumed it, and
convinced her majesty that the deficiency did proceed from the
evaporation thereof. So then she paid the bet, and merrily told him
'that she knew of many persons who had turned their gold into smoke,
but he was the first who had turned smoke into gold.'"

The young gentleman being amused at this story, I likewise told him of
Sir Walter's hap when he first returned to England, and was staying in
a friend's house: how a servant coming into his chamber with a tankard
of ale and nutmeg toast, and seeing him for the first time with a
lighted pipe in his mouth puffing forth clouds of smoke, flung the ale
in his face for to extinguish the internal conflagration, and then
running down the stairs alarmed the family with dismal cries that the
good knight was on fire, and would be burnt into ashes before they
could come to his aid.

My unknown companion laughed, and said he had once on his travels been
taken for a sorcerer, so readily doth ignorance imagine wonders. "Near
unto Metz, in France," quoth he, "I fell among thieves. My money I had
quilted within my doublet, which they took from me, howsoever leaving
me the rest of my apparel, wherein I do acknowledge their courtesy,
since thieves give all they take not; but twenty-five French crowns,
for the worst event, I had lapped in cloth, and whereupon did wind
divers-colored threads, wherein I sticked needles, as if I had been so
good a husband as to mend mine own clothes. Messieurs the thieves were
not so frugal to take my ball to mend their hose, but did tread it
under their feet. I picked it up with some spark of joy, and I and my
guide (he very sad, because he despaired of my ability to pay him his
hire) went forward to Chalons, where he brought me to a poor
ale-house, and when I expostulated, he replied that stately inns were
not for men who had never a penny in their purses; but I told him that
I looked for comfort in that case more from gentlemen than clowns;
whereupon he, sighing, obeyed me, and with a dejected and fearful
countenance brought me to the chief inn, where he ceased not to bewail
my misery as if it had been the burning of Troy; till the host,
despairing of my ability to pay him, began to look disdainfully on me.
The next morning, when, he being to return home, I paid him his hire,
which he neither asked nor expected, and likewise mine host for
lodgings and supper, he began to talk like one mad for joy, and
professed I could not have had one penny except I were an alchemist or
had a familiar spirit."

I thanked the young gentleman for this entertaining anecdote, and
asked him if France was not a very disquieted country, and nothing in
it but wars and fighting.

"Yea," he answered; "but men fight there so merrily, that it appears
more a pastime than aught else. Not always so, howsoever. When
Frenchman meets Frenchman in the fair fields of Provence, and those of
the League and those of the Religion--God confound the first and bless
the last!--engage in battle, such encounters ensue as have not their
match for fierceness in the world. By my troth, the sight of dead
bodies doth not ordinarily move me; but the valley of Allemagne on the
day of the great Huguenot victory was a sight the like of which I
would not choose to look on again, an I could help it."

"Were you, then, present at that combat, sir?" I asked.

"Yea," he replied; "I was at that time with Lesdiguières, the
Protestant general, whom I had known at La Rochelle, and beshrew me if
a more valiant soldier doth live, or a worthier {641} soul in a
stalwart frame. I was standing by his side when Tourves the butcher
came for to urge him, with his three hundred men, to ride over the
field and slay the wounded papists. 'No, sir,' quoth the general, 'I
fight men, but hunt them not down.' The dead were heaped many feet
thick on the plain, and the horses of the Huguenots waded to their
haunches in blood. Those of the Religion were mad at the death of the
Baron of Allemagne, the general of their southern churches, brave
castellane, who, when the fight was done, took off his helmet for to
cool his burning forehead; and lo, a shot sent him straight into
eternity."

"The Catholics were then wholly routed?" I asked.

"Yea," he answered; "mowed down like grass in the hay-harvest. De
Vins, however, escaped. He thought to have had a cheap victory over
those of the Religion; but the saints in heaven, to whom he trusted,
never told him that Lesdiguières on the one side and d'Allemagne on
the other were hastening to the rescue, nor that his Italian horsemen
should fail him in his need. So, albeit the papists fought like
devils, as they are, his pride got a fall, which well-nigh killed him.
He was riding frantically back into the fray for to get himself slain,
when St. Cannat seized his bridle, and called him a coward, so I have
heard, to dare for to die when his scattered troops had need of him;
and so carried him off the field. D'Oraison, Janson, Pontmez, hotly
pursued them, but in vain; and all the Protestant leaders, except
Lesdiguières, returned that night to the castle of Allemagne for to
bury the baron."

A sort of shiver passed through the young gentleman's frame as he
uttered these last words.

"A sad burial you then witnessed?" I said.

"I pray God," he answered, "never to witness another such."

"What was the horror of it?" I asked.

"Would you hear it?" he inquired.

"Yea," I said, "most willingly; for methinks I see what you describe."

Then he: "If it be so, peradventure you may not thank me for this
describing; for I warrant you it was a fearful sight. I had lost mine
horse, and so was forced to spend the night at the castle. When it
grew dark I followed the officers, which, with a great store of the
men, also descended into the vault, which was garnished all round with
white and warlike sculptured forms on tombstones, most grim in their
aspect; and amidst those stone imager, grim and motionless, the
soldiers ranged themselves, still covered with blood and dust, and
leaning on their halberds. In the midst was the uncovered coffin of
the baron, his livid visage exposed to view--menacing even in death.
Torches threw a fitful, red-colored light over the scene. A minister
which accompanied the army stood and preached at the coffin's head,
and when he had ended his sermon, sang in a loud voice, in French
verse, the psalm which doth begin,

  'Du fond de ma pensée,
  Du fond de tous enuuis,
  A tol s'est adressé
  Ma clamear jour et nult.'

When this singing began two soldiers led up to the tomb a man with
bound hands and ghastly pale face, and, when the verse ended, shot him
through the head. The corpse fell upon the ground, and the singing
began anew. Twelve times this did happen, till my head waxed giddy and
I became faint. I was led out of that vault with the horrible singing
pursuing me, as if I should never cease to hear it."

"Oh, 'tis fearful," I exclaimed, "that men can do such deeds, and the
while have God's name on their lips."

"The massacre of St. Bartholomew," he answered, "hath driven those of
the Religion mad against the papists."

"But, sir," I asked, "is it not true that six thousand Catholics in
Languedoc had been murthered in cold blood, {642} and a store of them
in other places, before that massacre?"

"May I be so," he answered in a careless tone. "The shedding of blood,
except in a battle or lawful duel, I abhor; but verily I do hate
papists with as great a hate as any Huguenot in France, and most of
all those in this country--a set of knavish traitors, which would
dethrone the queen and sell the realm to the Spaniards."

I could not but sigh at these words, for in this young man's
countenance a quality of goodness did appear which made me grieve that
he should utter these unkind words touching Catholics. But I dared not
for to utter my thinking or disprove his accusations, for, being
ignorant of his name, I had a reasonable fear of being ensnared into
some talk which should show me to be a papist, and he should prove to
be a spy. But patience failed me when, after speaking of the clear
light of the gospel which England enjoyed, and to lament that in
Ireland none are found of the natives to have cast off the Roman
religion, he said:

"I ween this doth not proceed from their constancy in religion, but
rather from the lenity of Protestants, which think that the conscience
must not be forced, and seek rather to touch and persuade than to
oblige by fire and sword, like those of the south, who persecute their
own subjects differing from them in religion."

"Sir," I exclaimed, "this is a strange thing indeed, that Protestants
do lay a claim to so great mildness in their dealings with recusants,
and yet such strenuous laws against such are framed that they do live
in fear of their lives, and are daily fined and tormented for their
profession."

"How so?" he said, quickly. "No papist hath been burnt in this
country."

"No, sir," I answered; "but a store of them have been hanged and cut
to pieces whilst yet alive."

"Nay, nay," he cried, "not for their religion, but for their many
treason."

"Sir," I answered, "their religion is made treason by unjust laws, and
then punished with the penalties of treason; and they die for no other
cause than their faith, by the same token that each of those which
have perished on the scaffold had his life offered to him if so he
would torn Protestant."

In the heat of this argument I had forgot prudence; and some unkindly
ears and eyes were attending to my speech, which this young stranger
perceiving, he changed the subject of discourse--I ween with a
charitable intent--and merrily exclaimed, "Now I have this day
transgressed a wise resolve."

"What resolve?" I said, glad also to retreat from dangerous subjects.

'"This," he answered: "that after my return I would sparingly, and not
without entreaty, relate my journeys and observations."

"Then, sir," I replied, "methinks you have contrariwise observed it,
for your observations have been short and pithy, and withal uttered at
mine entreaty."

"Nothing," he said, "I so much fear as to resemble men--and many such
I have myself known--who have scarce seen the lions of the Tower and
the bears of Parish Garden, but they must engross all a table in
talking of their adventures, as if they had passed the Pillars of
Hercules. Nothing could be asked which they could not resolve of their
own knowledge."

"Find you, sir," I said, "much variety in the manners of French people
and those you see in this country?"

He smiled, and answered, "We must not be too nice observers of men and
manners, and too easily praise foreign customs and despise our own
--not so much that we may not offend others, as that we may not be
ourselves offended by others. I will yield you an example. A
Frenchman, being a curious observer of ceremonious compliments, when
he hath saluted one, and began to entertain him with speech, if he
chance to espy another {643} man, with whom he hath very great
business, yet will he not leave the first man without a solemn excuse.
But an Englishman discoursing with any man--I mean in a house or
chamber of presence, not merely in the street--if he spy another man
with whom he hath occasion to speak, will suddenly, without any
excuse, turn from the first man and go and converse with the other,
and with like negligence will leave and take new men for discourse;
which a Frenchman would take in ill part, as an argument of
disrespect. This fashion, and many other like niceties and curiosities
in use in one country, we must forget when we do pass into another.
For lack of this prudence I have seen men on their return home tied to
these foreign manners themselves, and finding that others observe not
the like toward them, take everything for an injury, as if they were
disrespected, and so are often enraged."

"What think you of the dress our ladies do wear?" I inquired of this
young traveller.

He smiled, and answered:

"I like our young gentlewomen's gowns, and their aprons of fine linen,
and their little hats of beaver; but why have they left wearing the
French sleeves, borne out with hoops of whalebone, and the French hood
of velvet, set with a border of gold buttons and pearls? Methinks
English ladies are too fond of jewels and diamond rings. They scorn
plain gold rings, I find, and chains of gold."

"Yea," I said, "ladies of rank wear only rich chains of pearl, and all
their jewels must needs be oriental and precious. If any one doth
choose to use a simple chain or a plain-set brooch, she is marked for
wearing old-fashioned gear."

"This remindeth me," he said, "of a pleasant fable, that Jupiter sent
a shower, wherein whosoever was wet became a fool, and that all the
people were wet in this shower, excepting one philosopher, who kept
his study; but in the evening coming forth into the market-place, and
finding that all the people marked him as a fool, who was only wise,
he was forced to pray for another shower, that he might become a fool,
and so live quietly among fools rather than bear the envy of his
wisdom."

With this pleasant story our conversation ended, for supper was over,
and the young gentleman soon went away. I asked of many persons who he
should be, but none could tell me. Polly, the next day, said he was a
youth lately returned from France (which was only what I knew before),
and that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton had written a letter to Lady
Ingoldsby concerning him, but his name she had forgot. O what strange
haps, more strange than any in books, do at times form the thread of a
true history! what presentiments in some cases, what ignorance in
others, beset us touching coming events!

The next pages will show the ground of these reflections.


CHAPTER XXV.

One day that Mrs. Wells was somewhat disordered, and keeping her room,
and I was sitting with her, her husband came to fetch me into the
parlor to an old acquaintance, he said, who was very desirous for to
see me. "Who is it?" I asked; but he would not tell me, only smiled;
my foolish thinking supposed for one instant that it might be Basil he
spoke of, but the first glance showed me a slight figure and pale
countenance, very different to his whom my witless hopes had expected
for to see, albeit without the least shadow of reason. I stood looking
at this stranger in a hesitating manner, who perceiving I did not know
him, held out his hand, and said,

"Has Mistress Constance forgotten her old playfellow?"

"Edmund Genings!" I exclaimed, suddenly guessing it to be him.

{644}

"Yea," he said, "your old friend Edmund."

"Mr. Ironmonger is this reverend gentleman's name now-a-days," Mr.
Wells said; and then we all three sat down, and by degrees in Edmund's
present face I discerned the one I remembered in former years. The
same kind and reflective aspect, the pallid hue, the upward-raised
eye, now with less of searching in its gaze, but more, I ween, of
yearning for an unearthly home.

"O dear and reverend sir," I said, "strange it doth seem indeed thus
to address you, but God knoweth I thank him for the honor he hath done
my old playmate in the calling of him unto his service in these
perilous times."

"Yea," he answered, with emotion, "I do owe him much, which life
itself should not be sufficient to repay."

"My good father," I said, "some time before his death gave me a token
in a letter that you were in England. Where have you been all this
time?"

"Tell us the manner of your landing," quoth Mr. Wells; "for this is
the great ordeal which, once overpassed, lets you into the vineyard,
for to work for one hour only sometimes, or else to bear many years
the noontide heat and nipping frosts which laborers like unto yourself
have to endure."

"Well," said Edmund, "ten months ago we took shipping at Honfleur,
and, wind and weather being propitious, sailed along the coast of
England, meaning to have landed in Essex; but for our sakes the master
of the bark lingered, when we came in sight of land, until two hours
within night, and being come near unto Scarborough, what should happen
but that a boat with pirates or rovers in it comes out to surprise us,
and shoots at us divers times with muskets! But we came by no harm;
for the wind being then contrary, the master turned his ship and
sailed back into the main sea, where in very foul weather we remained
three days, and verily I thought to have then died of sea-sickness;
which ailment should teach a man humility, if anything in this world
can do it, stripping him as it does of all boastfulness of his own
courage and strength, so that he would cry mercy if any should offer
only to move him."

"Ah!" cried Mr. Wells, laughing, "Topcliffe should bethink himself of
this new torment for papists, for to leave a man in this plight until
he acknowledged the queen's supremacy should be an artful device of
the devil."

"At last," quoth Mr. Genings, "we landed, with great peril to our
lives, on the side of a high cliff near Whitby, in Yorkshire, and
reached that town in the evening. Going into an inn to refresh
ourselves, which I promise you we sorely needed, who should we meet
with there but one Radcliff?"

"Ah! a noted pursuivant," cried Mr. Wells, "albeit not so topping a
one as his chief."

"Ah!" I cried, "good Mr. Wells, that is but a poor pun, I promise you.
A better one you must frame before night, or you will lose your
reputation. The queen's last effort hath more merit in it than yours,
who, when she was angry with her envoy to Spain, said, 'If her royal
brother had sent her a goose-man,  [Footnote 94] she had sent him in
return a man-goose.'"

  [Footnote 94: Guzman.]

Mr. Genings smiled, and said:

"Well, this same Radcliff took an exact survey of us all, questioned
us about our arrival in that place, whence we came, and whither we
were going. We told him we were driven thither by the tempest, and at
last, by evasive answers, satisfied him. Then we all went to the house
of a Catholic gentleman in the neighborhood, which was within two or
three miles of Whitby, and by him were directed some to one place,
some to another, according to our own desires. Mr. Plasden and I kept
together; but, for fear of suspicion, we determined at last to
separate also, and singly to commit ourselves to the protection of God
and his good angels. Soon after we had thus {645} resolved, we came to
two fair beaten was, the one leading north-east, the other south-east,
and even then and there, it being in the night, we stopped and both
fell down on our knees and made a short prayer together that God of
his infinite mercy would vouchsafe to direct us, and send us both a
peaceable passage into the thickest of his vineyard."

Here Mr. Genings paused, a little moved by the remembrance of that
parting, but in a few minutes exclaimed:

"I have not seen that dear friend since, rising from our knees, we
embraced each other with tears trickling down our cheeks; but the
words he said to me then I shall never, methinks, forget. 'Seeing,'
quoth, he, 'we must now part through fear of our enemies, and for
greater security, farewell, sweet brother in Christ and most loving
companion. God grant that, as we have been friends in one college and
companions in one wearisome and dangerous journey, so we may have one
merry meeting once again in this world, to our great comfort, if it
shall please him, even amongst our greatest adversaries; and that as
we undertake, for his love and holy name's sake, this course of life
together, so he will of his infinite goodness and clemency make us
partakers of one hope, one sentence, one death, and one reward. And
also as we began, so may we end together in Christ Jesus.' So he; and
then not being able to speak one word more for grief and tears, we
departed in mutual silence; he directing his journey to London, where
he was born, and I northward."

"Then you have not been into Staffordshire?" I said.

"Yea," he answered, "later I went to Lichfield, in order to try if I
should peradventure find there any of mine old friends and kinsfolks."

"And did you succeed therein?" I inquired.

"The only friends I found," he answered, with a melancholy smile,
"were the gray cloisters, the old cathedral walls, the trees of the
close; the only familiar voices which did greet me were the chimes of
the tower, the cawing of the rooks over mine head as I sat in the
shade of the tall elms near unto the wall where our garden once
stood."

"Oh, doth that house and that garden no more exist?" I cried.

"No, it hath been pulled down, and the lawn thereof thrown into the
close."

"Then," I said, "the poor bees and butterflies must needs fare badly.
The bold rooks, I ween, are too exalted to suffer from these changes.
Of Sherwood Hall did you hear aught, Mr. Genings?"

"Mr. Ironmonger," Mr. Wells said, correcting me.

"Alas!" Edmund replied, "I  dared not so much as to approach unto it,
albeit I passed along the high road not very far from the gate
thereof. But the present inhabitants are famed for their hatred unto
recusants, and like to deal rigorously with any which should come in
their way."

I sighed, and then asked him how long he had been in London.

"About one month," he replied. "As I have told you. Mistress
Constance, all my kinsfolk that I wot of are now dead, except my young
brother John, whom I doubt not you yet do bear in mind--that fair,
winsome, mischievous urchin, who was carried to La Rochelle about one
year before your sweet mother died."

"Yea," I said, "I can see him yet gallopping on a stick round the
parlor at Lichfield."

"'Tis to look for him," Edmund said, "I am come to London. Albeit I
fear much inquiry on my part touching this youth should breed
suspicion, I cannot refrain, brotherly love soliciting me thereunto,
from seeking him whom report saith careth but little for his soul, and
who hath no other relative in the world than myself. I have warrant
for to suppose he should be in London; but these four weeks, {646}
with useless diligence, I have made search for him, leaving no place
unsought where I could suspect him to abide; and as I see no hopes of
success, I am resolved to leave the city for a season."

Then Mr. Wells proposed to carry Edmund to Kate's house, where some
friends were awaiting him; and for some days I saw him not again. But
on the next Sunday evening he came to our house, and I noticed a
paleness in him I had not before perceived. I asked him if anything
had disordered him.

"Nothing," he answered; "only methinks my old shaking malady doth
again threaten me; for this morning, walking forth of mine inn to
visit a friend on the other side of the city, and passing by St.
Paul's church, when I was on the east side thereof, I felt suddenly a
strange sensation in my body, so much that my face glowed, and it
seemed to me as if mine hair stood on end; all my joints trembled, and
my whole body was bathed in a cold sweat. I feared some evil was
threatening me, or danger of being taken up, and I looked back to see
if I could perceive any one to be pursuing me; but I saw nobody near,
only a youth in a brown-colored cloak; and so, concluding that some
affection of my head or liver had seized me, I thought no more on it,
but went forward to my intended place to say mass."

A strange thinking came into mine head at that moment, and I doubted
if I should impart to him my sudden fancy.

"Mr. Edmund," I said, unable to refrain myself, "suppose that youth in
the brown cloak should have been your brother!"

He started, but shaking of his head said:

"Nay, nay, why should it have been him rather than a thousand others I
do see every day?"

"Might not that strange effect in yourself betoken the presence of a
kinsman?"

"Tut, tut, Mistress Constance," he cried, half kindly, half
reprovingly; "this should be a wild fancy lacking ground in reason."

Thus checked, I held my peace, but could not wholly discard this
thought. Not long after--on the very morning before Mr. Genings
proposed to depart out of town--I chanced to be walking homeward with
him and some others from a house whither we had gone to hear his mass.
As we were returning along Ludgate Hill, what should he feel but the
same sensations he had done before, and which were indeed visible in
him, for his limbs trembled and his face turned as white as ashes!

"You are sick," I said, for I was walking alongside of him.

"Only affected as that other day," he answered, leaning against a post
for to recover himself.

I had hastily looked back, and, lo and behold I a youth in a brown
cloak was walking some paces behind us. I whispered in Mr. Genings's
ear:

"Look, Edmund; is this the youth you saw before?"

"O my good Lord!" he cried, turning yet more pale, "this is strange
indeed! After all, it may be my brother. Go on," he said quickly; "I
must get speech with him alone to discover if it should be so."

We all walked on, and he tarried behind. Looking back, I saw him
accost the stranger in the brown cloak. And in the afternoon he came
to tell us that this was verily John Genings, as I had with so little
show of reason guessed.

"What passed between you?" I asked.

He said:

"I courteously saluted the young man, and inquired what countryman he
was; and hearing that he was a Staffordshireman, I began to conceive
hopes it should be my brother; so I civilly demanded his name.
Methought I should have betrayed myself at once when he answered
Genings; but as quietly as I could, I told him I was {647} his
kinsman, and was called Ironmonger, and asked him what had become of
his brother Edmund. He then, not suspecting aught, told me he had
heard that he was gone to Rome to the Pope, and was become a notable
papist and a traitor both to God and his country, and that if he did
return he should infallibly be hanged. I smiled, and told him I knew
his brother, and that he was an honest man, and loved both the queen
and his country, and God above all. 'But tell me,' I added, 'good
cousin John, should you not know him if you saw him?' He then looked
hard at me, and led the way into a tavern not far off, and when we
were seated at a table, with no one nigh enough to overhear us, he
said: 'I greatly fear I have a brother that is a priest, and that you
are the man,' and then began to swear that if it was so, I should
discredit myself and all my friends, and protested that in this he
would never follow me; albeit in other matters he might respect me. I
promise you that whilst these harsh words passed his lips I longed to
throw my arms round his neck. I saw my mother's face in his, and his
once childish loveliness only changed into manly beauty. His young
years and mine rose before me, and I could have wept over this
new-found brother as Joseph over his dear Benjamin. I could no longer
conceal myself, but told him truly I was his brother indeed, and for
his love had taken great pains to seek him, and begged of him to keep
secret the knowledge of my arrival; to which he answered: 'He would
not for the world disclose my return, but that he desired me to come
no more unto him, for that he feared greatly the danger of the law,
and to incur the penalty of the statute for concealing of it.' I saw
this was no place or time convenient to talk of religion; but we had
much conversation about divers things, by which I perceived him to be
far from any good affection toward Catholic religion, and persistent
in Protestantism, without any hope of a present recovery. Therefore I
declared unto him my intended departure out of town, and took my
leave, assuring him that within a month or little more I should return
and see him again, and confer with him more at large touching some
necessary affairs which concerned him very much. I inquired of him
where a letter should find him. He showed some reluctance for to give
me any address, but at last said if one was left for him at Lady
Ingoldsby's, in Queen street, Holborn, he should be like to get it."

After Mr. Genings had left, I considered of this direction his brother
had given him, which showed him to be acquainted with Polly's
mother-in-law, and then remembering the young gentleman I had met at
her house, I suspected him to be no other than John Genings. And
called back to mind all his speeches for to compare them with this
suspicion, wherein they did all tally; and some days afterward, when I
was walking on the Mall with Sir Ralph and Polly, who should accost
them but this youth, which they presently introduced to me, and Polly
added, she believed we had played at hide-and-seek together when we
were young. He looked somewhat surprised, and as if casting about for
to call to mind old recollections; then spoke of our meeting at Lady
Ingoldsby's; and she cried out,

"Oh, then, you do know one another?"

"By sight," I said, "not by name."

Some other company joining us, he came alongside of me, and began for
to pay me compliments in the French manner.

"Mr. John Genings," I said, "do you remember Lichfield and the close,
and a little; girl, Constance Sherwood, who used to play with you,
before you went to La Rochelle?"

"Like in a dream," he answered, his comely face lighting up with a
smile.

"But your brother," I said, "was my chiefest companion then; for at
that age we do always aspire to the notice of such as be older than
{648} condescend to such as be younger than ourselves."

When I named his brother a cloud darkened his face, and he abruptly
turned away. He talked to Polly and some other ladies in a gay,
jesting manner, but I could see that ever and anon he glanced toward
me, as if to scan my features, and, I ween, compare them with what
memory depicted; but he kept aloof from me, as if fearing I should
speak again of one he would fain forget.

On the 7th of November, Edmund returned to London, and came in the
evening to Kate's house. He had been laboring in the country,
exhorting, instructing, and exercising his priestly functions amongst
Catholics with all diligence. It so happened that his friend, Mr.
Plasden, a very virtuous priest, which had landed with him at Whitby,
and parted with him soon afterward, was there also; and several other
persons likewise which did usually meet at Mr. Wells's house; but,
owing to that gentleman's absence, who had gone into the country for
some business, and his wife's indisposition, had agreed for to spend
the evening at Mr. Lacy's. Before the company there assembled parted,
the two priests treated with him where they should say mass the
following day, which was the Octave of All Saints. They agreed to say
their matins together, and, by Bryan's advice, to celebrate it at the
house of Mr. Wells, notwithstanding his absence; for that Mistress
Wells, who could not conveniently go abroad, would be exceeding glad
for to hear mass in her own lodging. I told Edmund of my meeting with
his brother on the Mall, and the long talk ministered between us some
weeks ago, when neither did know the other's name. Methought in his
countenance and conversation that night there appeared an unwonted
consolation, a sober joy, which filled me almost with awe. When he
wished me good-night, he added,  "I pray you, my dear child, to lift
up your soul to heaven ere yon sleep and when you wake, and recommend
to heaven our good purpose, and then come and attend at the holy
sacrifice with the crowd of angels and saints which do always assist
thereat." When the light faintly dawned in the dull sky, Muriel and I
stole from our beds, quietly dressed ourselves, and slipping out
unseen, repaired as fast as we could, for the ground was wet and
slippery, to Mr. Wells's house. We found assembled in one room Mr.
Genings, Mr. Plasden, another priest, Mr. White, Mr. Lacy, Mistress
Wells, Sydney Hodgson, Mr. Mason, and many others. Edmund Genings
proceeded to say mass. There was so great a stillness in the room a
pin should have been heard to drop. Albeit he said the prayers in a
very low voice, each word was audible. Mine ears, which are very quick
were stretched to the utmost. Each sound in the street caused me an
inward flutter. Methought, when he was reading the gospel I discerned
a sound as of the hall-door opening, and of steps. Then nothing more
for a little while; but just at the moment of the consecration there
was a loud rush up the stairs, and the door of the chamber burst open.
The gentlemen present rose from their knees. Mistress Wells and I
contrariwise sunk on the ground. I dared not for to look, or move, or
breathe, but kept inwardly calling on God, then present, for to save
us. I heard the words behind me: "Topcliffe! keep him back!" "Hurl him
down the stairs!" and then a sound of scuffling, falling, and rolling,
followed by a moment's silence.

The while the mass went forward, ever and anon noises rose without;
but the gentlemen held the door shut by main force all the time. They
kept the foe at bay, these brave men, each word uttered at the altar
resounding, I ween, in their breasts. O my God, what a store of
suffering was heaped into a brief space of time! What a viaticum was
that communion then received by thy doomed priest! {649} "_Domine, non
sum dignus_," he thrice said, and then his Lord rested in his soul.
"_Deo gratias_" None could now profane the sacred mysteries; none
could snatch his Lord from him. "_Ite missa est_." The mass was said,
the hour come, death at hand. All resistance then ceased. I saw
Topcliffe hastening in with a broken head, and threatening to raise
the whole street. Mr. Plasden told him that, now the mass was ended,
we would all yield ourselves prisoners, which we did; upon which he
took Mr. Genings as he was, in his vestments, and all of us, men and
women, in coaches he called for, to Newgate. Muriel and I kept close
together, and, with Mistress Wells, were thrust into one cell.
Methinks we should all have borne with courage this misfortune but for
the thinking of those without--Muriel of her aged and infirm father;
Mistress Wells of her husband's return that day to his sacked house,
robbed of all its church furniture, books, and her the partner of his
whole life. And I thought of Basil, and what he should feel if he knew
of me in this fearful Newgate, near to so many thieves and wicked
persons; and a trembling came over me lest I should be parted from my
companions. I had much to do to recall the courageous spirit I had
heretofore nurtured in foreseeing such a hap as this. If I had had to
die at once, I think I should have been more brave; but terrible
forebodings of examinations--perchance tortures, long solitary hours
in a loathsome place--caused me inward shudderings; and albeit I said
with my lips over and over again, "Thy will be done, my God," I
passionately prayed this chalice might pass from me which often before
in my presumption--I cry mercy for it--I had almost desired to drink.
Oh, often have I thought since of what is said in David's Psalms, "It
is good for me that thou hast humbled me." From my young years a hot
glowing feeling had inflamed my breast at the mention of suffering for
conscience' sake, and the words "to die" had been very familiar ones
to my lips; "rather to die," "gladly to die," "proudly to die;" alas,
how often had I uttered them! O my God, when the foul smells, the
faint light of that dreadful place, struck on my senses, I waxed very
weak. The coarse looks of the jailers, the disgusting food set before
us, the filthy pallets, awoke in me a loathing I could not repress.
And then a fear also, which the sense of my former presumption did
awaken. "Let he that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,"
kept running in mine head. I had said, like St. Peter, that I was
ready for to go to prison and to death; and now, peradventure, I
should betray my Lord if too great pain overtook me. Muriel saw me
wringing mine hands; and, sitting down by my side on the rude
mattress, she tried for to comfort me. Then, in that hour of bitter
anguish, I learnt that creature's full worth. Who should have thought,
who did not then hear her, what stores of superhuman strength, of
heavenly knowledge, of divine comfort, should have flowed from her
lips? Then I perceived the value of a wholly detached heart,
surrendered to God alone. Young as she was, her soul was as calm in
this trial as that of the aged resigned woman which shared it with us.
Mine was tempest-tossed for a while. I could but lie mine head on
Muriel's knee and murmur, "Basil, O Basil!" or else, "If, after all, I
should prove an apostate, which hath so despised others for it!"

"'Tis good to fear," she whispered, "but withal to trust. Is it not
written, mine own Constance, 'My strength is sufficient for thee?' and
who saith this but the Author of all strength--he on whom the whole
world doth rest? He permitteth this fear in thee for humility's sake,
which lesson thou hast need to learn. When that of courage is needed,
be not affrighted; he will give it thee. He bestoweth not graces
before they be needed."

{650}

Then she minded me of little St. Agnes, and related passages of her
life; but mostly spoke of the cross and the passion of Christ, in such
piercing and moving tones, as if visibly beholding the scene on
Calvary, that the storm seemed to subside in my breast as she went on.

"Pray," she gently said, "that, if it be God's will, the extremity of
human suffering should fall on thee, so that thy love for him should
increase. Pray that no human joy may visit thee again, so that heaven
may open its gates to thee and thy loved ones. Pray for Hubert, for
the queen, for Topcliffe, for every human soul which thou hast ever
been tempted to hate; and I promise thee that a great peace shall
steal over thy soul, and a great strength shall lift thee up."

I did what she desired, and her words were prophetic. Peace came
before long, and joy too, of a strange unearthly sort. A brief
foretaste of heaven was showed forth in the consolations then poured
into mine heart. When since I have desired for to rekindle fervor and
awaken devotion, I recall the hours which followed that great anguish
in the cell at Newgate.

Late in the evening an order came for to release Muriel and me, but
not Mrs. Wells. When this dear friend understood what had occurred,
she raised her hands in fervent gratitude to God, and dismissed us
with many blessings.

The events which, followed I will briefly relate. When we reached home
Mr. Congleton was very sick; and then began the illness which ended
his life. Kate was almost wild with grief at her husband's danger, and
we fetched her and her children to her father's house for to watch
over them. On the next day all the prisoners which had been taken at
Mr. Wells's house (we only having been released by the dealings of
friends with the chief secretary) were examined by Justice Young, and
returned to prison to take their trials the next session. Mr. Wells,
at his return finding his house ransacked and his wife carried away to
prison, had been forthwith to Mr. Justice Young for to expostulate
with him, and to demand his wife and the key of his lodgings; but the
justice sent him to bear the rest company, with a pair of iron bolts
on his legs. The next day he examined him in Newgate; and upon Mr.
Wells saying he was not privy to the mass being said that day in his
house, but wished he had been present, thinking his name highly
honored by having so divine a sacrifice offered in it, the justice
told him "that though he was not at the feast, he should taste of the
same."

The evening I returned home from the prison a great lassitude overcame
me, and for a few days increased so much, joined with pains in the
head and in the limbs, that I could scarcely think, or so much as
stand. At last it was discerned that I was sickening with the
small-pox, caught, methinks, in the prison; and this was no small
increase to Muriel's trouble, who had to go to and fro from my chamber
to her father's, and was forced to send Kate and her children to the
country to Sir Ralph Ingoldsby's house; but methinks in the end this
proved for the best, for when Mr. Lacy was, with the other prisoners,
found guilty, and condemned to death on the 4th of December, some for
having said, and the others for having heard, mass at Mr. Wells's
house, Kate came to London but for a few hours, to take leave of him,
and Polly's care of her afterward cheered the one sister in her great
but not very lasting affliction, and sobered the other's spirits in a
beneficial manner, for since she hath been a stayer at home, and very
careful of her children and Kate's also, and, albeit very secretly,
doth I hear practise her religion. Mr. Congleton never heard of his
son-in-law and his friend Mr. Wells's danger, the palsy which affected
him having numbed his senses so that he slowly sunk in his grave
without suffering of body or mind. From Muriel I heard the course of
the trial. How many bitter words and scoffs were used by the {651}
judges and others upon the bench, particularly to Edmund Genings,
because of his youth, and that he angered them with his arguments! The
more to make him a scoff to the people, they vested him in a
ridiculous fool's coat which they had found in Mr. Wells's house, and
would have it to be a vestment. It was appointed they should all die
at Tyburn, except Mr. Genings and Mr. Wells, who were to be executed
before Mr. Wells's own door in Gray's Inn Fields, within three doors
of our own lodging. The judges, we were told, after pronouncing
sentence, began to persuade them to conform to the Protestant
religion, assuring them that by so doing they should obtain mercy, but
otherwise they must certainly expect to die. But they all answered
"that they would live and die in the true Roman and Catholic faith,
which they and all antiquity had ever professed, and that they would
by no means go to the Protestant churches, or for one moment think
that the queen could be head of the Church in spirituals." They dealt
most urgently with Edmund Genings in this matter of conformity, giving
him hopes not only of his life, but also of a good living, it he would
renounce his faith; but he remained, God be praised, constant and
resolute; upon which he was thrust into a dark hole within the prison,
where he remained in prayer, without food or sustenance, till the hour
of his death. Some letters we received from him and Mr. Wells, which
have become revered treasures and almost relics in our eyes. One did
write (this was Edmund): "The comforts which captivity bringeth are so
manifold that I have rather cause to thank God highly for his fatherly
dealings with me than to complain of any worldly misery whatsoever.
Custom hath caused that it is no grief to me to be debarred from
company, desiring nothing more than solitude. When I pray, I talk with
God--when I read, he talketh with me; so that I am never alone." And
much more in that strain. Mr. Wells ended his letter thus: "I am bound
with gyves, yet I am unbound toward God, and far better I account it
to have the body bound than the soul to be in bondage. I am threatened
hard with danger of death; but if it be no worse, I will not wish it
to be better. God send me his grace, and then I weigh not what flesh
and blood can do unto me. I have answered to many curious and
dangerous questions, but I trust with good advisements, not offending
my conscience. What will come of it God only knoweth. Through prison
and chains to glory. Thine till death." This letter was addressed to
Basil, with a desire expressed we should read it before it was sent to
him.

On the day before the one of the execution, Kate came to take leave of
her husband. She could not speak for her tears; but he, with his usual
composure, bade her be of good comfort, and that death was no more to
him than to drink off the caudle which stood there ready on his table.
And methinks this indifferency was a joint effect of nature and of
grace, for none had ever seen him hurried or agitated in his life with
any matter whatsoever. And when he rolled Topcliffe down the stairs
and fell with him--for it was he which did this desperate action--his
face was as composed when he rose up again, one of the servants who
had seen the scuffle said, as if he had never so much as stirred from
his study; and in his last speeches before his death it was noticed
that his utterance was as slow and deliberate, and his words as
carefully picked, as at any other time of his life. Ah me! what days
were those when, hardly recovered from my sickness, only enough for to
sit up in an armed-chair and be carried from one chamber to another,
all the talk ministered about me was of the danger and coming death of
these dear friends. I had a trouble of mine own, which I be truly
ashamed to speak of; but in this narrative I have resolved above all
things to be truthful; and if I have ever had {652} occasion, on the
one hand, to relate what should seem to be to mine own credit, on the
other also I desire to acknowledge my weaknesses and imperfections, of
which what I am about to relate is a notable instance. The small-pox
made me at that time the most deformed person that could be seen, even
after I was recovered; and the first time I beheld my face in a glass,
the horror which it gave me was so great that I resolved Basil should
never be the husband of one whom every person which saw her must needs
be affrighted to look on; but, forecasting he would never give me up
for this reason, howsoever his inclination should rebel against the
kindness of his heart and his true affection for me, I hastily sent
him a letter, in which I said I could give him no cause for the change
which had happened in me, but that I was resolved not to marry him,
acting in my old hasty manner, without thought or prudence. No sooner
had I done so than I grew very uneasy thereat, too late reflecting on
what his suspicions should be of my inconstancy, and what should to
him appear faithless breach of promise.

It grieved me, in the midst of such grave events and noble sufferings,
to be so concerned for mine own trouble; and on the day before the
execution I was sitting musing painfully on the tragedy which was to
be enacted at our own doors as it were, weeping for the dear friends
which were to suffer, and ever and anon chewing the cud of my wilful
undoing of mine own, and it might prove of Basil's, future peace by my
rash letter to him, and yet more rash concealment of my motives.
Whilst I was thus plunged in grief and uneasiness, the door of my
chamber of a sudden opened, and the servant announced Mr. Hubert
Rookwood. I hid my face hastily with a veil, which I now did generally
use, except when alone with Muriel. He came in, and methought a change
had happened in his appearance. He looked somewhat wild and
disordered, and his face flushed as one used to drinking.

"Constance," he said abruptly, "tidings have reached me which would
not suffer me to put off this visit. A man coming from France hath
brought me a letter from Basil, and one directed to you, which he
charged me to deliver into your hands. If it tallies with that which
he doth write to me--and I doubt not it must be so, for his dealings
are always open and honorable, albeit often rash--I must needs hope
for so much happiness from it as I can scarce credit to be possible
after so much suffering."

I stretched out mine hand for Basil's letter. Oh, how the tears gushed
from mine eyes on the reading of it! He had received mine, and having
heard some time before from a friend he did not name of his brother's
passion for me, he never misdoubted but that I had at last yielded to
his solicitations, and given him the love which I withdrew from him.

Never was the nobleness of his nature more evinced than in this
letter; never grief more heartfelt, combined with a more patient
endurance of the overthrow of his sole earthly happiness; never a
greater or more forgiving kindness toward a faithless creature, as he
deemed her, with a lingering care for her weal, whom he must needs
have thought so ill deserving of his love. So much sorrow without
repining, such strict charges not to marry Hubert if he was not a good
Catholic and truly reconciled to the Church. But if he was indeed
changed in this respect, an assent given to this marriage which had
cost him, he said, many tears and many prayers for to write, more than
if with his own heart's blood he had traced the words; but which,
nevertheless, he freely gave, and prayed God to bless us both, if with
a good conscience we could be wedded; and God forbid he should hinder
it, if I had ceased for to love him, and had given to Hubert--who had
already got his birthright--also a more precious treasure, the heart
once his own.

{653}

"What doth your brother write to you?" I coldly said; and then Hubert
gave me his letter to read.

Methinks he imagined I concealed my face from some sort of shame; and
God knoweth, had I acted the part he supposed, I might well have
blushed deeper than can be thought of.

This letter was like unto the other--the most touching proof of love
a man could give for a woman. Forgetting himself, my dearest Basil's
only care was my happiness; and firm remonstrances were blended with
touching injunctions to his brother to treasure every hair of the head
of one who was dearer to him than all the world beside, and to do his
duty to God and to her, which if he observed, he should, mindless of
all else, for ever bless him.

When I returned the missive to him, Hubert said, in a faltering voice,
"Now you are free--free to be mine--free before God and man."

"Yea," I answered; "free as the dead, for I am henceforward dead to
all earthly things."

"What!" he cried, startled; "your thinking is not, God shield it, to
be a nun abroad?"

"Nay," I answered; and then, laying my hand on Basil's letter, I said,
"If I had thought to marry you, Hubert; if at this hour I should say I
could love you, I ween you would leave the house affrighted, and never
return to it again."

"Is your brain turned?" he impatiently cried.

"No," I answered quietly, lifting my veil, "my face only is changed."

I had a sort of bitter pleasure in the sight of his surprise. He
turned as pale as any smock.

"Oh, fear not," I said; "my heart hath not changed with my face. I am
not in so merry a mood, God knoweth, as to torment you with any such
apprehensions. My love for Basil is the same; yea, rather at this
hour, after these noble proofs of his love, more great than ever. Now
you can discern why I should write to him I would never marry him."

Hiding his face in his hands, Hubert said, "Would I had not come here
to embitter your pain?"

"You have not added to my sorrow," I answered; "the chalice is indeed
full, but these letters have rather lightened than increased my
sufferings."

Then concealing again my face, I went on, "O Hubert, will you come
here to-morrow morning? Know you the sight which from that window
shall be seen? Hark to that noise! Look out, I pray you, and tell me
what it is."

He did as I bade him, and I marked the shudder he gave. His face, pale
before, had now turned of an ashy hue.

"Is it possible?" he said; "a scaffold in front of that house where we
were wont to meet those old friends! O Constance, are they there to
die?--that brave joyous old man, that kind pious soul his wife?"

"Yea," I answered; "and likewise the friend of my young years, good
holy Edmund Genings, who never did hurt a fly, much less a human
creature. And at Tyburn, Bryan Lacy, my cousin, once your friend, and
Sydney Hodgson, and good Mr. Mason, are to suffer."

Hubert clenched his hands, ground his teeth, and a terrible look shot
through his eyes. I felt affrighted at the passion my words had
awakened.

"Cursed," he cried, in a hoarse voice,--"cursed be the bloody queen
which reigneth in this land! Thrice accursed be the tyrants which hunt
us to death! Tenfold accursed such as lure us to damnation by the foul
baits they do offer to tempt a man to lie to God and to others, to
ruin those he loves, to become loathsome to himself by his mean
crimes! But if one hath been cheated of his soul, robbed of the hope
of heaven, debarred from his religion, thrust into the company of
devils, let them fear him, yea, let them fear him, I say. Revenge is
not impossible. What shall stay the {654} hand of such a man? What
shall guard those impious tempters if many such should one day league
for to sweep them from earth's face? If one be desperate of this
world's life, he becomes terrible. How should he be to be dreaded who
doth despair of heaven!"

With these wild words, he left me. He was gone ere I could speak.


TO BE CONTINUED.

------

From Chambers's Journal.

RESIGNED.


      When my weary spinning's done,
      And the shades of eve grow deep,
      And by the bright hearthstone
      The old folk sit asleep;
  My heart and I in secret talk, when none can see me weep.

      Ofttimes the driving rain,
      And sometimes the silent snow,
      Beat on the window-pane,
      And mingle sad and low
  With the hopes and fears, the smiles and tears, of a time long, long ago;

      Till they act the tales they tell,
      And a step is on the floor,
      And a voice I once loved well
      Says: "Open me the door."
  Then I turn with a chill from the mocking wind, which whispers "Nevermore!"---

      To the little whitewashed room
      In which my days are spent;
      And, journeying toward the tomb,
      My companions gray and bent.
  Who haply deem their grandchild's life not joyous, but content.

      Ah me! for the suns not set,
      For the years not yet begun,
      For the days not numbered yet,
      And the work that must be done,
  Before the desert path is crossed, and the weary web is spun!

      Like a beacon in the night,
      I see my first grey hair;
      And I scarce can tell aright
      If it is from age or care,
  For time glides silent o'er my life, and leaves no landmark there.

      But perchance 'tis for the best.
      And I must harder strive,
      If life is little blest.
      Then not for life to live.
  For though a heart has nought to take, it may have much to give.

{655}

      And they are old and poor.
      And bread is hard to win.
      And a guest is at the door
      Who soon must enter in,
  And to keep his shadow from their hearth, I daily toil and spin.

      My sorrow is their gain,
      And I show not by a tear
      How my solitude and pain
      Have bought their comfort dear.
  For the storm which wrecked my life's best hope has left me stranded here.

      But I hear the neighbors say,
      That the hour-glass runs too fast,
      And I know that in that glad day,
      When toil and sorrow are past,
  The false and true shall receive their due, and hearts cease aching at last.

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN. D.D.


1. A sportsman fell in with Abbot Antony, when pleasantly conversing
with his brethren, and was scandalized.

The old man said: "Put an arrow on the string, and bend your bow." He
did so.

Then Antony said: "Bend it more;" and he bent it more.

Antony said: "More still." He answered: "I shall break it."

Then said Antony: "This will befal the brethren, if their minds are
always on the stretch."


2. It is told of Abbot Arsenius, how he was used to remain all night
without sleep.

Then, when morning broke, and he needed rest, he used to say to sleep:
Come, you good-for-nothing.

Then he took a nap, as he sat; and soon woke up again.


3. A brother said to Abbot Theodore, "Say some good word to me, for I
am perishing."

He answered: I am in jeopardy myself,  and what can I say to _thee?_


4. A brother said to Abbot Pastor: "I have done a great sin; give me a
three years' penance." The abbot answered; "It is too much."

The brother said, "Give me a year." The old man said again, "It is too
much."

The brothers round him asked, "Should it be forty days?" Still he
answered, "It is too much."

For, said he, whoso doth penance with his whole heart, and never does
the sin again, is received by God even on the penance of three days.


5. A brother had sinned, and the priest bade him leave the church.

Bessarion rose, and went out with him, saying: And I too am a sinner.


6. Abbott Macarius said: Never chide an erring brother angrily; for
you are not bid save another's soul at the loss of your own.


7. Abbot Nilus said: If you would pray as you ought, beware of
sadness; else you will run in vain.

------

{656}


From All The Year Round.

UP AND DOWN CANTON.


Canton is a genuine Chinese city, and one of the most extraordinary
places in the world. There are four American steamers which ply
between Hong-Kong and Canton. They are fast commodious vessels, in
fact floating hotels, such as ply on the large American rivers. The
voyage occupies about eight or nine hours. Of these, five or six are
on the open sea, sheltered mostly under the lee of precipitous bluffs
and lofty rocky islets; and the rest, from the "Bocca Tigris," up the
Canton river. The fog in the winter season lies so dense over the
flats and extensive swamps bordering the river that steamers have to
proceed with great caution, going "dead slow," and sounding the
steam-whistle, while the little fishing-junks, which are sure to be
scattered by dozens in the way, eagerly beat their gongs, to make
known their whereabout. As the steamer ascends the river, a noble
stream, some five or six miles broad near the mouth, she gets
gradually clear of the fog. The wide marshy flats, and the bold rocks
on the left bank, crowned with odd-looking Chinese stone batteries,
come into view, to be succeeded by paddy-fields, sugar-cane
cultivation, orchards, gardens, roads, and villages, that become, on
both banks, more and more numerous, until they blend with the vast
suburbs of Canton. Charming little pagodas, and fanciful buildings,
painted and carved, the residences of mandarins, peep from the shades
of groves, and every village is surmounted by two or more lofty square
towers, the nature of which puzzles a stranger, until he is told they
are pawnbrokers shops. These shops are so fashioned for the greater
security of the articles pledged, because the broker is made heavily
responsible for their safe-keeping. The security is meant to be not
only against thieves, but also against fire. Half-way to Canton, on
the right, or west bank, is a little English settlement at the town of
Whampo. It consists of some ship-chandlers' stores, warehouses, and a
dock for repairing vessels which discharge their cargoes here, being
unable to proceed higher up the stream. Whampo is, in fact, the
seaport of Canton, and was a flourishing place as such till Hong-Kong
diverted the trade. From Whampo upward, the river becomes more and
more crowded with junks and Chinese boats. Some of the junks,
men-of-war, differ from the rest only in being larger, and in having
several unwieldy guns on their decks, mounted on uncouth carriages: in
many instances with their muzzles not pointed through portholes, but
grinning over the bulwarks at an angle of forty-five degrees, like
huge empty bottles.

When the steamer has slowly and cautiously threaded her way among
these numerous vessels, and dropped anchor, the rush of  "tanka-boats"
round her is astonishing. These are broad bluff crafts, something of
the size and shape of the sampans, but impelled chiefly by women; one
sweeping, the other sculling with a large steering oar. They close
round the ship in hundreds, yelling, screaming, struggling, and
fighting for the gangways, till every passenger or article of light
freight has left. The women are warmly and comfortably dressed in
dark-blue linen shirts and wide drawers, with red and yellow bandanas
round their heads and faces. They are often young and good-looking,
with bright laughing eyes, white {657} teeth, and jolly red cheeks.
They are, unlike the "flower-boat" girls, honest and well conducted.
Their boats are roofed over, with snug neat cabins nicely painted, and
bedizened with flowers, old-fashioned pictures, and looking-glasses. A
low cushioned bench runs round three sides, and the passenger sits
down pleasantly enough, looking through the entrance, and face to face
with the sturdy nymph, who, with a "stamp and go," is rowing him
along, while at the stern, behind his back, another lusty Naiad steers
him on his way.

The river divides the great city into two parts; that on the left
bank, which is by far the larger, being Canton, and the opposite
smaller town "Honan." On the Honan side, a few European gentlemen
still live and carry on business, as branches of several firms in
Hong-Kong; but the principal European quarter is a fine level plain on
the Canton side, presenting to the river a revetted wall. A pretty
church and some handsome houses, including the British consulate, have
been already completed within the land, which is called the "Shámeen."
It adjoins the portion formerly allotted for the Hongs, or warehouses
and offices of foreign (European) merchants, which were burnt down by
the Chinese mob before the last war.

At ten in the morning, one day in the month of February, I started
from the Honan side, under the guidance of a Chinese cicerone, who
spoke a language somewhat better than the gibberish known by the name
of "pigeon" (business) English, to explore the city of Canton. We
crossed the river in a tanka-boat, and after threading, jostling, and
pushing our way through swarms of small craft in every variety, landed
at the custom-house stairs, close to a small office in which presides
an English functionary, in the pay of the Chinese government. The
strand is crowded with mean dirty hovels, in which, and about the
muddy road, and on board innumerable boats, packed closely along the
bank, men, women, and children, filthy and ragged, were crowding in
swarms. We passed a short way up the strand, by some large shops,
crammed with clothing and ship chandlery, and, striking inland,
traversed an open space, scattered with the relics of the European
Hongs burnt before the last war (a space, by-the-by, which Europeans
have altogether deserted, preferring the "Shámeen" land, and which the
Chinese government appear unwilling to resume, so that it remains
altogether untenanted). We then entered the bazaar, or strictly
commercial portions of the town.

The day was unusually sultry for the time of year; the streets (so to
call passages of six or seven feet width), entirely paved with
flag-stones, were muddy and greasy from rain that had fallen the day
before. The air was stagnant from the confinement of closely packed
and overhanging houses, and heated by swarms of people hurrying to and
fro, while an insupportable stench from sewers, neglected drains, and
putrid fish and flesh, with a horrible odor of stale cabbage water,
pervaded the suffocating atmosphere. I became faint at times, fatigued
and heated beyond endurance, so that my estimate of the extent of this
enormous labyrinth through which I plodded for four hours before I
could get a sedan-chair, is one rather, of the feelings than of the
judgment I walked--stepping now and then into shops, to examine them
more closely--and rode in a sedan-chair up one street and down
another, from about half-past ten in the morning until four in the
afternoon, and had to leave unvisited about half the bazaar, to get a
hasty glimpse of a few temples, gardens, and mandarin-houses before
dusk.

The streets are flagged, and about six or seven feet broad. They
appear to be innumerable, crossing each other at right angles at every
two or three hundred yards. The houses {658} on each side are
narrow-fronted, but extending considerably to the rear. There are no
windows, for the centre of each front is, open, merely consisting of
carved and painted framework, like the proscenium of a theatre, and
displaying the contents of the shop on each hand, like side scenes.
The back is closed by a large panelling, in which figures of gods,
men, animals, and flowers are painted, with a vast deal of gilding and
finery. In short, each shop looks like a little theatre. A few houses
have upper stories, reached by pretty carved and balustraded stairs.
And as every article for which space can be found is hung up for
display, both inside the shop and around its front, the spectator, as
he enters the bazaar, feels as if he were diving into an ocean of
cloths, silks, flags, and flutters.

My guide was a sharp fellow, who thoroughly knew all the sights of
Canton. As he had been often employed as cicerone by the ship
captains, he immediately put me down as one of that jolly fraternity,
frequent intercourse with whom had given a slightly nautical twang to
his discourse. We had not gone far before he addressed me, "I say,
cappen: you come along o' me and see jewelers' shops. Here's
first-rate shop--number one jeweler this chap--cappen want to buy
anything? Heave along!" The jewelers' shops were numerous, and I saw
many very beautiful specimens of carving and filigree-work. Some of
the shops sold articles of European design, others ministered only to
the native beauty and fashion of Canton. These contained many articles
of considerable beauty and real taste. The most notable were the
"bird's feather ornaments," which consist of gold or gilt head combs,
brooches, ear-rings, and the like, on which are firmly fixed, with
glue, strips of the bright blue feathers of the kingfisher (Halcyon
Smyrnensis), cut into small patterns, through which the gold ground
appears; the whole effect being exactly like that of enamel work. The
kingfisher is not, I think, found in China, but is imported in great
numbers from Burmah and India. I asked the price of one skin lying on
the counter, and was told half a dollar (two shillings and
threepence). The bird was probably procured in India for
three-halfpence. Ivory shops are in great number, but the Chinese
ivory yields, in my opinion, to that of the Japanese. I went into
several porcelain shops, and saw in each ten or a dozen
languid-looking youths painting away, slowly and laboriously, at
leaves, flowers, insects, and so forth, on plates. Each lad had a
small bowl of one color, and when he had painted in all the parts of
the design intended to be of that color, he passed the plate on to his
neighbor, who added his color, and so on all round the room till the
pattern was completely colored. The result is stiff and mechanical.
There is no attempt at artistic effect, nothing like the beautiful
pictures painted in the factories at Worcester or Dresden. Dyers and
weavers are numerous. The silk shops are the finest in the bazaar, but
their contents are excessively dear, and are not very good. Indeed,
the Canton silks are considered by the Chinese themselves to be,
inferior to those made in the northern provinces of the empire. I have
seen silk dresses and pieces from Pekin brought into India via Nepaul,
of a quality which I was assured by a competent judge could not be
procured at Canton. This was five-and-twenty years ago, and it is
possible that our present widely different connection with China may
have introduced a better article into Shanghae, which is so near
Pekin. But the Chinese were very jealous formerly about exporting
their finest silks, and those I allude to were brought by the members
of a mission, sent every three years with a tribute from Kathmandoo to
the Emperor of China, as a friendly return present from the emperor to
the Rajah of Nepaul.

{659}

The Chinese shopkeepers are fat comfortable-looking fellows, with
pleasant, good-humored faces. They showed me their curiosities very
willingly, and none the less courteously exchanged a smiling
"chin-chin" with me if I left the shop without purchasing anything.

Tea-shops are numberless. They are piled up with chests such as we see
in England, and with open baskets of coarse and inferior tea for the
poor. The cheapest kind is made in thin round cakes or large wafers,
strung upon slips of bamboo. It partially dissolves in hot water, and
is flavored with salt by those who drink it. Of this form of brick tea
I have never seen any mention in the books published by travellers.

There are poulterers' shops, with fowls roasted and raw; and there are
vegetable sellers' stalls, and fish in baskets, dead and not
over-fresh, or alive in large tubs of water. They were all of the carp
family, including réhos, mïrgals, and kutlas, so familiarly known in
India, also several species of the siluroids, called vulgarly
"catfish." The fish brought from the sea are salted and sun-dried,
and, with strong aid from immense festoons of sharks' fins, set up a
stench that it is not easy to walk through.

After inspecting shops and elbowing and being elbowed in the crowd
till afternoon, when I was ready to drop with heat and fatigue, my
pilot steered me to a small square, flagged with stone, on which the
sun shone fiercely. He called it "Beggars' square," and told me that
all the destitute and abandoned sick in the city crawled, if they
could, to this spot, because those who died there received burial at
the expense of government. While he spoke, my eyes were fixed upon
some heaps of dirty tattered clothes on the ground, which presently
began to move, and I discovered to my horror three miserable
creatures, lean and covered with odious filth, lying in different
stages of their last agony on the bare stones, exposed to the burning
rays of the sun. They came here to die, and no one heeded them, or
gave them a drop of water, or a morsel of food, or even a little
shelter from the noontide glare. I had seen shocking things of this
sort in India, but nothing so horrible. To insure a climax of
disgusts, my guide led me straight to a dog butcher's shop, where
several of the nasty fat oily carcases of those animals were hanging
for sale. They had not been flayed, but dangled there with their
smooth shining skins, which had been scalded and scraped clean of
hair, so that at first I took them for sucking-pigs. There were joints
of dog, ready roasted, on the counter, and in the back of the shop
were several cages in which live dogs were quietly sitting, lolling
their tongues out, and appearing very unconcerned. I saw several cats
also, in cages, looking very demure; and moreover I saw customers,
decorous and substantial-looking householders, inspect and feel the
dogs and cats, and buy those which they deemed fittest for the table.
The cats did not like being handled, and mewed loudly. "What cappen
think o' that?" said my guide. "Cappen s'pose never eat dog?--dog very
good, very fat, very soft. Oh, number one dinner is dog!" "And are
cats as good?" I asked. "Oh, Chinaman chowchow everything. Chowchow
plenty cat. Chinaman nasty beast, I think, cappen, eh?" My cicerone
had been so long mixed up with European and American ship captains and
missionaries, that he had learnt to suit his ideas to his company, if
his ideas had not actually undergone great modification, as is the
case in India with those educated natives of the present day known to
us as specimens of "Young Bengal."

Before quitting the bazaar, I was ushered into two gambling-shops.
These are licensed by the Chinese government, the owners paying a
considerable tax. Both were tolerably full of players, and in both the
same kind of game was being played--a simple one enough, if I
understood it. {660} A player staked a pile of cash or dollars; the
croupier staked a similar one; and then another member of the
establishment dipped his hand into a bag and drew out a handful of
counters; if they were in even fours, the bank won; if they were
uneven, the player won, and the croupier's stake was duly handed over
to him--rather ruefully, it struck me, by the banker, who sat on the
counter raised above the rest. This game appears about as
intrinsically entertaining as pulling straws; but I may have
overlooked or misunderstood parts of it of a more intellectual nature.
In the first house I visited, the players were of the lower class, and
the stakes were copper cash. One man, quite a youth, left the room
evidently cleaned out; his look revealed it, and I suppose he went
away to the opium shop, the usual consolation of a Chinaman under the
circumstances. As we entered the second gambling-house, my guide
informed me, "This rich house. Number one fellow play here--mandarin
chap." And truly I saw in the room goodly piles of dollars heaped up
before a better-dressed assembly. The game appeared to be the same,
and money changed hands rapidly. I "chin-chinned" to the banker and to
the company, and was civilly allowed to look on. The room led through
a filigreed doorway to another apartment, where cakes, loaves, tea,
and pipes were spread out, and where long-tailed gentlemen were
lounging and discussing the news of the day.

Being in want of cash, and having only dollar notes with me, I asked
my guide what I should do? He straightway led me to a money-changer's,
where I was at once furnished with change for my notes at par. As this
was an unusual accommodation, I asked the reason of such generosity,
and was informed that the dollars given me were all light, and that
the changer would obtain full-weight dollars for the notes by-and-by.
I was assured, however, that in all the shops the dollars I had
received would be received at the full value; and this I found to be
the case. All the time I was in the money-changer's, I saw three or
four people telling, examining, and stamping dollars. So defaced and
mutilated does the coin become by bearing the "chop" or mark of every
banker or dealer into whose possession it passes, that it as nearly as
possible returns to that state of bullion which the Chinaman prefers
to minted coin. As it was, the only small change I could procure for a
dollar was in fragments of silver; in the weighing out of which I was
of course at the mercy of the shopman.

A chair having been with great difficulty procured for me, and another
for my guide, we were about emerging from the bazaar when I had the
honor of meeting a mandarin and suite. My bearers had just time to
squeeze into the entrance of a side-alley, when the cavalcade was down
upon us. Funny-looking soldiers with spears and muskets
indiscriminately, musicians and drummers or tom-tom beaters, and an
amazing figure in red and gold apparel of a loose flapping cut, with a
sword in his hand, mounted upon an inexcusable pony--a Chinese
Rosinante. In the centre of this cortege the mandarin was borne along,
a placid fat dignitary, in a richly embroidered purple velvet and
golden dress, seated in a gaudy sedan.

It was a great relief to emerge from the crowded bazaar, pass through
the gateway in the massive city wall, and proceed through
comparatively airy lanes to one or two Chinese gentlemen's houses and
gardens, which my guide most unceremoniously entered, marshalling me
in without a word of introduction or apology, and making me feel
rather ashamed of myself. These dwellings, as well as the joss-houses
or temples, have been so often described, that I will not inflict them
again on the reader. Not the slightest objection was raised by the
priests to my exploring every part of the temples, the vergers showing
the altars, the various images, the cloisters {661} and refectories,
with great alacrity, and extending their hands afterward for a fee.
The only undescribed fact connected with these worthies which I was
informed of is, that they sell their finger-nails to any foreigner
desirous of purchasing such curiosities. These nails are suffered to
grow uncut, and attain a length of three or four inches, looking
remarkably unlike finger-nails, and forming curiosities much coveted,
said my guide, by foreign gentlemen and "cappens." Among other
religious edifices I visited a Mohammedan temple, a singular jumble of
Islamism and Buddhism. Extracts from the Koran wore an odd appearance
emblazoned on Chinese architecture. There were no priests visible
here; only children and begging old women.

Want of time prevented my visiting the camp or barracks of the Chinese
soldiers, on the heights outside the eastern suburbs of the town. A
large garden, attached to a temple on the Honan side, was the only
other object I had time that day to inspect. The garden was
principally stocked with orange-trees, also loquats and lychees,
hundreds of which were on sale for the benefit of the good fathers,
who are supported by the produce of the garden and the contributions
of the piously disposed. On each side of the centre walk, beyond a
little dirty pond, was a shed, with shelves, on which were ranged pots
containing the ashes of the priests ("priests' bones," my guide
irreverently called them); their bodies, after decease, undergoing
incremation in an adjoining pit. Names, ages, and dates of decease are
duly preserved, cut into slabs of stone on the concave face of a
semicircular screen of masonry in the garden. Before leaving the
garden I was not a little surprised by the appearance of a veritable
magpie, identical, as it seemed to me, with our British bird, that I
had not seen for many years.

After guiding me safely to my quarters--for so labyrinthine is every
part of Canton and Honan that it would be hopeless to attempt to find
one's way alone--my pilot left me and departed to his own home, which
was, he told me, on the Canton side. The language he spoke is, as may
be gathered from the specimens here given, not the ordinary "pigeon
English" of Chinese servants; a style of gibberish which it is
lamentable to think has become the ordinary channel of communication
with all Chinamen. These sharp and intelligent people would soon learn
to speak and understand better English than such sentences has "You go
top-side and catchee one piecee book"--"You tell those two piecee
cooly go chow-chow, and come back chop-chop." (Go up-stairs and fetch
a book--Tell those two coolies to go to their dinner, and return
quickly.) The good effects of the tuition afforded by schoolmasters
and missionaries in China are much marred by the jargon used
conventionally, with irrational adherence to defect, in all ordinary
transactions of business, by masters and mistresses in intercourse
with their servants, and by  commercial men with their native
assistants.

About seven hours' run, in one of the American steamers before
mentioned, carries the passenger from Canton to Macao. The mouth of
the river is cleared in four hours, and the rest of the voyage is over
an open sea, which, with a fresh southerly breeze, is rather rough for
a flat-bottomed steamer: the islands to eastward, though numerous,
being too remote to check the swell of the Chinese ocean. After
running for about an hour along the bold rocky peninsula at the point
of which Macao is built, the steamer rounds in, and, entering a
partially land-locked harbor between the town and some rocky islets to
its south, anchors in smooth water. The town has a quaint picturesque
look. Its old-fashioned houses extend to the water's edge. They are
all of stone or brick, covering the face of the bold coast: the
heights of which are crowned by castles, forts, batteries, and
convents, and from whose ancient walls the last rays of a setting sun
were fading as we entered the harbor. The {662} inhabitants are
entirely Portuguese, Chinese, and a breed between the two. The
jealousy of the Portuguese government effectually excludes foreigners
from settling; a miserable policy, by which trade is almost extinct,
the revenue being derived chiefly from licensing of gambling-houses.
In front of the house of the governor I saw a guard of soldiers. They
wore able-bodied, smart-looking young fellows in neat blue uniforms,
detailed from a regiment in the fort. These soldiers, and a few
half-castes, looking like our office keranies in India, together with
some strangely dressed females, in appearance half aya, half sister of
charity, were all that I saw of the Portuguese community. The
non-military Portuguese looked jaded and lazy, almost every man with a
cheroot in his mouth. The town, indeed, struck me as a very "Castle of
Indolence."

------


Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.

GLASTONBURY ABBEY, PAST AND PRESENT.


One of the most subtle operations of time is the tendency it has to
transform the facts of one age into the phantasies of another, and to
cause the dreams of the past to become the realities of the present.
Far away in the remote distance of history, when a lonely monk in his
cell mused of vessels going without sails and carriages without
horses, it was a dream--a mere dream, produced probably by a brain
disordered by over study, long vigils, and frequent fasts, but that
dream of the thirteenth century has become the most incontrovertible
fact of the nineteenth, a fact to whose influence all other hitherto
immovable facts are giving way, even the great one, the impregnability
of the Englishman's castle; for we find that before the obstinate
march of one of these railway facts a thousand Englishmen's castles
fall prostrate, and a thousand Englishmen are evicted, their
avocations broken up, and themselves turned out upon the world as a
new order of beings--outcasts with compensation.

The monastic life, so commonly regarded in these later times as a
phantasy, was once a fact, a great universal fact; it was a fact for
twelve or thirteen centuries; and when we remember that it extended
its influence from the sunny heights of Palestine, across Europe, to
the wild, bleak shores of western Ireland; that it did more in the
world for the formation and embellishment of modern civilization than
all the governments and systems of life the accompanied it in its
course; that the best portions of ancient literature, the materials of
history, the secrets of art, are the pearls torn from its
treasure-house, we may form some idea of what a fact the monastic life
must have been at one time, and may venture to assert that the history
of that phase of existence, as in frock and cowl it prayed, and
watched, and fasted; as in its quiet cloisters it studied, and copied,
and labored; as outside its walls it mingled its influence with the
web of human destiny, and as in process of time, becoming wealthy and
powerful, it degenerated, and went the way of all human things--we say
that the history of the development of this extinct world, however
defective the execution of that history may be, will include in its
review some of the most interesting portions of our national career,
will furnish a clue to many of the mazes of historical speculation, or
at least may be suggestive {663} to some more able intellect of a
course of investigation which has been very little followed, and a
mine of truth which to a great extent still remains intact.

At a time when laws were badly administered, and the country often
torn by internal contentions, and always subject to the violence of
marauders, it was absolutely necessary that there should be some
asylum for those thoughtful, retiring spirits who, unable or unwilling
to take part in the turmoil of the times, were exposed to all its
dangerous vicissitudes. In an age, too, when the country possessed no
literature, the contemplative and the learned had no other means of
existence than by retiring to the cloister, safe out of the reach of
the jealous superstition of ignorance and the wanton barbarity of
uncouth violence. The monastery then was the natural home of these
beings--the deserted, the oppressed, the meek spirit who had been
beaten in the world's conflict, the untimely born son of genius, the
scholar, the devotee, all found a safe shelter and a genial abode
behind the friendly walls of these cities of refuge. There, too, lay
garnered up, as a priceless hoarding for future ages, the sacred
oracles of Christianity, and the rescued treasures of ancient lore;
there science labored at her mystic problems; and there poetry,
painting, and music were developed and perpetuated; in fine, all that
the world holds as most excellent, all that goes toward the foundation
and adornment of modern society, treasured up in the monastery as in
an ark, rode in safety over the dark flood of that mediaeval deluge
until the waters subsided, and a new world appearing from its depths,
violent hands were laid upon those costly treasures, which were torn
from their hiding-places and freely scattered abroad, whilst the
representatives of those men who, in silence and with prayer, had
amassed and cherished them, were branded as useless idlers, their
homes broken up, and themselves dispersed, with no mercy for their
errors and no gratitude for their labors, to seek the scanty charities
of a hostile world. Beside being the cradle of art and science, the
monastery was a great and most efficient engine for the dispensation
of public charity. At its refectory kitchen the poor were always
cheerfully welcomed, generously treated, and periodically relieved; in
fine, the care of the poor was not only regarded as a solemn duty, but
was undertaken with the most cheerful devotion and the most
unremitting zeal. They were not treated like an unsightly social
disease, which was to be cured if possible, but at any rate kept out
of sight; they were not handed over to the tender sympathies of paid
relieving officers, nor dealt with by the merciless laws of
statistics, but they were treated gently and kindly in the spirit of
the Great Master, who when on earth bestowed upon them the larger
share of his sympathy, who, in the tenderness of his pity, dignified
poverty and sanctified charity when he declared that "inasmuch as ye
have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
me." Whatever may have been the vices of the monastic system or the
errors of its ritual, its untiring charity was its great redeeming
virtue.

It will not perhaps be an unfitting introduction to our investigation
into the rise and influence of this system upon our national life if
we resuscitate from the grave of the past one of these great
monasteries, the oldest and most powerful which sprang up in our
country, and which, compared with others at the time when they fell
before the great religious convulsion of the sixteenth century, had,
in the midst of general corruption, maintained its purity, and
suffered less from its own vices than from the degeneracy of the
system to which it belonged, and of which it was the most
distinguished ornament. We shall endeavor to portray the monastery as
it was in all its glory, to pass through its portals, to enter
reverently {664} into its magnificent church, to listen to its
gorgeous music, to watch its processions, to wander through its
cloisters, to visit its domestic domains, to penetrate into the
mysteries of its refectory, the ascetic simplicity of its dormitory,
the industry of its schoolhouse and fratery, the stores of its
treasury, the still richer stores of its library, the immortal labors
of its Scriptorium, where they worked for so many centuries, uncheered
and unrewarded, for a thankless posterity, who shrink even now from
doing them justice; we shall visit the gloomy splendors of its crypt,
wander through its grounds, and marvel at its strange magnificence.
After having thus gazed, as it were, upon the machine itself in
motion, we shall perhaps be the better enabled subsequently to
comprehend the nature and value of its work.

In the early part of the sixteenth century the ancient abbey of
Glastonbury was in the plenitude of its magnificence and power. It had
been the cynosure for the devotees of all nations, who, for nearly
eleven centuries, flocked in crowds to its fane--to worship at its
altars, to venerate its relics, to drink in health at its sacred well,
and to gaze in rapt wonder at its holy thorn. And even now, in these
later days, though time has wasted it, though fierce fanaticism has
played its cannon upon it, though ruthless vandalism in blind
ignorance has despoiled many of its beauties, it still stands proud in
its ruined grandeur, defiant alike of the ravages of decay, the
devastation of the iconoclast, and the wantonness of the ignorant.
Although not a single picture, but only an inventorial description, is
extant of this largest abbey in the kingdom, yet, standing amidst its
silent ruins, the imagination can form some faint idea of what it must
have been when its aisles were vocal with the chant of its many-voiced
choir, when gorgeous processions moved grandly through its cloisters,
and when its altars, its chapels, its windows, its pillars, were all
decorated with the myriad splendors of monastic art. Passing in at the
great western entrance, through a lodge kept by a grave lay-brother,
we find ourselves in a little world, shut up by a high wall which
swept round its domains, inclosing an area of more than sixty acres.
The eye is arrested at once by a majestic pile of building, stretching
itself out in the shape of an immense cross, from the centre of whose
transept there rises a high tower. The exterior of this building is
profusely decorated with all the weird embellishments of medieval art.
There, in sculptured niche, stands the devout monarch, sceptred and
crowned; the templar knight, who had fallen under an oriental sun
fighting for the cross; the mitred abbot, with his crosier; the saint
with his emblem; the martyr with his palm; scenes from Sacred Writ;
the apostles, the evangelists; petrified allegories and sculptured
story; and then, clustering around and intertwining itself with all
these scenes and representations of the world of man, were ornamental
devices culled from the world of nature. A splendid monument of the
genius of those mediaeval times whose mighty cathedrals stand before
us now like massive poems or graven history, where men may read, as it
were from a sculptured page, the chivalrous doings of departed heroes,
the long tale of the history of the Church--of her woes, her triumphs,
her martyrs, and her saints--a deathless picture of actual existence,
as though some heaven-sent spirit had come upon the earth, and with a
magic stroke petrified into the graphic stillness of stone a whole
world of life and living things. The length of the nave of this
church, beginning from St. Joseph's chapel (which we shall presently
notice, and which was an additional building) up to the cross, was 220
feet, the great tower was 40 feet in breadth, and the transepts on
either side of it each 45 feet in length, the choir was 150 feet; its
entire length from east to west was {665} 420 feet; and if we add the
appended St. Joseph's chapel, we have a range of building 530 feet in
length.

Turning from the contemplation of this external grandeur, we come to a
structure which forms the extreme west of the abbey--a chapel
dedicated to St. Joseph of Arimathea. The entrance on the north side
is a masterpiece of art, being a portal consisting of four
semicircular arches, receding and diminishing as they recede into the
body of the wall, the four fasciae profusely decorated with sculptured
representations of personages and scenes, varied by running patterns
of tendrils, leaves, and other natural objects. The first thing that
strikes the attention upon entering is the beautiful
triarial-mullioned window at the western extremity, with its
semicircular head; opposite, at the eastern end, another,
corresponding in size and decoration, throws its light upon the altar.
On both the north and south sides of the church are four uniform
windows, rising loftily till their summits nearly touch the vaulting;
underneath these are four sculptured arches, the panelling between
them adorned with painted representations of the sun, moon, stars, and
all the host of heaven; the flooring was a tesselated pavement of
encaustic tiles, each bearing an heraldic device, or some allegorical
or historical subject. Beneath this tesselated pavement is a spacious
crypt, eighty-nine feet in length, twenty feet in width, and ten feet
high, provided with an altar, and when used for service illuminated by
lamps suspended from the ceiling. St. Joseph's chapel, however, with
its softly-colored light, its glittering panels, its resplendent
altars, and its elegant proportions, is a beautiful creation; but only
a foretaste or a prelude of that full glare of splendor which bursts
upon the view on ascending the flight of steps leading from its lower
level up to the nave of the great abbey church itself, which was
dedicated to St. Mary. Arrived at that point, the spectator gazes upon
a long vista of some four hundred feet, including the nave and choir;
passing up through the nave, which has a double line of arches, whose
pillars are profusely sculptured, we come to the central point in the
transept, where there are four magnificent Gothic arches, which for
imposing grandeur could scarcely be equalled in the world, mounting up
to the height of one hundred feet, upon which rested the great tower
of the church. A portion of one of these arches still exists, and
though broken retains its original grandeur. In the transept running
north and south from this point are four beautifully decorated
chapels, St. Mary's, in the north aisle; St. Andrew's, in the south;
Our Lady of Loretto's, on the north side of the nave; and at the south
angle that of the Holy Sepulchre; another stood just behind the tower,
dedicated to St. Edgar: in each of these are altars richly adorned
with glittering appointments, and beautiful glass windows, stained
with the figures of their patron saints, the apostles, scriptural
scenes or episodes from the hagiology of the Church; then, running in
a straight line with the nave, completing the gigantic parallelogram,
is the choir, where the divine office is daily performed. The body is
divided into stalls and seats for the abbot, the officers, and monks.
At the eastern extremity stands the high altar, with its profusion of
decorative splendor, whilst over it is an immense stained-glass
window, with semicircular top, which pours down upon the altar, and in
fact bathes the whole choir, when viewed from a distance, in a sea of
softened many-colored light. The flooring of the great church, like
that of St. Joseph's, is composed of encaustic Norman tiles, inscribed
with Scripture sentences, heraldic devices, and names of kings and
benefactors. Underneath the great church is the crypt--a dark vault
divided into three compartments by two rows of strong massive pillars,
into which, having descended from the church, the spectator {666}
enters; the light of his torch is thrown back from a hundred different
points, like the eyes of serpents glittering through the darkness,
reflected from the bright gold and silver nails and decorations of the
coffins that lie piled on all sides, and whose ominous shapes can be
just faintly distinguished. This is the weird world, which exerts a
mysterious influence over the hearts of the most thoughtless--the
silent world of death in life; and piled up around are the remains of
whole generations long extinct of races of canonized saints, pious
kings, devout queens, mitred abbots, bishops, nobles who gave all
their wealth to lie here, knights who braved the dangers of foreign
climes, the power of the stealthy pestilence, and the scimitar of the
wild Saracen, that they might one day come back and lay their bones in
this holy spot. There were the gilded coffins of renowned abbots,
whose names were a mighty power in the world when they lived, and
whose thoughts are still read with delight by the votaries of another
creed--the silver crosiers of bishops, the purple cloth of royalty,
and the crimson of the noble--all slumbering and smoldering in the
dense obscurity of the tomb, but flashing up to the light once more in
a temporary brilliancy, like the last ball-room effort of some aged
beauty--the aristocracy of death, the coquetry of human vanity, strong
even in human corruption. Amongst the denizens of this dark region
are--King Arthur and his queen Guinever, Coel II., grandfather of
Constantine the Great, Kentwyn, king of the West Saxons, Edmund I.,
Edgar and Ironsides, St. David of Wales, and St. Gildas, beside nine
bishops, fifteen abbots, and many others of note. Reascending from
this gloomy cavern to the glories of the great church, we wander
amongst its aisles, and as we gaze upon the splendors of its choir, we
reflect that in this gorgeous temple, embellished by everything that
art and science could contribute, and sanctified by the presence of
its holy altar, with its consecrated host, its cherished receptacle of
saintly relics, and its sublime mysteries, did these devout men, seven
times a day, for centuries, assemble for prayer and worship. As soon
as the clock had tolled out the hour of midnight, when all the rest of
the world was rocked in slumber, they arose, and flocked in silence to
the church, where they remain in prayer and praise until the first
faint streaks of dawn began to chase away the constellations of the
night, and then, at stated intervals through the rest of the day, the
appointed services were carried on, so that the greater portion of
their lives was spent m this choir, whose very walls were vocal with
psalmody and prayer. It was a grand offering to the Almighty of human
work and human life. In that temple was gathered as a rich oblation
everything that the united labor of ages could create and collect;
strong hands had dug out its foundations in the bowels of the earth,
had hewn stubborn rocks into huge blocks, and piled them up high in
the heavens, had fashioned them into pillars and arches, myriads of
busy fingers had labored for ages at its decoration until every
column, every cornice, and every angle bore traces of patient toil;
the painter, the sculptor, the poet, had all contributed to its
embellishment, strength created it, genius beautified it, and the
ever-ascending incense of human contrition, human adoration, and human
prayer completed the gorgeous sacrifice which those devotees of
mediaeval times offered up in honor of him whose mysterious presence
they venerated as the actual and real inhabitant of their holy of
holies.

Retracing our steps once more to the nave, we turn to take one
lingering glance at the scene: and here the full beauty and
magnificence of the edifice bursts upon the view, the eye wanders
through a perfect stony forest whose stately trees, taken at some
moment when their tops, bending toward each other and interlacing
{667} themselves, had been petrified into the natural beauty of the
Gothic arch; here and there were secluded spots where the prismatic
light from painted windows danced about the pillars like straggling
sunbeams through the thick foliage of a forest glade. The clusters of
pillars resembled the gnarled bark of old forest trees, and the
grouped ornaments of their capitols were the points where the trunk
itself spread off into limbs and branches; there were groves and
labyrinths running far away into the interior of this sculptured wood,
and towering high in the centre were those four kings of the forest,
whose tops met far up in the heavens--the true heart of the scene,
from which everything diverged, and, with which everything was in
keeping. Then, as the spectator stands, lost in the grandeur of the
spectacle, gazing in rapt wonder at the sky-painted ceiling, or at
some fantastic gnarled head grinning at him from a shady nook, the
passing whim of some mediaeval brain--a faint sigh, as of a distant
wind, steals along those stony glades, gradually increasing in volume,
until presently the full, rich tones of the choir burst forth, the
organ peals out its melodious thunder, add every arch and every pillar
vibrates with undulations of harmonious sound, just as in the
storm-shaken forest every mighty denizen bends his massive branches to
the fierce tempest-wind, and intones his deep response to the wild
music of the storm. Before the power of that music-tempest everything
bowed, and as the strains of some Gregorian chant or the dirge-like
melody of some penitential psalm filled the whole building with its
pathos, every figure seemed to be invested with life, the mysterious
harmony between the building and its uses was manifested, the painted
figures on the windows appeared to join in the strain, a celestial
chorus of apostles, martyrs, and saints; the statues in their niches
threw back the melody; the figures reclining on the tombs seemed to
raise their clasped hands in silent response to its power, as though
moved in their stony slumber by a dream of solemn sounds;  the
grotesque figures on the pillars and in nooks and corners chanted the
dissonant chords, which brought out more boldly the general harmony;
every arch, with its entwined branches and sculptured foliage, shook
with the stormy melody: all was instinct with sympathetic life, until,
the fury of the tempest dying away in fitful gusts, the last breeze
was wafted, the painted forms became dumb, the statues and images grew
rigid, the foliage was still, all the sympathetic vitality faded away,
and the sacred grove fell into its silent magnificence.

Attached to the great church were two offices--the sacristy and church
treasury. In the former were kept the sacred vestments, chalices,
etc., in use daily; and in the latter were kept all the valuables,
such as sacred relics, jewels and plate not in use, with mitres,
crosiers, cruces, and pectorals; there was also a confessional for
those who wished to use it before going to the altar. The care of
these two offices was committed to a monk elected by the abbot, who
was called the sacrist. Coming out of the church we arrive at the
cloisters, a square place, surrounded by a corridor of pillars, and in
the centre of the enclosure was a flower-garden--this was the place
where the monks were accustomed to assemble at certain hours to walk
up and down. In one of the alleys of the cloister stood the
chapter-house, which, as it was the scene of the most important events
in their monotonous lives, deserves a description. In this spot the
abbots and officers of the monastery were elected, all the business of
the house as a body was discussed, faults were openly confessed,
openly reproved, and in some cases corporal punishment was awarded in
the presence of the abbot and whole convent upon some incorrigible
offender, so that, beside being an assembling room, it was a court of
complaint and correction. One {668} brother could accuse another
openly, when the matter was gone into, and justice done. In all
conventual institutions it was a weekly custom, and in some a daily
one, to assemble in the chapter-house after one of the morning
services (generally after primes), when a sentence from the rule was
read, a psalm sung, and business attended to. It was also an envied
burying-place; and the reader, as he stood at his desk in the
chapter-house of Glastonbury Abbey, stood over the body of Abbot
Chinnock, who himself perfected its building, which was commenced in
1303 by Abbot Fromont. In the interior, which was lit up by a
magnificent stained-glass window, there were three rows of stone
benches one above another. On the floor there was a reading-desk and
bench apart; in a platform raised above the other seats was the
abbot's renowned elbow-chair, which extraordinary piece of monastic
workmanship excited so much curiosity at the great Exhibition of 1851.
In the middle of the hall was a platform called the Judgment, being
the spot where corporal punishment, when necessary, was inflicted; and
towering above all was a crucifix, to remind the brethren of the
sufferings of Christ. In another alley of the cloisters stood the
fratery, or apartment for the novices, which had its own refectory,
common room, lavatory, and dormitory, and was governed by one of the
priors. Ascending the staircase, we come to a gallery in which are the
library, the wardrobe, the common house, and the common treasury. The
library was the first in England, filled with choice and valuable
books, which had been given to the monastery from time to time in its
history by kings, scholars, and devotees of all classes; many also
were transcribed by the monks. During the twelfth century, although
even then of great renown in the world, it was considerably augmented
by Henricus Blessensis, or Henry of Blois (nephew of Henry I. and
brother of Stephen), who was abbot. This royal scholar had more books
transcribed during his abbacy than any of his predecessors. A list is
still extant--"_De libris quos Henricus fecit transcribere_," in which
are to be found such works as Pliny "_De Naturali Historia_," a book
in great favor at that time; "_Originem super Epistolas Pauli ad
Romanos_," "_Vitas Caesarum_," "_Augustinum de Trinitate_," etc.

Here, too, as in every monastic library in the kingdom, was that old
favorite of conventual life, and still favorite with many a lonely
student, "_Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae_," and many a great
work from the grim solitude of a prison cell, cherished, too, as the
link which connected the modern Latinists with those of the classic
age. Housed up in that lonely corner of the island, the Glastonbury
library was the storehouse of all the learning of the times; and as
devotees bent their steps from all climes toward the Glastonbury
relics and the Glastonbury shrine, so did the devotees of genius
lovingly wander to the Glastonbury library. Leland, the old gossipping
antiquarian, has testified to its glory, and given us an amusing
account of the reverential awe with which he visited it not long
before the fatal dissolution of the monastery. In the preliminary
observations to his "_Collectanea de Rebus Britannicis_,"   [Footnote
95] he has put the following upon record:--"Eram aliquot ab hinc annis
Glessoburgi Somurotrigum ubi antiquissimum simul et famosissimum est
totius insulaes nostrae caenobium, animumque longo studioram labore
fessum, favente Ricardo Whitingo,  [Footnote 96] ejusdem loci abbate,
recreabam donee novus quidam cum legendi tum discendi ardor me
inflammaret. Supervenit autem ardor ille citius opinione; itaque
statim me contuli ad bibliothecam non omnibus perviam at sacras
sanctae vetustatis reliquias quarum tantus ibi numerus quantus nollo
{669} alio facile Britanniae loco diligentissime evolverem. Vix certo
limen intraveram cum antiquissimorum librorum vel solus conspectus,
religionem nescio an stuporem, animo incuteret meo, eaqae de causa
pedem paululum sistebam. Deinde salutato loci numine per dies aliquot
onmes forulos curiosissime excussi."

  [Footnote 95: "Collect Reb. Brit." vi., page 87, Hearne's edition.]

  [Footnote 96: Richard Whiting, the last Abbot.]

But attached to the library was a department common to all the
Benedictine monasteries, where, during long centuries of ignorance,
the materials of modern education were preserved and perpetuated; this
office was called the scriptorium, or _domus antiquariorum_. Here were
assembled for daily labor a class of monks selected for their superior
scholarship and writing ability; they were divided into two classes,
the _antiquarii_ and the _librarii_: the former were occupied in
making copies of valuable old books, and the latter were engaged in
transcribing new ones, and works of an inferior order. The books they
copied were the Scriptures, always in process of copying; missals,
books for the service of the Church, works on theology, and any of the
classics that fell into their hands. St. David, the patron saint of
Wales, is said to have devoted much time to this work, and at the
period of his death had begun to transcribe the gospel of St. John in
letters of gold with his own hand.  [Footnote 97]

  [Footnote 97: _Giraldus Cambren, vitâ Davidis Angl. Sac, ii._, 635.]

The instruments used in the work of the scriptorium were pens, chalk,
pumice-stone for rubbing the parchment smooth; penknives, and knives
for making erasures, an awl to make dots, a ruler and inkstand. The
greatest care was taken by the transcriber, the writing was always
beautifully clear, omissions were most scrupulously noted in the
margins, and all interlineations were mentioned and acknowledged. In
an old manuscript belonging to the Carmelites, the scribe adds, "I
have signed it with the sign following, and made a certain
interlineation which says '_redis_' and another which says
'_ordinis_,' and another which says '_ordini_,' and another which says
'_circa_.'" So great was the care they took to preserve the text
accurately, and free from interpolations. In these secluded studies
sprang up that art, the most charming which the middle ages have
handed down to us, the art of illumination, so vainly imitated by the
artists of the present day, not from want of genius, but from want of
something almost indescribable in the conception and execution, a tone
and preservation of color, and especially of the gilding, which was
essentially peculiar to the old monks, who must have possessed some
secret both of combination and fixing of colors which has been lost
with them. This elaborate illumination was devoted to religious books,
psalms, missals, and prayer-books; in other works the first letters of
chapters were beautifully illuminated, and other leading letters in a
lesser degree. The scribe generally left spaces for these, as that was
the duty of another; in the spaces were what were called "leading
letters," written small to guide the illuminator; these guide-letters
may still be detected in some books. So great was the love of this
art, that when printing displaced the labors of the scribe, it was
customary for a long time to have the leading letters left blank for
illumination. Such were the peculiar labors of the scriptorium, and to
encourage those who dedicated their time to it, a special benediction
was attached to the office, and posterity, when satirizing the
monastic life, would do well to remember that the elegance of the
satire may be traced back again to these labors, which are the
materials for the education and refinement of modern thought; we got
our Bible from them, we got our classics from them, and had not such
ruthless vandalism been exercised by those over-zealous men who
effected their dispersion, it is more than probable that the learned
world would not have had to lament over, the lost Decades of Livy. It
is the peculiarity of ignorance to be barbarous. There {670} is very
little difference between the feeling which prompted a Caliph Omar to
burn the Alexandrian Library or a Totila to destroy the achievements
of Roman art; and the feeling had only degenerated into the barbarity,
without the bravery, when it revived again in the person of our
arch-iconoclast, Cromwell, of church-devastating memory, who, however
great his love of piety many have been, must have had a thorough
hatred of architecture. The care of the library and the scriptorium
was intrusted to the librarian. The next department in the gallery was
the lavatory, fitted up with all the appliances for washing; and
adjoining this room was one arranged for shaving, a duty to which the
monks paid strict attention, more especially to preserve the tonsure.
The next room was the wardrobe, where their articles of clothing and
bedding were stored, and in an inner chamber was the tailory, where a
number of lay brethren, with a vocation for that useful craft, were
continually at work, making and repairing the clothes of the
community. These two rooms and the lavatory were in charge of the
camerarius, or chamberlain. The last abbot who sat in the chair of
Glastonbury was, as we shall see, elevated from this humble position
to that princely dignity. The common room was the next office, and
this was fitted up with benches and tables for the general use of the
monks; a fire was also kept burning in the winter, the only one
allowed for general purposes. The last chamber in the corridor was the
common treasury, a strong receptacle for ready money belonging to the
monastery, charters, registers, books, and accounts of the abbey, all
stored up in iron chests. In addition to being the strong room of the
abbey, it had another important use. In those uncertain times it was
the custom for both nobles and gentry to send their deeds, family
papers, and sometimes their plate and money, to the nearest monastery,
where, by permission of the abbot, they were intrusted to the care of
the treasurer for greater security; in the wildest hour, when the
castle was given up to fire and sword, the abbey was always held in
reverence; for, independently of its sacred character, it was endeared
to the people by the free-handed charity of its almonry and refectory
kitchen. Retracing our steps along the corridor, and ascending another
flight of stairs, we come to the dormitory, or dortoir, a large
passage with cells on either side; each monk had a separate chamber,
very small, in which there was a window, but no chimney, a narrow
bedstead, furnished with a straw bed, a mattress, a bolster of straw,
a coarse blanket, and a rug; by the bedstead was a prie-Dieu, or desk,
with a crucifix upon it, to kneel at for the last and private
devotions; another desk and table, with shelves and drawers for books
and papers; in the middle was a cresset, or stone-lantern, with a lamp
in it to give them light when they arose in the middle of the night to
go to matins; this department also was under the care of the
chamberlain. One more chamber was called the infirmary, where the sick
were immediately removed, and treated with the greatest attention;
this was in the charge of an officer called the infirmarius. We now
descend these two flights of stairs, issue from the cloisters, and,
bending our steps to the south-west, we come to the great hall, or
refectory, where the whole convent assembled at meals. At Glastonbury
there were seven long tables, around which, and adjoining the walls,
were benches for the monks. The table at the upper end was for the
abbot, the priors, and other heads, the two next for the priests, the
two next for such as were in orders, but not priests, and such as
intended to enter into orders; the lower table on the right hand of
the abbot was for such as were to take orders whom the other two
middle tables could not hold, and the lower table on the left of the
abbot was reserved for the lay brethren. In a convenient place was a
pulpit, where one of the monks, at the {671} appointment of the abbot,
read portions of the Old and New Testament in Latin every day during
dinner and supper. The routine of dinner, as indeed the routine of all
their meals, was ordered by a system of etiquette as stringent as that
which prevails in the poorest and smallest German court of the present
day. The sub-prior, who generally presided at the table, or some one
appointed by him, rang the bell; the monks, having previously
performed their ablutions in the lavatory, then came into the great
hall, and bowing to the high table, stood in their places till the
sub-prior came, when they resumed their seats; a psalm was sung, and a
short service followed by way of grace. The sub-prior then gave the
benediction, and at the end they uncovered the food, the sub-prior
beginning; the soup was then handed round, and the dinner proceeded;
if anything was wanted it was brought by the cellarer, or one of his
assistants, who attended, when both the bringer and receiver bowed. As
soon as the meal was finished the cellarer collected the spoons; and
so stringent was the etiquette, that if the abbot dined with the
household (which he did occasionally) he was compelled to carry the
abbot's spoon in his right hand and the others in his left; when all
was removed the sub-prior ordered the reading to conclude by a "Tu
antem," and the reply of  "Dei gratias;" the reader then bowed, the
remaining food was covered, the bell was rung, the monks arose, a
verse of a psalm was sung, when they bowed and retired two by two,
singing the "Miserere."

A little further toward the south stood the guest-house, where all
visitors, from prince to peasant, were received by the hospitaller
with a kiss of peace, and entertained. They were allowed to stay two
days and two nights; on the third day after dinner they were expected
to depart, but if not convenient they could procure an extension of
their stay by application to the abbot. This hospitality, so
generously accorded, was often abused by sons of donors and
descendants of benefactors, who saddled themselves and their retinues
upon the monasteries frequently, and for a period commensurate with
the patience of the abbot; and to so great an extent did this evil
grow that statutes were enacted to relieve the abbeys so oppressed.
Not far from the refectory, toward the west, stood the abbot's private
apartments, and still further to the west the great kitchen, which was
one of the wonders of the day; its capacity may be imagined when we
reflect that it had frequently to provide dinner for four or five
hundred guests; but the arrangements and service of the kitchen
deserve notice. Every monk had to serve as hebdomadary, or dispenser,
whose duty it was to appoint what food was to be dressed and to keep
the accounts for the week. Upon taking office he was compelled to wash
the feet of the brethren, and upon yielding it up to the new
hebdomadary he was obliged to see that all the utensils were clean.
St. Benedict strictly enjoined this rule upon them, in order that, as
Christ their Lord washed the feet of his disciples, they might wash
each others' feet, and wait upon each others' wants. The Glastonbury
kitchen is the only building which still remains entire; it was built
wholly of stone, for the better security from fire; on the outside it
is a four-square, and on the inside an eight-square figure; it had
four hearths, was twenty feet in height to the roof, which ran up in a
figure of eight triangles; from the top hung suspended a huge lantern.
[Footnote 98]

  [Footnote 98: Strange vicissitudes of kitchens--in 1667 this
  Glastonbury Abbey kitchen was hired by the Quakers as a
  meeting-house; in the fulness of time, where monasticism cooked its
  mutton Quakerdom sat in triumph.]

Attached to the kitchen was the almonry, or eleemosynarium, where on
Wednesdays and Fridays the poor people of Glastonbury and its
neighborhood were liberally relieved. This duty was committed to a
grave monk, who {672} was called the almoner, or eleemosynarius, and
who had to inquire after the poor and sick. No abbots in the kingdom
were more liberal in the discharge of these two duties of their
office, hospitality and almsgiving, than the abbots of Glastonbury. It
was not an unusual thing for them to entertain 500 guests at a
sitting, some of whom were of the first rank in the country, and the
loose charge of riotous feasting which has been thoughtlessly made
against the monastic life by hostile historians becomes modified when
we recollect that in that age there were scarcely any wayside inns in
the country, and all men, when travelling, halted at the monastery and
looked for refreshment and shelter as a matter of right; neither had
that _glorious_ system of union work-houses been thought of, and
therefore the sick and the poor fell at once to the care of the
monastery, where they were cheerfully relieved and tenderly treated.
Last, but not least, was the department for boys--another little
detached community, with its own school-room, dormitory, refectory,
hall, etc. One of the monks presided over them. They were taught
Christian doctrine, music, grammar, and, if any showed capacity, the
subjects necessary for the university. They were maintained free, and
had to officiate in the church as choristers; a system maintained
almost to the letter up to the very present moment. William of
Malmesbury records that in the churchyard of Glastonbury Abbey stood
some very ancient pyramids close to the sarcophagus of King Arthur.
The tallest was nearest the church, twenty-six feet in height,
consisting of five stories, or courses; in the upper course was the
figure of a bishop, in the second of a king, with this
inscription--HER. SEXI. and BLISVVERH. In the third the names
WEMCRESTE, BANTOMP, WENETHEGN. In the fourth--HATE, WVLFREDE, and
EANFLEDE. In the fifth, and last, the figure of an abbot, with the
following inscription--LOGVVOR, WESLIELAS and BREGDENE, SVVELVVES
HVVINGENDES, and BERNE. The other pyramid was eighteen feet in height,
and consisted of four stories, whereon were inscribed in large letters
HEDDE Episcopus BREGORRED and BEORVVALDE. William of Malmesbury could
give no satisfactory solution to the meaning of these inscriptions
beyond the suggestion that the word BREGDENE must have meant a place
then called "Brentacnolle," which now exists under the name of Brent
Knowle, and that BEORWALDE was Beorwald, the abbot after Hemigselus.
He concludes his speculation, however, with the sentence--"Quid haec
significent non temere diffinio sed ex suspicione colligo eorum
interius in cavatis lapidibus contineri ossa quorum exterius leguntur
nomina."  [Footnote 99]

  [Footnote 99: Guliel. Malms. Hist. Glaston.]

The man who ruled over this miniature world, with a state little short
of royalty, was endowed with proportionate dignities; being a member
of the upper house of convocation and a parliamentary baron, he sat
robed and mitred amongst the peers of the country; in addition to his
residence at the abbey he had four or five rural retreats at easy
distances from it, with parks, gardens, fisheries, and every luxury;
his household was a sort of court, where the sons of noblemen and
gentlemen were sent to be trained and educated. When at home he
royally entertained his 300 guests, and when he went abroad he was
attended by a guard of 100 men. The rent-roll of the monastery has
been computed to amount to more than £300,000 per annum, which in
these days would be equal to nearly half a million. Up to the year
1154 he ranked also as First Abbot of England, and took precedence of
all others; but Adrian the Fourth, the only Englishman who ever
ascended the papal chair, bestowed that honor upon the Abbot of St.
Albans, where he had received his education. The church, and different
offices which clustered round it, formed a kingdom, {673} over which
he ruled with absolute power. This description of the buildings and
adjuncts of the abbey may not be inaptly closed by giving a sketch of
the outline of a monastic day, which will assist the reader to form a
clearer idea of the monastic life. At two in the morning the bell
tolled for matins, when every monk arose, and after performing his
private devotions hastened to the church, and took his seat. When all
were assembled fifteen psalms were sung, then came the nocturn, and
more psalms; a short interval ensued, during which the chanter choir
and those who needed it had permission to retire for a short time if
they wished; then followed lauds, which were generally finished by six
A.M., when the bell rang for prime; when this was finished the monks
continued reading till seven o'clock, when the bell was rung and they
returned to put on their day clothes. Afterward, the whole convent
having performed their ablutions and broken their fast, proceeded
again to the church, and the bell was rung for tierce at nine o'clock.
After tierce came the morning mass, and as soon as that was over they
marched in procession to the chapter-house for business and correction
of faults. This ceremony over, the monks worked or read till sext,
twelve A.M., which service concluded, they dined; then followed the
hour's sleep in their clothes in the dormitory, unless any of them
preferred reading. Nones commenced at three P.M., first vespers at
four, then work or reading till second vespers at seven, afterward
reading till collation; then came the service of complin, confession
of sins, evening prayers, and retirement to rest about nine P.M.

That was the life pursued at Glastonbury Abbey, according to the
Benedictine rule, from the time of its establishment there until the
dissolution of the monastery, nearly ten centuries. With our modern
training and predilections, it is a marvel to us that men could be
found willing to submit to such a monotonous career--ten hours a day
spent in the church, beginning in the middle of the night, winter and
summer. And yet the monastery was always full. We read of no breaking
up of institutions for want of devotees, and we are driven to the
conclusion that in the age when the monastic life was in its power and
purity these men could have been actuated by none other than the
motive of strong religious fervor--a fervor of which we in modern
times have neither conception nor example. The operation of the
influence of that life upon the history of these islands can only be
contemplated by watching it in the various phases of its action upon
the politics, literature, and art by which it was surrounded, and for
that purpose we have selected this oldest and grandest specimen of
English monasticism, so faintly described, the mother Church of our
country, in whose career so brilliant, so varied, and so tragically
ended, we hope to be able to show wherein was the glory, the weakness,
and the ruin of the system, as it rose, flourished, and fell in
England.

We have endeavored to conjure up from the shadowy realms of the past
some faint representation of what Glastonbury Abbey was in the days of
its glory; let us now transfer ourselves from the age of towered
abbeys, wandering pilgrims, monks, cloisters, and convent bells to
this noisy, riotous, busy time in the year of grace 1865--from the
Glastonbury Abbey of the sixteenth century to the Glastonbury Abbey of
to-day.

It is only within the last ten years that the deep slumber of that
quiet neighborhood has been disturbed by the noise and bustle of this
busy life--that a railroad has gone out of its way to upset the
sedate propriety of ecclesiastical Wells, or the peaceful repose of
monasterial Glastonbury; hitherto the stillness and quiet of that
lovely country was the same as when mass was sung in the superb
cathedral of the one place, and the palmer or the {674} penitent bent
his steps to the holy well of the other. But alas! the life of the
nineteenth century has broken in upon it; the railway has dashed
through that beautiful valley with its sacrilegious march; and at
Wells, the cathedral of Ina, with its matchless front, studded with
apostles and martyrs, kings, bishops, knights, and mystic emblems,
vocal as it were with history, now frowns upon the contentions of two
rival companies; whilst at Glastonbury there is a railway station
erected almost over the very bones of the saints. Alighting from this,
we make our way to the ruins; but as we go, will just view their past
history. After the dissolution of the abbey there was an effort made
to restore it in the time of Mary, but unavailingly; from that period
it was allowed to fall into decay. It is difficult to estimate whether
the hand of man or the hand of time has been busier about its
spoliation. At the period of Cromwell, who loved to worship God in the
"ugliness of holiness," it must have been nearly entire, but that hero
could not pass the town without putting a shot through those
unoffending ruins in the name of the Lord, which act, however
appropriate as an expression of Puritan feeling, was sadly detrimental
to the architecture of Glastonbury Abbey. Then in 1667, as we have
already alluded to, the Quakers got possession of the kitchen, hired
at a nominal rent, paid in hard Quaker money--that glorious kitchen,
sanctified by so much saintly cookery--for their grim assemblies.
There is a great deal of what is aptly called the "romance" of history
in this fact if we only had time to think about it--that it should
come to this, monasticism with its princely head, its grand religions
life and ceremonies, its painting and staining, its chanting and
intoning, itself in all its glory, driven from the face of the
country, and modern Quakerdom sitting silent in its ruined kitchen
waiting to be "moved." It has suffered much, also, from the gross
vandalism of the people themselves. Naturally a simple people, they of
course knew nothing of antiquarianism, although that science is
irreverently said to master many simples among its votaries. For years
then it was their practice to use the materials of the abbey for
building purposes, and it is not difficult to find scattered for miles
around the country, in farmhouses and even in hovels, portions of
sculpture over doorways and fireplaces which speak of mediaeval
workmanship. But a worse degradation still befel the place, and the
walls which at one time would have been regarded as invested with the
odor of sanctity, and even now are sacred to us as a priceless
historical monument, were actually sold as materials for mending the
roads, to the lasting shame of overseerdom and the powers that were at
Glastonbury. But the day for building huts or mending roads with
ecclesiastical sculpture is gone, and the little that remains of
Glastonbury Abbey has found its way into the hands of those who appear
to know how to preserve it, and have the intention to do so. After all
this decay and vandalism very little is left of the old abbey--some
portions of St. Joseph's church with the crypt--some walls of the
choir of the great church; the two east pillars of the tower, forming
a grand broken arch, a lasting memento of the original splendor; there
are portions, also, of some of the chapels and the abbot's kitchen,
the most complete of all. The eye is at once arrested by the portals
of St. Joseph's church, which still remain in a tolerable state of
preservation, sufficient to enable one to form an idea of what a
triumph of decorative art they were. Nothing could be more profusely
ornamented than the northern portal; it was composed of semi-circular
arches, receding in succession and diminishing in size as they recede
into the body of the building; the exterior arch being about twelve
feet by eleven, and the interior nine feet by six. The four fasciae
are covered with sculptured representations supposed to be {675}
commemorations of royal and noble people connected with the
monastery--saints, pilgrims, and knights. The forms graven on these
fasciae are interpreted in Warner's History of Glastonbury to
represent the following subjects. The uppermost fascia is almost
obliterated, though still showing a running pattern of tendrils and
leaves interspersed with figures of men and animals; toward the centre
the sculpture is much mutilated, though something can be traced like
the effigy of a person in long robes seized on the shoulder by a
furious animal. Beyond him are indistinct remains of three or four
upright figures, and the rest is filled up by foliage. The second
fascia is made up of eighteen separate ovals, each of which contained
a distinct subject; the two first are defaced; the third contains a
person apparently kneeling; the fourth, a female with a head-dress
sitting on a conch; the fifth, a female on horseback; the sixth, a man
on horseback; the seventh, a crowned personage on horseback; the
eighth, the body of a deceased person stretched on a couch, with a
canopy over it, the corpse covered, and the head resting on a pillow;
nine and ten the same; eleven, a knight in a coat of chain armor, with
a pointed shield charged with the cross, indicative of a crusader;
twelve, a regal personage with a flowing beard and in long robes,
crowned, and sitting on a throne; thirteen, a knight in chain armor
falling from his horse as if wounded; fourteen, a figure like the
former, the right arm stretched out and holding a sword which impales
an infant; fifteen, the upright figure of a female with a veil,
apparently in male costume; sixteenth, another body stretched out on a
couch; seventeen, unintelligible; eighteen, a figure of a pilgrim. The
intervals between all these ovals are sculptured into foliage. There
can be very little doubt that the subjects contained in these ovals
were the representations of monarchs, knights, persons, and events
connected with the history of the abbey. The fourth fascia is much
mutilated; but Warner thinks it referred to some act of munificence,
from the canopied couch it displays, with a figure recumbent upon it
and representations of angels guarding it. The portal toward the south
was on a similar plan to the northern, but with five instead of four
fasciae. One, two, and five are covered with finely chiseled foliage;
the third is plain; the fourth only partially worked. According to the
authority already mentioned, the only two ovals which are complete
represent in the first the creation of man, and in the second the
eating of the fruit. In the former is to be seen an upright figure
with a nimbus or glory round its head, designating the Almighty in the
act of calling man into being, and at his feet is man himself. In the
latter there is the tree with Satan behind it, and Adam and Eve
sitting with the apples. The appearance of these two portals,
independent of the interest lent them by Warner's speculations as to
their import, is very striking. In their perfection they must have
been masterpieces of that exquisite taste and minute labor which the
men of that age devoted to the embellishment of the church. Taking the
ruins in a mass, it would be difficult to find anywhere such a
specimen of broken grandeur. Standing upon the spot at the extreme
east, where was the high altar of the church, the eye wanders down a
grand vista of some five hundred feet, relieved in the midst by that
solitary, magnificent, broken arch towering up high in the air, with
rich festoons of ivy hanging about it in lavish luxuriance like the
tresses of some gigantic beauty, and far down in the distance are the
crumbling remains of St. Joseph's chapel, the gem of the whole, with
its arched windows and profuse decoration, the tops of its walls
covered over with straggling parasites, which curl over its brow like
the scanty locks of sere old age. And as we reflect that this sacred
spot was the cradle of our {676} Christianity; that this building was
the mother of our Church; that far back in the bygone ages of
barbarism vagrant missionaries wandered foot-sore and worn to this
very spot; planted with their own hands the cross of Christ; built up
with those hands the rude rush-covered shed which served as the first
temple raised to God in these islands; spent their lives here in
preaching that good tidings to a benighted pagan people, laid their
bones down by the side of the work of their hands, and left their
mission to their successors; that in process of time this little
community became a mighty power, and that rush-covered shed a splendid
temple, whose history is collateral with that of the country for
nearly twelve centuries, and now it lies all battered and broken,
crumbling away and wasting like human life itself--the mind shrinks
appalled at the thought of the vicissitude which brought about so
complete a ruin.

  "O who thy ruine sees, whom wonder doth not fill
  With our great father's pompe, devotion, and their skill?
  Thou more than mortall power (this judgment rightly waid)
  Then present to assist at that foundation laid;
  On whom for this sad waste, should justice lay the crime?
  Is there a power in fate? or doth it yield to time?
  Or was this error such that thou could'st not protect
  Those buildings which thy hands did with their zeal erect?
  To whom did'st thou commit that monument to keepe?
  That suffereth with the dead their memory to sleepe.
  When not great Arthur's tombe, nor Holy Joseph's grave,
  From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save;
  He who that God-in-Man to his sepulchre brought,
  Or he which for the faith twelve famous battles fought;
  What? did so many Kings do honour to that place
  For avarice at last so vilely to deface?"   [Footnote 100]

  [Footnote 100: Drayton's Polyolbion]

In the neighborhood of the town is a hill known all over the world by
the name of Wearyall Hill, so called (according to the chronicles)
because St. Joseph and his companions sat down here to rest
themselves, weary with their journey. As the legend goes St. Joseph is
said to have stuck his staff in the earth and left it there, when lo!
it took root, grew, and constantly budded on Christmas Day! This was
the legendary origin of the far-famed holy thorn. Up to the time of
Queen Elizabeth it had two trunks or bodies, and so continued until
some nasal psalm-spoiler of Cromwell's "crew" exterminated one,
leaving the other to become the wonder of all strangers, who even then
began to flock to the place. The blossoms of this remaining branch of
the holy thorn became such a curiosity that there was a general demand
for them from all parts of the world, and the Bristol merchants, then
very great people in their "line," turned this relic of the saint into
a matter of commercial speculation, and made goodly sums of money by
exporting the blossoms to foreign countries. There are trees from the
branches of this thorn growing at the present moment in many of the
gardens and nurseries round about Glastonbury, nay, all over England,
and in various parts of the Continent. The probability is, as
suggested by Collinson in his "History of Somerset," that the monks
procured the tree from Palestine, where many of the same sort
flourish.

In the abbey church-yard, on the north side of St Joseph's chapel,
there was also a walnut tree which, it was said, never blossomed
before the feast of St. Barnabas (the 11th June). This is gone. These
two trees, the holy thorn and the sacred walnut, were held in high
estimation even long after the monasteries had disappeared from the
land. Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm
are said to have given large sums of money for cuttings from them; so
that the "odor of sanctity" clung about the old walls of Glastonbury
long after its glory had departed; nay, even the belief in its
miraculous waters lingered in the popular mind, and was even revived
by a singular {677} incident so late as the year 1751. The
circumstances are somewhat as follows:--One Matthew Chancellor, of
North Wootton, had been suffering from an asthma of thirty years'
standing, and on a certain night in the autumn of 1750, having had an
usually violent fit of coughing, he fell asleep, and, according to the
depositions taken upon his oath, dreamed that he was at Glastonbury,
somewhere above the chain gate, in a horse track, and there found some
of the clearest water he ever saw in his life; that he knelt down and
drank of it and upon getting up, fancied he saw some one standing
before him, who, pointing with his finger to the stream, thus
addressed him: "If you will go to the freestone shoot, and take a
clean glass, and drink a glassful fasting seven Sunday mornings
following, and let no person see you, you will find a perfect cure of
your disorder, and then make it public to the world." He asked him why
he should drink it only on Sunday mornings, and the person replied
that "the world was made in six days, and on the seventh day God
rested from his labor, and blessed it: beside, this water comes out of
the holy ground where a great many saints and martyrs have been
buried." The person also told him something about Christ himself being
baptized, but this he could not distinctly remember when he awoke.
Impelled by this dream, the man kept the secret to himself, and went
on the Sunday morning following to Glastonbury, which was three miles
from the place where he lived, and found it exactly according to his
dream; but being a dry time of the year, the water did not run very
plentifully; however, dripping his glass three times in the pool
beneath the shoot, he managed to drink a quantity equal to a glassful,
giving God thanks at the same time. This he continued to do for seven
times, according to the injunction of the dream, at the end of which
period he had entirely lost his complaint. The effect of this story is
remarkable. As soon as it was noised abroad, thousands of people of
all sects came flocking to Glastonbury from every quarter of the
kingdom to partake of the waters of this stream. Every inn and house
in the town, and for some distance round, was filled with lodgers and
guests; and it is stated upon reliable authority that during the month
of May, 1751, the town contained upward of ten thousand strangers.
Even to this day, there is a notion amongst the peasantry, more
especially the _old women of both sexes_, that the water is good for
the "rheumatiz."

After the scenes of violence, the ruthless vandalism, which this old
abbey has gone through, it cannot be a matter of surprise that so
little remains of all its grandeur; but it is a fact much to be
lamented, because, as it was in its time one of the grandest
ecclesiastical edifices in the country, so, if it had been preserved
intact like its old rival, the cathedral at Wells, it would have been
one of the most important and valuable items in the monumental history
of England; that broad page where every nation writes its own
autobiography; how valuable we find it in our researches as to the
life of bygone times; and yet how little do we appear to do in this
way as regards our own fame; how little do we cultivate our monumental
history. One of the most lasting evidences of greatness which a
country can leave behind it for the admiration and instruction of
posterity, is the evidence of its national architecture--its
architecture in the fullest sense of the term, not its mere roofs and
walls, but the acts which it writes upon those walls, its statues and
monuments. There are only two agencies by which national fame can be
perpetuated--literature and art. The pen of the historian or the poet
may give the outline of national manners and the description of
national achievements, but art, as it exists in the extant monuments
of the architecture of that nation, gives the {678} representation of
the actual life as it was, fills up the outline, and presents us with
something like the substance: it does not describe, but illustrate; it
is, in fact, the petrified manifestation of the very life itself. We
have read much about the splendor of those extinct civilizations of
the Pharaohs, and of the marvels of Babylonish grandeur, but what a
flood of light was thrown upon our dim conceptions by the resuscitated
relics of a buried Nineveh! In Grecian poets and Grecian historians we
make the acquaintance of the heroes and the heroism of that heroic
existence; but in the Elgin marbles we see the men and the deeds in
all their natural grandeur, petrified before us in the graphic
sublimity of motionless life. To come a little nearer our own times
and to the mother of our civilization, what a confirmation of the
historic tradition of the Rome of our studies have we found under that
hardened lava which for centuries has formed the tombstone of
Herculaneum and Pompeii. What vivid illustrations of Roman life and
Roman manners are continually being discovered in those buried cities;
and so of every nation and time it is its history which narrates its
glory, but it is its architecture alone which must illustrate and
confirm it. There is no fear of the present age of our country leaving
no evidence of its power behind it. That evidence is written in
indelible characters deep even to the very bowels of the earth itself,
through the heart of mountains, over broad rivers, across plains, its
scroll has been the broad bosom of the country, upon which it has
engraven its character truly with a pen of iron; but there is a danger
that we shall leave very little monumental history behind us in our
architecture. . . . .

Protestantism, too, was an iconoclast as regards Catholicism, but it
contented itself with desecrating temples, pulling down altars,
tearing away paintings, but it substituted nothing in their place; it
would admit of no allurements in the Church but that of genuine piety,
and supplied no attractions for the thoughtless, the careless, the
unbelieving, but its bare walls and cold ministrations. This feeling
is now undergoing a marked change; we are beginning to see that
plainness in externals may conceal a considerable amount of pride and
worldliness, and thus Quakers are leaving off their curious garb, and
Methodists are building temples; it is beginning to dawn upon men's
minds, at last, that ugliness is one of the most inappropriate
sacrifices man can offer to his God, that as in the olden times the
patriarchs used to offer up the first-fruits of the field, so in these
later times we should offer up the first-fruits of our achievements;
the choicest productions of art, science, and every form of human
genius should be presented to him who is the God of all humanity. As
we raise up temples to his honor and glory, where we may come with our
supplications for his mercy, our adoration of his power, where we may
bring our purest thoughts, our noblest hopes, our highest aspirations,
and our best emotions; so let us decorate that temple with the best
works of our hands as we hallow it with the best feelings of our
hearts. The reason given by Solomon for exerting all the power and
wealth of his kingdom to decorate the temple was simply, "This house
which I build is great, for great is our God above all gods;"
[Footnote 101] and the approval and acceptance of it by him for whom
it was built is recorded in his own words: "Now mine eyes shall be
open, and mine ears attent unto the prayer that is made in this place,
for now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be
there for ever, and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there
perpetually."

  [Footnote 101: 2 Chron. ii. 5.]

And that we may not go to the other extreme, as some churches have
done and do in our day, and imagine that if we decorate our temple
with all the choicest offerings we can bring it is enough, and God
will be satisfied with the mere offering, there is, following {679}
immediately upon his gracious acceptance and approval of Solomon's
temple, the solemn warning in his own words: "But if ye turn away and
forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,
and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them, then will I pluck
them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this
house which I have sanctified for my name will I cast out of my sight,
and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And
this house which is high shall be an astonishment to every one that
passeth by it, so that he shall say, 'Why hath the Lord done this unto
this land and unto this house?' And it shall be answered, 'Because
they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them forth
out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped
them and served them; therefore hath he brought all this evil upon
them.'"  [Footnote 102 ]

  [Footnote 102: 2 Chron. vii. 15, _seq_. ]

That is the canon of church building as ordained by God himself--make
the church as grand an offering as you can, but keep the ritual
pure--fill the temple with all the emblems of his glory, but remember
that it is he only who is to be worshipped. Such is the teaching of
revelation; and now we turn to nature, that boundless temple which God
has built up to himself with his own hands. Had he been a God of mere
utility instead of a God of beauty and glory; had he only considered
the bare convenience and accommodation of the human race, a
proportionate amount of dry land in one place, and a proportionate
amount of water in another, would have sufficed to meet all human
wants; there was no practical need for the variegated aspect, of
natural scenery, of hill and dale, mountain and valley, of rippling
stream and sweet-smelling flowers; but the world of nature was built
for something higher than the mere dwelling place of man. It was built
as a temple in which he should honor his God, and which was therefore
filled with a myriad of beauties to excite his admiration, to please
his eye, to fill his soul with gratitude and joy, and to raise his
heart to that God who has given him such a beautiful home, furnished
not only with the means of supplying his necessities, but embellished
with the choicest beauties of creative power. What is nature but a
gorgeous temple, laid out and decorated by the hand of God himself,
with its broad pavement tesselated with endless varieties of verdure,
with mountain altars which Christ himself loved to frequent and hallow
with his prayers, its long aisles fretted with luxurious foliage
pillared with tall trees, which bend their tops together in the
matchless symmetry of nature's arch, all vocal with the deep-toned
music of rushing waters, and melodies warbled by the unseen songsters
of the air, spanned over with the boundless blue ceiling of heaven
itself, lit up by day with the sunshine of his majesty, and at night
by the stars placed there with his own hands?

Let us, whilst we endeavor to get at the truth of history, appeal also
to revelation and nature.

------

{680}


From The St. James Magazine.

CITY ASPIRATIONS.


  Oh, not in the town to die!
    With its restless trampling to and fro,
    And its traffic-hubbub above, below,
  And the whirling wheels that hurry by.
  And the chimney forests, blacken'd and high--
  Oh, mercy! not in a town to die!

  In a town I may live, and strive, and toil,
  And grow a part of the living turmoil;
  A cog-wheel in a machine of men.
  Turning to labor again and again,
  Doing my work with the multitude,
  With a spirit wean'd, and a heart subdued,
  Pausing sometimes, in a moment of ease,
  To yearn and sigh for a meadow breeze,
  For the whispering rustle of summer trees,
  And the dreamy murmur of golden bees,
  And the field-path margined by many a flower.
  And the village church with its grey old tower;
  Yet still, for sake of my babes and thee.
  Sweet wife, I may work courageously;
  May bide in a town, and with iron will
  Go laboring on in the hubbub still.
  Where the wheels of the man-machine ever spin,
  Money, and money, and money, to win.

  But to _die_ in a town, in turmoil and smoke,
    'Mongst houses, and chimneys gaunt and high.
  When the silken cord of the soul is broke,
    Methinks the vapors so heavy would lie.
    It scarce could soar, as it should, to the sky.
    Oh, live as I may, to brook it I'll try--
    But, mercy! not in a town to die!

------

{681}


From The Month.

THE FACULTY OF PARIS IN THE TIME OF MOLIÈRE.


In a former number we gave a slight sketch of the laws and etiquettes
of the old French Medical Faculty. The state of things there described
was already on the wane when Molière dealt it a blow, from the effects
of which it never recovered. But there is one characteristic of the
position of the medical body which is inherent in its very nature, and
is likely to be as enduring as the world itself, allowing for the
modifications of varying times and changing manners. So long as our
poor humanity shall be subject to disease and death, so long will
medicine and its scientific administration be esteemed a necessity.
Some, indeed, judge both to be well-nigh unmitigated evils; but at any
rate, if evils, they are necessary evils; and even the greatest
railers at the doctor and his drugs are pretty sure to send for him in
the hour of danger, lean on him for hope, and swallow his potions. The
medical man thus obtains an exceptional position. He is introduced
into the sanctuary of the family, sees us in our unguarded moments,
receives our confidence, and often wins our friendship. He never comes
as a judge or a censor. We feel at our ease with him. Our esteem for
him is personal, and independent of all considerations of rank or
fortune. He is a stranger to all the conflicting interests which
divide parties from each other, and can visit persons of all shades of
opinion and of views the most opposite, whether of religion or
politics, without causing the shadow of an offense. From all this it
results that the doctor is often admitted to the closest intimacy by
men occupying the highest positions. Hence the footing of
quasi-equality accorded, often to the obscure son of AEsculapius,
raised by his profession to a post of dignity and benevolent
authority, which, while it obtains for him consideration and respect,
clashes in nothing with the social importance of the patient. It was
so, in a certain degree, in the seventeenth century, when classes were
divided much more widely than at present, and reverence for birth and
rank much stronger; and we have numerous instances of the friendship
subsisting between doctors and the highest in the land.

It is true that the medical faculty did actually number amongst its
members men who had undoubted claims to nobility; and we find from
Larroque's _Traité de la Noblesse_ that doctors, as distinguished from
apothecaries and surgeons, were held not to derogate from their rank
by the practice of medicine. But further, the medical profession was
held to confer a species of nobility; for of nobility there were
reckoned to be three sorts--nobility of race, nobility of royal
concession, and personal nobility, such as in peculiar cases we find
conferred on the whole _bourgeoisie_ of certain towns. This
distinction offended no one, as it expired with its recipient, on whom
while living it conferred many practical advantages, such as exemption
from taxation. In Paris this circumstance was of small moment,
because, as members of the university, the doctors enjoyed all manner
of immunities. But in the provinces it was different. In the south of
France, in particular, these privileges were energetically claimed on
the ground of the honor of the profession, and they were traditionally
referred to Roman times. Montpellier {682} was full of these
reminiscences of the past, and in Dauphiné the nobility of the doctors
was even transmitted from father to son. At Lyons it was remembered
that Antonius Musa had cured the Emperor Augustus, and had received a
gold ring for himself and his successors in the art. "Accipe annulum
aureum, in signum nobilitatis ab Augusto et Senatu Romano medicis
concessae," were the words used in the aggregation of a doctor by the
college of that city.

The misfortune was that there must of necessity be some contrast
between this theoretical nobility and the practical life of the
physician. He must, if he would gain his living, go from house to
house indiscriminately, and receive his pay from all classes, like the
butcher or the baker. The doctors endeavored to smooth over this
anomaly by affecting considerable state. They might be seen threading
the streets of Paris mounted on mules, in large wigs and with ample
beards. The mule gave an almost episcopal air. "The beard is more than
half the doctor," says Toinette, in the _Malade Imaginaire_, When the
fashionable Guénaut took to a horse, it raised quite a scandal, which
Boileau has commemorated:

  "Guénaut, sur son cheval, en passant m'éclabousse."

Many, not satisfied with this degree of state, paid their visits in
the long magisterial robe, with scarlet hose and band, the famous
_rabat_, to which Pascal wittily alludes when he says, "Who could
place any confidence in a doctor without a _rabat_?" Not only were the
doctors careful to uphold their dignity by these forms, but the Paris
Faculty was extremely jealous in maintaining its exclusive position.
Its members not merely refused, as was natural, to meet in
consultation any of the host of quacks with which the capital swarmed,
and who found frequent access to the houses of the great lords and
ladies, often as sceptical in regard to orthodox practitioners as they
were credulous in the extreme of the pretensions of these heretical
interlopers, but they likewise stood aloof from men as respectable as
themselves--the honorable doctors of Montpellier, of whom perhaps a
few words anon. In the meantime we will take a hasty glance at the
members of the Paris Faculty apart from their official life; for they
were men after all, and did not always figure in wig and gown. They
must have had their private as well as public existence; but it is a
more difficult task to obtain a sight of them _en déshabille_.

In history, of course, it were vain to seek anything beyond the record
of public events; and even the contemporary memoirs of the age of the
Grand Monarque tell us more about the court and its festivities, the
_réunions_ of the wits of the day, and the current gossip and scandal
of the hour, than about the ordinary domestic life of any class,
particularly of such as ranged below the aristocratic level. We are
too apt to believe, from the revelations that are made in the light
literature of the time, that the brilliant surface of the Augustan age
of France concealed a general mass of corruption in the higher
classes, and of misery in the lower. But this would be a false
conclusion. The _bourgeoisie_, as a body, were complete strangers to
the ferment of ambition and intrigue so rife in the upper strata of
society. They had their own interests, their own pursuits, and were in
the main an industrious and worthy class, sufficiently independent to
be able often to regard those above them with a secret, and not always
undeserved, contempt. To confine ourselves, however, to the doctors.
Two courses were open to them. They might shut themselves up within
the round of their own immediate occupations and studies, and limit
themselves to the social circle of their colleagues and compeers. The
faculty, as we have seen, was a little community in itself, with its
own traditions, laws, distinctions, glories. Here, satisfied with
their moderate gains, the doctors might preserve their independence
{683} and live in all security and honor; or, on the other hand, they
might try their fortune in the world and seek the favor of the great.
The enterprise involved a certain loss of liberty and a corresponding
detriment to that nice delicacy of feeling which is the guardian of
severe probity. There were doctors of both kinds; those of the first
class were by far the most numerous. The others were the richest; but
the esteem in which they were held by their brethren was in the
inverse ratio to the wealth acquired by this compromise of dignified
independence.

The illustrious dean, Guy Patin, who enjoyed an immense reputation in
his day, furnishes an example of the life of voluntary isolation and
of practical activity systematically confined to professional or
scientific subjects. He is now remembered chiefly for that on which he
probably least valued himself--his epistolary correspondence, never
designed for publication, but which is extremely interesting, not only
as a record of events great and small, the memory of which has long
passed away, but for the freshness both of ideas and style for which
it is remarkable. These letters exhibit Guy Patin as an apparent
compendium of contradictions--a believer in medicine, a sceptic in
almost all else; obstinately tenacious of the privileges of the
faculty, but full of liberal, and even republican, aspirations;
confident in the steady advance of science, but always railing at
modern times and extolling the past. Yet there is a clue to many of
these seeming contradictions; Guy Patin was a dean. Before he was
dean, you felt that he would be dean; later, he has been dean. He has
studied minutely all the details of the organized institution to which
he is indebted for all that he is--he has made its spirit and doctrine
his own; for the faculty _has_ a doctrine. The experimental method is
newer in medicine than in the other sciences. In the seventeenth
century we find in its place simple observation guided by theory;
which theory was no other than that of the father of medicine,
Hippocrates--viz., that nature tends to a cure, and that disease is
but an outward manifestation of a salutary effort of the vital
organization to counteract the destructive causes at work. The
physician's part was to aid this process rather than to interfere with
it. This view, we may observe, is finding favor anew in certain
quarters in our own day; and we may perhaps be allowed humbly to
express an instinctive leaning toward any theory of which the
practical result might be a system of comparative non-intervention.
But this by the way. Certainly Hippocrates's fundamental principle did
not deter medical practitioners of the olden time from much painful
interference with the workings of nature under the plea of assistance;
a course to which their elaborate doctrine concerning the humors of
the body--which, however, they did _not_ derive from Hippocrates, but
of which the germ exists in the other great authority, Galen--much
contributed.

The period we are considering was one of transition. Men felt the need
of progress; and this feeling evoked a number of medical
adventurers--the revolutionists, as we may call them, of medicine.
Placed between two opposite systems--the one resting on tradition and
on principles, at any rate, in great measure sound; the other calling
itself progress, but having nothing to allege save a number of vague
aspirations and anticipations, some genuine discoveries mingled with
much baser metal, and half-truths obscured by palpable error--can we
wonder that the faculty should be tempted to confound all novelties in
one sweeping act of reprobation, and intrench itself in a state of
obstinate opposition? Guy Patin shared this feeling, though not to
excess. He was no enemy, as we have said, to a wise and safe progress;
but he had the shallowness and narrowness which belongs to a certain
range of cleverness. He was not the man to accept anything new which
it required {684} breadth, elevation, and comprehensiveness of mind to
discern. He had also his favorite theory of simplicity; and this made
him suspicious of aught which seemed at variance therewith. He looked
askance, for instance, at Harvey and the circulation of the blood. We
have said that Guy Patin was a sceptic, yet he was not an unbeliever.
His language certainly is often extremely irreverent; but just as he
sometimes speaks in terms bordering on modern liberalism, while all
the time, by his attachment to medical traditions, to the faculty, and
to monarchy, he is securely anchored in respect for antiquity and
authority, so is it as regards religion, and we must not conclude from
his free expressions that he is a decided freethinker. Nevertheless it
must be confessed that he betrays a very uncatholic mind and temper;
and as we cannot believe that he stood alone in this respect, it may
serve as an indication of the spirit of many of his order, and of the
prevalence of opinions which were later to bear such bitter fruit.

Guy Patin was content with his sphere; he had no desire to overstep
it. His friends and intimates were from amongst his own medical
brethren, or they were members of the legal and magisterial body. By
marriage he was connected with the latter class; and moreover there
was always a close analogy of manners and sentiments betwixt the
medical body and the _noblesse de robe_. To his friendship with the
President de Thou, brother to Cinq Mars' unfortunate accomplice, we
may attribute much of his animosity to the minister Richelieu. Guy
Patin is, in short, a systematic grumbler, a regular _frondeur_; but
it is chiefly in talk and speculation. He is in reality no
revolutionist. Speaking of his frequent social meetings with two
lawyer friends, he observes: "Our conversation is always gay. If we
talk of religion or of state affairs, it is always historically,
without dreaming of either reformation or sedition. We converse
chiefly on literary subjects. With a mind thus recreated, I return
home, where, after some little converse with my books, or with the
record of some past consultation, I retire to rest."

Such was the honorable position of an independent member of the
faculty. But what was the condition and social estimate of those who
sought the favor of the nobility? Undoubtedly their standing was much
inferior to that which they came to occupy a hundred years
later--thanks to the spread of the utilitarian spirit, which raised
all the positive sciences into high esteem. In the eighteenth century
fine ladies had their pet physician, as they had their philosophic or
poetic _protégé_; but in the seventeenth a great personage thought he
conferred much honor on a doctor by seeking a cure at his hands. The
nobles were glad, it is true, to have their familiar physician; though
the physician, if he had any self-respect, must have felt that he paid
rather dear for admission to this familiarity, not to speak of the
actual large sums by which, in the case at least of princes of the
blood-royal, they had to buy their offices. But we are here chiefly
speaking of a less aspiring class, who angled for the casual good
graces of the aristocratic order. See how Madame de Sevigné speaks of
the doctors, whom she is always consulting and always unmercifully
quizzing. See her malicious pleasure when she can get four or five
together to discuss her bile, her spleen, her humors, when she would
ply them with questions and contrive to make them contradict each
other. She talks of the profession as a humbug, yet she never passes
through a town without consulting what she calls "the chief
ignoramuses of the place." She consults them, and then turns them into
ridicule. They know this, and take their legitimate revenge in high
charges. But strange to say, although so contemptuous toward the
privileged doctors, Madame de Sevigné has quite a weakness for all
quacks or unlicensed dabblers in the {685} art, and is even credulous
in their regard. However, it would seem that science with this lively
lady is not the sole requirement. "My dear," she says, speaking of a
certain elegant Signor Antonio, an Italian son of AEsculapius, "he is
twenty-eight years old, with the most beautiful and charming face I
ever saw. He has Madame de Mazarin's eyes, and his teeth are
perfection. The rest of his face is what you might conceive Rinaldo's
to have been, with large black curls, altogether making the prettiest
head in the world. He is dressed like a prince, and is a thorough _bon
garçon_." We are a long way off the wigs and _rabats_, it will be
seen; but we have got a clue to the secret. It is the _médecin bon
garçon_ Madame de Sevigné is in search of. She finds him at the
baths--_les eaux_. He has none of the pedantry, possibly little of the
science, of his Paris brethren of the faculty. He is a man of the
world, and can sacrifice to the graces. Medically, his part seems
restricted to drenching and dosing his patients with hot water. Tired
of court amusements, they fly to the _douche_ and the vapor-bath to
expel those inward vapors of which Frenchwomen, and indeed our own
great-grandmothers, complained so much. Madame de Sevigné goes through
this ordeal perseveringly; but she has her alleviations. "My
doctor"--this is another pet _bon garçon_--"is very good. Instead of
resigning myself to two hours' _ennui_, inseparable from _la
suerie_(the sweating process) I make him read to me. He knows what
life is; he has no trickery about him; he deals with medicine like a
gentleman (_en galant homme_); in short, he amuses me."

At court the doctors had more serious trials. Beside the task of
pleasing this or that capricious and exacting patron, they had to
beware of displeasing twenty others. The princes of the blood shared
with the sovereign the right to choose their own physician from any
quarter they pleased, who became forthwith invested _ipso facto_ with
all the privileges of the Paris faculty. Possibly, to make a little
display of authority, they would often decline selecting him from the
honored precincts of the Rue de la Bûcherie, and perhaps take a doctor
of Montpellier. Hence interminable jealousies. Then the doctors would
sometimes be drawn into mixing themselves with party politics, and get
into the Bastille; but this was their own fault. To escape the shaft
of ridicule was more difficult. It appears certain that in _L'Amour
Médecin_ Molière ventured upon satirizing four of the court physicians
under assumed names; and this in the presence of the king himself,
before whom the piece was played. Possibly Louis, whose docility to
his physicians stands in remarkable contrast with his lofty distance
toward others, might not be sorry to indulge occasionally in a laugh
at his masters, or have a brief fling of independence, like a truant
schoolboy. Of his habitual bondage to their authority we have the
record in a journal of the royal health, magnificently bound in folio
and besprinkled _fleurs-de-lis_, which has been preserved. It was
begun in 1652 at the desire of the boy-sovereign himself--who thus
gave early tokens of his methodical tastes--and it was kept up till
four years previous to his death, when it suddenly ceases, possibly
because even the pen of flattery became unable to disguise the
approaches of inevitable death. The whole is in the handwriting of
Louis' three successive physicians, Valot, Daquin, and Fagon. No man,
it is said, is a hero to his _valet de chambre_; still less, we may
imagine, to his apothecary. That the king should have to submit to all
those medical appliances which in Molière's pages are recorded in such
plain terms was perhaps a necessity--judged at least to be so; but
that etiquette should require that the whole court should be regularly
apprised of all these details, is a little surprising. {686} The diary
is, however, interlarded with no small amount of flattery. Valot
inaugurates his office, for instance, by a memoir on the king's
temperament, which was that of which "heroes are made;" and all is in
the same adulatory and stilted style. But the writer is by no means
unsparing of self-laudation. It is with much evident self-complacency
that he registers for the benefit of posterity the different remedies
with which "heaven inspired him" to prescribe for the preservation of
a health so precious. "Plaster for the king," "potion for the king,"
and so on, figure in large characters. He can also play the prophet,
and announce coming measles, dysenteries, etc., _from which the king
is to be exempt_. There are temporary interruptions to Valot's
absolute rule; these were the seasons when Louis was campaigning; the
monarch on these occasions despised the care of his health, and threw
physic to the dogs. The doctor groaned and remonstrated, but was fain
to await the close of the campaign to resume his authority and make up
for lost time. He died in his office. His nephew and successor,
Daquin, was a Montpellier doctor and a converted Jew. He was a clever
man of moderate science. But he entered on his charge in difficult
days. A gouty prince, subject to melancholy, and desirous to abate
nothing of his customary attention either to business or amusement, is
not an easy patient to manage. Beside, the royal valetudinarian met
with sundry accidents while under this physician's care. Daquin was an
accomplished courtier, and even improved upon Valot in the art of
flattery. From him we learn the remarkable fact that "the king is
subject, like other men, to catch cold." With all his tact, Daquin did
not escape disgrace. Perhaps he made too undisguised a display of his
acquisitive disposition; indeed, he was a notorious beggar. It is
related that one day Louis, being informed of the death of an old
officer, expressed regret, saying that the man had been to him a
faithful servant, with the merit, rare in a courtier, of never having
asked for anything. While making this observation, he fixed his eyes
pointedly on Daquin. The physician, no way disconcerted, naively said,
"May one venture to inquire, sire, what your majesty gave him?" The
king was silenced, for the bashful courtier in question had never
received any royal favor whatsoever. Daquin was dismissed in 1693. He
had asked for the archbishopric of Tours for his son. He had so often
offended, if offence it were considered, in making bold requests, that
it is hardly likely that this application was the real cause of his
disgrace. It was probably rather the consequence of the king's rupture
with Mme. de Montespen, to whom Daquin owed his elevation. It appears
that ever since the king's marriage he had found some difficulty in
maintaining his position, from which it is natural to infer that
adverse influences were at work; indeed, it was a _protégé_, or rather
a friend, of Mme. de Maintenon who was promoted to fill his place--a
circumstance corroborative of this supposition. Fagon appears to have
been a very estimable man, and the attachment and mutual esteem
subsisting between him and his patroness, with whom he had first
become acquainted in his capacity of physician to the Duc de Maine,
never abated. [Footnote 103] He won the confidence also of Louis, and
the favor he enjoyed while still in his position of secondary
physician was much increased at the period of the king's great illness
by a trifling circumstance which made a strong impression on the
monarch's mind. One night all the surgeons and doctors, {687} Daquin
included, had ventured to go to bed. The king had taken a _bouillon_,
and the fever seemed to be subdued. But Fagon, unobserved by the rest,
slipped back and took his post in an arm-chair in the ante-room. He
was thus at hand to comfort and administer a _tisane_ to the sick
monarch, whose fever shortly returned, and who, albeit with the fear
of Daquin greatly before his eyes, ventured to accept the services of
the attentive subaltern. The _tisane_ sent Louis to sleep, and made
Fagon's fortune. Three months afterward he was first in command. He
deserved his elevation to an office which was a post of no slight
honor and profit.  [Footnote 104] He bore his honors meekly, and was
remarkable for a spirit of disinterestedness as rare as it was
creditable to him. Fagon closes the list of the court physicians of
the seventeenth century, and indeed carries us on into the eighteenth.
All reserve being made in his favor, it must be confessed that the
great dramatist's satire was richly deserved by those doctors of
royalty, whose ambitious manoeuvres, intrigues, and paltry rivalries
were enough to excite the indignation of any honest man.

  [Footnote 103: Fagon was the nephew of Guy de la Brosse, the founder
  of the _Jardin du Roi_, now developed into the magnificent Museum of
  Natural Science and himself also an eminent botanist. He was named
  professor of botany at this establishment by Valot, who, as first
  physician to the king, was its superintendent.]

  [Footnote 104: The king's physician ranked with the great officers
  of the crown, and received orders from the sovereign alone, to whom
  he took an oath of fidelity; and he became a count in virtue of his
  office, and transmitted his nobility to his children. He was
  entitled to the same honors and privileges as the high chamberlain.
  He was a councillor of state, and received the usual emoluments.
  When he visited the faculty, he was met at the door by the dean,
  bachelors, and beadles, although he himself might not be a Paris
  doctor. He had, beside, very extensive authority, enjoying a species
  of medical jurisdiction throughout the kingdom.]

We have seen that the independent physician, who stood aloof from
courting the great, could lead an honorable and tranquil life; but it
would be a mistake to conclude that profound peace reigned within the
medical corporation itself. On the contrary, it was the scene of a
bitter internecine war between the men of the new ideas, the men of
progress, and the adherents to tradition and the received system. But
to excite men's passions ideas must assume a concrete form, which then
becomes at once a rallying-point and a watchword. Such in the
seventeenth century were the circulation of the blood and antimony.
Ever since the days of Galen the liver had been held to be the origin
of the veins, and of those organs by which blood is transmitted to the
whole body. Harvey's announcement accordingly raised a universal
commotion in the medical world: perhaps his doctrine would have met
with less opposition but for the discovery of the lacteal veins by an
Italian anatomist, Gasparo Aselli, in the year 1622. These veins, as
most of our readers probably know, originating in the intestines,
receive and convey thence the products of digestion--the chyle. Imbued
with the doctrine of Galen, and deceived by appearances, Aselli, it is
true, believed the liver to be their ultimate destination. Immediately
there was one general outcry against these intrusive vessels: their
non-necessity was put forward as a conclusive objection--a very common
argument, it may be noted, with the old doctors. Really it was not
worth upsetting received notions on their account--the lacteal vessels
were superfluous. Even Harvey, who was among Aselli's opponents,
joined in insisting on this unsatisfactory reason. "It is not
_necessary_," he says, "to seek a fresh channel for the transport of
the chyle in the lacteal veins." It was evident, he said, that the
chyle was carried from the intestines by the mesenteric veins.

But in 1649 Pecquet, a Frenchman, completed the demonstration, by
showing that the lacteal veins do not terminate in the liver, but in a
reservoir, to which his name was given. Now indeed the liver, and
Galen, and the whole edifice of medicine, were threatened; nothing
could be deemed sacred any longer. The liver was not the origin of the
veins, if the blood careered in a circle, having neither beginning nor
end; and the chyle did not go to the liver. {688} "_Quid de nostra
fiet medicina?_" was the sorrowful exclamation of one of the doctors
of the Montpellier faculty when Pecquet had triumphantly expounded his
discovery before them. Ah, there was the difficulty! _Quid de nostra
fiet medicina?_ We are condemning our past--an argument which weighs
powerfully against all conversions. Nothing can afford stronger
evidence of the deep conviction entertained that the whole existing
system was at stake, than the opposition of a physician of so much
eminence, intellectual and scientific, as Riolan, whom alone of all
his adversaries Harvey judged worthy of a rejoinder. It is
astonishing, indeed, to see a man of his stamp reduced to throw
himself on such arguments as the uselessness and degradation of the
liver if the new hypothesis be admitted; to find him urging the
impropriety of allowing impure unelaborated chyle to go straight to
the heart, which under these circumstances it must do--thus converting
that noble seat of vital heat into an ignoble kitchen. And then, once
there, how was the chyle to be got rid of? An absurd list of
suppositions follows, intended to prove, by an exhaustive process, the
sheer impossibility of disposing of the chyle after having arrived at
such an _impasso_. _Ergo_, the chyle _must_ go to the liver. In fact,
it cannot go anywhere else with either reason or propriety. Such are
the contemptible arguments to which even superior minds will stoop
when they battle against evidence. Harvey, however, found many
partisans amongst the Paris faculty. Guy Patin, as we have said, was
not of the number: he was not a deep thinker, and trusted his friend
Riolan. Harvey's followers were called "circulators." Now "circulator"
in Latin means a charlatan--that is enough for Guy Patin. The debate
ceased with Riolan's death: the doctrine had been gradually gaining
ground. In 1678 its victory had been achieved when Louis instituted at
the Jardin des Plantes a special chair of anatomy for propagating the
new discoveries.

The battle about antimony raged still more fiercely, inasmuch as the
question admitted of less tangible proof. There is a legend that this
mineral was first exhibited in a pure state and applied to medical
purposes by Basil Valentine, a Benedictine monk of Erfurt, in the
beginning of the sixteenth century; he gave it to his hogs, who throve
marvellously. This is to be attributed to the arsenic contained in the
drug, which fattens when taken in small quantities--a fact well known
to the peasants of Styria and Lower Austria. Basil next gave it to his
monks, who fell sick; from which he drew the following conclusion:
"This metal suits hogs; it does not suit monks." Hence its name of
antimony. Thirty years later Paracelsus took up the study of antimony,
and endeavored to introduce its use, with that of other minerals, in
medicine. This would have been to break completely with tradition; but
Paracelsus was half-cracked, and not very intelligible. The sixteenth
century was the age of alchemy, especially in Germany, where it was
ardently pursued, in connection with the occult sciences, by men who
rivalled Paracelsus in obscurity. In France transcendental chemistry
found less favor, and there was early a split between the
pseudo-mystics and the chemists. The former cultivated astrology; but
astrology, as an aid to medicine, had quite fallen into disrepute in
the seventeenth century, being abandoned to low vagabond quacks.
Chemistry, however, was making gradual progress and striving to
establish its place in medicine. The sympathy manifested for this
science at Montpellier was quite enough to indispose toward it the
faculty of Paris. The absurd blunders into which its association with
alchemy had betrayed it in times past weighed also on its reputation;
but, above all, the contempt for antiquity manifested by its adepts
was calculated to condemn it in the eyes {689} of the majority of the
physicians, brought up as they were in reverence for all that
chemistry pretended to reform or destroy.

There were not wanting, however, conciliatory spirits, who strove to
effect a compromise between the past and the present, and make room
for the new chemical theories in the received system. It has already
been observed how Galen's theory of the humors of the body had been
elaborated: all medical language was grounded upon it.   [Footnote
105] Disease was the result of the vitiation of these humors, each
humor having its special morbid product. To expel this vitiated humor
was the task of the doctor; but why might not minerals be added to his
pharmacopoeia, without interfering with his principles? This seemed
reasonable; and as a matter of theory the faculty were not unwilling
to let it pass. The difference arose on the practical question. All
were agreed that the peccant humor was to be expelled; but the
faithful followers of Hippocrates attached great importance to
awaiting what was called the _coction_ of the humors. This was the
work of nature, which was employed in making an effort which the
physician was called only to second,--an effort of which fever was but
the symptom. It was esteemed a very nice point to hit off the proper
moment, and not prevent or disturb the crisis which was thus
preparing: hence the need of mild measures. Whoever will refer to the
apothecary's bill in the first scene of Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_
will see that lenifying, softening, tempering, and refreshing, were
the avowed objects of the drugs administered. Such was Hippocratic
medicine; mild, at least, in theory. We must make one exception as
respects bleeding: these enemies of violent measures bled with a
vengeance; they shed torrents of blood. They bled old men of eighty,
and babies two months, nay, even two days old; and this "without
inconvenience,"--so they said. We presume some of the sufferers
survived,--thanks to a strong constitution. Riolan says that there are
twenty-four pounds of blood in the human body, and that twenty can be
lost without causing death; _ergo_, it is keeping within very
reasonable bounds to deprive a man of only the half of his blood.
[Footnote 106]

  [Footnote 105: M. Raynaud, to whose amusing work we are again
  largely indebted, notices that much of this language still survives
  in the diction of the common people. Many of their ideas and forms
  of expression still reflect the old doctrine of humorism; just as
  they have retained many words and idioms now become obsolete in the
  upper and more shifting strata of society.]

  [Footnote 106: The famous Guy de la Brosse refused to be bled. He
  called bleeding the remedy of sanguinary pedants, and said he would
  rather die then submit to the operation. "And he did die," says M.
  Basalis, a brother doctor; adding, "The devil will bleed him in the
  next world, has such a rascal and unbeliever deserves." Such are the
  imprecations hurled at the man who ventured on refusing to die _in
  proper form_. Could Molière have written anything more sublimely
  comic?]

The object of bleeding, of course, was the expulsion of the vitiated
humors supposed to be contained in it; but it is hardly reconcilable
with the doctrine of waiting for their _coction_ to commence
operations by attacking a disease at once with a lancet. But this is
one of Guy Patin's primary convictions, as well as of numbers of his
brethren, and they conscientiously acted on the same. It was otherwise
as respected emetics. Antimony administered in the potent quantities
then used was a most frightful emetic. No one in those days thought of
giving infinitesimal doses, or suspected that what was poisonous in
large, might be salutary in fractional, proportions. It was reserved
for Rasoni to discover that antimony could be thus beneficially
administered. And so the whole question lay between those who held as
a principle that the peccant humor was not to be expelled till after
_coction_, and those who maintained that the sooner the morbific
matter was ejected from the system the better.

It is true that the horrible prostration of strength consequent on
this summary process was sufficient to alarm men's minds, and furnish
a reasonable topic to the opponents of {690} antimony. The quarrel
occupied a whole century; of course we cannot attempt to go into even
its most elementary details. In 1566, the parliament prohibited the
use of this drug. The year 1666 saw it rehabilitated by the same body.
The motive of the first decree was the report of the faculty that
antimony was an incorrigible poison. The idea, as we just now
observed, that diminution of quantity might effect what was
unattainable by correctives, did not occur to the medical mind of that
day. In 1615 there was a fresh unanimous decree against antimony, also
indorsed by parliament; but the scientific world was still on the
search for a _corrective_, and converts, or perverts, were being
secretly made within the very sanctuary of the faculty. In 1638, the
dean, Hardoun de Saint-Jacques, suddenly published an incomplete
pharmaceutic codex, which had been in course of preparation for twelve
years. In this dictionary antimonial wine actually figured in its
alphabetical place. How had the enemy contrived to creep into the
citadel? No one could say. This incident was the occasion of a deluge
of pamphlets, of which the very form and language are, for the most
part, like a dead letter to us. Hippocrates, Holy Scripture, history,
and the fathers, are all called into court. Even the definition of
antimony gives rise to much discussion; and it is gravely argued
whether Adam, when conferring names in Paradise, named this drug, and
if so, what he called it. Even the troubles of the Fronde did not
check this medical civil war. Antimony had quite a literature of its
own. Guy Patin, of course, was inimical, but a little cautious while
the question of his deanship was impending. Afterward he launches out;
he hates chemistry, he hates antimony, he hates Guénaut, who is its
warm advocate, and is beside Cardinal Mazarin's physician (Guy Patin
is always in political opposition). Guénaut, he says, has poisoned his
wife, daughter, and two sons-in-law with this drug; at last he poisons
himself, and dies a martyr to his infatuation. And then the faculty
have twice condemned antimony. That is more than enough for Guy Patin.
However, a great event turned the balance in his favor. During the
campaign of 1658, the king, then twenty years of age, was attacked by
typhus. Valot had been absent a few days, sent by Louis, as the
journal tells us, to settle a quarrel between the physicians and
surgeons who were treating the Maréchal de Castelnau for a mortal
wound--poor marshal! He hastened back to his master, and fell to work
vigorously, sparing neither bleeding nor dosing; but the king got
worse, and Guénaut was sent for. The court-physicians--Valot, Esprit,
Daquin, Yvelin, beside a local doctor--were all there disputing over
the monarch's sinking body. A great consultation is now held, presided
over by the cardinal; and he votes for antimony. It was given. The
king took an ounce, and marvellous are the recorded effects. However,
whether in consequence or in spite of the dose, he recovered. Louis
was at that time his people's darling and idol; they adored their
young monarch, and he had been saved by Guénaut and antimony! Guy
Patin's embarrassment at this crisis is a little ludicrous. The dose,
he urges in extenuation, was small; but he concludes that, after all,
what saved the king "was his innocence, his youth and strength, nine
good bleedings, and the prayers of good people like himself and
others." Defections now became numerous, and the faculty was in a
false position.  In fact, most of the doctors gave antimony in spite
of the two decrees, the last of which interdicted the mention of it.
In 1666 the embargo was finally removed, after a tedious and ponderous
process, as were all processes in those days, before the parliament;
and the doctors were henceforth permitted "to give the said emetic
wine for the cure of maladies, to write and dispute about it,"' etc.,
but it was not lawful for persons to take it {691} without their
advice. The question had been decided in the faculty by ninety-two
doctors against ten. The decree came to sadden the last days of Guy
Patin, and of a few more respectable old stagers, who were unable to
advance with their age.

But this internal conflict was not the only one which the faculty had
to sustain. There was the perennial dispute with the surgeons. Surgery
and medicine are twin sciences, if they be not rather branches of one
and the same. Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, made no practical
distinction between them; nevertheless, they came to be entirely
separated in mediaeval practice. Two causes may be assigned for this:
the first was the quasi-ecclesiastical character of the medical
profession in early days, which rendered the shedding of blood and
other operations incompatible with the position of men who were either
clerics or bound by clerical rules. Still, though they could not
themselves draw blood, they could prescribe blood-letting and other
sanguinary operations; and this led, of course, to the existence of
another class, paid to carry out their orders. But a second and far
more enduring cause was the strong prejudice existing in feudal times
against manual labor as degrading. In vain might the surgeons urge
that it was absurd to regard as merely mechanical an occupation which
necessitated much scientific knowledge. The university shared the
feelings of the faculty on this point; and while admitting the doctors
into its fellowship, rejected the surgeons. Excluded from this
fraternity of liberal science, the surgeons gave themselves diligently
to professional study. As early as the fourteenth century we meet with
their celebrated confraternity, placed under the patronage of Sts.
Cosmas and Damian, which boasted of its foundation by St. Louis, and
which maintained its existence for five centuries. The quarrel with
the doctors began in the middle of the fifteenth century, and
terminated only on the eve of the Revolution, when St. Cosmas's
College and the faculty were both alike to share the universal
shipwreck of all the ancient institutions.

The surgeons had long been in the habit of availing themselves of the
aid of the barbers in certain ordinary operations, and bleeding was at
last entirely abandoned to their hands. Just, however, as the faculty
wished to depress the surgeons, and the latter were desirous to raise
themselves to an equality with the faculty, so also the surgeons were
resolved to keep down their servants the barbers, who, on their part,
aspired to rise in the professional scale. The policy of the faculty
was to foster their rivalry, and thus keep a check upon both; but as
the nearest enemy is always the most dreaded, the time came when it
was judged prudent to elevate the barbers, whose very inferiority
rendered them less obnoxious, in order the better to make head against
the surgeons; and so the faculty adopted the barbers, in whom it hoped
to find docile clients, in order to mortify its unsubmissive children.
It magnificently compared this measure to the call of the Gentiles and
rejection of ungrateful Israel. But the barbers held their heads up
now, and requested to study anatomy. Here was a difficulty. University
regulations strictly enjoined that all public lessons should be in
Latin; but what was the use of talking Latin to barbers? So the
lecture was to be in Latin, and the explanation in French. Apparently
to facilitate the comprehension of the classic tongue by the
unlearned, the use of that whimsical Latin which Molière has so
happily caricatured then first began. A clever compromise was now
supposed to have been effected. A doctor was to teach in the
amphitheatre of the faculty without touching the body; a surgeon was
to dissect; the barbers were to be present, and try to understand.
This was in 1498.

Further concessions followed; and in 1505 the faculty allowed the
barbers to be inscribed on the dean's {692} register, and, after
passing through an examination, to be formally received as scholars.
They paid, however, for their lessons, and took an oath never to
prescribe an internal remedy, but to have recourse to the doctors for
the medical treatment of their patients. On these conditions the
proudest of scientific corporations extended its protection to, and
even took into a certain fellowship, a profession not only humble, but
so much despised, that in Germany at that period barbers were not
admitted into any trade corporation. The credit of the king's
barber--an important personage, who enjoyed familiar opportunities for
asking favors--had something perhaps to say to the prosperity of this
trade in France. And the barbers continued to prosper; it was their
interest, indeed, to keep well with the faculty, whose protecting hand
once withdrawn, they would helplessly fall back under the cruel
bondage of their old masters. But as time went on, they grew
confident. The troubles of the League unhinged society, and for some
years we find them neglecting to take the oath of fidelity. Meanwhile
surgery had attained a proud position, and at the end of the sixteenth
century was much in advance of the other sciences, both in its spirit
of independent inquiry and in experimental practice.

Many eminent names illustrate its annals at this period. At the head
of the corporation was Ambroise Paré, the restorer--we might almost
say the creator--of modern surgery. He had been a barber's boy in his
youth, and still treated his old associates with much consideration.
Perhaps this honorable notice helped to turn their heads a little, for
they actually began to set up school for themselves, and to maintain
theses. This got them a snub from the faculty, and a prohibition from
parliament, which recalled to their recollection the ancient statute
which permitted their intervention only "_pro furunculis, bocchiis, et
apostumatibus_." But the time was past for enforcing such laws; every
day the barbers more and more emancipated themselves from thraldom;
and in 1629 they obtained the right of having their receptions
presided over by the king's barber or by his lieutenant.

The surgeons meanwhile had left no stone unturned to get admission
into the university, to have a recognized right to lecture publicly,
and to receive the chancellor's benediction. They were several times
granted the king's license to this effect; but the university
disregarded the royal injunction, and even set at naught a Papal bull
which, in 1579, recognized the surgeon's title to the chancellor's
benediction. There was a consequent _appel comme d'abus_ from that
Gallican body to the parliament. Nevertheless, more than one
chancellor was found to comply with the Pope's rescript.

Such, then, was the situation of parties in the beginning of Louie
XIV.'s reign. Three rival corporations existed; in principle united,
but mutually independent. There was the faculty, petrified as it were,
in its immobility, demanding from the others a submission it could not
obtain; there was the corporation of surgeons, intermediary between
the learned bodies and the trading _bourgeoisie_, wearing the gown on
days of ceremony, holding examinations, conferring degrees, but
keeping shop;  [Footnote 107] and there were the barbers, with neither
gown nor school, but living at the expense of the two former classes,
and, by long prescription, freely practising surgery, and even
medicine to a certain extent. The reasons for old distinctions had
passed away--nothing remained but inveterate rivalries. Anatomy was
the perpetual theatre for dissension. The surgeons never had resigned
themselves to the secondary part allotted to them. They claimed {693}
to teach what they understood at least as well as their superiors. But
how to get bodies? The dean of the faculty had an exclusive claim to
those of all executed criminals, and none other were procurable.
Accordingly, whenever an execution occurred there was a regular
scramble for the poor wretch's body. The students of surgery and the
barber-apprentices assembled on the Place de Grève, where they had no
difficulty in finding recruits amongst the rabble. Scarcely had the
executioner done his work, when these bands, armed with swords and
sticks, rushed on the yet warm corpse, which was carried off by the
victors to some shop, in which they barricaded themselves against the
_maréchaussée_. Many of these disgraceful acts went unpunished.
Sometimes the faculty would despatch an official to claim the body; he
was always sent about his business; and then recourse was had to law.
The report of an unfortunate _huissier_, who was actor and victim in
one of these scenes, may be seen in a _procès-verbal_ of the time. He
was sent to seize a body which had been taken to St. Cosmas's. There
he found three professors (in cap and gown!) giving an anatomical
demonstration to a large audience. He was received with yells, and
cruelly beaten. A force coming to his rescue, the students cut up the
corpse into bits rather than let the faculty get it.

  [Footnote 107: They hang up at their windows as a sign three
  emblematic boxes, surmounted with a banner bearing the figures of
  Sts. Cosmas and Damian.]

A common interest and a common hatred of their domineering antagonist
ended by drawing together the two inferior orders, and finally led to
their reunion. The increasing number of the barbers, unrestrained by
any rule, and unrestrainable by any law, threatened to swamp surgery
altogether; and so the men of letters made up their minds to extend
the hand of fellowship to the artisans, and receive them back, not as
slaves any longer, but as brethren. In 1655 the surgeons swallowed
this bitter pill; they took upon themselves the shame of uniting with
the barbers, and the barbers entered on the privileges of the
surgeons. Parliament ratified the contract, and the faculty was
scarcely named in the affair. It was left stranded. Its servants, whom
it had raised from the dust to do its work and fight its battles, had
betrayed it and gone off with arms and baggage to the enemy's camp.
But it was not long without perceiving that it might draw profit from
what seemed a discomfiture. The surgeons had conferred their
privileges on the barbers; in return they had, of course, accepted the
liabilities of their new associates. Now the barbers were bound by
contract to an oath of fidelity, and other obligations of a pecuniary
nature, to the faculty. This body accordingly claimed either that the
union effected should be dissolved, or that both companies should be
subject to the engagements by which the barbers had bound themselves.
It renewed at the same time all its former claims of supremacy, and
its old prohibitions against teaching and conferring degrees, but,
above all, against the assumption of the _cap and gown_.

Three years did this process last, which occupies a voluminous place
in the parliamentary registers. The surgeons eventually lost their
cause; and that which did not a little contribute thereto was the
manifestation of their own miserable internal dissensions. "St. Luke
has been stronger than St. Cosmas!" exclaimed the triumphant Guy Patin
at the news of this great victory. Seventy-two doctors went in
procession, in grand costume, to thank the president, Lamoignon, and
the avocat-général, Talon; and in order to testify their special
gratitude to the latter, it was decreed that, having well merited of
the faculty, he and his family should be attended gratis in
perpetuity. A magnificent edition of Hippocrates in five folio volumes
was presented along with this decree, inclosed in a silver box. For
several days not one of the crest-fallen {694} surgeons was to be seen
in the streets, and six of their number, it is said, fell sick. Gladly
would they now have dissolved the unhappy _mésalliance_ they had
contracted, but it was too late. Both barbers and surgeons, indeed,
alike felt that the defeat was final; but on the latter it must have
fallen with the most crushing severity. Before the close of the year
the chair in which Ambroise Paré had sat--the symbol of departed
greatness--was removed. They had to pay the impost, take the oath of
fidelity--no humiliation was spared them. Thus forced into a
preposterous alliance, which was made the pretext for its degradation,
the surgical profession languished for many years. The faculty on this
occasion certainly committed its worst fault. For paltry questions of
precedence it retarded for a century the progress of surgery, which
did not emerge from the inferior position to which the decree of 1660
had reduced it until time and necessity led to a reconstitution of
surgery and shaving as two distinct professions. It was then that
Louis XV., at the instance of La Peyronie, created the Royal Academy
of Surgery, which furnished so many illustrious names to science in
the eighteenth century, and which would doubtless have extinguished
the old faculty if the Revolution had not saved it the trouble by
destroying them both.

Our space forbids us to notice the other great battle of the faculty
during the period which has immediately fallen under our
consideration--that which it waged and won against the Montpellier
doctors. But the Montpellier school would deserve a notice by itself;
and the interest which gathers round it has been heightened by the
important questions, physiological and philosophical, connected with
its name in the present day.

A word or two more, and we have done. When Molière was about to deal
the faculty its most grievous wound, it was triumphant on all sides.
Yet, as a system, it was already doomed to that destruction which had
fallen on the whole scholastic method in science prevailing in the
middle ages. Hippocrates, it is true, furnished the text-book of
medicine,  but it was Hippocrates virtually commented by Aristotle, as
all the old medical phraseology and medical argumentations abundantly
prove. Much of the ridicule attached to that venerable body against
which Molière has raised an inextinguishable laugh had its origin in
the retention of this language, with all the quiddities of the
schools, and of those curious dialectic exercises which formed the
approved method of mental gymnastics in the middle ages long after
they had been discarded everywhere else. The rest of the ridicule
which falls to the due share of the faculty must be laid to the
account of the selfishness, pride, and egotism inherent in human
nature, but which always strike us more forcibly when exhibited in a
state of things foreign to current ideas and manners.

In conclusion, we would point out what we conceive may be esteemed as
a sound point in the system of that day--its treatment of man as a
whole. There is no divorce with these old doctors between body and
soul. Modern medical science has affected to treat the body apart from
any regard to the spiritual portion of man's nature. While allowing
the immense progress made in medicine and surgery in modern times, we
cannot but feel that a serious error was committed in dividing what
our fathers deemed inseparable. The materialistic errors of the
eighteenth century, and, in particular, the materialism so prevalent
in the learned medical body, are a standing comment on the systems
which made clear decks of those fundamental principles which had come
down to us from the earliest antiquity, and which had received the
sanction of the Christian schools, in whose teaching physiology and
psychology were always closely united; the study of the soul crowning
{695} that of physiology. We witness with satisfaction a strong
reaction amongst many members of the French medical body toward views
which harmonize thoroughly with the old doctrine of the Angel of the
School, laid down long before those modern discoveries which are
beginning slowly to lead men back, not to the pedantry of the olden
time, but to those ancient paths from which our fathers would have
deemed it heresy to wander.

------

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

HANDWRITING.


Men, like trees, have a curved line which, touching at the
extremities, forms a figure which is the general estimate of their
characters. Individual traits are lost in the harmony of them all. The
hand may be delicate; the face coarse; there may be contradiction
between the eye and the brow, between the motive power and the object
desired; but still the man is a unity unlike any other man, and yet
similar in original traits.

To tell character by confining one's self to one exhibition of a
faculty, would be like trying to tell the climate of a place by
staying there one day. But in the other extreme, the collecting of
facts proves nothing unless there have been opportunities for the
display of other qualities than the ones in which the person is not
interested. I, for instance, always dislike making new acquaintances;
I get sulky whenever it is forced upon me; that does not prove that I
may not be pleasant enough when allowed to act as I please.

One man, with no taste for a certain pursuit, is forced into it, kept
at it, and, as he gives evidence of dislike, is accused of being
almost a fool. Wonderful that in something else he should be a
proficient at the first attempt. Yet it is not the doing a thing, but
the getting pay for it, that is difficult; not the reading of
character, but the applying it. What value is the being able to
understand why men's handwritings vary, save as interesting?

Yet, perhaps, many a reader will glance over this and be inclined to
acquire the skill.

First, does the man write often moderately, or very nicely? Did he
write in a hurry, or not? Lastly, is his temperament nervous or
inclined to be heavy?

Bad writing may arise from haste, nervousness, and want of practice;
but the handwriting of the illiterate is intrinsically different from
that of a nervous scholar. A man who writes badly when in haste must
be a nervous man; so scrawly writing may be reduced to want of
self-command. The man of business asks of the scholar, "Why can't you
sell your labor and become rich?" The scholar may ask, "Why don't you
give your money and write a book?" It is as impossible for one to
change as the other. Poverty of brains can be no more overcome than
poverty of purse. The right plan is for the two to divide. Money for
talent. Ridiculous for money to wait for brains, or brains to be
contemptuous of money. There must be help. Look at the writing! That
nervous sweep of the pen is not the characteristic of a man to sway
material matters; he is not thick-headed enough; the blows crush him.

On the other hand, that round, manly, firm chirography, regular as a
troop of horses, indicates outward show, but there is no brain,
sentiment, intense sensibility behind. {696} A bird is in a quiver of
excitement at the least noise, but a cow stands looking on without the
least alarm. Women write small. Indolence, affectation, and weakness
are indicated, and indolence is nature's guard for nervous persons.

Take particular instances. A is a man of medium size, high forehead,
hair of the Yankee brownish hue, eyes deep-set and rather small, nose
small, mouth firm, chin rather weak. Physically, he is inclined to be
of a nervous, sanguine temperament; hope large, caution large; animal
propensities strong. He is a man of business, writes considerably,
generally about business. His habit of mind exact. Now, what will be
his characteristic handwriting? Ask half a dozen different men who are
interested in judging of character, and compare their answers. His
habits of business will have made his writing to a certain extent
formal. He will have tried to make it a plain hand. His long practice
in keeping books will have taught him to be able to write large or
small; his nervousness will have taught him to use abbreviations; his
solidity and preference for mercantile pursuits will have made him
always more or less subject to self-command. He writes, then, not like
the man of mere intellect, to get his thoughts upon paper for
preservation, but for others to read. He thinks constantly how he will
affect others; how they will understand him. He employs formal
expressions because they are better understood. He says, "Rec'd three
bales goods," instead of telling in many words the same fact, but
writes not obscurely, but with particular care that they shall be
read.

A lawyer will fill out a writ, and, save an undulating line, no one
but the initiated would understand that a legal phrase was implied.
The man of business deals with facts. The facts may be expressed
briefly, in a formal way, hurriedly, but always with the intention of
being read. That some business men do write badly is nothing to this
purpose. I am speaking of the desire in you to write plainly.

Now my man, described, sits down to tell his correspondent that a
certain lot of goods has arrived, all save one package. He writes
rapidly, exactly, and with the wish that the others shall read what he
says at once and without mistake. His nervous power would urge him to
haste and carelessness, but his business education will restrain him.
How will his writing show it? His mind is not particularly active. He
is not thinking what to say, but to explain an understood fact. I
think, all these circumstances taken into consideration, his letters
will be open, frank regular, round, and well-looking, but at the ends
of the longest wider, and at the tops and bottoms of long letters will
be a perceptible twitch as if he grew there first a little impatient
at the delay.

Boldness and delicacy of handwriting may not indicate more than
straight-forwardness or caution. A prudent, secretive man generally
writes fine, generally also boldly. A passionate nature is confined,
and, unless great ability of pencraft is acquired, will rather betray
his interest by weakness and indecision in his letters than by excess
of power. A fine writer is either one who holds himself in control or
a thick-headed nobody, a calm, passionless man, or a mere copyist, for
to pay attention to the mere form, augurs that the man's mind is not
very much excited by his theme.

Writing full of unnecessary thrusts and turns betokens a man undecided
and wavering. A direct up and down style is his who cares nothing for
ornament--prefers comfort with regularity to luxury without. A
slovenly man scrawls his own nature. A timid man writes commandingly,
with unequal heaviness of line. Indolent men avoid trouble and write
small. A bold, careless, obstinate man writes variably, at one time
well, at another ill. Nothing can charm a man, especially if careless
himself, like neatness in the letters of a lady.

------

{697}


From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XXIII.

The long-wished-for day appointed for this great match had now
arrived, and there was not a man of a hundred in each parish beside
the two leading men who had not on that morning taken his hurl from
the rack before he went to prayers, inspected it, weighed it in his
hand, to ascertain if the _set_ lay fair to the _swipe_, as he placed
it on the ground.

Two o'clock in the afternoon had been appointed for the men to be on
the ground, and punctual to the moment they were seen in two compact
masses beyond opposite ends of the common. They had assembled outside,
and were not permitted to straggle in, in order that their approach
toward each other, in two distinct bodies, amidst the inspiring cheers
of their respective parties, might have the better effect. This great
occasion had been talked of for weeks, and was looked upon, not only
by the players themselves, and the two great men at their heads, but
it might be said by the "public at large," as the most important
hurling-match which had been projected for years in that or perhaps
any other district. The friends of each party, beside hundreds of
neutral spectators, had already occupied the hills round what might be
called the arena.

Conspicuous at the head of the Rathcash men as they advanced with
their green sleeves amidst the cheers of their friends, Tom Murdock
could be seen walking with his head erect, and his hurl sloping over
his shoulder. He kept his right hand disengaged that he might fulfil
the usual custom of giving it to his opponent, in token of goodwill,
ere the game began.

He was undoubtedly a splendid handsome-looking fellow "that day."
Upwards of six feet high, made in full proportion. His shirt tied at
the throat with a broad green ribbon, having the collar turned down
nearly to the shoulders, showed a neck of unsullied whiteness, which
contrasted remarkably with the dark curled whiskers above it. His men,
too, were a splendid set of fellows. Most of them were as tall and as
well made as himself, and none were under five feet ten; there was not
a small man among them--the picked unmarried men of the parish. Their
green sleeves and bare necks, with their hurls across their left
shoulders, as in the case of their leader, elicited thunders of
applause from the whole population of Rathcash upon the hill to their
right.

A deep ditch with a high grass bank lay between the common and the
spot where Emon-a-knock and his men had assembled.

Phil M'Dermott was silent. He was not yet reconciled to the color
which their leader had chosen. Of course he could not account for it,
but he did not half like it. To him it looked sombre, melancholy, and
prophetic. But Phil had sense enough to assume a cheerfulness, if he
did not feel it.

Emon himself, though five feet ten and a half inches high, was about
the smallest man of his party. In every respect they equalled, if they
did not exceed, the Rathcash men.

{698}

"Come, boys," said Emon; "Tom Murdock is bringing on his men; we'll
have to jump the bank. Shall I lead the way?"

"Of course, Emon; an' bad luck to the man of the hundred will lave a
toe on it."

"No, nor a heel, Phil," said the wit.

"Stand back, boys, about fifteen yards," said Emon. "Let me at it
first; and when I am clean over, go at it as much in a line as you
can. Give yourselves plenty of room and don't crowd."

"Take your time, boys," whispered the prophet, "an' let none of us
trip or fall."

"Never fear, Phil," ran through them all in reply.

Emon then drew back a few yards; and with a light quick run he cleared
the bank, giving a slight little steadying-jump on the other side,
like a man who had made a somersault from a spring-board.

The Shanvilla population--the whole of which, I may say, was on the
surrounding hills--rent the air with their cheers, amidst which the
red sleeves were seen clearing the bank like so many young deer. Not a
mistake was made; not a man jumped low or short; not a toe was left
upon it, as the prophet had said--nor a heel, as the wit had added. It
was an enlivening sight to see the red sleeves rising by turns about
eight feet into the air, and landing steadily on the level sward
beyond the bank.

The cheers from Shanvilla were redoubled, and even some of the
Rathcash men joined.

The two parties were now closing each other in friendly approach
toward the centre of the field, where they halted within about six
yards of each other; Tom Murdock and Emon-a-knock a tittle in advance.
They stepped forward, with their right hands a little extended.

"Hallo, Lennon!" said Murdock; "why, you are dressed in silk, man, and
have a cap to match; I heard nothing of that. I could not afford silk,
and our sleeves are plain calico."

"So are ours, and I could afford silk still less than you could; but
my men presented me with these sleeves and this cap, and I shall wear
them."

"Of course, of course, Lennon. But I cannot say much for the color;
blue would have looked much better; and, perhaps, have been more
appropriate."

"I left that for the girls to wear in their bonnets," replied Lennon,
sarcastically. He knew that Winny Cavana's holiday bonnet was trimmed
with blue, and thought it not unlikely that Murdock knew it also.

They then shook hands, but it was more formal than cordial; and
Murdock took a half-crown from his pocket. He was determined to be
down on Emon-a-knock's poverty, for a penny would have done as well;
and he said, "Shall I call, or will you?"

"The challenger generally 'skies,' and the other calls," he replied.

"Here then!" said Murdock, standing out into a clear spot, and curling
the half-crown into the air, eighteen or twenty feet above their
heads.

"Head," cried Lennon; and head it was.

It was the usual method on such occasions for the leader who won the
toss to throw the ball with all his force as high into the air as
possible, and, as a matter of course, as far toward his opponent's
goal as he could. The height into the air was as a token to his
friends to cheer, and the direction toward his opponent's goal was
considered the great advantage of having won the toss.

This was, however, the first occasion in the annals of hurling where
this latter point had been questioned. Emon-a-knock and Phil M'Dermott
were both experienced hurlers; and previous to their having taken the
high bank in such style, from the field outside the common, they had
stepped aside from their men, and discussed the matter thus:

"Phil, I hope we'll win the toss," said Emon.

"That we may, I pray. You'll put the ball a trifle on its way if we
do, Emon."

{699}

"No, Phil, that is the very point I want to settle with you. I have
always remarked that when the winner of the toss throws the ball
toward the other goal, it is always met by some good man who is on the
watch for it; and as none of the opposite party are allowed into their
ground until 'the game is on,' he has it all to himself, and generally
deals it such a swipe as puts it half-way back over the others' heads.
Now my plan is this. If I win 'the toss,' I'll throw the ball more
toward our own goal than toward theirs. Let you be there, Phil, to
meet it; and I have little fear that the first puck you give it will
send it double as far into our opponent's ground as I could throw it
with my hand. Beside, the moment the ball is up, our men can advance
all over the ground, and another good man of ours may help it on. What
say you, Phil?"

"Well, Emon, there's a grate dale of raison in what you say, now that
I think of it; but I never seen it done that way afore."

It had been thus settled between these two best men of Shanvilla; and
Emon, having won the toss, cast his eye over his shoulder and caught a
side glance of Phil M'Dermott in position, with his hurl poised for
action.

Contrary to all experience and all expectation, Emon-a-knock, instead
of casting the ball from him, toward the other goal, threw it as high
as possible, but unmistakably inclining toward his own. Here there was
a murmur of disappointed surprise from Shanvilla on the hill. But it
was soon explained. Phil M'Dermott had it all his own way for the
first puck, which was considered a great object. Never had such an
expedient (_nunc_ dodge) to secure it been thought of before.
M'Dermott had full room to deal with it. There was no one near him but
his own men, who stood exulting at what they knew was about to come.
M'Dermott with the under side of his hurl rolled the ball toward him,
and curling it up into the air about a foot above his head, met it as
it came down with a puck that was heard all over the hills, and drove
it three distances beyond where Emon could have thrown it from his
hand. The object of the backward cast by the leader had now been
explained to the satisfaction of Shanvilla, whose cheers of
approbation loudly succeeded to their previous murmurs of surprise.

"Be gorra, they're a knowing pair," said one of the spectators on the
hill.

But I cannot attend to the game, which is now well "on,"' and tell you
what each party said during the struggle.

Of course the ball was met by Rathcash, and put back; but every man
was now at work as best he might, where and when he could, but not
altogether from under a certain sort of discipline and eye to their
leaders. Now some fortunate young fellow got an open at the ball, and
gave it a puck which sent it spinning through the crowd until stopped
by the other party. Then a close struggle and clashing of hurls, as if
life and death depended on the result. Now, again, some fellow gets an
open swipe at it, and puck it goes over their heads, while a rush of
both parties takes place toward the probable spot it must arrive at;
then another crowded struggle, and ultimately another puck, and it is
seen like a cannon-ball on the strand at Sandymount. Another rush,
another close struggle and clashing of hurls, and puck, puck; now at
the jaws of this goal, now at the jaws of that, while the cheers and
counter-cheers re-echo through the surrounding hills.

It is needless to say that Tom Murdock and Emon-a-knock were
conspicuous in all these vicissitudes of the game. No man took the
ball from either of them if he was likely to get a puck at it _in
time_; but no risk of a counter-puck would be run if an opponent was
at hand to give it. This was the use of the distinguishing colors, and
right curious it was to see the green and red sleeves twisting through
each other and rushing in groups to one spot.

{700}

After all, Emon's color "did not look so bad;" and Shanvilla held
their own so gallantly as the game went on, that betting--for it was a
sort of Derby-day with the parish gamblers--which was six, and even
seven, to four on Rathcash at the commencement, was now even for
choice. Ay, there is one red-haired fellow, with a small eye and a big
one, who shoves three thimbles upon a board at races, has offered five
fippenny-bits to four upon Shanvilla; and well he may, for Emon and
his men had got the ball amongst them, and Emon's orders were to keep
it close--not to puck it at all, now that they had it, but to tip it
along and keep round it in a body. This was quite fair, and would have
been adopted by the other party had they got the chance.

They were thus advancing steadily but slowly. The Rathcash men were on
the outside, but found it difficult, if not impossible, to enter the
solid body of Shanvilla men, who were advancing with the ball in the
middle of them toward Rathcash goal.

"To the front, to the front, boys, or the game is lost!" roared Tom
Murdock, who was himself then watching for an open to get in at the
ball.

Forthwith there was a body of the green-sleeves right before
Shanvilla, who came on with their ball, tip by tip, undaunted.

Still Rathcash was on the outside, and could not put a hurl on the
ball. It was a piece of generalship upon the part of the Shanvilla
leader not often before thought of, and likely to be crowned with
success. The cheers from Shanvilla on the hills were now
deafening--the final struggle was evidently at hand. Rathcash on the
hills was silent, except a few murmurs of apprehension.

"This will never do, boys!" said Tom Murdock, rushing into the center
of Shanvilla and endeavoring to hook the ball from amongst them; but
they were too solid for that, although he had now made his way within
a hurl's length of Emon.

Emon called to his men to stoop in front that he might see the goal
and judge his distance.

"A few yards further, boys," he cried, "and then open out for me to
swipe: I will not miss either the ball or the goal."

"Steady, Emon, steady a bit!" said Phil M'Dermott; "don't you see who
is, I may say, alongside of you? Keep it close another bit."

"In with you, men! what are  you about?" roared Tom Murdock; and half
a score of the green-sleeves rushed in amongst the red. Here the
clashing of hurls was at its height, and the shouts from both sides on
the hill were tremendous. Shanvilla kept and defended their ball in
spite of every attempt of Rathcash to pick it from amongst them; but
nothing like violence was thought of by either side.

Shanvilla seemed assured of victory, and such of them as were on the
outside, and could not get a tip at the ball, kept brandishing their
hurls in the air, roaring at the top of their voices, "Good boys,
Shanvilla, good boys!" "Through with it--through with it!" "Good
boys!"

Emon looked out. Though he did not see the stones, he saw the
goal-masters--one red, the other green--ready expecting the final
puck, and he knew the spot.

"Give me room now, Phil," he whispered, and his men drew back.

Emon curled the ball into the air about the height of his head, and
struck it sure and home. As if from a cannon's mouth it went over the
heads of Rathcash, Shanvilla, and all, and sped right through the
center of the stones--hop--hop--hop--until it was finally lost sight
of in some rushes. But another blow had been struck at the same
moment, and Emon-a-knock lay senseless on the ground, his face and
neck, shirt and sleeves, all the same color, and that color
was--blood.

Tom Murdock's hurl had been poised ready to strike the all the moment
Lennon had curled it into the air. Upon this one blow the whole {701}
game depended. Emon was rather sideways to Tom, who was on his left.
Both their blows were aimed almost simultaneously at the ball, but
Tom's being a second or two late, had no ball to hit; and not being
able to restrain the impetus of the blow, his hurl passed on and took
Emon's head above the top of the left ear, raising a scalp of flesh to
the skull-bone, about three inches in length, and more than half that
breadth.

The cheers of Shanvilla were speedily quashed, and there was a rush of
the red-sleeves round their leader. Phil M'Dermott had taken him in
his arms, and replaced the loose piece of flesh upon Emon's skull in
the most artistic manner, and bound it down with a handkerchief tied
under the chin. He could see that no injury had been done to the bone.
It was a mere sloping stroke, which had lifted the piece of flesh
clean from the skull. But poor Emon still lay insensible, his whole
face, neck, and breast covered with blood.

There was some growling amongst the Shanvilla boys, and those from the
hill ran down with their sticks to join their comrades with their
hurls; while the Rathcash men closed into a compact body, beckoning to
their friends on the hill, who also ran down to defend them in case of
need.

This was indeed a critical moment, and one that, if not properly
managed, might have led to bloodshed of a more extended kind. But Tom
Murdock was equal to the occasion. He gave his hurl to one of his men
the moment he had struck the blow, and went forward.

"Good heaven, boys, I hope he is not much hurt!" he exclaimed.
"Rathcash should lose a hundred games before Shanvilla should be
hurt."

As he spoke he perceived a scowl of doubt and rising anger in the
faces of many of the Shanvilla men, some of whom ground their teeth,
and grasped their hurls tighter in their hands. Tom did not lose his
presence of mind at even this, although he almost feared the result.
He took Emon by the hand and bid him speak to him. Phil M'Dermott had
ordered his men to keep back the crowd to give the sufferer air. Poor
Emon's own remedy in another cause had been resorted to. Phil had
rubbed his lips and gums with whiskey--on this occasion it was near at
hand--and poured a few thimblefuls down his throat. He soon opened his
eyes, and looked round him.

"Thank God!" cried Tom Murdock. "Are you much hurt, Lennon?"

The very return to life had already quashed any cordiality toward Emon
in Tom's heart.

"Not much, I hope, Tom. I was stunned; that was all. But what about
the game? I thought my ear caught the cheers of victory as I fell."

"So they did, Emon," said M'Dermott; "but stop talking, I tell you.
The game is ours, and it was you who won it with that last puck."

"Ay, and it was that last puck that nearly lost him his life,"
continued Tom, knowingly enough. "We both struck at the ball nearly at
the same moment; he took it first, and my hurl had nothing to hit
until it met the top of his head. I protest before heaven, Lennon, it
was entirely accidental."

"I have not accused you of it's being anything else, Murdock; don't
seem to doubt yourself," said Emon in a very low weak voice. But it
was evident he was "coming-to."

Still the Shanvilla men were grumbling and whispering. One of them, a
big black-haired fellow named Ned Murrican, burst out at last, and
brandishing his hurl over his head, cried out:

"Arrah, now, what are we about; boys? Are we going to see our best man
murdered before our eyes, an' be satisfied wid a piper an' a dance? I
say we must have blood for blood!"

"An' why not?" said another. "It was no accident; I'm sure of that."

"What baldherdash!" cried a {702} third; "didn't I see him aim the
blow?" And the whole of Shanvilla flourished their hurls and their
sticks in the air, clashing them together with a terrific noise of an
onslaught.

Tom Murdock's cheeks blanched. He feared that he had opened a
floodgate which he could not stop, and that if there had not been,
there would soon be, murder. His men stood firm in a close body, and
not a word was heard to pass amongst them.

"Don't strike a blow, for the life of you, boys!" he cried, at the
same time he took back his hurl from the man to whom he had given it
to hold, who handed it to him, saying, "Here, Tom, you'll be apt to
want this."

The Shanvilla men saw him take the hurl, and thought it an acceptance
of a challenge to fight. They now began to jump off the ground,
crying, "Whoop, whoop!" a sure sign of prompt action in an Irish row.

At this still more critical moment, Father Farrell, the parish priest
of Shanvilla, who had been sent for in all haste "for the man who was
killed," was seen cantering across the common toward the crowd; and
more fortunately still he was accompanied by Father Roche, the
parish-priest of Rathcash. They were both known at a glance; Shanvilla
on his "strawberry cob," and Rathcash on his "tight little black
mare."

It is needless to say that the approach of these two good men calmed
to all appearance, if not in reality, the exhibition of angry feeling
amongst the two parties.

"Here, your reverence," said one of the Shanvilla men to Father
Farrell,--"here's where the man that was hurt is lying; poor
Emon-a-knock, your reverence."

Father Farrell turned for a moment and whispered to his companion,
"I'll see about the hurt man, and do you try and keep the boys quiet.
I can see that Shanvilla is ready for a fight. Tell them that I'll be
with them in a very few minutes, if the man is not badly hurt. If he
is, my friend, I'm afraid we shall have a hard task to keep Shanvilla
quiet. Could you not send your men home at once?"

"I'll do what I can; but you can do more with your own men than I can.
Rathcash will not strike a blow, I know, until the very last moment."

They then separated, Father Farrell dismounting and going over to
where Emon-a-knock still lay in M'Dermott's arms; and Father Roche up
toward the Rathcash men.

"Boys," said he, addressing them, "this is a sad ending to the day's
sport; but, thank God, from what I hear, the man is not much hurt. Be
steady, at all events. Indeed, you had better go home at once, every
man of you. Won't you take your priest's advice?"

"An' why not, your reverence? to be sure we will, if it comes to that;
but, plaise God, it won't. At worst it was only an accident, an' we're
tould it won't signify. We'll stan' our ground another while, your
reverence, until we hear how the boy is. Sure, there's two barrels of
beer an' a dance to the fore, by-an'-by."

"Well, lads, be very steady, and keep yourselves quiet. I'll visit the
first man of you that strikes a blow with condign--"

"We'll strike no blow, your reverence, if we bant struck first. Let
Father Farrell look to that."

"And so he will, you may depend upon it," said Father Roche.

The Shanvilla men had great confidence in Father Farrell in every
respect, and there was not a man in the parish who would not almost
die at his bidding from pure love of the man, apart from his religious
influence. They knew him to be a good physician in a literal, as well
as a moral, point of view; and he had been proving himself the good
Samaritan for the last seventeen years to every one in the parish,
whether they fell among thieves or not. He had commenced life as a
medical student, but had (prudently, perhaps) preferred the Church.
{703} In memory, however, of his early predilections, he kept a sort
of little private dispensary behind his kitchen; and so numerous were
the cures which nature had effected under his mild advice and harmless
prescriptions, that he had established a reputation for infallibility
almost equal to that subsequently attained by Holloway or Morrison.
Never, however, was his medical knowledge of more use as well as value
than on the present occasion.

Shanvilla grounded their weapons at his approach, and waited for his
report. Father Farrell of course first felt the young man's pulse. He
was not pedantic or affected enough to hold his watch in his other
hand while he did so; but, like all good physicians, he held his
tongue. He then untied the handkerchief, and gently examined the wound
so far as possible without disturbing the work which Phil M'Dermott
had so promptly and judiciously performed. His last test of the state
of his patient was his voice; and upon this, in his own mind, he laid
no inconsiderable stress. In reply to his questions as to whether he
felt sick or giddy, Emon replied, much more stoutly than was expected,
that he felt neither the one nor the other. Father Farrell was now
fully satisfied that there was nothing seriously wrong with him, and
that giving him the rites of the Church, or even remaining longer with
him then, might have an unfavorable effect upon the already excited
minds of the Shanvilla men. He therefore said, smiling, "Thank God,
Emon, you want no further doctoring just now; and I'll leave you for a
few minutes while I tell Shanvilla that nothing serious has befallen
you."

He then left him, and hastened over toward his parishoners, who
eagerly met him half-way as he approached.

"Well, your reverence?" "Well, your reverence?" ran through the
foremost of them.

"It is well, and very well, boys," he replied; "I bless God it is
nothing but a scalp wound, which will not signify. Put by your hurls,
and go and ask the Rathcash girls to dance."

"Three cheers for Father Farrell!" shouted Ned Murrican of the black
curly head. They were given heartily, and peace was restored.

Father Farrell then remounted his strawberry cob, and rode over toward
where Father Roche was with the Rathcash men. They were, "in a
manner," as anxious to hear his opinion of Emon-a-knock as his own men
had been. They knew nothing, or, if they did, they cared nothing, for
any private cause of ill-will on their leader's part toward
Emon-a-knock. They were not about to espouse his quarrel, if he had
one; and, as they had said, they would not have struck a blow unless
in self-defence.

Father Farrell now assured them there was nothing of any consequence
"upon" Emon; it was a mere tip of the flesh, and would be quite well
in a few days. "But, Tom _a-wochal_," he added, laughing, "you don't
often aim at a crow and hit a pigeon."

"I was awkward and unfortunate enough to do so this time, Father
Farrell," he replied. And he then entered into a full, and apparently
a candid, detail of how it had happened.

Father Farrell listened with much attention, bowing at him now and
then, like the foreman of a jury to a judge's charge, to show that he
understood him. When he had ended. Father Farrell placed his hand upon
his shoulder, and, bending down toward him, whispered in his ear, "Oh,
Tom Murdock, but you are the fortunate man this day! for if the blow
had been one inch and a half lower, all the priests and doctors in
Connaught would not save you from being tried for manslaughter."

"Or murder," whispered Tom's heart to himself.

By this time Emon-a-knock, with M'Dermott's help, had risen to his
feet; and leaning on him and big Ned Murrican, crept feebly along
toward the boreen which formed the entrance to the common.

{704}

Father Farrell, perceiving the move, rode after him, and said, as he
passed, that he would trot on and send for a horse and cart to fetch
him home, as he would not allow him to walk any further than the end
of the lane. Indeed, it was not his intention to do so; for he was
still scarcely able to stand, and that not without help.

Before he and his assistants, however, had reached the end of the
lane, Father Farrell came entering back, saying, "All right, my good
lads; there is a jennet and cart coming up the lane for him."

Emon cocked his ear at the word jennet; he knew who owned the only one
for miles around. And there indeed it was; and the sight of it went
well-nigh to cure Emon, better than any doctoring he could get.


TO BE CONTINUED.

--------

From The Month.

INQUIETUS.


  We put him in a golden cage
    With crystal troughs; but still he pined
  For tracts of royal foliage.
    And broad blue skies and merry wind.

  We gave him water cool and dear;
    All round his golden wires we twined
  Fresh leaves and blossoms bright, to cheer
    His restless heart: but still he pined.

  We whistled and we chirped; but he
    Trilled never more his liquid falls,
  But ever yearned for liberty,
    And dashed against his golden walls.

  Again, again, in wild despair,
    He strove to burst his bars aside;
  At last, beneath his pinion fair,
    He hid his drooping head and died!

  And so against the golden bars--
    Life's golden bars--our poor souls smite.
  Pining for tracts beyond the stars.
    Freedom and beauty, truth and light

  Those bars a Father's hands adorn
    With leaves and flowers--earth's loveliest things--
  With crystal draughts; but still we mourn
    With thirsting for the "living springs."

  Nor crystal draughts, nor leaves and flowers,
    The exiled heart can satisfy:
  We shake the bars; and some few hours
    We droop and pine, and then we die,

  We die! But, oh, the prison-bars
    Are shatter'd then: then far away,
  We pass beyond the sky, the stars--
    Beyond the change of night and day.

------

{705}


From Chambers's Journal.

A KINGDOM WITHOUT A KING.


Lichtenstein is the name of the smallest principality in the great
German "Vaterland," and this has hitherto been the most remarkable
thing that could be said about it, for in the great political world it
has as yet played no part. It appears, however, that its time has now
arrived; and for the benefit of those who might receive this bit of
intelligence with a sceptical smile, I subjoin a few words of
explanation.

In order fully to appreciate this important question, it will be
necessary to commence by going back into the past--if not so far as to
the Flood, at least to some part of the twelfth century.

It will not do to believe that the Lichtensteiners are people of
vulgar extraction. True, their ancestors hardly anticipated that the
house of Lichtenstein would ever be reckoned among the reigning
families of Europe; but this did not affect the nobleness of their
quarterings. The founder of the house was a lively and enterprising
Lombard, and related to the Este family. He went to Germany with the
object of making his fortune, and there he married, 1145 A.D., a
little princess of the house of Schwaben. They had not the slightest
fraction of a principality, but they had plenty of children to educate
and provide for. Their fortune was not very large, but, in his quality
of Lombard, the father exercised the lucrative business of an usurer,
whenever the occasion presented itself. The sovereigns of those times
were often in want of money, and our Lombard supplied them with this
article, proper security being forthcoming. When the time of
restitution arrived, it was not always convenient to the debtors to
pay in cash, and the affair was therefore generally settled by means
of small pieces of land, titles, or privileges. The Lichtensteiners
soon became allied to the greatest German families. In the year 1614,
the Emperor Matthias ceded to them, in settlement of their pecuniary
claims, the principality of Troppau, in Schlesien. Ten years later,
the Emperor Ferdinand II. added to their possessions the principality
of Jagendorff. Then they obtained the title of "Prince of the Holy
Roman Empire;" and by this time they had purchased the districts of
Vadutz and Schnellenberg, on the borders of the Rhine, and close to
the Swiss frontier. These possessions form the actual principality of
Lichtenstein, which has the small town of Vadutz for its capital.

The Congress of Vienna--contrary to its principles of
mediatization--resolved, for reasons which we abstain from
investigating, to maintain Lichtenstein as a sovereign and independent
state, and gave it an entire vote in the German Confederation.

In return for these advantages, Lichtenstein had to provide a
contingent of ninety men and one drummer to the federal army. It is
important not to lose sight of these ninety men and one drummer, for
they play a principal part in the impending question. The subjects of
the principality of Lichtenstein, according to the last census,
numbered 7,150; they are clever people, of a peaceable disposition,
but impressed with no particular awe for authorities. They even have a
slight taint of independence, undoubtedly owing to the close vicinity
of Switzerland.

{706}

A year had scarcely elapsed after the remodelling of the map of Europe
by the Congress of Vienna, when the inhabitants of Lichtenstein
addressed themselves to their sovereign, John I., and declared with
rustic frankness that they had no objection to being ruled by him,
since the Congress had decided it so; but that they found it entirely
superfluous to pay any civil list; beside, they were too few in number
to contribute every year ninety men and one drummer to the federal
army. Prince John was an excellent man, and, moreover, he was
immensely rich. He informed his subjects that he could do very well
without any civil list; and as for the federal contingent, he
concluded a convention with the Austrian government, by which the
latter undertook to furnish it together with its own. With this the
loyal subjects declared themselves satisfied; and everything went on
well until the year 1836, when Prince Aloysius I. ascended the throne.
In the meantime, the natives of Lichtenstein had made various
reflections. The conclusions arrived at were: that a prince, even if
paid nothing, entails sundry expenses on the country where he is
reigning; festivals have to be given, as well as solemn audiences,
illuminations, fire-works, etc.

Accordingly, they sent a deputation to their new lord and master, and
made it obvious, to him that he must indemnify the country for all
expenses of the description alluded to. Aloysius I. was as excellent a
monarch as his predecessor; he admitted the claims of his subjects,
and made an agreement with them concerning an annual indemnity, which
he paid with exemplary regularity.

The Lichtensteiners had now attained the object of their wishes; they
led an existence entirely ideal. They occupied a position unique in
Europe, nay, in the whole world; for, instead of paying for
government, they actually were paid for submission to it. It would now
be supposed that nothing in future could disturb the good
understanding existing between prince and people. But alas! that the
old saying should here find its application--namely, that he who has
got yellow hair, wants it also to be curled.

John II. became Prince of Lichtenstein. One fine morning he said to
himself: "Since I have no civil list, nay, since I--contrary to all
established usages--pay a tribute to my subjects, I ought at least to
have full liberty to live according to my tastes. This small capital
is a bore. I have plenty of money; I will set out for Vienna!" No
sooner said than done. John II. built a magnificent palace in the
capital of Austria, and there he lived in a luxurious style. The
government of the principality he intrusted to a minister, with whom
he corresponded. But when were those stupid Lichtensteiners to be
satisfied? They put their heads together and resolved to send a
deputation to their supreme master in Vienna; and one particular
morning, just as the prince had got out of bed, a dozen of the most
distinguished among his subjects made their appearance. After the
customary reverences and ceremonies, the deputation put forth its
request with becoming solemnity, expressing itself somewhat to the
following effect: "We don't pay your serene highness any civil list;
on the contrary, your serene highness pays an annual indemnity to us.
But your serene highness is in possession of a large fortune, and
spends it in a royal manner, by the which formerly your principality
benefited. If, now, your serene highness continues to reside in
Vienna, you inflict a serious loss upon your subjects; and it appears
therefore to us but just that you should in future inhabit at least
six months of the year your own capital." Several demands of a
political nature were appended to this petition. John II. granted
their request, and issued, moreover, a brand-new constitution, with a
parliament of fifteen members, whom he promised to pay out of his own
pocket.

{707}

But what about the ninety men and the drummer? Well, now the
difficulty arises, for they are exactly the cause of the present
dispute.

Austria having long furnished this contingent, sent, some time ago, a
bill of the resulting expenses to the prince. But the prince thought
that, as he had renounced his claims to a civil list, and even paid
his subjects a round sum every year, it could be no very heavy burden
for the said subjects to pay their own federal contingent. This the
Lichtensteiners obstinately refuse to do; the prince, on the other
side, tired of so much trouble, has expressed his intention to
abdicate, and to cede his dominions to Austria. But against this
scheme his people protest most energetically--they would rather belong
to Switzerland. Beside, if Austria annexes Lichtenstein, then Prussia
will regard the transaction with an envious eye. The prince will
neither pay nor govern. Such is the present state of things, of which
nobody can predict the end.

------

From The St. James Magazine.


A NOVEL TICKET-OF-LEAVE; OR, MISTAKEN IDENTITY.


"No two things are alike." Such is the dictum of science. "Nature,"
say the wise men, "resembles the charms of Cleopatra, which custom
cannot stale, so infinite is their variety." Even in so humble a thing
as a flock of sheep there is a personal identity, and the shepherd of
Salisbury Plain will vow to you that he can discriminate between the
countenances of each member of his woolly family, and particularize
their features. So with the herdsman and his drove, the trainer and
his stud. But why pursue the theme? Why dwell upon these flocks _qui
passent et ne se resemblent pas?_ Is it to prove that these
resemblances are mere fallacies, and have no real existence; that they
ought to be classed with Sir Thomas Browne's "vulgar errors?" No; but
to lament that whereas each member of a flock of sheep, of a herd of
oxen, or a stud of horses, carries his individuality so markedly, the
privilege is not more extended in the genus _homo_. I solemnly aver
that the number of cases of mistaken identity which have lately come
to my knowledge is not only astounding, but exceedingly embarrassing;
I may add, too, _quorum magna pars fui_; which, being translated,
means, in which I have formed a no inconsiderable portion of the
quorum. It is no pleasant sensation to know that your "counterfeit
presentment" is walking the earth; in fact, it is monstrously
unpleasant. The other day I felt a heavy hand placed rapidly upon my
shoulder, in the most unceremonious and familiar of ways, accompanied
with an equally unceremonious and familiar exclamation: "Why, Perkins,
old boy, _how_ are ye? Haven't seen ye for an age! Glad to see you
again in London! How are all the folks at Nottingham?"

How far this familiar stranger would have gone on in this fluent
strain of amity I know not. It was time to stop his exuberance of
friendship, and acquaint him with the fact that my name was not
Perkins; that I had not come from Nottingham; and, I fear, added, in
the bitterness and irritation of the moment, that I had never been to
Nottingham, and never wished to go there. "Oh, nonsense, Perkins! I'm
not going to be knocked off in that style. How are Mrs. Perkins and
the chicks?" "I tell you again, sir, you are mistaken in your man; my
name {708} is not Perkins." "It may not be Perkins now, but it was
three months ago; and whatever your new name may be, I am not going to
be turned off in this way. Not Perkins! Why, you can't get rid of that
mole on your cheek with your new name; and as to your wig, old fellow,
there never was but that shade of red I ever saw. Come, where shall we
dine?" "I must plainly tell you, sir," I replied to my would-be
friend, "you are carrying your pleasantry too far; and if you do not
leave me at once, I will give you in charge of the police." The
fellow, evidently chagrined, left me to chew the cud of bitter
reflection. "Well, well," were his parting words, "it can't be Perkins
after all; Perkins was a jolly good fellow, and this chap is------" He
had by this time got out of hearing. What an unpleasant rencontre
this! I thought to myself. Then again the subject took another aspect.
What if the real, the true Perkins, should ever be persecuted by _my_
friends as I have been by one of his?

And this leads me on to another incident in the same category, which
occurred still more recently, and might have led to very deplorable
results. In fact, I am not sure that the end is yet. I had business
out of town for a day or two, and returned punctually at the appointed
hour. Whom should I meet on the platform of the terminus but Tom
Cridlins! Now Tom is a great gossip, and an immense favorite with the
ladies. He frequents the theatres and the operas, conversaziones and
balls, and retails all the news and scandal of the day to his fair
friends. Well, I met him accidentally at the terminus; in an instant
he was full of apologies and excuses. "Hope, Sam, done no mischief;
didn't mean it, didn't mean it, 'pon honor; deuced sorry, hope it's
all over." "Why, what's the matter?" "Didn't know you'd gone out of
town, you sly dog. I understand it all. Called at Mrs. Sam's
yesterday; told her--didn't do it intentionally--saw you at the opera
Monday night with Countess Tarascona; magnificent woman; saw at once
made mistake. Why didn't she tell me you'd gone out of town? wouldn't
have breathed a word. 'Pon honor, accidental." "Opera, Tom! I wasn't
at the opera; I have been out of town since Monday morning; you're
mistaken." "Capital joke, that. Why, Sam, think I'm 'flicted with
color-blindness? No, my boy, nothing blinds me but friendship;
wouldn't have said a word had known you didn't want it." Need I say
what a miserable vista was opened up before me? A jealous wife's
jealousy accidentally inflamed in this innocent manner, and even Tom
Cridlins incredulous. These men of the world won't believe in--in
anything.

"Tom," I said, seriously, "this is very unfortunate; but you were
never more mistaken in your life. I have not been at the opera for
weeks." Oh that wicked twinkle of his eye! "Well, my boy, _I_ don't
want to believe you were there; disbelieve anything you like;
only----" "Tom, I can stand this no longer; I must not be played with;
you _must_ admit that I was not at the opera. I can bring the whole
village of Cudgleton to prove an _alibi_." "Glad to hear it, for peace
of home's sake. Mrs. Sam took it very ill, can assure you; sorry,
'ceedingly sorry; but really the countess is a magnificent woman."
"Who the devil cares _now_ about the countess? I affirm that I have
been at Cudgleton from Monday 4 P.M. till this morning 10 A.M. Left by
express, and just arrived." "There's the bell, Sam; must say good-bye;
remember me to your wife; purely accidental; 'ceedingly regret it;
believe every word you say--will back it 'gainst all odds; remember
me to your wife, and tell her _I believe you, my boy_."

"Believe me, my boy!" and that's how Tom Cridlins left
me,--light-hearted and gay-spirited, after having kindled a torch
which Acheron itself could not quench.

{709}

I returned home. Of course Mrs. Sam was _prepared_ to receive me. In
vain I protested; in vain I insisted that Tom Cridlins was laboring
under an illusion; I had brought him to confess as much. "Oh, then,
you have seen him to-day; planning and scheming, I suppose, to get up
a pack of contradictions. I understand; but you are not going to
deceive me. Natural evidence is better than got-up evidence, and I
shall prefer to take Mr. Thomas Cridlins's first statement to his
second. There are some things better fresh, and testimony I take to be
one of those things. Whatever you and Mr. Cridlins may choose to
concoct, for the future I shall believe what I please to believe."

And so on till bedtime. Would that I could say we had had it out even
then! At midnight we were only in the thick of it; and to acquire
renewed vigor for future assaults, Mrs. Sam prudently fell asleep.

But what a time for me! Oh that I could reverse the hand of the clock
eight-and-forty hours, or push it on until this trouble had blown
over! Plague on that man, whoever he is, that looked so like me! Why
was he at the opera? why was he there with a fine woman? Cridlins saw
nothing of the Countess Tarascona--only seen her once--and his foolish
head jumps to the conclusion it must be the countess. Ass that he is!
Why isn't he honestly employed, like other people, instead of idling
about on his five thousand a year, philandering and making mischief?
He can scarcely count the fingers on his hand, yet he can create a
devil of a row between man and wife!

Two o'clock struck. I had fallen into a distempered doze; still it was
somewhat soothing. With the waking reflection came back, not quite so
excited. After all it might have been worse. I remember reading of a
Bishop of Siena who had a sovereign antidote against every attack of
despondency.

"When I am disappointed or vexed, or embarrassed or dissatisfied," he
said, "I look round upon the world and notice how many hundreds and
thousands are worse off than myself, and the result invariably is,
that grumbling and vexation take wings and fly away, and contentment
and cheerfulness return and nestle in my bosom."

What, thought I, as I lay awake,--what if, instead of this conjugal
_contretemps_, I had been wrongly seized for theft and murder, and
unable to prove an _alibi_? Such cases have been. Such cases _have_
been! Why, they have taken place by scores--are taking place, and will
to the end of the chapter. And my imagination vividly portrayed the
mental agonies of the innocent convict. Memory ransacked the dusty
tomes of history to supply fresh food for meditation, fresh fuel to
feed my horror. Does not Pliny cite innumerable instances? Had not the
twin brothers of Ephesus just cause to exclaim, each to his unknown
counterpart, in the anguish and bitterness of his spirit, "Oh, Dromio,
Dromio, wherefore art thou, Dromio?" Does not the "Newgate Calendar"
teem with cases of men's lives perjured by false witnesses, or
sacrificed to a false tissue of circumstances? Did not Richard Coleman
and Clinch and Mackley suffer death for crimes of which they were
subsequently proved to be guiltless, simply because each was mistaken
for the "right man," who was not, and never is, in the "right place."
Was not Hoag tried at New York, in 1804, for bigamy, through a similar
misconception? And did not Redman in 1822, and Robinson in 1824, just
escape the gallows by a hair's-breadth? And were not these instances
enough to scarify any man's imagination, and shiver his every nerve?
My "counterfeit presentment" was evidently wandering about somewhere.
What sort of a character was he? Did ho belong to the dangerous
classes? was he a respectable member of society or an impostor? was he
cunning and clever, and capable of swindling? was he cold-blooded and
resolute, capable {710} of murder? was he passionate and revengeful?
was he anything and everything that could lead a man into a violent
scrape?

No wonder the perspiration ran off my brow as my brain scudded through
the chapter of probabilities and revealed a long gloomy vista of
perils. I bethought me of the police. Should I make known that my
"counterfeit" was abroad "stalking the world around?" Should I seek
the protection of Scotland Yard, and warn them if they heard of a
robbery or a murder, or some other villainy or felony committed by a
man answering to my description, that _I_ was not the culprit? To be
forewarned is to be forearmed; to tell them this might save loss of
time, and spare a world of trouble, inconvenience, and annoyance.
Beside, was it not exactly what my late friend Richter had done? Ah!
by-the-bye, you didn't know Richter--thereby hangs a tale. Richter,
poor fellow, is dead now; but there is a moral attached to his life,
and we, whose eidola are walking the earth, may as well extract it.

Richter was a wealthy _rentier_, living in Vienna; and a thorough
Austrian by birth, education, and nature. Quiet, inoffensive, kindly;
there was nothing striking about him in person or position. He never
meddled with that firebrand--politics; he had never troubled the most
immaculate government of the imperial and royal apostolic Kaiser with
unseasonable and unreasonable comments on its virtues or defects; he
had never violated that most sacred thing, the concordat; had never
offended lord or prince; had hated Hungary, and had always wished
Venice at the bottom instead of on the surface of the sea. He was a
peaceable citizen, obedient to the decrees of his sovereign, and
pursued the even tenor of his life with well-balanced footstep,
inclining to nothing that was likely to lead him or his neighbor into
the dark and dreary desert of trouble and vexation. Nevertheless the
Nemesis of envy marked him for her own; and he was pointed at during
the latter part of his life as one who could set the vast army of
spies and detectives formed and disciplined by that arch-policeman,
Metternich, at absolute defiance.

It was the custom of Herr Richter of an afternoon or morning--as any
one might who had nothing better to do--to stroll up and down the
principal thoroughfares of Vienna, gaze into its splendid shops, and
admire the beauty and the becrinolined silks and satins, muslins and
grenadines, of the stately dames of that ancient and quaint city. One
day--it was in the summer of 1849--Herr Richter was _flâning_ along
the Kätner Strasse, and, impelled neither by curiosity nor
covetousness, but that indefinable something which of directs our
course and shapes our conduct without our consciousness, stopped
before the "Storr and Mortimer" of the Hapsburg capital. Why did he
thrust himself in amongst that band of ragged _gamins_, who, with
gaping mouth and burning eyes, were devouring the splendors of the
plate-glass window, and wistfully wishing that that glittering heap of
rings and chains, brooches and necklaces, cassolettes and lockets,
bracelets and eardrops, emeralds, diamonds, pearls, rubies,
turquoises, etc., were theirs? Why did he mingle with them? He could
not have told you, nor can I. Only he was there, and it was evident
his heart, too, was overflowing, like Mr. Pickwick's, with the milk of
human kindness. "Poor fellows!" such was his train of thought, "you
can never get any of these treasures, though you should toil for a
century;" and then turning away, he muttered aloud, still continuing
his train of thought, "Any of them might be mine in a moment if I
chose." Was he speculating on the iniquitous force of the Austrian
guild laws, or the false system of political economy in vogue in
Austria? was he pondering over the mysteries of _meum et tuum_, or
endeavoring to solve that profound problem, "_La proprieté c'est le
vol?_"

{711}

Possibly yes, possibly no; but just at that moment a strong hand was
laid on his shoulder. "One word with you, if you please," said a low
musical voice, imperative yet polite.

The invitation was irresistible. With the utmost complacency Herr
Richter retired with the gentleman who accosted him underneath one of
those huge gateways, _porte-cochères_, which form the entrance of the
old Vienna houses. The stranger then took a paper from his pocket, and
looking intently, now at its contents, now at the features of Herr
Richter, opened the conversation in a curt and peremptory manner:

"Sir, I am under the painful necessity of requesting you to follow
me."

Herr Richter, incensed, grows restiff.

"Pray, sir, who are you that dare--" and without finishing the
sentence he threw himself into an attitude of defence, if not
defiance.

"Had you not better give less trouble?" coolly asked the stranger. "Am
I to call assistance?"

Rapidly the truth dawned upon the Herr. The stranger, though clad in
the ordinary attire of a _bourgeois_, belonged to that mysterious
body, dreaded by every section of the community, since it received its
orders, so it was universally believed, directly from the cabinet, or
a joint committee of the holy alliance itself. Yes, he must be an
agent of the secret police.

Herr Richter, however, is not hurried off to the star chamber where
political offenders are dealt with, but is conducted to the Scotland
Yard of Vienna--the headquarters of the _gendarmerie_--the central
station for criminal suspects. In Austria it is safer to be classed
with common thieves and felons than to be suspected of meddling with
politics. So the Herr's mind was materially relieved; though
ignominious his fate, on perceiving his destination he scarcely felt
enraged at the indignity offered him.

When they had arrived within the gloomy precincts of the gaol
barracks, things began to explain themselves. There was evident
satisfaction, not to say exultation, on the faces of the officials.
The captor was specially gratified; and waving his warrant, as though
it were an honorable trophy, over the head of his unfortunate prize,
he exclaimed--

"I've captured him at last; I've found him and caught him, this prince
of pickpockets!" and he enacted the passion of triumph so perfectly
that he jeered at and derided in true Teutonic fashion his safe and
sound victim in the most cold-blooded and insolent manner.

"As I was passing down the Kätner Strasse," continued this
self-gratulatory detective, "I saw him looking into a goldsmith's
shop, noting every article in the window, and heard him muttering to
himself, with a most complacent air, 'Any one of them could be mine in
a moment if I chose.'"

A superior officer was then called, and the description in the warrant
being read over, there could be no doubt as to the identity of the
prisoner with the most active and desperate thief in Vienna. The
personal appearance of Herr Richter tallied exactly with the written
portrait in the possession of the Polizer-Haus; type and antitype
could not be more exact.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the alarmed captive, "I the greatest thief
in Vienna! I am Herr Richter, a gentleman, a man of property, rich
enough to purchase twenty jewellers' shops. I beg you to be careful
how you proceed further."

"Don't excite yourself," retorted the commissioner, "we _shall_ be
careful enough. You won't catch us giving you an opportunity of
escape."

"_Donnerwetter!_" ejaculated the now infuriated _rentier_; "this is
too much of a good thing. Just send round for my banker and he will
tell you who and what I am. I'll sue you, sir--I'll sue you, sir, as
sure as you are born," repeated the Herr, growing more exasperated
every moment.

{712}

The superintendent, like most men of his profession, was well versed
in physiognomy, and could read the features of the human face and
interpret their varied expressions. "This is not feigned anger," he
said to himself.

The banker was sent for, and identified the prisoner as his friend
Herr Richter. As a matter of course the wealthy gentleman escaped the
grasp of the Philistines.

On leaving the beetle-browed gateway of the police barracks the Herr
breathed freely again, rejoicing that matters had turned out no worse
in that empire of suspicion and caprice. He moved along through the
principal thoroughfare of the Austrian capital, pondering over his
recent unpleasant adventure. At length he called a cab to take him to
his club, where he might drown the indignity of the morning in a
bumper of Tokay or Johannisberg, and invite oblivion by devouring a
good dinner. Hardly, however, had he placed his foot on the step than
he was forced deep down into the vehicle by a mysterious personage at
his back, who, whispering to the driver, "To the police station!"
enters the cab also. Speechless and aghast as though a spectre were
the intruder, the unfortunate Herr Richter looked wildly at his
compulsory companion.

"Sir," said the spectre--

"I know all you are going to say," feebly remarked the desperate
Richter, cursing his fate.

"_Of course_ you know," sneered the spectre at his side, who, however,
is no spectre, but a jolly-booking individual in the prime of manhood.
"_Of course_ you know." And with this he dives his hand into his
pocket, and drags forth the fatal warrant.

"All right!" groans out the inevitable captive, with whom despair was
fast degenerating into recklessness. "All right, you need not take the
trouble to read every trait. I have read the account myself. It is
very correct, wonderfully correct, terribly correct."

"For a gentleman of your profession," observed the portly detective,
"you are really very civil. Half a dozen such as you would
marvellously improve the manners of our modern _chevaliers
d'industrie_. I say, old boy," continued the pleasant thief-catcher,
poking the unresisting Herr in the ribs, "you ought to think it over,
and exert yourself to instill a little politeness into your tribe.
It's a large section of the community, you know. If yon get out again,
think over my advice."

The only reply of Herr Richter was a faint, helpless smile.

Arrived at the station, a general shout of laughter greeted the captor
and the captured.

The latter seated himself in a chair, and, composing his thoughts for
a desperate harangue, thus addressed the commissioners present:

"Gentlemen, here I am again, and here I am resolved to remain. As it
is, I should not be safe anywhere else a quarter of an hour until
arrested and taken to the station by _all_ your detectives one after
the other. Calculating from to-day's experience, and forming a
moderate estimate of the rate of locomotion at which I could proceed
under the circumstances, it would take me a fortnight to get home and
bury myself from the now hated gaze of mankind. You will therefore
have the kindness to let me keep you company and make the personal
acquaintance of each member of your force, who will then, I hope, be
able to recognize me when he sees me in the streets."

The commissioner-in-chief regretted that he could not assent to the
Herr's proposition. "Impossible! it would never do, my dear sir," he
informed the astounded Richter, "for a civilian, even a man of your
respectability and appearance, to know all the detectives; the state
itself would be endangered. However," he added very graciously, "I
will give you a certificate, under {713} my hand and seal, that you
are not the man you have been taken for; and this will make, I hope,
as far as lies in my power, the _amende honorable_."

"A ticket-of-leave?"

"_Comme vous voulez_."

Poor Richter surrendered unconditionally, glad, like the Bishop of
Hereford, "that he could so get away." Never from that hour did he
lose sight of that precious "ticket-of-leave," the prison release of
the Austrian Scotland Yard. He always carried it about with him as a
kind of amulet to charm away the too active _agens de police_. In his
last will and testament he inserted a special clause, ordering that
the old leather sheath, containing the official permit, should be
placed in his coffin.

"Who knows how many a fix it may yet help me out of?" was written in
the margin with his own hand.

Why should not I, then, do like Herr Richter? thought your humble
servant, as he still lay awake. If ever the dastardly hand of a peeler
be laid on my shoulder, such shall be my first step. Pshaw! why should
I not take time by the forelock? why should I not go that very morning
to Scotland Yard and acquaint the commissioners that my counterfeit
was at large, and might commit some fearful atrocity, some terrible
crime, and so beg for a ticket of recognition--a ticket-of-leave?

Alas! whilst I was putting on the breastplate and buckling on my armor
against imaginary foes, I had forgotten the real danger that
encompassed me. Whilst I was congratulating myself on the ingenious
dispensation I was to obtain from the police, I forgot that I had not
yet obtained a dispensation from the partner of my joys and sorrows
who was calmly reposing by my side. Calmly reposing, I say, for
nothing seemed to disturb her. There are natures, it appears to me,
whose repose nothing _can_ break, and it is exactly that class of
natures which can most easily and effectually disturb the peace of
others. It is a mighty faculty, and was possessed, _à merveille_, by
Mrs. Sam.

When she woke I meekly broached my idea of police protection, thereby
intending by a side-wind to establish my spotless innocence before
her. Granted the necessity of police protection, the corollary would
be that the story of the opera and the countess was all a myth. Mrs.
Sam let me run the whole tether of suggestion with surprising
complacency. I almost felt I was triumphant.

"Mr. Samuel----, you may be guilty of whatever folly you please; it is
nothing strange to you," she began in her most stately and cutting
manner; "but if you think of bamboozling me and throwing me off the
scent, you have mistaken your woman. The herring to trail across my
path must be stronger flavored than the one you have in hand if you
would turn me from the pursuit. Justice I am resolved to have, and
will sift the matter to the bottom. It is not yet time to get up, and
I wish to finish my sleep. After breakfast, with your kind
_permission_ (oh the agony of that irony!) we will together call on
the countess. She, perhaps, may be able to explain."

I knew the countess had left town; but I did not dare to say so, and
hypocritically assented to Mrs. Sam's proposal. She was furious when
she learnt that the countess was from home. "How long had she been
from home?" "A fortnight," was the testimony of the butler. "Has she
not been in town since?" "No." "Was she not in town on Monday?"
"Certainly not." How freely I breathed as this witness gave his
involuntary and corroborative evidence in my favor. Mrs. Sam turned
round upon me with an incredulous smile. "I condone it this time," she
graciously observed as we descended the steps, which reminded me very
forcibly of the verdict of the Cornish jury--"We find the prisoner
_not_ guilty, only we advise him not to do it again."

------

{714}

MISCELLANY.


_An Intermittent Fountain_--M. l'Abbe Laborde, writing to _Les
Mondes_, describes a simple apparatus for producing an intermittent
fountain. It consists of an inverted flask fitted with a cork, through
which pass two tubes of unequal length. The longer reaches nearly to
the bottom of the flask, and outside has a length of some twenty
inches. The shorter tube merely pierces the cork, and does not extend
to any length inside, and outside it ends immediately in a jet, which
can be curved round. The flask is filled with water, fitted with the
two tubes, and then, with the finger on the shorter tube, is inverted,
plunging the end of the longer tube in a vessel of water. The
instrument may now be fixed in this position, as an intermittent jet
of water begins to flow at once, continuing until the flask is empty.
The column of water in the longer tube will be seen to be alternately
rising and falling, from which phenomena an explanation has been given
of the cause of the intermittent flow.


_On Phosphatic Deposits Recently Discovered in North Wales, by Dr.
Aug. Voelcker._--An extensive mine, containing several phosphatic
minerals, was accidentally discovered early last year by Mr. Hope
Jones, of Hooton, Cheshire, whilst he was searching for other minerals
in the neighborhood of Cwmgynen, about sixteen miles from Oswestry.
Mr. Hope Jones found the phosphatic mine to be continuous for more
than a mile, and to come within twelve feet of the surface. It is not
far from the clay slate and lead bearing district of Llangrynag. The
strata (slaty shale) contain several beds of contemporaneous
felspathic ash and scoriae, and the usual fossils of the Llandillo
series are found, but not in great numbers. The strata are vertical,
and run east to west, or, more correctly speaking, fifteen degrees
north of west (magnetic). A true vein, or fissure containing vein
deposit, partially metallic, divides two phosphatic deposits. One of
them is nearly three yards in thickness, and embodies phosphatic
limestone beds, containing from ten to upwards of thirty-five per
cent, of phosphate of lime. The other, and more valuable deposit, is a
yard and a half thick, and consists of a black, graphitic shale,
largely impregnated with phosphate of lime. This deposit is free from
carbonate of lime, and much richer in phosphate of lime than the
first-mentioned deposit. In specimens taken at a depth of about twelve
feet from the surface, Dr. Voelcker found from 54 to 56 per cent. of
phosphate of lime in this phosphatic shale. At a greater depth the
shale becomes richer in phosphates, and, consequently, more valuable.
In the deeper specimens the proportions of phosphate of lime amounted
to 64-1/2 per cent. This phosphatic mine is readily accessible, and
naturally drainable to a depth of about 500 miles, and contains many
hundred thousand, if not millions, of tons of valuable phosphatic
minerals. The discovery of this extensive mine in England appears to
be of great importance to the English agriculturist, who at the
present time consumes annually many tons of phosphatic minerals in the
shape of superphosphate and similar artificial manures.



_Belgian Records_.--The Royal Historical Commission of Belgium, which
for some years past has been doing good service by publishing records
and indexes of the documents relating to the domestic history of
Belgium, held its usual quarterly meeting a few weeks back. M.
Galeshoot presented a copy of the "_Livre des Foudataires_" of John
III., Duke of Brabant, copies of which were ordered to be distributed
to the scientific and other bodies entitled to receive the
publications of the commission. At the same time, M. Piot, chief
keeper of the archives, submitted a proposal to publish the chartulary
of the abbey of St. Trond, which was founded in the year 660. The
documents of which the chartulary is composed are of high interest,
and commence in the eighth century. They {715} throw much light on the
civil and religious history, manners and customs, and institutions of
the middle ages.



_Sun-Spot Period_.--Professor Wolf, of Zurich, has undertaken the
laborious work of determining the number of Sun spots at the
dyouifferent periods when the planets, more especially Jupiter, are in
perihelion and aphelion. In the year 1859 he expressed his opinion
that Jupiter determines the leading character of the sun-spot curve,
that Saturn causes small alterations in the height and length of the
undulations, and that the earth and Venus determine the indentations
of the curve. More recently. Mr. Carrington and Mr. De la Rue have
returned to the same subject, and the latter, in conjunction with Mr.
Stewart, has found that when "the sun or a part of the solar surface
approaches a planet, the spots disappear, or the brightness
increases." It is the intention of Professor Wolf to calculate for
every five days a mean relative number of sun-spots during the period
1811-1865. He gives the results of a portion of his labors in showing
the connection of the sun-spot period of 11.11 years with the
revolution of Jupiter between the years 1805 and 1816. The numbers
given are certainly very remarkable, for whilst only 21 spots were
visible soon after the perihelion of Jupiter in 1809, 64 were seen in
1815 at the time of the aphelion. The progression of the numbers is
otherwise very remarkable.


_Plastic Wood_.--Among new inventions we hear of plastic wood, or
rather of a method by which wood can be rendered plastic, and so
applied to various novel purposes. The method consists in forcing
dilute hydrochloric acid, under pressure, into the cells of the wood,
and continuing it a sufficient time, according to the quality of the
wood operated on. When completely saturated with the acid, the wood is
washed in water, and subjected to pressure, which presses the fibres
close together without breaking them, and reduces it to about a tenth
of its original bulk, and the size and form thus impressed on it
remain unaltered. Thus, if pressed in dies, the details retain all the
sharpness ever afterwards, unless the wood should get soaked with
water. Wood treated in this way is particularly well suited for
carvings, as it cuts under the tool almost as easily as cheese; and it
may be made ornamental, for various dyes can be forced in to color it
at the same time with the acid. But it can also be made hard as flint
and incombustible, by forcing in a preparation of water-glass or
soluble flint. From all this, it seems likely that wood may be
employed in new ways for ornamental and useful purposes.

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.


THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny. By
O. A. Brownson, LL.D. 8vo., pp. 435. New York: P. O'Shea. 1866.

This book, which was merely announced in our January number, is the
fruit of Dr. Brownson's mature age, ripe experience, great learning,
and extraordinary intellectual and literary culture and discipline. It
would seem that his life-long labors as a philosophical and critical
writer had been simply a course of preparation for this crowning
achievement, and that nothing less severe could have trained his mind
to grasp and handle the great principles involved with such masterly
power, ease, perspicuity, and completeness.

The questions discussed are: Government; the Origin of Government;
Constitution of Government; the United States; Constitution of the
United States; Secession; Reconstruction; Political Tendencies;
Destiny--Political and Religious. The argument throughout is sustained
and connected in such a perfect manner, and the connection between the
divisions of the subject so thoroughly welded, that it is impossible
to make extracts at all within the compass of this notice which would
give a correct idea of the work. It must be read and studied to
appreciate its beauty, scope, and cogency.

Government and the origin of government are analyzed and placed on
their historical and metaphysical basis. {716} The constitution of the
United States is explained in a manner never before attempted or
approached. The relations of the United States to the states in the
Union, and their relations to her as a unit, are for the first time
made clear and intelligible, and secession, while dealt with
charitably as respects individuals and the erroneous premises honestly
entertained by multitudes both South and North, is logically proved to
be the highest of political crimes--"_state suicide_.'" The
constitutional and Christian method of restoration is pointed out, and
the glorious destiny of the country painted on the sky of the future
with artistic beauty and prophetic grandeur.

The style is remarkable for its strength, density, clearness, and
purity. It supports and carries forward the immense weight and volume
of thought, argument, and historical and philosophical illustration
without apparent effort, and transmits the author's meaning directly
to the intellect, like a ray of light passing through a Brazilian
pebble to the retina. If Dr. Brownson had done nothing else, his
philological labors would entitle him to the lasting admiration of
every lover of pure English.

We do not expect the work to be popular in the common sense of the
term, or that it will escape the vituperation of narrow-minded men and
those who have used all their feeble power in vain to pull down the
structure of constitutional unity. But we do believe that it will be
read and appreciated by a very large class of right-minded, thinking
men South and North, and exert an immense influence in the direction
of complete reconciliation and reconstruction by demonstrating the
absolutely illogical character of secession, while it does justice to
the honesty, manhood, courage, military skill, and fortitude displayed
by the Southern people. It is the logical defeat of the rebellion. It
places Dr. Brownson in the first rank as a Catholic statesman, doctor
of laws, and fervent, consistent, patriot. He is the citizen who never
despaired of the republic. Every man who wishes to understand the
history and politics of the country must study this book, and if we
are to realize the destiny distinctly indicated by the finger of
Providence, the principles which it has established must become the
ruling principles of the statesmen of the country. The glove is fairly
thrown to the champions of the various specious and popular forms of
error, falsehood, and fanaticism, both civil and religious, and they
will be compelled to take it up and defend themselves successfully or
be condemned by default in the final verdict of mankind. The
typography, binding, and general execution are equal to the best
London books.


JOURNAL OF EUGENIE DE GUÉRIN.
Edited by G. S. Trebutien. 12mo., pp. 460. Alexander Strahan, London
and New York.

This very remarkable and most attractive book has already received a
lengthened notice in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and we have only to add that
never was there penned a book so full of the highest and most refined
sentiment, touching pathos, combined with so much deep philosophic and
poetic thought. What a pure and innocent soul is here revealed! Not to
the world. She did not write for it, but for her own soul, and the
soul of her idolized Maurice. He has found renown through these
tear-bedewed pages of a devoted sister. We read it, yet can hardly
believe it to be, as it is, a real journal.

Her descriptions are full of the intensest interest and charming
naïveté. Here is one on a first communion:

"29th. What a sweet, simple, pious, and touching ceremony! I have only
time to say this, and to declare that of all the festivals the one I
delight in most is a first communion in a country district: God
bestowing himself simply on children! Miou, the little Françouil de
Gaillard, and Augustine were exquisite, both in innocence and beauty.
How pretty they looked under their little white veils, when they
returned weeping from the holy table! Divine tears! Children united to
God; who can tell what was passing that moment in their souls? M. le
Curé was admirable in his unction and gentleness; it was the Saviour
saying to children, 'Come unto me.' Oh! how lovingly he addressed
them, and then how he charged them to have a care of that white robe,
that innocence with which they were clothed! Poor children, {717} what
risks before them! I kept saying to myself, 'Which of yon will tarnish
it first?' They are not going to Paris, indeed; but earth is
everywhere soiled, everywhere evil is found, seduces, and leads away."

That closing sentence was not thoughtlessly penned. It was for the eye
of that brother whom Paris had seduced and led away into error, but
who never read that gentle admonition. Maurice de Guérin died soon
after, reconciled to the Church, in his last agony embracing the
crucifix; but Eugénie continues her journal to Maurice in heaven. Here
is a passage which will, if we mistake not, induce our readers to
procure and read the whole of this delightful volume. They will find
it, as we have found it, like a rare and beautiful picture, which,
with a strange selfishness, we desire to be universally admired, yet
wish it were all our own:

"This woman, this nurse who watched thee, and held thee in illness for
a year on her lap, has given me a greater shock than a winding sheet
would have done. Heart-rending apparition of the past--cradle and
tomb! I could spend the night with thee here in this paper, but the
soul needs prayer; the soul will do thee more good than the heart.
Each time that my pen rests here, a sword pierces my heart. I do not
know whether I shall continue to write or not. Of what use is this
Journal? For whom? Alas! and yet I love it as one loves a funereal
urn, a reliquary in which is kept a dead heart, all embalmed with
sanctity and love. Such seems this paper, where I still preserve thee,
my so beloved one: where I keep up a speaking memory of thee, where I
shall meet with thee again in my old age--if I live to be old. Oh!
yes, the days will come when I shall have no life but in the past;
that past shared with thee; spent beside thee, young, intelligent,
lovable, raising and refining whatever approached thee; such as I
recall thee, such as thou wert on leaving us. At present I do not know
what my life is, if, indeed, I do live. Everything is changed within
and without. Oh! my God, how heart-rending these letters are! They
contain so many tears for my tears! This intimate friend of thine
touches me as would a sight of thyself. My dear Maurice, all thou hast
loved are dear to me--seem a portion of thee."


THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER, January, 1866.

This is the first number of the new, or New York, series of this
publication, which is to be issued every two months. It explains the
reason and object of the change which has been made in the editorship
and place of publication. The Convention of Unitarians held in this
city a few months ago initiated a new and important movement in that
denomination. The radical and destructive element was put down, and
that party which is in favor of taking a positive Christian position
achieved a victory. The _Examiner_ has been made their organ, and is
to be used in promoting the end they have in view. The convention
solemnly and publicly recognized our Lord Jesus Christ, under that
title which is indicative of his character as Supreme Head of the
human race, in spite of the violent opposition of a few, which was
vented in a very unseemly and vulgar manner, shocking to the Christian
sentiment of the community. The declaration of belief is significant
of the _animuis_ of the movement, and shows it to be a return to the
principle of positive and constructive Christianity. The impress of
this idea is visible in the new phase of the _Examiner_, and has given
it at once a position far above that which it formerly occupied. In
its scholarly and literary tone it is superior to the old series; but
the superiority is more marked and evident in the exhibition of a more
fixed and earnest purpose to aim at a definite result, and to make
more positive affirmation of religious and philosophical ideas. The
writers recognize the wide-spread scepticism in intelligent minds as a
lamentable fact, and have turned their face away from the road of
scepticism and disintegration as one that conducts only to
intellectual, moral, and social death. They do not profess to have
surveyed the road which leads away from this "valley of the shadow of
death;" but they seem to be convinced that there is one, and to be
resolved to look for it and to try to guide others in a search for it.
It is difficult to say, in regard to men who allow themselves so much
latitude in belief, and so great a liberty of independent theorizing,
what are the fixed doctrines in which they agree as the fundamental
basis of {718} an anti-sceptical philosophy, and what are merely
tentative hypotheses thrown out for discussion. It appears to us,
however, that there are several sound principles of Christian
philosophy and doctrine dominating in the articles of the number
before us, and which we may suppose will hereafter give a certain
unity of character and tendency to the work. One of these is the
affirmation of the pure theistic doctrine, in contradiction to
pantheism, in connection with a manifest tendency to repudiate the
sensist philosophy of Hamilton, Mansel, and that class of writers, and
to look for a better one. Another is a recognition that there is
something in the idea of the supernatural which is real, and above the
sphere of mere natural science. A third is a principle of reverence
for the Scriptures, and the religious traditions of the human race,
connected with a disposition to reject the scepticism of the
pseudo-critical school of Germany. A fourth is an assertion of the
obligatory force of the Divine Law, and the necessity of cultivating a
personal relation to God as the principle of solid virtue and
morality. There is also a sort of instinctive apprehension that a more
thorough investigation of the difficulties which science appears to
throw in the way of revealed religion will eventually produce a more
triumphant vindication of the latter than it has ever had. The topics
to be discussed in the Review are the most real and living questions
of the age in philosophy and theology. They will be discussed by men
of no mean pretensions to learning and intellectual ability, and of
superior literary cultivation. We are glad that they have undertaken
the work, and we hope for good results from it. We have no fear that
they will weaken the religious belief of those who have a positive,
dogmatic faith in regard to any essential doctrine of Christianity.
The public which will be reached by their writings and sermons, are
already familiar with all the questions and difficulties they will
discuss. They are full of doubt, and drifting into infidelity. All the
influence which these gentlemen will gain over them will tend to check
this downward progress, and initiate a salutary retrogression toward
Christian truth.

Moreover, all discussions of this kind will stimulate the work of
investigating and exhibiting the doctrine of the Catholic Church in
its relation toward rationalism. The controversy with orthodox
Protestantism is finished, and Protestant orthodoxy has gone where
Ilium formerly went. The real controversy of the day relates to the
very foundation of revelation itself.



SPARE HOURS: A Monthly Miscellany for the Young. Boston: P. Donahoe.
January, 1866.

We have received the first number of a new magazine with the above
title. It is published by Mr. Donahoe, Boston, is well printed on fine
paper, and illustrated with much taste. The matter, of which there are
64 pages, is both original and selected, and displays discrimination
and tact on the part of the editor. It would be well to give credit to
the source from which the selected matter is taken. This magazine
fills a want long felt by the Catholic community in this country.
Since the discontinuance of the "Youth's Catholic Magazine" we have
had no periodical that gave us any reading for our children. We
cordially welcome the advent of "Spare Hours" amongst as, and trust
its subscription list may show that Catholics _do_ appreciate good
reading.


NICHOLAS OF THE FLUE, the Saviour of the Swiss Republic. A dramatic
poem in five acts. By John Christian Schaad. 12mo., pp. 144.
Washington, D.C.: McGill & Witherow. 1866.

This book purposes to give, in a dramatic form, an account of the rise
of a dangerous civil dissension which took place among the brave and
religious Swiss during the invasion of their country by Charles the
Bold, and the happy reunion of sentiment by the wise interposition and
holy prayers of a hermit. How religion, or the counsels of its
ministers, can ever supplant the arbitrament of the sword or the
stratagems of the politician in the successful adjustment of national
difficulties, will not, we think, be so readily comprehended in our
present society, and chiefly so because with us there is no unity of
religion, and consequently a multiplicity of counsels, the prolific
seed itself of discord. But that it is {719} possible, as it is
enviable, may be seen by any one who will peruse this poem. Peace
which nations enjoy is a blessing of God. "Unless the Lord keep the
city, he watcheth in vain who keepeth it." It is not to be wondered at
then that a people thoroughly imbued with the spirit of faith should
look to God for help in the day of trial, when the demon of discord
sows the seeds of strife and disunion amongst them. The thought which
evidently moved the writer to compose this work is the same which has
often crossed our own mind during the late deplorable civil war: that
if our beloved country had been one in religion, it never would have
fallen a prey to such a fearful and almost fatal division, or at least
would have rejoiced in a more speedy reconciliation.



MERRY CHRISTMAS. A cantata for Christmas eve. Affectionately inscribed
to the children of the parish of St. Paul the Apostle, New York city.
P. O'Shea.

This little brochure contains directions, with appropriate recitatives
and hymns, for a religious celebration of Christmas by children, who
describe, in a sort of infantine opera, the scenes of our Lord's
nativity as related in the gospel. It contains, among other hymns,
some of the most beautiful Christmas carols in the English language;
and when sung by the voices of merry-hearted children must have a most
edifying and pleasing effect. We are sure it will be welcomed in all
our schools, and at the fireside of many a Christian family. It was
performed with great success before an immense and delighted audience
last Christmas night in the church of the Paulists, to the children of
whose parish it is dedicated.


THE MONTHLY. Edited at the University of St. Mary of the Lake,
Chicago, III. Published by J. P. Byrne, Chicago.

The December number of "The Monthly" did not reach us until the first
of January. This is rather late, and we presume is a mistake, as it
has been heretofore promptly on hand. The number before us completes
the second volume, and is quite interesting. It contains nine
articles, the first being on "Fenianism and Secret Societies." There
are two stories, one just commenced and one concluded. The former,
"The Huron Chief," is a tale of the Catholic missions in the
northwest, and the latter, "From June to October," is by an author not
unknown to the literary world. The articles in this magazine are
original, and are well written. We find in its literary notices the
following hit at a class which we are sorry to say is but too
numerous:

"The mission of a Catholic editor is something different from that of
the mendicant who stands at a church gate with a
'Help-the-poor-blind-man' label upon his breast. And yet there are
those--not a few--who look upon a pitiful subscription of three or
four dollars a year to a paper or a magazine in the light of an alms,
and actually imagine that they are performing one of the seven
corporal works of mercy if they can be induced to subscribe, while, in
justice, they are not paying a thousandth part of the interest on
their lawful debts. Not long ago we happened to meet with a Catholic
gentleman from New York, and among the different topics of
conversation the subject of literature was brought in. This gave us
the occasion to ask his opinion about 'The Monthly,' to which he
replied that he was unaware of its publication, because he had never
seen it noticed by a certain romantic sheet of the Quixotic stamp in
that city. He is the type of a class for whose conduct there is not
the shadow of an excuse. From this we might draw a general conclusion,
and apply the same course of reasoning to the case of every Catholic
publication in the country, for it is not rare to find Catholic
families without a Catholic paper or magazine on their tables. Under
these circumstances, then, it is not surprising that not a few of them
should be strangers to the existence of the works which they _ought_
to possess, while they may be conversant with a class of literature
whose spirit is productive either of no good at all or positively
injurious, and hence without either intellectual or moral benefit."

We wish "The Monthly" a happy and prosperous year.


HANS BRINKER, ETC. By M. E. Dodge. 12mo., pp. 347. New York: James
O'Kane. 1866.

We could cordially recommend this well-written story were it not for
one passage relating to _autos da fe_ and the Inquisition. Those who
have charge of Catholic youth are bound to {720} be extremely careful
what books they place in their hands, and this becomes often a cause
of perplexity, as there are so few which are entirely unexceptionable.
Those who write with the express purpose of inculcating the
distinctive principles of Protestantism are not amenable to our
criticism. But those who do not write with this intention, and who
merely seek to afford entertainment to the youthful mind with a
modicum of instructive information, may perhaps consider it worth
while to respect the religion of a large and increasing class of the
reading public. We are not very exacting. We desire only that books
written for the instruction and amusement of the young public at large
should contain a sound and wholesome morality and nothing offensive to
Catholics. We could not desire a better specimen of this class of
books than the work of our gifted authoress, which we have read with
pleasure, with the exception of the single passage alluded to; and
this might have been left out without any injury to the purpose of the
story. Those who are disposed to profit by our hints will find us
always ready to assist the circulation of their books by our
recommendation, if their literary merit renders them worthy of it.


A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, from the commencement of the
Christian Era until the present time.
By M. l'Abbe J. E. Darras. First American from the last French
Edition. With Introduction and Notes by Archbishop Spalding. Vol. II.
8vo.,  pp. 627. New York: P. O'Shea.

The second volume of the history of the Catholic Church has just
appeared, and it is in every respect in keeping with the first volume;
is well printed on good paper, and makes a handsome book.

The Very Rev. Dr. Newman is preparing for the press a reply to Dr.
Pusey's "Eirenicon," lately published in London. We shall give it to
the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD at the earliest date.


The Messrs. Sadlier announce the publication of a new edition of
Father Young's "Catholic Hymns and Canticles," together with a
complete sodality manual. It will contain 107 hymns, arranged for all
the different seasons and festivals of the Church, as well as the
processions, ceremonies, etc.



Messrs. Murphy & Co., of Baltimore have in press a new and enlarged
edition of "Archbishop Spalding's Miscellanea." This learned work will
be carefully revised by the distinguished author, who will add nearly
100 pages of interesting matter, embracing among many other things his
"Essay on Common Schools throughout the World"--his "Analysis of the
Controversy into which he was forced by Professor Morse, in relation
to an alleged saying of Lafayette"--his "Lecture on the Origin and
History of Libraries," and his "Essay on Demonology and the
Reformation." This new edition will thus embrace essays, reviews, and
lectures on more than forty subjects, most of them historical, and all
of more than ordinary interest.


BOOKS RECEIVED.

From KELLY & PIET, Baltimore: "The Spae Wife, or Queen's Secret, a
story of the Times of Queen Elizabeth," by Paul Peppergrass, Esq.
12mo., pp 742. "The Little Companion of the Sisters of Mercy." 32mo.,
pp 102.

From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York: Parts 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of "The
Complete Works of the Brothers Banim."


From P. O'SHEA, New York: "Life of St. Antony of Padua, of the Order
of Friars Minor," by Father Servas Dirks, Friar Minor, etc. 12mo., pp
341. "The Life and Miracles of St. Philomena, Virgin and Martyr, whose
sacred body was lately discovered in the Catacombs of Rome, and from
thence transferred to Mugnano, Naples." 12mo., pp 135.

Statuta Dioecesana ab Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo P. D. Joanne
Baptists Purcell, Archiepiscopo Cincinnatensi, in variis Synodis, quae
hue usque in Ecclesia sua Cathedrali vel in Sacello Seminarii,
celebratae sunt, lata et promulgata. Una cum Decretis Conciliorum
Provincialium et plenarii Baltimorenslum, quibus interfuerunt omnes
statuum Foederatorum Episcopi et Decretis Conciliorum Trium
Cincinnatensium. Nunc primum in unum collecta et publici juris facta.
Cincinnati: Published for the Most Rev. Archbishop of Cincinnati by
John P. Walsh.


------

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 12--MARCH, 1866.

------
{721}

Translated from Le Correspondant

POSITIVISM.


A. COMTE, LITTRÉ, H. TAINE.


An exposition of the various philosophical systems constructed in our
times against Christianity, either as means of combatting it or as
substitutes for it, and showing in the false assumption with which
they all start the reason of their failure, would be an interesting
and instructive work. It would be a new _history of variations_, and
of the impotence of the human mind when it assumes to be sufficient
for itself, and the natural complement to the first, were there a
Bossuet to write it. Now it is a chapter of this history not yet
written, but which one day will be, that I propose to prepare in
rendering an account here of the positivist philosophy, of which M.
Auguste Comte was the inventor, and M. Littré is the learned and
fervent defender. To enable my readers to understand, as well as may
be, this pretended philosophy, I will first state through what
accidents and revolutions it has passed, then set forth its chief
formulas, and finally conclude by passing on them such critical
judgment as an impartial examination shall suggest.

The founder and chief of the positivist philosophy, Auguste Comte,
died at Paris in 1858, in the 59th year of his age. He was born in
1798 at Montpellier, of Christian parents; but, placed early in the
lyceum of that city, he soon lost there, under the influence of the
reigning spirit of the school, the faith of his childhood. From the
lyceum he went to the École Polytechnique, in which the worship of the
Convention and revolutionary ideas was at that period held in high
honor. We recall these circumstances, because the childhood and youth
of a man serve to explain his mature age.

It does not appear that M. Comte, on leaving the Polytechnic School,
received, as is ordinarily the case, any appointment in the public
service, civil or military--wherefore we know not. Whatever may have
been the reason, as he was without fortune he supported himself for
several years by giving lessons in mathematics. {722} After a while,
however, he was appointed repeater and examiner in the Polytechnic
School, which position he held till the revolution of 1848. His
profession as well as his aptitudes devoted him to the study of the
exact sciences; but he cherished a far higher ambition, and already
aspired to be the reformer and prophet of the human race. That this
thought, was early germinating in his mind, is proved by a pamphlet
which he published in 1822, when only twenty-four years of age,
entitled "_Système de Politique Positiviste_" (System of Positivist
Politics). He subsequently greatly modified and enlarged it, and his
pretensions above all greatly expanded as he advanced; but the first
idea of his system, not difficult, however, to discover, it must be
acknowledged was deposited in that publication.

About this time he became connected with Henri Claude de Saint-Simon,
and being much younger than the founder of Saint-Simonism, he
naturally yielded to his influence, and became very near being
absorbed in the god of the Rue de Taitbout. But Auguste Comte could
not consent to that; he would be master not disciple, and therefore,
after having written some articles in the Saint-Simonian journal, _Le
Producteur_, he abandoned the sect, separated from Saint-Simon, and
lamented bitterly the precious time which that _depraved juggler_, as
he called him, had made him lose. After this rupture he was restored
to himself and freed from all restraint; he could devote himself to
the finishing stroke of the great work he meditated.   [Footnote 108]
The solemn moment approached. Hitherto he had only staked out his
ground and sown the seeds, but the synthesis, the real _cerebral_
unity, to use his language, was wanting. Without further delay he set
himself resolutely at work, and a meditation continued for four score
hours brought him to the conception, to the preamble as it were, of
the systemization of the whole positive philosophy.  [Footnote 109]
But, alas! the long meditation brought with the system an access of
madness. It was slight at first, he assures us, a simple passing
enfeeblement of the cerebral organs, resulting from excessive labor;
but the physicians took hold of it, and then the evil grew so much
worse that it became necessary to shut him up in a madhouse--him who
had just discovered the law of the universe! M. Littré complains that
one of his collaborators in the _Journal des Débats_ threw up this
fact against the doctrine of his master, and he cites instances of
very superior men who have had similar accidents befal them. This
cannot be denied. No one can say that he is secure from such cruel
attacks; but we may be permitted to remark that there is here an
intimate correlation between the doctrine and the mental malady, since
both are produced at the same time and by the same intellectual
effort.

  [Footnote 108: M. de Chalambert forgets to add that the cause of
  this rapture was precisely the attempt of Saint-Simon, after having
  failed to kill himself, to found a new religion, which he called
  _Nouveau Christianisme_, and of which the positive religion
  professed afterwards by M. Comte is only a manifest
  plagiarism.--TRANSLATOR]

  [Footnote 109: A useless labor, for he might have learned it from
  that _depraved juggler_, Saint-Simon, who had reached it as early as
  1804. Auguste Comte never made any advance on his master, but to the
  last remained rather behind him. With all his pretensions to
  originality, he was never anything more than the disciple of
  Saint-Simon.--TRANSLATOR.]

Two or three years passed thus, after which M. Comte, having recovered
his health, resumed his labors, and in 1829 published the first volume
of his "_Cours de Philosophie Positive_," in which for the first time
he gives the principal data of his new theory. Five other volumes, of
eight or nine hundred pages each, followed at long intervals, and it
was only in 1842 that the work could be completed; not that ideas were
wanting, but money to pay the printers, as the author himself tells
us. During that time he opened a course of lectures, in which, under
pretext of teaching astronomy, he essayed to indoctrinate the public
in his principles. Thanks to these several methods of propagating his
views, he at length succeeded in gaining a {723} few disciples, not
numerous, indeed, but enough to encourage the hope of obtaining more.

Among those who from that time adhered to the positivist doctrine we
must cite M. Etex, an artist, M. Vieillard, a politician who, then
unknown, afterward obtained some note, and, in fine, M. Littré, a
philologist, a litterateur, and a member of the Academy of
Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. This last especially was an important
recruit, an unhoped-far good fortune for the new school. M. Comte
(they who have tried to read him know it but too well!) was
essentially deficient in the art of explaining and expressing his
ideas. M. Littré knows precisely how to write, if not with brilliancy,
at least with method and clearness. Moreover, he had under his
influence an important public organ, _The National_, and used it to
the profit of the new philosophy. In 1844, M. Littré published in that
journal, of which he was an editor, a series of articles in which he
extolled the positivist philosophy, declared himself its disciple, and
carried his complaisance toward the master so far as to give him the
brevet of a man of genius. However, unknown to him perhaps, a great
transformation was about to be effected; the _affective_ element of
the new doctrine, hitherto neglected, was about to make its way to the
light and play its part.

Toward that epoch, M. Comte encountered a woman, still young, Madame
Clotilde de Vaux, who lived separate from her husband. The misfortunes
of this unhappy wife, misunderstood and deserted, touched him deeply;
he received her into his house, and forthwith she became his Beatrix,
or, rather, his Egeria, for it was from her that he received the
revelation of the new dogmas which he hastened to promulgate to the
world. All at once, under the inspired influence of Madame Clotilde de
Vaux, the positivist philosophy is changed into a religion, in which
the _affective_ element decidedly predominates. With dogma and morals,
worship and the priesthood are promptly organized. The sovereign
pontificate belonged as a matter of right to M. Comte, and he would no
doubt have willingly shared it with his _holy_ companion, but she,
alas! had already been removed by a premature death, and he must be
resigned to proclaim himself alone, high priest or sovereign pontiff.

This metamorphosis was so much the bolder as hitherto one of the
principal theses of the positivist philosophy had been precisely that
the time for religion was gone, and gone for ever. It might well
startle the adepts; but it failed to frighten M. Littré, the most
important among them, for we find him using still _The National_ and
preaching in its columns, with all the zeal of the neophyte, the
dogmas of the new religion--the religion of humanity. This was, it is
true, in 1851, when each day saw born and die some new sect, and M.
Littré and _The National_ no doubt judged that, socialism for
socialism, M. Comte's socialism was worth as much as any other, and in
fact was more convenient. We are inclined, nevertheless, to believe
that M. Littré was really smitten and vanquished (for what is there in
the way of new religions of which a free thinker is not capable?), and
we are confirmed in our belief because, not content to aid the
establishment of the new worship with his pen, he actually contributed
to it from his purse. The republic of 1848 was not a good mother for
M. Comte, although he hailed it with enthusiastic acclamations and
pronounced it immortal; it despoiled him at once of his means of
subsistence. M. Comte was little relished by the _savans_, and
relished them still less, especially those of the Academy of Sciences,
who had obstinately refused to open their doors to him. M. Arago, to
whom M. Comte attributed his disgrace, judging, doubtless, that there
must be some incompatibility between the dignity of high priest and
the functions of a repeater and examiner in the Polytechnic {724}
School, deprived him of these two employments, from which he drew his
support. M. Littré then came generously to the aid of his spiritual
father, and headed an annual subscription by which the adepts must
provide for the wants of their pontiff.

While these things were in progress there came the _coup d'état_ of
the 2d of December. M. Comte bore this trial with a scandalous
resignation. The faithful, M. Littré among others, refused
henceforward all active concurrence. But, on another side he found in
M. Vieillard, become a senator of the new empire, a useful protector,
and, thanks to him, he could soon resume his preachments. It was, in
fact, all he desired, for he was singularly free from all political
ambition.

From this moment M. Comte's religious zeal only augmented, and his pen
became more active and prolific than ever. From 1851 to 1854 he
published four huge volumes under the title of "_Système de Politique
Positiviste_;" then a "_Catéchisme Positiviste_," a "_Calendrier
Positiviste_," and announced new works for the following years, when
death took him by surprise and cut short his labors. It cannot be said
that his efforts were crowned with success, and that the numbers of
his disciples was increasing; on the contrary, solitude was gathering
closer and closer around him; but his faith was not shaken, and he
remained to the last full of confidence in the future. If
_occidentality_ gave little, he hoped much from _orientality_, and, in
1852, he wrote to the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, and to the Sultan of
Turkey, to induce them to undertake to propagate positivism in their
respective dominions, by representing to them that it was the only
means of salvation that remained to them.

Such is the succinct history of the positivist philosophy and
religion. The religion, indeed, ended with its founder, for he
declared a short time before his death that he had found no true
believer worthy to succeed him in the pontificate; but the philosophy
left disciples who, though they may not accept it in all its parts,
yet continue to be inspired by its principles. Not long since they had
an organ in the _Revue Philosophique_, in which they showed themselves
much divided, and gravely discussed the question whether it must be a
philosophy or a religion with which they should gratify the human
race. They seem, however, after the advice of M. Littré, to have
finally agreed that it is necessary first of all to reproduce the
eighteenth century; that is to say, to renew, in the name of the
emancipated flesh, the war against the Church and the religion of the
spirit. Events have seemed to favor them, and instead of regretting
the suspension of public liberty, by the establishment of the new
empire, they even greet it as an advantage, since they remind us that
it was under a similar _régime_ that the encyclopaedic  work of which
they claim to be the legal heirs was born, grew, and prospered. In
short, M. Littré published, a short while ago, a new _brochure_ under
the title of "_Partóles de Philosophie Positive_," in which he
sustains all the principles of his master, and vindicates for himself
the honor of having been his most faithful disciple.

We have joined the names of M. H. Taine with the names of Messrs.
Comte and Littré, although he has never openly avowed himself an
adherent of their school. But, beside the identity of his principles
with those of positivism, the lightness of his philosophical luggage
does not permit us to devote to him a separate study. We know of him
on this subject only by the book entitled "_Les Philosophes Français
du dix-neuvième siècle_" (French Philosophers of the Nineteenth
Century), a superficial work, but agreeable, in which he judges with
wit, sometimes with justice, the chief representatives of the eclectic
philosophy, and to which he has added a concluding chapter that gives
us an exposition of his method. It is to this {725} method which we
shall, farther on, devote a few words.  [Footnote 110]

  [Footnote 110: M. de Taine has, since this article was written,
  published a work on English writers and literature, which has in
  certain quarters been well spoken of, and which really has some
  merit, though of a lighter sort.--TRANSLATOR. ]

II.

It will readily be perceived that we cannot even attempt to set forth
within our limits the positivist religion and philosophy in all their
details and developments, and that we must confine ourselves to their
chief points or leading principles. We shall take our analysis from
the works of M. Comte himself, and from the series of letters which M.
Littré formerly inserted in _The National_, and which he has since
republished in a volume entitled _Révolution, Positivism,
Conservatism_, Paris, 1851. M. Littré has reproduced the ideas of the
master with a fidelity and disinterestedness rare in a disciple, and
he has over the master the advantage of style and method.

Positivism assumes as its starting point that modern society is
suffering from a deeply rooted evil, that it is like a man in a fever
who tosses and turns in his bed, seeking a position in which he may
rest at ease, and finding none. Do what it will it can find no stable
position. In vain has it effected immense progress, for this very
progress turns to its disadvantage. Beside, what does progress avail
if society cannot enjoy it in order and peace? But whence comes this
evil, this trouble, this feverish and sterile agitation? Evidently it
comes from intellectual and moral anarchy. Nobody any longer believes
in anything; there is no longer any law, any principle, that unites
all minds in a common symbol; every one draws from himself; divided
egotisms are in mutual conflict, and seek each other's destruction. If
such is the nature of the malady, the remedy is obvious. It must be in
obtaining a doctrine which accepted by all becomes the doctrine of
all, a bond of union for them, and the principle of peace.

But where is this doctrine to be found? Is it a religious doctrine--
Catholicity, for instance? The Catholic doctrine, indeed, gave
formerly the result desired, and realized in the world an incomparable
unity; but it has had its day; science has demonstrated the
impossibility of its dogmas, and it, in fact, finds now only here and
there a real believer--the great majority have ceased to believe it.
Will Protestantism supply the doctrine needed? No; for Protestantism
is only a degenerate and illogical Catholicism. Will Islamism give it?
Islamism has certainly its grand sides, but its morality is too
defective, and its dogma is hardly less repulsive than the Christian.
It is, then, manifest that all existing religions are impotent for the
future to rally and unite in a common bond the minds of men. But as
religion cannot do it, perhaps philosophy, metaphysics, can?
Metaphysics is only the abstract form of religion, resting on the same
basis and sustained by it, and does nothing but substitute abstract
beings that have no reality for the supernatural beings imagined by
religion, and which science equally rejects. Metaphysics has, as
religion, been indeed useful, has aided science to show the inanity of
religions dogmas; but, if useful in the work of destruction, it is
impotent in that of rebuilding, and can henceforth serve only to
perpetuate intellectual anarchy--that is to say, only aggravate the
evil instead of curing it. If, then, the remedy can be found neither
in religion nor in metaphysics, where can it be found?

It is to be found in a doctrine which substitutes for the supernatural
beings of religion, and the abstract entities of metaphysics, the real
beings which science demonstrates, and the existence of which nobody
disputes or can dispute. But how find or how construct such a
doctrine? The experience of what has been done in the exact sciences
gives distinctly enough the answer. There was a time when mathematics,
astronomy, physics, did not exist, and when men explained all the
phenomena {726} of nature by chimerical hypotheses. Now, how has man
come forth from that ignorance? By observing instead of imagining, as
he had hitherto done; and in observing phenomena he discovered their
laws, and thus, with time and effort, he succeeded in creating the
sciences which are called mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry.
Can we doubt, after this, that by applying the same method or
following the same process in regard to the science of individual man,
or _biology_, and the science of society, or _sociology_, we shall
obtain the same result? And let it not be said that these sciences are
of another order; the distinction attempted to be established between
them and the exact sciences is puerile and unfounded, as science
exists only on condition of being exact, and if not exact it is not
science. Biology and sociology have, it is true, not yet the character
of exact sciences; but why have they not? Simply because they are as
yet in their infancy, as was chemistry two centuries ago; because, on
the one hand, they have been badly studied, and, on the other, because
they are more complex and less easily mastered. The difficulties, it
is admitted, are therefore great; but it is necessary to conquer them,
since the salvation of the world can be secured on no other condition.

The terms of the problem are now distinctly stated, together with the
method of its solution. The malady from which society suffers is
intellectual anarchy, and intellectual anarchy will cease only when we
have made of the sciences of biology and sociology (it is known what
these sciences mean) sciences as exact as are mathematics, astronomy,
etc.; and to do this it is only necessary to use the same method in
constructing them that is used in constructing the so-called exact
sciences.

However, the whole is not yet said. Observation is, indeed, the true
method, but observation of what? Of moral phenomena, the operations of
the soul? But what is the soul? Who has seen it? Certain
metaphysicians have, indeed, pretended to derive all science from the
phenomena of the soul; but this is a gross error; psychology is an
impossible science. In psychology the subject, or rather the organ
which observes, is precisely that which is observed--the eye striving
to see itself. To what, then, is observation to be applied? To the
body, to the cerebral organs, and, primarily, to the external world;
to the inorganic world at first, afterward to the organic world, to
minerals, plants, animals. The study of animals is especially
serviceable, since man, at most, has over the animal only the
advantage of some superior intellectual faculties, and even that
advantage appears doubtful, observes M. Comte, if we compare the acts
of the mammiferae, the most elevated, with those of savages, the least
developed.

After zoology, the most useful science is phrenology, the science
which best teaches us what man really is. Dr. Gall under this relation
has rendered an immense service, and created the true science of man.
He erred, it is true, by too minute detail, and in wishing to
determine at once the organs of theft, luxury, etc., which gave fair
scope to criticism;  [Footnote 111] but it would be difficult to
resist the accumulated proofs on which he had established his system.
In short, science is now in the position to give a classification of
eighteen interior functions of the brain, or a systematic _tableau_ of
the soul. Thus it is neither from metaphysics nor from religion, but
from zoology, and, above all, from phrenology, that we must seek the
knowledge of the laws which govern intelligence.

  [Footnote 111: Nothing is new under the sun, says Solomon. Any one
  curious on the subject of phrenology may read, as M. Cousin has well
  remarked, in Plato's _Timoeus_, all that Gall and Spurzheim, and
  their followers, have really established in their pretended
  science.--TRANSLATOR.]

However, _method_ alone does not suffice. There is needed also a
_criterion_, and here M. Comte confesses that the difficulty is great.

To observe with profit, to be able, by observation, to abstract from
the {727} phenomena their laws, we most have an anterior law, a
type-law, to serve as the term of comparison, in like manner as a
standard is necessary to determine the value of a coin. Now, what
furnishes this type? Observation? But this is only to recommence the
difficulty. The embarrassment can be relieved only by reasoning from
analogy, and a historical theory. Positivism, after all, then, resorts
to reasoning and theorizing! The sciences which are firmly seated on
positive realities began in hypotheses, and it has been by the aid of
hypotheses, ascertained afterward to be false, that observation has
succeeded in discovering the real laws of these sciences! It must be
the same with biology and sociology. Humanity began by religion, and
religion has passed through three phases, fetichism, polytheism, and
monotheism. Religion, truly, is only a fiction, but a useful fiction,
and even necessary to the development of humanity. Fetichism, in
offering plants to the adoration of man, taught him to cultivate them;
polytheism, in creating supernatural beings, gave birth to poetry and
the fine arts; monotheism, in elevating minds, has fitted them for the
culture of science. After religion came metaphysics, which, by
transforming the dogmas into abstractions, destroyed them; and, by
destroying them, opened the way for positivism. Now, what has taken
place for humanity in general must be reproduced for each man in
particular; each one of us must pass through the religious state and
the metaphysical state before we can arrive at the positivist state.
Thus, then, in like manner as it has been by means of false hypotheses
that the real laws of the science have been discovered, so by means of
hypotheses equally false, religion and metaphysics, will be discovered
the true laws of biology.

We confess that we do not very clearly perceive what relation there is
between this theory and the problem to be solved. The problem is how
to find a criterion by the aid of which the true may be distinguished
from the false; but this criterion escapes us still, and we have for
it only a second method superposed on the first, or history coming to
the aid of physiology. True, we are not told what bond connects the
two methods, or how we are to combine them, and from their combination
obtain the type-law; but we must not be too difficult, and we forewarn
our readers that they must not look for any real connection, any
logical nexus, between the various propositions which we are about to
place before them. Beyond the gross materialism which follows
necessarily from the positivist premises, all is arbitrary and
capricious; the master says it, and he must be believed on his word,
without being asked for reasons, good or bad. Our readers will judge
for themselves if this be not so, and that they may not accuse us of
exaggerating anything, we shall give generally textual citations.

After having presented the formula of its method, or rather of its two
methods, the positivist school proceeds to the application and
exposition of the consequences which are derived from it or them.

In the very outset they assert that there are no absolute truths, that
all truth is relative; the true, the good, the fair, are such only by
a provisional title; what was virtue yesterday may be crime to-day,
and what is crime to-day may be virtue to-morrow. Thus speaks M.
Littré:

"The positivist philosophy is experimental; . . . . it is composed of
relative not absolute notions. . . . When man, in the beginning of his
scientific career, launched into unrestricted researches after the
absolute, he had only this way open to him; now another way has been
opened, that of experience and induction. This way cannot conduct the
inquirer to absolute notions, and when we demand them of reason we
demand of her more than she has. The mind of man is neither absolute
nor infinite, and to try to obtain from it absolute {728} solutions is
to go out of the _immutable_ conditions of human nature."  [Footnote
112]--_Littré, Conservatism, Revolution, and Positivism_, pp. 5, 38.

  [Footnote 112: M. de Chalambert might here reply, granting man has
  no infinite or absolute _notions_, which no finite mind can have, it
  by no means follows that he has no notions or conceptions of that
  which is infinite and absolute, or intuitions of necessary, eternal,
  and immutable truth, as are the first principles of all science,
  religion, and morals.--TRANSLATOR. ]

If there are no absolute truths, then there is no God:

"This conclusion," says M. Littré "rests on the decisive results of
all scientific exploration during the long course of the ages, namely,
that nothing of what is called first cause is accessible to the human
mind, and the origin of the world can be explained neither by many
gods nor by one god alone, neither by nature, chance, nor atoms. This
result, erected into a principle, gradually takes possession of modern
intelligence, and bears in its womb the social organization of the
future of the race. . . . If, for a childish and individual
satisfaction, the idea of some theological being, one or manifold, is
retained, it is necessary to reduce the conception forthwith to a
nullity, and to purely nominal and supererogatory functions; for the
result of scientific investigation is, that there is in the course of
things no trace of miracle or government from above, and nothing but
an unbroken chain of laws modifiable, within certain limits, by the
action from age to age of mankind. As Laplace says, such a being is
henceforth a useless hypothesis."--_lb. pp_. 279, 298.

The soul has no existence distinct from that of the body, and
therefore dies with it:

"This belief (concerning the survivance of the soul), which might be
true, is not found to be so; science (always science!) has not been
able to establish a single fact whatever of a life after death; and
so, like a pond no longer alimented by inflowing streams, the opinion
of an individual perpetuity gradually evaporates."--_lb., pp._128.

There is room for liberty only because the biological phenomena are
very complex:

"No science," says M. Littré (_ib_., p. 114), "if the phenomenon has
no law, and no power (liberty) if not complex enough to offer us
struggles duly proportioned to the complication."

It follows from this that the effect of the progress of science must
be to diminish human liberty, since in proportion as it elucidates
questions it diminishes their complexity.

However, human intelligence must have an ideal:

"The ideal is its dream and its worship. Now what will be its ideal?
Humanity itself. Humanity has a real existence; it is the great Being,
really a great collective body, having a regular growth of its own,
and provided, like every individual body, with temporary organs, which
lose their activity, wither, and disappear in default of employment
and nutrition" (_ib_., p. 118). "Formerly, and conformably to the
medium in which they moved, theology and metaphysics, its slave, gave
their demonstration of the divine existence. In like manner science
to-day gives the demonstration of the existence of humanity. It is no
longer possible to mistake the growth of this ideal--the solidarity of
its most remote past with its most distant future, and this powerful
life of which each man has been, is, and will be an organ" (_ib_., p.
283). "Humanity is a real ideal, which it is necessary to know
(education), to love (religion), to embellish (the fine arts), to
enrich (industry), and which therefore holds our whole existence,
individual, domestic, and social, under its supreme direction" (_ib_.,
p. 286).

To love and serve humanity is the whole positivist moral law. M.
Littré says, pp. 291, 292: "This morality is much superior to the
morality of the past, which was founded on selfishness. The
'salvation' of the theologians is as much a selfish calculation as the
'enlightened self-interest' {729} of the materialists. The
materialists say, 'Do good: it is for thy interest in this life;' the
theologians say, 'Do good: it is for thy interest in another life.'
Never was there a more perfect system of selfishness organized in the
world; and if powerful instincts, and, it is but justice to add,
sacerdotal wisdom, had not in part counterbalanced the disastrous
effects of such an habitual direction, individual asceticism and
aspiration to salvation would have dissolved all social bonds."

It is, we see, no longer God whom we are to love and serve, but
humanity, and as humanity has few or no rewards to bestow, the worship
we render her must needs be disinterested. Selfishness falls in
proportion as the hope of reward vanishes. [But suppose one does not
love and serve humanity, will he suffer punishment or lose anything in
consequence? If so, what becomes of the positivist doctrine of the
disinterestedness of the worship of humanity?--TR.]

Such are the solutions offered by the positivist philosophy on the
principal points of biology, or the science of the individual; we
proceed now to sociology, or the science of society.

Positivism, being at once a philosophy and a religion, must admit and
does admit two distinct societies--a temporal society and a spiritual
society. We begin with the first.

The aim of the temporal society M. Littré, _ib_., p. 119, explains in
the following manner: "The historic tradition itself, without anything
forced, arbitrary, fortuitous, or transitory, conducts us to the reign
of industry. Before industry the whole past successively falls and
disappears. For the modern man industrial activity is the only
temporal occupation, the only practical activity. . . . If the
accession of the industrial regimen is inevitable, it is also
inevitable that the chiefs of our industry should be our temporal
chiefs. We have no need of patricians or of gentlemen to lead us to
war and conquest; we have no need of kings or kaisers to concentrate
in their own hands the power of the sword. Their functions, formerly
preeminent, are now without employment (!). But we have need of
directors who can conduct the peaceful labors of industry with
firmness and intelligence, labors which certainly want neither
complication nor difficulty nor grandeur. It is to this end that all
temporal power must aspire."

If so, if industry is the supreme and last end of humanity, evidently
nothing is to be changed in the present condition of property, and
that the wealth of the rich should be augmented rather than
diminished. The constitution of the family must also be maintained.
The marriage bond is, therefore, declared indissoluble; the positivist
law is in this respect even more severe than the Christian law, for,
not contented with prohibiting divorce, it even forbids second
nuptials. In the purely political order the republican form must
obtain.

"I have thought ever since February, 1848," said M. Littré, in 1850,
p. 205, "that the establishment of the republic is definitive in
France, having for it the guarantee of manners which have ceased to be
monarchical, and after this wholly theoretical point of view, I have
constantly lived, and engage to live, in security."

This confidence, wholly positivist, has been but poorly justified by
events; yet there are compensations, and, in reality, the imperial
_régime_, which has succeeded to the republic, differs not so much as
might be supposed from that which the positivists themselves wished to
establish. The principal conditions demanded by the positivist
republic are: 1. Free discussion; 2. The preponderance of the central
power; 3. The rigid restriction of the parliamentary or _local_ power
to the vote of the budget; 4. In fine, the investment of the growing
power in the hands of proletaries or working-men.

M. Comte and M. Littré both agree on all these points; they both have
an {730} equal horror of parliamentary government, under which, says
M. Littré, power passes into the hands of lawyers, pettifoggers, and
sophists. Both desire three directors; but M. Comte judges it most
suitable to choose three bankers, because society is industrial, and
bankers, who are the lessors of the funds of industry, are in a better
position than others to know its wants. M. Littré (he was writing in
_The National_ in 1850) preferred three eminent proletaries. "What is
the proletary," exclaims he, "operative or peasant, who, if he has
equal intelligence, that he should not be as capable as M. Thiers or
M. Guizot of directing political affairs?" He concedes, however, that
as a counterpoise to the central proletarian power, the _Chamber of
Deputies_ should be composed of rich men, who are the best fitted by
habit to vote the budget.

Master and disciple both agree, that Paris should elect the executive
government; and that the rest of the French people should have the
right to obey. Fear you that from such a system despotism must result?
M. Littré reassures you, with his strange apothegm, "what is despotism
in our days but government in the hands of the retrograde parties?"
That is, despotism is simply power in the hands of those whose ideas
are different from ours? Could he tell his secret with a more
refreshing simplicity? He has another word which might excite some
uneasiness. "The philosophical genius of the Convention was not
inferior to its political genius, and, indeed, they were each the
necessary condition of the other. _Positivism is their direct heir_.
The whole positivist political theory, therefore, like all
revolutionary theories, ends at last in this: Below, as the very
condition of its existence, the sovereignty of the plebs; above, as
the crown of the edifice, the dictator.

But we pass to the spiritual society. We have seen under the influence
of what sentiments the positive philosophy was suddenly transformed
into a religion. Madame Clotilde de Vaux had the initiative, and
inspired, in 1845, the religious thought of M. Comte. From that moment
it was no longer the intellect but the heart, no longer intelligence
but love, that predominated in the positivist school. The disciples
were transformed with the master. "I recognize and profess as the
positivist philosophy requires," says M. Littré, p. 298, "that this
_affective_ side of human nature should always preponderate over the
intellectual side." As soon as it was decided that religion should
take the place of philosophy, M. Comte proclaimed a great Being and
then a high priest. The great Being, who was none other than humanity
itself, was defined to be "the collection of all beings, past,
present, and to come, that freely concur in the completion of
universal order," or more briefly, but not more clearly, "the
continuous whole of convergent beings."  [Footnote 113]

  [Footnote 113: Aug. Comte, "_Cours de Politique Positive_," t. 1, p. 30.]

The high priest (_le grand prétre_) was, as we have said, M. Comte
himself. After this came dogma and worship. The dogma had already its
principal features in philosophy, and there was little to be added;
but for worship, _le culte_, all was to be created. The fertile
imagination of M. Comte promptly provided for it. He engaged at first
in compiling and publishing a positivist catechism, by the side of
which M. Littré gravely tells us "the Catholic catechism is only an
embryo." He afterward constructed a calendar; he commences the new era
with the year 1793, and names it _Cycle of the Great Crisis_. The year
is divided into thirteen months of four weeks each; the months take
the names of thirteen men of superior genius; instead of saying
January, February, we must say Moses, Aristotle, etc. The days have
also the names of celebrated men, but men of an inferior order.
Several circular letters from the high priest to the faithful were
dated the 4th of Moses, {731} 6th of the Great Crisis, or 6
Archimedes, Great Crisis 64.

There was, or rather was to have been, a college of assessor
priests--the number of whom was fixed at twenty thousand for Europe,
one-fourth of whom were allotted to France; positivist savans and
poets were to compose the college faculty.

Time and money failed for the construction of a temple for the new
worship, and the apartment occupied by M. Comte, Rue des Fosses,
Monsieur-le-Prince, held temporarily its place. The faithful
congregated there on appointed days, and every positivist believer was
required to say three prayers daily. It was, doubtless, in consequence
of one of these pious exercises that M. Littré exclaimed:

"I have too clearly perceived the efficacy of this regenerative
socialism in myself and in the little group of disciples, and the calm
content with which it fills the soul, not to desire to take part in
it. . . . In these times, when all things seem giving way, how
salutary and sweet to feel ourselves in communion with the immense
existence which protects us, with that humanity which is the spirit of
our globe, and the providence of successive generations!"--_M. Littré,
ib._, p. 294.

The number of festival days was considerable; there were fourscore and
one a year. The festival of the great Being, those of the sun, the
dead, the police, the press, etc. Nine sacraments were instituted:

1. _The Presentation_, The parents present the new-born child to the
priest, who accepts it, or, in some rare cases, rejects it. We are not
told what becomes of the new-born child that is rejected.

2. _Initiation_. At fourteen the boy is delivered to the priesthood,
who take charge of his instruction.

3. _Admission_. At twenty-one the adult is admitted to the service of
humanity.

4. _Destination_. Seven years after the young man is admitted to the
special office which he is judged capable of filling.

5. _Marriage_. Marriage is not permitted after thirty-five in men and
twenty-eight in women. Three months continence before the definitive
celebration, eternal widowhood, save in some rare cases, of which the
high priest alone is the judge, are enjoined.

6. _Maturity_. At forty-two the man is admitted to the full maturity
of the service of humanity.

7. _Retirement_. This takes place at sixty-three.

8. _Transformation_. Perfection is prepared by repentance.

9. _Incorporation_. Burial in a garden in the midst of flowers.

Once entered into this way, M. Comte cannot stop, and he even arrives
at the Utopia of a virgin mother, at first hazarded only as a bold
hypothesis, but afterward proclaimed as the synthetic _résumé_ of the
whole positivist religion, in which are combined all its aspects. He
was preparing a special treatise on this grand discovery when death
interrupted him. A word on this conception of a virgin mother. Through
the indefinite progress of positivism, the wife may one day come to
conceive without ceasing to be a virgin, and so universal continence
become the supreme law of the positivist religion, without in other
respects abolishing the social bonds of marriage.

But at least humanity, after so many efforts, once elevated to this
glorious state, will henceforth remain in it? M. Comte thinks not; he
inclines, on the contrary, to the belief that in spite of the
positivist virtue, humanity will end by decreasing and entirely
disappearing.

But we have detained our readers long enough with these sad
lucubrations of a sickly brain. We could not well pass them over in
silence, for they belong to the intellectual history of our times, and
it seems to us some useful lessons may be extracted from them.

We have promised to make known {732} the philosophical theory of M. H.
Taine, but as the matter is small, the exposition may be short. His
theory may be reduced to the three following points:

1. The philosopher in the study of science must be disinterested, and
draw his conclusions after having made his observations, without
disturbing himself as to their consequences. The philosopher, in a
word, must set the man aside, forget that he is a son, a father, a
husband, a citizen, and regard science alone, nothing but science,
with the facts observation furnishes.

2. Observation is the only method, and observation must be confined
exclusively to physical phenomena, which alone are real. Metaphysical
beings, notions of the soul, of first cause, are pure illusions;
consequently nothing survives the body, and there is no God, at least
no God that can be inferred from any observable phenomena.

3. The highest synthesis to which observation can conduce is that
there is a vast assemblage of laws and phenomena which we call nature.

All this resembles positivism too closely to be separated from it. If
we have distinguished it, we have done so that M. H. Taine should not
accuse us of making him, in spite of himself, the disciple of a master
whom, perhaps, he does not wish to own.



III.

Before proceeding to examine this strange and incoherent system either
in its general principles or in its particular application, we must
reduce to their first value the two propositions which we set forth as
its preamble, or rather as its pretext: 1. That modern society is in
want of a doctrine that unites all intelligences in a common symbol,
and enables them to live in peace and harmony; and, 2. That this
doctrine cannot be in the future the Catholic doctrine, though that
doctrine for a long time in the past filled its office, for its dogmas
are now known to be irreconcilable with the discoveries of science.

One of the most common practices of the sophistical spirit is not so
much to deny facts as to distort them, exaggerate their reach, or
confuse those which are distinct. This is what our positivists do in
these propositions. That there is at present much intellectual
anarchy, that many souls, having lost their faith, or suffered it to
be greatly weakened, refuse to recognize any law except the law which
they make for themselves, and that thence results a mental
perturbation from which society suffers not a little, is a fact too
evident and too lamentable to be questioned. It is only simple
justice, however, to acknowledge that M. Comte has the merit of
pointing it out much earlier than the most of his friends [and
Saint-Simon much earlier than even M. Comte.--TR.] Although strongly
imbued with the revolutionary spirit he comprehended [had learned from
Saint-Simon?--TR.] as early as 1822 that that spirit, powerful indeed
to destroy, is radically incapable of establishing anything, and he
never spared the illusion of those who believed that the principles of
the Constituent Assembly of 1789, engrafted on religious unbelief,
could serve as the basis of the social edifice.

But if the evil denounced is only too real, it is not necessary to
represent it as greater than it is, or to conclude, because faith in
many souls has grown feeble, that it has entirely perished, and is no
longer to be found among men. We know how difficult and how delicate
it is to establish the balance-sheet of religious society. Appearances
are deceptive, and to reach the real facts we must explore, to the
bottom, the consciences of men, which only God can do. However, there
are certain exterior circumstances which may enable us even on this
point to approximate the real facts in the case. It is undeniable that
there are in all the degrees of society men who really believe and
faithfully practise religion; others who believe but practise not;
{733} and still others who make an open profession of not believing.
The first division have representatives in every social class, among
the poor as well as among the rich, in the sciences, in literature, in
art, in industry, in politics. Their faith in general is equally firm
and enlightened, for it has been thoroughly tried, and has withstood
every attack, both from within and from without.

The second class are more numerous, at least in the great centres of
population, and form in those centres the bulk of society. They
believe, but their faith is weak, or perhaps it were more proper to
say that they have not faith, but only vague and indecisive beliefs,
whose level rises or falls according to events. They recoil alike from
avowed apostasy and from distinct, precise, and frank affirmation of
the truth. As they have abandoned the practice of their religion, it
may be supposed that they have lost all belief, but that is far from
being the case, for often the slightest breath from without suffices
to rekindle what seems to be extinct, but is really only asleep. It is
rare, above all, that at the last moment, when the passions have been
appeased, when they stand face to face with reality and see it as it
is, their last and solemn word is not a word of faith.

The third class, those who make an open profession of unbelief, are
relatively few; but they make up for their lack of numbers by their
activity and the powerful means at their disposal. They fill high
positions in the state, control the greater part of the organs of
publicity, and gain the multitudes to their side all the more easily
because they excel in the art of caressing popular prejudices and
pandering to popular passions. Beside, their hatred of truth is
greater than their attachment to any doctrine whatever, and they can,
therefore, hold themselves free to attack the faith without being
bound to defend anything of their own against it, or to maintain any
self-consistency in their attacks. What moves and governs them is not
the desire to ascertain or defend the truth, but to appear to have
independence and hardihood of mind, and to pose themselves as
despisers of the past and precursors of the future.

But to appreciate the real situation of things, it is not enough to
regard the present. We must also consider the past. No society makes
itself such as it is, and every society holds infinitely more from the
generation that went before than from the existing generation. Now, as
the society of the past was manifestly a Christian society, it cannot
be that the present should not remain Christian in the greater part of
its elements; and in fact, notwithstanding the formidable efforts that
have been made to unchristianize modern society, and its numerous
deviations, it is still the Christian spirit that inspires the laws,
manners, and institutions, and so pervades the general intelligence
that even those who would attack the Christian dogmas are constrained,
in order to render their attacks more effective, to appeal to the very
principles which Christianity has brought to light and made
predominant.

Moreover, religious faith, far from decreasing, is actually
progressing, and, if it has not yet recovered all the ground it had
lost, its gains since the commencement of the present century have
been far greater than its losses.

It is not difficult to detect the vice of the first proposition. It
consists in assuming that Christian faith is dead, while it has only
been lessened; that it has lost all authority over the intelligent,
while, in fact, it continues to exercise, directly or indirectly, such
an empire over them that its principles are universally regarded as
the foundation and support of the social edifice itself.

But not contented with assuming that Christianity is dead, the
positivists go further, and pretend that it cannot be restored to
life, because its dogmas are found to be incompatible with the
discoveries of science. This is not {734} a fact distorted, not a fact
invented, and for which no proof is offered or attempted to be
offered. We have in vain sought in the writings of Messrs. Comte and
Littré even the semblance of a reason of any sort in support of the
allegation. The positivists announce it, affirm it, but make no effort
even to prove it, or at most only stammer out by the way the name of
Galileo, as if it had not been a thousand times answered, at first,
that the sacred writers must have spoken the language of their times,
which after all is still the language of our times; afterward that
Copernicus dedicated, in 1545, to Pope Paul III., his great work, in
which he sets forth and defends the new or heliocentric system of the
universe; that nearly a century elapsed before any censure of it
intervened; that Galileo, although technically condemned, was neither
loaded with chains nor cast into a dungeon; in fine--and it is the
important point--that the holy office which condemned him, though
possessing great and legitimate authority, is not the Church, and has
no claim to infallibility.  [Footnote 114]

  [Footnote 114: This was written before the Encyclical of the Holy
  Father, dated December 8, 1864, otherwise the noble author might
  have modified his expression so as not even to seem to incur its
  censure. Without raising any question as to the infallibility of the
  pontifical congregations when they render a dogmatic Judgment
  approved by the Holy Father, it is evident that the judgment
  rendered in the case of Galileo was not a dogmatic judgment in the
  understanding of even Rome herself, for she has since rescinded it,
  and has permitted the theory to be taught in her schools as science.
  The judgment was disciplinary, not dogmatic, and assuming,
  therefore, that Galileo held the scientific truth, it offers no
  evidence of the incompatibility of Catholic _dogma_ with science,
  any more than the condemnation of an unwarrantable insurrection in a
  monarchical country in favor of democracy would prove that the
  Church is hostile to liberty.--TRANSLATOR. ]

Unable to produce any facts to support their thesis, the positivists
resort to historical induction. They argue that the sciences have been
in a state of continuous progress for three centuries; but during the
same three centuries they say faith has been in a state of continual
decline; there is, therefore, an intimate correlation between the two
facts, so intimate that we may assert the former as generating the
latter. But to a legitimate induction, all the facts on which it
depends should be carefully observed and reported, which in this case
is not done.

It is not true that faith has declined in a fatal and continuous
manner; nor is it true that the sciences have made their greatest
progress in those epochs in which faith has most declined. Ask
history. In the beginning of the sixteenth century occurred Luther's
revolt; It produced in the Christian world a universal shock. During
several years heresy made every day new progress, and a part of Europe
was detached from the centre of unity; but very soon the movement was
arrested, and before the end of that same century a reaction against
it had begun, followed by a religious revival or re-birth which
produced one of the grandest epochs in the history of mankind. In the
eighteenth century a new attack, more formidable than the first, is
made on faith; it triumphs, and seems to be on the point of destroying
all truth. Yet from the beginning of the next century a second
religious restoration is effected, of which it may be as yet too early
to determine the full bearing on the future, but which has already had
too serious results to allow its great importance to be questioned.
Thus out of four centuries there are two, the sixteenth and the
eighteenth, in which faith has declined, and two, the seventeenth and
the nineteenth, in which faith has revived and increased. There is not
then a fatal and continuous march of faith in a certain direction.
There are two contrary currents that meet and combat each other,
without its being lawful as yet from the point of view of science to
say which will ultimately triumph.

But at least they are the centuries of doubt and unbelief in which
science has made her greatest progress? Not at all. Precisely the
contrary is the fact. The sixteenth century did hardly anything for
science, but the seventeenth century, the age of the {735} Catholic
revival, was the age of the Galileos, the Pascals, the Des Cartes, the
Newtons, the Leibnitzes--the age in which not only philosophy,
letters, the arts, were carried to their highest degree of splendor,
but the great principles of modern science were discovered and
established--principles from which have resulted all subsequent
discoveries, which, it is well to remark, have been only an affair of
application and patience, not of invention and genius.

But the positivists insist again that, granting there is no absolute
incompatibility between science and faith, since the masters of
science have been decided believers, and are so still; granting also
that there is no direct relation between the progress of science and
the decline of faith, since the periods in which science has grown are
not coincident with those in which faith has diminished--still the
general result of three centuries of activity is that science has
gained and faith has lost, and it is difficult, therefore, to suppose
that these two facts are wholly foreign one to the other.

We reply that if this were proposed as a mere hypothesis, it might
pass, and there would be no inconvenience in admitting that the
progress of science may have indirectly, and so by way of reaction,
had some influence in weakening religious beliefs. In all progress, in
every increase of power, there is danger. Man is naturally weak, and
as soon as he feels himself in possession of a new force he suffers
himself to be dazzled by it, attributes to himself all its merits, and
soon comes to believe that he can suffice for himself, and dispense
with all aid from above. Consider what takes place in our days.
Certainly, it is impossible to conceive in what respect steam,
chloroform, electricity, or photography conflicts with any Christian
dogma. Religion, instead of standing aghast at these discoveries in
the application of science, applauds them, and sees in them new and
more efficient means of doing her own work, of ameliorating the
condition of a large number, of propagating the Gospel, and drawing
closer the bonds of unity throughout the world. Yet such is not the
impression which they produce on all minds. Certain persons, at sight
of so many marvels, are so carried away with enthusiasm as to conclude
that man is on the eve of becoming God. The impression will, no doubt,
soon wear away, but till it does, the intoxication continues, and
hearts are inflated. In this way science may come to the aid of
unbelief; not by itself, nor by the results it gives; but by the
presumptuous confidence with which it too often fills the mind. As it
is not and cannot be the principal and efficient cause of the success
of unbelief, we must seek that cause elsewhere, in the unloosing of
the passions, always impatient of the restraints of faith. History in
fact teaches us that the great revolts of the intellect are
contemporary with those of the will and the senses; that it was in the
scandals of the revival of ancient learning in the fifteenth century
that Protestantism was conceived; that more lately it was the _les
petits soupers_ of the Regency and under the impure inspirations of
the Pompadours and the Du Barrys that was spun and woven the
conspiracy against the God of Calvary. Modern unbelief may boast of
the independence it has acquired, but assuredly not, if it has any
self-respect, of its shameful cradle.

So we see that the very propositions which serve as a pretext to the
positivist system are belied by the historical facts in the case. Far
from being ready to perish, religion is every day making new progress,
and none of its dogmas have as yet been contradicted or weakened by
any of the real discoveries of science.

The positivist system itself, it will be recollected, is based on the
assumption that no doctrine can henceforth obtain the assent of the
intelligent, save on condition of being positive, {736} that is, as
rigidly demonstrable as are the physical sciences. Such a theory
hardly needs refuting, so contrary is it to common sense and the
universal beliefs of the race. But as it has been set forth at length
in a series of huge volumes, maintained and lauded in an important
political journal, counts still many adepts, has been recalled not
long since to the public attention by a work written by one of their
number who has the honor of being a member of the Institute [and as it
is gaining no little ground, under its philosophical aspect, in Great
Britain and the United States--TR.], it is not permissible to neglect
it, and we feel it necessary, if not to combat it directly, at least
to point out the levity and inconsistency of its originators and
adherents, who claim to be reformers of the human race, and with
imperturbable gravity pretend that for six thousand years mankind has
been the dupe of the grossest error, and that before their advent
there were only illusion and falsehood in the world.

The assumption from which the system proceeds is that the real, the
positive, is restricted to the world of the senses, or the material
universe, and that what transcends the material order is for us at
least unreal--a thesis directly opposed to that of Des Cartes, who
taught that thought is the phenomenon the most real, the most positive
of all. Now which is right, the author of the "Discourse on Method" or
M. Comte? No great effort is needed to prove that it is Des Cartes,
and that the existence of spiritual phenomena is not only more certain
than that of physical phenomena, but more positive and more easily
proved, because the knowledge of spiritual phenomena is direct and
immediate, while that of sensible phenomena is only indirect and
mediate. All knowledge, rational or sensible, is a spiritual
phenomenon. Matter may be the occasion or medium of it, but can never
produce it, for it is always spirit or mind that knows even in
sensation or sentiment. We may be deceived as to the meaning of the
phenomenon, but never as to its existence. [Footnote 115]

    [Footnote 115: As a subjective fact, there can be no doubt of its
    existence: but this, with all respect to M. de Chalambert, is
    nothing to the purpose. All phenomena are subjective, and
    therefore mental, if you will, spiritual; but is there an
    objective spiritual reality revealed by these spiritual phenomena?
    This is the question, and I need not say it is a question not
    answerable on the Cartesian principle or method. Few persons
    outside of France regard Des Cartes as worth citing as an
    authority in philosophy, for, beginning with thought as a
    psychological phenomenon, he never did and never could attain
    scientifically to any objective existence, either spiritual or
    material. The error of Des Cartes was in seeking to settle the
    question of method before settling that of principles; the
    principles determine the method, not the method the principles, as
    M. Cousin, misled by his veneration for Des Cartes, pretends: and
    the principles are necessarily _à priori_, prior to experience--as
    without them experience is not possible--given, intuitive, and
    therefore objective. The real existence of the spiritual or
    supersensible order, superior to and distinct from the material,
    is certain from the demonstrable fact that the sensible has its
    root only in the supersensible, and the material in the spiritual,
    both as to the order of knowledge and as to the order of being.
    The author maintains the truth against the positivists, but his
    reasoning is not conclusive, because he is misled by the Cartesian
    method, which is the method of the positivists themselves.
    Malebranche followed in one direction the Cartesian method, and
    lost the material world; the Abbé Condillac followed it in another
    direction, and lost the spiritual world; the positivists follow it
    in both, and lose all reality, and, with Sir William Hamilton,
    make truth purely relative; that is, subjective, and as pure
    subjectivity is impossible, thus positivism is positive nihilism.
    The author proceeds to refute, on the Cartesian method, the denial
    by the positivists of the existence of spirit, of the absolute, of
    God, and the immortality of the soul; but as I do not regard his
    reasoning, though in defence of the truth, conclusive, I omit it,
    and pass to his exhibition of the inconsistencies and absurdities
    of positivism, in which he is admirable and perfectly
    successful.--TRANSLATOR. ]

Nevertheless, after having denied all the truths or principles which
are the basis of all moral and intellectual life, the positivists
pretend to pass from negation to affirmation, and undertake in their
turn to dogmatize. But to affirm any doctrine whatever it needs a
method, and we have shown that on the purely negative method which
they commence with, they can never legitimately affirm anything. What
then can they do? They invent another method, which they call
induction, because they pretend that it is from the observation of the
facts of history that they induce or draw their doctrine; but the
process they adopt has none of the characters of a real induction.
{737} To induction three things are necessary; the principle of
causality, general notions, and particular facts.  [Footnote 116]

  [Footnote 116: I transfer the word _notion_, although no notion is
  or can be general, because French writers frequently use it when
  they really mean not _notion_, but the object or thing noted. I do
  not approve of this use either in French or English. We may have
  notions of the general, but not general notions; a notion, if you
  will, as has been previously said, of the absolute (though absolute
  is itself a bad term for necessary, eternal, immutable, and infinite
  being), but not absolute notions. The _notion_ is subjective, the
  _noted_ is objective. To all legitimate induction there is necessary
  causality, the general--the universal, as say the schoolmen--and the
  particular, and unless the mind has _à priori_ knowledge or
  intuition of them, no induction is possible. This is what the author
  evidently means, and it is undoubtedly true.--TRANSLATOR.]

Experience gives the particular facts, and, by the aid of the
principle of causality, we determine by way of induction their laws;
that is, by means of particular facts we determine the general notions
hitherto confused and vaguely perceived [that is, refer them to their
respective genera or species.---TRANSLATOR.] The positivists, then,
who recognize no principle [of causality, and deny all general notions
or notions of the general prior to the particular facts.--TRANSLATOR.]
can make no induction, and have no scientific basis, no logical nexus
for their theories, and are left to the caprices of their own
imagination. Imagination, and imagination alone, is the new method
they employ.

The human mind, according to the positivists, is radically incapable
of knowing causes, and if it attempts to know them it exhausts itself
with fruitless efforts. This is wherefore they treat as illusions all
the causes which philosophers assign to phenomena. They deny the
metaphysical being, God as cause; yet they substitute the metaphysical
being humanity, and not content with affirming it, they even define
it, both as principle and cause, to be a great collective beings--
living a life of its own, and advancing continually through the ages
from progress to progress, and from whom all individual existences
proceed as their beginning, and to whom they all return as their end.
Nor is this all. After having defined this metaphysical being, they
explain it, and pretend to know what it has been, what it is, and what
it will be--they, who declare that Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine,
St. Thomas, Des Cartes, and Leibnitz have done nothing, because in
attempting to penetrate the mystery of human life these master minds
broke against an insolvable problem--they, we say, do not hesitate to
raise the veil, and to give us the complete solution of the far more
formidable mystery of human destiny. They know its origin. Humanity
has begun in fetichism; M. Littré, however, has discovered, since the
death of his master, that prior to fetichism there was a state in
which man like the brute sought only to satisfy his physical wants;
but he maintains that at any rate, if fetichism was not the first it
was at least the second state of humanity. If we ask him what proofs
he has of this, he confesses that if direct facts are demanded he has
none; but he has arguments, and here is the way in which he argues:

In America and the unexplored regions of Africa savage tribes are
found who were and still are fetich worshippers, _therefore_ so was it
with all men in the beginning! Such is the positivist induction.
[Footnote 117]

  [Footnote 117: How know the positivists that these savage tribes do
  not represent the degenerate man, rather than the primitive man--man
  cut off from communion with the central life of humanity, not man in
  his first developments?--TRANSLATOR.]

Positivism continues: From fetichism humanity passed to polytheism,
and then from polytheism to monotheism. But it forgets that it is not
permitted to take the part for the whole, and if Europe became
Christian after having been pagan, it has not been the same with all
the world, for on one side we find the people Jewish, who have always
believed in the unity of God, and, on the other side, we find many
nations still remaining immersed in the darkness of idolatry. But we
must not be too exacting with the positivists. They have here really
some partial facts which they can use, though not legitimately as the
basis of an argument.  [Footnote 118]

  [Footnote 118: Truth is older than error, and man began not in
  error, but in the truth, the sole principle of life and growth.
  Monotheism preceded, historically, both fetichism and polytheism,
  and the earliest and most authentic historical documents that we
  have prove that all the world began by believing in and worshipping
  one God. Polytheism bears evident traces of a prior religion which
  asserted the unity of God, of being not a development of fetichism,
  but a corruption of monotheism, as positivism bears unmistakable
  traces of its being a corruption of Christianity; a conclusive
  evidence that it never could have originated in a society that had
  never known and believed the Christian religion.--TRANSLATOR.]

As to the future, who can doubt that humanity will be positivist? Can
any one prove the contrary? Is not the future a domain open to all,
and where each may imagine for himself the part that pleases him? And
yet, even in regard to the future, it is necessary to be circumspect.
Young as positivism is, it has had the pain of seeing more than one of
its predictions falsified by the event. In 1850 M. Littré assured us
that the race had arrived at that degree of civilization that rendered
war henceforth impossible, and that the republic was definitively
established in France. What does he think of either prediction now? He
would have obliged us if he had given us his explanations of these
predictions in his last publication. The first would, perhaps, have
embarrassed him; the second would give him less trouble, because the
destruction of the republic of 1848 by the empire accords only too
well with the positivist hostility to a really representative
government.

It is useless to press the matter further. There is in the positivist
induction no trace of a rational process, and positivism in the last
analysis is simply the product of pure imagination. Moreover, M.
Littré is so well aware of it that he has taken in advance his
precautions against all unfavorable criticism. It may say what it
pleases, he will not hear or heed it; he professes to be a positivist,
and positivist he will live and die. His decision is made. Beside, no
one who has not taken his degree of doctor in the mathematical,
astronomical, physical, and chemical sciences, understands or can
understand anything of positivism, and is incompetent to its
discussion. But if instead of opposing one is disposed to accept it,
he is very accommodating, and by no means exacts so laborious and
painful an initiation. He requires only one thing--namely, the denial
of the supernatural order. To be received into the positivist school
it is not necessary to affirm or to believe anything--simple denial
suffices.

We must in concluding make a single reference to M. Taine. As the
positivists, M. Taine denies metaphysics, all metaphysical (spiritual)
beings, God, and the human soul, and like them he substitutes for
these others of his own fashioning. From Messrs. Comte and Littré he
separates only on a single point. To the cause _humanity_ he prefers
the cause _nature_. There is no disputing about tastes. We add merely
a word on one of the fundamental maxims of M. Taine's method. The
philosopher, he says, must be in the study of science perfectly
disinterested, and even to the degree of forgetting that he is a
father, a son, a husband, a citizen. He must take account only of the
facts furnished by observation, and in no respect trouble himself
about their practical consequences. Were the facts observed to prove
that paternal love, filial respect, conjugal tenderness, and devotion
to one's country are empty words or dangerous illusions, he must not
hesitate to immolate these sentiments on the altar of reality--or
science. We do not discuss such a doctrine. The irreflection of the
author (we can suppose nothing else) is so great that we need only
indicate it. Does not M. Taine comprehend that the disinterestedness
or indifference of the philosopher must consist not in abjuring the
eternal principles of the just, the true, the good, the beautiful, and
the noblest sentiments of the human heart, but simply in silencing
within {739} him the voice of prejudice and passion, so as to leave
his understanding free and unbiased? Knows he not that to know a fact
he must study it first in himself and in its essence, and then in its
manifold applications? The chemist asserts a substance only after,
having resolved it into its elements, he has experimented on it in all
its effects; in like manner, it is not enough for the philosopher to
have studied a doctrine in its principle, he must go further, and
establish that in its applications it conforms to the laws of the
just, the true, and the beautiful. It is, in fact, this accordance
that is, all things considered, the surest test of its truth. The
moral is the counter-proof of the intellectual. M. Taine and his
school recognize, it is true, no principles anterior to facts, and
therefore want, as M. Comte avows, a type-law, a term of comparison,
which may serve as the criterion of the judgment of facts themselves;
but is there a more manifest mark of the falsity of a theory than that
it leaves the human mind without any means of determining the
significance of phenomena, without a touchstone to determine whether
the metal be gold or copper?

But it is time to close. It is assuredly a grave fact, and one that
merits more attention than it receives, that a doctrine so thoroughly
materialistic and atheistic can be produced in our age, that it can
obtain adherents, and be recognized by important and widely
influential public journals, which, without openly displaying its
flag, insinuate its principles, and strive to infuse it into the minds
of their readers. Yet this fact is nothing new. There are always
atheists in the world; even in the time of the Prophet King the
impious said: There is no God. _Non est Deus_. But we discover in the
positivist system a sign or symptom, if not graver at least more
alarming, in the manifest enfeeblement in our time of reason, and the
rational faculties of the soul, which it supposes. We know that
society is not responsible for all that is said or done in its bosom,
but we know also that people are in general treated as they deserve to
be treated, and that writers, journalists, and system-mongers, when
they believe they are addressing a community accustomed to think, to
reason, to reflect, and to render an account to themselves of what is
addressed to them, are on their guard and weigh carefully what they
say. They may assign bad reasons, but they will at least assign
reasons of some sort, and take great pains to do it, as the thing most
essential to their success. There have always been sophists, but the
sophist of former times reasoned; the sophist of to-day reasons not,
he simply imagines. Do not attempt to refute him; he will not listen
to you, for he understands not the language you speak; he denies or
affirms with assurance, with audacity, even at the command of his
passions or his caprices; he seeks not to convince, but to startle, to
astonish, and neither proves nor cares to prove anything. Things have
come to such a pass that Voltaire himself, if he could return, would
blush with shame for his children. He might still smile approvingly on
their blasphemies; his good sense would be shocked with the
incoherence and extravagance of their theories; and he would say to
them. Continue, my children, to deny, to crush _l'infame_, all that is
well, but do have the grace not to attempt to put anything in place of
what you deny. You are not equal to that, and can only render
yourselves ridiculous.

The evil is very real and very great, but it has already been
denounced by an authority so high, and with so much eloquence, that I
need not any further insist on it. I would simply add that it calls
for a prompt remedy, since the peril is great and imminent. When faith
grows weak in souls, and reason remains, there is hope; for reason
well directed leads back to faith, since human reason is the child of
the divine reason, and {740} cannot persist in denying her mother; but
when reason in her turn goes, and leaves only imagination in her
place, there is no ground of hope; and everything is to be feared, for
no means of salvation remain. Imagination is, indeed, one of the
powers and one of the grandeurs of the human mind, which it elevates
and adorns; but if it comes to predominate alone, without supporting
itself on reason, it loses its virtue and its beauty, and is proper
only to dazzle, to pervert, to bewilder and mislead. It sheds
darkness, not light, or if it emits still some gleams, it is only to
gild with a last and false splendor a dying civilization. When the
barbarians thundered at her gates, Rome still imagined, but she had
long since ceased to reason.

COUNT VICTOR DE CHALAMBERT

------

From Chambers's Journal.

PLAIN-WORK.


"Thank goodness, Lizzie! you were taught to work."

My husband is constantly repeating this sentiment to me, and I
decidedly agree with him that it is a great cause for thankfulness. I
may say, in passing, that I don't believe I should ever have married
my husband at all if I had not been able to work, for one of his very
first questions to me upon our becoming acquainted, was as to what
occupation I took most pleasure in, and upon my answering
"Plain-work," a pleased smile came over his face. From that moment, he
has since confessed to me, he made up his mind that I should be his
wife. I am now the mother of a large family, with constant demands
upon my needle, and what I should do, if I had not early acquired the
use of it, I cannot think. I made a point of teaching my own girls as
soon as ever they became old enough to handle their needles, and if
they don't all turn out good plain-workers, it certainly won't be my
fault.

I look upon occupation as the true secret of happiness, and surely
there is no occupation so well suited to a woman, whether she is the
wife of a gentleman or a laborer, as needle-work. I would encourage
the taste for it as early as possible in a girl, as I think it has
such an influence for good on her character in making her womanly and
sensible. It has also the effect of producing tidy habits, for no girl
who can thoroughly use her needle will be content to go about the
house with her frock torn or a rip in her petticoat; but, upon the
first appearance of a hole, she will sit down and carefully mend it.
When still quite young, she works for her doll; a little older, for
some poor child in the village, or her own younger brothers and
sisters. In either case, she is learning to be loving and kind, and
the habit of working for others and being useful is good for her.

You wish probably to fit your daughter for her future career in life,
and you naturally look forward to her marriage as the aim and object
of your most ardent desires. I know _I_ do with regard to my own
girls, for, being a happy and married woman myself, I cannot bear the
idea of their becoming old maids. Well, if you want her to marry, and
you desire to train her to be a good wife, teach her to work; you are
laying the foundation of much future happiness, and her husband will
bless you for it. Say she marries a man not too well off, who is
constantly engaged in his profession, and she is in consequence forced
to spend {741} many hours of her day alone. This is very trying to her
at first, fresh from a happy home and the bosom of a large family. She
turns to her needle as her companion and solace during her husband's
absence, and finds her greatest interest and pleasure in working for
him. She keeps his clothes in good repair, and he never finds his
socks in holes or his shirts minus their buttons. Very likely--and
happy I consider it for her if it is so--his wedding outfit may have
been small. In that case, she can employ herself in making him a new
set of shirts; whilst her odd moments may be profitably spent in
knitting him a set of warm socks against the coming winter. Depend
upon it, he will never find any shirts that fit him so well, or any
socks so comfortable, as those made for him by his wife during the
early days of their married life. This gives her so much occupation
during her day that she has no time to be dull or discontented. She
gladly puts away her work when she expects her husband's return, and
she meets him with a cheerful smile, being happy in her own mind and
feeling that she has been praiseworthily engaged. She is also ready to
enter into his interests and pursuits, in which she finds an agreeable
relaxation.

Then there's the coming baby to work for. What mother does not
remember the delights of working for her first baby! The care and
thought bestowed first upon purchasing the materials, then upon
cutting them out to the best advantage, followed by many months of
happy employment in making them up. The little articles, when
finished, are carefully put away in a drawer set aside for the
purpose, and bunches of lavender are placed amongst them.

The first baby is born, and others follow, and the cares of a family
come rapidly upon your child. She now feels the real use of her
needle, and she learns to thank you accordingly for the pains you took
with her. Not only can she sew well, but she knows how to cut out; and
she has such a first-rate eye, from long practice, that she can take
her patterns from the shop-windows. She makes the best use of her
powers of observation. That which makes men good soldiers, doctors,
engineers, literary men, artists, and naturalists, makes her a good
plain-worker. In her own line, she is not to be beaten. Perhaps she is
a little proud of her talent; but she uses it to good advantage, and
her husband has the comfort of seeing his children well clothed, and
of finding his bills comparatively small. Constant practice has also
given her a capital knowledge of the value of materials, and she
understands thoroughly the textures of different cotton, linen, and
woollen fabrics, so that it would be very difficult to impose upon
her.

I have taken it for granted that your daughter marries a poor man, as
poor men unfortunately predominate in this world, and it is always as
well to be prepared for the worst. But her husband may be rich or, at
all events, well enough off to render it unnecessary that his wife
should be a slave to her needle. You will still find that you have
done your girl no injury by imposing upon her the early habit of using
that instrument. You have, at all events, given her the power of
superintending her servants, and seeing that their work is properly
done; and she will not so easily be taken in by her dressmaker, or
trampled upon by her nurse, who will soon find out that "missis" knows
how to work for her own children, and will respect her accordingly.

But supposing that your daughter does not marry at all, still her
knowledge of plain-work will not be thrown away upon her. If left
poorly off, she has her own clothes to make and mend, and if not,
surely there are plenty of claims upon her. There is her more
fortunate sister, who married young, and is now a widow, with six
children on her hands--think of the comfort and use her needle may be
to them! Then her brothers are {742} most of them married with
families, and Aunt Susan's work is invaluable, If she has no brothers
or sisters, but is left entirely alone in the world, and so well off
that she does not require to work for herself, let her turn to the
poor, and give them the use of her needle; she will certainly find a
never-ending field amongst them. By the time she has worked for all
the babies in the parish, and helped the mothers about the clothes for
the elder children, she will find she has occupation enough for her
fingers to keep her mind happy and interested, and to prevent her from
dwelling upon her own loneliness. She can also spend some time
profitably in instructing the girls in the village-school how to cut
out and sew. The ignorance upon these points in some schools is
perfectly lamentable. I took a nursery-maid for my eighth baby
straight from a national school. She was a fine healthy girl of
sixteen. It will hardly be credited that she could not hold her needle
properly! She doubled it up in her hand, and pushed it into her work
in the most extraordinary manner. I tried in vain to teach her by
every means in my power, but if the knack of holding the needle is not
learned in early life, it is rarely acquired afterward. Although so
very awkward about her work, that girl had been taught to crochet
ridiculous watch-pockets, and to knit impossible babies' shoes, with
such wonderful pointed toes that no infant I ever saw could get his
feet into them. At length I was obliged to part with her on this
account, though a tidy, active girl, and satisfactory in many ways.
She is not the only case I have had in my house of ignorance on the
subject of plain-work. Some of my servants have been able to sew well
enough, but have not had the remotest idea of cutting-out and placing
their work. I have often thought, if I had only time to spare, how
much I should like to teach the rising generation the little I myself
know of the art of plain-work.

In these days of sewing-machines people think much less of needle-work
than they did formerly. I don't approve of sewing-machines myself. My
husband accuses me of being jealous of them, but in this he is unjust
to me. I don't approve of them simply because I think that the work
produced from them--though I grant that the stitches may be regular
enough--cannot be compared to good hand-work, particularly when
employed upon fine materials. I have seen machine-work in every stage,
and from the very best sewing-machines, and I never could consider it
equal to good hand-work. I feel convinced in my own mind that
sewing-machines will have their day, and that when that day is over,
plain-work done by hand will be at as high a premium again as ever.
Even pillow-lace is now gradually recovering the place it once
occupied in public estimation, and from which it was temporarily
ousted by lace produced from that unutterable abomination, the
_machine_, and which used to be called "Nottingham lace."

I acknowledge machine-work may be all very well for cloth clothes, and
useful in families where there are many boys; but my ten children are
mostly girls, and I don't at all covet a machine. My husband offers me
one periodically, and I as often refuse it. I could not bear to have
one in the house, it would be going so entirely against my own
principles.

It is most important, when a girl is learning to work, that great care
should be taken with her to prevent her from acquiring bad habits;
such habits, I mean, as clicking her needle with her thimble, pinning
her work to her knee, biting the end of her thread, and sticking her
needle into the front of her dress. These habits once gained will
probably stick to her all her life, and she will find the greatest
difficulty in overcoming them. It is therefore advisable that she
should be taught to work by her mother, rather than be left to the
instruction of servants. A {743} ladylike manner of working is
essential, and should be carefully cultivated, for work may be
executed both neatly and rapidly without the acquirement of any of
these vulgar peculiarities. A great point to be learned connected with
plain-work, and one that I consider quite indispensable, is the art of
cutting out accurately and without waste of material. Far too little
importance is attached to that branch of work, and many women go to
their graves without acquiring it, having been dependent all their
lives upon their servants or some kind friend for having their work
cut out and placed for them. When this is the case ladies are apt to
be too much under the thumb of their ladies' maids or nurses, who are
not slow to profit by their own superior knowledge, and domineer over
their mistresses accordingly.

Where there are a number of the same articles of clothing to be made,
it is advisable to cut out one garment first, being careful to take
the pattern in paper, and to complete it before cutting out the rest
of the material. By this means an opinion can be formed as to whether
it fits properly and any necessary alterations may be made. The other
articles may then be cut out all together, care being taken to pin the
separate parts together, to avoid their being mislaid or any mistakes
made. It is no doubt essential that sewing should be neatly done, but
I think this need not be achieved at the entire expense of all
rapidity of execution. It really is perfectly ludicrous to see some
women at their work. They look at each stitch when completed, and give
it a little approving pat with the top of the thimble; and at this
rate, though the neatness of the work may be undeniable, still so
little is accomplished, that it is hardly worth the trouble of doing
it at all. Method in plain-work is also highly necessary, and much
time and labor may be spared by keeping all the materials in the
proper places. If every article when done with is put away carefully,
it is sure to be forthcoming when again required. Thus, there is no
time wasted in searching for a missing reel of cotton, or hunting up a
pair of scissors. The cleanliness of the work is also thereby kept
unimpaired.

The greatest care should be taken with the pieces of broken needles,
which are too apt to be left carelessly about the floor, and which are
most dangerous, especially when there are any young children in the
house. I must confess, and I do it with shame, that there was a time
when I was not as careful as I am now. I never shall forget my
husband's indignation upon coming into my room one day, where our
second baby was crawling about on the ground, at finding a piece of a
broken needle in her hand, quite ready to put it in her mouth. I think
he was more angry with me then than he had ever been before during our
married life. It was certainly a good lesson to me, for I have been
most careful ever since, and I'll trouble him or anybody else to find
a broken needle about my carpet _now_. Waste should be carefully
avoided, both with regard to ends of cotton and pieces of material.
The scraps of the latter which are too small to be of any use, instead
of being left littered about the room, should be thrown into a
waste-basket, to be cleared by the housemaid, and the larger pieces
should be tidily put away. The time will probably come when they will
be required for some purpose or other; and if pinned up in a tight
bundle they will not occupy much space in a drawer or basket kept for
the purpose.

I trust I have not ridden my hobby to death, nor worn out the patience
of my readers, but it is a subject the importance of which I strongly
feel. It must not, however, be supposed that I advocate the
cultivation of work to the exclusion of more intellectual pursuits, or
that I wish to take the bread from the mouth of my poorer sister. I
consider a thorough {744} knowledge of the science of plain-work to be
essential to every woman, be she rich or poor, and that in it she will
always find a sphere of usefulness. It will, if cultivated, turn out
for her own benefit, and the comfort and happiness of those around
her, and surely it shall be said of her that "her children arise up,
and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."

------

THE BIRTHPLACE OF SAINT PATRICK.

BY J. CASHEL HOEY.


The question of the birthplace of St. Patrick--a question which has
been debated with considerable learning and acrimony for several
centuries--has always seemed to me to have an interest far beyond the
rival claims of clans and the jealous litigation of the antiquary. It
is interesting not merely because it is in reality a curious
archaeological problem, but also because it may in some measure afford
a clue to the character of one of the greatest saints and greatest men
of his own age or of any other--a saint who was the apostle of a
nation which he found all heathen and left all Christian; who
succeeded in planting the Catholic faith without a single act of
martyrdom, but planted it so firmly that it has never failed for now
1,400 years, though tried in what various processes of martyrdom God
and man too well know; a saint whose apostolate was the mainspring of
an endless succession of missionary enterprises, prosecuted with the
same untiring zeal in the nineteenth century as in the fifth, wherever
the vanguard of Christendom may happen to be found, whether in
Austria, in Gaul, in Switzerland, or in Iceland, as now at the
furthest confines of America and of Australasia. Add to these ordinary
evidences of the supernatural efficacy of St. Patrick's mission the
testimony which is derived from the peculiar spiritual character of
the people that he converted. The Irish nation retains the impress
which it received from the hands of St. Patrick in a way that I
believe no other Christian nation has preserved the mould of its
apostle. If that nation has never even dreamed of heresy or schism, it
is because, in terms as positive as an ultramontane of our own days
could devise,   [Footnote 119] St. Patrick established the supreme
authority of the Roman Pontiff as a chief canon of the Irish Church.
Patience in poverty, an innate love of purity, prodigal alms-giving,
and mutual charities, the practice of heavy penances and of long
fasts, a peculiarly vivid sense of purgatory, and a strong devotion to
the doctrine of the Trinity, which the saint taught in the figure of
the shamrock--these have always been the distinguishing
characteristics of Irish piety. They were the peculiar characteristics
of the Christian of the fourth century, who had not yet learned to
live at peace with the world--who felt that as yet Christians were in
the strictest sense one family community--who practised mortification,
as if the untamed pagan {745} blood were still burning in his veins,
and the great temptation to whose faith was the heresy of Arius, and
the question of the relations of the three divine persons. But St.
Patrick was not only a great saint--was not merely and simply the
apostle of the Irish; he was their teacher and their lawgiver, their
Cadmus and Lycurgus as well. The school of letters which he founded in
Ireland so well preserved the learning which had become all but
extinguished throughout western Europe, that your own Alfred,
following a host of your nobles and clerics, went thither to be
taught, and the universities of Paris and Pavia owe their earliest
lights to Irish scholars. The Brehon laws, which are at last to be
published, by order of Parliament, a complete code of the most minute
and comprehensive character, were, according to the evidence of our
annalists, carefully revised and remodelled by St. Patrick, with the
consent of the different estates of the kingdom of Ireland; and there
is good reason to believe that this revision, of which there is
abundant intrinsic evidence, had reference not merely to the Christian
doctrine and the canons of the Church, but to the body of the Roman
civil law.

  [Footnote 119: "Quaecunqne causa valde difficilis exorta fuerit
  atque ignota cun?tis Scotorum gentis jadicils, ad cathedram
  archiepiscopi Hibernensium, atque hujus antistitis examinationem
  recte referenda. Si vero in illa, cum suis sapientibus, facile
  sanari non poterit talis causa praedictae negotiationis, ad Sedem
  Apostolicam decrevimus esse mittendam; id est, ad Petri Apostoli
  cathedram, auctoritatem Romae urbis habentem." This canon of St.
  Patrick is contained in the "Book of Armagh," the antiquity of which
  is instanced in the text of the present paper. The canon is of a
  date early in the fifth century; and it would be difficult to show
  so early, so emphatic and so complete a recognition of the Papal
  authority in the ecclesiastical legislation of any other national
  church.]


It would throw a certain light upon the character of a saint whose
works were so various and so full of vitality, if we could arrive at
any solid conclusion as to the place of his nativity, the quality of
his parentage, and the sources of his education. The theory most
generally accepted, and which certainly has the greatest weight of
authority in its favor, is that which assumes that St. Patrick was
born in Scotland, at Dumbarton, on the Clyde--the son, as we may
suppose, of a French or British official employed in the Roman service
at that extreme outpost of their settlements in this island, where he
would have spent his youth surrounded by a perpetual clangor of
barbarous battle, amid clans of Picts and Celts swarming across the
barriers of the Lowland. The opinion that St. Patrick was a Scotchman
has the unanimous assent of all the antiquaries of Scotland; but I am
not aware that any of them has succeeded in identifying any single
locality named in the original documents with any place of sufficient
antiquity in or near Dumbarton; nor could I, in the course of a
careful examination of the district and the recognized authorities
concerning its topography, arrive at any acceptable evidence on the
subject. I have to add to the Scotch authorities and pleadings,
however, all the best of the Irish. That St. Patrick was born in
Scotland is the opinion of Colgan,  [Footnote 120] a writer whose
services to the history of the Irish Church cannot be excelled and
have not been equalled. The opinion of Colgan has overborne almost
every other authority which intervened between his time and the
present. The Bollandists  [Footnote 121] accepted it without
hesitation; and I hasten to add to their great sanction that of the
two most learned antiquaries of the latter days of Ireland, Dr. John
O'Donovan and Professor Eugene O'Curry. They, I am aware, were also of
Colgan's opinion; and so, I believe, are Dr. Reeves and Dr. Todd,
whose views on most points of ecclesiastical antiquities connected
with Ireland are entitled to be named with every respect.

  [Footnote 120: Colganus, R. P. F. Joannes, "_Triadis Thaumaturgae,
  sen Divorum Patricii, Columbae, et Brigidiaetrium Hiberniae
  Patronorum, Acta_." Lovanii, 1647.]

  [Footnote 121: "_Acta Sanctorum Martii_" a Joanne Bollando, tom. il.
  Antverpiae, 1668.]

Still it is to be said, on the other hand, that the opinion that St.
Patrick was born in France has always had a traditional establishment
in Ireland. It is asserted in one of the oldest of his lives, that of
St. Eleran, and indicated in another, that of Probus. Don Philip
O'Sullivan Bearre  [Footnote 122] is not the first nor the last of the
more modern biographers of the saint who has held that he was of
French birth, though of British blood. But before the time of Dr.
Lanigan, the most acute, the {746} most conscientious, and perhaps the
most generally learned of Irish historians, there appears to have been
no really candid and scientific examination of the original documents
and evidences. Irish scholars were too angrily engaged in the
controversy of Scotia Major and Scotia Minor to be seriously regarded
when they proposed to remove St. Patrick's birthplace from the
neighborhood of Glasgow to the neighborhood of Nantes. Until Dr.
Lanigan published his Ecclesiastical History,  [Footnote 123] no one
seems to have even attempted to identify he localities named in the
various original documents which concern the saint. Dr. Lanigan came
to the conclusion that he was born not at Dumbarton but in France, at
or in the neighborhood of Boulogne-sur-Mer. I am able, I hope, to
perfect the proof which Dr. Lanigan commenced, and which, if he had
been enabled to follow it up by local research and by the light lately
cast on the geography of Roman Gaul, would, I am sure, have come far
more complete from his hands.

  [Footnote 122: D. Philippi O'Sullevani Bearri Iberni, "_Patritiana
  Decas_." Madrid, 1629.]

  [Footnote 123: Lanigan, John, D.D. "An Ecclesiastical History of
  Ireland." Dublin, 1820.]

I hold, then, with Doctor Lanigan, and with a tradition which has long
existed in Ireland, and also in France, that St. Patrick was born on
the coast of Armoric Gaul; and that Roman in one sense by descent--by
his education in a province where Roman civilization had long
prevailed, where the Latin language was spoken, and the privileges of
the empire fully possessed--Roman too by the possession of nobility,
which he himself declares, and of which his name was a curious
commemoration  [Footnote 124]--Roman, in fine, in the connection of
his family which he testifies with the Roman government and with the
Church, St. Patrick was a Celt of Gaul by blood. The fact that the
district between Boulogne and Amiens was at that time inhabited by a
clan called Britanni has misled both those who supposed he must have
been born in the island of Britain and those who held that, if born in
France, he must have been born in that part of it which was
subsequently called Brittany.

  [Footnote 124: Gibbon says ("Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
  v. vi.) "At this period the meanest subjects of the Roman empire
  assumed the illustrious name of Patricius, which by the conversion
  of Ireland has been communicated to a whole nation." It is supposed
  that the name was conferred on St. Patrick in consideration of his
  parting with his nobility for a motive of charity, as he mentions in
  his Epistle to Coroticus. But he was certainly not the first of the
  name. Patricius was also the name of St. Augustine's father, born
  fully a century before.]

The original documents which bear on the point are only two in number
--the "Confession" of St. Patrick himself, and the hymn in his honor
composed by his disciple St. Fiech. Of the antiquity of these
documents we have evidence the most complete that can be conceived.
Not merely does written history certify the record of their age--they
have borne much more delicate tests. The hymn of St. Fiech is written
in a dialect of Irish that is to the Irish of the Four Masters as the
English of Chaucer is to the English of Lord Macaulay. The quotations
of Scripture which are given in the "Confession" of St. Patrick are
taken from the version according to the interpretation of the
Septuagint, and not according to the recent version of St. Jerome,
which had indeed been just executed in St. Patrick's time, but had not
yet been publicly received. At the same time, the "Liber Armachanus,"
which contains the original copy of the "Confession," contains also
St. Jerome's translation of the New Testament--thus curiously marking
the fact that the date of the one document by a little preceded the
date of the other. The manuscript itself has been subjected to a most
curious and rigorous examination. The authentic signature of Brian,
Imperator Hibernorum, commonly called Brian Boroimhe, on the occasion
of his visit to Armagh, carries us back at a bound eight hundred years
in its history; but the scholar who is expert in the hue of vellum and
the style of the scribe, will tell us that the "Book of Armagh" was
{747} evidently a book of venerable age even then. The Rev. Charles
Graves,  [Footnote 125] a fellow of the University of Dublin, and a
scholar specially skilled in the study of the Irish manuscripts and
hieroglyphs, published a paper some years ago in the "Proceedings of
the Royal Irish Academy" on the question of the age of the "Book of
Amagh." That the version at present preserved in the library of
Trinity College is a copy from a far older version he says there can
be no doubt. The marginal notes of the scribe show that he found it
difficult in many places to read the manuscript from which he was
transcribing. But the same notes, the character of his writing, and a
reference to the Irish primate of the time under whose authority the
work was undertaken, leave no doubt that the transcript was executed
by a scribe named Ferdomnach, during the primacy of Archbishop
Torbach, at a date not later than the year of Our Lord 807.

  [Footnote 125: Graves, Rev. C, "On the Age of the Book of Armagh:
  Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," vol. iii., p. 816.]

Of the "Confession," beside the original copy in the "Book of Armagh,"
there are several manuscript versions of great age in England: two at
Salisbury; two in the Cotton library; one, I believe, at Cambridge;
another very interesting and valuable copy, that which was used by the
Bollandists in printing their edition of the "Confession," existed
until the time of the revolution in the famous French monastery of St.
Vedastus. Fragments of the precious manuscripts of that learned
congregation are scattered among the libraries of Arras, of Saint
Omer, of Boulogne, and of Douai; but among them I could not find any
trace of the missing manuscript of St. Patrick's "Confession;" nor
could the present learned representatives of Bollandus, who were good
enough to interest themselves in my inquiry, give me any room to hope
that it still exists. It would have been of much importance to have
been able to compare the style and the text of the only existing
French copy with the original in Ireland--especially as that French
copy belonged to the very district from which St. Patrick originally
came.

There are four localities designated in these documents; three of them
in the "Confession of St. Patrick," and one in the hymn of St. Fiech.
In the "Confession," St. Patrick says of himself, "Patrem habui
Calphurnium Diaconum (or Diacurionem) qui fuit e vico
Bonaven-Taberniae; villam Enon prope habuit, ubi ego in capturam
decidi." The hymn of St. Fiech adds that the saint was born at a place
called Nem-tur.

The ancient "Lives of St. Patrick" cite these localities with little
variation.

The first Life, given in Colgan's collection, and ascribed to St.
Patrick junior, says, "Natus est igitur in illo oppido, Nempthur
nomine. Patricius natus est in campo Taburnae."

The second Life, which is ascribed to St. Benignus, is word for word
the same with the first on this point.

The third, supposed to be by St. Eleran, suggests that he was of Irish
descent through a colony allowed by the Romans to settle in Armorica;
but that his parents were of Strato Cludi (Strath Clyde); that he was
born, however, "in oppido Nempthur, quod oppidum in campo Taburniae
est." This life is of very ancient date, and shows clearly enough how
old is the Irish tradition concerning the saint's birth in France.

The fourth Life, by Probus, says: "Brito fuit natione . . . de vico
Bannave Tiburniae regionis, haud procul a mare occidentali--quem vicum
indubitanter comperimus esse Neustriae provinciae, in qua olim
gigantes." Here, again, we observe the same confused tradition of the
saint's French origin; for Neustria was the name in the Merovingian
period of the whole district comprised between the Meuse and the
Loire.

{748}

The fifth and best known life, by Jocelyn, has it: "Brito fuit natione
in pago Taburniae--co quod Romanus exercitus tabernacula fixerant
ibidem, secus oppidum Nempthor degens, mare Hibernico collimitans
habitatione."

The sixth Life, by St. Evin, declares that he was "de Brittanis
Alcluidensibus, natus in Nempthur."

The Breviaries repeat the same names with as little attempt to fix the
actual localities.

The Breviary of Paris says: "In Britiania natus, oppido Empthoria."
The Breviary of Armagh: "In illo Brittaniae oppido nomine Emptor." The
old Roman Breviary says simply: "Grenere Brito." The Breviary of
Rheims: "In maritimo Brittaniae territorio." The Breviary of Rouen:
"In Brittania Gallicana." The Breviary of the canons of St. John of
Lateran: "Ex Brittania magna insula."

It will be observed that in the principal of these authorities there
is a concurrence in accepting the locality called so variously Nemthur
and Empthoria, as well as the second of the localities, the Taberniae,
named by St. Patrick himself; and also that there is no appearance of
certainty in the minds of the writers as to the exact sites of the
places of which they speak. None of them ventures to name the exact
district or diocese where Empthoria or the Taberniae are to be found.

But certain scholia upon the "Hymn of St. Fiech," which were for the
first time published by Colgan in the "Triadis Thaumaturgae," boldly
lay down the proposition that "Nemthur est civitas in Brittania
Septentrionali, nempe Alcluida;" and the name is also translated as
meaning "Holy Tower." The same writer, however, adds in another note
that St. Patrick was not carried into his Irish captivity from
Dumbarton, but from Boulogne, where he and his family were visiting
some of their friends at the time when the Irish pirates swept down
upon the coast of Gaul. The Irish annals say that about the period of
St. Patrick's captivity, Nial of the Nine Hostages lost his life on
the Sea of Iccius between France and England. These long piratical
forays were not uncommon at the time.  [Footnote 126] A little later,
the last of our pagan kings, Dathy, was killed by lightning near the
Rhaetian Alps.

  [Footnote 126: Totum cum Scotus Iernem Movit, et infesto spumsvit
  remige Tethys CLAUDIAN.]

Colgan with a curious credulity accepted this improbable solution of
the scholiast, of which it may in the first place be said that it is
incompatible with the statement of St. Patrick himself, who declares
distinctly that he was captured at a country house belonging to his
father, near the town to which his family belonged.

Usher, however, who had equal opportunities of studying the original
documents, also adopted this explanation. Several Irish writers, and
especially Don Philip O'Sullivan, vaguely conscious of the tradition
of St. Patrick's French origin, attempted to reconcile the fact of his
being a Briton with the fact of his birth in France by the supposition
that he was a Breton of Brittany. This theory, however, falls
summarily to the ground when it is opposed to the fact that the
province now known by the name of Brittany was not inhabited by any
tribe which bore the name in the time of St. Patrick, "The year 458,"
says the Benedictine Lobineau  [Footnote 127] in his learned history
of Brittany, "is about the epoch of the establishment of the Bretons
in that part of ancient Armorica which at present bears the name of
Bretagne." There was, however, a clan called Brittani, further toward
the north of France, a clan whose territory Pliny and the Greek
Dionysius Periegetes had long before designated with accuracy: Pliny
in these words, "Deinde Menapii, Morini, Oromansaci juncti pago, qui
Gessoriacus vocatur; {749} Brittani, Ambiani, Bellovaci."  [Footnote
128] The Brittani of the time of St. Patrick are to be found in the
country that lies between Boulogne and Amiens. It is there that
Lanigan came upon the first authentic traces of the origin
of our apostle.

  [Footnote 127: Lobineau. D. Gui Alexis, "_Histoire de Bretagne_."
  Paris, 1707.]

  [Footnote 128: Plinii Secundi, "_Historia Naturalis_; de Gallia," 1.
  iv. The editors of the Dauphin's edition have a note on the word
  Brittaui, which is worth quotation. "Ita libri omnes. Hi inter
  Gessoriacenses Ambianosqne medii, in ora similiter positi, ea loca
  teuuere certè, ubi nunc oppida Stapulae, Monetrolium, Hesdinium, et
  adjacentem agrum, Ponticum ad Somonam amnem. Cluverius hic Briannos
  legi mavult." See also the learned essay on the Britons of Armorica
  in the "_Acta Sanctorum, Vitâ S. Ursulae_;" Octobris, vol. ix., p.
  108. A glance at the map will show the close relation of the
  district marked by the present towns of Etaples, Montreuil, Hesdin,
  and Ponthieu to the localities named a little farther on. That the
  Britons of Great Britain originally came from this district is
  declared in the Welsh Triads, thus: "The three beneficent tribes of
  the Isle of Britain. The first was the nation of the Cymmry, who
  came with Hu the mighty to the Isle of Britain, who would not
  possess nor country nor lands through writing and persecution, but
  of equity and in peace; the second was the stock of the Lioegrians,
  who came from the land of Gwasgwyn (Gascolgne), and were descended
  from the primitive stock of the Cymmry: the third were the Brython,
  and from the land of Llydaw they came, having their descent from the
  primary stock of the Cymmry." And again, Cynan is spoken of as lord
  of Meirlon (probably a Celtic form of the word _Morini_) in Llydaw.
  Taliessin also mentions the _Morini Btython_ in his _Prif Gyfarch_,
  Lydaw, Latinized Letavia, is one of the early Celtic names of the
  country of the Morini, as Neustria, in the Life by Probus, was that
  given in the Merovingian period to the whole province between the
  Meuse and Loire, including Boulogne of course. Pliny mentions
  Boulogne itself as the _Portus Morinorum Brittanicus_. ]

He was guided to his conclusion, mainly, I think, by the "History of
the Morini," published in the year 1639, by the Jesuit Malbrancq,
[Footnote 129] and which seems strangely to have escaped the notice of
every earlier Irish writer. In this work, there are two chapters
devoted to the tradition of the connection of St. Patrick with the see
of Boulogne. Malbrancq relates this tradition, which states that
previous to his departure for the Irish mission, St. Patrick remained
for some time at Boulogne, occupied in preaching against the Pelagian
heresy, to contend with which Saint Germanus and Lupus had crossed
over to Britain. Malbrancq refers, in proof of this fact, to the
"Chronicon Morinense," to the Catalogue of the Bishops of Boulogne,
and to the "Life of St. Arnulphus of Soissons." This tradition is to a
certain extent a clue in tracing the early and intimate connection of
St. Patrick with this country--but as yet it is nothing more.

  [Footnote 129: Malbrancq, Jacobus, "_De Morinis et Morinrum rebus_."
  Tornaci Nerviorum,1639--1654.]

The critical question is, whether the four names given by St. Patrick
himself, and by St. Fiech, can be identified with any localities now
known either in the district of Boulogne or any other district in
which toward the close of the fourth century it is possible to find
the conditions of Roman government and British blood combined? Before
Lanigan there was, it seems to me, no serious attempt made to solve
this question. The scholiast whose authority was so unhesitatingly
adopted by Colgan and Usher simply says, "Nempthur est civitas in
Brittania Septentrionali, nempe Alcluid." There is not a word more. He
does not attempt to show how Nempthur and Alcluid are to be considered
as convertible terms. Nor does he attempt to interpret the names of
the three localities stated by St. Patrick himself. The same may be
said, in the most sweeping way, of the biographies and the breviaries.

I will now read the reasons which Lanigan gives for identifying
Bonaven with Boulogne, and Taberniae with a city very famous in the
wars of the middle ages, long before Arras had been fortified by
Vauban or defended by General Owen Roe O'Neill. It will be observed
that Lanigan does not attempt to identify the two other localities
Enon and Nempthur. The former he regarded as too insignificant, the
latter he did not believe had any existence. I will not say that his
proof with regard to the identity of Boulogne with Bonaven is
conclusive; but if the whole of his proof rested on as strong
presumptive grounds, little would remain to be said on the subject.
The second part of it is, however, in my humble opinion, wholly
erroneous. He says:

{750}

"Colgan acknowledges that there is an ancient tradition among the
inhabitants of Armoric Britain that St. Patrick was born in their
country, and that some Irishmen were of the same opinion. He quotes
some passages from Probus and others whence they argued in proof of
their position, but omits, through want of attention to that most
valuable document, the following passage of 'St. Patrick's
Confession:' My father was Calpurnius, a deacon, son of Potitus, a
priest of the town Bonavem Taberniae. He had near the town a small
villa, Enon, where I became a captive.' Here we have neither a town
Nemthor nor Alcluit. Nor will any British antiquary be able to find
out a place in Great Britain to which the names Bonavem Taberniae can
be applied. Usher, although he had quoted these words, has not
attempted to give any explanation of them, or to reconcile them with
Nemthur.

"The word Taberniae has puzzled not only Colgan, but some of the
authors of the Lives which he chose to follow; for while they left out
_Bonavem_ as not agreeing with _Nemthur_, they retained Taberniae, or,
as they were pleased to write it, _Taburniae_, which they endeavored
to account for by making it a district that got its name from having
been the site of a Roman camp in which there were tents or
tabernacles. Colgan, who swallowed all this stuff, quotes Jocelin as
his authority for Taburnia being situated near the Clyde, at the South
Bank. Great authority, indeed! It is, however, odd that such a place
should be unnoticed by all those who have undertaken to elucidate the
ancient topography of Great Britain. The places of Roman camps in that
country were usually designated by the adjunct _castra_, whence
_chester_, or _cester_, in which the names of so many cities and towns
in England terminate.

"Bonavem, or Bonaven, was in Armoric Gaul, being the same town as
Boulogne-sur-Mer in Picardy. That town was well known to the Romans
under the name of Gressoriacum; but about the reign of Constantine the
Great the Celtic name Bonaven or Bonaun, alias Bonon, which was
Latinized into Bononia, became more general. According to Bullet, who
informs us that Am, Aven, On, signify river in the Celtic language,
the town was so called from its being at the mouth of a river; _Bon_,
mouth, _on_ or _avon_, river. Baxter also observes that Bononia is no
other than _Bonavon_ or _Bonaun_, for _aven, avem, avon, aun_, are
pronounced in the same manner. The addition of _Taberniae_ marks its
having been in the district of Tarvanna or Tarvenna, alias Tarabanna,
a celebrated city not far from Boulogne, the ruins of which still
remain under the modern name of Terouanne. The name of this city was
extended to a considerable district around it, thence called _pagus
Tarbannensis_, or _Tarvanensis regio_. Gregory of Tours calls the
inhabitants Tarabannenses. It is often mentioned under the name of
_Civitas Morinorum_, having been the principal city of the Morini, in
which Boulogne was also situated. Boulogne was so connected with
Tarvanna that both places anciently formed but one episcopal see. Thus
Jonas, in his 'Life of the Abbot Eustatius,' written near twelve
hundred years ago, calls Audomarus Bishop of Boulogne and Tarvanna. It
is probable that St. Patrick's reason for designating Bonaven by the
adjunct _Taberniae_ was lest it might be confounded with the Bononia
of Italy, now Bologna, or with a Bononia in Aquitain, in the same
manner that, to avoid a similar confusion, the French call it at
present Boulogne-sur-Mer. Perhaps it will be objected that _Tabernia_
is a different name from _Tarvenna_. In the first place, it may be
observed that, owing to the usual commutation of _b_ for _v_, and
_vice versâ_, we might read _Tavernia_. Thus we have seen that
Tarvenna was called by some _Tarabanna_. To account for the further
difference of the names, nothing more is required than to admit the
{751} transposition of a syllable or a letter, which has frequently
occurred in old words, and particularly names of places. Nogesia, the
name of a town, becomes Genosia. Dunbritton has been modified into
Dunbertane, Dunbarton, Dumbarton. Probus agrees with the 'Confession,'
except that, according to Colgan's edition, for Bonavem Taberniae he
has 'Bannave Tyburniae regionis,' and adds that it was not far from
the Western sea or Atlantic ocean. Although we may easily suppose that
some errors of transcription have crept into the text of Probus, yet
as to Bannave there is no material difference between it and Bonavem.
_Ban_ might be used for _Bon_; and the final _m_, which was a sort of
nasal termination, as it is still with the Portuguese, could be
omitted so as to write for Bonavem, or Bonaum (_v_ and _u_ being the
same letter), Bonaue. Probus' addition of _regionis_ is worth
noticing, as it corresponds with what has been said concerning the
_Tarvanensis regio_."

I think the proof in this passage with regard to the word Bonaven is
very strong. The passage which Lanigan cites from Bexter distinctly
says, "Gallorum Bononia eodem pene est etymo; quasi dicas Bon-avon
sive Bonaun." The derivation of the word is clear enough. Avon even in
England retains its Celtic signification of a river. But the passage
identifying the _Tabernia_ of Boulogne with Therouanne is in my
opinion altogether incorrect. Where he accounts for the change in the
structure of the word by the usual transmutation of _b_ and _v_, he
overlooks the letter _r_--a letter which does not melt into the music
of patois by any means so easily. Again, he hardly lays sufficient
stress on the fact that the word _Taberniae_ is invariably understood
in all the scholia, and in all the lives, to mean the _Campus
tabernaculorum_--the barracks and district occupied by a Roman army.
In fine, he confuses Therouanne, which is at a distance of thirty
miles from Boulogne, and certainly did not stand in the relation he
supposes to it, with another city some twenty miles still further
away. But Malbrancq, who was his chief authority, does not omit to
mention that Tervanna and Taruanna are two absolutely distinct places:
Tervanna was the old Roman name of the town now known as Saint Pol
[Footnote 130]--Taruanna that of Therouenne.

  [Footnote 130: "_Comitum Tervanensium Annales Historici_,"
  Collectore Th. Turpin Paulinati. Ord. Predicat. 1731.]

It is very possible--I may add to the proof concerning the word
Bonaven--that it may have been written originally Bononen, for
Bononenses Taberniae. Any one familiar with the form of the letters of
the early Irish alphabet, indeed of almost all early manuscript, will
readily comprehend how easily an _o_ might be written for an _a_, an
_n_ for a _v_, and _vice versâ_, by a scribe ignorant of the exact
locality, and copying from a half-defaced document. Any one who looks
at the form of the letters in the alphabet of the "Book of Kells,"
given in Dr. O'Donovan's Grammar, will conceive at a glance how this
might have happened.

Assuming, however, that Lanigan is correct in his conjecture as to
Boulogne, I have endeavored to discover whether the other localities
named in the "Confession" and "Hymn" can be identified with localities
now existing within the proper circumscription of the Roman military
occupation around that city, and of a certain and unquestionable
antiquity. I need not inform the academy of the great military
importance of Boulogne at the time of which we treat. It was the point
from which England had been invaded. It was the principal military
settlement of the Romans in Northern Gaul. Julian the Apostate had
held his headquarters there shortly before St. Patrick's birth. The
country all around is marked by roads and mounds, which exhibit the
rigid lines and stern solidity of Roman construction. I learn from a
recent essay by {752} M. Quenson, an accomplished scholar of Saint
Omer, that eighty-eight different works have been written to settle
the site of the Portus Itius, whence Caesar embarked to invade
Britain, and nineteen different localities assigned. Since M. Quenson
wrote, M. de Saulcy has again opened, and this time I think finally
determined, that controversy. Perhaps I am so far fortunate that the
absorbing zeal with which this difficult problem has been pursued, in
a country of such zealous scholars, still leaves to a stranger
somewhat to glean, in places far inland from the famous port which
they have so long labored to identify.

The localities to which St. Patrick refers have, I find, all been
preserved with the least alteration of their etymology that it is
possible to conceive in the space of so many centuries; and this, I
may add, is peculiarly wonderful in a country where so many Roman
names have, by the friction of the much mixed dialects of northern
France, been almost frayed out of recognition. Who would suppose, for
example, taking some of the familiar names of the department, that
Fampoux was the _Fanum Pollucis_, Dainville _Dianae villa_, Lens
_Elena_, Etaples _Stapulae_, Hermaville _Hermetis villa_, Hesdin
_Helenum_, Souchez _Sabucetum_, Surques _Surcae_, Ervillers
_Herivilla_, Tingry _Tingriacum_?  [Footnote 131] And yet regarding
these names there is no doubt that the modern French is a corruption
of the old Latin form. Of the localities, which I proceed to
designate, I submit that each has kept its original name with far less
violation of the ancient word. The _Enon_, the _Nemthur_, the
_Taberniae_ of St. Patrick are, to my mind, manifest in comparison
with the majority of a hundred other localities in the Boulonnais
which undoubtedly derive their titles from a Roman source.

  [Footnote 131: The name of the neighboring village of Ardres has run
  through the following traceable variations since the Roman period:
  Horda, Ardra, Ards, Ardrea, Ardes, Ardres.]

In the first place, let us take the word Enon. The river Liane, which
runs into the sea at Boulogne, was known to the Romans as the Fluvius
Enna. It is so marked on the most ancient maps of northern Gaul. It is
so written in Latin by Malbrancq. Near Desvres--once called
Desurennes, or Desvres-sur-Ennes--there is marked a little village of
the same name, called also Enna. I will not be said to strain
language, which has survived so many centuries, very severely when I
venture to identify St. Patrick's Enon with this undoubtedly Roman
Enon.

Lanigan totally disbelieved in the existence of the town called
Nempthor. I could not do so; nor underrate the importance of
identifying it, if possible, in such an inquiry as this. But the
difficulty of discovering this place was hitherto greatly increased by
a mistranslation of its meaning, for which I believe Colgan is
responsible. The word was always supposed to mean "Holy
Tower"--_Neim_, holy, and _Tur_, tower--until Professor Eugene
O'Curry, when compiling, some years ago, his valuable catalogue of the
Irish MSS. of the British Museum, after a minute examination of the
manuscript, which is the oldest copy of the "Hymn" in existence, came
to the conclusion that the word should really be written "Emtur," as
it is indeed, though by accident I take it, in some of the breviaries.
"The place of St. Patrick's birth," he says, "is generally written
Nemtur; but there is clear evidence that the N is but a prefix
introduced to fill the hiatus in the text, and that Emtur is the
proper form of the word." The word, then, means not holy tower, but
the tower of some place or person indicated by the word Em. Some eight
miles distant from Desvres, toward the north, still within the
military circumscription of which it is the centre, there is such a
place. The river Em, or Hem, flows past a village of so great an
antiquity, that even in the ordinary geographical dictionaries the
record is preserved that Julius Caesar slept {753} there on his way to
embark for the invasion of Britain.  [Footnote 132] The town contains
a Roman arch and the ruins of a Roman tower, from which the village
derives its name. The name is Tournehem, or, as it was written in
Malbrancq's time, Tur-n-hem. The tower and the river show the
derivation of the word at a glance. The exigencies of Irish verse
simply caused their transposition. I have only to add to Mr. O'Curry's
ingenious note on the subject the remark that the _n_ was not, as he
supposes, merely inserted to fill up a hiatus in the line, but was
obviously a part of it. It is a copulative as common in Celtic words
as _de_ in modern French, and has precisely the same meaning.
Ballynamuck, for example, means the town of, or on, the river Muck.
Tulloch na Daly (whose swelling dimensions the French afterward curbed
into the famous name of Tollendall) is a more apposite instance.

  [Footnote 132: "Ce lieu existait lorsque les l'egions romaines
  penétrèrent dans la Morinie, l'an de Rome 697, ou 57 ans avant l'ère
  valgaire, et consistait alors en un château fort garni de tours,
  d'où eat venu, selon Malbrancq, la dénomination de _Tournehem_ du
  Latin _à Turribus_. César s'empara de ce château et y fit quelque
  séjour pour l'avantage de ea cavalerie. Environ deux siècles et demi
  après, c'est à dire en 218, Septime-Sévère, autre empereur romain,
  fit camper dans le voisinage de Tournehem (sur la montagne de Saint
  Louis) une partie de son armée destinée pour une expédition contre
  le Grand Bretagne, qu'll effectua glorieusement la même année."--P.
  Collet, "_Notice Historique de Saint Omer suivi de celles de
  Therouanne el de Tournehem_." Saint Omer, 1830. Both M. Collet and
  Père Malbrancq, however, overlook the obvious derivation of the
  word--though both note the name of the river which flows through the
  town, and which M. Collet calls "la rivière de _Hem_ ou de _Saint
  Louis_." Again, M. H. Piers, in the "_Mémoires de la Société des
  Antiquaries de la Morinie_" (Saint Omer. 1834) says, '"César après
  s'être emparé des forteresses de la contrée s'y rendit de Ther
  ouanne, Sithieu et Tournehem, l'an 55 on 56 avant l'ère vulgaire,
  pour subjuguer la Grande Bretagne." In the same volume there is an
  interesting paper by M. Pigauit de Beaupré on the castle of
  Tournehem, which, he says, was partially rebuilt by Baldwin II.,
  Count of Guines, in 1174, and continued to be a principal residence
  of the Dukes of Burgundy at so late a date as 1485. But the vastness
  and solidity of the works which he describes, some of them
  subterranean roads evidently used for communication with other
  fortified works, clearly indicate their Roman character. Baldwin,
  indeed, a prince far in advance of his age, seems to have attempted
  to revive Roman ideas, and rebuild Roman works wherever he found
  them within his dominions. The castle of Hâmes, near Calais, which
  he likewise rebuilt, and which he ceded to the English as part of
  the ransom of King John of France, was also, as M. Pigault de
  Beaupré shows, of Roman construction.]

I have yet to identify the _Taberniae_. To the eye, and on the old
maps, they almost identify themselves. Desvres has all the characters
of a great Roman military position--a vast place of arms, the tracings
of fortified walls, the fosse, lines of circumvallation, and hard by
on the forest edge the _Sept Voies_ or _Septemvium_, the meeting of
the seven great military roads leading from and to the other principal
strongholds of the imperial power in northern and western Europe. Any
one who examines in particular the "Carte des Voies Romaines du
Département du Pas de Calais," published by the Commission of
Departmental Antiquities,  [Footnote 133] cannot fail to perceive that
this now obscure village, which certainly never was raised to the rank
of a Roman city, was nevertheless once a great nucleus of Roman power.
The fragment of an ancient bridge is still known as the _Pont de
Caesar_. The _Septemvium_, with its remarkable concentration of roads,
is alone sufficient to indicate the importance of the place. There is
one road leading straight to Amiens; one that reaches the sea by the
mouth of the Canche; another that runs to the harbor of Boulogne;
another that joins the roads from Saint Omer and from Tournehem, and
carries them on to Wissante and Sangate, the supposed Portus Itius and
Portus Inferior; the fifth road was to Tervanna and Arras; the sixth
to Taruanna; the seventh to Saint Omer. Would so many roads,
communicating with places of such military importance, have been
concentrated by a race of such a centralizing talent as the Romans
anywhere except at the cite of a great city or a great camp? On the
ancient maps, indeed, the country which lies between Desvres and
Boulogne, along the Liane, is simply marked _Castrum_.

  [Footnote 133: "_Statistique Monurnentale du Département du Pas de
  Calais. Publiée par la Commission des Antiquités Departementales_."
  Arras: chez Topino, Libraire, 1840.]

{754}

I now approach, not unconscious of its difficulties, the etymology of
the word. In the lax Latin of the middle ages, we find Desvres spoken
of as _Divernia Bononiensis_. There is the epitaph of a churchman,
born in the place, which says on his behalf:

"Me Molinet peperit Divernia Bononiensis."

The local historian, Baron d'Ordre, speaks of the place as "Désurène,
Divernia, aujourd'hui Desvres."  [Footnote 134] The name Desvres
itself evidently has undergone strange, yet traceable, variations and
modifications.  [Footnote 135] Its first appearance as a French word
is "Desurennes," and this is derived from Desvres sur Enna, or Desvres
upon the Enna or Liane, which, as I have said, flows past the place,
giving its name to a little village near the forest. By this
derivation, however, only the first two letters of the original word
Desvres are left. How do they disappear, why do they reappear in the
modern form of the word, and what is its original derivation?

  [Footnote 134: "Notice historique sur la ville de Désurène Divernia,
  aujourd'hui Desvres." Par M. d'Ordre. Boulogne, 1811.]

  [Footnote 135: "II n'y pas 50 ans que le nom de Desvres a prevalu
  sur celul de Desurenne que cette ville avait tonjours porté
  auparavant."--M. L. Cousin "_Mémoires de la Société des Antiquarires
  de la Morinie_," vol. iv., p. 239. M. Cousin's papers on Monthulin
  and Tingry, in the Transactions of this society, are in general
  accord with what I have said of the ancient military importance of
  the whole district of Desvres.]

It is a very curious fact, that in England the Roman camps seem to
have been always known as "Castra," while in Gaul the Tabernae is the
name which generally adhered to them. Lanigan says, and correctly, so
far as I have been able to discover, that there is no trace of a Roman
station called _Tabernae_ in England, while the affix _chester_ is the
most common in its topography. In England, it may be said the Romans
encamped; in France, the _Tabernae_ meant a more settled and familiar
residence, as familiar as the Caserne of the empire. It would be
interesting to inquire whether as many cities in France do not derive
their origin from these military stations as England has of Chesters.
But the student who attempts this task will be sure to find the Latin
word almost defaced beyond power of recognition by the etymological
maltreatment which it has sustained in that conflict of consonants
which has resulted in the present high polish of Academic French. I
may mention one or two instances to show how little violence I do to
French philology in identifying the _Divernia Bononiensis_ of the
middle ages with the Tabenae of Boulogne. Saveme in Lorraine is well
known to be the _Tabenae Triborocrum_. It was known in a semi-Germanic
form as _Elsas Tabern_. Gradually the sibilant _ss_ of the first word
invaded the second; and it has long settled down into one word in the
form of Saveme. The _Tabernae Rhenanae_, on the other hand, retained
the hard _b_ instead of converting it into _v_, as inevitably happened
in the south, and instead changed the T into Z Rhein-Zabren. In ages
which had no hesitation in changing the pure dental T into the
sibilant dentals S or Z, it will not be considered surprising that it
was sometimes changed into D--the only other pure dental sound.
Indeed, of all the transmutations of letters, those of _d_ and _t_ and
those of _v_ and _b_, are notoriously the most common. "The Irish
_d_," says O'Donovan, "never has such a hard sound as the English
_d_." Again, "In ancient writings, _t_ is frequently substituted for
_d_." Again, "It should be remarked that in ancient Irish MSS.
consonants of the same organ are very frequently substituted for each
other, and that where the ancients usually wrote _p, c, t,_ the
moderns write _b, q, d._"  [Footnote 136] Decline the Irish word
_Tâd_, father. It becomes _Ei dâd_, his father; _Ei thâd_, her father;
_by nhâd_ my father. We carry the tendency into English. The mistake
is one from which certain parts of Ireland as well as certain parts of
France are not exempt even to the present day; and in Munster one may
still {755} hear, as in the times when the ballad of "Lillibullero"
was written, the letter _d_ occasionally used where the tongue
intended _t_ or _th_. Nor is this vagary of speech confined to the
Irish. Why do the Welsh say Tafyd for David? It is the most frequently
recurring of that systematic permutation of consonants which is one of
the chief difficulties of the Cymbric tongue. The Welsh _d_ and _t_
turn about and wheel about in their mysterious alphabet without the
slightest scruple. In Germany the convertibility of the same letters
is also very marked. The German says _das_ for that, _Dank_ for
thanks, _Durst_ for thirst; and again _Teufel_ for devil, _Tanz_ for
dance, _Theil_ for dial. As to the same abuse in France, the
dictionary of the Academy and that of Bescherelle  [Footnote 137] lay
down the principle very plainly: "Le _t_ est une lettre à la fois
linguale et dentale, comme le _d_ son correlatif, plus faible, plus
doux, avec lequel il est fréquemment confondu, nonseulement dans les
langues germaniques, mais dans la plupart des langues. En latin, cette
lettre so permute fréquemment avec le _d: attulit_ pour _adtulit_. On
écrivit primitivement set, aput, quot, haut, au lieu de sed, apud,
quod, hand."

  [Footnote 136: O'Donovan, John, LL.D., "A Grammar of the Irish
  Language." Dublin, 1845.]

  [Footnote 137: "_Dictionnaire de l'Académie_ Française,"
  Bescherelle,  "_Dictionnaire National_." Paris, 1857.]

So far as to the permutation of T and D. I will not waste the time of
the reader in order to show that the conversion of _v_ into _b_ is
even more common. We find a familiar illustration of it in the old
Latin name of Ireland, which, as every one knows, is variously written
Ibernia, Ivernia, Hibernia, Juvernia, and Iernia. But the English word
tavern, which is exactly derived from the Latin Taberniae, is a still
more apposite illustration in the present case. In this word, finally,
the intermediate vowel swayed in sound with the consonants which
inclosed it. As the primary Latin T changed into the softer and
feebler D, and the _b_ into _v_, the intermediate _a_ lost its full
force. The mediaeval Latin melts into _i_ in Divernia. The modern
French form, Desvres, brings it half-way back toward its place at the
head of the alphabet. It does not run the whole gamut of the vowels,
as from Ibernia to Juvernia.

This _Divernia Bononiensis_, then, I claim to identify with the
_Taberniae Bononienses_, Tournehem with Nemtur or Emtor, Enna with
Enon. If it were necessary even to push the proof a step further,
there is the district called _Le Wicquet_, which M. Jean Scoti, who
was _lieutenant particulier de la Sennechaussée de Boulogne_, tells us
is undoubtedly derived from the Latin Vicus, and which might naturally
be the _vico Bonaven Taberniae_ of which the "Confession" speaks; but
the historian of Desvres, Baron d'Ordre, whom I have already cited,
disputes this derivation, and says the word is Celtic, and comes from
_Wic_, Celtic for wood, like our word wicket. Both may be right, for
Vicus may be a Latin form of the same word.  [Footnote 138] But the
point is not material.

  [Footnote 138: Among the names of  villages in this district of
  whose history I could find no trace, is one called Erin, the place
  where Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre was born.]

Let me now add to the etymological evidence a few historical
illustrations.

St. Patrick is stated in almost all his biographies to have been a
nephew of St. Martin of Tours. St. Martin, though said to be a Celt of
Pannonia, was during his military and early ecclesiastical career
stationed in this identical district. The well known legend of his
division of his cloak with the beggar, who proved to be our Lord
himself, is alleged to have taken place at Amiens. It is recorded that
he was baptized at Therouanne. The first church raised to his honor
was built there. The principal missionaries of the district are said
to have been his disciples, and evidently entertained a deep devotion
to him, of {756} which there are still abundant evidences.  [Footnote
139]

  [Footnote 139: Of the 420 churches comprised in the ancient diocese
  of Boulogne, 82 had St. Martin for patron. I also find several
  dedicated to the Irish St. Maclou and St. Kilian: but, strange to
  say, not one to St. Victricius.--V. "_Histoire des Evêques de
  Boulogne_," par M. l'Abbé E. Van Drival. Boulogne, 1852. ]

St. Patrick, while in captivity at Slemish in Ireland, lived within
sight of Scotland. A few miles only separate the coasts at Antrim. But
when he escaped, he did not attempt to pass into Scotland. He made his
way south, and passed through England to France. He says he was
received among the Britons as if (_quasi_) among his own clan and kin.
Doubtless there was close relationship of race and language between
the Britons of the island and of the continent. There were Britons and
there were Atrebates on both sides of the sea.  [Footnote 140] But
Britain was not the saint's native place nor his resting-place. He
went on, and abode with those whom he calls his brethren of Gaul,
"seeing again the familiar faces of the saints of the Lord," until he
was summoned to undertake his mission to Ireland.

  [Footnote 140: M. Piers, in the paper already cited, quotes H.
  Amédée Thierry as saying; "Les _Brittani_ furent les premiers qui
  a'y fixèrent; il habitalent une partie de la Morinie; peut-être par
  un pieux souvenir ont-ils appelé leur nouvelle patrie la Grande
  Bretagne. Les _Atrebates_ anglais, originaires de Belgium,
  résidaient à _Caleva_ ou _Galena Atrebatum_,  à 22 milles de _Venta
  Belgarum_ dans le canton où est aujourd'hui Windsor." H. Piers adds
  that there is a tradition that a colony of the Morini had given
  their name to a distant country of islands which they discovered;
  but that he has found it impossible to discover the name in any
  ancient atlas. Perhaps the district of Mourne, on the north-east
  coast of Ireland, is that indicated. The Irish derivation of the
  name is at all events identical with the French ]

In his own account of the vision which induced him to undertake the
apostolate of Ireland, he says he was called to do so by a man, whose
name is variously written Victor, Victoricius, and Victricius. The
real name is in all probability Victricius; but if it were Victor or
Victoricius, it would be equally easy (were it not for the fear of
failing by essaying to prove too much) to identify the source of the
saint's inspiration with the same district. Saint Victricius was the
great missionary of the Morini at the end of the fourth century; but
he had been preceded in that capacity by St. Victoricius, who suffered
martyrdom with Sts. Fuscien and Firmin, at Amiens, in A.D. 286. Again,
the name Victor is that of a favorite disciple of St. Martin, whom
Sulpicius Severns sent to St. Paulinus of Nola,  [Footnote 141] and of
whom they both write in terms of extraordinary encomium. But the
person referred to in the "Confession" is far more probably St.
Victricius,  [Footnote 142] who was an exact contemporary of St.
Patrick, who was engaged on the mission of Boulogne at the time of his
escape, and who is said to have been a French Briton himself.
Malbrancq's "Annals of the See of Boulogne" aver that in the year 390
the "Morini a Domino Victricio exculti sunt," and that in the year 400
he dedicated their principal church to St Martin.  [Footnote 143]

  [Footnote 141: S. Paulini Nolani "_Opera_." _Epistola_  xxiii. in
  the "_Patrologiae Cursus Compietus_" of J. P. Migne, vol. lxi.
  Paris, 1847. See also the two epistles to St. Victricius, who with
  St. Martin persuaded Paulinus to withdraw from the world. I hare a
  suspicion that the disciple of St. Victricius, named in these
  epistles now as Paschasius, now as Tytichus or Tytius (the name
  being evidently misprinted, but there being no doubt, as the
  Bollandists say, that the two names refer to one and the same
  person), may have been in reality St. Patrick. In his 17th Epistle,
  St. Paulinus refers to the accounts he had heard from this young
  priest of the anxiety of St. Victricius for the evangelization of
  the most remote parts of the globe, and speaks of him as a disciple
  in every way worthy of his master; "In cujus gratia el humauitate,
  quasi quasdam virtutam gratiarumque tuarum lineas velut speculo
  reddente collegimus."]

  [Footnote 142: Franciscus Pommeraeus, O. S. B.. In his "History of
  the Bishops of Rouen." says St. Victricius was also sometimes called
  Victoricus and Victoricius.]

  [Footnote 143: See also "_Acta Sanctorum Augustii_;" tom. ii., p.
  193. Antverpiae, 1735.]

When St. Patrick was on his way to Ireland, with full powers from Pope
Celestine, it is recorded that he was detained at Boulogne by the
request of Sts. Germanus and Lupus, who were proceeding into Britain
in order to preach against the Pelagian heresy; and that during their
absence he temporarily exercised episcopal functions at Boulogne, and
so came to be included in the list of its bishops. If St. Patrick were
a native of the island, is it not probable that Germanus and Lupus
would rather have {757} invited him to join their mission? But their
object in asking him to interrupt his own special enterprise for a
time in order to remain among the Boulonnais was, it is said, to guard
against the spread of this heresy on the continent. And it is very
natural that they should have asked him to stay for such an object,
and that he should have consented, if this were indeed his native
district, in which his intimacies were calculated to give him a
special degree of influence; but not otherwise, hastening as he was
under the sense of a divine call to the conversion of a whole nation
plunged in paganism.

And, as I began by saying, all this proof is important mainly because
it tends in some degree to elucidate the spirit and the work of the
saint. We begin to see how with the Celtic character of a French
Briton, which made him easily akin to the Irish, he combined the Roman
culture and civilization, which added to his missions peculiar
literary and political energy, that long remained. We see in him the
friend and comrade of the great saints of a great but anxious age. We
see how he connects the young Church of Ireland, not with Rome alone,
but with the great militant Christian communities of Gaul--a
connection which his disciples were destined so to develope and extend
in the three following centuries; and we cease to wonder that both
Ireland and France have clung so fondly to a tradition which linked
together in their earliest days two churches whose mutual services and
sympathies have ever since been of the closest kind.

------

From The Lamp.

THE BETTER PART.


  "Sweet sister Lucille, I watch thee working,
    From morning till nightfall, on cloth of gold,
  On silks of purple, and finest linen,
    And gems lie before you of worth untold.
  Makest thou vestments for holy preacher,
    And cloths to adorn the altar rare?"
  "Ha, ha!" quoth Lucille, "thou simple creature!
    The garments I make I intend to wear.

  Dost thou not see I am nobly fashioned,
    Regal indeed is my bearing and mien;
  Are not my features as finely chiselled
    As e'en were the features of Egypt's queen?
  I'll work, and work, and I'll never weary,
    Until rich garments be duly wrought,
  Suited to clothe my unrivalled form.
    For which tissues fitting cannot be bought.

{758}

  But, my gentle Mary, I watch thee praying.
    And wasting many a precious day,
  Sauntering out amid lanes and alleys,
    And taking to beggars upon the highway.
  You bring them on to sit at your table,
    You feed them on savory meat and wine;
  Are they above you, that you should clothe them,
    And so humbly serve while they feast and dine?"

  Then answered Mary: "God's poor, my sister,
    Are more than our equals, I should say;
  One day they'll feast in the kingdom of heaven,
    For Christ will call them from hedge and highway.
  I too am working a costly garment
    With tears and penance, fasting and prayer;
  'Tis to clothe my soul, and with God's needy
    The raiment I weave I hope to wear."

  Each walked her way through this vain world;
    Lucille lived with courtiers who gave her praise,
  Solicitous still to adorn her person,
    She frittered time to the end of her days;
  She work'd, and work'd, and never felt weary.
    Changing her costume as changed her will;
  When death came, unfinished still were her garments,
    But withered and sinful he found Lucille.

  Each walked her way through this vain world;
    Mary sought neither courtiers nor praise,
  But in the lazar-house, firm and steadfast.
    Good she worked to the end of her days.
  She smooth'd the couch of the sick and dying,
    She taught the sinner the ways of the Lord,
  She gave to the "little ones" drink refreshing;
    Verily she shall not lose her reward.

------
{759}


From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD:

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.


(CONCLUDED.)


CHAPTER XXVI.


On the night before the 10th of December neither Muriel nor I retired
to rest. We sat together by the rush-light, at one time saying
prayers, at another speaking together in a low voice. Ever and anon
she went to listen at her father's door, for to make sure he slept,
and then returned to me. The hours seemed to pass slowly; and yet we
should have wished to stay their course, so much we dreaded the first
rays of light presaging the tragedy of the coming day. Before the
first token of it did show, at about five in the morning, the
door-bell rung in a gentle manner.

"Who can be ringing?" I said to Muriel.

"I will go and see," she answered.

But I restrained her, and went, to call one of the servants, who were
beginning to bestir themselves. The man went down, and returned,
bringing me a paper, on which these words were written:

"MY DEAR CONSTANCE--My lord and myself have secretly come to join our
prayers with yours, and, if it should be possible, to receive the
blessing of the holy priest who is about to die, as he passeth by your
house, toward which, I doubt not, his eyes will of a surety turn. I
pray you, therefore, admit us."

I hurried down the stairs, and found Lord and Lady Arundel standing in
the hall; she in a cloak and hood, and he with a slouching hat hiding
his face. Leading them both into the parlor, which looketh on the
street, I had a fire hastily kindled; and for a space her ladyship and
myself could only sit holding each other's hands, our hearts being too
full to speak. After a while I asked her when she had come to London.
She said she had done so very secretly, not to increase the queen's
displeasure against her husband; her majesty's misliking of herself
continuing as great as ever.

"When she visited my lord last year, before his arrest," quoth she,
"on a pane of glass in the dining-room her grace perceived a distich,
writ by me in bygone days with a diamond, and which expressed hopes of
better fortunes."

"I mind it well," I replied. "Did it not run thus?

  'Not seldom doth the sun sink down In brightest light
  Which rose at early dawn disfigured quite outright;
  So shall my fortunes, wrapt so long in darkest night,
  Revive, and show ere long an aspect clear and bright.'"

"Yea," she answered. "And now listen to what her majesty, calling for
a like instrument, wrote beneath:

  'Not seldom do vain hopes deceive a silly heart
  Let all each witless dreams now vanish and depart;
  For fortune shall ne'er shine, I promise thee, on one
  Whose folly hath for aye all hopes thereof undone.'

{760}

"We do live," she added, "with a sword hanging over our heads; and it
is meet we should come here this day to learn a lesson how to die when
a like fate shall overtake us. But thou hast been like to die by
another means, my good Constance," her ladyship said, looking with
kindness but no astonishment on my swollen and disfigured face, which
I had not remembered to conceal; grave thoughts, then uppermost,
having caused me to forget it.

"My life," I answered, "God hath mercifully spared; but I have lost
the semblance of my former self."

"Tut, tut!" she replied, "only for a time."

And then we both drew near unto the fire, for we were shivering with
cold. Lord Arundel leant against the chimney, and watched the
timepiece.

"Mistress Wells," he said, "is like, I hear, to be reprieved at the
last moment."

"Alas!" I cried, "nature therein finds relief; yet I know not how much
to rejoice or yet to grieve thereat. For surely she will desire to die
with her husband. And of what good will life be to her if, like some
others, she doth linger for years in prison?"

"Of much good, if God wills her there to spend those years," Muriel
gently said; which words, I ween, were called to mind long afterward
by one who then heard them.

As the hour appointed for the execution approached, we became silent
again, and kneeling down betook ourselves to prayer. At eight o'clock
a crowd began to assemble in the street; and the sound of their feet
as they passed under the window, hurrying toward the scaffold, which
was hung with black cloth, became audible. About an hour afterward
notice was given to us by one of the servants that the sledge which
carried the prisoners was in sight. We rose from our knees and went to
the window. Mr. Wells's stout form and Mr. Genings's slight figure
were then discernible, as they sat bound, with their hands tied behind
their backs. I observed that Mr. Wells smiled and nodded to some one
who was standing amidst the crowd. This person, who was a friend of
his, hath since told me that as he passed he saluted him with these
words: "Farewell, dear companion! farewell, all hunting and hawking
and old pastimes! I am now going a better way." Mistress Wells not
being with them, we perceived that to be true which Lord Arundel had
heard. At that moment I turned round, and missed Muriel, who had been
standing close behind me. I supposed she could not endure this sight;
but, lo and behold, looking again into the street, I saw her threading
her way amongst the crowd as swiftly, lame though she was, as if an
angel had guided her. When she reached the foot of the scaffold, and
took her stand there, her aspect was so composed, serene, and
resolved, that she seemed like an inhabitant of another world suddenly
descended amidst the coarse and brutal mob. She was resolved, I
afterward found, to take note of every act, gesture, and word there
spoken; and by her means I can here set down what mine own ears heard
not, but much of which mine own eyes beheld. As the sledge passed our
door, Mr. Genings, as Lady Arundel had foreseen, turned his head
toward us; and seeing me at the window, gave us, I doubt not, his
blessing; for, albeit he could not raise his chained hand, we saw his
fingers and his lips move. On reaching the gibbet Muriel heard him cry
out with holy Andrew, "O good gibbet, long desired and now prepared
for me, much hath my heart desired thee; and now, joyful and secure, I
come to thee. Receive me, I beseech thee, as the disciple of him that
suffered on the cross!" Being put upon the ladder, many questions were
asked him by some standersby, to which he made clear and distinct
answers. Then Mr. Topcliffe cried out with a loud voice,

"Genings, Genings, confess thy fault, thy papist treason; and the
queen, no doubt, will grant thee pardon!"

{761}

To which he mildly answered, "I know not, Mr. Topcliffe, in what I
have offended my dear anointed princess; if I have offended her or any
other person in anything, I would willingly ask her and all the world
forgiveness. If she be offended with me without a cause, for
professing my faith and religion, or because I am a priest, or because
I will not turn minister against my conscience, I shall be, I trust,
excused and innocent before God. 'We must obey God,' saith St. Peter,
'rather than men;' and I must not in this case acknowledge a fault
where there is none. If to return to England a priest, or to say mass,
is popish treason, I here do confess I am a traitor. But I think not
so; and therefore I acknowledge myself guilty of these things not with
repentance and sorrow of heart, but with an open protestation of
inward joy that I have done so good deeds, which, if they were to do
again, I would, by the permission and assistance of God, accomplish
the same, though with the hazard of a thousand lives."

Mr. Topcliffe was very angry at this speech, and hardly gave him time
to say an "Our Father" before he ordered the hangman to turn the
ladder. From that moment I could not so much as once again look toward
the scaffold. Lady Arundel and I drew back into the room, and clasping
each other's hands, kept repeating, "Lord, help him! Lord, assist him!
Have mercy on him, O Lord!" and the like prayers.

We heard Lord Arundel exclaim, "Good God! the wretch doth order the
rope to be cut!" Then avoiding the sight, he also drew back and
silently prayed. What followeth I learnt from Muriel, who never lost
her senses, though she endured, methinks, at that scaffold's foot as
much as any sufferer upon it. Scarcely or not at all stunned, Mr.
Genings stood on his feet with his eyes raised to heaven, till the
hangman threw him down on the block where he was to be quartered.
After he was dismembered, she heard him utter with a loud voice, "Oh,
it smarts!" and Mr. Wells exclaim, "Alas! sweet soul, thy pain is
great indeed, but almost past. Pray for me now that mine may come."
Then when his heart was being plucked out, a faint dying whisper
reached her ear, "Sancte Gregori, ora pro me!" and then the voice of
the hangman crying, "See, his heart is in mine hand, and yet Gregory
in his mouth! O egregious papist!"

I marvel how she lived through it; but she assured us she was never
even near unto fainting, but stood immovable, hearing every sound,
listening to each word and groan, printing them on the tablet of her
heart, wherein they have ever remained as sacred memories.

Mr. Wells, so far from being terrified by the sight of his friend's
death, expressed a desire to have his own hastened; and, like unto Sir
Thomas More, was merry to the last; for he cried, "Despatch, despatch,
Mr. Topcliffe! Be you not ashamed to suffer an old man to stand here
so long in his shirt in the cold? I pray God make you of a Saul a
Paul, of a persecutor a Catholic." A murmur, hoarse and loud, from the
crowd apprised us when all was over.

"Where is Muriel?" I cried, going to the window. Thence I beheld a
sight which my pen refuseth to describe--the sledge which was
carrying away the mangled remains of those dear friends which so short
a time before we had looked upon alive! Like in a dream I saw this
spectacle; for the moment afterward I fainted. Many persons were
running after the cart, and Muriel keeping pace with what to others
would have been a sight full of horror, but to her were only relics of
the saintly dead. She followed, heedless of the mob, unmindful of
their jeers, intent on one aim--to procure some portion of those
sacred remains, which she at last achieved in an incredible manner;
one finger of Edmund Genings's hand, which she laid hold of, remaining
in hers. This secured, she hastened home, bearing away this her
treasure.

{762}

When I recovered from a long swoon, she was standing on one side of me
and Lady Arundel on the other. Their faces were very pale, but
peaceful; and when remembrance returned, I also felt a great and quiet
joy diffused in mine heart, such as none, I ween, could believe in who
have not known the like. For a while all earthly cares left me; I
seemed to soar above this world. Even Basil I could think of with a
singular detachment. It seemed as if angels were haunting the house,
whispering heavenly secrets. I could not so much as think on those
blessed departed souls without an increase of this joy sensibly
inflaming my heart.

After Lady Arundel had left us, which she did with many loving words
and tender caresses, Muriel and I conversed long touching the future.
She told me that when her duty to her father should end with his life,
she intended to fulfil the vow she long ago had made to consecrate
herself wholly to God in holy religion, and go beyond the seas, to
become a nun of the order of St. Augustine.

"May I not leave this world?" I cried; "may I not also, forgetting all
things else, live for God alone?"

A sweet sober smile illumined Muriel's face as she answered, "Yea, by
all means serve God, but not as a nun, good Constance. Thine I take to
be the mere shadow of a vocation, if even so much as that. A cloud
hath for a while obscured the sunshine of thy hopes and called up this
shadow; but let this thin vapor dissolve, and no trace shall remain of
it. Nay, nay, sweet one, 'tis not chafed, nor yet, except in rare
instances, riven hearts which God doth call to this special
consecration--rather whole ones, nothing or scantily touched by the
griefs and joys which this world can afford. But I warrant thee--nay,
I may not warrant," she added, checking herself, "for who can of a
surety forecast what God's designs should be? But I think thou wilt
be, before many years have past, a careful matron, with many children
about thy apron-strings to try thy patience."

"O Muriel," I answered, "how should this be? I have made my bed, and I
must lie on it. Like a foolish creature, unwittingly, or rather
rashly, I have deceived Basil into thinking I do not love him; and if
my face should yet recover its old fairness, he shall still think mine
heart estranged."

Muriel shook her head, and said more entangled skeins than this one
had been unravelled. The next day she resumed her wonted labors in the
prisons and amongst the poor. Having procured means of access to
Mistress Wells, she carried to her the only comfort she could now
taste--the knowledge of her husband's holy, courageous end, and the
reports of the last words he did utter. Then having received a charge
thereunto from Mr. Genings, she discovered John Genings's place of
residence, and went to tell him that the cause of his brother^s coming
to London was specially his love for him; that his only regret in
dying had been that he was executed before he could see him again, or
commend him to any friend of his own, so hastened was his death.

But this much-loved brother received her with a notable coldness; and
far from bewailing the untimely and bloody end of his nearest kinsman,
he betrayed some kind of contentment at the thought that he was now
rid of all the persuasions which he suspected he should otherwise have
received from him touching religion.

About a fortnight afterward Mr. Congleton expired. Alas! so
troublesome were the times, that to see one, howsoever loved, sink
peacefully into the grave, had not the same sadness which usually
belongs to the like haps.

Muriel had procured a priest for to give him extreme unction--one Mr.
Adams, a friend of Mr. Wells, who had sometimes said mass in his
house. He also secretly came for to perform the funeral rites before
his burial in the cemetery of St. Martin's church.

{763}

When we returned home that day after the funeral, this reverend
gentleman asked us if we had heard any report touching the brother of
Mr. Genings; and on our denial, he said, "Talk is ministered amongst
Catholics of his sudden conversion."

"Sudden, indeed, it should be," quoth Muriel; "for a more indifferent
listener to an afflicting message could not be met with than he proved
himself when I carried to him Mr. Genings's dying words."

"Not more sudden," quoth Mr. Adams, "than St. Paul's was, and
therefore not incredible."

Whilst we were yet speaking, a servant came in, and said a young
gentleman was at the door, and very urgent for to see Muriel.

"Tell him," she said, raising her eyes, swollen with tears, "that I
have one hour ago buried my father, and am in no condition to see
strangers."

The man returned with a paper, on which these words were written:

"A penitent and a wanderer craveth to speak with you. If you shed
tears, his do incessantly flow. If you weep for a father, he grieveth
for one better to him than ten fathers. If your plight is sad, his
should be desperate, but for God's great mercy and a brother's prayers
yet pleading for him in heaven as once upon earth.
    "JOHN GENINGS."

"Heavens!" Muriel cried, "it is this changed man, this Saul become a
Paul, which stands at the door and knocks. Bring him in swiftly; the
best comfort I can know this day is to see one who awhile was lost and
is now found."

When John Genings beheld her and me, he awhile hid his face in his
hands, and seemed unable to speak. To break this silence Mr. Adams
said, "Courage, Mr. Genings; your holy brother rejoiceth in heaven
over your changed mind, and further blessings still, I doubt not, he
shall yet obtain for you."

Then this same John raised his head, and with as great and touching
sorrow as can be expressed, after thanking this unknown speaker for
his comfortable words, he begged of Muriel to relate to him each
action and speech in the dying scene she had witnessed; and when she
had ended this recital, with the like urgency he moved me to tell him
all I could remember of his brother's young years, all my father had
written of his life and virtues at college, all which we had heard of
his labors since he had come into the country, and lastly, in a manner
most simple and affecting, we all entreating him thereunto, he made
this narrative, addressing himself chiefly to Muriel:

"You, madam, are acquainted with what was the hardness of mine heart
and cruel indifference to my brother^s fate; with what disdain I
listened to you, with what pride I received his last advice. But about
ten days after his execution, toward night, having spent all that day
in sports and jollity, being weary with play, I resorted home to
repose myself. I went into a secret chamber, and was no sooner there
sat down, but forthwith my heart began to be heavy, and I weighed how
idly I had spent that day. Amidst these thoughts there was presently
represented to me an imagination and apprehension of the death of my
brother, and, amongst other things, how he had not long before
forsaken all worldly pleasure, and for the sake of his religion alone
endured dreadful torments. Then within myself I made long discourses
concerning his manner of living and mine own; and finding the one to
embrace pain and mortification, and the other to seek pleasure--the
one to live strictly, and the other licentiously--I was struck with
exceeding terror and remorse. I wept bitterly, desiring God to
illuminate mine understanding, that I might see and perceive the
truth. Oh, what great joy and consolation did I feel at {764} that
instant! What reverence on the sudden did I begin to bear to the
Blessed Virgin and to the Saints of God, which before I had never
scarcely so much as heard of! What strange emotions, as it were
inspirations, with exceeding readiness of will to change my religion,
took possession of my soul! and what heavenly conception had I then of
my brother's felicity! I imagined I saw him--I thought I heard him. In
this ecstasy of mind I made a vow upon the spot, as I lay prostrate on
the ground, to forsake kindred and country, to find out the true
knowledge of Edmund's faith. Oh, sir," he ended by saying, turning to
Mr. Adams, which he guessed to be a priest, "think you not my brother
obtained for me in heaven what on earth he had not obtained? for here
I am become a Catholic in faith without persuasion or conference with
any one man in the world?"

"Ay, my good friend," Mr. Adams replied; "the blood of martyrs will
ever prove the seed of the Church. Let us then, in our private
prayers, implore the suffrages of those who in this country do lose
their lives for the faith, and take unto ourselves the words of
Jeremiah: 'O Lord, remember what has happened unto us. Behold and see
our great reproach; our inheritance is gone to strangers, our houses
to aliens. We are become as children without a father, our mothers are
made as it were widows.'"

These last words of Holy Writ brought to mine own mind private
sorrows, and caused me to shed tears. Soon after John Genings departed
from England without giving notice to us or any of his friends, and
went beyond seas to execute his promise. I have heard that he has
entered the holy order of St. Francis, and is seeking to procure a
convent of that religion at Douay, in hopes of restoring the English
Franciscan province, of which it is supposed he will be first
provincial. Report doth state him to be an exceeding strict and holy
religious, and like to prove an instrument in furnishing the English
mission with many zealous and apostolical laborers.

Muriel and I were solitary in that great city where so many
misfortunes had beset us; she with her anchor cast where her hopes
could not be deceived; I by mine own folly like unto a ship at sea
without a chart. Womanly reserve, mixed, I ween, with somewhat of
pride, restraining me from writing to Basil, though, as my face
improved each day, I deplored my hasty folly, and desired nothing so
much as to see him again, when, if his love should prove unchanged
(shame on that word _if!_ which my heart disavowed), we should be as
heretofore, and the suffering I had caused him and endured myself
would end. But how this might happen I foresaw not; and life was sad
and weary while so much suspense lasted.

Muriel would not forsake me while in this plight; but although none
could have judged it from her cheerful and amiable behavior, I well
knew that she sighed for the haven of a religions home, and grieved to
keep her from it. After some weeks spent in this fashion, with very
little comfort, I was sitting one morning dismally forecasting the
future, writing letter after letter to Basil, which still I tore up
rather than send them--for I warrant you it was no easy matter for to
express in writing what I longed to say. To tell him the cause of my
breaking our contract was so much as to compel him to the performance
of it; and albeit I was no longer so ill-favored as at the first, yet
the good looks I had before my sickness had by no means wholly
returned. Sometimes I wrote: "Your thinking, dear Basil, that I do
affection any but yourself is so false and injurious an imagination,
that I cannot suffer you to entertain it. Be sure I never can and
never shall love any but you; yet, for all that, I cannot marry you."
Then effacing this last sentence, which verily belied my true desire,
I would write another: "Methinks if you should see me now, yourself
would not wish otherwise than to dissolve a contract {765} wherein
your contentment should be less than it hath been." And then thinking
this should be too obscure, changed it to--"In sooth, dear Basil, my
appearance is so altered that you would yourself, I ween, not desire
for to wed one so different from the Constance you have seen and
loved." But pride whispered to restrain this open mention of my
suspicious fears of his liking me less for my changed face; yet
withal, conscience reproved this misdoubt of one whose affection had
ever shown itself to be of the nobler sort, which looketh rather to
the qualities of the heart and mind than to the exterior charms of a
fair visage.

Alas! what a torment doth perplexity occasion. I had let go my pen,
and my tears were falling on the paper, when Muriel opened the door of
the parlor.

"What is it?" I cried, hiding my face with mine hand that she should
not see me weeping.

"A letter from Lady Arundel," she answered.

I eagerly took it from her; and on the reading of it found it
contained an urgent request from her ladyship, couched in most
affectionate terms, and masking the kindness of its intent under a
show of entreating, as a favor to herself that I would come and reside
with her at Arundel Castle, where she greatly needed the solace of a
friend's company, during her lord's necessary absences. "Mine own
dear, good Constance," she wrote, "come to me quickly. In a letter I
cannot well express all the good you will thus do to me. For mine own
part, I would fain say come to me until death shall part us. But so
selfish I would not be; yet prithee come until such time as the clouds
which have obscured the fair sky of thy future prospects have passed
away, and thy Basil's fortunes are mended; for I will not cease to
call him thine, for all that thou hast thyself thrust a spoke in a
wheel which otherwise should have run smoothly, for the which thou art
now doing penance: but be of good cheer; time will bring thee shrift.
Some kind of comfort I can promise thee in this house, greater than I
dare for to commit to paper. Lose no time then. From thy last letter
methinks the gentle turtle-dove at whose side thou dost now nestle
hath found herself a nest whereunto she longeth to fly. Let her spread
her wings thither, and do thou hasten to the shelter of these old
walls and the loving faithful heart of thy poor friend,
  "ANNE ARUNDEL AND SURREY."

Before a fortnight was overpast Muriel and I had parted; she for her
religious home beyond seas, I for the castle of my Lord Arundel,
whither I travelled in two days, resting on my way at the pleasant
village of Horsham. During the latter part of the journey the road lay
through a very wild expanse of down; but as soon as I caught sight of
the sea my heart bounded with joy; for to gaze on its blue expanse
seemed to carry me beyond the limits of this isle to the land where
Basil dwelt. When I reached the castle, the sight of the noble gateway
and keep filled me with admiration; and riding into the court thereof,
I looked with wonder on the military defences bristling on every side.
But what a sweet picture smiled from one of the narrow windows over
above the entrance-door!--mine own loved friend, yet fairer in her
matronly and motherly beauty than even in her girlhood's loveliness,
holding in her arms the pretty bud which had blossomed on a noble tree
in the time of adversity. Her countenance beamed on me like the
morning sun's; and my heart expanded with joy when, half-way up the
stairs which led to her chamber, I found myself inclosed in her arms.
She led me to a settle near a cheerful fire, and herself removed my
riding-cloak, my hat and veil, stroked my cheek with two of her
delicate white fingers, and said with a smile,

"In sooth, my dear Constance, thou art an arrant cheat."

"How so, most dear lady?" I said, likewise smiling.

{766}

"Why, thou art as comely as ever I thee; which, after all the torments
inflicted on poor Master Rookwood by thy prophetical vision of an
everlasting deformity, carefully concealed from him under the garb of
a sudden fit of inconstancy, is a very nefarious injustice. Go to, go
to; if he should see thee now, he never would believe but that that
management of thine was a cunning device for to break faith with him."

"Nay, nay," I cried; "if I should be ever so happy, which I deserve
not, for to see him again, there could never be for one moment a
mistrust on his part of a love which is too strong and too fond for
concealment. If the feebleness of sickness had not bred unreasonable
fears, methinks I should not have been guilty of so great a folly as
to think he would prize less what he was always wont most to treasure
far above their merits--the heart and mind of his poor Constance
--because the casket which held them had waxed unseemly. But when the
day shall come in which Basil and I may meet, God only knoweth. Human
foresight cannot attain to this prevision."

Lady Arundel's eyes had a smiling expression then which surprised me.
For mine own heart was full when I thus spoke, and I was wont to meet
in her with a more quick return of the like feelings I expressed than
at that time appeared. Slight inward resentments, painfully, albeit
not angrily, entertained, I was by nature prone to; and in this case
the effect of this impression suddenly checked the joy which at my
first arrival I had experienced. O, how much secret discipline should
be needed for to rule that little unruly kingdom within us, which many
look not into till serious rebellions do arise, which need fire and
sword to quell them for lack of timely repression! Her ladyship set
before me some food, and constrained me to eat, which I did merely for
to content her. She appeared to me somewhat restless: beginning a
sentence, and then breaking off suddenly in the midst thereof; going
in and out of the chamber; laughing at one time, and then seeming as
if about to weep. "When I had finished eating, and a servant had
removed the dishes, she sat down by my side and took my hand in hers.
Then the tears truly began to roll down her cheeks.

"O, for God's sake, what aileth you, dearest lady?" I said, uneasily
gazing on her agitated countenance.

"Nothing ails me," she answered; "only I fear to frighten thee, albeit
in a joyful manner."

"Frightened with joy!" I sadly answered. "O, that should be a rare
fright, and an unwonted one to me of late."

"Therefore," she said, smiling through her tears, "peradventure the
more to be feared."

"What joy do you speak of? I pray you, sweet lady, keep me not in
suspense."

"If, for instance," she said in a low voice, pressing my hands very
hard,--"if I was to tell thee Constance, that thy Basil was here,
shouldst thou not be affrighted?"

Methinks I must have turned very white; leastways, I began to tremble.

"Is he here?" I said, almost beside myself with the fearful hope her
words awoke.

"Yea," she said. "Since three days he is here."

For a moment I neither spoke nor moved.

"How comes it about? how doth it happen?" I began to say; but a
passion of tears choked my utterance. I fell into her arms, sobbing on
her breast; for verily I had no power to restrain myself. I heard her
say, "Master Rookwood, come in." Then, after those sad long weary
years, I again heard his cheerful voice; then I saw his kind eyes
speaking what words could never have uttered, or one-half so well
expressed. Then I felt the happiness which is most like, {767} I ween,
of any on earth to that of heaven: after long parting, to meet again
one intensely loved--each heart overflowing with an unspoken joy and
with an unbounded thankfulness to God. Amazement did so fill me at
this unlooked-for good, that I seemed content for a while to think of
it as of a dream, and only feared to be awoke. But oh, with how many
sweet tears of gratitude--with what bursts of wonder and admiration--I
soon learnt how Lady Arundel had formed this kind plot, to which
Muriel had been privy, for to bring together parted lovers, and
procure to others the happiness she so often lacked herself--the
company of the most loved person in the world. She had herself written
to Basil, and related the cause of my apparent change; a cause, she
said, at no time sufficient for to warrant a desperate action, and
even then passing away. But that had it forever endured, she was of
opinion his was a love would survive any such accident as touched only
the exterior, when all else was unimpaired. She added, that when Mr.
Congleton, who was then at the point of death, should have expired,
and Muriel gone beyond seas to fulfil her religious intent, she would
use all the persuasion in her power to bring me to reside with her,
which was the thing she most desired in the world; and that if he
should think it possible under another name for to cross the seas and
land at some port in Sussex, he should be the welcomest guest
imaginable at Arundel Castle, if even, like St. Alexis, he should hide
his nobility under the garb of rags, and come thither begging on foot;
but yet she hoped, for his sake, it should not so happen, albeit
nothing could be more honorable if the cause was a good one. It needed
no more inducement than what this letter contained for to move Basil
to attempt this secret return. He took the name of Martingale, and
procured a passage in a small trading craft, which landed him at the
port of a small town named Littlehampton, about three or four miles
from Arundel. Thence he walked to the castle, where the countess
feigned him to be a leech sent by my lord to prescribe remedies for a
pain in her head, which she was oftentimes afflicted with, and as such
entertained him in the eyes of strangers as long as he continued
there, which did often move us to great merriment; for some of the
neighbors which she was forced to see, would sometimes ask for to
consult the countess's physician; and to avoid misdoubts, Basil once
or twice made up some innocent compounds, which an old gentleman and a
maiden lady in the town vowed had cured them, the one of a fit of the
gout, and the other of a very sharp disorder in her stomach. But to
return to the blissful first day of our meeting, one of the happiest I
had yet known; for a paramount affection doth so engross the heart,
that other sorrows vanish in its presence like dewdrops in the
sunshine. I can never forget the smallest particle of its many joys.
The long talk between Basil and me, first in Lady Arundel's chamber,
and then in the gallery of the castle, walking up and down, and when I
was tired, I sitting and he standing by the window which looked on the
fair valley and silvery river Arun, running toward the sea, through
pleasant pastures, with woody slopes on both sides, a fair and a
peaceful scene; fair and peaceful as the prospect Basil unfolded to me
that day, if we could but once in safety cross the seas; for his
debtors had remitted to him in France the moneys which they owed him,
and he had purchased a cottage in a very commodious village near the
town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, with an apple-orchard and a garden stored
with gay flowers and beehives, and a meadow with two large
walnut-trees in it. "And then bethink thee," he added, "mine own dear
love, that right in front of this fine mansion doth stand the parish
church, where God is worshipped in a Catholic manner in {768} peace
and freedom; and nothing greater or more weighty need, methinks, to be
said in its praise."

I said I thought so too, and that the picture he drew of it liked me
well.

"But," quoth Basil suddenly, "I must tell thee, sweetheart, I liked
not well thy behavior touching thine altered face, and the misleading
letter thou didst send me at that time. No!" he exclaimed with great
vehemency, "it mislikes me sorely that thou shouldst have doubted my
love and faith, and dealt with me so injuriously. If I was now by some
accident disfigured, I must by that same token expect thine affection
for me should decay."

"O Basil!" I cried, "that would be an impossible thing!"

"Wherefore impossible?" he replied; "you thought such a change
possible in me?"

"Because," I said, smiling,  "women are the most constant creatures in
the world, and not fickle like unto men, or so careful of a good
complexion in others, or a fine set of features."

"Tut, tut!" he cried, "I do admire that thou shouldst dare to utter so
great a . . . ." then he stopped, and, laughing, added, "the last half
of Raleigh's name, as the queen's bad riddle doth make it."  [Footnote 144]

  [Footnote 144: "The bane of the stomach, and the word of disgrace.
  Is the name of the gentleman with the bold."]

Well, much talk of this sort was ministered between us; but albeit I
find pleasure in the recalling of it, methinks the reading thereof
should easily weary others; so I must check my pen, which, like unto a
garrulous old gossip, doth run on, overstepping the limits of
discretion.


CHAPTER XXVII.

Before I arrived, Lady Arundel had made Basil privy to a great secret,
with warrant to impart it to me. In a remote portion of the castle's
buildings was concealed at that time Father Southwell, a man who had
not his like for piety and good parts; a sweet poet also, whose pieces
of verse, chiefly written in that obscure chamber in Arundel Castle,
have been since done into print, and do win great praise from all
sorts of people. Adjoining to his room, which only one servant in the
house, who carried his meals to him, had knowledge of, and from which
he could not so much as once look out of the window for fear of being
seen, was a small oratory where he said mass every day, and by a
secret passage Lady Arundel went from her apartments for to hear it.
That same evening after supper she led me thither for to get this good
priest's blessing, and also his counsel touching my marriage; for both
her ladyship and Basil were urgent for it to take place in a private
manner at the castle before we left England. For, they argued, if
there should be danger in this departure, it were best encountered
together; and except we were married it should be an impossible thing
for me to travel in his company and land with him in France. Catholics
could be married in a secret manner now that the needs of the times,
and the great perils many were exposed to, gave warrant for it. After
some talk with Father Southwell and Lady Arundel, I consented to their
wishes with more gladness of heart, I ween, than was seemly to
exhibit; for verily I was better contented than can be thought of to
think I should be at last married to my dear Basil, and nevermore to
part from him, if it so pleased God that we should land safely in
France, which did seem to me then the land of promise.

The next days were spent in forecasting means for a safe departure, as
soon as these secret nuptials should have taken place; but none had
been yet resolved on, when one morning I was called to Lady Arundel's
chamber, whom I found in tears and greatly disturbed, for that she had
heard from Lady Margaret Sackville, who {769} was then in London, that
Lord Arundel was once more resolved to leave the realm, albeit Father
Edmunds did dissuade him from that course; but some other friend's
persuasions were more availing, and he had determined to go to France,
where he might live in safety and serve God quietly.

My lady's agitation at this news was very great. She said nothing
should content her but to go with him, albeit she was then with child;
and she should write to tell him so; but before she could send a
letter Lord Arundel came to the castle, and held converse for many
hours with her and Father Southwell. When I met her afterward in the
gallery, her eyes were red with weeping. She said my lord desired to
see Basil and me in her chamber at nine of the clock. He wished to
speak with us of his resolve to cross the seas, and she prayed God
some good should arise out of it. Then she added, "I am now going to
the chapel, and if thou hast nothing of any weight to detain thee,
then come thither also, for to join thy prayers with mine for the
favorable issue of a very doubtful matter."

When we repaired to her ladyship's chamber at the time appointed, my
lord greeted us in an exceeding kind manner; and after some talk
touching Basil's secret return to England, our marriage, and then as
speedy as possible going abroad, his lordship said: "I also am
compelled to take a like course, for my evil-willers are resolved to
work my ruin and overthrow, and will succeed therein by means of my
religion. Many actions which at the outset may seem rash and
unadvised, after sufficient consideration do appear to be just and
necessary; and, methinks, my dearest wife and Father Southwell are now
minded to recommend what at first they misliked, and to see that in
this my present intent I take the course which, though it imperils my
fortunes, will tend to my soul's safety and that of my children. Since
I have conceived this intent, I thank God I have found a great deal
more quietness in my mind; and in this respect I have just occasion to
esteem my past troubles as my greatest felicity, for they have been
the means of leading me to that course which ever brings perfect
quietness, and only procures eternal happiness. I am resolved, as my
dear Nan well knoweth, to endure any punishment rather than willingly
to decline from what I have begun; I have bent myself as nearly as I
could to continue in the same, and to do no act repugnant to my faith
and profession. And by means hereof I am often compelled to do many
things which may procure peril to myself, and be an occasion of
mislike to her majesty. For, look you, on the first day of this
parliament, when the queen was hearing of a sermon in the cathedral
church of Westminster, above in the chancel, I was driven to walk by
myself below in one of the aisles; and another day this last Lent,
when she was hearing another sermon in the chapel at Greenwich, I was
forced to stay all the while in the presence-chamber. Then also when
on any Sunday or holyday her grace goes to her great closet, I am
forced either to stay in the privy chamber, and not to wait upon her
at all, or else presently to depart as soon as I have brought her to
the chapel. These things, and many more, I can by no means escape, but
only by an open plain discovery of myself, in the eye and opinion of
all men, as to the true cause of my refusal; neither can it now be
long hidden, although for a while it may not have been generally noted
and observed."

Lady Arundel sighed and said:

"I must needs confess that of necessity it must shortly be discovered;
and when I remember what a watchful and jealous eye is carried over
all such as are known to be recusants, and also how their lodgings are
continually searched, and to how great danger they are subject if a
Jesuit or seminary priest be found within their house, I begin to see
that either you cannot serve God in such {770} sort as you have
professed, or else you must incur the hazard of greater sufferings
than I am willing you should endure."

"For my part," Basil said, "I would ask, my lord, those that hate you
most, whether being of the religion which you do profess, they would
not take that course for safety of their souls and discharge of their
consciences which you do now meditate? And either they must directly
tell you that they would have done the same, or acknowledge themselves
to be mere atheists; which, howsoever they be affected in their
hearts, I think they would be loth to confess with their mouths."

"What sayest thou, Constance, of my lord's intent?" Lady Arundel said,
when Basil left off speaking.

"I am ashamed to utter my thinking in his presence, and in yours,
dearest lady," I replied; "but if you command me to it, methinks that
having had his house so fatally and successfully touched, and finding
himself to be of that religion which is accounted dangerous and odious
to the present state, which her majesty doth detest, and of which she
is most jealous and doubtful, and seeing he might now be drawn for his
conscience into a great and continual danger, not being able to do any
act or duty whereunto his religion doth bind him without incurring the
danger of felony, he must needs run upon his death headlong, which is
repugnant to the law of God and flatly against conscience, or else he
must resolve to escape these perils by the means he doth propose."

"Yea," exclaimed his lordship, with so much emotion that his voice
shook in the utterance of the words, "long have I debated with myself
on the course to take. I do see it to be the safest way to depart out
of the realm, and abide in some other place where I may live without
danger of my conscience, without offence to the queen, without daily
peril of my life; but yet I was drawn by such forcible persuasions to
be of another opinion, as I could not easily resolve on which side to
settle my determination. For on the one hand my native, and oh how
dearly loved country, my own early friends, my kinsfolk, my home, and,
more than all, my wife, which I must for a while part with if I go, do
invite me to stay. Poverty awaits me abroad; but in what have state
and riches benefited us, Nan? Shall not ease of heart and freedom from
haunting fears compensate for vain wealth? When, with the sweet
burthen in thine arms which for a while doth detain thee here, thou
shalt kneel before God's altar in a Catholic land, methinks thou wilt
have but scanty regrets for the trappings of fortune."

"God is my witness," the sweet lady replied, "that should be the
happiest day of my life. But I fear--yea, much I do fear--the chasm
of parting which doth once more open betwixt thee and me. Prithee,
Phil, let me go with thee," she tearfully added.

"Nay, sweet Nan," he answered; "thou knowest the physicians forbid thy
journeying at the present time so much as hence to London. How should
it then behoove thee to run the perils of the sea, and nightly voyage,
and it may be rough usage? Nay, let me behold thee again, some months
hence, with a fair boy in thine arms, which if I can but once behold,
my joy shall be full, if I should have to labor with mine hands for to
support him and thee."

She bowed her head on the hand outstretched to her; but I could see
the anguish with which she yielded her assent to this separation.
Methinks there was some sort of presentiment of the future heightening
her present grief; she seemed so loth her lord should go, albeit
reason and expediency forced from her an unwilling consent.

Before the conversation in Lady Arundel's chamber ended, the earl
proposed that Basil and I should accompany him abroad, and cross the
sea in the craft he should privately {771} hire, which would sail from
Littlehampton, and carry us to some port of France, whence along the
coast we could travel to Boulogne. This liked her ladyship well. Her
eyes entreated our consent thereunto, as if it should have been a
favor she asked, which indeed was rather a benefit conferred on us;
for nothing would serve my lord but that he should be at the entire
charge of the voyage, who smiling said, for such good company as he
should thus enjoy he should be willing to be taxed twice as much, and
yet consider himself to be the obliged party in this contract.

"But we must be married first," Basil bluntly said.

Lady Arundel replied that Father Southwell could perform the ceremony
when we pleased--yea, on the morrow, if it should be convenient; and
that my lord should be present thereat.

I said this should be very short notice, I thought, for to be married
the next day; upon which Basil exclaimed,

"These be not times, sweetheart, for ceremonies, fashions, and nice
delays. Methinks since our betrothal there hath been sufficient
waiting for to serve the turn of the nicest lady in the world in the
matter of reserves and yeas and nays."

Which is the sharpest thing, I think, Basil hath uttered to me either
before or since we have been married. So, to appease him, I said not
another word against this sudden wedding; and the next day but one, at
nine of the clock, was then fixed for the time thereof.

On the following morning Lord Arundel and Basil (the earl had
conceived a very great esteem and good disposition toward him; as
great, and greater he told me, as for some he had known for as many
years as him hours) went out together, under pretence of shooting in
the woods on the opposite side of the river about Leominster, but
verily to proceed to Littlehampton, where the earl had appointed to
meet the captain of the vessel--a Catholic man, the son of an old
retainer of his family--with whom he had dealt for the hiring of a
vessel for to sail to France as soon as the wind should prove
favorable. Whilst they were gone upon this business, Lady Arundel and
I sat in the chamber which looked into the court, making such simple
preparations as would escape notice for our wedding, and the departure
which should speedily afterward ensue.

"I will not yield thee," her ladyship said, "to be married except in a
white dress and veil, which I shall hide in a chamber nigh unto the
oratory, where I myself will attire thee, dear love; and see, this
morning early I went out alone into the garden and gathered this store
of rosemary, for to make thee a nosegay to wear in thy bosom. Father
Southwell saith it is used at weddings for an emblem of fidelity. If
so, who should have so good a right to it as my Constance and her
Basil? But I will lay it up in a casket, which shall conceal it the
while, and aid to retain the scent thereof."

"O dear lady," I cried, seizing her hands, "do you remember the day
when you plucked rosemary in our old garden at Sherwood, and smiling,
said to me, 'This meaneth remembrance?' Since it signifieth fidelity
also, well should you affection it; for where shall be found one so
faithful in love and friendship as you?"

"Weep not," she said, pressing her fingers on her eyelids to stay her
own tears. "We must needs thank God and be joyful on the eve of thy
wedding-day; and I am resolved to meet my lord also with a cheerful
countenance, so that not in gloom but in hope he shall leave his
native land."

In converse such as this the hours went swiftly by. Sometimes we
talked of the past, its many strange haps and changes; sometimes of
the future, forecasting the manner of our lives abroad, where in
safety, albeit in poverty, we hoped to spend our days. In {772} the
afternoon there arrived at the castle my Lord William Howard and his
wife and Lady Margaret Sackville, who, having notice of their
brother's intent to go beyond seas on the next day, if it should be
possible, had come for to bid him farewell.

Leaving Lady Arundel in their company, I went to the terrace
underneath the walls of the castle, and there paced up and down,
chewing the cud of both sweet and sad memories. I looked at the soft
blue sky and fleecy clouds, urged along by a westerly breeze
impregnated with a salt savor; on the emerald green of the fields, the
graceful forms of the leafless trees on the opposite hills, on the
cattle peacefully resting by the river-side. I listed to the rustling
of the wind amongst the bare branches over mine head, and the bells of
a church ringing far off in the valley. "O England, mine own England,
my fair native land--am I to leave thee, never to return?" I cried,
speaking aloud, as if to ease my oppressed heart. Then mine eyes
rested on the ruined hospital of the town, the shut-up churches, the
profaned sanctuaries, and thought flying beyond the seas to a Catholic
land, I exclaimed, "The sparrow shall find herself a house, and the
turtle-dove a nest for herself--the altars of the Lord of hosts, my
king and my God."

When Basil returned, he told me that the vessel which was to take us
to France was lying out at sea near the coast. Lord Arundel and
himself had gone in a boat to speak with the captain, who did seem a
particular honest man and zealous Catholic; and the earl had bespoken
some needful accommodation for Mistress Martingale, he said, smiling;
not very commodious, indeed, but as good as on board the like craft
could be expected. If the wind remained in the same quarter in the
afternoon of the morrow, we should then sail; if it should change, so
as to be most unfavorable, the captain should send private notice of
it to the castle.

The whole of that evening the earl spent in writing a letter to her
majesty. He feared that his enemies, after his departure, would, by
their slanderous reports, endeavor to disgrace him with the people,
and cause the queen to have sinister surmises of him. He confided this
letter to the Lady Margaret, his sister, to be delivered unto her
after his arrival in France; by which it might appear, both to her and
all others, what were the true causes which had moved him to undertake
that resolution.

I do often think of that evening in the great chamber of the
castle--the young earl in the vigorous strength and beauty of manhood,
his comely and fair face now bending over his writing, now raised with
a noble and manly grief, as he read aloud portions of it, which,
methinks, would have touched any hearts to hear them; and how much the
more that loving wife, that affectionate sister, that faithful
brother, those devoted friends which seemed to be in some sort
witnesses of his last will before a final parting! I mind me of the
sorrowful, dove-like sweetness of Lady Arundel's countenance; the
flashing eyes of Lady Margaret; the loving expression, veiled by a
studied hardness, of Lord William's face; of his wife my Lady Bess's
reddening cheek and tearful eyes, which she did conceal behind the
coif of her childish namesake sitting on her knees. When he had
finished his letter, with a somewhat moved voice the earl read the
last passages thereof: "If my protestation, who never told your
majesty any untruth, may carry credit in your opinion, I here call God
and his angels to witness that I would not have taken this course if I
might have stayed in England without danger of my soul or peril of my
life. I am enforced to forsake my country, to forget my friends, to
leave my wife, to lose the hope of all worldly pleasures and earthly
commodities. All this is so grievous to flesh and blood, that I could
not desire to live if I {773} were not comforted with the remembrance
of his mercy for whom I endure all this, who endured ten thousand
times more for me. Therefore I remain in assured hope that myself and
my cause shall receive that favor, conceit, and rightful construction
at your majesty's hands which I may justly challenge. I do humbly
crave pardon for my long and tedious letter, which the weightiness of
the matter enforced me unto; and I beseech God from the bottom of my
heart to send your majesty as great happiness as I wish to mine own
soul."

A time of silence followed the reading of these sentences, and then
the earl said in a cheerful manner:

"So, good Meg, I commit this protestation to thy good keeping. When
thou hearest of my safe arrival in France, then straightway see to
have it placed in the queen's hands."

The rest of the evening was spent in affectionate converse by these
near kinsfolk. Basil and I repaired the while by the secret passage to
Father Southwell's chamber, where we were in turn shriven, and
afterward received from him such good counsel and rules of conduct as
he deemed fitting for married persons to observe. Before I left him,
this good father gave me, writ in his own hand, some sweet verses
which he had that day composed for us, and which I do here transcribe.
He, smiling, said he had made mention of fishes in his poem, for to
pleasure so famous an angler as Basil; and of birds, for that he knew
me to be a great lover of these soaring creatures:

  "The lopped tree in time may grow again.
  Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
  The sorest wight may find release of pain.
  The driest soil suck in some moistening shower;
  Times go by turn, and chances change by course.
  From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

  "The sea of fortune doth not over flow,
  She draws her favors to the lowest ebb;
  Her time hath equal times to come and go.
  Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
  No joy so great but runneth to an end.
  No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

  "A chance may win that by mischance was lost.
  The well that holds no great, takes little fish;
  In some things all, in all things none are crossed.
  Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
  Unmeddled joys here to no man befal,
  Who least have some, who most have never all.

  "Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring;
  No endless night, yet not eternal day;
  The saddest birds a season find to sing;
  The roughest storm a calm may soon allay;
  Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
  That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall."

The common sheet of paper which doth contain this his writing hath a
greater value in mine eyes than the most rich gift that can be thought
of.

On the next morning. Lady Arundel conducted me from mine own chamber,
first into a room where with her own hands she arrayed me in my bridal
dress, and with many tender kisses and caresses, such as a sister or a
mother would bestow, testified her affection for her poor friend; and
thence to the oratory, where the altar was prepared, and by herself in
secret decked with early primroses, which had begun to show in the
woods and neath the hedges. A small but noble company were gathered
round us that day. From pure and holy lips the Church's benison came
to us. The vows we exchanged have been faithfully observed, and long
years have set a seal on the promises then made.

Basil's wife! Oh, what a whole compass of happiness did lie in those
two words! Yea, the waves of the sea might now rage and the winds
blow. The haven might be distant and the way thither insecure. Man's
enmity or accident might yet rob us each of the other's visible
presence. But naught could now sever the cord, strong like unto a
cable chain, which bound our souls in one. Anchored in that wedded
unity, which is one of God's sacraments, till death, ay, and beyond
death also, this tie should last.

We have been young, and now are old. We have lost country, home, and
almost every friend known and affectioned in our young years; but
{774} that deepest, holiest love, the type of Christ's union with his
Church, still doth shed its light over the evening of life. My dear
Basil, I am assured, thinks me as fair as when we did sit together
fishing on the banks of the Ouse; and his hoary head and withered
cheeks are more lovely in mine eyes than ever were his auburn locks
and ruddy complexion. One of us must needs die before the other,
unless we should be so happy that that good should befal us as to end
our days as two aged married persons I have heard of. It was the
husband's custom, as soon as ever he unclosed his eyes, to ask his
wife how she did; but one night, he being in a deep sleep, she quietly
departed toward the morning. He was that day to have gone out
a-hunting, and it was his custom to have his chaplain pray with him
before he went out. The women, fearful to surprise him with the ill
news, had stolen out and acquainted the chaplain, desiring him to
inform him of it. But the gentleman waking did not on that day, as was
his custom ask for his wife, but called his chaplain to prayers, and,
joining with him, in the midst of the prayer expired, and both were
buried in the same grave. Methinks this should be a very desirable
end, only, if it pleased God, I would wish to have the last
sacraments, and then to die just before Basil, when his time cometh.
But God knoweth best; and any ways we are so old and so near of an
age, one cannot tarry very long behind when the other is gone.

Being at rest after our marriage touching what concerned ourselves,
compassion for Lady Arundel filled our hearts. Alas! how bravely and
how sweetly she bore this parting grief. Her intense love for her
lord, and sorrow at their approaching separation, struggled with her
resolve not to sadden their last hours, which were prolonged beyond
expectancy. For once on that day, and twice on that which followed,
when all was made ready for departure, a message came from the captain
for to say the wind, and another time the tide, would not serve; and
albeit each time, like a reprieved person, Lady Arundel welcomed the
delay, methinks these retardments served to increase her sufferings.
Little Bess hung fondly on her father's neck the last time he returned
from Littlehampton with the tidings the vessel would not sail for some
hours, kissing his face and playing with his beard.

"Ah, dearest Phil!" her mother cried, "the poor babe rejoiceth in the
sight of thee, all unwitting in her innocent glee of the shortness of
this joy. Howsoever, methinks five or six hours of it is a boon for to
thank God for;" and so putting her arm in his, she led him away to a
solitary part of the garden, where they walked to and fro, she, as she
hath since written to me, starting each time the clock did strike,
like one doomed to execution. Methinks there was this difference
between them, that he was full of hope and bright forecastings of a
speedy reunion; but on her soul lay a dead, mournful despondency,
which she hid by an apparent calmness. When, late in the evening, a
third message came for to say the ship could not depart that night, I
begun to think it would never go at all. I saw Basil looked at the
weathercock and shrugged his shoulders, as if the same thought was in
his mind. But when I spake of it, he said seafaring folks had a
knowledge in these matters which others did not possess, and we must
needs be patient under these delays. Howsoever, at three o'clock in
the morning the shipman signified that the wind was fit and all in
readiness. So we rose in haste and prepared for to depart. The
countess put her arms about my neck, and this was the last embrace I
ever had of her. My lord's brother and sisters hung about him awhile
in great grief. Then his wife put out her hands to him, and, with a
sorrow too deep for speech, fixed her eyes on his visage.

{775}

"Cheep up, sweetest wife," I heard him say. "Albeit nature suffers in
this severance from my native land, my true home shall be wherever it
shall please God to bring thee and me and our children together. God
defend the loss of this world's good should make us sad, if we be but
once so blessed as to meet again where we may freely serve him."

Then, after a long and tender clasping of her to his breast, he tore
himself away and getting on a horse rode to the coast. Basil and I,
with Mr. William Bray and Mr. Burlace, drove in a coach to the port.
It was yet dark, and a heavy mist hung on the valley. Folks were yet
abed, and the shutters of the houses closed, as we went down the hill
through the town. After crossing the bridge over the Arun the air felt
cold and chill. At the steep ascent near Leominster I put my head out
of the window for to look once more at the castle, but the fog was too
thick. At the port the coach stopped, and a boat was found waiting for
us. Lord Arundel was seated in it, with his face muffled in a cloak.
The savor of the sea air revived my spirits; and when the boat moved
off, and I felt the waves lifting it briskly, and with my hand in
Basil's I looked on the land we were leaving, and then on the watery
world before us, a singular emotion filled my soul, as if it was some
sort of death was happening to me--a dying to the past, a gliding on
to an unknown future on a pathless ocean, rocked peacefully in the
arms of his sheltering love, even as this little bark which carried us
along was lifted up and caressed by the waves of the deep sea.

When we reached the vessel the day was dawning. The sun soon emerged
from a bank of clouds, and threw its first light on the rippling
waters. A favoring wind filled our sails, and like a bird on the wing
the ship bounded on its way till the flat shore at Littlehampton and
the far-off white cliffs to the eastward were well-nigh lost sight of.
Lord Arundel stood with Basil on the narrow deck, gazing at the
receding coast.

"How sweet the air doth blow from England!" he said; "how blue the sky
doth appear to-day! and those saucy seagulls how free and happy they
do look!" Then he noticed some fishing-boats, and with a telescope he
had in his hand discerned various ships very far off. Afterward he
came and sat down by my side, and spoke in a cheerful manner of his
wife and the simple home he designed for her abroad. "Some years ago,
Mistress Constance," he said--and then smiling, added, "My tongue is
not yet used to call you Mistress Rookwood--when my sweet Nan, albeit
a wife, was yet a simple child, she was wont to say, 'Phil, would we
were farmers! You would plough the fields and cut wood in the forest,
and I should milk the cows and feed the poultry.' Well, methinks her
wish may yet come to pass. In Brittany or Normandy some little
homestead should shelter us, where Bess shall roll on the grass and
gather the fallen apples, and on Sundays put on her bravest clothes
for to go to mass. What think you thereof, Mistress Constance? and who
knoweth but you and your good husband may also dwell in the same
village, and some eighteen or twenty years hence a gay wedding for to
take place betwixt one Master Rookwood and one Lady Ann or Margaret
Howard, or my Lord Maltravers with one Mistress Constance or Muriel
Rookwood? And on the green on such a day, Nan and Basil and you and I
should lead the brawls."

"Methinks, my lord," I answered, smiling, "you do forecast too great a
condescension on your part, and too much ambition on our side, in the
planning of such a union."

"Well, well," he said; "if your good husband carrieth not beyond seas
with him the best earl's title in England, I'll warrant you in God's
sight he weareth a higher one far {776} away--the merit of an
unstained life and constant nobility of action; and I promise you,
beside, he will be the better farmer of the twain; so that in the
matter of tocher, Mistress Rookwood should exceed my Lady Bess or Ann
Howard."

With such-like talk as this time was whiled away; and whilst we were
yet conversing I noticed that Basil spoke often to the captain and
looked for to be watching a ship yet at some distance, but which
seemed to be gaining on us. Lord Arundel, perceiving it, then also
joined them, and inquired what sort of craft it should be. The captain
professed to be ignorant thereof; and when Basil said it looked like a
small ship-of-war, and as there were many dangerous pirates about the
Channel it should be well to guard against it, he assented thereto,
and said he was prepared for defence.

"With such unequal means," Basil replied, "as it is like we should
bring to a contest, speed should serve us better than defence."

"But," quoth Lord Arundel, "she is, 'tis plain, a swifter sailer than
this one we are in. God's will be done, but 'tis a heavy misfortune if
a pirate at this time do attack us, and so few moneys with us for to
spare!"

Now none of our eyes could detach themselves from this pursuing
vessel. The captain eluded further talk, on pretence for to give
orders and move some guns he had aboard on deck; but it was vain for
to think of a handful of men untrained to sea-warfare encountering a
superior force, such as this ship must possess, if its designs should
be hostile. As it moved nigher to us, we could perceive it to be well
manned and armed. And the captain then exclaimed:

"'Tis Keloway's ship!"

This man was of a notorious, infamous life, well known for his
sea-robberies and depredations in the Channel.

"God yield," murmured the earl, "he shall content himself with the
small sum we can deliver to him and not stay us any further."

A moment afterward we were boarded by this man, who, with his crew,
thrice as numerous as ours and armed to the teeth, comes on our deck
and takes possession of the ship. Straightway he walks to the earl and
tells him he doth know him, and had watched his embarkation, being
resolved to follow him and exact a good ransom at his hands, which if
he would pay without contention, he should himself, without further
stop or stay, pass him and his two gentlemen into France, adding, he
should take no less from him than one hundred pounds.

"I have not so much, or near unto it, with me," Lord Arundel said.

"But you can write a word or two to any friend of yours from whom I
may receive it." quoth Keloway.

"Well," said the earl, "seeing I have pressing occasion for to go to
France, and would not be willingly delayed, I must needs consent to
your terms, no choice therein being allowed me. Get me some paper," he
said to Mr. William Bray.

"Should this be prudent, my lord?" Basil whispered in his ear.

"There is no help for it, Master Rookwood," the earl replied. "Beside,
there is honor even amongst thieves. Once secure of his money, this
man hath no interest in detaining us, but rather the contrary."

And without further stopping, he hastily wrote a few lines to his
sister the Lady Margaret Sackville, in London, that she should speak
to Mr. Bridges, _alias_ Grately, a priest, to give one hundred pounds
to the bearer thereof, by the token that was between them, that _black
is white_, and withal assured her that he now certainly hoped to have
speedy passage without impediment. As soon as this paper was put into
Kelloway's hand, he read it, and immediately called on his men for to
arrest the Earl of Arundel, producing an order from the queen's
council for to prove he {777} was appointed to watch there for him,
and carry him back again to land where her majesty's officers did
await him.

An indescribable anguish seized my heart; an overwhelming grief, such
as methinks no other event, howsoever sad or tragical, or yet more
nearly touching me, had ever wrought in my soul, which I ascribe to a
presentiment that this should be the first link of that long chain of
woes which was to follow.

"O, my lord!" I exclaimed, almost falling at his feet, "God help you
to bear this too heavy blow!"

He took me by the hand; and never till I die shall I lose the memory
of the sweet serenity and noble steadfastness of his visage in this
trying hour.

"God willeth it," he gently said; "his holy will be done! He will work
good out of what seemeth evil to us." And then gaily added, "We had
thought to travel the same way; now we must needs journey apart. Never
fear, good friends, but both roads shall lead to heaven, if we do but
tread them piously. My chief sorrow is for Nan; but her virtue is so
great, that affliction will never rob her of such peace as God only
giveth."

Then this angelic man, forecasting for his friends in the midst of
this terrible mishap, passed into Basil's hands his pocket-book, and
said, "This shall pay your voyage, good friend; and if aught doth
remain afterward, let the poor have their share of it, for a
thank-offering, when you reach the shore in safety."

Basil, I saw, could not speak; his heart was too full. O, what a
parting ensued on that sad ocean whose waves had seemed to dance so
joyously a short space before! With what aching hearts we pressed the
young earl's hand, and watched him pass into the other ship,
accompanied by his two gentlemen, which were with him arrested! No
heed was taken of us; and Kelloway, having secured his prey, abandoned
our vessel, the captain of which seemed uneasy and ill-disposed to
speak with us. We did then suspect, which doubt hath been since
confirmed, that this seeming honest Catholic man had acted a traitor's
part, and that those many delays had been used for the very purpose of
staying Lord Arundel until such time as all was prepared for his
capture. The wind, which was in our favor, bore us swiftly toward the
French coast; and we soon lost sight of the vessel which carried the
earl back to the shores of England. Fancy, you who read, what pictures
we needs must then have formed of that return; of the dismal news
reaching the afflicted wife, the sad sister, the mournful brother, and
friends now scattered apart, so lately clustered round him! Alas! when
we landed in France, at the port of Calais, the sense of our own
safety was robbed of half its joy by fears and sorrowing for the dear
friends whose fortunes have proved so dissimilar to our own.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

The deep clear azure of the French sky, the lightsome pure air, the
quaint houses, and outlandish dresses of the people in Calais; the
sound of a foreign tongue understood, but not familiar, for a brief
time distracted my mind from painful themes. Basil led me to the
church for to give thanks to God for his mercies to us, and mostly did
it seem strange to me to enter an edifice in which he is worshipped in
a Catholic manner, which yet hath the form and appearance of a church,
and resembles not the concealed chambers in our country wherein mass
is said; an open visible house for the King of kings, not a
hiding-place, as in England. After we had prayed there a short time,
Basil put into a box at the entrance the money which Lord Arundel had
designed for the poor. A pale thin man stood at the door, which, when
we passed, said, "God {778} bless you!" Basil looked earnestly at him,
and then exclaimed, "As I live, Mr. Watson!" "Yea," the good man
answered, "the same, or rather the shadow of the same, risen at the
last from the bed of sickness. O Mr. Rookwood, I am glad to see you!"
"And so am I to meet with you, Mr. Watson," Basil answered; and then
told this dear friend who I was, and the sad hap of Lord Arundel,
which moved in him a great concern for that young nobleman and his
excellent lady. Many tokens of regard and interchange of information
passed between us. He showed us where he lived, in a small cottage
near unto the ramparts; and nothing would serve him but to gather for
me in the garden a nosegay of early flowerets which just had raised
their heads above the sod. He said Dr. Allen had sent him money in his
sickness, and an English lady married to a French gentleman provided
for his wants. "Ah! that was the good madame I told you of," Basil
cried, turning to me; "who would have harbored . . . ." Then he
stopped short; but Mr. Watson had caught his meaning, and with tears
in his eyes said: "Fear not to speak of her whose death bought my
life, and it may be also my soul's safety. For, God knoweth, the
thought of her doth never forsake me so much as for one hour;" and
thereupon we parted with much kindness on both sides. That night we
lay at a small hostelry in the town; and the next morning hired a cart
with one horse, which carried us to Boulogne in one day, and thence to
this village, where we have lived since for many years in great peace.
I thank God, and very much contentment of mind, and no regrets save
such as do arise in the hearts of exiles without hope of return to a
beloved native country.

The awaiting of tidings from England, which were long delayed, was at
the first a very sore trial, and those which reached us at last yet
more grievous than that suspense. Lord Arundel committed to the Tower;
his brother the Lord William and his sister the Lady Margaret not long
after arrested, which was more grief to him, his lady wrote to me,
than all his own troubles and imprisonment. But, O my God! how well
did that beginning match with what was to follow! Those ten years
which were spent amidst so many sufferings of all sorts by these two
noble persons, that the recital of them would move to pity the most
strong heart.

Mine own sorrows, leastways all sharp ones, ended with my passage into
France. If Basil showed himself a worthy lover, he hath proved a yet
better husband. His nature doth so delight in doing good that it wins
him the love of all our neighbors. His life is a constant exercise of
charity. He is most indulgent to his wife and kind to his children, of
which it hath pleased God to give him three--one boy and two girls, of
as comely visages and commendable dispositions as can reasonably be
desired. He hath a most singular affection for all such as do suffer
for their religion, and cherishes them with an extraordinary bounty to
the limits of his ability; his house being a common resort for all
banished Catholics which land at Boulogne, from whence he doth direct
them to such persons as can assist them in their need. His love toward
my unworthy self hath never decreased. Methinks it rather doth
increase as we advance in years. We have ever been actuated as by one
soul; and never have any two wills agreed so well as Basil's and mine
in all aims in this world and hopes for the next. If any, in the
reading of this history, have only cared for mine own haps, I pray
them to end their perusal of it here; but if, even as my heart hath
been linked from early years with Lady Arundel's, there be any in
which my poor writing hath awakened somewhat of that esteem for her
virtues and resentment of her sorrows which hath grown in me from long
experience of her singular worth; {779} if the noble atonement for
youthful offences and follies already shown in her lord's return to
his duty to her, and altered behavior in respect to God, hath also
moved them to desire a further knowledge of the manner in which these
two exalted souls were advanced by long affliction to a high point of
perfection--then to such the following pages shall not be wholly
devoid of that interest which the true recital of great misfortune
doth habitually carry with it. If none other had written the life of
that noble lady, methinks I must have essayed to do it; but having
heard that a good clergyman hath taken this task in hand, secretly
preparing materials whilst she yet lives wherewith to build her a
memorial at a future time, I have restrained myself to setting down
what, by means of her own writing or the reports of others, hath
reached my knowledge concerning the ten years which followed my last
parting with her. This was the first letter I received from this
afflicted lady after her lord's arrest:

"O MY DEAR FRIEND--What days these have proved! Believe me, I never
looked for a favorable issue of this enterprise. When I first had
notice thereof, a notable chill fell on my soul, which never warmed
again with hope. When I began to pray after hearing of it, I had what
methinks the holy Juliana of Norwich (whose cell we did once visit
together, as I doubt not thou dost remember) would have called a
foreshowing, or, as others do express it, a presentiment of coming
evil. But how soon the effect followed! I had retired to rest at nine
of the clock; and before I was undressed Bertha came in with a most
downcast countenance. 'What news is there?' I quickly asked,
misdoubting some misfortune had happened. Then she began to weep. 'Is
my lord taken?' I cried, 'or worse befallen him?' 'He is taken,' she
answered, 'and is now being carried to London for to be committed to
the Tower. Master Ralph, the port-master, hath brought the news. A
man, an hour ago, had reported as much in the town; but Mr. Fawcett
would not suffer your ladyship to be told of it before a greater
certainty thereof should appear. O woe be the day my lord ever
embarked!' Then I heard sounds of wailing and weeping in the gallery;
and opening the door, found Bessy's nurse and some other of the
servants lamenting in an uncontrolled fashion. I could not shed one
tear, but gave orders they should fetch unto me the man which had
brought the tidings. From him I heard more fully what had happened;
and then, in the same composed manner, desired my coach and horses for
to be made ready to take me to London the next day at daybreak, and
dismissed everybody, not suffering so much as one woman to sit up with
me. When all had retired, I put on my cloak and hood; and listing
first if all was quiet, went by the secret passage to the chapel-room.
When I got there, Father Southwell was in it, saying his office. When
he saw me enter at that unusual hour, methinks the truth was made
known to him at once; for he only took me by the hand, and said: 'My
child, this would be too hard to bear if it were not God's sweet will;
but being so, what remaineth but to lie still under a Father's
merciful infliction?' and then he took out the crucifix, which for
safety was locked up, and set it on the altar. 'That shall speak to
you better than I can,' he said; and verily it did; for at the sight
of my dying Saviour I wept. The whole night was spent in devout
exercises. At dawn of day Father Southwell said mass, and I received.
Then, before any one was astir, I returned to mine own chamber, and,
lying down for a few moments, afterward rung the bell, and ordered
horses to be procured for to travel to London, whence I write these
lines. I have here heard this report of my dear lord's journey from
one which conversed with Sir George Carey, {780} who commanded the
guard which conducted him, that he was nothing at all daunted with so
unexpected a misfortune, and not only did endure it with great
patience and courage, but, moreover, carried it with a joyful and
merry countenance. One night in the way he lodged at Guildford, where
seeing the master of the inn (who sometime was our servant, and who
hath written it to one of my women, his sister), and some others who
wished well unto him, weeping and sorrowing for his misfortunes, he
comforted them all, and willed them to be of good cheer, because it
was not for any crime--treason or the like--he was apprehended, but
only for attempting to leave the kingdom, the which he had done only
for his own safety. He is soon to be examined by some of the council
sent to the Tower for this special purpose by the queen. I have sought
to obtain access to him, but been flatly reused, and a hint ministered
to me that albeit my residence at Arundel House is tolerated at the
present, if the queen should come to stay at Somerset House, which she
is soon like to do, my departure hence shall be enforced; but while I
remain I would fain do some good to persons afflicted as myself. I
pray you, my good Constance, when you find some means to despatch me a
letter, therewith to send the names and addresses of some of the poor
folks Muriel was wont to visit; for I am of opinion grief should not
make us selfish, but rather move us to relieve in others the pains of
which we feel the sharp edge ourselves. I have already met by accident
with many necessitous persons, and they do begin in great numbers to
resort to this house. God knoweth if the means to relieve them will
not be soon lacking. But to make hay whilst the sun shines is a wise
saying, and in some instances a precept. Alas! the sunshine of joy is
already obscured for me. Except for these poor pensioners, that of
fortune causeth me small concern.--Thy loving friend, A. A. and S."

"Will and Meg are at present in separate prisons. It is impossible but
that she shall be presently released; for against her nothing can be
alleged, so much as to give a pretence for an accusation. My lord and
Will's joint letter to Dr. Allen, sent by Mr. Brydges--who, out of
confidence, mentioned it to Mr. Gifford, a pretended priest, who lives
at Paris, and is now discovered to be a spy--is the ground of the
charges against them. How utterly unfounded thou well knowest; but so
much as to write to Dr. Allen is now a crime, howsoever innocent the
matter of such a correspondence should be. I do fear that in one of
his letters--but I wot not if of this they have possession--my lord,
who had just heard that the Earl of Leicester had openly vowed to make
the name of Catholic as odious in England as the name of Turk, did
say, in manner of a jest, that if some lawful means might be found to
take away this earl, it would be a great good for Catholics in
England; which careless sentence may be twisted by his enemies to his
disadvantage."

Some time afterward, a person passing from London to Rheims, brought
me this second letter from her ladyship, written at Rumford, in Essex:

"What I have been warned of verily hath happened. Upon the queen's
coming to London last month, it was signified to me I should leave it.
Now that Father Southwell hath been removed from Arundel Castle, and
no priest at this time can live in it, I did not choose to be
delivered there, without the benefit of spiritual assistance in case
of danger of death, and so hired a house in this town, at a short
distance of which a recusant gentleman doth keep one in his house. I
came from London without obtaining leave so much as once to see my
dear husband, or to send him a letter or message, or receive one from
him. But this I have learnt, that he cannot speak with any person
whatsoever but in the presence and hearing of his {781} keeper or the
lieutenant of the Tower, and that the room in which he is locked up
has no sight of the sun for the greatest part of the year; so that if
not changed before the winter cometh it shall prove very unwholesome;
and moreover the noisomeness thereof caused by a vault that is under
it is so great that the keeper can scarce endure to enter into it,
much less to stay there any time. Alas! what ravages shall this
treatment cause on a frame of great niceness and delicate habits, I
leave you to judge. By this time he hath been examined twice; and
albeit forged letters were produced, the falsity of which the council
were forced to admit, and he was charged with nothing which could be
substantiated, except leaving the realm without license of the queen,
and being reconciled to the Church of Rome, his sentence is yet
deferred, and his imprisonment as strict as ever. I pray God it may
not be deferred till his health is utterly destroyed, which, I doubt
not, is what his enemies would most desire.

"Last evening I had the exceeding great comfort of the coming hither
of mine own dear good Meg, who hath been some time released from
prison, with many vexatious restraints, howsoever, still laid upon
her. Albeit very much advanced in her pregnancy, nothing would serve
her when she had leave to quit London but to do me this good. This is
the first taste of joy I have had since my lord's commitment. In her
face I behold his; when she speaks I hear him. No talk is ministered
between us but of that beloved husband and brother; our common prayers
are put up for him. She hath spied his spies for to discover all which
relates to him, and hath found means to convey to him--I thank God for
it--some books of devotion, which he greatly needed. She is yet a-bed
this morning, for we sat up late yester-eve, so sweet, albeit sad, was
the converse we held after so many common sufferings. But methinks I
grudge her these hours of sleep, longing for to hear again those loved
accents which mind me of my dear Phil.

"My pen had hardly traced those last words, when a messenger arrived
from the council with an express command to Margaret from her majesty
not to stay with me another night, but forthwith to return to London.
The surprise and fear which this message occasioned hastened the event
which should have yet been delayed some weeks. A few hours after (I
thank God, in safety) a fair son was born; but in the mother's heart
and mine apprehension dispelled joy, lest enforced disobedience should
produce fresh troubles. Howsoever, she recovered quickly; and as soon
as she could be removed I lost her sweet company. Thine affectionate
friend to command,

"A. A. AND S."

Some time afterward, one Mr. Dixon, a gentleman I had met once or
twice in London, tarried a night at our house, and brought me the news
that God had given the Countess of Arundel a son, which she had
earnestly desired her husband should be informed of, but he heard it
had been refused. Howsoever, when he was urgent with his keepers to
let him know if she had been safely delivered, they gave him to
understand that she had another daughter; his enemies not being
willing he should have so much contentment as the birth of a son
should have yielded him.

"Doth the queen," I asked of this gentleman, "then not mitigate her
anger against these noble persons?"

"So far from it," he answered, "that when, at the beginning of this
trouble, Lady Arundel went to Sir Francis Knowles for to seek by his
means to obtain an audience from her majesty, in order to sue for her
husband, he told her she would sooner release him at once--which,
howsoever, she had no mind to do--than only once allow her to enter
her presence. He then, her ladyship told me, rated her exceedingly,
asking if she and her husband were not ashamed to make themselves
{782} papists, only out of spleen and peevish humor to cross and vex
the queen? She answered him in the same manner as her lord did one of
his keepers, who told him very many in the kingdom were of opinion
that he made show to be Catholic only out of policy; to whom he said,
with great mildness, that God doth know the secrets of all hearts, but
that he thought there was small policy for a man to lose his liberty,
hazard his estate and life, and live in that manner in a prison as he
then did."

A brief letter from Lady Tregony informed me soon after this that,
after a third examination, the court had fined Lord Arundel in £10,000
unto the queen and adjudged him to imprisonment during her pleasure.
What that pleasure proved, ten years of unmitigated suffering and slow
torture evinced; one of the most grievous of which was that his lady
could never obtain for to see him, albeit other prisoners' wives had
easy access to them. This touching letter I had from her three years
after he was imprisoned:

"MINE OWN GOOD FRIEND--Life doth wear on, and relief of one sort
leastways comes not; but God forbid I should repine. For such
instances I see in the letters of my dear lord--which when some of
his servants do leave the Tower, which, worn out as they soon become
by sickness, they must needs do to preserve their lives--he findeth
means to write to me or to Father Southwell, that I am ashamed to
grieve overmuch at anything which doth befal us--when his willingness
and contentment to suffer are so great. As when he saith to that good
father, 'For all crosses touching worldly matters, I thank God they
trouble me not much, and much the less for your singular good counsel,
which I beseech our Lord I may often remember; and to me this dear
husband writes thus: 'I beseech you, for the love of God, to comfort
yourself whatsoever shall happen, and to be best pleased with that
which shall please God best, and be his will to send. I find that
there is some intent to do me no good, but indeed to do me the most
good of all; but I am--and, thank God, doubt not but I shall be by his
grace--ready to endure the worst which flesh and blood can do unto
me.' O Constance, flesh and blood doth sometimes rebel against the
keen edge of suffering; but I pray you, my friend, how can I complain
when I hear of this much, long dearly cherished husband, ascending by
steps the ladder of perfection, advancing from virtue to virtue as the
psalm saith, never uttering one unsubmissive word toward God, or one
resentful one toward his worst enemies; making, in the most sublime
manner, of necessity virtue, and turning his loathsome prison into a
religious cell, wherein every exercise of devotion is duly practised,
and his soul trained for heaven?

"The small pittance the queen alloweth for his maintenance he so
sparingly useth, that most of it doth pass into the hands of the poor
or other more destitute prisoners than himself. But sickness and
disease prey on his frame. And the picture of him my memory draweth is
gradually more effaced in the living man, albeit vivid in mine own
portraying of it.

There is now a priest imprisoned in the Tower, not very far from the
chamber wherein my lord is confined; one of the name of Bennet. My
lord desired much to meet him, and speak with him for the comfort of
his soul, and I have found means to bring it to effect by mediation of
the lieutenant's daughter, to whom I have given thirty pounds for her
endeavors in procuring it. And moreover she hath assisted in conveying
into his chamber church-stuff and all things requisite for the saying
of mass, whereunto she tells me, to my indescribable comfort, he
himself doth serve with great humility, and therein receives the
blessed sacrament frequently. Sir Thomas Gerard, she saith, and Mr.
Shelly, which are likewise prisoners at this time, she introduces
secretly into his lodgings for to hear mass and have speech with {783}
him. Alas! what should be a comfort to him, and so the greatest of
joys to me, the exceeding peril of these times causeth me to look upon
with apprehension; for these gentlemen, albeit well disposed, are not
famed for so much wisdom and prudence as himself, in not saying or
doing anything which might be an occasion of danger to him; and the
least lack of wariness, when there is so much discourse about the
great Spanish fleet which is now in preparation, should prove like to
be fatal. God send no worse hap befal us soon.

"In addition to these other troubles and fears, I am much molested by
a melancholy vapor, which ascends to my head, and greatly troubles me
since I was told upon a sudden of the unexpected death of Margaret
Sackville, whom, for her many great virtues and constant affection
toward myself, I did so highly esteem and affection."



From that time for a long while I had no direct news of Lady Arundel;
but report brought us woful tidings concerning her lord, who, after
many private examinations, had been brought from the Tower to the
King's Bench Court, in the hall of Westminster, and there publicly
arraigned on the charge of high treason, the grounds of which
accusation being that he had prayed and procured others to make
simultaneous prayer for twenty-four hours, and procured Mr. Bennet to
say a mass of the Holy Ghost, for the success of the Spanish fleet.
Whereas the whole truth of this matter consisted in this, that when a
report became current among the Catholics about London that a sudden
massacre of them all was intended upon the first landing of the
Spaniards, this coming to the earl's ear, he judged it necessary that
all Catholics should betake themselves to prayer, either for the
avoiding of the danger or for the better preparing themselves
thereunto, and so persuaded those in the Tower to make prayer together
for that end, and also sent to some others for the same purpose,
whereof one of greater prudence and experience than the rest signified
unto him that perhaps it might be otherwise interpreted by their
enemies than he intended, wishing him to desist, as presently
thereupon he did; but it was then too late. Some which he had trusted,
either out of fear or fair promises, testified falsely against him--of
which Mr. Bennet was one, who afterward retracted with bitter anguish
his testimony, in a letter to his lordship, which contained these
words: "With a fearful, guilty, unjust, and most tormented conscience,
only for saving of my life and liberty, I said you moved me to say a
mass for the good success of the Spanish fleet. For which unjust
confession, or rather accusation, I do again and again, and to my
life's end, most instantly crave God's pardon and yours; and for my
better satisfaction of this, my unjust admission, I will, if need
require, offer up both life and limbs in averring my accusation to be,
as it is indeed, and as I shall answer before God, angels, and men,
most unjust, and only done out of fear of the Tower, torments, and
death." Notwithstanding the earl's very stout and constant denial of
the charge, and pleading the above letter of Mr. Bennet, retracting
his false statement, he was condemned of high treason, and had
sentence pronounced against him. But the execution was deferred, and
finally the queen resolved to spare his life, but yet by no means to
release him. His estates, and likewise his lady's, were forfeited to
the crown, and he at that time dealt with most unkindly, as the
following letter will show:

"DEAR CONSTANCE--At last I have found the means of sending a packet by
a safe hand, which in these days, when men do so easily turn
traitors--notable instances of which, to our exceeding pain and
trouble, have lately occurred--is no easy matter. I doubt not but thy
fond affectionate heart hath followed with a sympathetic grief the
anguish of mine {784} during the time past, wherein my husband's life
hath been in daily peril; and albeit he is now respited, yet, alas! as
he saith himself, and useth the knowledge to the best purpose, he is
but a doomed man; reprieved, not pardoned; spared, not released. Mine
own troubles beside have been greater than can be thought of; by
virtue of the forfeiture of my lord's estates and mine, my home hath
been searched by justices, and no room, no corner, no trunk or coffer,
left unopened and unransacked. I have often been brought before the
council and most severely examined. The queen's officers and others in
authority--to whom I am sometimes forced to sue for favor, or some
mitigation of mine own or my lord's sufferings--do use me often very
harshly, and reject my petitions with scorn and opprobrious language.
All our goods are seized for the queen. They have left me nothing but
two or three beds, and these, they do say, but for a time. When
business requires, I am forced to go on foot, and slenderly attended;
my coach being taken from me. I have retained but two of my servants
--my children's nurse being one. I have as yet no allowance, as is
usual in such cases, for the maintenance of my family; so I am forced
to pay them and buy victuals with the money made by the sale of mine
own jewels; and I am sometimes forced to borrow and make hard shifts
to procure necessary provisions and clothes for the children; but if I
get eight pounds a week, which the queen hath been moved to allow me,
then methinks I shall think myself no poorer than a Christian woman
should be content to be; and I have promised Almighty God, if that
good shall befal us, to bestow one hundred marks out of it yearly on
the poor. I am often sent out of London by her majesty's commands,
albeit some infirmities I do now suffer from force me to consult
physicians there. Methinks when I am at Arundel House I am not wholly
parted from my lord, albeit my humble petition, by means of friends,
to see him is always denied. When I hear he is sick, mine anguish
increases. The like favor is often granted to Lady Latimore and others
whose husbands are at this time prisoners in the Tower, but I can
never obtain it. The lieutenant's daughter, whom I do sometimes see,
when she is in a conversible mood doth inform me of my dear husband's
condition, and relates instances of his goodness and patience which
wring and yet comfort mine heart. What think you of his never having
been heard so much as once to complain of the loss of his goods or the
incommodities of his prison; of his gentleness and humility where he
is himself concerned; of his boldness in defending his religion and
her ministers, which was alike shown, as well as his natural
cheerfulness, in a conversation she told me had passed between her
father, the lieutenant, and him, a few days ago? You have heard, I
ween, that good Father Southwell was arrested some time back at Mr.
Bellamy's house; it is reported by means of the poor unhappy soul his
daughter, whom I met one day at the door of the prison, attired in a
gaudy manner and carrying herself in a bold fashion; but when she met
mine eye hers fell. Alas! poor soul, God help her and bring her to
repentance. Well, now Father Southwell is in the Tower, my lord, by
Miss Hopton's melons, hath had once or twice speech with him, and doth
often inquire of the lieutenant about him, which when he did so the
other day he used the words 'blessed father' in speaking of him. The
lieutenant (she said) seemed to take exception thereat, saying, 'Term
you him blessed father, being as he is an enemy to his country?' My
lord answered: 'How can that be, seeing yourself hath told me
heretofore that no fault could be laid unto him but his religion?'
Then the lieutenant said: 'The last time I was in his cell your dog,
my lord, came in and licked his hand,' Then quoth my lord, {785}
patting his dog fondly: 'I love him the better for it.' 'Perhaps,'
quoth the lieutenant in a scoffing manner, it might be he came thither
to have his blessing.' To which my lord replied, 'It is no new thing
for animals to seek a blessing at the hands of holy men, St. Jerome
writing how the lions which had digged St. Paul the hermit's grave
stood waiting with their eyes upon St. Anthony expecting his
blessing.'

'Is it not a strange trial, mine own Constance, and one which hath not
befallen many women, to have a fondly loved husband yet alive, and to
be sometimes so near unto him that it should take but a few moments to
cross the space which doth divide us, and yet never behold him; year
after year passing away, and the heart waxing sick with delays?
Howsoever, one sad firm hope I hold, which keepeth me somewhat careful
of my health, lest I should be disabled when that time cometh--one on
which I fix my mind with apprehension and desire to defer the approach
thereof, yet pray one day to see it--yea, to live long enough for this
and then to die, if it shall please God. When mine own Philip is on
his death-bed, when the slow consumptive disease which devoureth his
vitals obtaineth its end, then, I ween, no woman upon earth, none that
I ever heard of or could think of, can deny me to approach him and
receive his last embrace. Oh that this should be my best comfort, mine
only hope!"

I pass over many intervening letters from this afflicted lady which at
distant intervals I received, in one of which she expressed her sorrow
at the execution at Tyburn of her constant friend and guide, Father
Southwell, and likewise informed me of Mistress Wells's death in
Newgate, and transcribe this one, written about six months afterward,
in which she relates the closing scene of her husband's life:

"MINE OWN DEAR CONSTANCE--All is over now, and my overcharged heart
casteth about for some alleviation in its excessive grief, which may
be I shall find in imparting to one well acquainted with his virtues
and my love for him what I have learnt touching the closing scenes of
my dear lord's mortal life. For think not I have been so happy as to
behold him again, or that he should die in my arms. No; that which was
denied me for ten long years neither could his dying prayers obtain.
For many months notice had been given unto me by his servants and
others that his health was very fast declining. One gentleman
particularly told me he himself believed his end to be near. His
devout exercises were yet increased--the bent of his mind more and
more directed solely toward God and heaven. In those times which were
allotted to walking or other recreation, his discourse and
conversation either with his keeper or the lieutenant or his own
servant, was either tending to piety or some kind of profitable
discourse, most often of the happiness of those that suffer anything
for our Saviour's sake; to which purpose he had writ with his own hand
upon the wall of his chamber this Latin sentence, 'Quanto plus
afflictionis pro Christo in hoc saeculo, tanto plus gloriae cum
Christo in futuro;' the which he used to show to his servants,
inviting them, as well as himself, to suffer all with patience and
alacrity.

"In the month of August tidings were brought unto me that, sitting at
dinner, he had fallen so very ill immediately upon the eating of a
roasted teal, that some did suspect him to be poisoned. I sent him
some antidotes, and all the remedies I could procure; but all in vain.
The disease had so possessed him that it could not be removed, but by
little and little consumed his body, so that he became like an
anatomy, having nothing left but skin and bone. Much talk hath been
ministered anent his being poisoned. Alas! my thinking is, and ever
shall be, the slow poison he died of was lack of air, of sunshine, of
kindness, {786} of loving aid, of careful sympathy. When I heard his
case was considered desperate, the old long hopes, sustained for ten
years, that out of the extremity of grief one hour of comfort should
arise, woke up; but now I was advised not to stir in this matter
myself, for it should only incense the queen, who had always hated me;
whereas my lord she once had liked, and it might be, when she heard he
was dying, she should relent. She had made a kind of promise to some
of his friends that before his death his wife and children should come
unto him; whereupon, conceiving that now his time in the world could
not be long, he writ a humble letter to her petitioning the
performance of her promise. The lieutenant of the Tower carried this
letter, and delivered it with his own hands to the queen, and brought
him her answer by word of mouth. What think you, mine own Constance,
was the answer she sent that dying man? God forgave her! Philip did;
yea, and so do I--not fully at the time, now most fully. His crown
should have been less glorious but for the heart-martyrdom she
invented.

"This was her message: 'That if he would but once go to the Protestant
church his request should not only be granted, but he should moreover
be restored to his honor and estate with as much favor as she could
show.' Oh, what were estates and honors to that dying saint! what her
favor to that departing soul! One offering, one sacrifice, one final
withdrawing of affection's thirsty and parched lips from the chalice
of a supreme earthly consolation, and all was accomplished; the
bitterness of death overpast. He gave thanks to the lieutenant for his
pains; he said he could not accept her majesty's offers upon that
condition, and added withal that he was sorry he had but one life to
lose in that cause. A very worthy gentleman who was present at this
passage related it to me; and Lord Mountague I have also had it from,
which heard the same from his father-in-law, my Lord Dorset.
Constance, for a brief while a terrible tumult raged in my soul. Think
what it was to know one so long, so passionately loved, dying nigh
onto and yet apart from me, dying unaided by any priest--for though he
had a great desire to be assisted by Father Edmund, by whose means he
had been reconciled, it was by no means permitted that either he or
any other priest should come to him--dying without a kindred face to
smile on him, without a kinsman for to speak with him and list to his
last wishes. He desired to see his brother William or his uncle Lord
Henry; at least to take his last leave of them before his death; but
neither was that small request granted--no, not so much as to see his
brother Thomas, though both then and ever he had been a Protestant.
And all this misery was the fruit of one stem, cruel, unbending
hatred--of one proud human will; a will which was sundering what God
had joined together. Like a bird against the bars of an iron cage, my
poor heart dashed itself with wild throbbings against these human
obstacles. But not for very long, I thank God; brief was the storm
which convulsed my soul. I soon discerned his hand in this great
trial--his will above all human will; and while writhing under a
Father's merciful scourge, I could yet bless him who held it I pray
you, Constance, how should a woman have endured so great an anguish
which had not been helped by him? Methinks what must have sustained me
was that before-mentioned gentleman's report of my dear lord's great
piety and virtue, which made me ashamed of not striving to resemble
him in howsoever small a degree. Oh, what a work God wrought in that
chosen soul! What meekness, what humility, what nobleness of heart! He
grew so faint and weak by degrees that he was not able to leave his
bed. His physicians coming to visit him some days before his death, he
desired {787} them not to trouble themselves now any more, his case
being beyond their skill. They thereupon departing, Sir Michael
Blount, then lieutenant of the Tower, who had been ever very hard and
harsh unto him, took occasion to come and visit him, and, kneeling
down by his bedside, in humble manner desired my dear Phil to forgive
him. Whereto mine own beloved husband answered in this manner, 'Do you
ask forgiveness, Mr. Lieutenant? Why, then, I forgive you in the same
sort as I desire myself to be forgiven at the hands of God;' and then
kissed his hand, and offered it in most kind and charitable manner to
him, and holding his fast in his own said, 'I pray you also to forgive
me whatever I have said or done in anything offensive to you,' and he
melting into tears and answering 'that he forgave him with all his
heart;' my lord raised himself a little upon his pillow, and made a
brief, grave speech unto the lieutenant in this manner: 'Mr.
Lieutenant, you have showed both me and my men very hard measure.'
'Wherein, my lord?' quoth he. 'Nay,' said my lord, 'I will not make a
recapitulation of anything, for it is all freely forgiven. Only I am
to say unto you a few words of my last will, which being observed,
may, by the grace of God, turn much to your benefit and reputation. I
speak not for myself; for God of his goodness hath taken order that I
shall be delivered very shortly out of your charge; only for others I
speak who may be committed to this place. You must think, Mr.
Lieutenant, that when a prisoner comes hither to the Tower that he
bringeth sorrow with him. Oh, then do not add affliction to
affliction; there is no man whatsoever that thinketh himself to stand
surest but may fall. It is a very inhuman part to tread on him whom
misfortune hath cast down. The man that is void of mercy God hath in
great detestation. Your commission is only to keep in safety, not to
kill with severity. Remember, good Mr. Lieutenant, that God who with
his finger turneth the unstable wheel of this variable world, can in
the revolution of a few days bring you to be a prisoner also, and to
be kept in the same place where now you keep others. There is no
calamity that men are subject unto but you may also taste as well as
any other man. Farewell, Mr. Lieutenant; for the time of my short
abode come to me whenever you please, and you shall be heartily
welcome as my friend.' My dear lord, when he uttered these words,
should seem to have had some kind of prophetic foresight touching this
poor man's fate; for I have just heard this day, seven weeks only
after my husband's death, that Sir Michael Blount hath fallen into
great disgrace, lost his office, and is indeed committed close
prisoner in that same Tower where he so long kept others.

"And now my faltering pen must needs transcribe the last letter I
received from my beloved husband, for your heart, dear friend, is one
with mine. You have known its sufferings through the many years evil
influences robbed it of that love which, for brief intervals of
happiness afterward and this long separation since, hath, by its
steady and constant return, made so rich amends for the past. In these
final words you shall find proofs of his excellent humility and
notable affection for my unworthy self, which I doubt not, my dear
instance, shall draw water from your eyes. Mine yield no moisture now.
Methinks these last griefs have exhausted in them the fountain of
tears.

"'Mine own good wife, I must now in this world take my last farewell
of you; and as I know no person living whom I have so much offended as
yourself, so do I account this opportunity of asking your forgiveness
as a singular benefit of Almighty God. And I most humbly and heartily
beseech you, even for his sake and of your charity, to forgive me all
whereinsoever I have offended you; and the assurance I have of this
your {788} forgiveness is my greatest contentment at this present, and
will be a greater, I doubt not, when my soul is ready to depart out of
my body. I call God to witness it is no small grief unto me that I
cannot make you recompense in this world for the wrongs I have done
you. Affliction gives understanding. God, who knows my heart, and has
seen my true sorrow in that behalf, has, I hope, of his infinite
mercy, remitted all, I doubt not, as you have done in your singular
charity, to mine infinite comfort.

"Now what remaineth but in a few brief sentences to relate how this
loved husband spent his last hours, and the manner of his death? Those
were for the most part spent in prayer; sometimes saying his beads,
sometimes such psalms and prayers as he knew by heart. Seeing his
servants (one of which hath been the narrator to me of these his final
moments) stand by his bedside in the morning weeping in a mournful
manner, he asked them 'what o'clock it was? they answering that it was
eight or thereabout, 'Why, then,' said he, 'I have almost run out my
course, and come to the end of this miserable mortal life,' desiring
them not to weep for him, since he did not doubt, by the grace of God,
but all would go well with him; which being said he returned to his
prayers upon his beads again, though then with a very slow, hollow,
and fainting voice; and so continued as long as he was able to draw so
much breath as was sufficient to sound out the names of Jesus and
Mary, which were the last words he was ever heard to speak. The last
minute of his last hour being come, lying on his back, his eyes firmly
fixed toward heaven, his long, lean, consumed arms out of the bed, his
hands upon his breast, laid in cross one upon the other, about twelve
o'clock at noon, in a most sweet manner, without any sign of grief or
groan, only turning his head a little aside as one falling into a
pleasing sleep, he surrendered his soul into the hands of God who to
his own glory had created it. And she who writeth this letter, she who
loved him since her most early years--who when he was estranged from
her waited his return--who gloried in his virtues, doated on his
perfections, endured his afflictions, and now lamenteth his death,
hath nothing left but to live a widow; indeed with no other glory than
that which she doth borrow from his merits, until such time as it
shall please God to take her from this earth to a world where he hath
found, she doth humbly hope, rest unto his soul."

The Countess of Arundel is now aged. The virtues which have crowned
her mature years are such, as her youth did foreshadow. My pen would
run on too fast if it took up that theme. This only will I add, and so
conclude this too long piece of writing--she hath kept her constant
resolve to live and die a widow. I have seen many times letters from
both Protestants and Catholics which made unfeigned protestations that
they were never so edified by any as by her. As the Holy Scriptures do
say of that noble widow Judith, "Not one spoke an ill word of her,"
albeit these times are extremely malicious. For mine own part I never
read those words of Holy Writ, "Who shall find a valiant woman?" and
what doth follow, but I must needs think of Ann Dacre, the wife of
Philip Howard, earl of Arundel and Surrey.

----

After the lapse of some years, it hath been my hap to have a sight of
this manuscript, the reading of which, even as the writing of it in
former days, doth cause me to live over again my past life. This lapse
of time hath added nothing notable except the dreadful death of
Hubert, my dear Basil's only brother, who suffered last year for the
share he had, or leastways was judged to have, in the Gunpowder Plot
and treason. Alas! he which once, to improve his fortunes, denied his
faith, when fortune turned her back {789} upon him grew into a
virulent hatred of those in power, once his friends and tempters, and
consorted with desperate men; whether he was privy to their counsels,
or only familiar with them previous to their crimes, and so fell into
suspicion of their guilt, God knoweth. It doth appear from some good
reports that he died a true penitent. There is a better hope methinks
for such as meet in this world with open shame and suffering than for
secret sinners who go to their pompous graves unchastised and
unabsolved.

By his brother's death Basil recovered his lands; for his present
majesty hath some time since recalled the sentence of his banishment.
And many of his friends have moved him to return to England; but for
more reasons than one he refused so much as to think of it, and has
compounded his estate for £700, 8s. 6d.

Our children have now grown unto ripe years. Muriel (who would have
been a nun if she had followed her godmother's example) is now
married, to her own liking and our no small contentment, to a very
commendable young gentleman, the son of Mr. Yates, and hath gone to
reside with him at his seat in Worcestershire; and Ann, Lady Arundel's
god-daughter, nothing will serve but to be a "holy Mary," as the
French people do style those dames which that great and good prelate,
M. de Genève, hath assembled in a small hive at Annecy, like bees to
gather honey of devotion in the garden of religion. This should seem a
strange fancy, this order being so new in the Church, and the place so
distant; but time will show if this should be God's will; and if so,
then it must needs be ours also.

What liketh me most is that my son Roger doth prove the very image of
his father, and the counterpart of him in his goodness. I am of
opinion that nothing better can be desired for him than that he never
lose so good a likeness.

And now farewell, pen and ink, mine old companions, for a brief moment
resumed, but with a less steady hand than heretofore; now not to be
again used except for such ordinary purposes as housewifery and
friendship shall require.

------

UNSHED TEARS.

  Once I believed that tears alone
    Could tell of sorrow deep;
  O blessed those whose eyes overflow!
    Within my heart I weep.

  And many think me calm, because
    My cheek unwet appears;
  The happy ones! they never know
    The pain of unshed tears.

------

{790}

From The Dublin Review.


CALIFORNIA AND THE CHURCH.


1. _The Resources of California_. By JOHN S. HITTEL. San Francisco.

2. _Christian Missions_. By T.W.M. MARSHALL. Longmans.


The year 1769 will long be memorable in the annals of the world as the
date of the birth of the Emperor Napoleon and of the Duke of
Wellington. In the same year another event took place of small
significance according to the thoughts of this world, but which in the
next world was assuredly regarded of infinitely greater importance;
for this was the year in which a poor despised Franciscan friar, the
Father Junipero Serra, entered into California Alta, the first apostle
of a land which has since, for such different reasons, become so
famous.

He was an Italian by birth, but had resided for many years in Mexico,
where he had preached the gospel with great success among the heathen
Indian population. A man of singular faith and piety, he lived the
severest life, considering, with his Father St. Francis, that poverty
and suffering are keys wherewith the zealous missioner is certain to
be able to unlock the floodgates of grace which divide heaven from
earth. He used to carry a stone with him, with which, like St. Jerome,
he would beat his breast for his sins, and he endeavored to bring home
to the mind of his uncivilized hearers the malice of sin, by scourging
his innocent body till streams of blood flowed forth in their
presence, by severe fasts, long prayers, and night watchings. He
seldom rode on mule or horseback, but preferred to journey humbly on
foot. Shortly after his arrival in Mexico, his leg was attacked with a
grievous sore; still he gave himself no rest, but was constant in
journeying and preaching. While he was laboring like an apostle among
the Mexicans, the Spanish monarch ordered D. Jose de Galvez (who
became later minister-general for all the Indies) to form an
expedition from La Paz into Upper California.  [Footnote 145] Whatever
may be said of the rapacious cruelty of many of the Spanish governors
and colonizers in America, the government at home was animated, on the
whole, with the most Catholic and loyal intentions. Its instructions
and public documents were conceived in the most Christian sense; and
if they were not always carried out in the same spirit, this arose
from its inability to control subjects at an immense distance from the
seat of government, and surrounded by exciting temptations and
pressing dangers. The following words were addressed by one of the
Spanish monarchs to the Indies: "The kings our progenitors, from the
discovery of the West Indies, its islands and continents, commanded
our captains, officers, discoverers, colonizers, and all other
persons, that on arriving at these provinces they should, by means of
interpreters, cause to be made known to the Indians that they were
sent to teach them good customs, to lead them from vicious habits, and
from the eating of human flesh, to instruct them in our holy Catholic
faith, to preach to them salvation, and to attract them to our
dominion." The same Catholic and religious spirit animates every part
of the great codex {791} of Indian laws which were promulgated by
successive kings in that most Catholic country.

  [Footnote 145: As far back as 1697 the Jesuits had, with apostolic
  seal, founded many missions in Lower California; they never,
  however, had pushed up into California Alta.]

Though it often did happen that local governors were not ministers of
this Catholic spirit, but rather of their own rapacity and cruelty,
this was not always the case, and we have before us an instance. When
Galvez set forth on his expedition to conquer California, the first
article of the instructions which he drew up, for the guidance of all
who were with him, ran in these terms: "The first object of the
expedition is to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous
heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism, and to
extend the dominion of our lord the king, and to protect this
peninsula from the ambitious views of foreign nations." Nor were these
mere words, written to salve a conscience or blind a critical public,
as we shall now see: for he took Father Junipero, who was zealous for
the salvation of souls, into his counsels; and the priest and the
layman worked jointly together. Two small vessels, the _San Carlos_
and _San Antonio_, were freighted to go by sea. Señor Galvez details
with a charming simplicity how he assisted Father Junipero to pack the
sacred vestments and other church furniture, and declared that he was
a better sacristan than the father, for he had packed his share of the
ornaments first, and had to go and help the father. Moreover, in order
that the new missions might be established with the same success as
those which had been already founded by F. Junipero in Sierra Gorda,
Galvez ordered to be packed up and embarked all kinds of household and
field utensils, iron implements for agricultural labor, all kinds of
seeds from Old and New Spain, garden herbs for food, and flowers for
the decoration of the altars. Then he sent on by land two hundred head
of cattle to stock the country, so that there might be food to eat and
beasts to labor on the land.

F. Junipero placed the whole enterprise under the patronage of the
Most Holy Patriarch St. Joseph, to whom he dedicated the country. He
blessed the vessels and sent on board of them three fathers, who
should accompany Galvez and his men. Two other parties were formed by
land, which were to meet the ships on the coast far up the country;
and all started, except Father Junipero, who was delayed some time by
the season of Lent and by his spiritual duties. When he overtook the
convoy, his leg and foot were so inflamed that he was hardly able to
get on or off his mule. The fathers and their companions wished to
send him back; they thought he was not equal to the undertaking. But
he had faith that our Lord would carry him through. He called a
muleteer and said to him: "My son, don't you know some remedy for the
sore on my foot and leg?" But the muleteer answered: "Father, what
remedy can I know? Am I a surgeon? I am a muleteer, and have only
cured the sore backs of beasts." "Then consider me a beast," said the
father, "and this sore, which has produced the swelling on my legs and
prevents me by its pain from standing or sleeping, to be a sore on a
beast, and give me the treatment you would apply to a beast." The
muleteer replied, smiling, "I will, father, to please you;" and taking
a small piece of tallow, mashed it between two stones with some herbs,
heated it over the fire, and then anointed the foot and leg, and left
a plaster on the sore. The father slept that night, awoke in health
and spirits, and astonished the whole party by rising early to say
matins and lauds and then mass, and proceeded on the journey quite
restored. After forty-six days' travelling by land, they reached the
port of San Diego; and F. Junipero now established his first mission.
He then went on to the place since called San Francisco, and
established there another mission. They fell short of provisions and
supplies, the {792} _San Antonio_, which had long been due, did not
arrive, and Portalá, the governor of the expedition, determined to
abandon the mission, if they were not relieved by the 20th of March;
but on the feast of St. Joseph the ship hove into view, bringing an
abundance of provisions, and the mission was then firmly established.

The usual way of erecting a mission was as follows: the locality was
taken possession of in the name of Spain by the lay authority; a tent
or an adobe building was erected as the temporary chapel; the fathers,
in procession, proceeded to bless the place and the chapel, on whose
front a crucifix, or a simple wooden cross, was raised; the holy
sacrifice was then offered up, and a sermon was preached on the coming
and power of the Holy Ghost. The _Veni Creator_ was sung, and a father
was charged with the direction and responsibility of the mission.

The Indians were attracted by little presents. To the men and women
were given pieces of cloth, or food, and to the children bits of
sugar. They would soon gather round the missioners when they found how
good and kind they were, and the missioners were not slow in picking
up the language. They became the fathers and instructors of the poor
ignorant Indians, catechized them in the mysteries of the faith,
collected them into villages round the mission church, and taught them
to plough and cultivate the land, to sow wheat, to grind corn, to
bake; they introduced the use of the olive, the vine, and the apple;
they showed them how to yoke the oxen for work, how to weave and spin
cloth for clothing, to prepare leather from the hides, and taught them
the rudiments of commerce.

There was another feature in the mode followed by the Spaniards in
preaching the gospel which is worthy of mention, and which shows how
Spain recognized the independent action of the Church and her own duty
to lend her every assistance and protection she might need. A presidio
was established, in which the secular governor, with a small number of
officers, soldiers, and officials, resided. These represented the
majesty of the King of Spain, and served, in case of need, for
protection and order. At some distance from the presidio and
independent of it, was formed the mission, a large convent for the
friars and for hospitality, and a church, built of "adobe," or mud
walls, sometimes seven or eight feet in thickness. The land in the
surrounding neighborhood was assigned to the missions for the support
of the Indians. In fact, the whole economy and arrangements, both of
presidios and missions, were made subservient to the wants of
civilization and religion, which were introduced among the native
population. This system remained in full force, consulting simply the
benefit of the poor Indian, till the liberal Cortes, in 1813,
overturned the design of the Spanish monarchs, and began to introduce
the idea of colonization and usurpation. Up to this time the Church
had had full action upon the people, and what she wrought in the span
of forty years was little less than miraculous. The Indians felt that
they had been lifted out of their state of abject misery and
ignorance, and that the strangers who had come among them had come
simply from disinterested charity, for their temporal and eternal
welfare. They felt that life was made to them less a burthen, and that
a way was opened out for them to endless happiness beyond the grave,
De Courcy, in his "Catholic Church in the United States," assures us
that the fathers converted, within the few years they had control of
the Californian missions, no less than 75,000 Indians, for whom they
also provided food, clothing, and instruction. The system of
colonization brought in by the Spanish liberals in 1813 was an evil,
but it was a mere prelude to the confiscation of the Indian property
which was perpetrated by the liberal {793} Mexican government in 1833.
It was pretended that the friars were unequal to the management of the
missions, and the natives' property was therefore transferred to the
hands of laymen. Mr. Marshall, in his interesting work on "Christian
Missions," quotes the following statistics, comparing the two
conditions:

                        Under the              Under
                       Administration          the Civil
                        of the Friars.         Administration.
Christian Indians           80,650                4,450
Horned Cattle              494,000               28,220
Horses and Mules            62,000                3,800
Sheep                      321,500               31,600
Cereal crop                 70,000                4,000

And then he sums up in these words:

  "It appears, then, that in the brief space of eight years the
  secular administration, which affected to be a protest against the
  inefficiency of the ecclesiastical, had not only destroyed
  innumerable lives, replunged a whole province into barbarism, and
  almost annihilated religion and civilization, but had so utterly
  failed even in that special aim which it professed to have most at
  heart--the development of material prosperity--that it had already
  reduced the wealth of a single district in the following notable
  proportions: Of homed cattle there remained about _one-fifteenth_ of
  the number possessed under the religious administration; of horses
  and mules less than _one-sixteenth_; of sheep about _one-tenth_; and
  of cultivated land producing cereal crops less than
  _one-seventeenth_. It is not to the Christian, who will mourn rather
  over the moral ruin which accompanied the change, that such facts
  chiefly appeal; but the merchant and the civil magistrate, however
  indifferent to the interests of religion and morality, will keenly
  appreciate the cruel and blundering policy of which these are the
  admitted results, and will perhaps be inclined to explain with Mr.
  Möllhausen, 'It is impossible not to wish that the missions were
  flourishing once more!'"

How beautiful was the old Spanish system under which Father Junipero
and his companions set forth to reclaim and convert the wandering
Indian! Is it not the greatest glory of Spain that she can still cheer
our dark horizon by the light of her past history, and shed a
fragrance which remains for ever over lands which have been broken
down by the hoof of the invader, and desolated by his diabolical pride
and insatiable rapacity? What was the Spanish system as exhibited in
California? It was simply this: a recognition, without question or
jealousy, that our Lord, the great high priest, continues in his
priesthood to be the shepherd, teacher, and minister of his people.
"To go and teach all nations," "to minister to the least of the little
ones," to be the "shepherd of the flock," "to lay down life for the
flock." This is distinctly the operation of Christ through his
priests. That this was the real character of the Christian priesthood
was a clear and elementary principle, which admitted of no doubt in
the mind of the Spanish people.

Conscious of their power, and with a light burning within them which
shone over the vast prospects that lay before them, of extending the
faith and saving innumerable souls, for whom the most precious blood
had been shed, the Spanish missioners went forth to extend their
conquests over the heathen world. Rapine and plunder were not their
aim; they were introduced among colonizers by the snare of the devil.
To maintain the Indian on his territory, to raise, instruct, and
Christianize him, giving him rights and equality before the law, this
was the policy of Catholic Spain. The priest, therefore, was regarded
as the chief pioneer, his plans were recognized and acted upon, and he
was considered to be not a mere creature of the crown, who should
extend its influence, but a minister and agent of his majesty the
Great King of Heaven, who had deigned in his infinite love to look
upon Spain with a peculiar predilection, and to choose her as an {794}
instrument to save the souls for whom he once had died.

A hundred years ago no European had ever fixed his abode in California
Alta. Father Junipero and his devoted companions, led on by zeal "to
establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people,
submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism," were, then, the real
pioneers of California. Three Protestant writers, quoted by Mr.
Marshall, shall sum up for us in a few words the civilizing effects of
the Catholic education of the Indians in California. Captain Morrell
says:

  "The Indians are very industrious in their labors, and obedient to
  their teachers and directors, to whom they look up as fathers and
  protectors, and who, in return, discharge their duty toward these
  poor Indians with a great deal of feeling and humanity. They are
  generally well clothed and led, have houses of their own, and are
  made as comfortable as they can wish to be. The greatest care is
  taken of any who are affected with any disease, and every attention
  is paid to their wants." And Mr. Forbes writes:

  "The best and most unequivocal proof of the good conduct of the
  Franciscan fathers is to be found in the unbounded affection and
  devotion invariably shown to them by their Indian subjects. They
  venerate them not merely as fathers and friends, but with a degree
  of devotedness approaching to adoration." And, lastly, Mr. Bartlett
  observes:

  "They (the Indians) are represented to have been sober and
  industrious, well clothed and fed. . . . . . They constituted a
  large family, of which the padres were the social, religious, and,
  we might almost say, political heads."

Such was the first planting in this vineyard of the Lord. Let us
briefly note the blight and destruction which followed. In 1827, a Mr.
Smith established himself in California to make money. In 1834, three
hundred Americans settled in the country for the same purpose. In
1839, Captain Sutter built a fort and an American refuge. In 1841, he
got possession of a considerable tract of land. In 1844, a revolution
took place, and the American settlers sold themselves for a grant of
land to the party which was afterward defeated.

In 1845, the people, being harassed by civil war, wished for the
protection of some strong external government. It was a chance whether
California was to become English or United States territory. H.M.S.
_Collingwood_ entered the port, we believe, of Monterey, and was asked
to set up the Union Jack, and declare the country to be under British
protection. The captain replied that he would sail up the coast and
ascertain whether this was the will of the country, and if it were, he
would return and declare the protectorate. Meanwhile, the United
States ship _Savannah_, under Commodore Stoat, was on the watch; so
that when the _Collingwood_ returned, having ascertained the good will
of the other ports, she found, to her surprise and dismay, that she
had been outstripped by the Yankee, and that the stars and stripes
were floating over the town. California from that time became the
property of the United States. In 1848 gold was accidentally
discovered, and an emigration set in with the violence of a spring
tide, of a very different character to that of the pious Señor Galvez
or of the humble Father Junipero and his Franciscans.

Then, indeed, the world began to ring with glad tidings of great joy:
the sun had at last arisen on a benighted land--its redemption was at
hand. Every newspaper in Europe--we may say in the world--teemed with
reports of a new _El Dorado_ discovered on the western coast of
America. This country was California. Adventurous spirits, athirst for
wealth, from all parts of the world, were set in motion toward this
land of promise. Ships were chartered and {795} freighted with men and
youths ready to spend all they had in order only to reach the golden
bourne. Merchants from the United States and from Europe, ready
speculators, sent out their vessels laden to the water's edge with dry
goods, hardware, corn, spirits, and general merchandise. The
excitement and the recklessness were, perhaps, without a parallel.
Ships reached the great and beautiful bay of San Francisco, in which
all the fleets of the world could ride at ease, and were often
abandoned by their captain and crews, who scampered off to the gold
diggings, even before their cargo was discharged. Sometimes they fell
to pieces in the bay; sometimes they became the property of
adventurers, or were run aground, and served as temporary houses, and
then as the corners and foundations of streets, which energetic
speculators soon carried down upon piles into the water. There they
stand to this day, monuments of the _auri sacra fames_.

It was, indeed, natural that none but the fiercest and most daring
elements should prevail. The modest, the timid, the indolent, the
sickly, the child, the woman, the aged, the leisure-learned, the owner
of property, of good position, of fair prospects, the man of routine,
the unambitious, were all left behind. It was said, and said truly, in
the cities of Europe, America, and Australia, that men of desperate
character were on the road to California; that all went armed with
knives and revolvers; that the way thither was a highway of rapine and
crime; and that none should start who were not prepared to fight it
out any day in self-defence or in attack. There were a thousand
difficulties arising from the immense length of the journey, and from
the great numbers on the way; and a thousand other difficulties to be
accepted on arrival in the country--expense, danger, uncertainty,
perhaps sickness; and all these far away from home. Such were the
prospects in those days, and such the normal condition of life in
California.

It is not strange, then, that the men who formed the horde which,
fifteen or sixteen years ago, began to flow into California, should
represent to us a type of all that is rough, adventurous,
devil-may-care, elastic, light-hearted, and determined in human
nature. The Australian population began with convicts and honest
emigrants. The Californian population began with all kinds of
unconvicted criminals from all parts of the world, with "Sydney
ducks," as they called the ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales or
Tasmania; but, beside these, a considerable number of energetic,
honest emigrants, chiefly from Europe and the States. Then, we may add
that the Yankee element prevails in the Californian population, and
the John Bull element in the Australian. The American is lean, and all
nerve and impatient energy; health and life are to him of no moment
when he sees an object to be attained by the risk of them. If we may
be allowed to put it grotesquely, his body is human but his soul is a
high-pressure steam-engine; he knows no delay and is reckless, and his
bye-word is "Go ahead." The Englishman, by contrast, is fat and
easy-going; much more cautious of health and life, he calculates on
both. F. Strickland ("Catholic Missions in Southern India") happily
applies to him the words of Holy Writ spoken of the Romans,
"Possederant omnem terram consilio suo et patientia." "It is by wisdom
in council, and by patiently watching their opportunity; . . . .
wisdom which has often degenerated into Machiavellism, but has never
neglected a single opportunity of aggrandizement; patience which has
known how to 'bide its time,' and to avoid precipitation"--this is
how the Englishman succeeds. And so, to look at the Englishman in a
Pickwickian sense, he is a matter-of-fact, cautious gentleman, who
wishes to make very sure of what he has got, {796} and when he feels
comfortably confident, says "All right," and moves on deliberately to
acquire more. An English traveller says:

"The first night we arrived in San Francisco we were kept awake all
night on board the steamer by the incessant cry of 'Go ahead,' which
accompanied the launch from the crane which sent each article of
luggage and goods on to the wharf. It reminded us of a story his late
eminence Cardinal Wiseman used to tell. He said the first Italian
words he heard on first landing, some forty years ago or more, in
Italy from England, were, 'Pazienza, pazienza.' The Englishman sums up
all things that happen with the words 'All right;* the Yankee with the
words, 'Go ahead.'"

Many merchants realized enormous fortunes in a few months--some even
by one consignment; but many were hit hard and many were ruined. A
period in which an egg was worth a dollar was followed by a glut in
the market of all kinds of goods and provisions. There was nobody to
receive them; there was no sale for them. Warehousage cost more than
the total value of goods and freight. Tons of sea-bread were
abandoned; barrels of hams and bacon, cargoes of cheeses, dry goods,
and even wine and spirits, were left unclaimed, and fell into the
hands of "smart" men of business, or were spoiled by weather and
neglect. Ships, captains, crews, and cargoes bound to California
sailed as into a vortex, and were lost in the whirlpool of excitement.
Even officers of men-of-war were seized by the gold mania, and "ran"
to soil their white hands in the precious "pay-dirt."

Such circumstances as these which occurred in 1849-50-51 are now past
and can never recur, at least in California. The country is settling
down into a normal condition. The regular system of American states
government is permanently established. On two occasions, once in 1851
and again in 1856, when the government of San Francisco fell into the
hands of a set of low sharpers, who suspended the laws for punishment
of crime and protected criminals, the people, trained from childhood
to self-government, extemporized what was called a vigilance
committee. They abrogated for the time the state laws, they caught
thieves, tried them in the night, and hung them in the morning. They
struck terror into the "Sydney ducks," and into the plunderers who had
come down upon San Francisco, like vultures upon their prey, from all
countries of the world. When the committee had effected its object it
peaceably dissolved, and the regular form of government resumed its
sway. California, however, still presents a spectacle unlike that of
any other country of the world. Sydney, Melbourne, and Queensland have
not the diversity of population which California has. They are more
like "home;" a stronger government is exercised; there is more
security, less excitement, less incident, and less variety in life.
The traveller meets every day in the diggings and elsewhere men who
had come over from Australia, thinking to better themselves; they have
not done so, and they all complain that they have not found the same
order and security for man and property; and most of them determine to
return in the coming season.

For internal resources, in scenery and climate, and in variety of
production, California is probably superior to the Australian
colonies. There is a continual excitement, and all the business of the
country is done in San Francisco; it is the only port of any note; the
trade with California from the States, from South America, from
Europe, Asia, and Australia, is to San Francisco. She is called the
"Queen of the Pacific," and it is expected that she will become one of
the largest cities of the world, and that the whole trade between
China, Japan, and Europe and the States will pass through her. She
will be one of the great ports, and the most magnificent harbor on the
{797} high-road which, when the railroad across the plains is
completed, will connect together in one line Pekin, Canton, Japan, San
Francisco, New York, London, and St. Petersburg; thus girdling in a
great highway the northern hemisphere of the world. The market in San
Francisco is just large and manageable enough to produce the greatest
amount of excitement for the merchants. Exports and imports are
reckoned at about eleven million pounds each; of the exports about
eight millions are of gold and silver. The highest game is played, and
the English houses, always safe and sure, are looked upon as slow and
plodding in comparison with the American. The stakes are, day by day,
fortune or ruin. The interest on loans varies from one to ten per cent
a month, according to the security. There are great losses and great
gains. San Francisco is in a chronic state of exciting business
fermentation; there is little amusement, no learned leisure, but
everybody is occupied in trade or speculation. The people are well
dressed--all the men wear broadcloth, nearly all the women silk; there
are no beggars in the streets, and there is an air of healthiness,
vigor, and buoyancy of life such as is not to be seen in any other
city in Europe or America. No market in the world, save, perhaps, that
of London, is better supplied. Railroads run along the streets in all
directions. Churches, schools, hotels, and houses are lifted up from
their foundations by hydraulic power; and if the owners wish to add a
story, instead of clapping it on above, they build it in below, and
roof, walls, and floors all go up together uninjured.

The traveller is astonished to see a procession of solid-built houses
slowly marching through the centre of one of the principal
thoroughfares. In eight-and-forty hours an hotel, brick-built and
three stories high, will be carried, without interruption to business,
from one part of the city to another. The country is full of
interesting incident and novel excitement. It contains all the
precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, copper, iron, coal,
asphaltum, spring and mineral oil, borax, arsenic, cobalt. The largest
crops in the world have been grown on its soil. We quote the published
accounts: Crops of 80 bushels of wheat to the acre have been grown in
California. Mr. Hill harvested 82-1/2 bushels from an acre in Pajaro
valley in 1853, and obtained 660 bushels from ten acres. In 1851, Mr.
P. M. Scooffy harvested 88 bushels, and Mr. N. Carriger 80 bushels, in
Sonoma valley. Again: In 1853 a field of 100 acres in the valley of
the Pajaro produced 90,000 bushels of barley, and one acre of it
yielded 149 bushels. It was grown by Mr. J. B. Hill, and was mentioned
as undoubtedly true by the assessor of Monterey county in his official
report; and a prize was granted by an agricultural society for the
crop. According to the assessor's report, the average crop of potatoes
in Sacramento county in 1860 was 390 bushels per acre. Potatoes have
been seen in the market weighing 7 lb. The largest beet-root was 5 ft.
long, 1 ft. thick, and 118 lb. in weight--it was three years old;
cabbages 45 lb. and 53 lb. each; and a squash vine bore at a time
1,600 lb. of fruit. Then the largest trees in the world are found in
California, in mammoth-tree groves. Two are known to be 32 ft in
diameter, 325 ft high. "One of the trees which is down must have been
450 ft. high, and 40 ft. in diameter." The tree of which the bark was
stripped for 116 ft., and sent to the Crystal Palace, continued green
and flourishing two years and a half after being thus denuded. The
highest waterfall in the world is in the Yosemite valley, in
California. It is 2,063 ft. high, according to the official surveyor.
The Californian Geysers are among the wonders of the world--a
multitude of boiling springs, emitting large quantities of steam with
a hissing, roaring, spluttering noise; while near them, within a {798}
few feet, are deliciously cold springs. There are mud volcanoes, which
can be heard ten miles off, and seen at a still greater distance. A
great variety of wild beasts and birds--bears, panthers, wolves, deer,
elk, the Californian vulture (next to the condor the largest bird that
flies), make up other sources of interest, speculation, and excitement
and contribute to give to Californians a certain peculiar character
and sympathy one with another, which unite them together as
hail-fellows-well-met in any part of the world in which they may
chance to meet. There is travelling up the rivers in steamboats three
and four stories high, which not unfrequently blow up or run into each
other. A considerable portion of the country can be traversed in
wagons called "stages," whose springs are so very strong that ocular
demonstration is necessary as a proof of their existence. They cross
plains and mountains, penetrate forests, and skirt precipices, along
the most difficult roads. Wooden bridges thrown across ravines or deep
gullies or streams, and formed by laying down a number, of scantling
poles, and covering them with loose planks, are taken by the
four-horse "stage" at a gallop, just as you ride at a ditch or rasper
out hunting; patter, patter, go the horses' feet, up and down go the
loose planks--one's heart in one's mouth--no horses have slipped
through--no broken legs--it seems a miracle--and away onward goes the
stage, conducted by dauntless and skilful drivers, to the everlasting
cry of "go ahead!" But much of the country must be travelled on
horseback, and California has an admirable breed of thin, wiry little
horses, which will gallop with their rider over a hundred miles a day,
requiring little care and hardly any food. Much of the country is
still unexplored. There are mountains covered with perpetual snow, and
immense virgin pine forests covering their sides; long rolling plains,
baked by the sun; and rich luxuriant valleys, watered by the richest
fish-streams. In extent the country is 189,000 square miles, or nearly
four times larger than England, and possesses within itself all the
resources of the temperate and tropical zones. There are 40,000,000
acres of arable land in the state, though not more than 1,000,000 are
now in cultivation.

"The climate near the ocean is the most equable in the world. At San
Francisco there is a difference of only seven degrees between the mean
temperature of winter and summer--the average of the latter being 57°
and of the former 50° Fahrenheit. Ice and snow are never seen in
winter, and in summer the weather is so cool that woolen clothing may
be worn every day. There are not more than a dozen days in the year
too warm for comfort at mid-day, and the oldest inhabitant cannot
remember a night when blankets were not necessary for comfortable
sleep. The climate is just of that character most favorable to the
constant mental and physical activity of men, and to the unvarying
health and continuous growth of animals and plants. By travelling a
few hundred miles the Californian may find any temperature he may
desire--great warmth in winter and icy coldness in summer."

It may be understood, then, from all these circumstances, that the
blood of a Californian tingles with an excitement of its own. Indeed,
it is constantly observed that men who leave California with their
fortunes made, and with the intention of establishing themselves in
the Eastern states, or in Europe, are unable to settle down, and soon
return to the Golden State.

Let us now proceed with the subject before us, and draw out briefly
two contrasts: one between the Spanish or Catholic and the Anglo-Saxon
or non-Catholic conduct and policy toward the original lords of the
soil, the Indians; the other as between the names they gave to the
localities which were the scenes of their respective labors. It will
indicate a difference of {799} tone and spirit sufficiently
remarkable.

Of course all Californians are not to be held responsible for the acts
of a low and heartless section of ruffians, any more than all
Englishmen are accountable for the atrocities which we have
perpetrated in times past in India or Oceanica. But as we would not
pass over the crimes committed by the Anglo-Saxon race in India were
India our topic, so neither will we be silent here on deeds of equal
atrocity with any of which we were guilty, committed in these latter
days by some of the new occupiers of California.

The love of souls and the love of wealth do not, indeed, grow in the
same heart. We have already faintly sketched the result of the
Church's love of souls on the temporal and spiritual well-being of the
indigenous population of California. Under her gentle care was
realized for its inhabitants the happiness, peace, and plenty of
Paraguay. The Anglo-Saxon and the thirst for gold ushered in, alas! on
these poor creatures--made in the divine image, and called equally
with ourselves to an eternal share in the love of the Sacred
Heart--not a miserable existence, but absolute destruction. The love
of mammon has been the murderer of the native owners of the soil. The
iron heart and the iron arm of the Anglo-Saxon invaders have cleared
all before them. In 1862, Mr. Hittel, who is not a Catholic, and whom
we hold to be an impartial witness, made a study of the subject, and
he thus speaks of the destruction of the Indian population of
California, page 288:

"The Indians are a miserable race, destined to speedy destruction.
Fifteen years ago, they numbered 50,000 or more: now there may be
7,000 of them. They were driven from their hunting-grounds and
fishing-grounds by the whites, and they stole cattle for food (rather
than starve); and to punish and prevent their stealing, the whites
made war on them and slew them. Such has been the origin of most of
the Indian wars, which have raged in various parts of the state almost
continuously during the last twelve years. For every white man that
has been killed, fifty Indians have fallen. In 1848 nearly every
little valley had its tribe, and there were dozens of tribes in the
Sacramento basin, but now most of these tribes are entirely
destroyed."

We have been ourselves assured by eye-witnesses that such an incident
as the following has frequently happened in the gold diggings. A man
would be quietly cleaning his gun or rifle on a Sunday morning, when
he would espy an Indian in the distance, and, without the least
hesitation, would fire at him as a mark. The Indians were fair game,
just as bear or elk were, and men would shoot them by way of pastime,
not caring whether the mark was a "buck" or a "squaw," as they call
them--that is, a man or a woman. Murder became thus a relaxation. And
we must add, that not only American citizens, but also men who pride
themselves on the greater civilization and virtue of their country
nearer home, thus imbrued their bands with reprobate levity in the
blood of their fellow-creatures. We should be very sorry to imply that
these horrible deeds are perpetrated only by inhabitants of the United
States. On the contrary, it is certain that men who from circumstances
lapse into a state of semi-savage life, without public opinion to
check them, living in the wilderness and the bush, and without
religion, naturally become so enslaved to their passions that at last
they commit the foulest abominations and the most horrible murders as
though they were mere pastimes. We have read abundant examples of this
in India and other British colonies. The American government passed
many wise and humane laws in favor of the Indian. It was not her fault
that pioneers, squatters, buccaneers, and outlaws, at a distance,
laughed at her laws and set them at defiance.

{800}

The other contrast is quickly drawn. It shall be the contrast of
names. We do not wish to found any strong argument upon it. Names are
not actions, and yet to call a man hard names is the next thing to
giving him hard blows; and we know that "out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh." Let the two lists go down in parallel
columns, and illustrate the old times and the new:

_Spanish baptisms of localities or settlements._

  San Francisco
  Sacramento
  La Purisima Concepcion
  Trinidad
  Jesus Maria
  Santa Cruz
  Nuestra Señora di Solidad.
  Los Angeles,  Reina de.
  San Jose
  San Pedro
  San Miguel
  San Rafael
  Santa Clara
  Santa Barbara
  San Luis Obispo
  San Paolo
  Buena Vista
  Mariposa
  San Fernando
  Alcatraz
  Contra Costa
  San Mateo
  Plumas

_Yankee baptisms of localities or settlements_

  Jackass Gulch
  Jim Crow Cañon
  Loafer Gill
  Whiskey diggings
  Slap Jack Bar
  Yankee Doodle
  Skunk Gulch
  Chicken Thief Flat
  Ground Hog's Glory
  Hell's Delight
  Devil's Wood
  Sweet Revenge
  Shirt-tail Cañon
  Rough and Ready
  Rag  Town
  Git up and Git
  Bob Ridley Flat
  Humpback Slide
  Swell-head Diggings
  Bloody Run
  Murderers' bar
  Rat trap Slide
  Hang town

We may now dismiss these contrasts, which we have only insisted on in
order to bring into greater relief the spirit of God and the spirit of
mammon. The Spaniard went with the tenderest devotedness to serve and
save the Indian, recognizing him from the first as a brother. The
Yankee came, straining every nerve and energy in the pursuit of
wealth; the Indian was in his way; he recognized no spiritual ties of
brotherhood; his soul presented to him no divine image deserving of
his love and service; rather it was said, let him be trodden into the
mire, or perish from the face of the land. The former cast over their
humble settlements, on the coast and inland, the sacred association of
the names of mysteries and holy saints, so that men for all
generations might be reminded that they are of the race of the people
of God; whereas the latter have named many of the places where they
have dug for gold with the names of their hideous crimes, and with
terms compared to which the nomenclature of savage and uncivilized
tribes is Christian and refined.

This sketch of the principal features of the two occupations of
California, as they have borne upon the native population, may be
sufficient for our present purpose. We shall presently dwell upon the
better qualities in the American character--the natural foundations
upon which religion has to be built. Our object is not to write a
political or commercial essay; all we attempt is to note the action of
the Church at the present day upon the heterogeneous elements which
compose the population of California, and to record as briefly as may
be the several influences observable as making up that action.

It has long been a favorite theme with the anti-Catholic philosophers
of the day to descant upon the feebleness of the Catholic Church. They
judge her as a purely human institution, good in her day; but her day
is gone. She was a good nurse, who held the leading-strings which
mankind needed in early childhood. But we have grown to the ripeness
of perfection; and the good nurse has grown old and past work: she may
be allowed therefore to potter about the world, as an old servant
round her master's hall and grounds, till she dies and is buried away.
We may render some little service if we point to one more instance of
her present vigor and vitality in our own day; if we can show that she
is stamping her impress upon the lettered horde that has overrun the
western shore, as she did formerly upon the unlettered hordes that
possessed themselves of the plains of Italy or of the wolds of
England. We believe that she is by degrees assimilating into herself
the strange mass of the Californian population; she is standing out in
the midst of them as the only representative of religions unity,
order, and revelation. She is executing her commission in California
to-day as faithfully as she did when Peter entered Rome, or {801}
Augustine Kent, or Xavier Asia, or Solano the wilds of South America.

The work of grace, through the Church of Christ, is gaining sensibly
and irresistibly upon the population of California. We are far from
foreseeing a day when all its inhabitants will be of one faith and one
mind, or from saying that the number of conversions to the faith is
prodigious and unheard-of. But we affirm that the Catholic Church,
with a far greater rapidity than in England, is daily attaining a
higher place in the estimation of the people, is becoming more and
more the acknowledged representative of Christianity, and is actually
gaining in numbers, piety, and authority. The sects there, as
elsewhere in America, are ceasing by degrees to exercise any religious
or spiritual influence upon the people; they act as political and
social agents, and hold together as organizations by the force of
local circumstances, which are wholly independent of religion. As
forms of religion, the people see through them, and have no confidence
in them; the consequence is, that an immense proportion are without
any religion at all, and many join the Catholic Church. It was the
policy of imperial Rome to open her gates to every form of heathenism:
every god was tolerated, every god was accepted, no matter how
incongruous or contradictory its presence by the side of others. The
empire was intent upon one thing, self-aggrandizement; and for
religion it did not care. Thoughtful men smiled or sneered at those
mythologies and divinities, and their forms of worship; and the people
became cold and indifferent to them. They were dying of this contempt,
when behold the newly imported presence of the Fisherman into their
midst, with his Catechism of Christian Doctrine, inspired one and all
with a new life and energy; the gods began to speak, and the people
began to hear them. It was not that a new faith had been awakened in
their old idolatry; but a new hostility and hatred had been aroused
against the majesty of consistent truth, which stood before them
humble, yet confounding them. They began to believe themselves to be
devout pagans, and to prove the sincerity of their convictions by
endeavoring to smite down the divine figure of the Catholic Church,
which claimed a universal homage and a universal power. Events
strangely repeat themselves in the world. That which occurred among
the sects of ancient Rome is now taking place among the sects of
America. Men smile at their pretensions; their convictions are not
moulded by them, and they will not submit to their discipline or bow
to their authority. But the sects object to death, and they think to
prolong the term of their existence not by a life of faith, but by a
life of sustained enmity against the religion which is slowly gaining
upon them, and supplanting them in the mind and affection of the
people.

There are many who believe that the day is not far distant when the
Catholics of America will have to brace themselves up to go through
the fire, for American religious persecution would be like an American
civil war, determined and terrible. It would carry us beyond the
limits of our scope to attempt to trace the steps by which persecution
is approaching. This spirit has ever existed in the New England
states. _Know-nothingism_ was a political and social form of it which
failed for a time; and the knowledge of the immense progress made by
the Church amidst the din of war, in the camp and in the hospital, in
North and South, among officers and men, has quickened this movement.
The government is not to blame for this. We believe the American
government, in point of religion, to be perfectly colorless. It is
noteworthy that nowhere in the world has religion made more rapid
progress in this century than in the United States.

We cannot doubt that the Church is repairing in America the losses she
{802} has suffered in Europe through the pride, abuse of grace, and
apostacy of many of her children.

In California the Church has no easy task before her. It is no longer
the simple and rude Vandal, Dane, or Lombard she has to lead into her
fold, but a population composed of men of keen wits, of the most
varied, world-wide experiences, and drawn from countries in which they
have been more or less within the reach of Catholic teaching. These
are the men whom she has now to reduce into the obedience of faith.

We are not of those who imagine that Almighty God has lavished all the
treasures of natural virtues upon one nation, and has withheld them
proportionately from others. In intellectual gifts men differ much
less one from another than is often supposed, as with their physical
strength and stature the difference, on the whole, is not very large.
And so their moral natural gifts, if considered in their full circle,
will be found before the tribunal of an impartial judge to be on the
whole pretty evenly distributed among the nations. One nation has
faith and trust, another understanding and subtlety, another mercy and
compassion, another truthfulness and fidelity, another tenderness and
love, another humility and docility, another courage and energy,
another determination and patience, another purity, another reverence.
These natural virtues may be elevated into supernatural, and then that
nation is _really_ the _greatest_ which has made best use of the grace
of God. The bounteous hand of God has enriched every part of the
canopy of heaven with stars and planets, differing infinitely in
light, color, distance, size, and combination, and he leaves no
portion in absolute poverty or darkness; and the "distilling lips" and
"shining countenance" have scattered in every direction over his
immortal creation precious gifts of natural virtues, set like gems in
the souls of men the moment his fingers first fashioned them. It will,
no doubt, often require the study and patient love of an apostle's
heart to discover them, so defiled and obscured have they become; but
they are ever there, though dormant, and when once they become subject
to the touch of divine grace, it is surprising what inclination and
facility toward their eternal Father break forth and become apparent.

Now, in speaking of the sufferings of the Church in California, we
have been marking some of the worst features of the Anglo-Saxon
invasion. But in viewing, as we are about to do, the future prospects
of the Church, we must, at the outset, point toward some of those
better qualities and characteristics, upon which, under God, the
Church has to build her hopes.

If once turned to God from materialism and mammon-worship, we are
persuaded that the American would rank among the foremost Catholics of
the world; not shining, perhaps, in the extraordinary gifts of faith,
and in the offices of the contemplative life, like the children of
Italy and Spain, but fruitful and overflowing in good works and in
pushing forward every active operation of charity.

Of the Californians it may be said that they are bold and independent
adventurers, and that they admire these qualities in others. They are
quick and devoted in their own business, and appreciate devotedness in
the business (the Chinese call it "sky business") of priests and nuns.
They are practical and determined, and failure after failure does not
discourage them. Health and life have no value when any temporal end
is to be gained. And, therefore, they are struck by the Catholic
Church, her bishops and missionaries, steadily pursuing her
supernatural end, in spite, of the allurements, distractions, and
threats of the world; preaching always and at all times the same
doctrines of faith and charity; ready day and night to obey the call
of her poorest member, in the camp and the battle-field, in the penury
and hardship of' emigration, in {803} pestilence and fever-wards, in
no matter what clime or among what people; always alike joyful to save
the soul of the negro, the red man, or the white man; esteeming
suffering, illness, contempt, poverty, and persecution, when endured
for God or for his souls, as so many jewels in her crown, and holding
life itself cheap and contemptible in comparison with the one end she
has in view.

The Californians are a singularly inquisitive and intelligent race.
Everybody is able to read and write; and even the common laborer has
his morning newspaper brought every day of his life to his cottage
door. The state prison of St. Quintin shows some curious statistical
of the proportion of native Americans and foreigners who are able to
read and write. The comparison, as will be seen, is in favor of the
United States: January 1, 1862, there were 257 prisoners, natives of
the United States; of these only 29 were unable to read or write. And
there were 333 of foreign birth; of these 141 were unable to read or
write. The spirit of free inquiry and private judgment, which brought
about the apostacy of the sixteenth century, is carried by
Californians to its legitimate conclusions. They are not stopped
half-way as Anglicans are by love or reverence for what may appear to
be a venerable, time-honored establishment, full of nationality and
wealth, and hoary with respectability. They wish to learn the reason
_why_ of everything, and they are little inclined to take anything
upon a mere _ipse dixit._They love knowledge, and desire to obtain it
easily, so they are great frequenters of lectures and sermons; and
will go anywhere to hear them when they believe them to be good. This
gives the Catholic priest a strong and solid advantage over every
other minister. He is able to give an account of his faith, to show
the reasonableness of submission, to prove that faith rests upon an
infallible basis, that religion is not a caprice of reason, not a mere
expedient, not a police, which was useful in ignorant days, and may be
still useful for superstitious minds and a leading-string for children
and the weak. Show the American that the submission of his intellect
to the divine intellect of the Church of God is not its destruction,
but its perfection, and elevation, and his intellectual pride will
yield as quickly as any man's. Explain to them the doctrine of the
Holy Ghost and his indwelling life in the Church and in the
individual, and they will be ready to call out, "Give us also the Holy
Ghost." There are some natures so confiding and so simple that it is
enough to address them as the centurion did his soldiers, or to tell
them what to believe, and they believe at once. It is a blessed thing
to have the grace of little children to believe from the first; but
there are some who have placed themselves out of the pale of this
great grace, or have been born outside it, on account of the sins of
their parents, and the mould they have been formed in. This is the
case with the Anglo-Saxon race, and pre-eminently so with the
American. And the Church accommodates herself to the peculiarities of
the human mind, with infinite charity and condescension, seeking the
surest avenue to the conversion of the soul to God, in faith, hope,
and charity. She is ready to meet the American on his own ground, and
to give the clearest and most convincing of explanations. Again, the
Americans are what has been called "viewy," and with all their
practical power and love for the positive, they prefer to have the
truth presented to them as in a landscape, in which the imagination is
able to throw the reason into relief on the foreground. Compare the
instructions and sermons of Peach, Gother, Fletcher, and Challoner,
excellent and solid though they be, where the imagination has no play,
with those of Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop Manning, Dr. Newman, and
our meaning is at once illustrated.

{804}

A priest who should draw his sermons out of Suarez or Petavius, rather
than from Perrone or Bouvier, or some hand-book of controversy--his
homilies on the gospel from, _e.g._, Dionysius the Carthusian,
illustrating them from such works as "Burder's Oriental Customs,"
"Harmer's Observations," etc., rather than heap up platitudes and
common generalities, or should even take our common little catechism
and develop its doctrine and popularize it by abundant illustrations
from Scripture, history, from the arts, science, commerce,
government--familiar themes to the American mind--would be certain to
attract around his pulpit large audiences of anxious souls, and, by
God's blessing, to win them to Catholic truth with astonishing
facility.

The Americans are keenly alive to coarse or rough manners in a priest.
They will not suffer masterful or domineering language from him in the
pulpit or in private. Above all, they consider the "brogue" to be a
capital sin--_talem devita_. This is a little inconsistent in men who
are not themselves remarkable either for the _suaviter in modo_ or for
a reticence of provincialisms and cant words and phrases. But still we
consider, unhesitatingly, that the brogue is more prejudicial to a
clergyman's influence upon Americans than upon Englishmen; and also
that a priest, through refinement of mind and manners, can effect more
in America than in England. Whether the reason for this fact is that
the latter qualities are rarer in the States than here, or that having
no hereditary titles, Americans attach greater value to adornments of
mind and manners, we may not pause to consider.

Again, they have been for the greater part cut off from the traditions
of home and family. The parish clergyman or district minister under
whom they once sat, the bitter zeal of old ladies who consider
Catholicity to be a species of sorcery, priests to be all Jesuits,
Jesuits to be one with the devil in cunning and malice, and who know
how to insert a sting into the life of the friend who withdraws from
their opinions; the quiet humdrum of life in the States or in Europe,
so favorable to the _status in quo_--all these anti-Catholic
influences are far away, and there is little substitute for them in
California, where there is a singular absence of public opinion and of
social despotism.

On the other hand it may be said that they have come into the presence
of the life of Catholicity in ways which impress them by the novelty
of their situation. In the first place, their belief in the
possibility of living for an invisible and supernatural end is
quickened by their experience of the country they have come to. They
came to seek for fortune, and they thought they were the first, but
they found that the Catholic Church had been there long before them,
perfectly satisfied without the gold and silver which has drawn
_them_, in the accomplishment of her mission of peace and salvation.
For long years Catholic missioners had abandoned home and civilization
in order to reside on the rolling plains, or valleys, or sea-coast,
with the untutored and debased Indian, with no other recompense than
one they looked for hereafter. They had not become savages and wild
men as men often do, conforming to the Indian, who lived upon
grasshoppers, and worms, and insects, or roots and grasses or fruits,
or at best on the produce of the chase. But by the constraining power
of love, and with a divine message, they had drawn the wild Indians
around them, taught them various arts and trades, the growth of the
olive, of the vine, and of corn, how to spin and weave, the first
elements of peace and commerce. They had instructed them in the
Christian faith and helped them on the way to heaven. The old remains
of their work are scattered over the country in some five-and-twenty
principal mission establishments. The great "adobe" walls of their
churches, varying from four to eight feet thick, {805} the rude
sculpture, the gaudy frescoes, the paintings and carvings brought all
the way from Spain and Mexico, the little square belfry standing
alone, the cemetery, and the avenue of trees planted by the friars
along the roads which lead up to the mission; the orchards still
fruitful, where the swine besport themselves and the coney burrows, as
at Santa Clara; the mournful olive-trees of the mission, which, in
spite of age, yield the best oil in the country; the crosses,
memorials of piety and faith, set up here and there, and the Christian
traditions still left among a few survivors of the old inhabitants,
often speak solemnly and instructively to the heart of the pioneer who
has come in hot haste to seek a fortune. How can he help at times
being touched, when he is with his own thoughts in solitude, perhaps
in sadness and disappointment, in the presence of these old remnants
which tell of pioneers who came with another and holier end in view
than that in which he sees himself foiled and mistaken? We will
venture to say that these ancient memorials of the faith and
devotedness of the Catholic missionaries are as sweet, and as dear,
and as impressive to many a Californian, as the gorgeous old piles of
Catholic piety in England are to the dense and civilized Protestant
population which lives around them and profits by their revenues.

Among the first pioneers of California, before the discovery of gold,
in search of an agricultural district and of a genial climate, came a
hardy band of earnest Irishmen. They were in a high sense pioneers,
for they were the first caravan that found a way across the plains and
Rocky Mountains from the Eastern states. They passed many long months
on the road, and were exposed to every imaginable hardship and
difficulty. They had to clear the forest as they went, to make a
passage for their wagons. Sometimes they would spend a week breaking a
road through great rocks and enormous boulders, which obstructed a
river-bed or a mountain-pass; their wagons often came to pieces
through hardship and exposure; they cut down trees to mend them, and
had to extemporize wheels and harness as they journeyed slowly on.
They had placed all their trust and confidence in God--in the rain and
wind, in the thick forest, and on the snowy mountain, they always
turned to him--they served and worshipped him as well as the
circumstances would allow, and he led them at last into the land of
promise which they looked to.

After them came another caravan from the States, but formed of men of
a very different stamp. License, crime, and disorder of the most
appalling character marked their steps. We will enter into no details.
They suffered innumerable hardships, they fell so short of provisions,
and were reduced to such straits, that, finally, in despair of ever
reaching the rich plains of California, they killed one of their
party, and made their evening meal upon human flesh. The next morning
one mile off they descried the land they longed for, and immense herds
of elk feeding on the plains. They felt that the hand of God had
struck them. The Irish Catholics soon rallied round the few pastors
who remained in the country; they established themselves near the
missions. Soon they lifted up their voice calling for more spiritual
assistance. The riches of earth were of little value to them without
the blessings of heaven. The zeal of the Holy See anticipated their
own. Missionaries were on the way to the scene of labor, and a devoted
bishop was soon appointed to rule over them.

When, after 1849, the rush to the diggings took place, and all men
were suffering from "the gold fever" and "silver on the brain,"
spending their money in wholesale gambling, making fortunes one week
and losing them the next, and every man's head seemed to be turned by
the helter-skelter excitement, the Catholic Church, in {806} her calm
majesty, was growing up in the midst of the turmoil, and occupying her
position as the city on the mountain, and the light shining before
men. The zeal of the archbishop and clergy and faithful Irish knew no
limits. Churches sprang up on the conspicuous eminences of the city of
San Francisco, and in the principal thoroughfares. And that vast
assemblage of men, who had come together from all parts, without
religion or God in their hearts, began to see that they were in the
presence of the Catholic Church, and that the shadow of the Catholic
towers and crosses had fallen upon them. As soon as the Holy See gave
to San Francisco an archbishop, the zealous sons of St. Patrick
determined to build him a cathedral. The wages of a common hodman were
£2, 10s. a day; nevertheless, while the Catholic with one hand worked
or scrambled for wealth, with the other he freely gave to that which
is always dearest to his heart. The deep foundations of the cathedral
were sunk, the walls arose, its massive time-keeping tower crowned the
city, its solemn services were inaugurated. It was the result of
fabulous sums of money, and of heroic devotedness on the part of
pastors and people. Nor was this all. Large and handsome churches have
sprung up in various parts of the city, like St. Ignatius's and St.
Francis's, and others, such as the French church, St. Patrick's, St.
Joseph's, the German church, and a number of smaller chapels. The
unbelieving speculator, the "smart" trader, the land-owner, and the
miner, on his visit to the city, were all struck with these visible
tokens of sincerity and zeal, without stint of generous alms, put
forth by the Catholic Church from the very outset. Later, and
stimulated by Catholic example, the various sects of Protestantism,
Jews, infidels, and pagans, erected in several places their churches,
temples, chapels, lecture-halls, and joss-houses. In point of
churches, in numbers and construction, the Catholic communion in San
Francisco stands far ahead of all others. But it is not in the
erection of churches alone that Catholicity has, with the vigor of her
perpetual youth, outstripped the sects, all of which, before they
attain to half a century, become old and decrepit; for no sooner did
the population roll in from the ocean and across the plains, than new
wants at once arose--hospitals for the sick from the city, the
country, and the mines; homes for the orphans who were left alone in a
far-off country, where men die in thousands from accident and
violence, as well as from disease and natural causes; and schools for
children, who are born more numerously, it is said, in California than
in any other country. Here again the Catholic Church was first in
devoted charity and anxious zeal for souls.

As to popular schools, before the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were
bridged together by the iron rails of Panama, the gentle and devoted
Sisters of the Presentation from Ireland, ladies by birth, tradition,
and refinement, left their tranquil convents for the storm and
troubles of life into the midst of which they were to be thrown in San
Francisco. They, in their strict and peaceful inclosure, were to be
calm, like the point which even in the whirlwind is always to be still
and at rest. There, day by day, they teach one thousand children from
infancy up to womanhood, the poor according to their wants, and the
rich according their requirements, and all this entirely _gratis_,
looking to God alone to be their "reward exceeding great." Moreover,
the only school in the state of California for Indians and negroes is
established and taught by them. In the state schools no colored child
would be allowed to set his foot. Thousands of children of Catholic,
of Protestant, and infidel parents have passed out into the world from
under their considerate and enlightened care, and they bless them
everywhere evermore. Such disinterested charities, such daily
self-denial, such {807} gentle and kindly sympathy, are not lost upon
the wayward, go-ahead, and hardened Yankee. These are the lives which
touch and melt and win him. This, he says, is practical religion.
Next, in a state like California, orphanages became an early and a
primary want. The Sisters of Charity first supplied them. Then
hospitals were needed; and the Sisters of Mercy from Ireland said,
"Here are hospitals." They possess the best hospital in the state.
They watch the sick with a mother's care; and many a man learns on his
bed of pain from their lips lessons which he has never heard in
childhood, or has forgotten in manhood. In all these departments of
popular instruction, orphanages, and hospitals, the Catholic Church in
California leads the way, extending aid and care to all, without
distinction of creed or nation. The Catholic convents and
establishments stand out conspicuously to all the world on the heights
and in the principal thoroughfares of San Francisco. These are all
works which we attribute to the zeal of the Irish, and which prove to
Americans, and they admit the proof, the faith and charity of the
Catholic Church. They are an appeal to their heart and to their
reason. And now for the appeal to their sense of honesty and justice.
Take the Catholics of California as a body, and they stand before any
other body for honesty in business. They nearly all came to the state
poor men; some had to borrow money for their journey; but they have
worked their way up; and now, though the Jews are the largest
capitalists, and the Yankees, from being more numerous, hold
absolutely a greater amount of wealth, the Irish and Catholics, as a
class, are more uniformly well off. The mean of comfort and
sufficiency is probably higher among them than among others. And they
have obtained for themselves a high reputation for honesty and
honorable conduct in business. It is impossible for a person without
experience to form an idea of the amount of cheating and rascality
which is often practised in trade and commerce. Robbery and lying,
upon however large or mean a scale, when successful, will be called by
a great number only "smart conduct." A man is not tabooed and banished
the exchange and the market for cheating his creditors, and defrauding
the public, as he would be in London or Liverpool. He can live down
such public opinion as there is, and many of his friends extend a
misplaced pity to him, or think none the worse of him for his
behavior. A man may become bankrupt three or four times, and become
richer each time; this is not uncommon; and there are certain persons
with whom it is taken for granted that they are thus "making their
pile." "So and so has just caved in," said a merchant; "and he had
$20,000 worth of goods from me last week, and all that's 'run into the
ground,' and no two ways about that. He'll be through the courts
white-washed in a few weeks." "Well," said the interlocutor, "you
won't let him have more goods without ready money?" "Yes, I shall.
He'll just come to me for goods to set up again; and he knows I'll let
him have them, for he's a 'smart' fellow; he will be better able to
pay me then than he ever has been before." In confirmation of our
general statement, we may quote the words of Mr. Hittel:

  "Insolvencies legally declared and cancelled by the courts are more
  frequent in San Francisco, in proportion to its population, than in
  any other part of the world. Our laws provide that any man who
  declares himself unable to pay his debts, and petitions to be
  released from them, may obtain a judicial discharge, unless he has
  been guilty of fraud; and as the fraud must be distinctly proved
  upon him before the discharge will be denied, the release is almost
  invariably obtained."

From this testimony of a long resident and man of business in
California {808} it will be readily understood how closely men's
personal character for honesty will be scrutinized by persons who are
not anxious to suffer in dealing with them. Now, inquiries have been
made in various parts of the country, and it has been ascertained
beyond a doubt that the Irish, or American Irish Catholics, are
considered the safest class of men to do business with. Whether it be
early training, religion, the confessional, or the influence of the
priests, so it is; they are trusted by a Yankee more readily than
others are. Far be it from us to impeach the honesty, and sense of
honor, of all save the Irish and Catholics. These natural virtues
shine with the greatest brilliancy in many an unbelieving man of
business. We but record a fact which is highly creditable to the
Irish, and spreads the good odor of the religion they profess.

We have now to notice the direct action of the archbishop and of the
clergy upon the population. The bishop is the "forma gregis facta ex
animo," "the city on the hill," "the candle placed high upon the
candlestick," giving its light around; and on each prelate bestows
what gifts he pleases. With these he illumines the world in the person
of his minister.

Go, then, up California street, turn round the cathedral of St.
Mary's, and you will enter a miserable, dingy little house. This is
the residence of the Archbishop of San Francisco and his clergy, who
live with him in community. To the left are a number of little yards,
and the back windows of the houses in which the Chinamen are swarming.
Broken pots and pans, old doors, and a yellow compost, window-frames,
fagots, remnants of used fireworks, sides of pig glazed and varnished,
long strings of meat--God only knows _what_ meat--hanging to dry,
dog-kennels, dead cats, dirty linen in heaps, and white linen and blue
cottons drying on lines or lying on rubbish--such is the view to the
left. The odors which exhale from it who shall describe? A spark would
probably set the whole of these premises in a conflagration; and one
is tempted to think that even a fire would be a blessing. To the
right, adjoining the cathedral, is the yard where the Catholic boys
come out to play; and in this yard stands a little iron or zinc
cottage, containing two rooms. This is where the archbishop lives; one
is his bedroom, the other his office, where his secretaries are at
work all day. No man is more poorly lodged in the whole city; and no
man preaches the spirit of evangelical poverty, a detachment in the
midst of this money-worshipping city, like this Dominican Spanish
Archbishop of San Francisco. From ten in the morning to one p.m. every
day, and for two or three hours every evening, his grace, arrayed in
his common white habit, and with his green cord and pectoral cross,
receives all who come to consult him, to beg of him, to converse with
him, be they who they may--emigrants, servants, merchants, the
afflicted, the ruined, the unfortunate. The example of such a life of
disinterested zeal, holy simplicity, and poverty has told upon the
inhabitants of San Francisco with an irresistible power. It has been
one of the Catholic influences exercised by the Church on the
population.

On taking possession of his see, when San Francisco was yet forming
and building itself up, the first thing Dr. Alemany looked around for
was an edifying and zealous body of clergy. There were, indeed,
already before him some few who are laboring in the vineyard to this
day, but there was also there the refuse of Europe, men of scandalous
life, and men affecting to be priests who were impostors. Whereupon he
went over to Ireland, and entering into relations with the College of
All Hallows, which had supplied so many devoted priests to other
parts, he began to draw from that splendid seminary apostles for
California: of whom, we believe, the first was the present bishop at
{809} Marysville, Dr. O'Connell, so distinguished for his gentleness,
learning, piety, and zeal for the salvation of the Indian as well as
of the white man. May that college long continue to send forth its
heroic bands of laborers, who may be recognized everywhere as they are
in California, as a virtuous and exemplary clergy! But the archbishop,
with the eye of a general, perceived that in order to make a deep
impression upon the masses which were forming themselves with
incredible activity in San Francisco and the country, it was
necessary, in addition to the secular clergy, which were stationed in
pickets through the city and country, to form a strong body of
indefatigable men, who should act upon the population with all the
accumulated power of a compact square. He therefore called into the
field the Jesuit fathers. They came down in little numbers from Oregon
and the Rocky Mountains, from the Eastern states, and from Piedmont.
He assigned to them the old mission of Santa Clara, about forty miles
from San Francisco, in order that they should at once open a college
for the better classes; and also a site in San Francisco, among the
sand-hills, in order to form a day college for the inhabitants of the
city; and a church in which they should bring into play all those
industries of devotion, retreats, sermons, lectures, novenas, and
sodalities, which constitute so considerable an element of their
influence in Rome, and upon the various populations in the midst of
which they establish themselves.

We have already shown that the Church was foremost in the formation of
hospitals, orphanages, and schools for the poor. She is also first in
reputation for the excellence and solidity of her higher education.
The College of Santa Clara has a public name all down the western
coast, in Mexico and Peru, as being, the most efficient house of
education on the Pacific. But in order to appreciate the value of this
work, it is necessary to understand something of the infidelity,
immorality, and vice against which it acts as a barrier. Precocity in
vice in California exceeds anything we know in England; and the
domestic inner life of the family, except among the Irish, who still
maintain its sanctity in a wonderful degree, and a certain small
minority of others, has probably less existence than in the Eastern
states. In the state system, boys and girls attend the same schools up
to seventeen and eighteen. We have heard of a college in which boys
and girls were educated together and live under the same roof; and we
have been told of even girls' boarding-schools having been broken up
on account of vice and disease. But rather than speak ourselves, we
prefer to quote the published evidence of a Californian as to the
moral state of society:

  "In no part of the world is the individual more free from restraint.
  Men, and women, and children are permitted to do nearly as they
  please. High wages, migratory habits, and bachelor life are not
  favorable to the maintenance of stiff social rules among men, and
  the tone of society among women must partake to a considerable
  extent of that among men, especially in a country where women are in
  a small minority, and are therefore much courted. Public opinion,
  which as a guardian of public morals is more powerful than the forms
  of law, loses much of its power in a community where the inhabitants
  are not permanent residents. A large portion of the men in
  California live either in cabins or in hotels, remote from women
  relatives, and therefore uninfluenced by the powers of a home. It is
  not uncommon for married women to go to parties and balls in company
  with young bachelor friends. The girls commence going into "society"
  about fifteen, and then receive company alone, and go out alone with
  young men to dances and other places of amusement. In this there is
  a great error: too much liberty is allowed to girls in the states on
  the Atlantic slope, and still greater {810} liberty is given here,
  where, as they ripen earlier, they should be more guarded."
  [Footnote 146]

  [Footnote 146: "Resources of California," p, 364. ]

Again:

  "The relation between the sexes is unsound. Unfortunate women are
  numerous, and separations and divorces between married couples
  frequent. No civilized country can equal us in the proportionate
  number of divorces. Our laws are not so lax as those of several
  states east of the Mississippi; but the circumstances of life are
  more favorable to separation. The small proportion of women makes a
  demand for the sex, and so when a woman is oppressed by her husband
  she can generally find somebody else who will not oppress her, and
  she will apply for a divorce. The abundance of money is here felt
  also. To prosecute a divorce costs money, and many cannot pay in
  poorer countries. During 1860, eighty-five divorce suits were
  commenced in San Francisco, and in sixty-one of these, or
  three-fourths of the cases, the wives were the plaintiffs."

We need add no comment. Such being the tone and condition of society,
of what inestimable value must not good Catholic colleges be to the
whole country! They are highly appreciated by many who are not
Catholics: for they send their children to Santa Clara, and to the
convents of Notre Dame, being fully persuaded that they will not only
be educated in the soundest principles of morality, and be fenced in
from evil, but will receive a higher intellectual training than they
could elsewhere. Society, indeed, must modify any particular system of
education; and the Jesuits have had to depart from their traditional
practice of a thorough classical training, in favor of positive
sciences, especially chemistry and mineralogy, and to adopt the
utilitarian line of instruction rather than that which is the habit in
Europe. Their colleges in Santa Clara and in San Francisco, and the
schools of Notre Dame, must be marked as the principal educational
establishments in California; and they are telling steadily upon the
people.

The archbishop has also opened another college in behalf of the middle
classes, which no doubt will bear its fruit. All are thus amply
provided for; and no one points a finger of scorn toward the Catholic
Church for ignorance and neglect of education; rather she is looked
upon as pre-eminent in her training, and men external to her communion
send their children to learn wisdom at her establishments.

The sand-hills in the midst of which the college and church of St.
Ignatius were placed, have long since been carried away by the
vigorous application of steam-power, and these religious buildings
stand out prominent upon the widest street in California.

A brief allusion to the work carried on in this church, and we come to
a conclusion. We have already referred at some length to the sermon
and lecture-going habit of the Americans, and to the conquests which
the Catholic Church alone has the power to make among them, by
addressing herself to their good qualities, and thus leading them to
God by the cords of Adam. Long ago the archbishop perceived this, and
acted promptly by planting in the capital, in addition to the busy,
active secular clergy, this community of St. Ignatius, with its
leisure, talent, and training, to meet special requirements; and
statistics would show with what success his grace's plans have been
crowned. But we must pass on, and confine our notice to a particular
industry of the society, which at San Francisco has received a special
blessing. Or rather, it is not a specialty of the society, but a
common arm in the armory of the Church; we refer, to the system of
sodalities and confraternities. The idea was first introduced by St.
Francis and St. Dominic in their third orders, and was perfected and
practically {811} applied to various devout ends by St. Charles, St.
Ignatias, and St. Philip, in the sixteenth century St. Charles covered
his diocese with confraternities as with so many nets. St. Philip
organized the little oratory, and the Jesuits wherever they establish
themselves are careful to found the sodality of the B. Virgin, and
that of St. Joseph as the patron of the _Bona Mors_, in their colleges
or among the frequenters of their public churches. Nothing can exceed
the importance of these sodalities and confraternities, and we dwell
on the subject all the more willingly, because of our own need of
their more perfect development and spread among ourselves. It strikes
us that such associations are more than ever desirable in countries
like England and America, where external dangers and seductions are so
numerous and insidious, and ecclesiastical influence so limited.

In Catholic countries the population is studded with religious houses,
convents, and communities, and the priesthood is numerous, visible to
the eye of the public, clothed in its own dress, affecting all classes
of society, and holding a political and national status of its own.
Their influence, therefore, is strong and ever present. It is
otherwise with the English clergy, who have not one of the advantages
alluded to, but are absorbed in begging and building with one hand,
while with the other they hastily baptize, absolve, and anoint the
new-born, the viator, and the dying. Now well-organized sodalities of
laymen supply the absence of those more powerful influences, of which
we daily lament the loss. They are a security to each member against
himself, and they quicken him with a new zeal and activity for his
neighbor. In San Francisco there is a sodality for men and one for
women. They hold their respective meetings, sing the office of the
Blessed Virgin, receive instructions, and frequent the sacraments on
appointed days: they have also their library. The object is purely
spiritual, and we believe there is no kind of obligatory subscription.
Is a youth being led away, or in the midst of dangers, his friend
induces him to join him in the sodality. It is a spiritual citadel
into which all may enter, and find a new armor and strength against
self and the world. Those newly born to the faith are gradually and
easily edified and perfected in their new religion, by contact with
the more fervent members whom they find in the sodality. Such a system
cannot be too widely spread. Why should not a sodality be established
in every considerable parish? After a time, all would loudly proclaim
that they had built up a tower of strength within the Church. But we
may not dwell longer on these topics.

The great spiritual dangers in California are rank infidelity and
unblushing naturalism: the one and only promise of religion, the one
hope of salvation, is in the attitude and position of the Catholic
Church. Mr. Hittel sums up the relative numbers thus: about fourteen
per cent, of the male population frequent some place of worship; of
the remaining eighty-six per cent., one-third occasionally go to
church, according to the attraction there, and two-thirds never go
near a church, and are not to be counted as Christians. He estimates
the Protestants at 10,000, of whom the Episcopalians are numbered at
only 600 communicants, with twenty churches and eighteen clergymen;
the Jews at 2,000. The Catholic priests, he adds, claim 80,000
communicants in their church, and they are more attentive to the forms
of their faith than are the Protestants. In a word, Catholicity is in
the ascendant, the sects are in the decline, and the battle is between
paganism with a mythology of dollars, and the Church of God with her
precepts of self-denial and her promises of eternal life.

------

{812}

From The Month.

PATIENCE.

FROM THE GERMAN.


  All through this earth we live in
    A silent angel goes,
  Sent by the God of mercy
    To soften earthly woes.
  Sweet peace and gracious pity
    In his meek eyes abide;
  That angel's name is Patience--
    Oh, take him for your guide.

  His gentle hand will lead thee
    Through paths of grief and gloom;
  His cheering voice will whisper
    Of brighter days to come;
  For when thy heart is sinking,
    His courage faileth not;
  He helps thy cross to carry,
    And soothes the saddest lot.

  He turns to chastened sadness
    The anguished spirit's cry;
  The restless heart he calmeth
    To meek tranquillity;
  The darkest hour will brighten
    At his benign command,
  And every wound he healeth
    With slow but certain hand.

  He dries, without reproving.
    The tears upon thy cheek;
  He doth not chide thy longings.
    But makes them calm and meek;
  And if, when storms are raging,
    Thou askest, murmuring, "Why?"
  He answers not, but pointeth
    With quiet smile on high.

  He hath not ready answer
    For every question here;
  "Endure," so runs his motto--
    "The time for rest is near."
  So, with few words, beside thee
    Fareth thine angel-friend;
  Thinking not of the journey,
    But of its glorious end.

------

{813}


From The Literary Workman.

THE TWO FRIENDS OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.


The first attraction to all Catholics who visit Antwerp is its
cathedral, which still remains after so many tempests of war and
sedition the glory of the city.

But there exists in one of the other churches a monument which has an
interest for English and Scotch Catholics almost personal; it is in
the church of St. Andrew, which was founded in the year 1529. Like
most of the churches in Belgian towns, it is of considerable size and
lofty. It contains one of the pulpits for which Belgium, more than any
other country in Europe, is famous. On the floor of the church, in
front of the pulpit, and immediately under the preacher, is a
representation in carved wood of the great event recorded in the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth verses of the first chapter of
St. Mark's Gospel:

"And passing by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his
brother casting nets into the sea, for they were fishermen: and Jesus
said to them, Come after me and I will make you to become fishers of
men. And immediately leaving their nets, they followed him."

The same event is recorded in St. Matthew. The whole scene is
represented in the most life-like manner. The figures of our blessed
Lord, of St. Peter and St. Andrew, are of the size of life, or nearly
so. Our blessed Lord stands by himself, toward the east, looking down
the church. One of the apostles is seated in a boat round which
shallow waves are rippling. The other stands by the boat on the shore.
A net contains fish, which show all the attitudes of fish just caught
and brought to land. The figure of our blessed Lord, and the attitude
of the future apostles listening to him with the utmost reverence, are
given with profound truth, and are full of the purest sentiment of
religion. The pulpit has a sounding-board on which stands the cross of
St Andrew, supported by small angelic figures. It is however the scene
on the floor of the church which is the great object of admiration.
The pulpit is fixed against one of the pillars of the nave, and a
little eastward of it, beyond the next pillar, is an altar inclosed by
a marble screen. Against the pillar nearest to the altar, and behind
it, is placed the monument which has so great an attraction for
Catholics speaking the English tongue.

It is called in the guide-books, "A marble monument raised to the
memory of Mary Stuart by two English ladies."

But this is not exactly true. It is the monument, as will be seen, of
two English ladies: and it was obviously intended also to honor the
memory of their sovereign and mistress the queen. It is placed high up
the pillar, quite out of reach; but the inscription upon it can be
read perfectly by spending some time and trouble in considering it.

The inscription occupies the whole centre of the monument. It is in
Latin, and the following is a literal translation of it:

"Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and France, mother of James, King of
Great Britain, coming into England in the year 1568, for the sake of
taking refuge, was beheaded through the perfidy of her kinswoman
Elizabeth, reigning there, and through the jealousy of the heretical
parliament, {814} after nineteen years of captivity for the sake of
religion. She consummated her martyrdom in the year of our Lord 1587,
and in the 45th year of her age and of her reign.

"Sacred to God, beat and greatest.

"You behold, oh traveller, the monument of two noble matrons of Great
Britain who, flying to the protection of the Catholic king from their
country, for the sake of orthodox religion, here repose in the hope of
the resurrection.

"First, Barbara Mowbray, daughter of the Lord John, Baron Mowbray,
who, being lady of the bedchamber to the most serene Mary Stuart,
Queen of Scotland, was given in marriage to Gilbert Curle, who for
more than twenty years was privy councillor. They lived together
happily for twenty-three years, and had eight children. Of these six
have passed to heaven; two sons, still alive, were trained in liberal
studies. James entered the Society of Jesus at Madrid, in Spain;
Hippolytus, the younger, made his choice to be enrolled in the army of
Christ in the Society of Jesus in the province of French Flanders. He,
sorrowing, and with tears, made it his care to place this monument to
the memory of his admirable mother, who, on the last day of July, in
the year 1616, and in the 57th year of her age, exchanged this
unstable life for the life of eternity.

"Secondly, the memory of Elizabeth Curle, his aunt, of the same noble
race of the Curles, who also was the faithful companion of the chamber
and the imprisonment of Queen Mary for eight years; and to whom the
queen at her death gave her last kiss; who never married, and lived a
life eminent for piety and chastity. Hippolytus Curle, son of her
brother, in great good will, in memory of her deserts, and as an
expression of his own love and gratitude, placed this monument here.
She ended her life in the year of our Lord 1620, on the 29th day of
May, in the 60th year of her age.

"May they rest in peace. Amen."

Opposite to your left hand, as you look at the monument, by the side
of the inscription, is the figure of a female saint holding a book,
and underneath, in large letters, ST. BARBARA.

On the other side of the inscription is another female saint, holding
up her dress, with gold loaves in it, under her left arm, and one gold
loaf in her right hand. Underneath her is written ST. ELIZABETH. This
is St. Elizabeth of Hungary. At the top of the monument, inclosed in a
pediment of marble, is a very agreeable painting of the queen, and at
the bottom of the monument, below the inscription, is a lozenge of
white marble, showing the arms of Scotland, France, and England,
carved, but not colored.

Miss Strickland, in the last volume of her life of Mary, Queen of
Scots, gives a version of this epitaph, and mentions the fact of the
burial of these ladies in the church of St. Andrew. The version of the
epitaph which we have given is more exact than that given by Miss
Strickland; and Miss Strickland is mistaken in saying that the church
of St. Andrew is a "small Scotch church."

Indeed it is difficult to know how such an expression could be applied
to St. Andrew's church. It is certainly not a small church, as we have
said; and is certainly not a Scotch church, in any intelligible sense
of that expression. It was built in 1529, under the government of
Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma. Miss Strickland mentions the
painting at the top of the monument as having been brought over to
Antwerp by Elizabeth and Barbara Curle. But in speaking of the family,
of Mowbray she has failed to do justice to the religion of these
ladies.

She says that "Barbara and Gillies Mowbray, the two youngest daughters
of the Laird of Barnborough, a leading member of the Presbyterian
Congregation, . . . sought and succeeded in obtaining the melancholy
privilege of being added to the prison-household {815} of their
captive queen--a favor they might probably have solicited in vain if
they had not been Protestants, and their father, Sir John Mowbray, a
staunch adherent of the rebel faction" (p. 380).

She gives no authority for her statement as to the religion of the
daughters, Barbara and Gillies, and the probabilities, in the absence
of evidence, seem all to lie the other way. But in any case, it is
obvious that they were Catholics in Antwerp.

Miss Strickland, in describing the absurd travestie of a funeral
performed by the Protestant ministers in Peterborough cathedral over
the body of the Scotch queen, five months after she had been murdered,
mentions that none of the queen's train would attend at the Protestant
services, "with the exception of Sir Andrew Melville and the two
Mowbrays, who were members of the Reformed Church."

If it is true that those two ladies did consent to be present when all
the others refused, with great contempt, there certainly is a
presumption that at that time they continued in the religion of Knox.

The fact is, indeed, capable of another very natural explanation. They
might have chosen to see the last of their mistress; remaining present
without taking any part in the shameful ceremonies.

One significant statement in the epitaph which we have given, and
which Miss Strickland has omitted, makes it certain that if Gillies
Mowbray continued in Knox's or any other form of heresy, her sister
Barbara Mowbray, wife of Gilbert Curie, was a Catholic before leaving
England. The words omitted by Miss Strickland we now reprint in
italics: "You behold, oh traveller, the monument of two noble matrons
of Great Britain, _who, flying to the protection of the Catholic king
from their country for the sake of orthodox religion, here repose in
the hope of the resurrection._"

Miss Strickland's account of the monument also omits to notice the
queen's arms which we have mentioned. This Widow's Lozenge tells the
whole case against her rival Elizabeth. Persons who understand the
laws of heraldry see its meaning at once. But for general readers it
is enough to say that the arms of Scotland are put first, then the
arms of England as they were used at that period by English
sovereigns. Now, if Elizabeth had been legitimate, and had a just
title to the throne, Queen Mary would have had no just right to place
the English arms in her lozenge. The act of placing these arms on the
monument of the Curles was a protest against the illegitimate usurper
who had murdered the true heir.

Miss Strickland furnishes the date of the marriage of Gilbert Curie
and Barbara Mowbray. It took place in Tutbury Castle, in
Staffordshire, in November, 1586, a few weeks after the sisters had
arrived there to attend upon the queen. Very soon afterward, at
Fotheringay, they had to attend her on her way to death. Elizabeth
Curle was one of the two, Jane Kennedy being the other, who were
allowed by the wretches who directed her murder to stand by her and
see it done.

Miss Strickland mentions that the conduct of the attendants of Queen
Mary at Peterborough was probably the reason why they were sent back
to Fotheringay Castle, instead of being liberated after the pompous
funeral of their murdered mistress. "They were cruelly detained there
nearly three months, in the most rigorous captivity, barely supplied
with the necessaries of life, and denied the privileges of air and
exercise."

Among those so detained were Gillies Mowbray, and Barbara (Mowbray)
Curle, and Elizabeth Curle. James, then King of Scotland only, sent
Sir John Mowbray to Elizabeth to remonstrate on the treatment of Queen
Mary's servants and to demand their release. Then, having been joined
by Gilbert Curle, {816} Barbara's husband, they sought the protection
of the Catholic king in Antwerp.

There they rest in the church of the great apostle, the patron of
Scotland.

The unhappy woman who occupied the English throne obtained entire
success--she gained the English crown, murdered her rival, and pursued
Catholics with death, ruin, and exile. But probably no well informed
person--certainly no Catholic--will doubt that these ladies, in their
exile, their devout lives and pious deaths, enjoyed happiness unknown
to Elizabeth in her guilty prosperity.

Our readers will not be displeased to receive this short memoir of two
ladies who were the attendants of Mary, Queen of Scots, during life,
and at her death.

------

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XXIV.

The moment it had been ascertained that Emon-a-knock had been so
seriously hurt, _somebody_ thought--oh, the thoughtfulness of some
people!--that some conveyance would be required, and she was
determined to take time by the forelock. Jamesy Doyle it was who had
been despatched for the jennet and cart, with a token to the only
servant-woman in the house to put a hair-mattress--she knew _where_ to
get it--over plenty of straw in the cart, and to make no delay.

Jamesy Doyle was the very fellow to make no mistake, and to do as he
was bid; and sure enough there he was now, coming up the boreen with
everything as correct as possible. Phil M'Dermott and Ned Murrican led
poor Emon to the end of the lane just as Jamesy Doyle came up.

"This is for you, my poor fellow," said he, addressing Emon. "An' I'm
to lave you every foot at your own doore--them's my ordhers from th'
ould masther himsel'."

Emon was about to speak, or to endeavor to do so; but M'Dermott
stopped him.

"Don't be desthroyin' yourself, Emon, strivin' to spake; but let us
lift you into the cart--an' hould your tongue."

Emon-a-knock smiled; but it was a happy smile.

Of course there was a crowd round him; and many a whispered
observation passed through them as poor Emon was lifted in, fixed in a
reclining position, and Jamesy Doyle desired "to go on," while Phil
M'Dermott and big Ned Murrican gave him an escort, walking one on each
side.

"It was herself sent Jamesy Doyle for the jennit, Judy; I heerd her
tellin' him to put plenty of straw into the cart."

"Ay, Peggy, an' I heerd her tellin' him to get a hair-matt_ress_, an'
pat it atop of it. Isn't it well for the likes of her that has
hair-matt_resses_ to spare?"

"Ay, Nelly Gaffeny, an' didn't I hear her tellin' him to dhrive fur
his life!"

"In troth an' you didn't, Nancy; what she said was, 'to make no
delay;' wasn't I as near her as I am to you this minute?"

"Whist, girls!" broke in (as Lever would say) a sensible old woman--
"it was ould Ned Cavana himself {817} sent Jamesy off; wasn't I
lookin' at him givin' him the kay of the barn to get the sthraw? Dear
me, how pleasant ye all are!"

"Thrue for you, Katty avrone; but wasn't it Winny that put him up to
it, an' the tears coming up in her eyes as she axed him? an' be the
same token, the hankicher she had in her hand was for all the world
the very color of Emon-a-knock's cap an' sleeves."

There was a good deal of truth, but some exaggeration, in the above
gossip.

It was old Ned Cavana himself who had despatched Jamesy Doyle for the
jennet and cart, and he had also given him the key of the barn--old
Katty was quite right so far.

Now let it be known that there was not a man in the parish of
Rathcash, who was the owner of a horse and cart, who would not have
cheerfully sent for it to bring Emon-a-knock home, when the proper
time arrived to do so--and Winny Cavana knew that; she knew that her
father would be all life for the purpose, the moment it was mentioned
to him; and she was determined that her father should be "first in the
field." There was nothing extraordinary in the fact itself; it was the
relative positions of the parties that rendered it food for the gossip
which we have been listening to. But old Ned never thought of the
gossip in his willingness to serve a neighbor. Winny had thought of
it, but braved it, rather than lose the chance. It was she who had
suggested to her father to send Jamesy for the jennet, and to give him
the key of the barn where the _dry_ straw was. If the gossips had
known this little turn of the transaction, doubtless it would not have
escaped their comments.

But we must return to the common, and see how matters are going on
there.

Tom Murdock had witnessed from no great distance the arrival of the
jennet and cart; and of course he knew them. He did not know, however,
that it was Winny Cavana who had sent for them--he only guessed that.
He saw "that----whelp"----he put this shameful addition to it in his
anger--lifted into it; and if he had a regret as to the accident, it
was that the blow had not been the inch-and-a-half lower which Father
Farrell had blessed his stars had not been the case. This was the
second time his eyes had seen the preference he always dreaded. He had
not forgotten the scene with the dog on the road. He had not been so
far that he could not see, nor so careless that he did not remark, the
handkerchief; nor was he so stupid as not to divine the purport of the
amicable little battle which apparently took place between them about
it. The color of Lennon's cap and sleeves now also recurred to his
mind, and jealousy suggested that it was _she_ who made them.

But his business was by no means finished on the common. He could not,
as it were, abscond, deserting his friends; and ill as his humor was
for what was before him, he must go through with it. It would help to
keep him from thinking for a while, at all events. Beside, the sooner
he saw Winny Cavana now the better. He would explain the accident to
her as if it had happened to any other person, not as to one in whom
he believed there was a particular interest on her part. To be silent
on the subject altogether, he felt would betray the very thing he
wished to avoid.

The hurling match over, it had been arranged that the evening should
conclude with a dance, to crown the amicable feelings with which the
two contending parishes had met in the strife of hurls. The boys and
girls of Rathcash and Shanvilla, whichever side won, were to mingle in
the mazy dance, to the enlivening lilts of blind Murrin the piper,
who, as he could not see the game, had been the whole afternoon
squealing, and droning, and hopping the brass end of his pipes {818}
upon a square polished-leather patch, stitched upon the knee of his
breeches.

There now appeared to be some sort of a hitch as to the dance coming
off at all, in consequence of the "untoward event" which had already
considerably marred the harmony of the meeting; for it would be idle
to deny that dissatisfaction and doubt still lingered in the hearts of
Shanvilla. Both sides had brought a barrel of beer for the occasion,
which by this time it was almost necessary to put upon "the stoop;"
Tom Murdock superintending the distribution of that from Rathcash, and
a brother of big Ned Murrican's that from Shanvilla.

Blind Murrin heard some of the talk which was passing round him about
the postponement of the dance. Like all blind pipers he was sharp of
hearing, and somewhat cranky if put at all out of tune.

"Arra, what would they put it off for?" said he, _looking_ up, and
closing his elbow on the bellows to silence the pipes. "Is it because
wan man got a cut on the head? I heerd Father Farrell say there
wouldn't be a haporth on him agen Sunda' eight days; an' I heerd him,
more be token, tellin' the boys to go an' ask the Rathcash girls to
dance. Arra, what do ye mane? Isn't the counthry gotthered now; an'
the day as fine as summer, an' the grass brave an' dhry, an' lashin's
of beer at both sides, an' didn't I come eleven miles this mornin' a
purpose, an' what the diowl would they go an' put off the dance for?
Do you mane to say they're _onshioughs_ or _aumadhawns_, or--what?"

"No, Billy," said a Shanvilla girl, with good legs, neat feet, black
boots, and stockings as white as snow,--"no, Billy; but neither the
Shanvilla boys nor girls have any heart to dance, after Emon-a-knock
bein' kilt an' sent home."

"There won't be a haporth on him, I tell you, agen Sunda'. Didn't I
hear Father Farrell say so, over an' over again? arra _badhershin_,
Kitty, to be sure they'll dance!"

While blind Murrin was "letting off" thus, Phil M'Dermott was seen
returning by a short cut across the fields toward them.

"Here's news of Emon, anyway; he's aither better or worse," continued
Kitty Reilly; and some dread that it was unfavorable crept through the
Shanvillas.

"Well, Phil, how is he? well, Phil, how is he?" greeted M'Dermott from
several quarters as he came up.

"All right, girls. He's much better, and he sent me back for fear I'd
lose the first dance--for he knew I was engaged;" and he winked at a
very pretty Rathcash girl with soft blue eyes and bright auburn hair,
who was not far off.

"Arra, didn't I know they'd dance?" said Murrin, giving two or three
dumb squeezes with his elbow before the music came, like the three or
four first pulls at a pump before the water flows.

It then ran like lightning through the crowd that the dance was going
to begin, and old Murrin blew up in earnest at the top of his power.
He had, with the help of some of the best dancers amongst the girls on
both sides, selected that spot for the purpose, before the game had
commenced; and he had kept his ground patiently all through, playing
all the planxties in Carolan's catalogue. But not without wetting his
whistle; for as he belonged to neither party, he had been supplied
with beer alternately by both.

Phil M'Dermott whispered a few words to the pretty Rathcash girl, and
left her apparently in haste. But she was "heerd" by one of our
gossips to say, "Of course, Phil; but I will not say 'with all my
heart;' sure, it is only a pleasure postponed for a little,--now
mind, Phil."

"Never fear, Sally." And he was off through the crowd, with his head
up.

Phil's expedition was to look for Winny Cavana, to whom Emon-a-knock
had been engaged for the first dance; and as he knew where the {819}
bonnet trimmed with broad blue ribbon could be seen all day, he made
for the spot. As he came within a few perches of it, he saw Tom
Murdock in seemingly earnest conversation with the object of his
search, and he hung back for a few minutes unperceived.

Tom Murdock, we have seen, was not a man to be easily taken aback by
circumstances, or to stand self-accused by any apparent consciousness
of guilt. Guilty or not, he always braved the matter out, whatever it
might be, as an innocent man would, and ought. As the dance was now
about to begin, and old Murrin's pipes were getting loud and
impatient, Tom made up to Winny. He had watched an opportunity when
she was partly disengaged from those around her; and indeed, to do
them justice, they "made themselves scarce" as he approached.

"They are going to dance, Winny; will you allow me to lead you out?"
he said.

Winny had been pondering in her own mind the possibility of what had
now taken place; and after turning and twisting her answer into twenty
different shapes, had selected one as the safest and best she could
give, with a decided refusal. Now, when the anticipated moment had
arrived, and she was obliged to speak, she was almost dumb. Not a
single word of any one of the replies she had shaped out--and least of
all the one she had rehearsed so often as the best--came to her aid.

"Will you not even answer me, Winny?" he added, after an unusually
long pause.

"I heard," she said hesitatingly, "that, as a proof of the good-will
which was supposed to exist between the parishes, the Rathcash men
were to ask the Shanvilla girls, and Shanvilla the Rathcash."

"That may be carried out too; but surely such an arrangement is not to
prohibit a person from the privilege of asking a near neighbor."

"No; but you had better begin, as leader, by setting the example
yourself. You were head of the Rathcash men all day, and they will be
likely to take pattern by you."

"Well, I shall _begin_ so, Winny; but say that you will dance with me
by-and-by."

"No, Tom, I shall not say any such thing, for I do not intend to do
so. I don't think I shall dance at all; but if I do, it shall be but
once--and that with a Shanvilla man."

"Do you mean to say, Winny, that you came here to-day intending to
dance but once?"

"I mean to say," she replied rather haughtily, "that you have no right
to do more than ask me to dance. That is a right I can no more deny
you than you can deny me the right to refuse. But you have no right to
cross-question me."

"If," he continued, "it is in consequence of that unfortunate
accident, I protest--"

"Here, father," said Winny, interrupting him and turning from him;
"shall we go up toward the piper? I see they are at it."

Tom stood disconcerted, as if riveted to the spot; and as old Ned and
his daughter walked away, he saw Phil M'Dermott come toward them. He
watched and saw them enter into conversation.

The first question old Ned asked, knowing that Phil had gone a piece
of the way home with him, was of course to know how Emon was.

"So much better," said Phil, "that he had a mind to come back in the
cart an' look on at the dancin'; but of course we would not let him do
so foolish a turn. He then sent me back, afeerd Miss Winny here would
be engaged afore I got as far as her. He tould me, Miss Winny, that he
was to take you out for the first dance yourself; an' although Phil
M'Dermott is a poor excuse for Emon-a-knock in a dance, or anywhere
else, for that matther, I hope, Miss Winny, you will dance with me."

{820}

"_Ceade mille a faltha_, Phil, for your own sake as well as for his,"
said Winny, putting her arm through his, and walking up to where they
were "at it," as she had said.

Tom Murdock had kept his eye upon her, and had seen this transaction.
Winny, although she did not know it, felt conscious that he was
watching her; and it was with a sort of savage triumph she had thrust
her arm through Phil M'Dermott's and walked off with him.

"Surely," said Tom to himself, "it is not possible that she's going to
dance with Phil M'Dermott, the greatest clout of a fellow in all
Shanvilla--and that's a bold word. Nothing but a bellows-blower to
his father--a common nailor at the cross-roads. Thank God, I put Emon,
as she calls him, from dancing with her, any way. He would be bad
enough; but he is always clean at all events, that's one thing--_neen
han an shin_. See! by the devil, there she's out with him, sure
enough. I think the girl is mad."

Now Tom Murdock's ill-humor and vexation had led him, though only to
himself, to give an under-estimate of Phil M'Dermott in more respects
than one. In the first place, Phil's father, so far from being a
common nailor, was a most excellent smith-of-all-work. He made
ploughs, harrows, and all sorts of machinery, and was unequivocally
the best horse-shoer in the whole country. People were in the habit of
sending their horses five, ay ten, miles to Bryan M'Dermott's
forge--"establishment" it might almost be called--and Tom Murdock
himself, when he kept the race-mare, had sent her past half-a-dozen
forges to get her "properly fitted" at Phil M'Dermott's.

Phil himself had served his time to his father, and was no less an
adept in all matters belonging to his trade; and as to "driving a
nail," there never was a man wore an apron could put on a shoe so
safely. A nail, too, except for the above purpose, was never made in
their forge. If sometimes Phil threw up his bare hairy arm to pull
down the handle of the bellows, it was only what his father himself
would do, if the regular blower was out of the way.

In fact, "Bryan M'Dermott and Son, Smiths," might have very justly
figured over their forge-door; but they were so well known that a
sign-board of any kind was superfluous.

Then as to being a _clout_, Phil was the very furthest from it in the
world, if it can have any meaning with reference to a man at all.
There are _nails_ called _clouts_; and perhaps as a nailor was
uppermost in Tom's cantankerous mind, it had suggested the epithet.

We have now only to deal with the dirt--the _neen han an shin_ of his
spite.

That Phil M'Dermott was very often dirty was the necessary result of
his calling, at which the excellence of his knowledge kept him
constantly employed. But on this occasion, as on all Sundays and
holidays, Phil M'Dermott's person could vie with even Tom Murdock's,
"or any other man's," in scrupulous cleanliness. Now indeed, if there
were some streaks and blotches of blood upon the breast of his shirt,
he might thank Tom Murdock's handiwork for that same.

Such as he was, however, bloody shirt and all, Winny Cavana went out
to dance with him before the whole assembly of Rathcash boys,
speckless as they were.

Kate Mulvey had been endeavoring to carry on her own tactics privately
all the morning, and had refused two or three Shanvilla boys, saying
that she heard there would be no dance, but that if there was, she
would dance with them before it was over. She now _accidentally_ stood
not very far from where Tom had been snubbed and turned away from by
her bosom friend, Winny Cavana. Tom Murdock saw her, and saw that she
was alone as far as a partner was concerned.

Determined to let Winny see that there were "as good fish in the sea
as {821} ever were caught," and that she had not the power to upset
his enjoyment, Tom made up to Kate, and, assuming the most amiable
smile which the wicked confusion of his mind permitted, he asked her
to dance.

"How is it that you are not dancing, Kate? Will you allow me to lead
you out?"

"I would, Tom, with the greatest possible pleasure; but I heard the
Rathcash boys were to dance with the Shanvilla girls, and so by the
others with the Rathcash girls."

"That's the old story, Kate. It was thrown up to me just now; but
there is no such restriction upon any of us at either side. And I'll
tell you what it is, Kate Mulvey--not a Shanvilla girl I'll dance with
this day, if I never struck a foot under me!"

Kate was not sorry to find him in this humor. If she could soothe
round his feelings on her own account now, all would be right. Under
any phase of beauty, Kate's expression of countenance was more amiable
than Winny Cavana's, although perhaps not so regularly handsome, and
she felt that she was now looking her best.

"Fie, fie, Tom; you should not let that little accident put you
through other like that, to be making you angry. I heard that was the
rule, and I refused a couple of the Rathcash boys. But if you tell me
there is no such rule, sure I'll go out with you, Tom, afore any man
in the parish."

"Thank you, Kate; and if you wish to know the truth, there's not a
girl in Rathcash, or Shanvilla either, that I'd so soon dance with."

"Ah,_na bocklish_, Tom; you'll hardly make me b'lieve that."

"Time will tell, Kate dear," said he, and he led her to the ring.

Kate made herself as agreeable as possible; amiable she always was.
She rallied her partner upon his ill-humor. "It is a great shame for
you, Tom," she said, "to let trifles annoy you--"

"They are not trifles, Kate."

"The way you do, where you have so much to make you happy; plenty of
money and property, and everybody fond of you."

"No, not everybody."

"And you can do just as you like."

"No, I can't."

"And there won't be a pin's-worth the matter with young Lennon in a
few days; and sure, Tom, every one knows it was an accident."

"No, not _every_ one," thought Tom to himself. The other interruptions
were aloud to Kate; but she kept never minding him, and finished what
she had to say.

"It is not that all but, Kate," said Tom.

"Oh, I see! I suppose Winny has vexed you; I saw her laying down the
law."

"She'd vex a saint, Kate."

"Faix, an' you're not one, Tom, I'm afeerd."

"Nor never will, _I'm afeerd_," said he, forgetting his manners, and
pronouncing the last word as she had done, although he knew better.

She saw he was greatly vexed, but she did not mind it.

"If I were you, Tom," she continued, "I would not be losing my time
and my thoughts on the likes of her."

This last expression was not very complimentary to her friend; but
Kate knew she would excuse it (for she intended to tell her), as it
was only helping her out.

"You are her bosom friend, Kate," he went on, "and could tell me a
great deal about her, if you liked."

"I don't like, then; and the sorra word I'll tell you, Tom. If you're
not able to find out all you want yourself, what good's in you?"

"Well, keep it to yourself, Kate; I think I know enough about her
already."

"See that, now; an' you strivin' to pick more out of me! This much
I'll tell you, any way, for you're apt to find it out yourself--that
she's as stubborn a lass as any in the province of Connaught What she
says she won't do, she _won't_."

{822}

"And what I say I will do, I _will_; and I'll take that one's pride
down a peg or two, as sure as my name is Tom Murdock, and that before
Easter Monday."

"Whist, Tom agra; she's not worth putting yourself in a passion about:
and she's likely enough to bring her own pride low enough. But betune
you an' me, I don't think she has very much. Whisper me this, Tom; did
she ever let on to you?"

"Never, Kate; I won't belie her."

"Answer me another question now, Tom; did she ever do th' other
thing?'

"You are sifting me very close, Kate. Do you mean did she ever refuse
me?"

"I do, just; and what I'm saying to you, Tom, is for your good. I'm
afeerd it's for her money you care, and not much for herself. Now,
Thomas Murdock, I always thought, an' more than myself thought the
same thing, that the joining of them two farms in holy wedlock was a
bad plan, and that _one_ of you would find it a dear bargain in the
end."

"Which of us, Kate?"

"Not a word you'll tell, Tom avic. There's the floore idle; come out
for another dance;" and she gave him one of her most beautiful looks.
He was glad, however, that her volubility prevented her from observing
that he had not answered her _other_ question.

Kate succeeded during this second dance in putting Tom into somewhat
better humor with himself. He had never thought her so handsome
before, nor had he until now ever drawn a comparison between herself
and Winny Cavana as to beauty of either face or figure, neither of
which it now struck him were much, if at all, inferior to that
celebrated beauty; and he certainly never found her so agreeable. He
listened with a new pleasure to her full rich voice, and looked
occasionally, unperceived (as he thought) into her soft swimming eyes,
and were it not for pure spite toward "that whelp Lennon," and indeed
toward that "proud hussy" Winny Cavana herself he would, after that
second dance, have transferred his whole mind and body to the said
Kate Mulvey on the spot. He considered, at all events, that he had
Kate Mulvey hooked, however slightly it might be. But he would play
her gently, not handle her too roughly, and thus keep her on his line
in case he might find it desirable to put the landing-net under her at
any time. He never thought she was so fine a girl.

But then he thought again: to be cut out, and hunted out of the field,
with all his money, by such a fellow as that, a common day-laborer,
was what he could not reconcile himself to. As for any real love for
Winny Cavana, if it had ever existed in his heart toward her, it had
that day been crushed, and for ever; yet notwithstanding the favorably
circumstances for its growth, it had not yet quite sprung up for
another. A firm resolve, then, to see his spite out, at any cost to
himself, to her, and to "that whelp," was the final determination of
his heart after the day closed.

Winny Cavana, having danced with Phil M'Dermott until they were both
tired, sat down beside her father on a _furrum_. Several of the
Shanvilla, and some of the Rathcash, boys "made up" to her, but she
refused to dance any more, pleading fatigue, which by-the-bye none of
them believed, for it was not easy to tire the same Winny Cavana
dancing. After sitting some time to cool, and look on at the neighbors
"footing it," she proposed to her father to go home; and he, poor old
man, thought "it was an angel spoke." He would have proposed it to
Winny himself long before, but that he  did not wish to interfere with
her enjoyment. He thought she would have danced more, but was now glad
of the reprieve; for to say the truth it was one to him. He, and
Winny, and Bully-dhu, who had been curled up at his feet all day, then
stood up, and went down the boreen together; Bully careering and
barking round them with his usual activity.

{823}

We need not remain much longer at the dance ourselves. In another half
hour it was "getting late," the beer was all out, Murrin's pipes were
getting confused, and Rathcash and Shanvilla were seen straggling over
the hills in twos and threes and small parties toward their respective
homes.

We cannot do better than end this chapter with a hearty Irish wish--
"God send them safe!"



CHAPTER XXV.

This great hurling match, although much spoken of before it came off,
was so universally believed to be a mere amicable, a _bona-fide_ piece
of holiday recreation, and not an ostensible excuse for the ulterior
purposes of Ribbonism, or a fight, that no precautions had been deemed
necessary by the police to detect the one or to prevent the other. The
sub-inspector (then called chief constables) had merely reported the
fact that it would take place to the _resident_ magistrate--_lucus à
non_. But "in the absence of sworn informations" of an intended row,
he would neither attend himself, nor give orders for the police to do
so, leaving the responsibility, if such existed, entirely to the
judgment and discretion of the chief in question; who, wishing to
enjoy the day otherwise himself, was satisfied with the report he had
made, and did not interfere by his own presence or that of his men
with the game. Thus, as "in the absence of sworn informations" the
resident magistrate would not attend, and in the absence of the
resident magistrate the chief would not attend, Rathcash and Shanvilla
had it all to themselves. Perhaps it was so best for the _denouement_
of this story; for had the police been present, the whole thing from
that point might have ended very differently.

But although it had not been thought necessary that a police-party
should put a stop to the day's sport on the common, it is not to be
supposed that they could hear of a man "having been murdered" on the
occasion without being instantly all zeal and activity. Like the three
black crows, the real fact had been exaggerated, and so distorted as
to frighten both the chief and the resident magistrate, but
principally the latter, as the intended assembly had been reported to
him. However, "better late than never." They heard that the man was
not yet dead, and away they started on the same jarvey, to visit him,
on the morning after the occurrence.

Their whole discussion during the drive--if an explanation by the
magistrate could be called a discussion--was on the safest and the
most legal method of taking a dying man's depositions, and wondering
if he knew who struck the fatal blow in this instance, and if the
police had him in custody, etc.

They soon arrived at the house, but saw no sign of a crowd, or of
police, whom the chief would have backed at any odds to have met on
the road with a prisoner.

"Is he still alive?" whispered the resident magistrate to the father,
who came to the door.

"Oh yes, your honor, blessed be God! an' will soon be as well as
ever," he replied. "It was a mere scratch, an' there won't be a
haporth on him in a day or two. He wanted to go back to look at them
dancin', but I kep' him lying on the bed."

"Does he know you?" said the magistrate, believing that the man wanted
to make light of it, as is generally the case.

"Does he know me, is it? athen why wouldn't he know his own father?"

"Oh, he is sensible, then?"

"Arrah, why wouldn't he be sensible? the boy was never anything else."

{824}

"That's right. Does he know who struck the blow?"

"Ochone, doesn't every one know that, your honor? Sure, wasn't it Tom
Murdock? an' isn't his heart bruck about it?"

Here the constable and two men of the nearest police station came up
at the "double" wiping their faces, to make inquiries for report; so
that they were not so remiss after all, for it was still early in the
morning.

Old Lennon was annoyed at all this parade and show about the place,
and continued, "Athen, your honor, what do ye's all want here, an'
these gentlemen?" inclining his head toward the police; "sure there's
nothing the matther."

"We heard the man was killed," said the chief.

"And we heard the same thing not an hour ago," said the constable.

"Arrah, God give ye sinse, gentlemen! Go home, an' don't be making a
show of our little place. I tell you there's not a pin's-worth upon
the boy, and the tip he did get was all accidents."

"I must see him nevertheless, my good man; and you need not be
uncivil, at all events."

"I ax your honor's pardon; I didn't mane it. To be sure you can see
him; but there's no harm done, and what harm was done was an accident.
Sure Emon will tell you the whole thing how it was himself."

"That is the very thing I want Let me see him."

Lennon then led the way into the room where Emon was sitting up in the
bed; for he had heard the buzz of the discussion outside, and caught
some of its meaning.

Lennon took care "to draw" the police into the kitchen; for there was
nothing annoyed him more--and that, he knew, would annoy his son--than
that they should be seen about the place. He had taken his cue from
Emon, who did not wish the matter to be made a blowing-horn of.

A very few words with the young man sufficed to show the magistrate
and the chief that their discussion upon the subject of taking a dying
man's deposition had been unnecessary in this instance, however
profitable it might prove on some future occasion. Emon, except that
his bead was still tied with a handkerchief, showed no symptom
whatever of having received an injury. He cheerfully explained how the
matter had happened, untied the handkerchief promptly at the request
of the magistrate, and showed him "the tip," as he called it, he had
received from Tom Murdock's hurl. There was no mystery or hesitation
in Emon's manner of describing the matter. Murdock himself had been
the very first to admit and to apologize for the accident; and they
did not wish that any fuss should be made about it As to prosecuting
him for the blow, which had been casually asked, he might as well
think of prosecuting a man who had accidentally jostled him in the
street.

All this was a great relief to the magistrate, who at once took the
sensible view of the case, and said he was delighted to find that the
whole matter had been exaggerated both as to facts and extent, and
congratulated both himself and the police upon this happy termination
to their zeal.

The magistrate then spoke of the propriety of "the doctor" seeing
young Lennon, saying that these sort of "tips" sometimes, required
medical care, and occasionally turned out more serious than might at
first be anticipated. But Emon told him that Father Farrell, who was
an experienced doctor himself, had examined the wound, and declared
that it would not signify.

The fact was that the magistrate, in his justifiable fright, had on
the first report of the "murder" sent off four miles for the
dispensary doctor, in case "the man might not be yet dead," and he
expected his arrival every moment, as the point at which his valuable
aid would be required was plainly to be explained to him by the
messenger.

{825}

Finding that matters were much less serious than rumor had made them,
and perceiving that the Lennons were far from gratified at the
exhibition already made, he was not anxious that it should appear he
had sent for the doctor to raise, as it were, young Lennon from the
dead. He was therefore determined to watch his approach, and to
pretend he was passing by on other business, and that it was as well
to bring him in. But the doctor had not been at home when the
messenger called; he had been at a _real_ case--not of murder, but of
birth; and the magistrate and chief could not now await his arrival
without awkwardness for the delay.

The magistrate was annoyed; but the chief soon set him to rights by
telling him that the doctor could not come there except by the road by
which they should go home, and that if on his way they must meet him,
and so they did--_powdhering_ on his pony, truly as if for life or
death.

"I suppose it is all over, and that I am late," he said, pulling up.

"No, you are time enough," said the chief. "It is nothing but a
scratch, and was a mere accident."

"And there is nothing then for me to do," said the doctor.

"Nothing but to go _'bock again'_ like the Scotchman."

"No trepanning, nor 'post-mortem,' doctor," added the R.M. He was a
droll fellow, was the R.M.

It was a great satisfaction to each of these officials, as they
secretly considered their positions in this affair, that no person had
been seriously hurt, and that the slight injury which had really taken
place was entirely accidental. The R.M. felt relieved upon the grounds
that the intended assembly had been officially reported to him and
that he had declined to attend, or to give any directions to the chief
to use any precautions to preserve the peace. But then he reconciled
himself with the burthen of his excuse upon all such occasions, that,
"in the absence of sworn informations," he would have been safe under
any circumstances. Still he was better pleased as it was.

The chief was relieved, because he had some idea that having reported
the intended assembly to the resident magistrate might have been
deemed insufficient, had a real homicide taken place, and that he
should upon his own responsibility have had a party of police in
attendance. These officials were therefore both ready to accept,
without much suspicion, the statement of young Lennon, that the blow
was purely accidental, and that the consequence would be of a trifling
nature. But they were "dark" to each other as to the grounds upon
which their satisfaction rested.

The doctor finding that there was no chance of earning a fee from the
coroner, turned his horse's head round and followed the car at a much
easier pace than he had met it. He of all the officials--for he was
constab. doc--was least gratified with the favorable position of
affairs. He had not only started without his own breakfast, but had
brought his horse out without a feed; and they had galloped four miles
upon two empty stomachs. No wonder that he was dissatisfied as
compared with the magistrate and the chief. But we must recollect that
there was no responsibility upon him, beyond his skill involved in the
affair; with its origin, or the fact of its having been permitted to
occur at all, he had nothing to do. There were, therefore, no points
of congratulation for him to muse upon, and he was vexed accordingly.
From his experience of himself in the treatment of broken heads in the
district, he had no doubt that his attendance would have "ended in
recovery," and that at least three pounds would have come down,
"approved" by the government upon the chiefs report, which would be
much better than the coroner's one-pound note. The disappointment had
completely taken away his own hunger, but he forgot that his horse did
not understand these things, so he grumbled slowly home.

{826}

A contemplative silence of some minutes ensued between the two
executives on the car, which was ultimately broken by the magistrate.
He, like the doctor, had had no breakfast, so certain was he of a
murder; but the whole thing being a bottle of smoke, he was now both
hungry and cross. It was the chiefs car they were on, and he was
driving--the R.M. "knocked that much out of him, at all events"--so
there was no driver to damp the familiarity of conversation.

"It was fortunate for you, my young friend, that nothing more serious
occurred at this same hurling match," said the magistrate.

(Certainly he was no prig in his choice of language. He was of course
much older than the chief and considered that he could carry a high
hand with "a mere boy" without any experience.)

"I am extremely glad," replied the chief, "for _both_ our sakes, that
it was a mere trifle and an accident."

"For both our sakes! Oh, you know, my dear young friend, that, in the
absence of sworn informations, I was not concerned in the matter at
all. I conceive that the whole responsibility--if there be any--in a
mere casual meeting of the kind, where there is admittedly no
apprehension of a breach of the peace, rests entirely upon your own
judgment and discretion. To be plain with you, except where a breach
of the peace may be fairly anticipated, and sworn informations lodged
to that effect, I do not think the magistrate's time should be
interfered with. I might have lost a petty-sessions to-day, inquiring
into a mere accident."

"But it might not have been one; and we could not have known until we
saw the injured man and made inquiries. But the absence of sworn
informations, and the fact that there was no apprehension of a row,
would have exonerated me from all blame as well as you. Beside, I so
far took the precaution of reporting the intended assembly to you,
with its professed object, and I took your instructions upon the
subject."

"No, you didn't; for I did not give you any."

"Well, I reported the meeting to you, and asked for instructions."

"That is the very thing which I object to--making reports without
sufficient grounds. I should decline to act again under similar
circumstances."

"That you would do so, I have no doubt; but that you _should_ do so, I
have some."

"I am right, young sir, as well in my grammar as in my view of the
case; _ought_ is the word you _should_ have used, to have properly
expressed what you intended."

The chief was nettled. He was not quite certain that the R.M. was not
right, and merely replied:

"Perhaps so, sir; but it really was not of _Lindley Murray_ I was
thinking at the time."

The magistrate was softened. He felt that he had been sparring rather
sharply with a lad not much more than one-third of his age.

"Well, I really beg your pardon," he said; "I did not intend to be so
sharp."

"Granted," said the chief, laughing; for he was not an ill-tempered
fellow. "But here we are at my box; come in and have some breakfast,
and I'll drive you to petty-sessions after."

"Thank you very much, I'll take breakfast; for I came away in a horrid
fuss without saying a word as to when I should be back again. I will
not trespass upon you, however, to do more than you have already done
in the driving way. I had some fears when we started that we should
have breakfasted at dinner, some time this evening, after a coroner's
inquest. But this is better."

They then gave "the trap" to the "private orderly," and proceeded to
punish the tea, toast, eggs, and cold ham in a most exemplary manner.


TO BE CONTINUED.

------

{827}


Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par
des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.


THE LAST EFFORT OF CHARLES II. FOR
THE EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND.


We have already seen what fruit grew from the mission of Father James
Stuart to Whitehall; how the Duke of York and, in all probability,
King Charles also, abjured the Protestant faith; and how the royal
neophyte, in the presence of his brother and his trusty counsellors,
Arundel, Clifford, and Arlington, declared his readiness to suffer
anything, to undertake any enterprise, in order to secure liberty of
worship for himself and his Catholic subjects.

The king knew that his conversion would arouse violent opposition,
would perhaps become a signal for revolt and civil war. He felt that
he could do nothing without the assistance of the King of France. To
secure his aid he secretly dispatched to Versailles Lord Arundel of
Wardour and Sir Richard Bellings, the same prudent ambassador whom he
had formerly dispatched to Pope Alexander VII. Out of this embassy
resulted the treaty of Dover and the offensive alliance of France and
England against Holland. Up to the present time an impenetrable veil
has concealed from us the real object of this treaty, and the details
of the negotiations which led to it. Charles has been almost
universally accused of submitting himself to a disgraceful vassalage
to the French monarch, and of selling to the Bourbon for money the
glory, the liberty, and the religion of his country. But the
unexpected disclosures of the diplomatic archives now enable us to
shed a new light upon this subject, and to ascertain whether Charles
was really moved by religions impulse when he asked Louis XIV. for
assistance in the reestablishment of Catholicism in England, or was,
as Lingard says, all the while trying to deceive his royal ally.

Lord Arundel had already been discussing the "Catholic project" for
nine months with the French king before Louis' minister, Colbert, was
let into the secret. Colbert de Croissy, the minister's brother and
French ambassador to London, was now made acquainted with Arundel's
propositions and Louis' answers to them, and on the 12th of November,
1669, had an interview with Charles, of which he gives the following
account:

  "The King of England was ready to assure me that he had no
  unwillingness to make me acquainted with the most important secret
  of his life. . . . In reading these papers, I could not help
  thinking that he and the persons to whom he had intrusted the
  conduct of this matter, were mad to think of re-establishing the
  Catholic religion in England. In fact, no one acquainted with the
  state of this kingdom and the disposition of the people could
  entertain a different opinion; but, in spite of all, he hoped that,
  with your majesty's assistance, the great enterprise would be
  successful. The Presbyterians and other dissenters are still more
  averse to the Anglican Church than to the Catholic. All that these
  sectaries want is the free exercise of their own form of worship;
  and provided they get that--and his majesty purposes to give it
  them--they will not oppose his change of religion. Moreover, he has
  good troops who are affectionately disposed toward him; and if the
  late king, his father, {828} had had as many, he would have stifled
  in their cradle the disturbances which prayed his ruin. He will
  increase the army on the best pretexts that he can find. The
  arsenals are all at his disposal and are well stocked. He is assured
  of the principal places of England and Scotland. The governor of
  Hull is a Catholic; those of Portsmouth, Plymouth, and many other
  places which he named to me--Windsor among the rest--would never
  depart from the obedience which they owe him. As for the troops in
  Ireland, he hopes that the Duke of Ormond, who has preserved great
  credit there, will always be faithful to him; and even should he
  fail in his duty, Lord Orrery, who is a Catholic at heart, and has
  still greater influence with that army, will lead the soldiers
  wherever he is ordered. . . . . Finally, he told me that he was
  driven to declare himself a Catholic both by his conscience and by
  the confusion which he saw daily increasing in his kingdom, to the
  detriment of his authority; and that, beside the spiritual benefit
  which he trusted to obtain, he believed that this was the only means
  of establishing the monarchy." (_Letter of Nov._13, 1669.)

But English writers maintain that, behind all this apparent zeal,
Charles concealed an ulterior design, and wished to impose upon Louis
for his own ends. There would be some plausibility in the supposition
if the conversion of England had been a matter so near to the heart of
the French king as is commonly imagined; but, unfortunately, it is now
evident that "the Catholic project" filled only a secondary place in
Louis XIV.'s policy. The object which then employed his chief desires
was the humiliation of Holland; and the more eager he was to secure
the cooperation of England in this enterprise, the less anxious was he
for a sudden return of the royal family of Whitehall to the ancient
faith--a change in which his penetrating eye saw grave danger to
Charles and, by consequence, disappointment to himself. He writes in
reply to Croissy's letter: "I will not commence a war with Holland,
unless the King of England join me;" and the ambassador is instructed
to look upon the Dutch question as the most important affair in hand.
(_Letter of November_ 24, 1669.)

Charles, too, had his plan, and to our thinking a very good one.
Colbert writes, December 5:

  "Arlington tells me that the king his master, having weighed all the
  reasons for and against, has finally determined to begin by
  satisfying his conscience. He adds, nevertheless, that the king may
  change his mind; but I see plainly that he will not advise him to do
  so; for he is persuaded that his royal master, having Spain, Sweden,
  and Holland attached to his interests, and assured at the same time
  of your majesty's friendship by a secret treaty, will overpower all
  the seditions that might be excited in the kingdom by such a
  declaration much more easily than by the way your majesty advises.
  Moreover, I do not find him very hot against the Dutch; and I
  confess, sire, that I am still doubtful whether the proposition to
  attack them, conjointly with your majesty, after the declaration of
  Catholicism shall have been successfully made, is sincere, at all
  events on the minister's part."

A few days afterward the draft of a treaty was sent by Arlington to
the Marquis de Croissy, in which occurred these words: "The King of
Great Britain, after having declared himself a Catholic, . . . leaves
to the most Christian king liberty to designate the time for making
war, with their united forces, upon the States General."

Louis, on his part, ordered Colbert to stand firm: "It would be well
for you not to allow Lord Arlington and the others to hope that I will
ever consent to what you propose in the last place, that the treaty of
war against Holland should be laid aside, {829} and that we should
agree only upon the two other points; thus the desire which they feel
for assistance in money and troops toward the declaration of
Catholicism, which is what they are most anxious about, may induce
them to further more zealously than they do now the project for a war
against Holland." (_Letter of Feb_. 16, 1670.)

The negotiation dragged along slowly. Disputed points became more and
more numerous; and the effect of all these difficulties and delays
upon such a timid soul as Charles's may easily be imagined. As the
time for openly breaking with Anglicanism drew near, the obstacles in
his way seemed to grow more formidable than ever. His resolution was
not shaken; but his religious ardor gradually cooled, and human
prudence overcame his faith. This change of disposition was observed
by Colbert de Croissy, but does not seem to have alarmed him. He
writes, on the 15th of May, 1670:

  "The king has not yet determined when to make his declaration,
  notwithstanding the urgency of those to whom he has confided his
  secret. M. Bellings informs me that the commissioners themselves are
  not agreed about the time; some advising that it be before the
  meeting of parliament, and others wishing the declaration to be made
  in full assembly of the two houses; that the King of England appears
  to favor the latter plan, because it affords more time for delay;
  and moreover that it cannot be later than October next, which is the
  time for the re-adjournment. I can see that the precautions which
  his majesty has taken are not sufficient. The troops in Scotland and
  Ireland are nearly all Presbyterians, with whom the concession of
  freedom of worship will weigh as nothing in the scale with their
  hatred of the Catholics. Even the captain of the royal guard, who
  belongs to this party, will probably be opposed to the execution of
  his royal master's design. In fine, those who are in the secret are
  greatly alarmed at all these dangers. _They cannot alter the kind's
  resolution_; but a sort of libertinism (if I may use the word) makes
  him procrastinate as much as he can."

But Louis XIV. was prepared with an instrument for overcoming all the
difficulties which Charles threw in his way. The amiable Duchess of
Orleans, the beloved sister of the English monarch, crossed the
Channel for no other purpose than to bring her brother's hesitation to
an end. "All the points of the treaty," says Mignet, "had been agreed
upon by both sides before this interview. Madame had therefore no
questions to negotiate with her brother; but Louis XIV. relied greatly
upon her influence in inducing Charles II. to sign the treaty, to
advance the exchange of ratifications, and, what was of the utmost
consequence to him, to declare war against Holland before declaring
himself a Catholic." On the 30th of May, five days after the arrival
of Henrietta, the French ambassador wrote to his court: "Madame tells
me that she has made an impression upon her brother's mind, and she
can see that he is almost disposed to declare war against the Dutch
before doing anything else." On the 1st of June, 1670, Arlington,
Arundel, Clifford, and Bellings, on the part of England, and Colbert
de Croissy on the part of France, affixed their signatures to the
celebrated treaty of Dover. If the text contains no mention of the
modification obtained by the young duchess, the reason undoubtedly is,
that, to avoid the delay which would have ensued had a new draft been
made out, the two sovereigns instructed their commissioners to sign it
in its present form, with a verbal clause, guaranteed by Charles's
word of honor, that the war against Holland should precede the formal
acknowledgment of the king's conversion.

Such was the mysterious journey of Henrietta of England upon which
Bossuet has conferred so much undeserved celebrity. {830} When, only
twenty-seven days afterward, the unfortunate duchess in the midst of
her vain triumph was overtaken by the pangs of death, it may be
doubted whether the recollection of her zeal for the postponement of
her brother's conversion soothed her conscience or alleviated for her
the terrors of divine judgment.

The Duke of York always looked upon the war with Holland as an
unfortunate complication which frustrated the re-establishment of the
Catholic worship in England. In this part of the treaty of Dover he
beheld the first and perhaps the most dangerous of the rocks among
which the Stuart dynasty ultimately foundered and disappeared for
ever. Charles at first looked at things from a more assuring point of
view. A letter to his sister, the duchess, dated June 6, 1669, shows
him full of hope, almost of enthusiasm, at the thought of this
expedition. The English navy was to take a brilliant revenge for the
insult received a short while before, when the Dutch flag waved
insolently under the walls of affrighted London. He himself,
associated with Louis in glory and good fortune, was finally to
triumph over the disasters of his family, and to enjoy for the rest of
his days the blessings he so ardently desired, liberty of conscience
and peace upon the throne. But these alluring dreams were even then
disturbed by presentiments and uneasiness too well founded to escape
his penetrating mind. If he yielded after a year's resistance, it was
through weakness and weariness, not through conviction.

In concluding this portion of our article, it is not amiss to inquire
what purpose Charles could have had in view in attempting "to deceive
the King of France." To be sure, surrounded as he was at home by
difficulties and dangers without number, he was compelled to look
abroad for assistance and protection. But if he had consulted only his
worldly interests, if he had not been inspired by religious motives,
where would he naturally have sought for aid? Certainly he would have
turned toward the Protestant, not the Catholic, states. His natural
allies would have been warlike Sweden and rich and powerful Holland,
whose last stadtholder, William II., had espoused a princess of the
house of Stuart, Charles's own sister Mary. Nothing was more popular
at that time, throughout Great Britain, than the triple alliance. Why
should he break it? Why should the son of Charles I., overcoming the
unpleasant recollections of his former sojourn at Paris, have so far
offended the instincts and prejudices of his people as to offer the
hand of fellowship and brotherhood to Louis XIV., and intrust to him
his destinies?

A parallel naturally suggests itself here between the two kings; and
perhaps if we had to assign their respective places we should not give
the preference to the abler or the more powerful. Louis, still young
and engrossed, heart and soul, in his projects of greatness and
magnificence, was guilty of the grave wrong of making religion
entirely subordinate to politics. Charles, no doubt, shows himself
through the course of these negotiations just what he always was. Too
sagacious not to see the dangers into which each step conducted him,
and too timid to confront them; now urged forward by the impatient
zeal of the Duke of York, now drawn back by his minister and confidant
Arlington--one hardly knows what he wanted to do. His frivolity, his
inconstancy, his perpetual wavering, his disingenuousness, all the
chief traits of his character, in fine, were displayed in these
negotiations of Dover. We are not disposed to deny that he was
sensible of the temporal advantages which the friendship of his
brother of France seemed to promise him; but, taking all things into
consideration, it is he that shows the greater heart, and with him the
calculations of selfish humanity are sometimes at least forgotten in
the sovereign importance of his eternal interests.

{831}

The treaty of Dover concluded, Charles secretly made preparations for
the war with Holland, which had now been deferred to a more distant
day; but there were other preparations in which he took a much more
lively interest. He knew that a terrible storm would break forth
whenever he should issue his bill of indulgence in favor of those who
disagreed with the state Church. Both French and English writers have
often said that the king hoped to accomplish his plans by means of
abuse of the royal prerogatives, and unconstitutional measures taken
under the protection of that ambitious neighbor across the channel
whom the Stuarts had rashly allowed to interfere in the affairs of the
United Kingdom. But this is a mistake. Without the slightest violence
or transgression of the law, Charles might have anticipated by two
hundred years the emancipation of the Catholics of England. The
constitution gave him no right to change any of the existing laws; but
it gave him power to dispense with the exaction of the penalties
prescribed for their violation. Well, he proposed to make use of this
prerogative in behalf of all dissenters without exception, whether
Protestant sectaries or Catholics, and whenever a fitting opportunity
arrived to lay before parliament a new bill of indulgence.

On the 15th of March, 1672, two days before the declaration of war
with Holland, he issued a proclamation, in which, after remarking that
the experience of twelve years had proved the inutility of coercive
measures in matters of conscience, he declared his good pleasure that
every penal law against nonconformists and recusants of every
description should thenceforth be suspended. Dissenters were
authorized to establish places of worship; but Catholics were not
permitted to assemble for religious exercises except in private
houses. This discrimination against the Catholics was the doing of the
Secretary Bridgman, who stoutly refused to sign the document, and
threatened to resign, if the same privileges granted to other
recusants were also accorded to the Catholics. Bridgman's resignation
would have given the alarm to the hostile parties; so, to avoid a
greater evil, Charles had to submit to this odious restriction.

There was a diversity of opinions about the declaration of the 15th of
March, but at first there was nothing in the state of public opinion
to excite alarm. As for the war, if the people looked upon it without
much favor, at least no one could assert that it was contrary to the
national interests. There were recent injuries to be avenged, glory
and profit to be won; above all, immense advantages to accrue to
English commerce from the crippling of one of its most formidable
rivals: all these considerations kept the minds of the nation in
suspense.

But unfortunately one naval engagement after another was fought with
no decisive results; and while the French gained brilliant victories
on land, the English seemed to be only humble, docile instruments in
the hands of their allies. The Protestants eagerly seized upon these
circumstances to arouse an undertone of discontent among the masses.
The Duchess of York had just died a Catholic. The Duke of York, the
heir presumptive to the throne, was strongly suspected of having
embraced the Catholic religion. Then there was England in league with
Catholic France against Protestant Holland; and the little army which
Charles had sent to the continent, though placed under the command of
Schomburg, a Calvinist (but for all that a Frenchman), had among its
subordinate officers a major-general, Fitzgerald, and many other
Catholics. All these things, they said, taken in connection with the
recent declaration, boded nothing but evil to the Reformed churches.

Such was the state of public feeling when, after a recess of two
years, parliament opened at the beginning of February, 1673. In the
troubles {832} which he saw were coming, the king relied for
assistance in the houses principally upon Clifford, whom he had
appointed a lord of the treasury, and the Chancellor Ashley, recently
created Earl of Shaftesbury, a man of no principle, but of great
ability and value in critical emergencies. At the opening of the
session Charles spoke of the French alliance, of the causes of his
rupture with the States General, and of the declaration of indulgence,
which he declared himself resolved to stand by.

The opposition had already matured their plan of campaign, and their
first measure was to deprive the Catholics of their new allies by
persuading the dissenting sects to renounce the precarious advantages
of the declaration for the toleration, less complete, perhaps, but
more assured, which they would infallibly obtain from the favorable
dispositions of the Commons. The manoeuvre was perfectly successful.
The Catholics were completely isolated. The "Country Party," as they
called themselves, then opened fire with more confidence in
Parliament. "The attack was made," says Macaulay, "not in the way of
storm, but by slow and scientific approaches. The Commons at first
held out hopes that they would give support to the king's foreign
policy, but insisted that he should purchase that support by
abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their first object was
to obtain the revocation of the declaration of indulgence. Of all the
many unpopular steps taken by the government, the most unpopular was
the publishing of this declaration." In fact, the annulment of the
edict was a matter of life or death for the Protestants. They wanted,
however, a constitutional argument, and they had not far to look for
one. We quote Macaulay again:

"It must in candor be admitted that the constitutional question was
not then quite free from obscurity. Our ancient kings had undoubtedly
claimed and exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal
laws. The tribunals had recognized that right. Parliaments had
suffered it to pass unchallenged. That some such right was inherent in
the crown, few even of the Country Party ventured, in the face of
precedent and authority, to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this
prerogative were without limit the English government could scarcely
be distinguished from a pure despotism." A hypocritical fear of
despotism and inviolable respect for the law were to be the standard
under which the dissenters should fight, and it was agreed that the
Anglicans should intrench themselves behind the ramparts of the
constitution.

The opposition in parliament did not disapprove of toleration in
itself; they only blamed the form of the edict. They were perfectly
willing to alleviate the condition of the Protestant nonconformists,
provided it could be done through the regular parliamentary channels.
Even if the king could remit a penalty, he could not suspend a law in
ecclesiastical, any more than in civil, matters. In support of this
position they argued at great length, with a good deal of passion and
obscurity and a great lack of common sense, for more than a month. The
real strength of the party lay in its popularity, and in that
irresistible power which the daring aggressors of a declining monarchy
always possess, in every country. The partizans of the court, by their
injudicious defence of the crown, did their best to aid the opposite
party. Instead of defending the prerogative by the precedents afforded
by previous reigns, they grounded its exercise upon the necessity for
some _ad interim_ power which, during the recess of parliament, might
act upon urgent cases, and, if need were, suspend the laws. "An
exempting power," they said, "must of necessity exist somewhere;
otherwise cases may arise, when parliament is not in session, in which
the welfare and even the safety of the state would be sacrificed to
impolitic and unreasonable {833} fears." This was playing directly
into their adversaries' hands. After long discussions, several times
interrupted by adjournments, the House of Commons, by a vote of 168
against 116, resolved "that the penal laws touching ecclesiastical
matters could not be suspended except by an act of parliament."

In replying to the message of the Commons, Charles declared himself
deeply concerned that they should question the ecclesiastical
authority of the crown, which had never been contested during the
reigns of his ancestors. He certainly pretended to no authority to
suspend any law touching the property, rights, and liberties of his
subjects. His only object in the exercise of his ecclesiastical power
was the relief of the dissenters. He was not disposed to reject the
advice of parliament, and would always be found ready to agree to any
bill which might seem better adapted than his declaration to
accomplish the chief object which he had in view--the welfare of all
his subjects, and the tranquillity and stability of England. This
moderate language did not satisfy the house. A second address
admonished the sovereign that his counsellors had deceived him, and
that none of his ancestors had ever claimed or exercised the power of
suspending statutes touching ecclesiastical matters; and his faithful
Commons implored his majesty to give them a more satisfactory and
complete answer. The king felt the insult, and did not conceal his
resentment. His course was chosen. He would dissolve parliament,
rather than submit to the dictation of his enemies. But he hoped to
subdue the opposition by exciting a conflict of opinion between the
two houses. He went to the House of Lords, and in a short and spirited
address complained that the Commons usurped the royal authority, laid
before their lordships the two addresses from the lower house, with
his replies, and concluded by asking the advice of the hereditary
counsellors of the throne. Clifford followed, and pleaded with his
accustomed fire and energy the cause of offended majesty. But the
spirit of defection had spread even among the chiefs of the
government. The chancellor went over to the enemy. "Shaftesbury," says
Macaulay, "with his proverbial sagacity, saw that a violent reaction
was at hand, and that all things were tending toward a crisis
resembling that of 1640. He was determined that such a crisis should
not find him in the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned
suddenly round, and acknowledged in the House of Lords that the
declaration was illegal." A month had not passed since, in another
place, Ashley had appealed to the justice of his fellow-subjects
against the adversaries of the edict of toleration. The lords made
haste to follow the example of the prudent chancellor. Ten years
before they had solemnly declared their opinion that Charles II. had
received from the English people a legitimate mission to establish
liberty of conscience; to-day, after maturely considering the royal
motion, they resolved "that the proposal of his majesty to settle the
dispute by parliamentary ways was a good and gracious answer."

The disapprobation of the Upper House filled the timid monarch with
consternation. Three days afterward Colbert presented himself* as the
bearer of officious advice from Louis XIV. The King of France felt but
little regret at the turn affairs were taking with his new allies; for
the Commons, who, in order to overthrow more surely the royal plan,
proposed to demolish it slowly, piece by piece, had not uttered a
single murmur against the French alliance or the war. Not only that,
but with a calculating shrewdness they had offered the king a
compensation for the sacrifices which they demanded of him, and
granted a subsidy of £1,260,000 sterling, destined to be expended in
more vigorously pushing forward hostile operations on land and sea.
Pleased with these favorable {834} dispositions, Louis XIV.
represented to his brother of England the sad consequences of a
rupture with parliament. The wisest course was to submit to necessity.
At the return of peace, when Louis would have troops and money to
spare, he would place both at the service of the Stuarts, and it would
then be easy to repair these temporary misfortunes. Charles listened
willingly to the ambassador. The offers of money he did not refuse;
but as for the assistance of French troops, he declared that he would
never use them against his subjects, unless a Second civil war should
reduce him to the very last extremity, as it had reduced his father.
The same day, in council with his ministers, he withdrew his edict of
toleration; and the next morning, the 8th of March, he annulled it
again, in presence of the Lords and Commons, promising that it should
never serve as a precedent. The royal communication was received with
acclamations of joy, and at night innumerable bonfires illuminated the
streets and squares of the capital.

The opposition party had received an impetus in its course, and it
needed a stronger arm than that of a Stuart to check it. The House of
Commons was already discussing its famous test bill, by the provisions
of which every Englishman holding any civil or military office was
required to take an oath of allegiance and subscribe to the royal
supremacy; he was to receive the sacrament according to the rites of
the Established Church, and to sign a declaration against
transubstantiation; and the penalty for violation of this law was a
fine of £500 sterling, and disqualification from filling any public
function or dignity whatsoever, from prosecuting any cause before the
courts, from acting as guardian or testamentary executor, or receiving
any legacy or deed of gift. Together with the test bill another was
introduced for the relief of the Protestant nonconformists. The former
passed quickly through both houses, and became that odious law which
England kept upon her statute-books until far into the present
century. As for the other bill, all the well-known arts of
parliamentary tricksters were brought to bear upon it. It was
postponed; it was amended again and again; it was thrown out; it was
brought in again. At last the end of the session found it effectually
killed; and, despite the insidious promises which had effected a
division among the several victims of the Anglican episcopacy, no new
act was passed with regard to the dissenters.

In a single day the test act deprived the Catholic cause of all its
defenders. The Duke of York, who, as lord high admiral, directed the
operations of the combined fleets of England and France, resigned his
command and his commission. Clifford, though a new convert, laid down
the white rod. All the Catholic officials, governors, magistrates,
naval and military officers, retired at once. One only--who had been
bold enough to praise the bill in the House of Lords as a wise and
opportune measure--was exempted from taking the test oath and branded
with the disgrace of a national recompense. This was the same Earl of
Bristol whom the Bishop of Salisbury had regarded as the inspirer of
those popish tendencies which he boasted of having detected under
Charles's dissimulation.

There was none of the cabinet whose fidelity Charles could now trust.
Shaftesbury had betrayed him; and it seemed certain that Buckingham,
Arlington, and Lauderdale were secretly in league with the chief
agitators. In return for their services parliament granted them
complete impunity for the past by freely condoning all the offences
committed previous to the 25th of March.

Thus the isolation of the king at home was complete. Louis XIV. was
still left him, but he was soon to lose even this last support. At the
beginning of 1674 the French alliance offered only very doubtful
advantages. On the continent the war had assumed the proportions of a
conflict of all Europe, and Montecuculli, seconded by {835} the Prince
of Orange, what successfully against the genius of Turenne. On the
sea, Prince Rupert, the successor of the Duke of York, with
ninety-ships of the line, had gained not a single notable advantage,
though he ought to have swept all the Dutch fleets before him. As
Lingard says, he was too intimately allied with the opposition party
to be very eager for a victory which would have given the ascendency
to their adversaries. Finally, the Commons manifested, from the
opening of the new session, a decided unwillingness to vote a subsidy.
Charles listened, therefore, to the proposals of the allied powers,
and, of his own accord, without asking the consent of "his suzerain"
(as Macaulay charges), concluded a special peace on the most honorable
conditions. "Necessity forbade him any longer to assist France as an
ally," he said to Louis' ambassador; "but he hoped to be able to serve
his good brother as a mediator between him and his enemies."

Thus all Charles's plans were overthrown, and England was delivered
for two centuries from the twin misfortunes against which she
struggled with equal energy--a French alliance and the inroads of
Popery.

Under the enormous pressure brought to bear upon him the unhappy king,
deserted by all his auxiliaries and all his friends, gave way, and
tried to stifle the voice of conscience. No doubt he is gravely to
blame when he receives the sacrament in the Protestant chapels of his
palace, and urges the Duke of York to imitate his unworthy weakness,
when he renews the protestations--which nobody believes--of his firm
adhesion to Anglicanism. He is inexcusable for his apostacy. But that
these criminal actions were not incompatible with a sincere resolve to
return to the Roman Catholic Church, and that one can trace in
Charles's conduct a plan seriously conceived and for three years
perseveringly followed, to establish freedom of Catholic worship
throughout the United Kingdom--these are the points which we have
endeavored to prove. We are not without hope that we have shed some
light upon an important series of events, which for two centuries have
been enveloped, through the bad faith of historians, in an obscurity
that until now the keenest glance has failed to pierce.

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.


1. A careless brother said to Abbot Antony, "Pray for me."

The old man made answer: I shall not pity thee, nor will the Highest,
unless thou hast pity on thyself, and makest prayer to God.


2. Abbot Arsenius used to say: I have often had to repent of speaking;
never of keeping silence.


3. Abbot Theodore said: If God impute to us our negligences when we
pray, and our distractions' when we sing, we cannot be saved.


4. Abbot Pastor said: One man is at rest and prays; another is sick
and gives thanks; a third ministers cheerfully to them both.

They are three; but their work and their merit is one.

{836}

5. A brother said to Abbot Sisoi: "What must I do to keep my heart?"

The old man made answer: Look to your tongue first, for it is nearest
to the door.


6. Abbot Abraham said: Passions live even in the saints here below;
but they are chained.


7. Abbot John said to his brother, "I do not like working; I wish to
be in peace, and to serve God without break, like an angel;" and he
set off to the desert.

In a week's time he returned, and knocked at his brother's door,
saying, "I am John."

His brother answered, "No, you are not; for John is an angel." He
insisted, "Yes, but I am John."

His brother opened to him, saying, "If you are a man, why don't you
work? If you are an angel, what do you knock for?"

------

From Chambers's Journal.

LITTLE THINGS.

  Often, little things we hear,
    Often, little things we see.
  Waken thoughts that long have slept,
    Deep down in our memory.

  Strangely slight the circumstance
    That has force to turn the mind,
  Backward on the path of years,
    To the loved scenes far behind!

  'Tis the perfume of a flower.
    Or a quaint, old-fashioned tune;
  Or a song-bird 'mid the leaves.
    Singing in the sunny June.

  'Tis the evening star, mayhap.
    In the gloaming silver bright;
  Or a gold and purple cloud
    Waning in the western light.

  'Tis the rustling of a dress.
    Or a certain tone of voice,
  That can make the pulses throb.
    That can bid the heart rejoice.

  Ah, my heart! But not of joy
    Must alone thy history tell.
  Sorrow, shame, and bitter tears
    Little things recall as well.

------
{837}

From The Month.


THE POEMS OF ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.  [Footnote 147]

  [Footnote 147: "Legends and Lyrics." By Adelaide Anne Procter. With
  an Introduction by Charles Dickens. New edition, with additions.
  Illustrated by W.T.C. Dobson, A.B.A., Samuel Palmer, J. Tenniel,
  George H. Thomas, Lorenz Fröhlich, W. H. Millais, G. du Maurier.
  W.P. Burton, J.D. Watson, Charles Keene, J.M. Carrick, M.E. Edward,
  T. Morten. (Bell & Daldy.) "A Chaplet of Verses." (Longman.)]


The appearance of the beautiful edition of Miss Procter's poems lately
issued among the Christmas gift-books of the season forms a fitting
occasion for some remarks upon the special character and genius of the
authoress whose verses are inscribed upon its delicately-toned pages.
Of both the first and second series of Miss Procters "Legends and
Lyrics" numerous editions have been called for by the public: they are
now collected into a quarto, illustrated by many excellent artists,
and are prefaced by a slight biographical introduction from the pen of
Mr. Charles Dickens, who, being intimately acquainted with Miss
Procter's family, had known her from her early girlhood, and
entertained for her the truest admiration and the most cordial esteem.

In attempting an analysis of Miss Procter's poetry, we may well
preface it by a few words concerning her life and character, because
these were the roots of her verse. To speak of the dead is at all
times a sacred thing, demanding heedful words and careful justice. To
speak of the beloved dead is always a doubly difficult task, requiring
a specially sober modesty of expression, even while giving some scope
to that instinctive power of true appreciation which affection best
insures. The writer of these pages knew and loved her long and well;
and in so far is qualified to speak of what she was: yet of a nature
which was all womanly, and which retained to its last earthly moments
a singular charm of childlike playfulness and innocence--having been,
as it were, at all times sheltered from life's rougher experiences--it
is not quite easy so to speak as to bring out a distinctive image to
those who knew it not.

Adelaide Anne Procter was born in October, 1825, in Bedford Square,
London; the eldest child, the "sweet beloved first-born," of Brian
Waller Procter, best known to literature as Barry Cornwall. We have
often heard her described as she was at three years old--"the
prettiest little fairy ever seen," with fair delicate features and
great blue eyes; always frail in health, but exceedingly intelligent.
Mr. Dickens tells of a tiny album, made of note-paper, into which her
favorite passages of poetry were copied for her by her mother's hand
before she herself could write; and she very soon began to acquire
foreign languages, and even to learn geometry. One of her early
accomplishments was drawing--she composed little figure pieces with
grace and facility; and we remember hearing from a loving relative of
Miss Procter's, many long years ago, of a certain set of sketches of
the Seven Ages of Man, done by her in pencil when she was yet a little
girl. Being at the time still younger, we heard of it with a sort of
admiring awe, which it is now pathetic to remember; considering in our
own mind what a wonderful and even alarming little girl this must be.
Some five-and-twenty years later (since her death) those little
sketches came to light; the sight of them smiting upon the heart with
the memory of that long-ago conversation, so full of fond hope and
pride.

{838}

Miss Procter was very thoroughly educated, and from her youth went
much into society, possessing in a marked degree the best
characteristics of a woman of the world. Mr. Dickens says that she had
nothing of the conventional poetess about her; was neither melancholy,
nor affected, nor self-absorbed. What she _had_, was the ease, the
polish, and the extreme readiness which we are taught to consider the
traditionary charm of a Frenchwoman of the old school. To perfect
self-possession she added a sort of feminine mastery of those about
her. Single out any of the famous Parisians gifted with the power to
win and to keep, and imagine this sort of power grafted on to a nature
_au fond_ very simple and sterling; and thus the reader will attain to
a conception of what she was in social life. She had deep and strong
feeling, which she poured out in her poetry; but it did not come
uppermost in her conversation. _That_ was always vivid and usually
lively, and, moreover, edged with marvellous finesse. "Sweet-briar"
one loving friend used to call her.

Her outward life was not very varied; but her conversion to the
Catholic faith, which took place when she was about four-and-twenty,
gave her a wide circle of intellectual interests beyond those of
ordinary English minds. Two years later she went to Piedmont, and
passed a year with a relative there. She always recalled this Italian
experience with lively pleasure; and it colored many of her poems. Her
letters home were very lively and pictorial, showing that she would
have excelled in prose composition.

Of her first entrance into literature Mr. Dickens has given an amusing
account: how she sent poems to _Household Words_ under the signature
of Miss Berwick, and how at the office they all made up their minds
she was a governess; and how Miss Berwick turned out, after all, to be
the daughter of his old friend Barry Cornwall, who preferred to win
her spurs with her visor down. When, some years later, she was with
much difficulty induced to collect her poems into a volume, with her
name, their success was immediate; both that volume and a second
series passed through edition after edition, till she truly became a
_household word_ in England.

There is not, alas! very much more to tell. Just when she became
famous, and opportunities of literary exertion were opening on every
side, her health began to fail. For three or four years before her
declared illness she was very delicate, and, with the fatal animation
of her peculiar temperament, always overworking herself. But that
dread malady, consumption, the scourge of England, can rarely be
averted when once it has marked its prey. In November, 1862, her
increasing illness first confined her to her room, and very shortly to
her bed. For fifteen long months she lay there, wasting gradually
away; yet not only was she patient and thoroughly resigned, but up to
the very last her bright cheerfulness never quite deserted her. When
not actually in pain, she would enter into conversation with all her
old zest, taking just the same interest in her friends and their
affairs; lively, sympathetic, and helpful to the end. On the very last
evening of all, one of her friends, thinking to interest her in the
old pursuit, brought her a little poem in proof. It was a Catholic
ballad for _The Lamp_, Miss Procter was sitting up in bed, supported
by pillows. She was too weak to speak any unnecessary word; but her
large blue eyes roused into their wonted intelligence as she listened;
and then, with the sweet sympathy which she at all times gave to
others, she made a slight applauding motion with those slender wasted
fingers, and smiled into the reader's face. It was such a very slight
thing, and yet so utterly characteristic--courtesy and kindness and a
sort of unselfish readiness surviving to the very end.

{839}

That night, an hour after midnight, on the 2d of February, the summons
came. She had been reading a little book--trying to read, rather--and
as the clock was on the stroke of one she shut it up, and with some
sudden mysterious rush of consciousness, having suffered greatly all
the evening from oppressed breathing, she asked quietly of her mother,
who was holding her in her arms:

"Do you think I am dying, mamma?"

"I think you are very, very ill tonight, my dear."

"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold--lift me up."

Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: "It has come at
last."

And then, with so soft a change that the anxious eyes bent upon those
sunken features could hardly detect the moment of her ceasing to
breathe, death came to the beloved of so many hearts. The prayers of
the Church, of which she was so devoted a child, were audibly uplifted
throughout that closing scene; they were the last earthly sounds that
can have reached the dulling ear. Opposite to her, as she lay upon her
little bed, was a photograph from that loveliest image by Francia of
the dead Saviour lying upon his mother's knees. At all times ardently
religious, the last days of her frail life were elevated and cheered
by the holy rites of her faith. As she lay in her coffin, a crucifix
upon her breast, and camellias and violets sprinkled over her fair
white garments, she looked the loveliest image of peace which a pure
and pious life could bequeath to perishable clay. The delicate face
was but little changed. Up to the very last it had retained its bright
spiritual expression, just as her voice had retained its musical
inflections, and her smile its blended charm of affectionate sympathy
and childlike gaiety. In death that smile had vanished for ever, but
something of its sweetness still lingered about the brow and mouth.
The tapers for which she had asked a little while previously (for the
due keeping of Candlemas-day) burnt at the head of the coffin, and
shed their soft light down upon that still face. When at length it was
covered up from mortal sight, and all that remained of her laid in the
grave at St. Mary's Cemetery, the sun shone out with the first
cheerfulness of early spring. Coming from behind a little cloud, that
sunshine lit up the white vestment of the priest, who, standing by her
coffin in the little chapel, spoke of the joyful resurrection of the
children of God. There is a little garden upon that simple grave,
where fresh flowers bloom every spring; and beside it many prayers are
offered up with each returning season of the year.

But we must linger no longer on memories and associations which are
almost too sacred for more than a passing word. To the world at large
Miss Procter is known through her genius only; but it is, perhaps, not
too much to say, that through it she is also endeared in a singular
degree to thousands who never looked upon her face. To some
consideration of her poems we will therefore address ourselves; the
less reluctantly that they were truly so much a revelation of her
life.

If canons of criticism be based on something deeper than mere
superficial rules in regard to the expression of the sublime and
youthful, it must be doubly interesting to trace the causes of a
wide-spread popularity attaching to any series of works from the same
pen. Such an appreciation cannot be won by a trick of form, or by a
deliberate appeal to well-known popular sympathies. It must arise from
the touching of universal emotions; from a true correspondence with
those thoughts and feelings which are the heritage of the race under
its most general conditions, or which have become the common property
of a people in all its various grades of culture.

{840}

There are two theories regarding the nature of poetry and of that
Genius which creates poetry, whether in literature or in the sphere of
any art. They will never be harmonized; for, like many other opinions,
doctrines, and theories, of which we are separately forced to
acknowledge the truth, they are irreconcilable by any effort of the
human understanding. One of these theories says that genius is rare,
recondite, unusual; that its creations are, by the very nature of
things, little likely to be appreciated; that, indeed, the higher and
the deeper it is, the more likelihood there is that it will not be
entered into by numbers. Such genius found its embodiment in the
phantasmagoria of Blake, in the poetry of Shelley, in the profound
insight of this or that thinker. It is the vivid but momentary flash
of lightning irradiating a sombre sky; it is the gnarled and solitary
pine; the deep still tarn upon the mountain-side; it is the vein of
bright ore buried in the darkness of the mine; the electric thrill
evoked from inert matter, interesting, delightful, and suggestive from
the very strangeness of its apparition. Who shall deny this is _one_
definition of genius, one way of picturing the idea of high art?

But there is another theory, which says that genius is that which
possesses the faculty of incarnating universal affections in a type
readily and instinctively appropriated by the imagination; that it
painted the Huguenots, and wrought out the image of Jeanie Deans; that
it sung the simple melody of "Auld Robin Gray," and accumulated the
massive choruses of Handel; that--putting aside those greatest men,
the Shakespeares, Groethes, and Raphaels, regarding whom criticism or
definition are alike exhaustless and for ever inconclusive--the most
admirable genius is that which thrills in the ballads, the religions
literature, and imitative art of a people, and which a whole nation
"will not willingly let die." Such genius, such art, is like the fair
sunshine upon corn-fields, the rippling of the running stream, the
silver surface of the lake, the profuse luxuriance of spring and
autumn woodlands. It embodies light, air, and the song of birds, the
solemnity of the universal twilight, and the radiance of the universal
dawn. Almost every one can see and feel it in _some_ wise, though the
keenness of the appreciation will be in proportion to the
sensitiveness of the eye and ear. Who shall deny that this is another
and equally true description of the highest genius and the noblest
art?

The poems we are now considering, and which have won such general
admiration wherever they have become known, belong to the latter class
of works of art. Their simple, delicate beauty appeals alike to men
and women, and to the soul of the young child; their transparent
clearness is that of an unusually lucid intellect; their profoundness
is only that of a believing heart. She who wrote them would often say,
with a certain characteristic simplicity, "I only write verses--I do
not write poetry;" and would fasten upon the products of some powerful
and mystic mind as an illustration of what genuine poetry ought to be.
But the mis-estimate was great. The absolute absence of claptrap, of
any appeal to the passions of the hour or the popular idols of the
English people, showed that if these volumes lay on so many tables,
and their contents were so often sung and quoted in public and in
private, as expressing just that which everybody had wanted to say,
the reason lay deeper than the ring of the verse-writer who knows how
to play into the fancy of the multitude. They are popular because they
are instinct with dainty feminine genius, and reach the hearts of
others with the sure precise touch of slender fingers awakening the
silver chords of a harp.

Three volumes originally comprised the whole of Miss Procter's
writings: a first and second series of legends and lyrics, and one of
religious poems, published for a night-refuge {841} kept by Sisters of
Mercy. The two former have now been printed in this rich quarto by
Messrs. Bell & Daldy; and it may not be amiss to say that the whole
_three_ have been republished in America in one small but excellently
got-up volume, at once a casket and a shrine (Ticknor & Fields,
Boston). Of the secular poems now brought before our English public in
so beautiful a dress, we would attempt a slight analysis of contents.
There are fourteen legends or stories, long and short--little tales in
verse, of which the gist generally lies in some very subtle and
pathetic situation of the human heart. Anything like violent wrong or
the ravages of unruly passion seemed rarely to cross this gentle
imagination; and yet the legends are nearly all sorrowful; but the
sorrow seems to spring from nobody's fault and perhaps for that very
reason it is all the more sorrowful, for repentance will not wash it
away. Little dead children borne to heaven on the bosom of the angels
while their mothers weep below; or a dying mother, dying amidst the
splendors of an earl's home, and calling to her bedside the son of an
earlier and humbler marriage, revealing herself to him at the last; or
the history of a stepmother, long loved but late wedded, and who had
given up the lover of her own youth to a younger friend, and afterward
taken the charge of that friend's jealous and reluctant children; or
the pitiful tale, since elaborately wrought out by Tennyson in his
"Enoch Arden," of the sailor who returns home to find his wife the
wife of another man. In one and all the pathos is wrought out and
expressed with the most extraordinary delicacy of touch. The reader
says to himself, "Nay, is it so sad after all?" And yet it is; sad and
spiritually hopeful too; sad for this earth, hopeful for heaven. This
seems the irresistible conclusion of almost every tale; even the story
of the stepmother, supposed to come quite right at last, is made
inexpressibly plaintive by being told by the first wife's nurse--she
who "knew so much," and had lived with her young mistress from
childhood, and would not call the cold husband unkind; "but she had
been used to love and praise."

In others of these legends the telling of the tale is simpler, the
pathos more direct, but almost always strangely subtle. In "Three
Evenings of a Life" a sister sacrifices her own hopes of married life
that she may devote herself to a young brother who needs her care. But
the young brother marries--a catastrophe which she does not seem to
have contemplated; and she finds too late that her sacrifice was
useless; and, what was worse, that the bride is ill-fitted to sustain
him in his life or in his art; and the unhappy sister

  "----watched the daily failing
  Of all his nobler part;
  Low aims, weak purpose, telling
  In lower, weaker art.

  And now, when he is dying,
  The last words she could hear
  Must not be hers, but given
  The bride of one short year.
  The last care is another's;
  The last prayer must not be
  The one they learnt together
  Beside their mother's knee."

Herbert sickens and dies, leaving the poor weak little Dora to Alice's
care; and we are told how Alice cherishes her, and bears with her
waywardness through sad weeks of depression, till news comes in spring
that Leonard--the rejected lover--is returning from India. Now Alice
is free! Now she may love Leonard and lean upon his strength. He
comes; the little household smiles once more. Summer succeeds to
spring; when one twilight hour Alice is aware of the perfume of
flowers brought into their London home. She goes out into the passage,
and through a half-opened door hears Leonard's voice:

{842}

  "His low voice--Dora's answers;
  His pleading;--yes, she knew
  The tone, the words, the accents;
  She once had heard them too.
  'Would Alice blame her? Leonard's
  Low tender answer came.
  'Alice was far too noble
  To think or dream of blame.'
  'And wishes sure he loved her?'
  'Yes, with the one love given
  Once in a lifetime only;
  With one soul and one heaven?'

  Then came a plaintive murmur:
  'Dora had once been told
   That he and Alice--' 'Dearest,
  Alice is far too cold
  To love: and I, my Dora,
  If once I fancied so,
  It was a brief delusion.
  And over long ago.'"

Very tender and touching is the description of the forlorn woman's
recoil upon her brother's memory:

  "Yes, they have once been parted;
  But this day shall restore
  The long-lost one; she claims him:
  'My Herbert--mine once more!'"

One of the most highly finished of the legends is "A Tomb in Ghent,"
setting forth the life of a humble musician and his young daughter. It
contains lovely touches of description both of music and architecture.
How the youth knelt prayerfully in St. Bavon--

  "While the great organ over all would roll,
  Speaking strange secrets to his innocent soul,
  Bearing on eagle-wings the great desire
  Of all the kneeling throng, and piercing higher
  Than aught but love and prayer can reach, until
  Only the silence seemed to listen still;
  Or, gathering like a sea still more and more.
  Break in melodious waves at heaven's door.
  And then fall, slow and soft, in tender rain,
  Upon the pleading, longing hearts again."

Not only what he heard, but what he saw, is thus exquisitely imaged in
words:

  "Then he would watch the rosy sunlight glow.
  That crept along the marble floor below,
  Passing, as life does with the passing hours.
  How by a shrine all rich with gems and flowers.
  Now on the brazen letters of a tomb;
  Then, again, leaving it to shade and gloom,
  And creeping on, to show distinct and quaint,
  The kneeling figure of some marble saint;
  Or lighting up the carvings strange and rare
  That told of patient toil and reverent care;
  Ivy that trembled on the spray, and ears
  Of heavy corn, and slender bulrush-spears.
  And all the thousand tangled weeds that grow
  In summer where the silver rivers flow:
  And demon heads grotesque that seemed to glare
  In impotent wrath on all the beauty there.
  Then the gold rays up pillared shaft would climb.
  And so be drawn to heaven at evening time;
  And deeper silence, darker shadows flowed
  On all around--only the windows glowed
  With blazoned glory, like the shields of light
  Archangels bear, who, armed with love and might,
  Watch upon heaven's battlements at night."

The second critical division of Miss Procter's poems comprises those
beautiful lyrics, many of which have been set to music, and all of
which are full of the melody of rhythms--inspired, as it were, by a
delicate AEolian harmony, having its source in the fine intangible
instinct of the poet's ear. Amidst more than a hundred of such short
poems and songs, selection seems nearly impossible to the critic. Many
of the little pieces and many of the separate verses are destined to
float on the surface of English literature with the same secure
buoyancy as Herrick's "Daffodils," or Lyttleton's verses to his fair
wife Lucy, or Wordsworth's picture of the maid who dwelt by the banks
of Dove. They have that short felicity of expression, that perfect
finish in their parts, that cause such poems to abide in the memory,
or, as the expression is, to "dwell in the imagination." In the six
verses of "The Chain,"

  "Which was not forged by mortal hands.
  Or clasped with golden bars and bands,

is one--the third--which exemplifies our assertion. It reads like one
of those immemorial quotations we have known from infancy:

  "Yet what no mortal hand could make.
  No mortal power can ever break;
  What words or vows could never do.
  No words or vows can make untrue;
  And if to other hearts unknown,
  The dearer and the more our own,
  Because too sacred and divine
  For other eyes save thine and mine."

Two songs, written in the quaint, irregular metre delighted in by the
seventeenth-century poets, seem like forgotten scraps by one of the
more elegant contemporaries of Milton; these are, "A Doubting Heart,"
and "A Lament for the Summer," of which the first and last verses are
instinct with the feelings of October days:

      "Moan, O ye Autumn winds--
      Summer has fled;
  The flowers have closed their tender leaves, and die;
      The lily's gracious head
  All low must lie.
      Because the gentle Summer now is dead.

  Mourn, mourn, O Autumn winds--
      Lament and mourn;
  How many half-blown buds must close and die!
      Hopes, with the Summer born,
  All faded lie,
      And leave us desolate and earth forlorn."

{843}

Equally musical, but full of the more personal sentiment of our
century, is that lovely song, "A Shadow," beginning,

  "What lack the valleys and mountains
  That once were green and gay?"

Quite different in tone, full of ringing harmony, is the little poem
of "Now?"

  "Rise, for the day is passing,
  And you lie dreaming on;
  The others have buckled their armor,
  And forth to the fight are gone.
  A place in the ranks awaits you--
  Each man has some part to play;
  The Past and the Future are nothing
  In the face of the stern To-day."

And so on, through four spirited verses. Something in these strikes
the ear as peculiarly illustrative of the active pious spirit of her
who wrote them, of the voice whose every tone was so dear, and of the
smile whose arch intelligence conveyed the same expression of lively
decision.

We must now bring our remarks to a close, having tried to indicate the
different qualities of Miss Procter's verse. The permanent place which
it will retain in English literature it is not for us to decide. She
has had the power to strike the heart of her own generation by its
simple pathos. That it is purely original of its kind can hardly be
denied; but it is hard, if not impossible, so far to separate
ourselves from the standard of our own generation as to judge where
the limits of the _special_, and therefore the _transient_, elements
of fame are passed. But we at least must not be wanting in gratitude
to one of the sweetest singers of the day that was hers and our own.

------

From The Sixpenny Magazine.

THE ADVENTURE.


Sir Brian O'Brian McMurrough commenced life as possessor of a
_nominal_ rent-roll of twelve thousand pounds sterling per annum,
although in reality, between mortgages, and rent-charges, and
incumbrances of every possible shape and hue, probably five would
represent the net sum received by the proprietor. Still, it was not
the age of economical reflection, nor was the young baronet either a
financier or a philosopher. He had been cradled in luxury, and bowed
down to with slavish senility; he had been educated at Cambridge, and,
one way or other, his bills there had been met, though not always
pleasantly, by his father. He had travelled over Europe, Asia, and a
good part of America, for four years, and at last a letter had caught
him at Vienna, telling him that his father, Sir Patrick, had died
suddenly, "full of years and honors," and that he was now the
representative of one of "the oldest and best families in Ireland,"
and possessor of its splendid estates, etc. On his return home he was
surrounded by troops of friends and hordes of sycophants, and for some
years was far too much engaged in pleasure not to let business attend
to itself. His fathers had lived "like kings," and he had too much the
spirit of an Irish, gentleman to let prudence or economy come "between
the wind and his nobility." He married, too, and chose for his wife a
far-descended and beautiful pauper, with tastes to the full as
reckless and extravagant as his own. This lady had brought him a
daughter, who lived, and in four years after {844} a son, who had died
a few hours after his birth, and whose death preceded that of his
mother by a single day. After her death Sir Brian became more careless
and reckless than ever. His spirits sank as his debts mounted; he saw
from the first that ruin was inevitable; section after section of his
splendid estates were put up for sale and swept away; until at last
all that remained to him was a half-ruined building, called "The Black
Abbey," which he sometimes used as a shooting and fishing lodge in
happier days, and a tract of mountain land, wild, and for the most
part sterile and unprofitable, and for part of which he paid rent. In
the present gloomy temper of his soul, however, it suited his humor.
The building stood halfway up a mountain, the base of which was almost
washed by the waters of a broad lake, or lough, and from which it was
only separated by a slip of meadow. The lake itself was several miles
in extent, and at least three miles and a half broad immediately
opposite the abbey, to which the only access from the mainland was by
a skiff or boat, except you chose to travel several miles round so as
to head the lake. It was a romantic but utterly desolate retreat, made
still more so, if possible, by the sullen gloom which had now taken
possession of the fallen man. He had secured some remnants of a once
splendid library, and sometimes amused himself by teaching his
daughter Eva, although there were weeks at one time when a restless
and morose spirit beset him, and then with a gun in his hand he
wandered idly through the mountains, or with a boy, named Paudreèn,
took to his yacht, and was never to be seen on shore, sometimes
sleeping on board, or bivouacking on some of the many small islands
which dotted the loch.

At such times Eva was left in possession of the abbey, accompanied by
old Deb Dermody and her husband Mogue (or Moses), who, of all his
followers, had stuck steadily to Sir Brian, and would not be shaken
off. Before utter ruin had come upon them, Eva had been for a year, or
somewhat better, at a boarding school, the mistress of which had
evidently done her duty by the child. The little girl, indeed, "showed
blood" in more ways than one: she was small but hardy, and, without
being critically beautiful, she was very lovely to look upon: her
features were delicate but full of animation. Her temper was lively,
but all her instincts were genial and generous, and she had, in a
particular manner, the gift of conciliating the affectionate regards
of all who came within the sphere of her innocent influence. True it
was, her worshippers were neither numerous nor select. A few hands
employed by the "steward" (as Mogue was magniloquently called) to till
the ground and attend to the "stock," consisting of mountain sheep and
Kerry cows, together with stray "cadgers," pedlars, and other
wanderers who occasionally visited the neighborhood, and the
"neighbors" on both banks of the lough (the hither and thither),
consisting for the most part of an amphibious sort of population, who
netted fish in the lake, or cultivated patches of ground to keep life
and soul together. Beside these, now and then the "agent" of the
estate, Mr. Redmond Hennessey, sometimes visited at the abbey, to look
for or receive the rents paid by Sir Brian, and another more welcome
occasional visitor was Father John Considine, the P.P. of a long,
straggling parish, which extended over both sides of the mountain, and
whose house and church lay in the valley which separated Ballintopher,
on which Sir Brian lived, from Ballinteer, a higher hill which ran
beyond. Sir Brian and his daughter belonged to the old faith, and as
the priest was a large-minded, liberal man, with a well-cultivated
mind, and a good-humored and even jovial temperament, his visits
always enlivened the abbey, and sometimes won a smile from its
proprietor. His literary tastes and recollections, also, were
exceedingly {845} useful to the young girl, particularly as he
sometimes ran up to Dublin, or even over to London or Paris, in the
summer holidays, from whence he was sure to bring back the gossip for
Sir Brian, and a budget of new books, periodicals, and songs for his
favorite. Thus matters went on for some years--nothing better, nothing
worse, apparently--until Eva was in her eighteenth year. The large
estates originally owned by Sir Brian had, in a great measure, fallen
into the hands of a single proprietor, Sir Adams Jessop, a rich London
merchant and banker, who had purchased them by lots on speculation,
because, in the first place, they were sold low (as at first all the
Irish estates were under the Incumbered Estates Court), and because he
had advanced large sums to the holders of the mortgages, etc., with
which they were embarrassed, and thus sought to recoup himself. Since
they came into his possession he had been over for a few days
twice--once to look over the property, and again to appoint an agent
recommended to him by some neighboring proprietors, who all spoke of
Mr. Redmond Hennessey as a man of zeal and industry, who always had
his employer's interest at heart, and detested a non-paying or
dilatory tenant as he did a mad dog. Under this gentleman's
supervision the estates put on a new aspect; rents were raised, and
covenants insisted on, such as "the oldest inhabitant" had never even
dreamed of; and as Mr. Hennessey was a solicitor as well as an agent,
processes followed defalcations, and the only sure road to his
friendly sympathy was punctuality in payment, and liberality (in the
shape of gifts, such as fowl, butter, eggs, fish, socks, flannel, and
so forth) from those who had favors to ask or bargains to make. Of
course he was a thriving man, but it was remarked that illicit
distillation, poaching, and illegal practices of all kinds were
greatly on the increase; and when Sir Brian heard of all this, and saw
that additional magistrates were sworn in, and a large draft of
constabulary and preventive police sent into the new barracks
specially constructed for them, he grimly triumphed in the change, and
made no secret of his sympathy with the malcontents, since, as he
said, "what better could be expected on the estate of an absentee?"

Neither did matters seem to mend when Sir Adams Jessop died somewhat
suddenly, and was succeeded by his only son, now Sir William Jessop,
who was understood to be a gay young man of indolent habits and roving
propensities, and who seemed to have even less sympathy for his Irish
tenants than his father--if, indeed, that were possible. Mr.
Hennessey's power and authority were now unlimited, and stories were
told of his rapacity and impatience of all control which appeared
incredible. Whole townships were depopulated by his _fiat_; families
were reduced to beggary and desperation by his determination to "make
the estate pay;" and some said (for every man has his enemies) that
when his new master informed him by letter of appeals being made and
of his wish that they should be attended to and the appellants dealt
more lightly with, his answer invariably was, that the accusers were
established liars, who would be the first to shoot down Sir William
himself should he ever be foolish enough to venture amongst them.


II.

Like all inland lakes of considerable extent, that which lay before
the windows of the Black Abbey was subject to violent changes of
temper on slight and sudden provocation. In the morning it would lie
dimpling and smiling before you, as full of placid beauty and as
incapable of a wrathful outburst as a ball-room belle; while at noon
its aspect would become as terrible as that of a virago, whose whole
family and neighborhood tremble and fly from the fearful storm which
no submission can allay. On such occasions, considerable danger {846}
menaced those who sailed on business or pleasure over the waters of
the lake, and it so happened that on the eve of a September day, the
yacht of Sir Brian McMurrough was caught in one of those sudden bursts
which had swept down from the mountains, accompanied by torrents of
rain and violent thunder and lightning, although in the morning, and
until after midday, there had been no warning of a gale.

To make matters worse, Miss McMurrough was known to be on board the
boat, as she had accompanied her father to a town at the other end of
the lake to make household purchases for the coming winter; and the
amount of agitation evidenced by a group of men who stood on the banks
of the lough and witnessed the fearful struggles of the little craft,
amounted gradually to extreme terror as they saw the principal sail
give way and flutter in the wind like ribands, while the waves washed
over the helpless vessel and threatened speedily to engulf her.

"It will never do, boys," at last said one of the men, "to stand idly
by and see the best blood of the country die the death of a drowned
dog without putting out a hand or an oar to save him. Run up, Patsy,
and tell Mick Mackesy to come down at once, while we launch _Sheelah_,
who never turned her back to the whitest horses that ever gallopped
over any water that ever ran; and don't let grass grow to your heels,
for a life may hang on every step you take. Away with you."

"Has he far to go?" asked another of the group.

"About a mile, sir," replied the man, touching his cap to the
questioner, who had been a stranger to him until on hour or two
before; "and the worst of it is Mick may be out, or drunk, and then
we're done for."

"Don't send for him, then," said the stranger; "I have pulled an oar
at college and elsewhere, and am pretty well up to the management of a
boat. Where is your craft?"

"Yonder in the cove, sir; but it's a bad business."

"Then the sooner we get rid of it the better, my friend," said the
energetic stranger. "Come, boys, I have a sovereign or two to spare,
and I promise you that no man shall lose by his humanity. Now, my
friend, lead on."

"May I never," said the first speaker, whose name was Andy Monahan,
"but you've a stout heart in your bazzom, whoever you are, and it's a
pity to baulk you!"

In an incredibly short space of time the boat was launched, and the
gentle _Sheelah_ fled on her mission of mercy, impelled by four pair
of hands who knew right well how to handle her. By this time the
baronet's yacht was a sheer wreck, and although the owner and his boy
struggled hard to keep her head to the wind, it was evident that if
she did not fill and go down, she would drive bodily on the ragged
rocks which shot perpendicularly up on that part of the shore toward
which she was drifting. The boat reached her safely, however, and by
the excellent management of the volunteer boatman mainly. Miss
McMurrough was got into the shore-boat, and her father and the boy
followed, while an anchor was let go in the yacht and she was then
left to her fate.

In moments of great danger and excitement there is little room for
ceremony or introduction, and on the present occasion only a few
words, and those of direction, passed on any side. Sir Brian's main
care was for his daughter, who, drenched and terrified as she must
necessarily be, bore up wonderfully, and even managed to murmur a few
words of gratitude to the stranger who so sedulously bore her into the
boat, and, so far as he could, protected her. When all was done, the
boat's head was again turned to the shore, and "in less than no time,"
as Andy promised, its wave-worn load was safely landed, wet, weary,
and chilled, but otherwise unharmed. After a few words in private
{847} with Andy, the boat-owner, Sir Brian turned to the stranger and
addressed him.

"I am told by my friend here, sir," he said, "that it is to your
dexterity and courage my own preservation and that of my daughter is
mainly due. I trust that you will accompany me to my residence, and
allow me, when I have regained my presence of mind, more suitably to
thank you for the signal service you have done me than I can find
words adequately to do now."

"You are very kind, sir," was the prompt and cordial reply, "and I
shall be very happy to accept your hospitable offer, as I am
altogether a stranger here, and the boatman tells me that I will have
to cross the mountain before I can reach an inn."

In the meanwhile, the storm had lulled considerably, and half a score
of women had come from the surrounding cottages, some with cloaks,
blankets, and shawls for "Miss Eva," and some with "poteen" jars or
bottles, to "warm the hearts" of the rescued mariners. But Sir Brian
persisted in going home, and refused the proffers of profuse
hospitality pressed on him, accepting a "wrap" for his daughter, and
sanctioning the attendance of the stranger, on whose offered arm she
leaned as they began their walk to the abbey. Before they set off,
however, the stranger found time to thrust five sovereigns into Andy's
hand, saying to him, in a low voice--

"Divide them among your brave comrades, my good friend, and say
nothing to Sir Brian. I only wish I could make it ten times as much,
since every man of them is worth--nay, don't refuse them, or I shall
say that you are too proud to be obliged by a friend. You and I must
become better acquainted hereafter."

He hastened away, and Andy pocketed the gratuity, which he had neither
expected nor was at all anxious to receive.

"We'll drink his health anyway," he said, as he pocketed the money;
"and if he stays in the country, we'll find a way to pay him back, if
not in his own coin, maybe in one that'll please him as well. A brave
chap he is, and feathers an oar as well as myself, who was born, I may
say, with one in my right hand."

The stranger had requested that a small, neat knapsack, which he had
flung down when he stripped for the lake, should be sent after him to
the abbey, at which, on arriving at it, he was warmly welcomed by the
master, and was ushered to a spare bed-chamber by Deb Dermody herself,
who had been advertised of the coming of the party by a "runner," and
had everything prepared to receive them.

When the stranger had dried his clothes and changed his linen by the
huge turf fire which blazed in the room allotted him, he descended to
the "refectory," of general dining and drawing-room, and so called
from its use by the monks "lang syne." He found the baronet and his
daughter ready to receive him, a large fire in the grate, a table
ready laid for dinner, and a fresh arrival in the sturdy person of
"Father John," who had come on one of his periodical visitations.
Evidently the good priest had heard of the adventure, and of the
gallant part which the stranger had performed in it, and, when
presenting him his hand, had good-humoredly thanked him for helping to
preserve two lives that were so precious to all who knew their worth.
The young man, in his turn, found it necessary to introduce himself,
and stated that he was an idle rover, with some taste for drawing,
literature, and music, and who came on an exploratory expedition to
see what he could pick up in the way of old airs or legends, or new
scenery, to forward some speculations of his own. His name was
Redland, and he considered himself fortunate in having been able to
assist Sir Brian and Miss McMurrough in their difficulty, etc.

{848}

The dinner was good. Fish from the lake, game from the mountain, fowl
from the stubble, and a capital ham, fed and cured by the "steward,"
who prided himself on fattening and killing swine. The night sped
pleasantly by. Redland was evidently a gentleman, and both the baronet
and the priest knew what that meant right well. He was light and
cheerful without being frivolous, and seemed more inclined to ask for
information from others than to obtrude his own. He spoke well without
speaking too much, and greatly pleased Father John by the interest he
took in Irish affairs. In the course of the evening the management of
the "Jessop property" was spoken of, and incidentally the character of
the agent was discussed.

"After all," said Sir Brian, "the devil is not so black as he is
painted; Hennessey is not the worst among the bad. I for my own part
have always found him civil and obliging, and not at all pressing for
the rent of my miserable holding, which, as you well know, Father
John, I never ought to be called on to pay a shilling for; but
Hennessey's not to blame for that; no more, I dare say, than for other
things laid to his charge. He sent Eva a whole chestful of books to
read last week, and baskets of fruit from his hot-houses, although I
dare say he was the first of his family that had any better sort of
house than a mud cabin to rear pigs instead of grapes and peaches in."

"He is a confirmed scoundrel, however, and a curse to the country that
holds him," ejaculated the priest, sternly and gravely.

"You ought to blame his absentee master rather than him," said Sir
Brian.

"Under your pardon, Sir Brian, I ought to do no such thing," persisted
the priest; "his master knows nothing of his doings, of that I am
certain, or if he did, as an English merchant, as a man of humanity,
he would be the first to reject and put down such intolerable tyranny,
which is equally miserable and profitless. In fact, the fellow is true
to no one or nothing but his own selfish interests, for he throws the
blame of his own cruelties on his employer, and perpetrates enormities
sufficient to draw down God's vengeance, under the plea of being
driven to it by a man to whom such cheese-parings and petty gains can
be of no possible account."

"I should think then, sir," said the stranger, "that it is high time
for him to look to his interests and good name, if your account be
true, and my only wonder is that he delays it so long."

"Poh! the present proprietor is a gay young fashionable fop, they were
called dandies in my day, who well pockets his rents and only thinks
of his Irish tenants when his purse runs, dry," said Sir Brian,
bitterly.

"Is not that a harsh estimate, papa," said Eva, gently and timidly,
"when you can only speak by surmise?"

"Then why is he not here?" asked Sir Brian; "why does he leave his
tenantry to be ground to powder or driven to desperation, if he could
cure it by his presence?"

"That question may be answered, too," said the priest; "it is
Hennessey's interest to keep him away as long as he can, and you may
be pretty sure that he has painted us in colors that would not waste a
long journey to witness them. I, however, have taken upon myself the
liberty of writing to Sir William Jessop, and it will not be my fault
if he does not see reason in my statements to come and have a look at
us himself."

"You will get into a mess with Hennessey if that comes to his ears,"
said the baronet, laughing.

"He knows right well I don't care a farthing for either his friendship
or his enmity," replied Father John. "'Be just, and fear not,' is my
motto, and if it please God to let him injure me, I will bow to the
chastisement, since it will be in a good cause."

{849}

"I think that your act was both justifiable and merciful," said the
stranger; "and I should say that Sir William will be little better
than a heartless fool if he should not respond to your application as
he ought."

"He'll never do it," said the obstinate host; "he'll be thinking of
his tallow and cotton, and molasses, as matters infinitely superior in
his estimation to Irish kernes and their wrongs."

"Ought we not to hope and pray that he will take a more considerate
view of Father John's application to him, papa?" said Eva. "He is an
English gentleman, and they are always alive to the interests of
humanity--at least I have always heard so."

"And you have heard right, my dear Miss Eva, so we'll hope for the
best," replied the priest. "So now let us have one cup of tea, and
afterward we'll trouble you for 'Love's Young Dream,' or 'The Minstrel
Boy,' or 'Silent, O Moyle!' or 'The Young May Moon,' and I'll grumble
a bass in 'St. Senanus and the Lady,' if Mr. Redland will help us
out."

The tea was drunk, and the songs sung to the accompaniment of a wild
Irish harp, which made excellent music in Eva's fair hands. A light
supper followed, and then to bed, after various arrangements for the
following days, which Sir Brian insisted Redland should give to them;
while Father John, whose time was his own, as he had a curate,
promised to remain at the abbey also for a few days.

Near to midnight Redland found himself in a very tidy and comfortable
room with a blazing fire, and as he undressed his thoughts took the
form of soliloquy.

"Pleasant enough all this," he said, as he sat before the fire, "and
not a bad beginning, at all events. Sir Brian is a gentleman
certainly, although his prejudices--natural, too--master him; the
priest, however, is my strong card, and I must stick to him; while as
to Eva--Miss McMurrough--who in the world could have thought of
finding such a choice and beautiful blossom in such a site? She is
equally Rich in blood and beauty, and no mistake, and her soprano has
a great deal of the Jenny Lind fine _timbre_ about it. I'm in luck, at
any rate, so here goes to enjoy and make the most of it." Thus saying
he went to bed.

For the next few days a great deal was done. The yacht was recovered
and made available; fish were caught, birds shot, views taken,
cottages visited, histories detailed, dinners eaten, songs sung, and
conversations enjoyed, in all which the stranger took part, making
himself both useful and agreeable; putting Sir Brian in mind of "the
good days," charming the priest by his humane and liberal philosophy,
and gradually stealing into Eva's good graces so far, that when one
evening he said to her he must think of going, she sighed, and said
plaintively--

"Yes, that's the worst of your coming, Mr. Redland, for when you leave
us how shall we ever get over your loss? Though of course one ought to
be always prepared for misfortune, and no one who wished you well
would think of detaining you in so dreary a place."

"Dreary! it has been a paradise to me, I assure you. Miss McMurrough,
and when duty demands my presence elsewhere, inclination will be sure
to draw me back by the hair of the head, and--and by the cords of the
heart as well."

The latter part of the sentence was spoken partly to himself and
escaped Eva's ear.

It so chanced that, the next morning, Father John left them, after a
hearty invitation to Redland to visit his cottage at the side of the
mountain; but it was doomed that his place was supplied about mid-day,
or rather toward dinner-time, by no less a person than the formidable
"agent," Mr. Redmond Hennessey, himself who announced to his "friend,"
Sir Brian, that, having a day to spare, he came to tax his
hospitality.

{850}

"Beside," he said, as he and Sir Brian sat in conclave, while Redland
and Eva were wandering on the banks of the lough--"beside, Sir Brian,
a report has reached me that a stranger has intruded himself on your
hospitality whom I think you ought to beware of."

"He is a fine young fellow, and saved my life," replied the baronet.

"Specious, I dare say; flippant, but anything but safe company, I
should say, if my information be correct," said Mr. Hennessey.

"What has he done?" demanded Sir Brian.

"A great deal that he should have left undone," was the reply. "I have
heard of the goings on of him and that confounded priest, whose finger
is in every man's dish; of their visitings to tenants, and their
bribes for information; in point of fact, I look upon him as a
dangerous person--one of those English radicals who, driven from their
own country, come to ours to plunge it into convulsion and confusion."

"I think you are mistaken in your estimate," replied Sir Brian.

"You will change your opinion by-and-bye," said Hennessey; "the proof
of the pudding is the eating of it; I have received three threatening
letters since he has been here, short as it is, and I mean, after
dinner, to draw him out a bit, and make him show his true colors, if
possible."

"You had better not, perhaps," was the reply; "he is an outspoken
young fellow, and seems to fear no man, no matter how potential he may
think himself. Better let him alone, for your detectives have tracked
the wrong man this time, Mr. Hennessey, I assure you."

"We shall see, however," said the agent, made more obstinate by
opposition.

The young people did not return until dinner was ready, and then
Redland and Hennessey were introduced to each other. The agent was
superciliously cold, and Redland hardly civil, so reserved was his
demeanor. It seemed to be "hate at first sight on both sides." Under
these circumstances, conversation was slow and restrained; Mr.
Hennessey talked of himself a good deal; of the improvements in his
house, his grounds, and gardens, and of his associations with the
aristocracy of the district; while Redland conversed with Eva in a low
voice, mercilessly inattentive to the utterings of the great man,
which were frequently interrupted by the ill-repressed laughter of Eva
at what her companion was saying. At last, however, dinner was done,
and when Eva left the room, Mr. Hennessey began his "drawing-out"
system by a point-blank question addressed to Redland.

"I understand, Mr. Redland," he said, "that you have been very
particularly anxious in your inquiries about the state of Sir William
Jessop's extensive property. I presume you are an author, and mean to
publish your travels in a neat volume, with wood-cut illustrations?"

"No, no; you are altogether mistaken," was the chilly reply; "I am
content to read books, without having the ambition to write them."

"Well, then, the greater compliment to us poor Irish that such an
independent inquirer should come amongst us," said Hennessey. "I hope
you are satisfied with what you have observed."

"I do not wish to answer your question, sir, since, without intending
it, I might give you offence," was the guarded reply.

"Pray don't spare me, young gentleman," sneered the agent, "as I am
used to misconstruction, and have shoulders broad enough to bear it.
You find fault with my management, of course?"

"Not of course, sir," replied Redland, "but if you insist on having my
opinion, I think that Sir William Jessop's estates are very wretchedly
managed indeed."

{851}

"Hah! that is candor with a vengeance!" said the agent, startled out
of his self-possession; "you must be a disinterested observer to jump
at once to so decided a conclusion."

"I had my eyes and ears, sir, and made use of them," answered the
composed stranger; "where everything is miserable, and everybody
wretched, on an estate which pays eight or ten thousand a year to its
owner, somebody must be to blame, since there can be no possible cause
for it."

"Go on, sir, go on," said the agent, winking at Sir Brian.

"At your invitation, I will, sir," was the cool reply. "Seeing what I
have seen, and hearing what I have heard, I do not wonder that
discontent and disaffection should prevail amongst men whom no
industry can raise, and no good conduct can protect. It is the
skeletons of a population that I have been among, and not men and
women of flesh and blood; and as to their homes, I profess that the
snow-hut of an Esquimaux would be less inhabitable. I shall call Sir
William Jessop a bad Englishman, and a worse Christian, if he shall
persist in sanctioning a state of things, which, of course, must be
out of your control, since I presume you act according to your orders,
and cannot help witnessing the terrible miseries which you are every
day compelled to increase."

"You have been in America, sir, I suppose?" was the irrelevant reply
of Hennessey.

"I have--both North and South."

"And have been a practitioner of 'stump' oratory? I thought so,"
replied Hennessey, with a coarse laugh. "Here's to your health, young
Cicero, and a better way of thinking to you!"

"To both of us, sir, if you please," replied Redland, touching his
glass, and then leaving the room.

"A dangerous fellow, just what I thought him," said Hennessey, when
the door closed. "But now that I see his game, I am prepared for him;
we'll have no stump orators--no Captain Rocks or Sergeant Starlights
amongst us here, if we can help it, Sir Brian. But let it rest--let it
rest; we have not quite done with him yet. And now, Sir Brian, to turn
to a pleasanter theme; the last time I was here I did myself the honor
of making known to you my ardent good wishes for a closer connection
with you, through the medium of Miss McMurrough, whose humble slave I
have long been."

"I have trusted the matter to my daughter, Mr. Hennessey, and find
that her objections are insuperable; she would not listen to me,
except at the risk of tears and hysterics," said Sir Brian. "I am
obliged to you, but we will speak no more of it, if you please."

"I am sorry for it," 'replied Hennessey, "as I thought that, under
such circumstances I might find means to allow your arrears, and the
fifty borrowed from myself, to stand over. I fear I can't promise
anything of the sort now, but I suppose you are prepared to back up,
and the sooner the better, as Sir William is pressing hard for money
and must have it. Let me have all, if possible, before Saturday, and
so save trouble to both of us. With thanks for your hospitality, and
wishing you a safer guest under your roof, I bid yon good-night."

In three minutes more he had left the house, and Sir Brian felt that
he had an enemy for life. He said nothing to his guest or his
daughter, however, save that Mr. Hennessey had been obliged to
leave--on business, he supposed.

The next day, Mogue, who had been at the other side of the lake,
brought back word that there was "great ructions" in the town of
Ballinlough, as Mr. Hennessey had been fired at early that morning, on
riding to one of his farms, and that "a whole pound of bullets had
lodged in his hat." Everything was in commotion; the "peelers" were
out, and "a whole bunch (bench?) of magistrates were to meet
immediately." So that day passed over; but the next morning a new
state of affairs occurred. About {852} ten o'clock, half a dozen
policemen, with an officer at their head, arrived at the abbey and
showed a warrant of arrest for Mr. William Redland, as a suspicious
person, etc., with a civil intimation that his body was to be produced
before the bench of magistrates now sitting at Ballinlough. Of course,
to hear was to obey.

"My accuser will make nothing of it, sir," said Redland to the
officer, "and if I really wished him evil he has now afforded me an
opportunity of doing it."

"You may require bail, however," said Sir Brian, "so I have dispatched
a messenger for Father John, although we can easily defeat him by an
_alibi_."

"Or by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,"
said Redland, with a smile.

When they arrived at the courthouse of Ballinlough, they found at
least a dozen magistrates in full conclave, who all scowled on "the
prisoner," as Hennessey was their friend.

Redland at once confronted this august assembly, and without waiting
for his accuser to begin, thus commenced:

"In order to save time and trouble, gentlemen," he said, "I think it
necessary to make a confession for which you may be unprepared.**

"Too late, my fine fellow," said Hennessey; "you should have thought
of what you were about before. I heard you myself at Sir Brian's table
spout as much treason as would set all Ireland in a flame. I do not
wish to prosecute you vindictively, however, although I was near
losing my life by your preaching and teaching, so if you will
undertake to leave the country, after telling us who and what you are,
I will give up the prosecution, and you may go about your business."

"You are very considerate, sir, and I accept your offer," said the
undismayed prisoner. "I acknowledge, therefore, that both my name and
my occupation have been assumed----"

"I  knew it--I could swear it from the first moment I laid eyes upon
you," said the triumphant agent; "but go on; you have told us who and
what you are not, now oblige us with similar information as to whom
and what you are."

"Willingly, sir," replied the young man. "My real name is not Redland,
but Jessop--a baronet by rank, an Englishman by birth, and your
employer, I think, into the bargain. I am called, then, Sir William
Jessop, and my occupation here has been quietly to supervise my
estates--and a very wretched supervision it was, as I had the honor to
tell you in Sir Brian McMurrough's house. I am willing to remain under
arrest until I am fully identified, and as you are not vindictively
influenced, I trust you will accept bail for my appearance when called
upon."

Hennessey was foiled and defeated by his employer's ruse, and he saw
it. He was crestfallen, too, for his warmest friends crowded round
"Sir William," and left him in the lurch, although his employer was
more merciful.

"I, and my father before me," he said, "have been to blame for not
sufficiently making ourselves acquainted with the serious
responsibility we had undertaken. I have seen with my own eyes that my
estates are sadly mismanaged, and I have reason to complain that your
conduct has been both selfish and unjust; selfish, in thinking solely
of your own interests--and unjust, in saddling me with your faults.
We cannot act longer together, Mr. Hennessey, and you will be good
enough to prepare your accounts, so as that they may be duly audited
as soon as possible. I will remain the guest of Sir Brian McMurrough,
at whose house I am for some little time to be found."

Hennessey left the court-house, degraded and dismissed, leaving with
him "his hat with the pound of bullets in it." "I always knew it was
Miles Casidy the driver put them m {853} it by Hennessey's order,"
said Andy Monahan, "and more be token be hinted as much himself
yesterday after the seventh glass."

Sir William Jessop went back to the Black Abbey in triumph; and never
left it until he had made Eva McMurrough his bride, so that the
estates still run with the "auld stock," and Sir Brian and Father
John, who is almoner-general to Sir William, are as happy as kings.

------

MISCELLANY.


_The Source of the Nile_.--Mr. S. W. Baker read a paper before the
"Royal Geographical Society," London, giving an "Account of the
Discovery of Lake Albert Nyanza." The author commenced by saying that
he began in 1861 the preparation of an expedition, in the hope of
meeting Speke and Grant at the sources of the Nile. He employed the
first year in exploring the tributaries of the Atbara, and afterward
proceeded to Khartoum, to organize his party for the great White Nile.
In December, 1862, he started from Khartoum with a powerful force,
embarked on board three vessels, and including twenty-nine animals of
transport, camels, horses, and asses. Pursuing his course, he entered
upon a dreary waste of water and reedy banks, where he soon lost his
only European attendant, who was killed by fever. The remainder of the
party safely reached Gondokoro, which is a wretched place, occupied
only occasionally by traders seeking for slaves and ivory. After
fifteen days the firing of guns announced some new arrivals, and a
party arrived, among whom were two Englishmen, who proved to be
Captains Speke and Grant, clothed in humble rags, but with the glory
of success upon them. Captain Speke told him the natives declared that
a large lake existed to the westward, which he believed would turn out
to be a second source of the Nile, and that he himself had traced the
river up to 2° 20' N., when it diverged to the west, and he was
obliged to leave it. Mr. Baker undertook to follow up the stream, and
made his arrangements to join a trading party going southward. The
trade along the White Nile really consisted of cattle-stealing,
slave-catching, and murder, and the men whom he was obliged to engage
at Khartoum were the vilest characters. He had applied through the
British consul at Alexandria to the Egyptian government for a few
troops to escort him; but the request was refused, although an escort
was granted to the Dutch ladies upon the request of the French consul.
After Speke and Grant had left him, his men mutinied and tried to
prevent his proceeding into the interior. His forty armed men
threatened to fire upon him, and the Turkish traders whom he intended
to accompany set off without him, and forbade him to follow in their
track. At that time, beside his wife, he had but one faithful
follower. But he managed to get back the arms from the recalcitrants,
and induced seventeen of the men to go with him to the eastward,
although none would undertake to go to the south. It was imperative
that he should advance, and he followed the trading party who had
threatened to attack him, and to excite the Ellyria tribe, through
whom he must pass, against him. However, the chief of the trading
party was brought over, and on the 17th of March, 1862, they safely
arrived in the Latooka country, 110 miles east of Gondokoro. That
country was one of the finest he had ever seen, producing ample
supplies of grain and supporting large herds. The towns are large and
thickly populated, and the inhabitants are a warlike but friendly
race, who go naked, and whose chief distinction is their hair, which
they train into a kind of natural helmet. The bodies of those of the
tribe who are killed in fight are not buried, but those who die
naturally are buried in front of the house in which they had dwelt,
and at the expiration of a fortnight the bodies are exhumed, the flesh
removed, and the bones put in earthen {854} pots, which are placed at
the entrance of the towns. Like all the tribes of the White Nile, the
Latookas seemed entirely devoid of any idea of a Supreme Being.
Indeed, the only difference between them and the beasts is that they
can cook and light a fire. There are forests abounding with elephants,
but cattle cannot live there on account of the "tsetse" fly. The chief
was an old man, who was held to possess the power of producing or
restraining rain by a magic whistle; but one day Mr. Baker happening
to whistle upon his fingers in a loud key, the natives assumed that he
had a power to control the elements, and frequently called upon him to
exercise it. From Latooka he proceeded to Kamrasi's country, across an
elevated region, the water-shed of the Sobat and White Nile rivers.
From the ridge he descended into the valley of the Asua, which river
Captain Burton regarded as the main stream of the White Nile, but
which, when Mr. Baker crossed it in January, did not contain enough
water to cover his boots. On arriving at Shooa, a large number of the
porters deserted him, but he pushed on for Enora. He crossed Karuma
Falls in the same boat which had carried Captain Speke across, but he
was detained for some days by the disinclination of the King Kamrasi
to allow strangers to pass over, and it was only when Mr. Baker had
exhibited himself on an elevated spot in full European costume that he
received the desired permission. It appeared that a trading party,
headed by one Debono, a Maltese, who had escorted Speke and Grant, had
made a foray upon Kamrasi's country, and Mr. Baker was therefore
looked upon with suspicion. From Karuma Falls the Nile flows due west,
a rapid stream, bordered with fine trees. King Kamrasi, who was a
well-dressed and cleanly person, although a great coward, was very
suspicious, and sought to prevent Mr. Baker continuing his journey by
representing that the great lake was six month's journey--a statement
which Mr. Baker, himself ill, with his wife prostrate from fever, and
his attendants refractory, received as a fatal blow to all his hopes.
Learning, however, from a native salt-dealer that the lake could be
reached in something like ten days, he induced Kamrasi, by the present
of his sword, to drink blood with his head man, and to allow them to
depart. In crossing the Karan river on the way to the lake Mrs. Baker
was struck down by a sunstroke, and remained almost insensible for
seven days, during which time the rain poured down in torrents. On the
eighteenth day after leaving Kamrasi they came in sight of the
looked-for lake, a limitless sheet of blue water sunk low in a vast
depression of the country. He descended the steep cliffs, 1,500 feet
in height, leading Mrs. Baker by the hand, and, reaching the clean
sandy beach, drank of the sweet waters. The western shore, sixty miles
distant, consisted of ranges of mountains 7,000 feet in height. Upon
achieving the object of their journeys, Mr. Baker named the lake
Albert Nyanza. That lake, together with that of Victoria Nyanza, may
be accepted as the great reservoir of the Nile. Embarking in canoes
upon the lake, the party proceeded for thirteen days to the point
where the upper river from Karuma Falls enters the lake by a scarcely
perceptible current, while the lake itself suddenly turned westward;
but its boundaries in that direction, as well as those of its southern
termination, are unknown. The Nile issued from the lake precisely as
the natives had reported to Speke and Grant, and from its exit the
river is navigable as far as the narrows near the junction of the
Asua. The author saw altogether from elevations three-fourths of the
course of the Nile between its issue from the lake to Miani's Tree.
Mr. Baker's progress up the Upper or Karuma river was stopped, at
fifteen miles distance, by a grand waterfall, which had been named
Murchison Falls, in honor of the distinguished president of the
Geographical Society. Upon their return to Kamrasi's country the
travellers were detained nearly twelve months, the king being so
impressed with the skill and knowledge of his European visitors that
he could not be persuaded to let them leave him. Ultimately the
travellers managed to get free, and, after a variety of difficulties
with their attendants and the traders, arrived safely at Alexandria.

------

{855}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.


LIFE OF SAINT TERESA.
Edited by the Archbishop of Westminster. London: Hurst & Blackett. 1865.

St. Philip Neri, that gentle and wise guide of souls, advised those
under his direction to read frequently the "Lives of the Saints."
Experience teaches how very profitable this is as an incitement to
virtue. As we get a better idea of a person, a place, or an event by
an accurate representation than by the most graphic description, so
the detailed account of the workings of grace in a faithful soul
oftentimes captivates the heart for God which frequent and fervent
exhortation has failed to reach. But the amount of good which even the
most striking example will produce upon the mind of the reader, will
depend very materially upon the way in which the incidents in the life
are presented. In the work before us we have the varied experience of
one of the very noblest and most courageous souls, through a long and
eventful life, related in language which charms while it inspires. St.
Teresa's spirit was peculiarly one of chivalry and honor. She was a
true child of her native Spain, that land of romance, the mother of so
large a proportion of the more distinguished of the canonized saints
of the Church. Avila, her birthplace, was known as the "City of
Knights." She tells us herself how in youth and early womanhood she
had revelled in stories of hazardous adventure, of deeds of valor, and
acts of self-devotion, to a degree which, on reflection in after
years, she thought had been very perilous to her fidelity to virtue.
But grace led captive that warm and impassioned heart, and stimulated
her to do for God what many a brave knight is said to have done for
the object of his love. As St. Paul said, "I can do all things in him
who strengtheneth me." So, the more rough and jagged the front of the
obstacles she had to oppose, the more invincible she proved herself to
be. "No, my Lord!" she said on one occasion, "it is no fault of thine
that those who love thee do not great things for thee; the fault is in
our own cowardice and fears, because we never do anything without
mingling with it a thousand apprehensions and human considerations."
The Holy Ghost had infused into her energetic soul a holy
restlessness, and work, ceaseless work, hard work, alone could satisfy
its cravings. While the foundations of Valentia and Burgos were in
contemplation, so many difficulties came up, one after another, and
among them ill health and the feebleness natural to a life now in its
decline, that it seemed impossible that they could be effected. In
speaking of this particular time she says: "It seems to me that one of
the greatest troubles and miseries of life is the want of noble
courage to bring the body into subjection; for though pain and
sickness be troublesome, yet I account this as nothing when the soul
can rise above them in the might of her love, praising God for them,
and receiving them as gifts from his hand. But on the one hand to be
suffering, and on the other to be able to do nothing, is a terrible
thing, especially for a soul that has an ardent desire to find no
rest, either interior or exterior, on earth, but to employ herself
entirely in the service of her great God." She was in this unsettled
state, her mind oppressed with doubt, when she begged light of our
Lord at communion. He answered her interiorly: "Of what art thou
afraid? When have I been wanting to thee? I am the same now that I
have ever been. Do not neglect to make these two foundations." She
then adds, "O great God! how different are thy words from those of
men! I became so resolute and courageous that all the world would not
have been able to hinder me." Here we have the key to her whole life.
Her stimulus, as well as strength, was personal love for our Lord.
When circumstances threw her back for a moment upon her own
feebleness, she was powerless; but let her only hear an encouraging
word from him, for which she instinctively listened, and in a moment
she was fearless and unconquerable. Spiritual cowardice is the great
obstacle which lies between numberless well-disposed {856} souls,
nowadays, and perfection. How valuable, then, and how opportune, this
life of the great-hearted St. Teresa! We offer our thanks and
gratitude to the devout and active Archbishop of Westminster, under
whose editorship this useful life appears. From private authority we
learn that its authoress is a religious of a convent of Poor Clares
under the direction of the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles, in London.
We are tempted to envy this good religious the satisfaction and
pleasure she must feel at having been instrumental in giving her
Catholic brethren so welcome and powerful an aid to lead a holy life.
Although the name of the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles does not appear
in connection with this work, their very recent connection with Dr.
Manning, and their existing relation to the convent from which this
work has issued, compels us before closing this notice to thank them
for the share which we suspect them to have had in its publication.
This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that from their hands we
have received that perfect specimen of a beautiful book, "The Works of
St. John of the Cross;" in unity of labor, as in spirit, the
twin-brother of St. Teresa.


THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF ANDREW JOHNSON, SEVENTEENTH PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES, including his State Papers and Public Speeches.
By John Savage, author of "Our Living Presidents," etc. Derby &
Miller. 8vo, pp. 408.

The life of a man like Andrew Johnson must command the profound
attention of every one who wishes to understand the age and country.
It is deeply interesting to ourselves, who have raised him from
obscurity to the highest position in the nation, and are prepared to
give him, without reference to party or opinion, our cordial and loyal
support in his efforts to carry out the organic idea of national life.

The biography of Andrew Johnson is a history of the epoch. He is a
representative man of his class and age. It illustrates the power of
will to conquer and bring to its support a vast amount of coeval will,
making itself the controlling and representative _will_. Few men are
elected who are not in intrinsic as well as extrinsic harmony with the
power electing. Fraud, chicanery, and deception have less to do with
the results of our popular elections than is generally and flippantly
asserted. The great characteristics of President Johnson are strong
natural ability, invincible determination, courage, ambition, loyalty
to the Union, fidelity to his own convictions, and contempt for
privilege and prescription.

Mr. Savage has written the text well and carefully, and interwoven the
coincident history with more than ordinary correctness. There is one
little point to which we would call attention, in, the contents of
Chapter XVII. the passage occurs, "_Granger and Thomas relieve
Burnside._" In the same chapter, page 281, he says, "Granger and
Sherman were sent into East Tennessee to relieve Burnside and raise
the siege of Knoxville." Granger and Thomas did _not_ relieve
Burnside. The opportune arrival of General Grant, the intelligent and
vigorous co-operation of Sherman and Hooker on the extreme flanks, and
the almost spontaneous charge of the center by the troops of the army
of the Cumberland up and over Missionary Ridge, won the glorious
victory of Chattanooga. General Grant immediately dispatched Sherman
to the relief of Knoxville. Gordon Granger commanded a corps
temporarily under Sherman, and was not distinguished for alacrity or
zeal on that occasion. Sherman relieved Knoxville as a part of
Grant'^s grand plan of the campaign. The work is issued in handsome
style, and has a correct steel engraving of the President.


THE LETTERS OF WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1769-1791). Translated from
the collection of Ludwig Nohl by Lady Wallace; with a portrait and
fac-simile. 2vols., 12mo. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1866.

The many thousands living who know, and the many thousands who are yet
to know, the works of the great Mozart, will not fail to welcome this
true picture of his artist life. It forms, indeed, rather a continuous
journal, very little short of an autobiography, than a mere chance
collection of letters; extending as they do from a date when he was
but thirteen years old up to within a few days of his death. One would
look in these letters, of course, for a great deal about music, and
musical composition, operas, concerts, and the {857} like, but hardly
expect to find so much as there is of Mozart's personal life, his
thoughts, plans, detailed descriptions of nearly all he saw and heard,
revealing to the reader, better than any biographer could, the real
character of this crowned master of the heavenly art. Possessing an
intensely vivid imagination and a sprightly wit, his letters sparkle
with humor. He dearly loves to say odd, pleasant things to make them
laugh at home. Here is one taken at random:

  "VIENNA, April 11, 1781.--_Te Deum Laudamus!_ at last that coarse,
  mean Brunetti is off, who disgraces his master, himself, and all the
  musicians: so say Cecarelli and I. Not a word of truth in any of the
  Vienna news, except that Cecarelli is to sing at the opera in Venice
  during the ensuing carnival. _Potz Himmel!_ and all sorts of devils!
  I hope that is not swearing, for if so, I must at once go to
  confession again, from which I have just returned, because to-morrow
  (Maunday Thursday) the archbishop is to administer the sacrament to
  the whole court in his own gracious person. Cecarelli and I went to
  the Theatine monastery to try to find Pater Froschauer, as he can
  speak Italian. A _pater_ or a _frater_, who was at the altar
  trimming the lights, assured us the Pater, as well as another who
  perfectly knows Italian, were not at home, and would not return till
  four o'clock. What did please me was, that on my saying to the
  clerical candle-snuffer that eight years ago I had played a violin
  concerto in this very choir, he instantly named me. Now, as far as
  swearing goes, this letter is only a _pendant_ to my former one, to
  which I hope to receive an answer by the next post."

Mozart lived and died a pious Catholic. Such might be gleaned from his
compositions, expressive as they are of that deep religious reverence,
and sense of the sublime majesty of the holy faith, which he possessed
in so marked a manner. He felt and fully appreciated the power of
inspiration which Catholic life possesses to elevate the soul, and
realize in art, as in every form of the beautiful and the true, its
noblest aspirations. "You know," he writes to his father, "that there
is nothing I desire more than a good appointment--good in
reputation--good in money--no matter where, provided it be in a
Catholic country." The piety of his ordinary life may be seen in the
manner in which he prepared for his marriage. "Previous to our
marriage," he writes, "we had for some time past attended mass
together, as well as confessed and taken the holy communion: and I
found that I never prayed so fervently, nor confessed so piously, as
by her side, and she felt the same."

There is throughout these letters a certain free, off-hand way of
dealing with all sorts of subjects and persons which evinces a strong
and independent spirit, and shows us that Mozart, though often obliged
to dawdle at the heels of niggardly and exacting patrons, never lost
his own self-respect. He had too keen a sense of his own merits, and
of the too frequent lack of any merit at all in his competitors, not
to be pardonably vain. He sought praise, it is true, and revelled in
it, and loved to repeat what had been said of him, yet with so much
boyish simplicity as to banish from the mind of the reader all
judgment of affectation. He gives an amusing account of an interview
with the composer Becke, of whom, it must be confessed, he was not a
little jealous. "At his request I tried his piano, which is very good.
He often said 'Bravo!' I extemporized, and also played the sonatas in
B and D. In short, he was very polite, and I also polite, but grave.
We conversed on a variety of topics--among others, about Vienna, and
more particularly that the emperor was no great lover of music. He
said, 'It is true he had some knowledge of composition, but of nothing
else. I can still recall (and here he rubbed his forehead) that when I
was to play before him I had no idea what to play, so I began with
some fugues and trifles of that sort, which in my own mind I only
laughed at.' I could scarcely resist saying, 'I can quite fancy your
laughing, but scarcely so loud as I must have done had I heard you.'
He further said (what is the fact) that the music in the emperor's
private apartments is enough to frighten the crows. I replied, that
whenever I heard such music, if I did not quickly leave the room, it
gave me a headache. 'Oh, no! it has no such effect on me; bad music
does not affect my nerves, but fine music never fails to give me a
headache.' I thought to myself again, such a shallow head as yours is
sure to suffer when listening to what is beyond its comprehension."

{858}

Altogether, it is a delightful book. It comes to us in a neat
scholarly dress, creditable to the publishers, and as worthy of a wide
circulation among the lovers of art as it is certain to have a
distinguished entrée into all literary circles.


HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CAVALRY FROM THE FORMATION OF THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT TO THE FIRST OF JUNE THE 1ST 1863.
To which is added a list of all the Cavalry Regiments, with Names of
their Commanders, which have been in the United States service since
the breaking out of the Rebellion. By Albert G. Brackett, Major First
U. S. Cavalry, Colonel Ninth Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, etc., etc.
12mo., pp. 337. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1865.

Col. Brackett has presented the history of the U. S. cavalry, brought
down to 1863, in a modest and soldierlike manner. It is the first
attempt at a systematic literary record of an arm of the service, and
we hope it will be followed by others, in order to perpetuate
traditions most interesting to the people and honorable to the brave
men who have trodden the wilds of the forest and prairie, subdued the
savage, and performed gallant deeds from the Rio Grande to the
Columbia, and from the James to the Colorado of the West.

Few persons living in towns and cities can appreciate the
intelligence, courage, and cheerful self-sacrifice which have been the
characteristics of American soldiers, who have borne such an important
but unobtrusive part in the conquest of the natural obstacles to the
settlement of the continent, and been the pioneers on the great lines
of emigration and improvement. The material subjugation of the
wilderness has been no less heroic than their military triumphs. In
all these great events the cavalry has acted a most conspicuous part.

This book will be welcomed at all the military posts, and become an
authority at every mess-table and camp-fire. Its personal
reminiscences are, perhaps, its most pleasing and attractive feature.
They recall vividly men and scenes identified with our early life, now
passed away for ever. Col. Brackett has done a graceful thing in
including Dr. Joseph B. Brown, U.S. A., in his dedication; a purer man
and better officer does not live than Dr. Brown.

The work concludes at a period when the volunteer cavalry was
beginning to be useful and efficient. The history will not be complete
till their splendid services under Wilson at the battle of Nashville
are recorded. No one who saw them moving in long gleaming lines on the
extreme right on the morning of the 15th of December, 1864, or heard
the ceaseless converging roll of the repeating carbines of the
dismounted two thousand reverberating amidst the wood-crowned hills,
will ever forget the picture or the sound.


THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE CIVIL POLICY OH AMERICA.
By John William Draper, M.D., LL.D. Crown 8vo., pp. 317. Harper &
Brothers. Third Edition.

This is the title of a beautifully printed and bound volume, by Prof.
Draper, who is well known for his scientific attainments and elegant
scholarship.

It might be called a treatise on the psychology and physiology of
national life, especially applied to the American republic in its
present and possible character and destiny. It is written from a point
of view directly opposed to Catholic theology and philosophy, and
asserts the dominion of the natural in opposition to the supernatural.
It rejects the supernatural and substitutes irresponsible force for
intelligent, benignant Providence. It recognizes only the plane of
natural reason, and denies by implication the transition from the
natural to the supernatural in the incarnation.

Dr. Draper is the best representative of the school of Guizot,
Carlyle, and Buckle, inasmuch as he is more calm and dispassionate,
and if he possess less erudition than they, he has more scientific
knowledge and the discipline of practical teaching to chasten and
modify his forms of thought and expression. Dr. Draper, we do not
question, desires conscientiously to promulgate the true doctrines of
national life and development. He announces many important truths, and
his analyses of historic periods in the domain of the material and
intellectual are often clear, precise, and beautiful. There is a good
deal of orientalism in his thoughts, and it seems to us that his own
imagination is profoundly affected by the gorgeous pictures passing
before it in the process of {859} intellectual creation. The same
observation applies to his style and imagery, and his writings possess
the power, like Carlyle's, of stimulating the imagination of the
leader to the highest degree, often to the detriment of the reason.

He chooses the close of his magnificent periods to dart a keen,
condensed, carefully studied, dogmatic assertion into the mind like an
arrow, while the faculties are for the moment blinded by the splendor
of diction and the pomp of highly colored illustration.

Dr. Draper is exceedingly cautious and guarded as to his conclusions,
and leaves the necessary inferences to be drawn by the reader. His
influence has a tendency toward one of two directions, either an
oriental, sensuous, hopeless intellectual apathy, or a senseless,
because objectless, material activity.

Dr. Draper does not deny the existence of God; but how he can assert
it while attempting to demonstrate the omnipotence of natural law and
_force_, we do not understand. His doctrines lead either to nihilism
or pantheism. Dr. Draper is entitled to high respect as a philosopher
of the natural order from Catholics, for the reason that he has always
been generous in his statements of Catholicity in its natural and
exterior aspects and relations. His tributes to the Church are among
the most cordial, appreciative, and eloquent that have been uttered in
modern times by non-Catholics. He has however done much in the present
volume to diminish this claim, established in some of his former
writings. He is the representative in this country, at least, of the
great controversy between the Church and the natural life of man--
between the two orders, natural and supernatural--between science and
authority.

There can be no antagonism between science and infallible authority;
for truth is a unit, comes from God, and returns to him, like light
from the sun, its type and figure. Religion has nothing to fear from
science. The occasional apparent opposition has been personal and
temporary, not ex-cathedral and eternal. There can be no conflict
between the spoken word of God and his actualized word, creation. The
dispute is an old one. There is no change in the principles involved;
but the form is modified by experience, development, and scientific
research. It must be reviewed in the retrospect of history, present
knowledge, and the prevision of science. There can be no doubt but the
illumination of the whole subject will illustrate (it cannot prove)
the truths of revelation, as practical science illustrates the
judgments of common sense.

Dr. Draper is an able philosopher and doctor of material progress and
the natural order. His advice to the people of this country is sound
and wise, and it will be well for our temporal prosperity if his
suggestions are heeded by those who have control of public affairs.
His work is in some sense complementary of Dr. Brownson's recent great
work, and there are some striking analogies between them.

The binding and execution of the book are in Harpers' best style, and
leave little to be desired in this department of luxury.


THE CROPPY: A Tale of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. By the O'Hara
Family, with Introduction by Michael Banim, Esq., the survivor of the
O'Hara Family. 12mo., pp. 464. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

The scene of this story is laid principally in the county of Wexford,
Ireland, where "the Rebellion of '98" chiefly raged during the spring
and summer of that memorable year. The narrative is highly
interesting, and contains about the best account of the battles of
"Vinegar Hill" and "New Ross," as well as of other skirmishes and
battles between the insurgents and the English troops. It also gives a
curious insight into the workings of the society of "United Irishmen"
and, also, of the "Orange-men" of that period. There are many fine
passages in this story, which was written by the present editor of the
new edition, Mr. Michael Banim.


THE CATHOLIC'S VADE MECUM; A SELECT MANUAL OF PRAYERS FOR DAILY USE.
Compiled from Approved Sources. pp. 415. Philadelphia: Eugene
Cummiskey.

This new prayer-book is published with the approbation of the Right
Rev. Dr. Wood, Bishop of Philadelphia, from the London edition of
"Vade Mecum." It is a useful compilation of prayers, and possesses one
merit highly recommendable--it is just the size to {860} carry in
one's pocket without any inconvenience, and contains all the prayers
necessary for ordinary occasions.


RICHARD COBDEN, THE APOSTLE OF FREE TRADE:
his Political Career and Public Services. A Biography. By John
McGilchrist, author of "Life of Lord Dundonald," "Men who have Made
Themselves," etc. 12mo., pp. 295. Harper & Brothers. 1865.

This neat little volume contains a well-written life of Richard
Cobden, and a succinct history of the Anti-Corn Law League and
agitation, the great work of his life.

Mr. Cobden, although an islander and an Englishman, justly merited the
title of "the international man." He was a man of peace, because war
is hostile to trade, and breaks up the lines of traffic, as well, no
doubt, from more humane and generous motives. He never sympathized
with the ignoble jealousy and enmity toward this country so common in
England, and was throughout the friend and defender of the Union.

His rise from obscurity to wealth, position, and almost unbounded
influence, is a remarkable event, and illustrates the tremendous power
of trade and commerce. He rose on the tide which commenced with the
adaptation of machinery and application of steam, which has wrought
the greatest revolution in the history of the world. He knew how to
take advantage of his great opportunities, and used the ability thus
acquired to advance the interests of humanity and general well-being.
His life is an example to our present race of very rich men, and
possibly may suggest to them objects more noble than mere accumulation
and personal luxury.



BOOKS RECEIVED.

From B. Appleton & Co., New York: "Life of the Most Rev. John Hughes,
D.D., First Archbishop of New York. With selections from his private
correspondence." By John R. G. Hassard. 1 vol. 8vo.

We regret not having received this handsome volume in time for a
notice in this number of The Catholic World. From a hasty glance
through its pages we judge that Mr. Hassard has done his work
faithfully and well. The book is gotten up in Appleton's best style.
We shall give an extended notice of it in our next number.


From G. & C. MERRIAM, Springfield, Mass.: "An American Dictionary of
the English Language." By Noah Webster, LL.D. Thoroughly revised, and
greatly enlarged and improved, by Chauncey A. Goodrich, D.D., and Noah
Porter, B.D. 1 vol. royal quarto, illustrated. Pp. 1,840.


From D. & J. SADLIER & Co., New York. Numbers 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13
of the "Lives of the Popes;" Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of Banim's Complete
Works. "Christian Missions, their Agents and their Results." By T. W.
Marshall. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 1,200. "The Peep o' Day, or John Doe;"
"The Croppy: a tale of the Irish rebellion of 1798;" and "Croohore of
the Billhook," by the O'Hara Family. A new edition, with introduction
and notes, by Michael Banim, the survivor of the O'Hara Family. 2
vols. 12mo., pp. 412 and 435.


From JOHN MURPHY & CO., Baltimore, Md.: "Manual of the Apostleship of
Prayer." By the Rev. H. Ramiere, S.J., Director of the Association.
Translated from the French. 32mo., pp. 168. "The 'Catholic' Church and
the Roman Catholic Church: In a Friendly Correspondence between a
Catholic Priest and an Episcopal Minister." Pamphlet, 16 pages.


We have received from Messrs. J. GURNEY & SON, 707 Broadway, New York,
an excellent photographic likeness of the late Rev. J. W. Cummings,
D.D.


MR. PETER F. CUNNINGHAM, of Philadelphia, announces as in press "The
Life of Blessed John Bachman," with a fine steel portrait of the
saint; "The Life of St. Cecilia," by Gueranger; and four new volumes
of the "Young Catholic's Library."


LAWRENCE KEHOE has in press, and will publish early in April, a small
volume of poems by Aubrey de Vere, entitled, "May Carols, and Hymns
and Poems."


The MESSRS. SADLIER & CO., New York, have just issued the "Catholic
Almanac and Ordo for the year of our Lord 1866." It contains the names
of the rev. clergy; religious and literary institutions in nearly all
the dioceses in the United States and Canada; a list of the hierarchy
in Ireland as well as other valuable information.





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