Title: The Catholic World. Volume III; Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. - A Monthly Eclectic Magazine
Author: Rameur, E.
Language: English
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[Transcriber's notes]
  This text is derived from
  http://www.archive.org/details/catholicworld03pauluoft

  Although square brackets [] usually designate footnotes or
  transcriber's notes, they do appear in the original text.

  This text includes Volume III;
    Number 1--April 1866
    Number 2--May 1866
    Number 3--June 1866
    Number 4--July 1866
    Number 5--August 1866
    Number 6--September 1866
[End Transcriber's notes]


THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


_Monthly Magazine_

of

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.



VOL. III.

APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1866.



NEW YORK:

LAWRENCE KEHOE, PUBLISHER,

145 Nassau Street.

1866.



CONTENTS.



All-Hallow Eve; or The Test of Futurity, 97, 241.
Abbey, Glastonbury, 150.
Animal Life, Curiosities of, 232.
Alexandria, Christian Schools of, 354, 484.
Abbeville, a Day at, 590.
Asses, Dogs, Cats, etc., 688.
A Celtic Legend, 810.

Benedictines, Rise of, 150.
Buried Alive, 805.

Curiosities of Animal Life, 232.
Catholic Publication Society, The, 278.
Christian Schools of Alexandria, The, 354, 484.
Cuckoo and Nightingale, The, 543.
Cardinal Tosti, 851.

Dr. Spring, Reminiscences of, 129.
Dreamers and Workers, 418.
De Guérin, Eugénie, Letters from Paris, 474.

Eirenicon, Reply to, by Very Rev. Dr. Newman, 46.
Eirenicon, Pamphlets on the, 217.
Eve de la Tour d'Adam, 366.
Ecce Homo, 618.
Episcopal Church, Doctrine on Ordination, 721.

France, Two Pictures of Life in, 411.
Franciscan Missions on the Nile, 768.

Glastonbury Abbey, 150.
Gerbet, l'Abbe, 308.
God Bless You, 593.
Gipsies, The, 702.

Haven't Time, 92.
Hürter, Frederick, 115.
Heaven, Nearest Place to, 433.

Ireland and the Informers of 1798, 122.
Irish Folk Books of the Last Century, 679.

Jenifer's Prayer, 17, 183, 318.

Kilkenny, a Month in, 301.

Legend, a Celtic, 810.

Miscellany, 137, 421, 570, 853.
Madeira, Tinted Sketches in, 265.

Newman, Very Rev. Dr., Saints of the Desert, 16, 170, 334.
Newman, Very Rev. Dr., Reply to Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon, 46.
New York; Religion in, 381.
Necklace, the Pearl, 693.
Nile, Franciscan Missions on the, 768.
Nile, Solution of the Problem of the, 828.

Old Thorneley's Heirs, 404, 443, 599, 738.
Our Ancestors, Industrial Arts of, 549, 780.

Patriarchate of Constantinople, Present State of, 1.
Prayer, Jenifer's, 17, 183, 318.
Problems of the Age, 145, 289, 518, 577, 758.
Perico the Sad, 497, 660, 787.
Perreyve, Henri, 845.

Reminiscences of Dr. Spring, 129.
Religion In New York, 381.
Reading, Use and Abuse of, 463.
Rome the Civilizer of Nations, 638.

Saints of the Desert, The, 16, 170, 334
Steam-Engine, Proposed Substitutes for, 29.
St. Paul, Youth of, 531.
Sealskins and Copperskins, 557.

The Age, Problems of, 145, 289, 518, 577, 758.
Turkestan, A Pretended Dervish in, 198, 370.
Two Pictures of Life In France before 1848, 411.
Three Women of our Time, 834.
Tosti, Cardinal, 851.

Unconvicted, 404, 443, 599, 738.
Use and Abuse of Reading, 463.

Virtue, Statistics of, 731.

Weddings, East Indian, 635.

--------

POETRY.

Bury the Dead, 379.
Banned and Blessed, 306.

Christine, 32, 171, 335.
Claims, 556.
Carols from Cancionero, 692.
Christian Crown, The, 736.

D«y-Dreams, 483.

Hymn, 548.
Holy Saturday, 634.

Lockharts, Legend of the, 127.
Lost for Gold, 826.

Mater Divinae Gratiae, 216
May Breeze, 442.

Our Neighbor, 317.
Our Mother's Call, 462.

Poor and Rich, 240.
Peace, 410.

Requiem AEternam, 263.

Shell, Song of the, 96.
Sapphics, 517.
Sacrilege, the Curse of, 656.
Sonnet, 850.

The King and the Bishop, 528.
Therein, 597.
The Martyr, 617.
Thy Will be Done, 778.

Words of Wisdom, 121


------

{iv}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.


Archbishop Hughes, Life of, 140.
Apostleship of Prayer, 428.
Agnes, 431.
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.
Army of the Potomac, Medical Recollections of, 854.

Biology, Spencer's Principles of, 425.
Blessed Virgin, Devotion to in North America, 574.
Biographical Dictionary, 574
Books for Young People, 720.
Criterion, Tuckerman's, 143.
Christ the Light of the World, 144.
Christus Judex, 288.
Christian Examiner, 427.
Christine,717.
Cosas de Espana, 858.

Dictionary, Webster's, 143.
Draper's Text Books of Chemistry, etc, 576.
Darras' Church History, 719.

Eirenicon, Dr. Pusey's, 283.
Eugénie de Guérin, Letters of, 859.
English Language, Practical Grammar of, 860.

Faber's New Book, 287.
Froude's History of England, 718.

Grahams, The, 288.
Grant, Headley's Life of, 575.

Hughes, Archbishop, Life of, 140.
Holy Childhood, Report of, 573.
Headley's Life of Grant, 575.
Homes without Hands, 860.

Kennett, Story of, 431.
Keating's Ireland, 432.

Mount Hope Trial, 430.
Marshall's Missions, 430.
May Carols, De Vere's, 432.
Marcy's Army Life, 716.

New-Englander, The, 855.

Prayer, Apostleship of, 428.
Priest and People, Good Thoughts for, 431.
Poetry of the Civil War, 576.

Queen's English, A Plea for the, 857.
as
Spencer's Principles of Biology, 425.
Spalding's Miscellanea, 571.
Shakespeare on Insanity, 860.

Wyoming, Valley of, 859.

------

{1}


THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


VOL. III., NO. 1.--APRIL, 1866.



[ORIGINAL.]


THE PRESENT STATE OF THE
PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.  [Footnote 1]

  [Footnote 1: "L'Eglise Orientale, par Jaques G. Pitzipios, Fondateur
  de la Société Chrétienne Orientale." Rome: Imprimerie de la
  Propagande, 1855.]

In the year 1841, the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal dioceses of
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Maryland,
and Pennsylvania, professing to speak in the name of their church in
the United States, addressed the following language to the
schismatical Patriarch of Constantinople, whom they style "the
venerable and right reverend father in God the _Patriarch of the Greek
Church,_resident at Constantinople:"

"The church in the United States of America, therefore, looking to the
triune God for his blessings upon its efforts for unity in the body of
Christ, turn with hope to the Patriarch of Constantinople, _the
spiritual head of the ancient and venerable Oriental Church._"
[Footnote 2]

  [Footnote 2: Quoted in the "Memoir of Rev. F.A. Baker," p. 47.]

This is by no means the only instance of overtures of this kind,
looking toward a union between Protestant Episcopalians and Eastern
schismatics, with the view of concentrating the opposition to the
Roman See under a rival Oriental primacy. The Non-jurors, who were
ejected from their sees at the overthrow of the Stuarts, proposed to
the Synod of Bethlehem to establish the primacy in the patriarchate of
Jerusalem; but their proposal was met by a decidedly freezing refusal.
The American bishops who signed the letter from which the foregoing
extract is taken show a remarkable desire to bow down before some
ecclesiastical power more ancient and venerable than themselves; and
in their extreme eagerness to propitiate the Eastern prelates, they
acknowledge without scruple the most arrogant titles usurped by the
Patriarch of Constantinople, although from their want of familiarity
with the ecclesiastical language, they do it in a very unusual and
peculiar style. Whatever may be at present the particular views of
those who are seeking to bring about a union between the Protestant
Episcopal churches and the Easterns, in regard to the order of
hierarchical organization, they are evidently disposed to pay court to
the successor of Photius and Michael Cerularius, and to espouse {2}
warmly his quarrel against Rome. His figure is the foremost one in the
dispute, and there is every disposition to take advantage as far as
possible of the rank which the See of Constantinople has held since
the fifth century, first by usurpation and afterward by the concession
of Rome, as second to the Apostolic See of St. Peter. We do not accuse
all those who are concerned in the union movement of being animated by
a spirit of enmity against Rome. Some of them, we believe, are seeking
for the healing of the schisms of Christendom in a truly Catholic
spirit, although not fully enlightened concerning the necessary means
for doing so. We may cherish the same hope concerning some of the
Oriental prelates and clergy also, especially those who have
manifested a determination not to compromise a single point of
Catholic dogma for the sake of union with Protestants. We are quite
sure, however, that the loudest advocates of union in the Protestant
ranks, and their most earnest and hearty sympathizers in the East, are
thoroughly heretical and schismatical in their spirit and intentions,
and are aiming at the overthrow of the Roman Church, and a revolution
in the orthodox Eastern communion, as their dearest object. While,
therefore, we disclaim any hostile attitude toward men like Dr. Pusey
and other unionists of his spirit, and would never use any language
toward them which is not kind and respectful, we are compelled to
brand the use which other ecclesiastics in high position have sought
to make of this Greek question as entirely unprincipled. Their
cringing and bowing before the miserable, effete form of Christianity
at Constantinople, dictated as it is chiefly by hatred against Rome,
is something unworthy of honest Christians and intelligent Englishmen
and Americans. Many very sincere and well-disposed persons are no
doubt misled by their artful misrepresentations. On that account it is
very necessary to bring out as clearly as possible the true state of
the case, as regards Oriental Christendom, that it may be seen how
little support Anglicanism or any kind of Protestantism can draw from
that quarter; and how strongly the entire system of Catholic dogma is
sustained by the history and traditions of the Eastern Church.

We may possibly hereafter discuss more at large some of these
important subjects relating to the Eastern Church and the schism which
has desolated its fairest portions for so many centuries. On this
occasion we intend merely to throw a little light on the present
actual condition of the patriarchate of Constantinople, in order to
dissipate any illusion that may have been created by high-sounding
words, and to show how little reason there is to "turn with hope to
the spiritual head of the Oriental Church" for any enlightening or
sanctifying influences upon the souls which are astray from the fold
of St. Peter. We waive, for the time, all consideration of past
events, anterior to the period of Turkish domination, and all
discussion of the remote circumstances which have brought the See of
Constantinople into its present state of degradation, and of obstinate
secession from the unity of the Church.

We take it as we find it, under the Mohammedan dominion, and will
endeavor to show how it stands in relation to other churches of the
East, and what are its claims on the respect and honor of Western
Christians.

The Patriarch of Constantinople is not the Patriarch of the "Greek
Church." There is no designation of this kind known in the East. The
style there used is, the "Holy Eastern Church." The Greek rite, or
form of celebrating mass and administering the sacraments in the Greek
language, is only one of the rites sanctioned by the Catholic Church
which are in use among those Christians who are not under the Latin
rite. What is usually called in the West the Greek Church has several
independent organizations. {3} The Patriarch of Constantinople, who
very early subjugated the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and
Jerusalem to his dominion, now rules over the same patriarchates,
which have dwindled to very insignificant dimensions, and over all the
separated orthodox Christians of the Turkish empire. The Russian
Church, which was erected into a distinct patriarchate by Ivan III.,
is under the supreme jurisdiction of the imperial governing synod. The
Patriarch of Constantinople is treated with respect and honor, and
referred to for advice and counsel, by the Russian authorities; but he
has no more jurisdiction in Russia than the Archbishop of Baltimore
has in the province of New York. The Church of Greece not only threw
off all dependence on the See of Constantinople after the revolution,
but renounced all communication with it, for reasons to be mentioned
hereafter. The separated Greek Christians of the Austrian empire are
governed by the Patriarch of Carlovitz, and there is at least one
other separate jurisdiction in the Montenegrine provinces. The
Patriarch of Constantinople possesses, therefore, an actual
jurisdiction over a fraction only of the Eastern Church. Within the
proper limits of his own patriarchate this jurisdiction is absolute,
both in ecclesiastical and civil matters, subject only to the supreme
authority of the sultan. Immediately after the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks, the Sultan Mahomet II. conferred upon the
Patriarch Grennadius the character of _Milet-bachi_, or chief of a
nationality, giving him investiture by the pastoral staff and mantle
with his own hands. The reason of his doing so was, that the
Mohammedan law recognizes only Mohammedans as members of a Mohammedan
nationality. In more recent times, the sultans, disgusted by the venal
and tyrannical conduct of the patriarchs, have refused to confer this
investiture in person, and it is now done by the grand vizier. Eight
metropolitans, namely, those of Chalcèdon, Ephesus, Derendah,
Heraclèa, Cyzicus, Nicomedia, Caesarèa, and Adrianople, form the
supreme council of the patriarchate, and, with the patriarch,
administer the ecclesiastical and civil government of the Christians
of their communion throughout the Ottoman empire. They have the
control of the common chest or treasury of the Oriental rite in
Turkey, and of that of the provinces; two great funds established
originally for helping poor Christians to pay the exactions levied on
them by the Mussulmans, but at present diverted to quite other uses by
their faithless and rapacious guardians. They are also exclusively
privileged to act as ephori or financial agents and bankers for the
other one hundred and thirty-four bishops of the Turkish provinces,
each one of them having as many of these episcopal clients as he can
get.

Possessed of such an amount of ecclesiastical and civil power as the
patriarchate of Constantinople has been within the Ottoman empire for
several centuries, it is plain that it might have become the centre of
an incalculable influence for the spiritual, moral, and social good of
its subjects. Everything would seem to have combined to throw into the
hands of the patriarch and his subordinate bishops the power of being
truly the protectors and fathers of their people, and to furnish them
with the most powerful motives for being faithful to their trust. The
oppressed, despised, and impoverished condition of their poor,
miserable people, slaves of a fanatical, barbarous, anti-Christian
despotism, was enough to have awakened every noble and disinterested
emotion in their bosoms, had they been men; and to have aroused the
most devoted, self-sacrificing charity and zeal in their hearts, had
they been Christians worthy of the name or true Christian pastors.
Moreover, if they had been true patriots, and really devoted to the
interests of Christianity and the church, there was every inducement
to avail themselves of their position {4} and to watch the opportunity
of cultivating unity and harmony with the Catholic Church and the
powerful Christian nations of the West, in order to secure their
eventual deliverance from the detestable Moslem usurpation, and the
restoration of religion among them to its ancient glory. All causes of
misunderstanding and dissension had been done away at the Council of
Florence. The perfect dogmatic agreement between the East and the West
had been fully established. The Greek and other Oriental rites, and
the local laws and customs, had been sanctioned. The patriarchs and
hierarchy had been confirmed in their privileges. The Patriarch of
Constantinople was even tacitly permitted to retain his high-sounding
but unmeaning title of ecumenical patriarch without rebuke, and
allowed to exercise all the jurisdiction which other patriarchs or
metropolitans were willing to concede to him, subject to the universal
supremacy of Rome. The remembrance of the gallant warfare of the Latin
Christians against their common Moslem enemy, and especially of the
heroic devotion of the cardinal legate and his three hundred
followers, who had buried themselves under the walls of Constantinople
at its capture, ought to have effaced the memory of former wrongs
[Footnote 3] and subdued the stupid, fanatical, unchristian sentiment
of national antipathy against Christians of another race. Everything
concurred to invite them to play a noble and glorious part toward
their own Christian countrymen and toward Christendom in general. We
are compelled, however, to say, with shame and pain, that they have
proved so recreant to every one of these trusts and opportunities,
their career has been one of such unparalleled infamy and perfidy, as
to cover the Christian name with ignominy, and to merit for themselves
the character of apostates from Christianity--seducers, corruptors,
oppressors, and robbers of their own people.

  [Footnote 3: The Crusaders undoubtedly committed some great
  outrages, in revenge far the treachery of the Byzantines, and some
  Latin missionaries imprudently attacked the Oriental rites and
  customs, but these acts were always disapproved and condemned by the
  Popes.]

We will first give a sketch of the line of conduct they have pursued
in relation to ecclesiastical matters, and afterward of their
administration of their civil authority.

It is notorious that the schismatical bishops and clergy of Turkey
neglect almost entirely the duty of preaching the word of God and
giving good Christian instruction to their people. The sacraments are
administered in the most careless and perfunctory manner, and real
practical Christian piety and morality are in a very low state both
among clergy and laity. The clergy themselves are grossly ignorant and
unfit for the exercise of their office, taken from the lowest class of
the people, without instruction or preparation for orders, and treated
by their superiors as menial servants. The bishops and higher clergy
do not trouble themselves to remedy this gross incapacity of their
inferiors, or to supply it by their own efforts. Consequently, the
common Christian people of their charge have fallen into a state of
moral degradation below that of the Turks themselves, by whom they are
despised as the outcasts of society. The striking contrast between the
schismatical clergy, monasteries, and people, and the Catholic, is
proverbial among the Turks, and an object of remark even by Protestant
travellers. It is probable that there have been many exceptions to the
general rule of incompetence and supine neglect; but, viewing the case
as a whole, it must be said that the patriarchs of Constantinople and
their subordinate prelates have completely failed to do their duty as
pastors of their people and their instructors and guides in religion
and virtue. Their unfortunate position furnishes no adequate excuse,
as will be seen when we examine a little further into the enterprises
they have actually been engaged in, and see how well {5} they have
succeeded in accomplishing what they have really desired and
undertaken, which is nothing else than their own selfish
aggrandizement. Look at the contrast between their conduct and that of
the Catholic hierarchies of Russia, Poland, and Ireland under similar
circumstances of oppression, and every shadow of excuse will vanish.
No doubt there were many causes making it difficult to elevate the
character of the ordinary clergy and the people, and tending to keep
them down to a low level of intelligence and knowledge. This would
furnish an excuse for a great deal, if there had been an evident
struggle of the hierarchy to do their best in remedying the evil.
Instead of doing this, they are the principal causes of the
perpetuation and aggravation of this degraded state. Since the decay
of the Ottoman power commenced, the clergy have had it in their power
to bid defiance in great measure to the Turkish government. They have
been able to control immense sums of money and to wield a great
commercial and financial influence. They might have employed the
intervention of Christian powers, and especially of Russia, if they
had been governed by enlightened and Christian motives, in order to
gain just rights and the means of improvement for their people. The
Ottoman government, itself, has come to a more just and liberal
policy, in which it would have welcomed the aid of the Christian
hierarchy, had there been one worthy of the name. Their complete
apathy at all times to everything which concerns the spiritual and
moral welfare of their subjects will warrant no other conclusion than
that they have practically apostatized from the faith and church of
Christ, and are mere intruders into the fold which they lay waste and
ravage.

In their attitude toward the Catholic Church and the Holy See, the
hierarchy of the patriaichate are ignorantly, violently, and
obstinately schismatical, and even heretical. The public and official
teaching of the Eastern Church is orthodox, and therefore no one is
adjudged to be a heretic simply because he adheres to that communion.
One who intelligently and obstinately adheres to a schism as a state
of permanent separation from the See of St. Peter, is, however, at
least a constructive heretic, and is very likely to be a formal
heretic, on several doctrines which have been defined by the Catholic
Church. The nature of the opposition of the clergy of Constantinople
to the Roman Church, the grounds on which they defend their
contumacious rebellion, and the dogmatic arguments which they employ
in the controversy, are such as to place them in the position of the
most unreasonable and contumacious schismatics, and as it appears to
our judgment, in submission to that of more learned theologians, of
heretics also. So far as their influence extends, and it is very
great, they are chiefly accountable for the isolated condition of the
entire non-united Eastern Church. As the ambition of the Patriarch of
Constantinople was the original cause of the schism, so now the
ignorant and violent obstinacy of the clergy of the patriarchate, and
their supreme devotion to their own selfish and narrow personal and
party interests, is, in connection with a similar though less odious
spirit in the chief Muscovite clergy, and the worldly policy of the
Russian czar, the chief cause of its perpetuation.

The clergy of Constantinople have not hesitated to resort to forgery
in order to do away with the legal and binding force of the act of
their own predecessors in subscribing and promulgating throughout
their entire jurisdiction the act of union established at the Council
of Florence. Gennadius, the first patriarch elected after the Turkish
conquest, was one of the prelates who signed the decree of the Council
of Florence, a learned and virtuous man, and is believed to have lived
and died in the {6} communion of the Holy See. Actual communication
between Constantinople and Rome was, however, rendered absolutely
impossible by the deadly hostility of the conquerors to their
principal and most dangerous foe. The slightest attempt at any
intercourse with the Latin Christians would have caused the
extermination of all the Christian subjects of the Ottoman empire. It
is difficult to discover, therefore, when and how it was that the
supremacy of the Roman Church, whose actual exercise was thus at first
impeded by the necessity of the case, was again formally repudiated by
the patriarchs. There is a letter extant, written in the year 1584 by
the Patriarch Jeremiah to Pope Gregory XIII., in which he says that
"it belonged to him, as the head of the Catholic Church, to indicate
the measures to be employed against the Protestants," and requests him
in virtue of this office to point out what measures can be taken to
arrest the advance of Protestantism. This is the last official act of
the kind of which there is any record. The patriarchs and their
associates have relapsed into an attitude toward the Holy See which is
equally schismatical and arrogant, though through their degraded
condition far more ridiculous than that which was assumed by their
predecessors before the Council of Florence. In order to nullify, as
far as possible, the legal force of the act of union promulgated by
that council, they have resorted to a forgery, and have published the
acts of a pretended council under a patriarch who never existed and
whom they call Athanasius. There is no precise date attached to these
forged acts, but they are so arranged as to appear to have been
promulgated soon after the return of the emperor and prelates from
Italy, and before the Turkish conquest; and in them, some of the
principal prelates what signed the decrees of the Council of Florence
are represented as abjuring and begging pardon for what they had done.
They are said to have been moved to this by the indignation of their
people and a sedition in Constantinople in which the rejection of the
act of union was demanded. The forgery is too transparent to be worthy
of refutation, and could never have been executed and palmed off as
genuine in any other place than in Constantinople. They have also put
out a book called the "Pedalium," in which they revive all the
frivolous pretexts on account of which the infamous Michael Cerularius
and his ignorant ecclesiastical clique of the _Bas Empire_ pretended
to prove the apostacy of the Bishop of Rome and all Western
Christendom from the faith and communion of the Catholic Church, and
the consequent succession of the Bishop of Constantinople to the
universal primacy. The clergy of the patriarchate have taken the
position that the Catholic Church at present is confined to the limits
of what we call the Greek Church. They claim for themselves,
therefore, that place which they acknowledge formerly belonged to the
See of Rome, and thus seek to justify and carry out the usurpation of
supreme and universal authority indicated by the title of ecumenical
patriarch. The absurdity of this is evident, from the very grounds on
which the title was originally assumed, and the traditional maxims
which directed the policy of the ambitions Byzantine prelates
throughout the entire period of the Greek empire. The original and
only claim of the bishops of Constantinople, who were merely
suffragans of the Metropolitan of Heraclèa before their city was made
the capital of the empire, to the patriarchal dignity, was the
political importance of the city. Because Constantinople was new Rome,
therefore the Bishop of Constantinople ought to be second to the
Bishop of ancient Rome; and not only this, but he ought to rule over
the whole East with a supremacy like that which the Bishop of Rome had
always exercised over the whole {7} world. This false and schismatical
principle is contrary to the fundamental principle of Catholic church
organization, viz., that the subordination of episcopal sees springs
from the divine institution of the primacy in the See of St. Peter,
and is regulated by ecclesiastical canons on spiritual grounds, which
are superior to all considerations of a temporal nature. The Patriarch
of Constantinople has long ago lost all claim to precedence or
authority based on the civil dignity of the city as the seat of an
empire. According to the principles of his predecessors, the primacy
ought to have been transferred to the Patriarch of Moscow, when the
Russian patriarchate was established by Ivan III. Nevertheless, he
still continues to style himself ecumenical patriarch, and the eight
metropolitans who form his permanent synod continue to keep the
precedence over all other bishops of the patriarchate, although their
sees have dwindled into insignificance, and other episcopal towns far
exceed them in civil importance. In point of fact, the baselessness of
his claim to universal jurisdiction has been recognized by the Eastern
Church. His real authority is confined to the Turkish empire, where it
is sustained by the civil power. Russia has long been independent of
him. The Church of Greece has completely severed her connection with
him. The schismatical Greeks of the Austrian empire, and those of the
neighboring provinces, are severally independent. The false principle
that produced the Eastern schism in the first place thus continues to
work out its legitimate effect of disintegration in the Eastern
communion itself, by separating the national churches from the
principal church of Constantinople, which would itself crumble to
pieces if the support of the Ottoman power were removed. The
privileges of the See of Constantinople have now no valid claim to
respect, except that derived from ecclesiastical canons ratified by
time, general consent, and the sanction of the Roman Church. The
instinct of self-preservation ought to compel its rulers to fall back
on Catholic principles, and submit themselves to the legitimate
authority of the Roman Pontiff as the head of the Catholic Church
throughout the world. They are following, however, the contrary
impulse of self-destruction, to which they are abandoned by a just God
as a punishment for their treason to Jesus Christ and his Vicar, and
in every way seeking to strengthen and extend the barrier which
separates them from the Roman Church.

This policy has led them to do all in their power to establish a
dogmatic difference between the Oriental Church and the Church of
Rome. Not only do they represent the difference in regard to the
procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, as expressed by the
"Filioque" of the Creed, which was fully proved at the Council of
Florence to be a mere verbal difference, as a difference in regard to
an essential dogma, but they have brought in others to swell their
list of Latin heresies. The principal dogmatic differences on which
they insist are three: the doctrine of purgatory, the quality of the
bread used in the holy eucharist, and the mode of administering
baptism. Only the most deplorable ignorance and factiousness could
base a pretence of dogmatic difference on such a foundation. In regard
to purgatory, the Roman Church has defined or required nothing beyond
that which is taught by the doctrinal standards of the Eastern Church.
The difference in regard to the use of leavened or unleavened bread,
and the mode of baptism, is a mere difference of rite. In regard to
the last-mentioned rite, however, the clergy of Constantinople have
even surpassed their usual amount of ignorance and effrontery. They
pretend that no baptism except that by trine immersion is valid, and
consequently that the vast majority of Western Christians are
unbaptized. This position of theirs, which will no doubt be {8} very
satisfactory to our Baptist brethren, makes sweeping work, not only
with the Latin Church, but with Protestant Christendom. Where there is
no baptism, there is no ordination, no sacrament whatever, no church.
What will our Anglican friends say to this? The clergy of
Constantinople rebaptize unconditionally every one who applies to be
received into their communion, whether he be Catholic or Protestant,
clergyman or layman. It would be folly to argue against this
sacrilegious absurdity on Catholic grounds. It is enough to show their
inconsistency with themselves, by mentioning the fact that the Russian
Church allows the validity of baptism by aspersion, and that even
their own book of canons permits it in case of necessity. But why look
for any manifestation of the learning, wisdom, or Christian principle
which ought to characterize prelates from men who have bought their
places for gold, and who sell every episcopal see to the highest
bidder? The simony and bribery which have been openly and unblushingly
practised by the ruling clerical faction of the Turkish empire since
the time when the monk Simeon bought the patriarchal dignity from the
sultan, make this page of ecclesiastical history one of the blackest
and most infamous in character. As we might expect under such a
system, virtuous and worthy men are put aside, and the episcopate and
priesthood filled up from the creatures and servile followers of the
ruling clique. Such men naturally disgrace their holy character by
their immoral lives, and bring opprobrium on the Christian name. The
history of the patriarchate of Constantinople, therefore, since the
period of Gennadius and the first few successors who followed his
worthy example, has been stained with blood and crime, and darkened by
scenes of tragic infamy and horror. We will relate one of the most
recent of these, as a sufficient proof and illustration of the heavy
indictment we have made against the patriarchal clergy.

At the time of the Greek revolution, the patriarch and principal
clergy of Constantinople received orders from the sultan to use their
power in suppressing all co-operation on the part of the Christians in
Turkey with their brethren in Greece, and to denounce to the Ottoman
government all who were suspected of conniving at the insurrection.
Their political position no doubt required of them to remain passive
in the matter, to refrain from positively aiding the revolutionists,
and also to suppress all overt acts of the Christians under their
jurisdiction against the government. Nevertheless, as a people
unjustly enslaved by a barbarous, anti-Christian despotism, they owed
nothing more to their masters than this exterior obedience to the
letter of the law. They could not be expected to enter with a hearty
and zealous sympathy into the measures of the government for
suppressing the revolution; and, indeed, every genuine and noble
sentiment of Christianity and patriotism forbade their doing so, and
exacted of them a deep, interior sympathy with their cruelly oppressed
brethren who were so nobly struggling to free their country from the
hated yoke of the Moslem conqueror. The really high-minded Greeks of
the empire did thus sympathize with their brethren. The ruling clergy,
however, manifested a zeal for the interests of the Ottoman court so
_outré_ and so scandalous that it not only outraged the feelings of
their own subjects, but, as we shall see, aroused the suspicions of
the tyrants before whom they so basely cringed, and brought
destruction on their own heads. They accused a great number of
Christians of complicity in the insurrection, seizing the opportunity
of denouncing every one who had incurred their hatred for any reason
whatever, so that the prisons were soon crowded with their unfortunate
victims, all of whom suffered the penalty of death. The patriarch
pronounced a sentence of major excommunication against Prince
Ypsilanti, and all the Greeks who {9} took part in the revolt. A few
days afterward, on the first Sunday of Lent, during the solemnities of
the pontifical mass, the patriarch, his eight chief metropolitans, and
fifteen other bishops, pronounced the same sentence of
excommunication, together with the sentence of deposition and
degradation, against seven bishops of Greece, partisans of Prince
Ypsilanti, and all their adherents, signing the decree on the altar of
the cathedral church. Such a storm of indignation was raised by this
nefarious act, that the prelates were obliged to pacify their people
by pretending that they had acted under the compulsion of the
government. A few days after, the patriarch and the majority of the
bishops who had signed the decree were condemned to death and
executed, on the charge of participating in the revolution. Even after
the great powers of Europe had acknowledged the independence of
Greece, the ruling clergy of Constantinople endeavored to curry favor
at court by sending a commission, under the presidency of the
metropolitan of Chalcèdon, to recommend to the Greeks a return to the
Turkish dominion! It is needless to say that this invitation was
declined, although we cannot but admire the self-control of the Greek
princes and prelates when we are told that it was declined, and the
ambassadors dismissed, _in the most polite manner_.

One more intrigue, the last one they have been left the opportunity of
trying, closes the history of their relations with the Church of
Greece. The clergy and people of the new kingdom were equally
determined to throw off completely and for ever the ecclesiastical
tyranny of Constantinople. At the same time they were disposed to act
with diplomatic formality and ecclesiastical courtesy, as well as in
conformity with the laws and principle of the orthodox church of the
East. The second article of the constitutional chart of the kingdom
defines in a precise and dignified manner the position of the national
church. "The orthodox Church of Greece, acknowledging our Lord Jesus
Christ as its head, is perpetually united in dogma with the great
Church of Constantinople and every other church holding the same
dogmas, preserving, as they do, immutably the holy canons of the
apostles and councils, and the sacred traditions. Nevertheless, it is
autocephalous, exercising independently of every other church its
rights of jurisdiction, and is administered by a sacred college of
bishops." This article was established in 1844. In 1850, the clergy
obtained from the government the appointment of a commission, composed
of one clergyman, the archimandrite Michael Apostolides, professor of
theology in the University of Athens, and one layman, Peter
Deligianni, _chargé d'affaires_ at Constantinople, to establish
concordats with the patriarchate and the governing synod of Russia, on
the basis of the above cited article of the Greek constitution. In
lieu of this proposed concordat, the Greek commissioners were duped by
the patriarchal synod into signing a synodal act, in which the
Patriarch of Constantinople, qualifying his see as the vine of which
other churches are the branches, and styling himself and his
associates [Greek text]--"Watchful shepherds and scrupulous guardians
of the canons of the church"--pretends by his own authority to grant
independent jurisdiction to the Church of Greece as a privilege. At
the same time he designates the Archbishop of Athens as the perpetual
president of the synod, ordains that the holy chrism shall always be
brought from Constantinople, and imposes other obligations intended to
serve as signs of dependence on the Patriarchal Church. The Greek
parliament, however, annulled this concordat, and the synod of Greek
bishops at Athens determined that henceforth there should be no
relation between the Church of Greece and that of Constantinople,
subsequently even forbidding priests ordained out of {10} the kingdom
to officiate in the priesthood. Although the Greek clergy had shown
themselves so forbearing and patient, it seems that the arrogance and
perfidy of the clergy of Constantinople had at last roused their just
indignation. The learned archimandrite Pharmacides published a book
against the synodal act and the policy of the Constantinopolitan
clergy, entitled "Antitomos; or, Concerning the Truth," in which he
ridicules the pompous pretensions which they make to pastoral
vigilance and fidelity in these words:

"Since you obtained the sacerdotal dignity by purchase, if you had
really the intention in becoming bishops to watch and to fatigue
yourselves by guarding the Church, no one of you would be a bishop;
for you would not have spent your money in buying vigils and labors."

Such being the nature of the solicitude of these watchful pastors and
scrupulous guardians of the canons for the welfare of those over whom
they claim a patriarchal authority, we need not be surprised at any
amount of reckless contempt which they may show for the general
interests of Christendom, and the admonitions they from time to time
receive from the veritable pastor of the flock of Christ.
Nevertheless, we cannot but wonder that the respectable portion of the
Oriental episcopate should permit themselves to be compromised by an
act which seems to cap the climax of even Byzantine stupidity and
effrontery. We refer to the reply to the noble and paternal encyclical
of Pius IX. to the Oriental bishops, put forth by Anthimus, the late
patriarch. Anthimus himself was notorious throughout the city for his
habits of drunkenness, which were so gross as to incapacitate him from
all business and expose him to the most ignominious insults even from
his own subordinates. The letter which he and several of his bishops
subscribed and sent to the Holy Father was written by the monk
Constantine OEconomus, and, in answer to the earnest and affectionate
appeals of the Holy Father to return to the unity of the Catholic
Church, makes the following astounding statement:

"The three other patriarchs, in difficult questions, demand the
fraternal counsels of the one of Constantinople, _because that city is
the imperial residence_, and this patriarch has the synodal primacy.
If the question can be settled by his fraternal co-operation, very
well. But if not, the matter is _referred to the government_ (_i.e._,
Ottoman), _according to the established laws_."

We think that the reason of the grave charge of schism, heresy, and
apostacy from the fundamental, constitutive principles of the Catholic
Church, which we have made against the higher clergy of
Constantinople, will now be apparent to every candid reader. The
history of their action in relation to the Church of Greece proves
that their principles and policy tend to disintegrate within itself
still more that portion of Christendom which they have alienated from
the communion of Rome and the West, and thus to increase the force of
the movement of decentralization, and to augment the number of
separate, local, mutually independent, and hostile communions. That
the natural tendency of this principle is to produce dogmatic
dissensions, and to efface the idea of Catholic unity, is too evident
from past history to need proof. It is only neutralized in the East by
the stagnation of thought, and the consequent immobility of the
Oriental mind from its old, long established traditions. The
essentially schismatical _virus_ of the principle is in the
subordination of organic, hierarchical unity to the temporal power and
the civil constitution of states, or the church-and-state principle in
its most odious form, which was never more grossly expressed than in
the letter above cited of Anthimus. This principle not only tends to
increase disintegration in the church, but to bar the way to a
reintegration in unity, and to destroy all desire of a return to
unity, as is also amply proved by the acts of the clergy of
Constantinople. A schismatical principle held {11} and acted on in
such a way as to make schism a perpetual condition, and thus not
merely to interrupt communion for a time but to destroy the idea of
Catholic unity, becomes heretical. Moreover, when doctrinal forms of
expressing dogmas of faith, or particular forms of administering the
rites of religion, are without authority set forth as essential
conditions of orthodoxy, and made the basis of a judgment of heresy
against other churches, those who make this false dogmatic standard
are guilty of heresy. This is the case with the clergy of
Constantinople, who make the difference respecting the use of
"Filioque" in the Creed the pretext for accusing the Latin Church of
heresy, and who deal similarly with the doctrine of purgatory, and the
questions respecting unleavened bread in the eucharist and immersion
in baptism. They have constantly persisted in their effort to
establish an essential dogmatic difference between the Latin and Greek
Churches and to make the peculiarities of the Greek rite essential
terms of Catholic communion, in order to widen and perpetuate the
breach between the East and West, and to maintain their own usurped
principality. They have been the authors of the schism, its obstinate
promoters, the principal cause of thrusting it upon the other parts of
the Eastern Church, and the chief instrument of thwarting the
charitable efforts of the Holy See for the spiritual good of the
Oriental Christians. They have done it in spite of the best and most
ample opportunities of knowing the utter falsehood of all the grounds
on which their schism is based, in the face of the example and the
writings of the best and most learned of their own predecessors, and
with a recklessness of consequences, and a disregard of the interests
of their own people and of religion itself, which merits for them the
name not only of heretics, but of apostates from all but the name and
outward profession of Christianity.

This last portion of the case against them we must now prosecute a
little further, by showing what has been their conduct in the exercise
of their temporal power over their fellow-Christians in Turkey.

The reasons and extent of the civil authority conferred upon the
Patriarch Gennadius by Mahomet II. have already been exposed. It is
obvious that although this authority would have enabled the governing
clergy to succor and console their unhappy people in their condition
of miserable slavery, if they had been possessed of truly apostolic
virtue, it opened the way to the most frightful tyranny and
oppression, by presenting to the worst and most ambitious men a strong
motive to aspire to the highest offices in the church. No form of
government can be worse than that of privileged slaves of a despot
over their fellow-slaves. Accordingly, but a short time elapsed before
the unhappy Christians of Turkey began to suffer from the effects of
this terrible system. Simoniacal bishops who bought their own dignity
by bribing the sultans and their favorites, and sold all the inferior
offices in their gift to the highest bidder; who were careless and
faithless in the discharge of their spiritual duties; and who had
apostatized from the communion of the Catholic Church, would, of
course, exercise their civil functions in the same spirit and
according to the same policy. They associated themselves intimately
with the Janissaries, on whom they relied for the maintenance of their
power; gave their system of policy the name of the "System of
_Cara-Casan_," that is, "Ecclesiastical Janissary System;" enrolled
themselves as members of the _Ortas_ or Janissary companies, and bore
their distinguishing marks tattooed on their arms. This redoubtable
body found its most powerful ally in the clergy up to the time of its
destruction by Mahmoud II. The author of the work whose title is
placed at the head of this article, James G. Pitzipios, is a native
Christian subject of the Sultan of Turkey, and was the secretary of an
imperial commission appointed to examine into the {12} civil and
financial administration of the Christian communities, as well as to
hear their complaints against their rulers. His position and
circumstances, therefore, have enabled him to investigate the matter
thoroughly. His estimate of the civil administration of the clergy of
the patriarchate from the time of Mahomet II. to that of Mahmoud II.--
that is, from the Turkish conquest to the projected reformation in the
Ottoman government--is expressed in these words:

  "We have seen why it was that the Sultan Mahomet II. delegated the
  entire temporal power over his Christian subjects to the Patriarch
  Gennadius and his successors; gave to the religious head of the
  Christians of his empire the title of _Milet-bachi_, and rendered
  him the absolute master of the lot of all his co-religionists, as
  well as responsible for their conduct and for their fulfilment of
  all duties and obligations toward the government. Such an
  arrangement was calculated to produce in its commencement some
  alleviations and even some advantages to these unfortunate
  Christians, as in point of fact it actually happened. But it was
  sure to degenerate sooner or later into a frightful tyranny, such as
  is naturally that of privileged slaves placed over those of their
  own race. Accordingly, as we have stated in several places already,
  the clergy of Constantinople made use of all the means of
  oppression, of vexation, and of pillage of which the cunning, the
  depraved conscience, and the rapacity of slaves in authority are
  capable. The clergy of Constantinople having become in this way the
  absolute arbiters of the goods, the conscience, the social rights,
  and indirectly even of the lives of all their Eastern
  co-religionists, continued to abuse this temporal power not only
  during the period of the old regime, but even after the destruction
  of the Janissaries, and, again, after the reform in Turkey, and up
  to the present moment"   [Footnote 4] (1855).

  [Footnote 4: "L'Eglise Orientale," p. iv., pp. 17, 18.]

The allusion to the reform in the lost clause of this extract requires
a fuller explanation, and this explanation will furnish the most
conclusive evidence of the degradation of the patriarchate, by showing
that not only have its clergy submitted to be the tools of the Ottoman
government when it was disposed to oppress the Christians in the worst
manner, but that they have even resisted and thwarted the efforts of
that government itself, when it was disposed to emancipate the
Christians from a part of their bondage.

The Sultan Mahmoud I I., a man of superior genius and enlightened
views, devoted all the energies of his great mind to the effort of
restoring his empire, rapidly verging toward dissolution, to
prosperity and splendor. He devised for this end a gigantic scheme of
political reformation, one part of which was the abolition of all
civil distinction between his subjects of different religions. He was
unable to do more, during his lifetime, than barely to commence the
execution of his grand project. His son and successor, Abdul-Medjid,
continued to prosecute the same work, and, at the beginning of his
reign, published a decree called the _Tinzimat_, enjoining certain
reformations in the manner of administering law and justice in the
provinces. The Christian inhabitants of Turkey were the ones who ought
to have profited most by this decree. On the contrary, the very
privileges which it accorded them, by withdrawing them in great
measure from the authority of the local Mussulman tribunals, deprived
them of their only resource against the oppressions and exactions of
their own clergy, and rendered their condition worse. The bishops
succeeded in getting a more exclusive control than ever over all cases
of jurisdiction relating to Christians, and made use of their power to
fleece their people more unmercifully than they had ever done before.
Encouraged by the publication of die Tinzimat, these unhappy Christian
communities ventured to send remonstrances to the Ottoman {13}
government against their cruel and mercenary pastors. In consequence
of these remonstrances, the Porte addressed the following official
note, dated Feb. 4, 1850, to the Patriarch of Constantinople:

  "Since, according to the Christian religion, the bishops are the
  pastors of the people, they ought to guide them in the right way,
  protect them, and console them, but never oppress them. As, however,
  many metropolitans and bishops commit actions in the provinces
  _which even the most despicable of men would not dare to
  perpetrate_, the Christian populations, crushed under this
  oppression, address themselves continually to the government,
  supplicating it to grant them its assistance and protection.
  Consequently, as the government cannot refuse to take into
  consideration these just complaints of its own subjects, it wills
  absolutely that these disorders cease. It invites, therefore, the
  patriarch to convoke an assembly of bishops and of the principal
  laymen of his religion, and, in concert with them, to consider
  fraternally of the means of doing away with these oppressions and
  the just complaints in regard to them, by regulating their
  ecclesiastical and communal administration in conformity with the
  precepts of their own religion and with the instructions the
  Tinzimat."   [Footnote 5]

  [Footnote 5: Ibid., p. iii., p. 144.]

A very edifying sermon this, from a Mohammedan minister of state to
the "spiritual head of the ancient and venerable Oriental Church!"
Like many other sermons, however, it did not produce a result
corresponding to its excellence. The good advice it contained was
followed up by levying a new tax. The patriarch sent immediately to
all the bishops a circular in which he prescribed to them "to admonish
the people, that since the government had imposed upon the church the
obligation of conforming to the demands of certain dioceses, and
applying everywhere the system of giving fixed salaries to the
bishops, the most holy patriarch is obliged to conform himself to the
orders of the government and to put them in execution as soon as
possible. But since both the general commune of Constantinople and the
particular ones of the several dioceses are burdened with debts which
amount to about 7,000,000 of piastres, it is just that the people
should previously pay off these debts; the bishops are, therefore,
ordered to proceed immediately to an exact enumeration of all the
Christian inhabitants of the cities, towns, and villages, without
excepting either widows or unmarried persons. In this way the
patriarchate, taking the census as its guide, can assign to each
Christian the sum which he is bound to pay for the pre-extinction of
the communal debts, and afterward apply the system of fixed episcopal
revenues."   [Footnote 6]

  [Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 144., p. 145.]

The poor people, terrified by this enormous tax, and by the
persecution which overtook the prime movers in the remonstrance, as
the secretary of the commission on the Tinzimat informs us, "swallowed
painfully their grievances and no longer dared to continue their just
reclamations to the government." The Ottoman government, intimidated
by the threats of the ecclesiastical Janissaries of the Cara-Casan,
"was obliged to yield to the force of circumstances, as they were used
to do in the time of their terrible _confrères_, and abandoned the
question completely."

The Greek revolution has also in one way aggravated the lot of the
Christians of Turkey, by causing the compulsory or voluntary removal
from the capital of the principal merchants and other Christians of
superior station and influence, who formed the greatest check upon the
unworthy clerical rulers. Under the name of "primates of the nation,"
they had a share in the management of ecclesiastical finances and
other temporal affairs, and as their compatriot, Mr. Pitzipios,
affirms, "these good citizens, inspired by their charitable {14}
sentiments, and encouraged by the influence which they had with the
Ottoman government, repressed greatly the abuses of the clergy, and
moderated, as far as they were able, the vexations of the people."
[Footnote 7] The men of this class who remained in Constantinople were
removed by the government, as foreigners, from all share in the
administration of Christian' affairs, and their places filled with the
creatures of the patriarchal clique, men of the lowest rank and
character, who were ready tools for every nefarious work.

  [Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 147.]

As a natural consequence of the faithless abuse of the sacred
religious and civil trust committed to the higher clergy, they and
their inferior clergy are detested and despised by their people, who
are held in subjection to them only by physical coercion. Mr.
Pitzipios assures us that there is among them a very strong
predisposition to Protestantism. A form of deism, introduced by
Theophilus Cairy, a Greek priest, who died in prison in the year 1851,
made great progress before it was suppressed by the civil power, and
is now secretly working with great activity in Greece and Turkey.

We cannot but think that the last and most degraded phase of the
Byzantine _Bas Empire_, impersonated in the schismatical patriarchate
of Constantinople, is destined soon to pass away. We hope and expect
soon to see the end of the Ottoman power, which alone sustains this
odious ecclesiastico-political tyranny. The signs of the political
horizon appear to indicate that Russia is destined to gain possession
of the ancient seat of the Greek empire. However this may be, if the
Church of Constantinople, and the other far more ancient churches
within her sphere of jurisdiction, are ever to be restored to a
healthy Christian vitality, and made to reflourish as of old, it must
be by a thorough ecclesiastical reformation, which shall sweep away
the present dominant clique in the clergy and the whole policy which
they have established.

The beginning of this reformation has already been inaugurated in the
kingdom of Greece. The bishops of that kingdom, in recovering freedom
from the odious yoke of Constantinople, have recovered the character
of Christian prelates and pastors. The severe remarks which we have
made respecting the Oriental hierarchy must be understood as
applicable only to that particular clique who have heretofore made
themselves dominant through intrigue and violence. There no doubt have
been, and are, among the higher clergy of the Turkish empire, some
exceptions to the general rule of incompetence and moral unworthiness.
The Greek bishops themselves who were established in their sees under
the old regime, manifested by their open or tacit concurrence in the
revolution that virtue had not completely died out under the pressure
of a long slavery. Since the establishment of Grecian independence,
the measures they have taken, in concert with the other members of the
higher secular and monastic clergy and the government, for the
amelioration of religion, are such as to reflect honor on themselves,
and to give great promise for the future. They live in a simple and
frugal manner, and some of them, instead of leaving millions of
piastres to their relatives, like their Turkish brethren, have not
left behind them enough money to defray their own funeral expenses.
They endeavor to select the best subjects for ordination to the
priesthood and to give them a good theological and religious training.
Professorships of theological science are established in the
University of Athens. The catechism is carefully taught to the young
people and children, and every year ten of the most competent among
the clergy are sent at the public expense to preach throughout all the
towns and villages of the kingdom. Such is the happy result of the
successful effort of these noble Greeks, so endeared to every lover of
learning, valor, and {15} religion for the memories of their glorious
antiquity, to shake off the yoke of the sultans and the patriarchs of
Constantinople. It is this miserable amalgam of Moslem despotism, and
usurped or abused spiritual power in the hands of a degenerate clergy
at Constantinople, which is the great obstacle in the way of the
regeneration of the East. We have already seen that the ecclesiastical
tyranny of the patriarchate is now confined to the one hundred and
forty-two small bishoprics, and the few millions of people included in
them, which are situated in Turkey. Nevertheless, the political views
of the Russian emperors, and the traditional reverence of the Russian
clergy, still maintain the patriarch and his synod in a modified
spiritual supremacy over the Russian Church, to which two-thirds of
the Oriental rite belong. If Constantinople should fall into the hands
of any of the great powers of Western Christendom, of course the
Cara-Casan, or system of mixed ecclesiastical and civil despotism,
will be overturned, the patriarch will become a mere primate among the
other metropolitans of the nation, and the patriarchate be reduced to
a simply honorary dignity like that of the Western patriarchs of
Venice and Lisbon. If the Czar becomes the master of European Turkey,
the same result will take place, with this only exception, that the
See of Constantinople will become the primatial see of the Russian
empire, and the Russian hierarchy will take the place of the effete
Byzantine clergy, which they are far more worthy, from their learning
and strict morality, to occupy.

What is to be the political and ecclesiastical destiny of the East,
and Russia, its gigantic infant, who can foretell, without prophetic
gifts? If the Russian emperors prove that they are destined and are
worthy to begin anew and to fulfil the grand design of Constantine,
Theodosius, Justinian, Pulcheria, and Irene, by creating a thoroughly
Christian empire of the East, we shall rejoice to see them enthroned
in Constantinople. If they are destined to restore the cross to the
dome of St. Sophia, and to renovate the ancient glory of that temple,
desecrated by Christian infamy more than by the Moslem crescent, we
shall exult in their achievement. If new Chrysostoms and Gregories
shall rise up to efface the dishonor of their predecessors, we will
forget the past, and give them the homage due to true and worthy
successors of the saints. We have no desire to see the Church of
Constantinople degraded, or the Eastern Church humiliated. The
Oriental Church is orthodox and catholic in its faith, and its several
great rites are fully sanctioned and protected by the Holy See. The
heresies which are found among a portion of its clergy are personal
heresies, and have never been established by any great synod, or
incorporated into their received doctrinal standards. We do not
condemn the great body of its people of even formal schism, but rather
compassionate them as suffering from a state of schism which has been
forced on them by a designing and unworthy faction, and is perpetuated
in great part through misunderstanding, prejudice, and national
antipathies. The causes and grounds of this unnatural state must
necessarily come up among them very soon for a more thorough
investigation. Study, thought, discussion, and contact with Western
Catholicism, as well as Western Protestantism and rationalism, will
compel them to place themselves face to face with their own hereditary
and traditional dogmas; and either to be consistent with themselves,
and submit to the supremacy of the Roman See, or to give up their
orthodoxy and open the doors to a religious revolution. We cannot deny
that the latter alternative is possible, although we are sure that Dr.
Pusey, and men like-minded with him, would deplore it as a great
calamity. We trust it will be otherwise. The Easter morning of
resurrection, which {16} we are now celebrating, dawned for us in _the
East_. It is the land, of Christ and his apostles, the birth-place of
our religion. We hope the day of resurrection for its decayed and
languishing churches may not be far distant.

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.



1. Abbot Antony pointed out to a brother a stone, and said to him,
"Revile that stone, and beat it soundly."

When he had done so, Antony said, "Did the stone say anything?" He
answered, "No."

Then said Antony: "Unto this perfection shalt thou one day come."

2. When Abbot Arsenius was ill, they laid him on a mat, and put a pillow
under his head, and a brother was scandalized.

Then said his attendant to the brother: "What were you before you were
a monk?" He answered, "A shepherd." Then he asked again, "And do you
live a harder or an easier life now than then?" He replied, "I have
more comforts now." Then said the other, "Seest thou this abbot? When
he was in the world he was the father of emperors. A thousand slaves
with golden girdles and tippets of velvet waited on him, and rich
carpets were spread under him. _Thou_ hast gained by the change which
has made thee a monk; it is thou who art now encompassed with
comforts, but he is afflicted."

3. When Abbot Agatho was near his end, he remained for three days with
his eyes open and steadily fixed.

His brethren shook him, sayings "Abbot, where are you?"

He replied, "I stand before the judgment seat."

They said, "What, father! do you you too fear? think of your works."

He made answer: "I have no confidence till I shall have met my God."

4. Abbot Pastor was asked, "Is it good to cloak a brother's fault?"

He answered: "As often as we hide a brother's sin, God hides one of
ours, but he tells ours in that hour in which we tell our brother's."

5. The Abbot Alonius said: "Unless a man says in his heart, I and my
God are the only two in the world, he will not have rest."

6. Abbot Pambo, being summoned by St. Athanasius to Alexandria, met an
actress, and forthwith began to weep. "I weep," he said, "because I do
not strive to please my God as she strives to please the impure."

7. An old monk fell sick and for many days could not eat, and his
novice made him some pudding. There was a vessel of honey, and there
was another vessel of linseed oil for the lamp, good for nothing else,
for it was rancid. The novice mistook, and mixed up the oil in the
pudding. The old man said not a word, but ate it.

The novice pressed him, and helped him a second time, and the old man
ate again.

When he offered it the third time, the old man said, "I have had
enough;" but the novice cried, "Indeed, it is very good. I will eat
some with you."

When he had tasted it, he fell on his face and said: "Father, I shall
be the death of you! Why didn't you speak?"

The old man answered: "Had it been God's will that I should eat honey,
honey thou wouldst have given me."

{17}


From The Literary Workman.

JENIFER'S PRAYER.

BY OLIVER CRANE.

IN THREE PARTS.


I.

He and she stood in a room in an inn in the town of Hull--and how she
wept! Crying as a child cries, with a woman's feelings joining
exquisite pain to those tears; which tears, in a way wonderful and
peculiar to beautiful women, scarcely disordered her face, or gave
anything worse to her countenance than an indescribably pathetic
tenderness.

He was older than she was by full ten years. He only watched her. And
if the most acute of my readers had watched _him_, they would have
been no wiser for their scrutiny.

At last she left the room; he had opened the door and offered his hand
to her. It was night; and she changed her chamber-candle from her
right hand to her left, and gave that right hand to him. He held it,
while he said: "I spoke because I dread the influence of the house we
are going to, and of those whom you will meet there."

"Thank you. Good night" And so she got to a great dark bed-room, and
knelt down, like a good girl as she was, and cried no more, but was in
bed and asleep before he had left the place he had taken by the side
of the sitting-room fire, leaning thoughtfully against the
mantel-shelf, when her absence had made the room lonely.

Then he ran down stairs and rushed out into the streets of the kingly
Hull--Kingston of the day of Edward I. The man we speak of was no
antiquary, and he troubled himself neither with the Kingston of the
royal Edward nor the _Vaccaria_ of the abbot from whom the place was
bought; he walked at a quick pace through streets dim and streets
lighted, toward the ships, or among the houses; to where he could see
the great headland of Holderness, or behold nothing at all but the
brick wall that prevented his going further, and told him by strong
facts that he had lost his way. So he wandered, walking fast
often--again, walking slowly; his head bowed down, his features
working, and his eyes flashing--clenched hands, or hands clasped on
his breast, as if to keep down the surging waves of memory, which
carried on their crests many things which now he could only gnash his
teeth at in withering vexation.

He and she had come from Scotland. I have said that she was
beautiful--she was English, too; but he was Scotch born and bred, and
not dark and stem, or really wild or poetic, as a Scotchman in a story
ought to be. He was simply a strong, well-formed man, of dark, ruddy
complexion, and fine, thick, waving brown hair. He might have been a
nobleman, or a royal descendant of Hull's own king. He looked it all,
without being downright handsome. But he was, in fact, only one of the
many men who have come into a thousand a year too soon for the
preservation of prudence. Between sixteen, when he succeeded to it,
and twenty-one, when he could spend it, he had committed many follies,
and found friends who turned out worse than declared enemies--since
twenty-one he had fallen {18} in love more than once. He had been
praised, blamed, accused, acquitted. But whether or not this man was
good or bad, no living soul could tell. He was well off, well looking,
well read, and in good company. He re-entered the inn at Hull that
April night, stood by the fire smoking, asked for a cup of strong
coffee, went to bed.

The next morning the two met at breakfast They were going south. No
matter where. Whether to the dreamy vales of Devonshire, to verdant
Somersetshire, or the gardens of Hampshire--no matter. They were going
to what the north Britons call the south. And it did not mean Algeria.
Railways were not everywhere then as railways are now. They had to
travel nearly all day, then to "coach it" to a great town, in whose
history coaches have now long been of the past. Then to get on a
second day by the old "fast four-horse," and to arrive about five
o'clock at a little quiet country town, where a carriage would take
them to the friends and the house whose influence he dreaded.

In fact, that night, in the inn sitting-room, he had offered marriage
to the girl whom he had in charge for safe guardianship on so long a
journey to her far-off home where he was to be a guest. She had felt
that he had abused his trust and taken an unfair advantage of her;
also, she was in that peculiarly feminine state of mind which is
neither expressed by _no_ nor by _yes_. She had upbraided him. He,
pleading guilty in his soul, was in a horror at the thought of losing
her; losing her in that way too, because he had done wrong. Being
miserable, he had shown his misery as a strong man may. He spoke, and
self-reproachfully; but, as he pleaded, he betrayed all he felt. The
girl saw his clasped hands, his bent form, as he leaned down from the
chair on which he sat in the straggling attitude which expressed a
disordered mind. He spoke, looking at the carpet, not loud nor long,
but with a terrible earnestness that frightened the girl, and then she
cried all the more, and seemed to shrink away as if in alarm, and yet
almost angrily. Why would he speak so fiercely--why had he taken this
advantage of her?

Then he had risen up quickly, and said, "Well, you know all now. We
will talk of something else." But she only shook her head and moved
away, and, as we have seen, went to bed.

The next morning they met calmly enough. On his side it was done with
an effort; on hers without effort, yet with a little trembling fear,
which went when she saw his calm, and she poured out tea, and he drank
it, and only a rather extraordinary silence told of too much having
being said the night before.

Now, why was all this? Why were this man and this young English girl
travelling thus to the sweet south coast, and to expecting friends?

While they are travelling on their way, we, you and I, dear reader,
will not only get on before them, but also turn back the pages of
life's story, and read its secrets.

They were going to a great house in a fine park, where fern waved its
tall, mounted feathers of green, and hid the dappled deer from sight--
where great ancestral oaks spread protecting branches; where hawthorn
trees, that it had taken three generations of men to make, stood,
large, thick, knotted, twisted--strange, dark, stunted looking trees
they looked, till spring came, and no green was like their green, and
the glory of their flower-wreaths people made pilgrimages to see. The
place was called Beremouth.

A mile and a half off was a town; one of those odd little old places
which tell of days and fashions past away. A very respectable place.
There had lived in Marston the dowager ladies of old country families,
in houses which had no pretensions to grandeur as you passed them in
the extremely quiet street, but which on the other side broke out into
bay windows, garden fronts, charming conservatories, and a {19} good
many other things which help to make life pleasant. So the inhabitants
of Marston were not all mere country-town's people. They knew
themselves to be _somebodies_ and they never forgot it.

Now, in this town dwelt a certain widow lady; poor she was, but she
had a pedigree and two beautiful daughters. Mary and Lucia Morier were
not two commonly, or even uncommonly, pretty girls; they were
wonderfully beautiful, people said, and nothing less. So lovers came a
courting. One married a Scotchman, a Mr. Erskine. They liked each
other quite well enough, Lucia thought, when she made her promises,
and received his; and so they did. They lived happily; did good;
wished for children but never had any, and so adopted Mr. Erskine's
orphan nephew--namely, the very man who behaved with such strange
imprudence in the inn at Hull. Mr. Erskine the uncle was twenty years
older than Mrs. Erskine the aunt. Mr. Erskine the younger was but a
child when they adopted him. But he was their heir, as well as the
inheritor of his father's' fortune, and they loved and cared for him.

Mary Morier did differently. She married at twenty, her younger sister
having married the month before at eighteen. Mary did differently, for
she did imprudently. They had had a brother who was an agent for
certain mines thirty miles off; and there he lived; but he came home
often enough, and made the house in the old town gay. A year before
the sister married, in fact while that sister was away on a visit to
friends in Scotland, the brother came home ill. He was ill for six
months. It is wonderful how much expense is incurred by a mother in
six months for a son who is sick. It made life very difficult. The
money to pay for Lucia's journey home had to be thought of. To be
sure, she was not there to eat and drink, but then her extra finery
had cost something. George had only earned one hundred a year. It had
not been more than enough to keep him. He came home ill with ten
pounds in his pocket, beside his half-year's rent, which would be due
the next month--certainly money at this time was wanted, for our
friends were sadly pinched. But the one most exemplary friend and
servant Jenifer was paid her wages, and tea and sugar money to the
day; and the doctor got so many guineas that he grew desperate and
suddenly refused to come--then repented, and made a Christian-like
bargain, that he would go on coming on condition that he never saw
another piece of any kind of money.

Mary and her mother looked each other in the face one day, and that
look told all. There was some plate, and they had watches, and a
little fine old-fashioned jewelry--yes, they must go. They were
reduced to poverty at last--this was more than "limited means"--hard
penury had them with a desperate grasp.

Fortune comes in many shapes, and not often openly, and with a
flourish of trumpets--neither did she come in that way now; but
shamefacedly, sneakingly, and ringing the door-bell with a meek, not
to say tremulous pull; and her shape was that of a broad-built, short,
wide-jawed, lanky-haired, pig-eyed, elderly man, with a curious
quantity of waistcoat showing, yet, generally, well dressed. "Your
mistress at home?" "Yes, Mr. Brewer." "Mr. George better?" "No. Never
will be, sir." "Bless me! I beg your pardon!" "Granted before 'tis
asked, sir." "Ah! yes; I have a little business to transact with your
mistress. Can I see her alone?" Mr. Brewer was shown by Jenifer into
the little right-hand parlor. He gravely took out a huge pocket-book,
and then a small parchment-covered account-book appeared. I believe he
had persuaded himself that he was really going to transact business,
and not to perform the neatest piece of deception that a {20}
respectable gentleman ever attempted. A lady entered the room. "Madam,
jour son has been my agent for mines three years--my mine _and land_
agent since Christmas. He takes the additional work at seventy-five
pounds a year extra. The half of that is now due to him. I pay _that_
myself. I have brought it" And thirty-seven pounds ten shillings Mr.
Brewer put on the table, saying, "I will take your receipt, madam.
Don't trouble Georges's head about business; for when you _do_ speak
of that you will have, I am sorry to say, to inform him that in _both_
his places I have had to put another man. I have to give George three
months' payment at the rate of one hundred and seventy pounds a year,
as I gave him no quarter's warning. That is business, do you
understand?" asked Mr. Brewer. "It is for my son to discharge himself,
sir--since he cannot"--the mother's voice faltered. "Ah--only he
didn't, and I did," said Mr. Brewer. "Your receipt? When your son
recovers, let him apply to me. I am sorry to end our connexion so
abruptly. But it is business. Business, you know"--and there Mr.
Brewer stopped, for Mary Morier was in the room, and her beauty filled
it, or seemed to do so. And Mr. Brewer departed muttering, as he had
muttered before often, "the most beautiful girl in the world." Still,
he had an uncomfortable sensation, for he felt he was an underhand
sneak, and that Mary had found him out; and so she had. She knew that
her brother had been "discharged" only to afford a pretext for giving
the quarter's money; and she was sure that his being land agent, at an
additional seventy-five pounds a year, was a pure unadulterated
fiction.

Mr. Brewer was an extraordinary man. He had a turn for the
supernatural. He would have liked above all things to have worked
miracles. He did do odd things, such as we have seen, which he made,
by means of the poetic quality that characterized him, a purely
natural act. He was praising George for a saving, prudent, industrious
young man, who had never drawn the whole of his last year's salary,
before an hour was over. And his story looked so like truth that he
believed it himself.

Mr. Brewer was what people call "a risen man." But then his father had
been rising--and, for the matter of that, his grandfather too. All
their fortunes had flowed into the life of the man who has got into
this story; and he, having had a tide of prosperity exceeding all
others, in height, and strength, and riches, had found himself
stranded on the great shore of society, at forty years of age, with
more thousands a year than he liked to be generally known. Could he
have transformed himself into a benignant fairy he would have been
very happy, and acts of mercy would have abounded on the earth. But
no--Mr. Brewer was Mr. Brewer, and anything less poetic to look
at--more impossible as to wands, and wings, and good fairy appendages,
it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Brewer was a middle-aged man, with
hands in his pockets; plain truth is always respectable. There it is.

But there was a Mrs. Brewer. Now Mrs. Brewer was an excellent woman,
but not excellent after the manner of her husband. She was three years
older. They had not been in love. They had married at an epoch in Mr.
Brewer's life when public affairs occupied his time so entirely as to
make it desirable to have what people call a "missus;" we are afraid
that Mr. Brewer himself so called the article, a "missus, at home."
Mrs. Brewer had been "a widow lady--young--of a sociable and domestic
disposition" who "desired to be housekeeper--to be treated
confidentially, and as one of the family--to a widower--with or
without children." On inquiry, it was found that young Mrs. Smith had
not irrevocably determined that the owner of the house that she was to
keep should have been the husband of one wife, undoubtedly {21} dead;
the widower was an expression only, a sort of modest way of putting
the plain fact of a single man, or a man capable of matrimony--the
expression meant all that; and when Mrs. Smith entered on the
housekeeping, she acted up to the meaning of the advertisement, and
married Mr. Brewer. Neither had ever repented. Let that be understood.
Only, Mr. Brewer, when he knew he could live in a great house, dine
off silver, keep a four-in-hand, or a pack of hounds, or enter on any
other legitimate mode of spending money, did none of them; but eased
his mind and his pocket by such contrivances as we have seen resorted
to in the presence of the beautiful Mary Morier. He tried curious
experiments of what a man would do with ten pounds. He had dangerous
notions as to people addicted to certain villanies being cured of
their moral diseases by the administration of a hundred a year. In
some round-about ways he had put the idea to the proof, and not always
with satisfactory results. He held as an article of faith--nobody
could guess where he found it--that there were people in the world who
could go straighter in prosperity than in adversity. He never would
believe that adversity was a thing to be suffered. He had replied to a
Protestant divine on that subject, illustrated in the case of a
starving family, that that might be, only it was no concern of his,
and he would not act upon the theory. And the result was a thriving,
thankful family in Australia, to whom Mr. Brewer was always, ever
after, sending valuable commodities, and receiving flower-seeds and
skins of gaudy feathered birds in return.

Mr. Brewer had a daughter, Claudia was her name. "A Bible name," said
Mr. Brewer, and bowed his head, and felt he had done his duty by the
girl. What more could he do? She went to school, and was at school
when he was paying money in Mrs. Morier's parlor. She was then ten
years old; and being a clever child, she had, in the holidays just
over, chosen to talk French, and nothing else, to a friend whom she
had been allowed to bring with her. A thing that had caused great
perturbation in the soul of her honest father, who prayed in a
wordless, but real anxiety, that the Bible name might not be thrown
away on the glib-tongued little gipsy. It will be perceived that
Claudia was a difficulty.

Now, when Mr. Brewer was gone out of Mrs. Morier's house, the mother
took up the money, wiped her eyes, and said, "What a good boy George
was." And Mary said "_Yes;_" and knew in her heart that if there had
been any chance of George living, Mr. Brewer would never have done
_that_.

George died. There was money, just enough for all wants. Lucia came
home engaged to the married to Mr. Erskine. And when she was gone
there went with her a certain seven hundred pounds, her fortune,
settled--what a silly mockery Mr. Erskine thought it--on her children.
The loss made the two who were left very poor. Lucia sent her mother
gifts, but the regular and to be reckoned on eight-and-twenty pounds a
year were gone. She who had eaten, drank, and dressed was gone
too--but still it was a loss; and Mary and her mother were poor. Also,
Mary had long been engaged to be married to the son of a younger
branch of a great county family house, Lansdowne Lorimer by name. He
was in an attorney's office in Marston. In that old-world place, the
attorney, himself of a county family, was a great man. It was hard to
see Lucia marry a man of money and land, young Lorimer thought, so he
advised Mary to assert their independence of all earthly
considerations, and marry too. And they did so.

The young man had no father or mother. He had angry uncles and
insolent aunts, and family friends, all to be respected, and prophets
of evil, every one of them. He had, also, a place in the office, a
clear head, a determined will, a handsome {22} person, a good
pedigree, and a beautiful wife. She, also, had her eight-and-twenty
pounds a year. But they gave it back regularly to Mrs. Morier; for,
you know, they, the young people, _were_ young, and they could work.
Mrs. Morier never spent this money. She and Jenifer, the prime
minister of that court of loyal love, put it by, against the evil day,
and they had just enough for themselves and the cat to live upon
without it.

The county families asked their imprudent kinsman to visit them with
his bride. How they flouted her. How they advised her. How they
congratulated her that she had always been poor. How they assured her
that she would be poor for ever. How, too, they feared that Lansdowne
would never bear hard work, nor anxiety, nor any other of those
troubles which were so very sure to happen. How surprised they were at
the three pretty silk dresses, the one plain white muslin, and the
smart best white net. How they scorned when they heard that she and
Jenifer, and her mother, and a girl at eightpence a day, had made them
all. And, then, how they sunned themselves in her wonderful beauty,
and accepted the world's praises of it, and kept the triumph
themselves, and handed over to her the gravest warnings of its being a
dangerous gift.

Dangerous, indeed! it was the pride of Lorimer's life. And Mary was
accomplished, far more really accomplished than the lazy, half-taught
creatures who had never said to themselves that they might have to
play and sing, and speak French and Italian, for their or their
children's bread. Mary had said it to herself many a time since her
heart had been given to the man who was her husband. A true, brave,
loving heart it was, and that which her common sense had whispered to
it that heart was strong to do, and would be found doing if the day of
necessity ever came. So, at that Castle Dangerous where the bride and
bridegroom were staying, Mary outshone others, and was not the
better loved for that; and one old Lady Caroline crowned the triumph
by ordering a piano-forte for the new home at Marston, with a savage
"Keep up what you know, child; you may be glad of it one day." Old
Lady Caroline was generally considered as a high-bred privileged
savage. But that was the only savage thing she ever said to Mary. She
told Lorimer that he was a selfish, unprincipled brute for marrying
anybody so perfect and so pretty. And Lorimer bore her
misrepresentations with remarkable patience, only making her a
ceremonious bow, and saying in a low voice, "You know better." "I know
you will starve," and she walked off without an answer.

They did not starve. In fact, they prospered, till one sad day when
Lorimer caught cold--and again and again caught cold--cough, pain,
symptoms of consumption--a short, sad story; and then the great end,
death. Mary was a widow three years after her wedding day, with a
child of two years of age at her side, and an income from a life
insurance made by her husband of one hundred a year. We have seen the
child--grown to a beautiful girl of seventeen--we have seen her in the
room with Mr. Erskine, at the inn at Hull.

Mrs. Lorimer went back to live with her mother, Jenifer, and the great
white cat.

The year after this great change, Mrs. Brewer died, and Claudia at
thirteen was a greater difficulty than ever. The first holidays after
the departure of the good mother, the puzzled father had written to
the two Miss Gainsboroughs to bring the child to Marston and stay at
his house during the holidays. He entertained them for a week, and
then went off on a tour through Holland. The next holidays he proposed
that they should take a house at Brighton, and that he should pay all
expenses. This, too, was done, and Mr. Brewer went to a hotel and
there made friends with his precocious daughter in a way that
surprised and pleased {23} him. He visited the young lady, and she
entertained him. He hired horses, and they rode together. He took
boxes at the theatre, and they made parties and went together. He gave
the girl jewelry and fine clothes, and they really got to know each
other, and to enjoy life together as could never have been the case
had they not been thus left to their own way. The child no longer felt
herself of a different world from that of her parents--the father had
a companion in the child who could grace his position, and keep her
own. They parted with love and anxious lookings forward to the summer
meeting. They were both in possession of a new happiness. When Mr.
Brewer got back to Marston, he led a dull, dreamy life--a year and a
half of widowhood passed--then he went to Mrs. Morier's, saw Mary, and
asked her to be his wife. It is not easy to declare why Mary Lorimer
said--after some weeks of wondering-mindedness--why she said "Yes."
She knew all Mr. Brewer's goodness. She preferred, no doubt, not to
wound a heart that had so often sympathized with the wounded. She
never, in her life, could have borne to see him vexed without great
vexation herself. She liked that he should be rewarded. She was
interested in Claudia. She liked the thought of two hundred a year
settled on her mother. She liked to feel that her own little Mary
might be brought up as grandly as any of those little saucy "county
family" damsels, her cousins, who already looked down on her, and
scorned her pink spotted calico frock.

Mary and Mr. Brewer walked quietly to church; Mrs. Morier still in
astonishment, and Jenifer "dazed;" bat all the working people loved
Mr. Brewer. And they walked back, man and wife, to her mother's house,
and had a quiet substantial breakfast before they started for London.
And when there Mr. Brewer told her that they were not to return to the
respectable stone-fronted house facing the market-place in Marston,
but that he had bought Lord Byland's property--and that Beremouth was
theirs. Beremouth, with its spreading park, and river, and lake, its
miles of old pasture-land, its waving ferns, and dappled deer;
Beremouth, with its forest and gardens, royal oaks and twisted
hawthorn trees; Beremouth, the finest place in the county. And all
that Mary felt was, that he who had kept this secret, had had a true
hero's delicacy, and had never thought to bribe her, or to get her by
purchase into his home. I think she almost loved him then.

In due time, after perhaps six months of wandering, and of
preparation, Mr. and Mrs. Brewer arrived at their new home, made
glorious by all that taste and art could do, with London energy
working with the power of gold. With them came Claudia. The child
loved her new mother with an abandonment of heart and a perfect
approval. She was still too young to argue, but she was not too young
to feel. The mother she had now got, though not much more than ten
years older than herself, was the mother to love, admire, delight
in--is the mother who could understand her.

Then Beremouth just suited this young lady's idea of what was worth
having in this world; and without any evil thought of the homely
mother who had gone, there was a thought that "Mother-Mary," as Mrs.
Brewer was called by her step-daughter, looked right at Beremouth, and
that another class of person would have looked wrong there--so wrong
that her father under such circumstances would never have put himself
in the position of trying the experiment.

Minnie Lorimer was very happy in her great play-ground; for all the
world, and all life, was play to little Minnie. She loved her new
sister; and the new sister patronized and petted her, so all seemed
right. It was, indeed, a great happiness for Claudia that her father
had chosen Mary Lorimer. Claudia was a vixenish, little handsome
gipsy; very clever, very {24} high-spirited, full of life, health, and
fun--a girl who could have yielded to very few, and who brought the
homage of heart and mind to "Mother-Mary," and rejoiced in doing it.
These two grew to be great friends, and when after three years Claudia
came home and came out, all parties were happy.

In the meantime Mr. Brewer's way in the world had been straight,
plain, and rapidly travelled. The county was at his feet. Mary was no
longer congratulated on having been brought up to poverty. Behind her
back there were plenty of people to say that Mr. Brewer was happy in
having for his wife a well connected gentlewoman. Her pedigree was
told, her poverty forgotten. Her singing and playing, dancing and
drawing, were none the worse for unknown thousands a year. And people
wondered less openly at the splendor of velvets and diamonds than they
had at the new muslin gown. To Mary herself life was very different in
every way. Daily, more and more, she admired her husband, and approved
of him. It was the awakening into life of a new set of feelings. She
knew none of the love and devotion she had felt for her first husband.
Mr. Brewer never expected any of it. But he intended that she should,
in some other indescribable manner, fall in love with him, and she was
doing it every day--which thing her husband saw, and welcomed life
with great satisfaction in consequence.

It was when Claudia came out that the man we have seen, Horace
Erskine, first came to them. He was just of age. Mary did not like
him. She could give no reason for it. Her sister had always praised
him--but Mary _could_ not like him. He came to them for a series of
gay doings, and Mr. Brewer admired him, and Claudia--poor little
Claudia! She gave him that strong heart of hers; that spirit that
could break sooner than bend was quite enslaved--she loved him, and he
had asked for her love, and vowed a hundred times that he could never
be happy without it. He asked her of her father, and Mr. Brewer
consented. It was not for Mary to say no; but her heart went cold in
its fear, and she was very sorry.

The Erskines in Scotland were delighted--all deemed doing well. But
when Horace Erskine talked to Mr. Brewer about money, he was told that
Claudia would have on her marriage five thousand pounds; and ten
thousand more if she survived him would be forthcoming on his death--
that was all. "Enough for a woman," said Mr. Brewer; and Erskine was
silent. It went on for a few weeks, Horace, being flighty and odd,
Claudia, for the first time in her life, humble and endearing. Then he
told her that to him money was necessary; then he asked her to appeal
to her father for more; then she treated the request lightly, and, at
last, positively refused. If she had not enough, he could leave her.
If he left her, would she take the blame on herself? It would injure
him in his future hopes and prospects to have it supposed to be _his_
doing if they parted? Yes, she said. It was the easiest thing in the
world. Who cared?--not he of course--and, certainly, not Claudia
Brewer. It broke her heart to find him vile. But she was too
discerning not to see the truth; her great thought now was to hide it.
To hide too from every one, even from "Mother-Mary," that her heart
felt death-struck--that the whole place was poisoned to her--that life
at Beremouth was loathsome.

She took a strange way of hiding it.

A county election was going on. The man whom Mr. Brewer hoped to see
elected was a guest at Beremouth. An old, grey-haired, worldly,
statesmanlike man. A man who petted Claudia, and admired her; and who
suddenly woke up one day to a thought--a question--a species of
amusing suggestion, which grew into a {25} profound wonder, and then
even warmed into a hope--surely that pretty bright young heiress liked
him, had a fancy to be the second Lady Greystock. It was a droll
thought at first, and he played with it; a flattering fancy, and he
encouraged it. He was an honest man. He knew that he was great,
clever, learned. Was there anything so wonderful in a woman loving
him? He settled the question by asking Claudia. And she promised to be
his wife with a real and undisguised gladness. Her spirit and her
determination were treading the life out of her heart. She was sincere
in her gladness. She thought she could welcome any duties that took
her away from life at Beremouth, and gave her place and position
elsewhere.

Mary suspected much, and feared everything. But Claudia felt and knew
too much to speak one word of the world of hope and joy and love that
had gone away from her. She declared that she liked her old love, and
gloried in his grey hairs, and in the great heart that had stooped to
ask for hers.

Now what are we to say of Horace Erskine? Was he wholly bad? First, he
had never loved Claudia with a real devotion. He had admired her; she
had loved him. He had gambled--green turf and green cloth--gambled
and recklessly indulged himself till he had got upon the way to ruin,
and had begun the downward path, and was glad to be stopped in that
slippery descent by a marriage with an heiress. There was a sparkle,
an originality, about Claudia. It was impossible not to be taken with
her. But Claudia with only _that_ fortune was of no use to him. He
knew she was brave and true-hearted; so he boldly asked her to guard
his name--in fact, to give him up, and not injure his next chance with
a better heiress by telling the truth. _He_ told _her_ the truth; that
he wanted money, and money he must have. She would not tell him that
the worst part of her trial was the loss of her idol. It was despising
him that broke her heart. But because he had been her idol she would
never injure him--never tell.

So the day came, and at Marston church she married Sir Geoffrey
Greystock, "Mother-Mary" wondering; Mr. Brewer believing, in the
innocence of his heart, that the fancy for Horace Erskine had been a
bit of the old wilfulness. "The last bit--the last," he said, as he
spoke of it to her that very day, making her chilled heart knock
against her side as he spoke, and kissed her, and sent her with
blessings from the Beremouth that she had married to get away from.

_To get away_--it had more to do with her marrying than any other
thought. To get away from the house, the spreading pastures, the
bright garden, and above all from the _old deer pond_ in the park--the
most beautiful of all the many lovely spots that nature and art, and
time and taste, had joined to create and adorn Beremouth. The old deer
pond in the park! Sheltered by ancient oak; backed by interlacing
boughs of old hawthorn trees; shadowed by tall, shining, dark dense
holly, that glowed through the winter with its red berries, and
contrasted with the long fair wreaths of hawthorn flowers in the sweet
smiling spring. There, in this now dreaded place, Horace Erskine had
first spoken of love; and there how often had he promised her the
happiness that had gone out of her life--for ever. In the terrible
nights, when her broken-hearted pains were strongest, this deer pond
in the park had been before her closed eyes like a vision. In its
waters she saw in her sleep her face and his, so happy, so loving, so
trusting, so true. Then the picture in that water changed, and she
watched it in her feverish dreams with horror, but yet was obliged to
gaze, and the truth went out of his face, and the terror came into
hers. And, worse and worse, he grew threatening--he was cold--he had
never loved--he was killing her; and she fell, fell from her height of
happiness; no protecting {26} arm stayed her, and the dark waters
opened, and she heard the rushing sound of their deadly waves closing
over her, as she sunk--sunk--again and again, night after night Oh, to
get away, to get away! And she blessed Sir Geoffrey, and when he said
he was too old to wait for a wife she was glad, for she had no wish to
wait. Change, absence, another home, another life, another
world--these things she wanted, and they had come. Is it any wonder
that she took them as the man who is dying of thirst takes the
longed-for draught, and drains the cup of mercy to the dregs?

It was a happy day to marry. Mr. Brewer had not only an excuse, but a
positively undeniable reason for being bountiful and kind. For once he
could openly, and as a matter of duty, make the sad hearts in
Marston--and elsewhere--sing for joy. His blessings flowed so
liberally that he had to apologize. It was only for once--he begged
everybody's pardon, but it could never happen again; he had but this
one child, and she was a bride, and so if they would forgive
everything this once! And many a new life of gladness was begun that
day; many a burden then lost its weight; many a record went up to the
Eternal memory to meet that man at the inevitable hour.

Little Mary was the loveliest bridesmaid the world ever saw; standing
alone like an angel by her dark sister's side. She was the only thing
that Claudia grieved to leave. She was glad to flee away from
"Mother-Mary." She dreaded lest those sweet wistful eyes should read
her heart one day; and she could not help rejoicing to get away from
that honest, open-hearted father's sight. Her poor, wrecked, shrunken
heart--her withered life, could not bear the contrast with his free,
kind, bounteous spirit that gave such measure of love, pressed down
and running over, to all who wanted it. Her old husband, Sir Geoffrey,
resembled that great good heart in whose love she had learnt to think
all men true, more than did her young lover Horace Erskine--she could
be humble and thankful to Sir Geoffrey; a well-placed approval was a
better thing than an ill-placed love. So with that little vision of
beauty, Minnie Lorimer, by her side, Claudia became Sir Geoffrey's
wife.

Four months past, the bride and bridegroom were entertaining a grand
party at their fine ancestral home, and Mr. Brewer was the father of a
son and heir. Horace Erskine read both announcements in the paper one
morning, and ground his teeth with vexation. He went to his desk and
took out three letters, a long lock of silky hair, a small
miniature--these things he had begged to keep. Laughing, he had argued
that he was almost a relation. His uncle had married "Mother-Mary's"
sister. She had had no strength to debate with him. She had chosen to
wear the mask of indifference, too, to him. He now made these things
into a parcel and sent them to Sir Geoffrey Greystock without one word
of explanation. When they were gone he wrote to his uncle, begged for
some money, got it, and started for Vienna. The money met him in
London, and he crossed to France the same day.

In the midst of great happiness the strong heart of good Sir Geoffrey
stood still. His wife sought him. She found him in his chair in a fit.
On a little table by his side was the parcel just received. Claudia
knew all. She took the parcel into the room close by, called her
dressing room, rung for help, but in an hour Sir Geoffrey was dead;
and Claudia had burnt the letters and the lock of silky hair.

The business of parliament, the excitement attendant on his marriage
with that beautiful girl, the entertainment of that great house full
of company--these reasons the world reckoned up, and found sufficient
to answer the questions and the wonderings on Sir Geoffrey's death.
But when those solemn walls no longer knew their master, Claudia, into
whose new life the new things held but an {27} unsteady place, grew
ill. First of all, sleepless nights: how could she sleep with the
sound of those waters by the deer pond in her ears? How could she help
gazing perpetually at the picture on the pond's still surface: Horace
and Sir Geoffrey, and herself not able to turn aside the death-stroke,
but standing, fettered by she knew not what, in powerless misery, only
obliged to see the changing face of her husband till the dead seemed
to be again before her, and Horace melted out of sight, and she woke,
dreading fever and praying against delirium? She was overcome at last.
Terrible hours came, and "Mother-Mary's" sweet face mingling with some
strong, subduing, life-endangering dream, was the first thing that
seemed to bring her back to better things, and to restore her to
herself.

In fact, Claudia had had brain fever, and whether or not she was ever
to know real health again was a problem to be worked out by time.
Would she come back to her father's house? No! The very name of
Beremouth was to be avoided. Would she go abroad? Oh, no; there was a
dread of separation upon her. "Somewhere where you can easily hear of
me, and I of you; where you can come and see me, for I shall never see
Beremouth again." It was her own thought, and so, about five miles
from Beremouth, in the house of a Doctor Rankin, who took ladies out
of health into his family, Claudia determined to go. It was every way
the best thing that could be done, for every day showed more strongly
than the last that Claudia would never be what is emphatically called
"herself" again. So people said.

Dr. Rankin was kind, learned, and wise; Mrs. Rankin warm-hearted and
friendly. Other patients beside Lady Greystock were there. It was not
a private asylum, and Claudia was not mad; it was really what it
called itself, a home which the sick might share, with medical
attendance, cheerful company, and out-door recreations in a well-kept
garden and extensive grounds of considerable beauty. Claudia had known
Dr. and Mrs. Rankin, and had called with her father at Blagden, where
they lived. And there her father and "Mother-Mary" took her three
months after her husband's death, looking really aged, feeble, and
strangely sad.

After a time--it was a long time--Claudia was said to be well.
"Perfectly recovered," said Dr. Rankin, "and in really satisfactory
health." So she was when Minnie Lorimer stood in the room at the inn
in Hull, talking to that very Horace Erskine, who was bringing her
home from her aunt's in Scotland to her mother at Beremouth.

"Sweet seventeen!" Very sweet and beautiful, pleasing the eye,
gratifying the mind, filling the heart with hope, and setting
imagination at play--Minnie Lorimer was beautiful, and with all that
peculiar beauty about her that belongs to "a spoilt child" who has not
been spoilt after all.

Claudia--how old she looked! Claudia, with that one only shadow on her
once bright face, was still living with Dr. and Mrs. Rankin. It was
Lady Greystock's pleasure to live with them. She said she had grown
out of the position of a patient, and into their hearts as a friend.
"Was it not so?" she asked. It was impossible to deny that which
really brought happiness to everybody. "Well, then, I shall build on a
few rooms to the house, and I shall call them mine, and I shall add to
the coach-house, and hire a cottage for my groom and his wife--I shall
live here. Why not? You will take care of me, and feed me, and scold
me, and find me a good guidable creature. You know I shall be ill if
you refuse."

It all happened as she chose. Hers was the prettiest carriage in the
county, the best horses, the most perfectly appointed little
household--for she had her own servants. Among her most devoted
friends were the good doctor and his wife. Lady Greystock was as
positive and as much given to {28} govern as the clever little Claudia
in school-girl days. But the arrangement was a success, and
"Mother-Mary," who saw her constantly, was very glad. Only one trouble
survived; Claudia would never go and stay at Beremouth. She would
drive her ponies merrily to the door, and even spend an hour or two
within the house, but never would she stay there--never! She used to
say to herself that she dared not trust herself with the things that
had witnessed her love, her sorrow, her marriage--with the things that
told her of him who had ruined everything like a murderer--as he was.

And so, to save appearances, she used to say that she never stayed
away from Blagden for a single night, and she never left off black. It
was not that she wore a widow's dress, or covered up the glories of
her beautiful hair. She was but twenty-nine at the moment recorded in
the first page of this story. She was very thin and pale, but she was
a strong woman, and one who required no more care than any other
person; but she had determined never again to see Horace Erskine. What
he had done had become known to her, as we have seen. She only
bargained with life, as it were, in this way, that _that_ man should
be out of it for ever. And for this it was that she made her
resolution and kept it.

Horace Erskine had been abroad for some years; but though she had felt
safe in that fact, she had looked into the future and kept her
resolution. And so she lived on at Blagden, doing good, blessing the
poor, comforting the afflicted, visiting the sick, and beautifying all
things, and adorning all places that came within her reach. Certain
things she was young enough to enjoy greatly; the chief of these was
the contemplation of Frederick Brewer, her half-brother, a fine boy of
nine years old, for nine years of widowhood had been passed, and
through all that time this boy, her dear father's son, had been Lady
Greystock's delight. She loved "Mother-Mary" all the better for having
given him to her father, and she felt a strong, unutterable
thanksgiving that, his birth having been expected, the test of whether
or not Horace Erskine loved her for herself had been applied before
she had become chained to so terrible a destiny as that of being wife
to a thankless, disappointed man. Terrible as her great trial had
been, she might have suffered that which, to one of her temper, would
have been far worse. So Fred Brewer would ride over to see his sister.
Day after day the boy's bright face would be laid beside her own, and
to him, and only to him, would she talk of Sir Geoffrey. Then they
would ride together down to Marston to see Mrs. Morier and Jenifer,
who was a true friend, and lived on those terms with the lady who
loved her well; then to the market-place where the old home stood, now
turned into an almshouse of an eccentric sort, with all rules included
under one head, that the dear old souls were to have just whatever
they wanted. Did Martha Gannet keep three parrots, and did they eat as
much as a young heifer? and scream, too? ah, that was their
nature--never go against a dumb creature's nature, Mr. Brewer said
there was always cruelty in that--and did they smell, and give
trouble, and would they be mischievous, and tear Mrs. Betty's cap?
Indeed. Mr. Brewer was delighted. An excellent excuse for giving new
caps to all the inmates, and to look up all troubles, and mend
everybody's griefs--such an excellent thing it was that the fact of
three parrots should lead to the discovery of so many disgraceful
neglects that Mr. Brewer begged leave to apologize very heartily and
sincerely while he diligently repaired them. It was a very odd school
to bring up young Freddy in. But we are obliged to say that he was not
at all the worse for it.

And here we must say what we have not said before. Mr. Brewer was a
Catholic. He and Jenifer were {29} Catholics; Mrs. Brewer had not been
a Catholic; and Claudia had been left to her mother's teaching. When
Freddy was born, Mr. Brewer considered his ways. And what he saw in
his life we may see shortly. He had been born of a Catholic mother who
had died, and made his Protestant father promise to send him to a
Catholic school. He had stood alone in the world, he had always stood
alone in the world. He seemed to see nothing else. Three miles from
Marston was a little dirty sea-port, also a sort of fishing place. A
place that bore a bad character in a good many ways. Some people would
have finished that character by saying that there were Papists there.
To that place every Sunday Mr. Brewer went to mass. Many and many a
lift he had given to Jenifer on those days. How much Jenifer's talk
assisted his choice of Mary for his wife, we may guess. When Freddy
was born Jenifer said her first words on the subject of religion to
Mr. Brewer: "You will have him properly baptized:" "Of course." "Order
me the pony cart, and I'll go to Father Daniels." "I must tell Mrs.
Brewer." "Leave that to me--just send for the cart." It _was_ left to
Jenifer. By night the priest had come and gone. It had not been his
first visit. He had been there many times, and had known that he was
welcome. The Clayton mission had felt the blessing of Mr. Brewer's
gold. He had seldom been at the house in the market-place in Marston,
but at Beremouth Mary had plucked her finest flowers, and sent them
back in the old gentleman's gig, and he had been always made welcome
in her husband's house with a pretty grace and many pleasant
attentions. Now, when Freddy was baptized, Mr. Brewer went to his wife
and bent over her, and said solemnly, "Mary--my dear wife; Mary--I
thank thee, darling. I thank thee, my love." And the single tear that
fell on her cheek she never forgot.

Then Mr. Brewer met Jenifer at his wife's door. "It's like a new life,
Jenifer." And the steady-mannered woman looked in his bright eyes and
saw how true his words were.

"It's a steady life of doing good to everybody that you have ever led,
sir. It was a lonely life once, no doubt. I was dazed when she married
you. But, eh, master; I have _that_ to think about, and _that_ to pray
for, that a'most makes me believe in anything happening to _you_ for
good, when so much is asked for, day and night, in my own prayer."

"Put _us_ into it; let me and mine be in Jenifer's prayer," he said,
and passed on.


TO BE CONTINUED.

----

From The Month.


PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR THE STEAM-ENGINE.


The present year has been remarkable for the large number of machines
invented for the purpose of superseding steam, in at least some of its
lighter tasks. Many of these are due to French engineers; being
further proofs, if any were required, of the great activity now
displayed in France in all matters of mechanical invention.

Two of these new engines are especially interesting as illustrating
that all-important law in modern physics, the correlation or
convertibility of forces. By this is meant that the forces of
inanimate nature, such as light, heat, electricity--nay, even the
muscular and nerve forces of living beings--have such a mutual
dependence and connection that each one is only produced or called
into action by another, and only ceases to be manifest when it has
given birth to a fresh force in its turn. Thus motion (in the {30}
shape of friction) produces heat, electricity, or light; heat produces
light or electricity; electricity, magnetism; and so on in an endless
chain, which links together all the phenomena of this visible
universe.

As a metaphysical principle, this is as old as Aristotle, and may be
found dimly foreshadowed in the forcible lines of Lucretius:

  "--Pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether
  In gremium matris terrai praecipitavit;
  At nitidae surgunt fruges, ramique virescunt,
  Arboribus crescunt ipsae, fetuque gravautur,
  Hinc alitar porro nostrum genus atque ferarum.

* * * * * *

  Haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur,
  Quando aliud ex alio reflcit natura, nec ullam
  Rem gigni patitur, nisi morte adjuta aliena."   [Footnote 8]

  [Footnote 8: Lucret. lib. i. 250-65.]

But the rediscovery of this law, as a result of experiment, is due to
English physicists of our own day; and it is so invariably true, and
the produced force is always so perfectly proportioned to the force
producing it, that some   [Footnote 9] have gone so far as to revive a
very old hypothesis in philosophy, supposing that all the forces of
nature are but differently expressed forms of the Divine Will.

  [Footnote 9: Dr. Carpenter, Philos. Trans. 1840, vol. ii. ]

As a corollary to this law, it follows that many a force of nature,
hitherto neglected because of its position or intractability, may be
turned to practical account by using it to produce some new power,
which may be either stored up or transmitted to a distance, and so can
be employed wherever and whenever it is required. Thus, in the first
machine we propose to notice, a M. Cazal has just hit upon a plan by
which to use the power of falling water at a considerable distance. He
employs a water-wheel to turn a magneto-electric machine (of the kind
used for medical purposes, on a very large scale), and the electric
force so obtained may be conveyed to any distance, and employed there
as a motive power. In this way a mountain stream in the Alps or
Pyrenees may turn a lathe, or set a loom in motion, in a workshop in
Paris or Lyons; or even (as has been remarked), if a wire were laid
across the Atlantic, the whole force of Niagara would be at our
disposal.

The idea is at present quite in its infancy; but we are told that the
few experiments hitherto made show that such an engine is not only
very ingenious but perfectly feasible, and (most important of all)
economical.

The second engine gave promise of considerable success when first
brought out in Paris about eight months ago. It was invented by a M.
Tellier, and proceeds on the principle of storing up force, to be used
when wanted. It has long been well known to chemists that a certain
number of gases (as chlorine, carbonic acid, ammonia, and sulphuretted
hydrogen) can be condensed into liquids by cold or pressure, or both
combined. Of all these gases, ammonia is the most easily liquefied,
requiring for this purpose, at ordinary temperatures, a pressure only
six and a half times greater than that of the atmosphere. A supply of
liquid ammonia obtained in this manner is kept by M. Tellier in a
closed vessel, and surrounded with a freezing mixture, so that it has
but little tendency to return to the gaseous state. A small quantity
is allowed to escape from this reservoir under the piston of the
engine, and, the temperature there being higher than in the reservoir,
the ammonia becomes at once converted into gas, increasing thereby to
more than twelve hundred times its previous bulk, and so driving the
piston with great force to the top of the cylinder. A little water is
now admitted, which entirely dissolves the ammonia, a vacuum being
thus created, and the piston driven down again by the pressure of the
air without. M. Tellier employs three such cylinders, which work in
succession; and the only apparent limit to the power to be obtained
from this machine is the amount of liquid ammonia which would have to
be used, about three gallons (or twenty-two pounds) being required for
each horse-power per hour. There is no waste of material; for the
water which has dissolved {31} the gas is saved, and the ammonia
recovered from it by evaporation, and afterwards condensed into a
liquid. M. Tellier proposed to use his engine for propelling omnibuses
and other vehicles; but it would appear that it is too expensive and
too cumbrous to be practically useful; there can, however, be very
little doubt that the principle will be used with success in some new
form. A patent has quite recently been taken out for such an engine in
England. It will be perceived at once how the ammonia engine
illustrates the law of storing up force. It originates no power of its
own, but simply gives out by degrees the mechanical force which had
been previously employed to change the ammonia from a gas to a liquid.

Lenoir's "gas-engine" has been more successful; for, although but a
few months old, it has been already largely adopted in Parisian
hotels, schools, and other large establishments, for raising lifts,
making ices, and even--for what is not done now-a-days by
machinery?--cleaning boots. In London, it was lately exhibited in
Cranbourne Street, and is now used for turning lathes and for other
light work.

This engine, like the ammonia-engine, is provided with an ordinary
cylinder, into which coal-gas and air are admitted, under the piston,
in the proportions of eleven parts of the latter to one of the former.
The mixture is then exploded by the electric spark, and the remaining
air, being greatly expanded, drives up the piston. When the top is
reached the gas and air are again admitted, but this time above the
piston, and the explosion is repeated, so that the piston is driven
down again. The most ingenious part of the whole thing is the
mechanism by which the electric spark is directed alternately to the
upper and lower ends of the cylinder. This cannot be satisfactorily
explained without a diagram, but is brought about (roughly speaking)
by connecting either end of the cylinder with a semicircle of brass,
which is touched by the "rotary crank" in the course of its
revolution. The crank is already charged with electricity, and so
communicates the electric spark to each of the semicircles in turn.
The cylinder is kept plunged in water, so that there is no fear of its
overheating by the constant explosions.

This engine has cheapness for its main recommendation. A
half-horsepower gas-engine (the commonest power made) costs, when
complete, £65, and consumes twopence worth of gas per hour; while the
cost of keeping the battery active is about fourpence per week.

An engineer of Lyons, M. Millon, has since proposed to use, instead of
coal-gas, the gases produced by passing steam over red-hot coke. These
gases are found to explode rather more quickly than coal-gas, when
mixed with common air, and fired by the electric spark. They will
probably be found cheaper and more efficient when they can be
obtained; but in many cases coal-gas will be the only material
available.

A M. Jules Gros has recently invented an engine in which gun-cotton is
exploded in a strong reservoir and air compressed in another, the
compressed air being afterward employed to move the pistons of the
machine. This sounds more dangerous than it perhaps really is, since
gun-cotton is now known to be more tractable than gunpowder, when
properly used; but we very much doubt whether the machine can be
regular or economical enough to be more than a curiosity.

To close the list of French inventions of this kind, we may state that
Count de Molin has lately patented an electro-magnetic machine, which,
he states, will be more powerful than any previously made. It is too
complicated for a mere verbal description to be of any use; but is
apparently not free from the fault of all electro-magnetic engines, of
costing too much to be of practical value.

{32}

[ORIGINAL]

CHRISTINE.

A TROUBADOUR'S SONG,

IN FIVE CANTOS,

BY GEORGE H. MILES.  [Footnote 10]

  [Footnote 10: Copyright secured.]

PRELUDE.

  The Queen hath built her a fairy Bower
  In the shadow of the Accursed Tower,
  For the Moslem hath left his blood-stained lair,
  And the banner of England waveth there.
  Thither she lureth the Lion King
  To hear a wandering Trovère sing;
  For well she knew the Joyous Art
  Was surest path to Richard's heart.
  But the Monarch's glance was on the sea--
  Sooth, he was scarce in minstrel mood,
  For Philip's triremes homeward stood
  With all the Gallic chivalry.
  And as he watched the filmy sail
  Upon the furthest billow fail,
  He muttered, "Richard ill can spare
  Thee and thy Templars, false and fair;
  Yet God hath willed it--home to thee,
  Death or Jerusalem for me!"
  Then pressing with a knightly kiss
  The peerless hand that slept in his,
  "Ah, would our own Blondel were here
  To try a measure I wove last e'en.
  What songster hast thou caught, my Queen,
  Whose harp may soothe a Monarch's ear?"
  She beckoned, and the Trovère bowed
  To many a Lord and Ladye fair
  That gathered round the royal pair;
  But most his simple song was vowed
  To a sweet shape with dark brown hair,
  Half hidden in the gentle crowd;
  Pale as a spirit, sharply slender.
  In maiden beauty's crescent splendor.
  And never yet bent Minstrel knee
  To Mistress lovelier than she.

{33}



THE FIRST SONG.

I.

  Ye have heard of the Castle of Miolan
  And how it hath stood since time began,
  Midway to yon mountain's brow,
  Guarding the beautiful valley below:
  Its crest the clouds, its ancient feet
  Where the Arc and the Isère murmuring meet
  Earth hath few lovelier scenes to show
  Than Miolan with its hundred halls,
  Its massive towers and bannered walls,
  Looming out through the vines and walnut woods
  That gladden its stately solitudes.
  And there might ye hear but yestermorn
  The loud halloo and the hunter's horn,
  The laugh of mailèd men at play.
  The drinking bout and the roundelay.
  But now all is sternest silence there.
  Save the bell that calls to vesper prayer;
  Save the ceaseless surge of a father's wail,
  And, hark! ye may hear the Baron's Tale.


II.

  "Come hither. Hermit!--Yestermorn
    I had an only son,
  A gallant fair as e'er was born,
    A knight whose spurs were won
  In the red tide by Godfrey's side
    At Ascalon.

{34}

  "But yestermorn he came to me
    For blessing on his lance,
  And death and danger seemed to flee
    The joyaunce of his glance,
  For he would ride to win his Bride,
    Christine of France.

  "All sparkling in the sun he stood
    In mail of Milan dressed,
  A scarf, the gift of her he wooed,
    Lay lightly o'er his breast.
  As, with a clang, to horse he sprang
    With nodding crest

  "Gaily he grasped the stirrup cup
    Afoam with spicy ale,
  But as he took the goblet up
    Methought his cheek grew pale.
  And a shudder ran through the iron man
    And through his mail.

  "Oft had I seen him breast the shock
    Of squire or crownèd king,
  His front was firm as rooted rock
    When spears were shivering:
  I knew no blow could shake him so
    From living thing.

  "'Twas something near akin to death
    That blanched and froze his cheek,
  Yet 'twas not death, for he had breath,
     And when I bade him speak,
  Unto his breast his hand he pressed
    With one wild shriek.

  "The hand thus clasped upon his heart
    So sharply curbed the rein,
  Grey Caliph, rearing with a start,
    Went bounding o'er the plain
  Away, away with echoing neigh
    And streaming mane.

  "After him sped the menial throng;
    I stirred not in my fear;
  Perchance I swooned, for it seemed not long
    Ere the race did reappear,
  And my son still led on his desert-bred.
    Grasping his spear.

{35}

  "Unchanged in look or limb, he came.
    He and his barb so fleet,
  His hand still on his heart, the same
    Stem bearing in his seat,
  And wheeling round with sudden bound
    Stopped at my feet.

  "And soon as ceased that wildering tramp
    'What ails thee, boy?' I cried--
  Taking his hand all chill and damp--
    'What means this fearful ride?
  Alight, alight, for lips so white
    Would scare a Bride!'

  "But sternly to his steed clove he,
    And answer made he none,
  I clasped him by his barbèd knee
    And there I made my moan;
  While icily he stared at me,
    At me alone.

  "A strange, unmeaning stare was that,
    And a page beside me said,
  'If ever corse in saddle sat,
    Our lord is certes sped!'
  But I smote the lad, for it drove me mad
    To think him dead.

  "What! dead so young, what! lost so soon,
    My beautiful, my brave!
  Sooner the sun should find at noon
    In central heaven a grave!
  Sweet Jesu, no, it is not so
    When Thou canst save!

  "For was he dead and was he sped,
    When he could ride so well,
  So bravely bear his plumèd head?
    Or, was't some spirit fell
  In causeless wrath had crossed his path
    With fiendish spell?

  "Oh. Hermit, 'twas a cruel sight.
    And He, who loves to bless,
  Ne'er sent on son such bitter blight.
    On sire such sore distress,
  Such piteous pass, and I, alas,
    So powerless!

{36}

  "They would have ta'en him from his horse
    The while I wept and prayed,
  They would have lain him like a corse
    Upon a litter made
  Of traversed spear and martial gear.
    But I forbade.

 "I gazed into his face again,
    I chafed his hand once more,
  I summoned him to speak, in vain--
    He sat there as before,
  While the gallant Grey in dumb dismay
    His rider bore.

  "Full well, full well Grey Caliph then
    The horror seemed to know.
  E'en deeper than my mailèd men
    Methought he felt our woe;
  For the barbed head of the desert-bred
    Was drooping low.

  "Amazed, aghast, he gazed at me,
    That mourner true and good.
  Then backward at my boy looted he.
    As if a word he sued.
  And like sculptured pile in abbey aisle
    The train there stood.

  "I took the rein: the frozen one
    Still fast in saddle sate.
  As tremblingly I led him on
    Toward the great castle gate.
  O walls mine own, why have ye grown
    So desolate?--

  "I led them to the castle gate
    And paused before the shrine
  Where throned in state from earliest date,
    Protectress of our line.
  Madonna pressed close to her breast
    The Babe Divine.

  "And kneeling lowly at her feet,
     I begged the Mother mild
  That she would sue her Jesu sweet
    To aid my stricken child;
  And the meek stone face flashed full of grace
    As if she smiled.

{37}

  "And methought the eyes of the Full of Grace
    Upon my darling shone,
  Till living seemed that marble face
    And the living man seemed stone,
  While a halo played round the Mother Maid
    And round her Son.

  "And there was radiance everywhere
    Surpassing light of day,
  On man and horse, on shield and spear
    Burned the bright, blinding ray;
  But most it shone on my only one
    And his gallant Grey.

  "A sudden clang of armor rang,
    My boy lay on the sward.
  Up high in air Grey Caliph sprang,
    An instant fiercely pawed.
  Then trembling stood aghast and viewed
    His fallen lord.

  "Then with the flash of fire away
    Like sunbeam o'er the plain,
  Away, away with echoing neigh
    And wildly waving mane.
  Away he sped, loose from his head
    The flying rein.

  "I watched the steed from pass to pass
    Unto the welkin's rim,
  I feared to turn my eyes, alas,
    To trust a look at him;
  And when I turned, my temples burned
    And all grew dim.

  "Sweet if such swoon could endless be,
    Yet speedily I woke
  And missed my boy: they showed him me
    Full length on bed of oak.
  Clad as 'twas meet in mail complete
     And sable cloak.

  "All of our race upon that bier
    Had rested one by one,
  I had seen my father lying there,
    And now there lay my son!
  Ah! my sick soul bled the while it said--
    'Thy will be done!'

{38}

  "Bright glanced the crest, bright gleamed the spur,
     That well had played their part,
  His lance still clasped, nor could they stir
    His left hand from his heart;
  There fast it clove, nor would it move
    With all their art

  "I found no voice, I shed no tear.
    They thought me well resigned.
  All else who stood around the bier
    With weeping much were blind;
  And a mourning voice went through the house
    Like a low wind.

  "And there was sob of aged man
    And woman's wailing cry,
  All cheeks were wan, all eyes o'erran,
    Yon fair-haired maidens sigh.
  And one apart with breaking heart
    Weeps bitterly.

  "But sharper than spear-thrust, I trow,
    Their wailing through me went;
  Stem silence suited best my woe,
    And, howe'er well the intent.
  Their menial din seemed half akin
    To merriment

  "For oh, such grief was mock to mine
    Whose days were all undone.
  The last of all this ancient line
    To share whose grief was none!
  Straight from the hall I barred them all
    And stood alone.

  "'Receive me now, thou bed of oak!'
     I fell upon the bier.
  And, Hermit, when this morning broke
    It found me clinging there.
  O maddening morn! That day dare dawn
    On such a pair!

  "I sent for thee, thou man of God,
    To watch with me to-night;
  My boy still liveth, by the rood,
    Nor shall be funeral rite!--
  But, Hermit, come: this is the room:
    There lies the Knight!"

{39}

III.

      But she apart
      With breaking heart?--
  That very yestermorn she stood
  In the deepest shade of the walnut wood,
  As a Knight rode by on his raven steed,
  Crying, "Daughter mine, hast thou done the deed?
  I gave thee the venom, I gave thee the spell,
  A jealous heart might use them well."
  But she waved her white arms and only said,
  "On oaken bier is Miolan laid!"
  "Dead!" laughed the Knight. "Then round Pilate's Peak
  Let the red light burn and the eagle shriek.
  When Miolan? heir lies on the bier,
  Low is the only lance I fear:
        I ride, I ride to win my Bride,
        Ho, Eblis, to thy servant's side.
        Thou hast sworn no foe
        Shall lay me low
  Till the dead in arms against me ride!"

------

THE SECOND SONG.

I.

  They passed into an ancient hall
    With oaken arches spanned.
  Full many a shield hung on the wall,
    Full many a broken brand.
  And barbèd spear and scimetar
    From Holy Land.

  And scarfs of dames of high degree
    With gold and jewels rich,
  And many a mouldered effigy
    In many a mouldering niche,
  Like grey sea shells whose crumbling cells
    Bestrew the beach.

{40}

  The sacred dead possessed the place,
    The silent cobweb wreathed
  The tombs where slept that warrior race,
    With swords for ever sheathed:
  You seemed to share the very air
    Which they had breathed.

  Oh, darksome was that funeral room,
    Those oaken arches dim,
  The torchlight, struggling through the gloom,
    Fell faint on effige grim,
 On dragon dread and carvèd head
    Of Cherubim.

  Of Cherubim fast by a shrine
    Whereon the last sad rite
  Was wont for all that ancient line,
    For dame and belted knight--
  A shrine of Moan which death alone
    Did ever light.

  But light not now that altar stone
    While hope of life remain,
  Though darksome be that altar lone,
    Unlit that funeral fane,
  Save by the rays cast by the blaze
    Of torches twain.

  Of torches twain at head and heel
    Of him who seemeth dead,
  Who sleepeth so well in his coat of steel.
    His cloak around him spread--
  The young Knight fair, who lieth there
    On oaken bed.

  One hand still fastened to his heart.
    The other on his lance,
 While through his eyelids, half apart.
   Life seemeth half to glance.
  "Sweet youth awake, for Jesu's sake,
    From this strange trance!"

  But heed or answer there is none.
    Then knelt that Hermit old;
  To Mother Mary and her Son
    Full many a prayer he told,
  Whose wondrous words the Church records
    In lettered gold:

{41}

  And many a precious litany
    And many a pious vow,
  Then rising said, "If fiend it be,
    That fiend shall leave thee now!"
  And traced the sign of the Cross divine
    On lips and brow.

  As well expect yon cherub's wings
    To wave at matin bell!
  Not all the relics of the kings
   Could break that iron spell.
  "Pray for the dead, let mass be said,
    Toll forth the knell!"

  "Not yet!" the Baron gasped and sank
    As if beneath a blow,
  With lips all writhing as they drank
    The dregs of deepest woe;
  With eyes aglare, and scattered hair
    Tossed to and fro.

  So swings the leaf that lingers last
    When wintry tempests sweep,
  So reels when storms have stripped the mast
    The galley on the deep,
  So nods the snow on Eigher's brow
    Before the leap.

  Uncertain 'mid his tangled hair
    His palsied fingers stray,
  He smileth in his dumb despair
    Like a sick child at play.
  Though wet, I trow, with tears eno'
    That beard so grey.

  Oh, Hermit, lift him to your breast,
    There best his heart may bleed;
  Since none but heaven can give him rest,
    Heaven's priest must meet his need:
  Dry that white beard, now wet and weird
    As pale sea-weed.

  Uprising slowly from the ground,
    With short and frequent breath.
  In aimless circles, round and round,
    The Baron tottereth
  With trailing feet, a mourner meet
    For house of death.

{42}

  Till, pausing by the shrine of Moan,
    He said, the while he wept,
  "Here, Hermit, here mine only one,
    When all the castle slept,
  As maiden knight, o'er armor bright,
    His first watch kept.

  "This is the casque that first he wore,
    And this his virgin shield.
  This lance to his first tilt he bore,
    With this first took the field--
  How light, how lâche to that huge ash
    He now doth wield!

  "This blade hath levelled at a blow
    The she-wolf in her den.
  With this red falchion he laid low
    The slippery Saracen.
  God! will that hand, so near his brand,
    Ne'er strike again?

  "Frown not on him, ye men of old.
    Whose glorious race is run;
  Frown not on him, my fathers bold.
    Though many the field ye won:
  His name and los may mate with yours
    Though but begun!

  "Receive him, ye departed brave,
    Unlock the gates of light.
  And range yourselves about his grave
    To hail a brother knight.
  Who never erred in deed or word
    Against the right!

  "But is he dead and is he sped
    Withouten scathe or scar?
  Why, Hermit, he hath often bled
    From sword and scimetar--
  I've seen him ride, wounds gaping wide,
    From war to war.

  "And hath a silent, viewless thing
    Laid danger's darling low,
  When youth and hope were on the wing
    And life in morning glow?
  Not yonder worm in winter's storm
    Perisheth so!

{43}

  "Oh, Hermit, thou hast heard, I ween,
    Of trances long and deep,
  But, Hermit, hast thou ever seen
    That grim and stony sleep.
  And canst thou tell how long a spell
    Such slumbers keep?

  "Oh, be there naught to break the charm,
    To thaw this icy chain;
  Has Mother Church no word to warm
    These freezing lips again;
  Be holy prayer and balsams rare
    Alike in vain? . . . .

  "A curse on thy ill-omened head;
    Man, bid me not despair;
  Churl, say not that a Knight is dead
    When he can couch his spear;
  When he can ride--Monk, thou hast lied.
    He lives, I swear!

  "Up from that bier! Boy, to thy feet!
    Know'st not thy father's voice?
  Thou ne'er hast disobeyed . . . is't meet
    A sire should summon thrice?
  By these grey hairs, by these salt tears,
    Awake, arise!

  "Ho, lover, to thy ladye flee,
    Dig deep the crimson spur;
  Sleep not 'twixt this lean monk and me
    When thou shouldst kneel to her!
  Oh 'tis a sin, Christine to win
    And thou not stir!

  "Ho, laggard, hear yon trumpet's note
    Go sounding to the skies,
  The lists are set, the banners float.
    Yon loud-mouthed herald cries,
  'Ride, gallant knights, Christine invites.
    Herself the prize!'

  "Ho, craven, shun'st thou the melée,
    When she expects thy brand
  To prove to-day in fair tourney
    A title to her hand?
  Up, dullard base, or by the mass
    I'll make thee stand!" . . . .

{44}

  Thrice strove he then to wrench apart
    Those fingers from the spear.
  Thrice strove to sever from the heart
    The hand that rested there.
  Thrice strove in vain with frantic strain
    That shook the bier.

  Thrice with the dead the living strove,
    Their armor rang a peal,
  The sleeping knight he would not move
    Although the sire did reel:
  That stately corse defied all force,
    Stubborn as steel.

  "Ay, dead, dead, dead!" the Baron cried;
    "Dear Hermit, I did rave.
  O were we sleeping side by side! . .
    Good monk, I penance crave
  For all I said .... Ay, he is dead,
    Pray heaven to save!

  "Betake thee to thy crucifix,
    And let me while I may
  Rain kisses on these frozen cheeks
    Before they know decay.
  Leave me to weep and watch and keep
    The worm at bay.

  "Thou wilt not spare thy prayers, I trust;
    But name not now the grave--
  I'll watch him to the very dust! ....
    So, Hermit, to thy cave.
  Whilst here I cling lest creeping thing
    Insult the brave!"

------

  Why starts the Hermit to his feet,
    why springs he to the bier,
  Why calleth he on Jesu sweet,
    Staying the starting tear.
  What whispereth he half trustfully
    And half in fear?

{45}

  "Sir Knight, thy ring hath razed his flesh--
    'Twas in thy frenzy done;
  Lo, from his wrist how fast and fresh
    The blood-drops trickling run;
  Heaven yet may wake, for Mary's sake,
    Thy warrior son.

  "Heap ashes on thy head, Sir Knight,
    In sackcloth gird thee well,
  The shrine of Moan must blaze in light,
    The morning mass must swell;
  Arouse from sleep the castle keep,
    Sound every bell!"

  They come, pale maid and mailèd man
    They throng into the hall,
  The watcher from the barbican,
    The warder from the wall.
  And she apart, with breaking heart,
    The last of all.

          "__Introibo! _Introibo!_"
          The morning mass begins;
          "_Mea culpa! mea culpa!_"
          Forgive us all our sins;
  And the rapt Hermit chaunts with streaming eyes,
    That seem to enter Paradise,
          "_Gloria! Gloria!_"
    The shrine of Moan had never known
    That gladdest of all hymns.

------

II.


  The fair-haired maiden standeth apart
  In the chapel gloom, with breaking heart.
  But a smile broke over her face as she said,
    "The draught was well measured, I ween;
  He liveth, thank Allah, but not to wed
    His beautiful Christine.
  No lance hath Miolan couched to-day:
  Let the bride for the bridegroom watch, and pray.
    Till the lists shall hear the shriek
  Of the Dauphin's daughter borne away
    By the Knight of Pilate's Peak."


TO BE CONTINUED.

{46}

A LETTER TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.,
ON HIS RECENT EIRENICON.

BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.,
OF THE ORATORY.


Veni, Domine, et noli tardare,
relaxa facinora plebi tuae;
et rovoca dispersos in terram suam.



No one who desires the union of
Christendom, after its many and
long-standing divisions, can have any other
feeling than joy, my dear Pusey, at
finding from your recent volume that
you see your way to make definite
proposals to us for effecting that
great object, and are able to lay down
the basis and conditions on which you
could co-operate in advancing it. It
is not necessary that we should concur
in the details of your scheme, or
in the principles which it involves, in
order to welcome the important fact
that, with your personal knowledge of the Anglican body, and your
experience of its composition and tendencies, you consider the time to
be come when you and your friends may, without imprudence, turn your
minds to the contemplation of such an enterprise. Even were you an
individual member of that church, a watchman upon a high tower in a
metropolis of religious opinion, we should naturally listen with
interest to what you had to report of the state of the sky and the
progress of the night, what stars were mounting up or what clouds
gathering; what were the prospects of the three great parties which
Anglicanism contains within it, and what was just now the action upon
them respectively of the politics and science of the time. You do not
go into these matters; but the step you have taken is evidently the
measure and the issue of the view which you have formed of them all.

However, you are not a mere individual; from early youth you have
devoted yourself to the Established Church, and after between forty
and fifty years of unremitting labor in its service, your roots and
your branches stretch out through every portion of its large
territory. You, more than any one else alive, have been the present
and untiring agent by whom a great work has been effected in it; and,
far more than is usual, you have received in your lifetime, as well as
merited, the confidence of your brethren. You cannot speak merely for
yourself; your antecedents, your existing influence, are a pledge to
us that what you may determine will be the determination of a
multitude. Numbers, too, for whom you cannot properly be said to
speak, will be moved by your authority or your arguments; and numbers,
again, who are of a school more recent than your own, and who are only
not your followers because they have outstripped you in their free
speeches and demonstrative acts in our behalf, will, for the occasion,
accept you as their spokesman. There is no one anywhere--among
ourselves, in your own body, or, I suppose, in the Greek Church--who
can affect so vast a circle of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned,
so zealous, as come, more or less, under your influence; and I cannot
pay them all a greater compliment, than to tell them they ought all to
be Catholics, nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray
that they may one day become such. Nor can I address myself to an act
more pleasing, as I trust, to the Divine Lord of the church, and more
loyal and dutiful to his Vicar on earth, than to attempt, however,
feebly, to promote so great a consummation.

{47}

I know the joy it would give those conscientious men of whom I am
speaking to be one with ourselves. I know how their hearts spring up
with a spontaneous transport at the very thought of union; and what
yearning is theirs after that great privilege, which they have not,
communion with the See of Peter and its present, past, and future. I
conjecture it by what I used to feel myself, while yet in the Anglican
Church. I recollect well what an outcast I seemed to myself when I
took down from the shelves of my library the volumes of St. Athanasius
or St. Basil, and set myself to study them; and how, on the contrary,
when at length I was brought into Catholicism, I kissed them with
delight, with a feeling that in them I had more than all that I had
lost, and, as though I were directly addressing the glorious saints
who bequeathed them to the Church, I said to the inanimate pages, "You
are now mine, and I am now yours, beyond any mistake." Such, I
conceive, would be the joy of the persons I speak of, if they could
wake up one morning and find themselves possessed by right of Catholic
traditions and hopes, without violence to their own sense of duty;
and, certainly, I am the last man to say that such violence is in any
case lawful, that the claims of conscience are not paramount, or that
any one may overleap what he deliberately holds to be God's command,
in order to make his path easier for him or his heart lighter.

I am the last man to quarrel with this jealous deference to the voice
of our conscience, whatever judgment others may form of us in
consequence, for this reason--because their case, as it at present
stands, has, as you know, been my own. You recollect well what hard
things were said against us twenty-five years ago, which we knew in
our hearts we did not deserve. Hence, I am now in the position of the
fugitive queen in the well-known passage, who, "haud ignara mali"
herself, had learned to sympathize with those who were inheritors of
her past wanderings. There were priests, good men, whose zeal
outstripped their knowledge, and who in consequence spoke confidently,
when they would have been wiser had they suspended their adverse
judgment of those whom they had soon to welcome as brethren in
communion. We at that time were in worse plight than your friends are
now, for our opponents put their very hardest thoughts of us into
print. One of them wrote thus in a letter addressed to one of the
Catholic bishops:

  "That this Oxford crisis is a real progress to Catholicism, I have
  all along considered a perfect delusion. ... I look upon Mr. Newman,
  Dr. Pusey, and their associates as wily and crafty, though
  unskilful, guides. . . . The embrace of Mr. Newman is the kiss that
  would betray us. . . . But--what is the most striking feature in the
  rancorous malignity of these men--their calumnies are often lavished
  upon us, when we should be led to think that the subject-matter of
  their treatises closed every avenue against their vituperation. The
  three last volumes [of the Tracts] have opened my eyes to the
  craftiness and the cunning, as well as the malice, of the members of
  the Oxford convention. . . . If the Puseyites are to be the new
  apostles of Great Britain, my hopes for my country are lowering and
  gloomy. . . . I would never have consented to enter the lists
  against this strange confraternity ... if I did not feel that my own
  prelate was opposed to the guile and treachery of these men. . . . .
  I impeach Dr. Pusey and his friends of a deadly hatred of our
  religion. . . . . What, my lord, would the Holy See think of the
  works of these Puseyites? . . ."

Another priest, himself a convert, wrote:

  "As we approach toward Catholicity our love and respect increases,
  and our violence dies away; but the bulk of these men become more
  rabid as they become like Rome, a plain proof of their designs. ...
  I do not believe that they are any nearer the portals of the
  Catholic Church than the most prejudiced Methodist and Evangelical
  preacher. . . . Such, rev. sir, is an outline of my views on the
  Oxford movement."

{48}

I do not say that such a view of us was unnatural; and, for myself, I
readily confess that I had used about the church such language that I
had no claim on Catholics for any mercy. But, after all, and in fact,
they were wrong in their anticipations--nor did their brethren agree
with them at the time. Especially Dr. Wiseman (as he was then) took a
larger and more generous view of us; nor did the Holy See interfere,
though the writer of one of these passages invoked its judgment. The
event showed that the more cautious line of conduct was the more
prudent; and one of the bishops, who had taken part against us, with a
supererogation of charity, sent me on his death-bed an expression of
his sorrow for having in past years mistrusted me. A faulty
conscience, faithfully obeyed, through God's mercy, had in the long
run brought me right.

Fully, then, do I recognize the rights of conscience in this matter. I
find no fault in your stating, as clearly and completely as you can,
the difficulties which stand in the way of your joining us. I cannot
wonder that you begin with stipulating conditions of union, though I
do not concur in them myself, and think that in the event you yourself
would be content to let them drop. Such representations as yours are
necessary to open the subject in debate; they ascertain how the land
lies, and serve to clear the ground. Thus I begin; but, after allowing
as much as this, I am obliged in honesty to say what I fear, my dear
Pusey, will pain you. Yet I am confident, my very dear friend, that at
least you will not be angry with me if I say, what I must say, or say
nothing at all, that there is much both in the matter and in the
manner of your volume calculated to wound those who love you well, but
love truth more. So it is; with the best motives and kindest
intentions, "Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem." We give
you a sharp cut, and you return it. You complain of our being "dry,
hard, and unsympathizing;" and we answer that you are unfair and
irritating. But we at least have not professed to be composing an
Irenicon, when we treated you as foes. There was one of old time who
wreathed his sword in myrtle; excuse me--you discharge your
olive-branch as if from a catapult.

Do not think I am not serious; if I spoke seriously, I should seem to
speak harshly. Who will venture to assert that the hundred pages which
you have devoted to the Blessed Virgin give other than a one-sided
view of our teaching about her, little suited to win us? It may be a
salutary castigation, if any of us have fairly provoked it, but it is
not making the best of matters; it is not smoothing the way for an
understanding or a compromise. It leads a writer in the most moderate
and liberal Anglican newspaper of the day, the "Guardian," to turn
away from your representation of us with horror. "It is language,"
says your reviewer, "which, after having often heard it, we still can
only hear with horror. We had rather not quote any of it, or of the
comments upon it." What could an Exeter Hall orator, what could a
Scotch commentator on the Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the
controversy by the picture he drew of us?  You may be sure that what
creates horror on one side will be answered by indignation on the
other, and these are not the most favorable dispositions for a peace
conference. I had been accustomed to think that you, who in times past
were ever less declamatory in controversy than myself, now that years
had gone on, and circumstances changed, had come to look on our old
warfare against Rome as cruel and inexpedient. Indeed, I know that it
was a chief objection urged against me only last year by persons who
agreed with you in deprecating an oratory at Oxford, which at that
time was in prospect, that such an undertaking would be the signal for
the rekindling of that fierce style of polemics which is now out of
date. I had fancied you shared in that opinion; but now, as if {49} to
show how imperative you deem its renewal, you actually bring to life
one of my own strong sayings in 1841, which had long been in the
grave--that "the Roman Church comes as near to idolatry as can be
supposed in a church, of which it said, 'The idols he shall utterly
abolish,'" p. 111.

I know, indeed, and feel deeply, that your frequent references in your
volume to what I have lately or formerly written are caused by your
strong desire to be still one with me as far as you can, and by that
true affection which takes pleasure in dwelling on such sayings of
mine as you can still accept with the full approbation of your
judgment. I trust I am not ungrateful or irresponsive to you in this
respect; but other considerations have an imperative claim to be taken
into account. Pleasant as it is to agree with you, I am bound to
explain myself in cases in which I have changed my mind, or have given
a wrong impression of my meaning, or have been wrongly reported; and,
while I trust that I have better than such personal motives for
addressing you in print, yet it will serve to introduce my main
subject, and give me an opportunity for remarks which bear upon it
indirectly, if I dwell for a page or two on such matters contained in
your volume as concern myself.

1. The mistake which I have principally in view is the belief, which
is widely spread, that I have publicly spoken of the Anglican Church
as "the great bulwark against infidelity in this land." In a pamphlet
of yours, a year old, you spoke of "a very earnest body of Roman
Catholics" who "rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in
the Church of England (whatever they think of her), and are saddened
by what weakens her who is, in God's hands, the great bulwark against
infidelity in this land." The concluding words you were thought to
quote from my "Apologia." In consequence, Dr. Manning, now our
archbishop, replied to you, asserting, as you say, "the contradictory
of that statement." In that counter-assertion he was at the time
generally considered (rightly or wrongly, as it may be), though
writing to you, to be really correcting statements in my "Apologia,"
without introducing my name. Further, in the volume which you have now
published, you recur to the saying, and you speak of its author in
terms which, did I not know your partial kindness for me, would hinder
me from identifying him with myself. You say, "The saying was not
mine, but that of one of the deepest thinkers and observers in the
Roman communion," p. 7. A friend has suggested to me that, perhaps,
you mean De Maistre; and, from an anonymous letter which I have
received from Dublin, I find it is certain that the very words in
question were once used by Archbishop Murray; but you speak of the
author of them as if now alive. At length a reviewer of your volume,
in the "Weekly Register," distinctly attributes them to me by name,
and gives me the first opportunity I have had of disowning them; and
this I now do. What, at some time or other, I may have said in
conversation or private letter, of course, I cannot tell; but I have
never, I am sure, used the word "bulwark" of the Anglican Church
deliberately. What I said in my "Apologia" was this: That that church
was "a serviceable breakwater against errors more fundamental than its
own." A bulwark is an integral part of the thing it defends; whereas
the words "serviceable" and "breakwater" imply a kind of protection
which is accidental and _de facto_. Again, in saying that the Anglican
Church is a defence against "errors more fundamental than its own," I
imply that it has errors, and those fundamental.

2. There is another passage in your volume, at p. 337, which it may be
right to observe upon. You have made a collection of passages from the
fathers, as witnesses in behalf of your doctrine that the whole
Christian faith is contained in Scripture, as if, in your sense of the
words. Catholics contradicted you here. {50} And you refer to my notes
on St. Athanasius as contributing passages to your list; but, after
all, neither do you, nor do I in my notes, affirm any doctrine which
Rome denies. Those notes also make frequent reference to a traditional
teaching, which (be the faith ever so certainly contained in
Scripture) still is necessary as a Regula Fidei, for showing us that
it is contained there--_vid_. pp. 283, 344--and this tradition, I
know, you uphold as fully as I do in the notes in question. In
consequence, you allow that there is a twofold rule. Scripture and
tradition; and this is all that Catholics say. How, then, do Anglicans
differ from Rome here? I believe the difference is merely one of
words; and I shall be doing, so far, the work of an Irenicon, if I
make clear what this verbal difference is. Catholics and Anglicans (I
do not say Protestants) attach different meanings to the word "proof,"
in the controversy whether the whole faith is, or is not, contained in
Scripture. We mean that not every article of faith is so contained
there, that it may thence be logically proved, _independently_ of the
teaching and authority of the tradition; but Anglicans mean that every
article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be proved,
_provided_ there be added the illustrations and compensations of the
tradition. And it is in this latter sense, I conceive, the fathers
also speak in the passages which you quote from them. I am sure at
least that St. Athanasius frequently adduces passages as proofs of
points in controversy which no one would see to be proofs unless
apostolical tradition were taken into account, first as suggesting,
then as authoritatively ruling, their meaning. Thus, _you_ do not deny
that the whole is not in Scripture in such sense that pure unaided
logic can draw it from the sacred text; nor do _we_ deny that the
faith is in Scripture, in an improper sense, in the sense that
_tradition_ is able to recognize and determine it there. You do not
profess to dispense with tradition; nor do we forbid the idea of
probable, secondary, symbolical, connotative senses of Scripture, over
and above those which properly belong to the wording and context. I
hope you will agree with me in this.

3. Nor is it only in isolated passages that you give me a place in
your volume. A considerable portion of it is written with reference to
two publications of mine, one of which you name and defend, the other
you tacitly protest against: "Tract 90," and the "Essay on Doctrinal
Development," As to "Tract 90," you have from the first, as all the
world knows, boldly stood up for it, in spite of the obloquy which it
brought upon you, and have done me a great service. You are now
republishing it with my cordial concurrence; but I take this
opportunity of noticing, lest there should be any mistake on the part
of the public, that you do so with a different object from that which
I had when I wrote it. Its original purpose was simply that of
justifying myself and others in subscribing to the Thirty-nine
Articles while professing many tenets which had popularly been
considered distinctive of the Roman faith. I considered that my
interpretation of the Articles, as I gave it in that Tract, would
stand, provided the parties imposing them allowed it, otherwise I
thought it could not stand; and, when in the event the bishops and
public opinion did not allow it, I gave up my living, as having no
right to retain it. My feeling about the interpretation is expressed
in a passage in "Loss and Gain," which runs thus:

  "'Is it,' asked Reding, 'a received view?' 'No view is received,'
  said the other; 'the Articles themselves are received, but there is
  no authoritative interpretation of them at all.' 'Well,' said
  Reding, 'is it a tolerated view?' 'It certainly has been strongly
  opposed,' answered Bateman; 'but it has never been condemned.' 'That
  is no answer,' said Charles. 'Does any one bishop hold it? Did any
  one bishop ever hold it? Has it ever been formally admitted as
  tenable by any one bishop? Is it a view got up to meet existing
  difficulties, or has it an historical existence?' Bateman could give
  only one answer to {51} these questions, as they were successively
  put to him. 'I thought so,' said Charles; 'the view is specious
  certainly. I don't we why it might not have done, had it been
  tolerably sanctioned; but you have no sanction to show me. As it
  stands, it is a mere theory struck out by individuals. Our church
  _might_ have adopted this mode of interpreting the Articles; but,
  from what you tell me, it certainly has not done so.'"--Ch. 15.

However, the Tract did not carry its object and conditions on its
face, and necessarily lay open to interpretations very far from the
true one. Dr. Wiseman (as he then was), in particular, with the keen
apprehension which was his characteristic, at once saw in it a basis
of accommodation between Anglicanism and Rome. He suggested broadly
that the decrees of the Council of Trent should be made the rule of
interpretation for the Thirty-nine Articles, a proceeding of which
Sancta Clara, I think, had set the example; and, as you have observed,
published a letter to Lord Shrewsbury on the subject, of which the
following are extracts:

  "We Catholics must necessarily deplore [England's] separation as a
  deep moral evil--as state of schism of which nothing can justify the
  continuance. Many members of the Anglican Church view it in the same
  light as to the first point--its sad evil; though they excuse their
  individual position in it as an unavoidable misfortune. . . . We may
  depend upon a willing, an able, and a most zealous co-operation with
  any effort which we may make toward bringing her into her rightful
  position, in Catholic unity with the Holy See and the churches of
  its obedience--in other words, with the church Catholic. Is this a
  visionary idea? Is it merely the expression of strong desire? I know
  that many will so judge it; and, perhaps, were I to consult my own
  quiet, I would not venture to express it. But I will, in simplicity
  of heart, cling to hopefulness, cheered, as I feel it, by so many
  promising appearances. . . .

  "A natural question here presents itself--what facilities appear in
  the present state of things for bringing about so happy a
  consummation as the reunion of England to the Catholic Church,
  beyond what have before existed, and particularly under Archbishops
  Laud or Wake? It strikes me, many. First, etc. . . . A still more
  promising circumstance I think your lordship will with me consider
  the _plan_ which the eventful 'Tract No. 90' has pursued, and in
  which Mr. Ward, Mr. Oakeley, and even Dr. Pusey have agreed. I
  allude to the method of _bringing their doctrines into accordance
  with ours by explanation._ A foreign priest has pointed out to us a
  valuable document for our consideration--'Bossuet's Reply to the
  Pope,' when consulted on the best method of reconciling the
  followers of the Augsburg Confession with the Holy See. The learned
  bishop observes, that Providence had allowed so much Catholic truth
  to be preserved in that Confession that full advantage should be
  taken of the circumstance; that no retractations should be demanded,
  but an explanation of the Confession in accordance with Catholic
  doctrines. Now, for such a method as this, the way is in part
  prepared by the demonstration that such interpretation may be given
  of the most difficult Articles as will strip them of all
  contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod. The same
  method may be pursued on other points; and much pain may thus be
  spared to individuals, and much difficulty to the church."--Pp. 11,
  35, 38.

This use of my Tract, so different from my own, but sanctioned by the
great name of our cardinal, you are now reviving; and I gather from
your doing so, that your bishops and the opinion of the public are
likely now, or in prospect, to admit what twenty-five years ago they
refused. On this point, much as it rejoices me to know your
anticipation, of course I cannot have an opinion.

4. So much for "Tract 90." On the other hand, as to my "Essay on
Doctrinal Development," I am sorry to find you do not look upon it
with friendly eyes; though how, without its aid, you can maintain the
doctrines of the Holy Trinity and incarnation, and others which you
hold, I cannot understand. You consider my principle may be the means,
in time to come, of introducing into our Creed, as portions of the
necessary Catholic faith, the infallibility of the Pope, and various
opinions, pious or profane, as it may be, about our Blessed Lady. I
hope to remove your anxiety as to these consequences, before I bring
my {52} observations to an end; at present I notice it as my apology
for interfering in a controversy which at first sight is no business
of mine.

5. I have another reason for writing; and that is, unless it is rude
in me to say so, because you seem to think writing does not become me.
I do not like silently to acquiesce in such a judgment You say at p.
98:

  "Nothing can be more unpractical than for an individual to throw
  himself into the Roman Church because he could accept the _letter_
  of the Council of Trent. Those who were born Roman Catholics have a
  liberty which, in the nature of things, a person could not have who
  left another system to embrace that of Rome. I cannot imagine how
  any faith could stand the shock of leaving one system, criticising
  _it_, and cast himself into another system, criticising _it_. For
  myself, I have always felt that had (which God of his mercy avert
  hereafter also) the English Church, by accepting heresy, driven me
  out of it, I could have gone in no other way than that of closing my
  eyes, and accepting whatever was put before me. But a liberty which
  individuals could not use, and explanations which, so long as they
  remain individual, must be unauthoritative, might be formally made
  by the Church of Rome to the Church of England as the basis of
  reunion."

And again, p. 210:

  "It seems to me to be a psychological impossibility for one who has
  already exchanged one system for another to make those distinctions.
  One who, by his own act, places himself under authority, cannot make
  conditions about his submission. But definite explanations of our
  Articles have, before now, been at least tentatively offered to us,
  on the Roman and Greek side, as sufficient to restore communion; and
  the Roman explanations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to
  our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not spoken."

Now passages such as these seem almost a challenge to me to speak, and
to keep silence would be to assent to the justice of them. At the
cost, then, of speaking about myself, of which I feel there has been
too much of late, I observe upon them as follows: Of course, as you
say, a convert comes to learn, and not to pick and choose. He comes in
simplicity and confidence, and it does not occur to him to weigh and
measure every proceeding, every practice which he meets with among
those whom he has joined. He comes to Catholicism as to a living
system, with a living teaching, and not to a mere collection of
decrees and canons, which by themselves are of course but the
framework, not the body and substance, of the church. And this is a
truth which concerns, which binds, those also who never knew any other
religion, not only the convert. By the Catholic system I mean that
rule of life and those practices of devotion for which we shall look
in vain in the Creed of Pope Pius. The convert comes, not only to
believe the church, but also to trust and obey her priests, and to
conform himself in charity to her people. It would never do for him to
resolve that he never would say a Hail Mary, never avail himself of an
indulgence, never kiss a crucifix, never accept the Lent
dispensations, never mention a venial sin in confession. All this
would not only be unreal, but dangerous, too, as arguing a wrong state
of mind, which could not look to receive the divine blessing.
Moreover, he comes to the ceremonial, and the moral theology, and the
ecclesiastical regulations which he finds on the spot where his lot is
cast. And again, as regards matters of politics, of education, of
general expedience, of taste, he does not criticise or controvert. And
thus surrendering himself to the influences of his new religion, and
not losing what is revealed truth by attempting by his own private
rule to discriminate every moment its substance from its accidents, he
is gradually so indoctrinated in Catholicism as at length to have a
right to speak as well as to hear. Also, in course of time, a new
generation rises round him; and there is no reason why he should not
know as much, and decide questions with as true an instinct, as those
who perhaps number fewer years than he does Easter communions. {53} He
has mastered the fact and the nature of the differences of theologian
from theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era from era.
He knows that there is much of what may be called fashion in opinions
and practices, according to the circumstances of time and place,
according to current politics, the character of the Pope of the day,
or the chief prelates of a particular country, and that fashions
change. His experience tells him, that sometimes what is denounced in
one place as a great offence, or preached up as a first principle, has
in another nation been immemorially regarded in just a contrary sense,
or has made no sensation at all, one way or the other, when brought
before public opinion; and that loud talkers, in the church as
elsewhere, are apt to carry all before them, while quiet and
conscientious persons commonly have to give way. He perceives that, in
matters which happen to be in debate, ecclesiastical authority watches
the state of opinion and the direction and course of controversy, and
decides accordingly; so that in certain cases to keep back his own
judgment on a point is to be disloyal to his superiors.

So far generally; now in particular as to myself. After twenty years
of Catholic life, I feel no delicacy in giving my opinion on any point
when there is a call for me, and the only reason why I have not done
so sooner, or more often than I have, is that there has been no call.
I have now reluctantly come to the conclusion that your volume _is_ a
call. Certainly, in many instances in which theologian differs from
theologian, and country from country, I have a definite judgment of my
own; I can say so without offence to any one, for the very reason that
from the nature of the case it is impossible to agree with all of
them. I prefer English habits of belief and devotion to foreign, from
the same causes, and by the same right, which justify foreigners in
preferring their own. In following those of my people, I show less
singularity and create less disturbance than if I made a flourish with
what is novel and exotic. And in this line of conduct I am but
availing myself of the teaching which I fell in with on becoming a
Catholic; and it is a pleasure to me to think that what I hold now,
and would transmit after me if I could, is only what I received then.
The utmost delicacy was observed on all hands in giving me advice;
only one warning remains on my mind, and it came from Dr. Griffiths,
the late vicar-apostolic of the London district. He warned me against
books of devotion of the Italian school, which were just at that time
coming into England; and when I asked him what books he recommended as
safe guides, he bade me get the works of Bishop Hay. By this I did not
understand that he was jealous of all Italian books, or made himself
responsible for all that Dr. Hay happens to have said; but I took him
to caution me against a character and tone of religion, excellent in
its place, not suited for England. When I went to Rome, though it may
seem strange to you to say it, even there I learned nothing
inconsistent with this judgment. Local influences do not supply an
atmosphere for its institutions and colleges, which are Catholic in
teaching as well as in name. I recollect one saying among others of my
confessor, a Jesuit father, one of the holiest, most prudent men I
ever knew. He said that we could not love the Blessed Virgin too much,
if we loved our Lord a great deal more. When I returned to England,
the first expression of theological opinion which came in my way was
_apropos_ of the series of translated saints' lives which the late Dr.
Faber originated. That expression proceeded from a wise prelate, who
was properly anxious as to the line which might be taken by the Oxford
converts, then for the first time coming into work. According as I
recollect his opinion, he was apprehensive of the effect of Italian
{54} compositions, as unsuited to this country, and suggested that the
lives should be original works, drawn up by ourselves and our friends
from Italian sources. If at that time I was betrayed into any acts
which were of a more extreme character than I should approve now, the
responsibility of course is mine; but the impulse came not from old
Catholics or superiors, but from men whom I loved and trusted who were
younger than myself. But to whatever extent I might be carried away,
and I cannot recollect any tangible instances, my mind in no long time
fell back to what seems to me a safer and more practical course.

Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right to speak out; and
that the more because other converts have spoken for a long time,
while I have not spoken; and with still more reason may I speak
without offence in the case of your present criticisms of us,
considering that, in the charges you bring, the only two English
writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger in
age than myself. I put aside the archbishop, of course, because of his
office. These two authors are worthy of all consideration, at once
from their character and from their ability. In their respective lines
they are perhaps without equals at this particular time; and they
deserve the influence they possess. One is still in the vigor of his
powers; the other has departed amid the tears of hundreds. It is
pleasant to praise them for their real qualifications; but why do you
rest on them as authorities? Because the one was "a popular writer;"
but is there not sufficient reason for this in the fact of his
remarkable gifts, of his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his
playful wit, his affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without
supposing that the wide diffusion of his works arises out of his
particular sentiments about the Blessed Virgin? And as to our other
friend, do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading,
displayed on the vantage ground of the historic "Dublin Review," fully
account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that any
great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the Pope's
infallibility? Our silence as regards their writings is very
intelligible: it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the
world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom we love
and respect. But the plain fact is this--they came to the Church, and
have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for
English Catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those who
have a real title to such an office. The chief authors of the passing
generation, some of them still alive, others gone to their reward, are
Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr.
Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, and Mr. Flanagan;
which of these ecclesiastics has said anything extreme about the
prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin or the infallibility of the Pope?

I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the
doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, on the two subjects I have
mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed of
Catholics; or to assume, as you do, that, because they are
thorough-going and relentless in their statements, therefore they are
the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for antiquity
will be thought little else than a mistake. For myself, hopeless as
you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the
fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not
yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority
of the "Schola," as one of the _loci theologici;_ still I sympathize
with Petavius in preferring to its "contentious and subtle theology"
that {55} "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after
the image of erudite antiquity." The fathers made me a Catholic, and I
am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the
church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it
was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you remark, a process of
development in apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does
not supersede the fathers, but explains and completes them. And, in
particular, as regards our teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin,
with the fathers I am content; and to the subject of that teaching I
mean to address myself at once. I do so because you say, as I myself
have said in former years, that "that vast system as to the Blessed
Virgin . . . . to all of us has been the special _crux_ of the Roman
system," p. 101. Here, I say, as on other points, the fathers are
enough for me. I do not wish to say more than they, and will not say
less. You, I know, will profess the same; and thus we can join issue
on a clear and broad principle, and may hope to come to some
intelligible result. We are to have a treatise on the subject of our
Lady soon from the pen of the most reverend prelate; but that cannot
interfere with such a mere argument from the fathers as that to which
I shall confine myself here. Nor indeed, as regards that argument
itself, do I profess to be offering you any new matter, any facts
which have not been used by others--by great divines, as Petavius, by
living writers, nay, by myself on other occasions; I write afresh
nevertheless, and that for three reasons: first, because I wish to
contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of the
argument in question; next, because I may gain a more patient hearing
than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself; lastly,
because there just now seems a call on me, under my circumstances, to
avow plainly what I do and what I do not hold about the Blessed
Virgin, that others may know, did they come to stand where I stand,
what they would and what they would not be bound to hold concerning
her.


I begin by making a distinction which will go far to remove good part
of the difficulty of my undertaking, as it presents itself to ordinary
inquirers--the distinction between faith and devotion. I fully grant
that _devotion_ toward the Blessed Virgin has increased among
Catholics with the progress of centuries; I do not allow that the
_doctrine_ concerning her has undergone a growth, for I believe that
it has been in substance one and the same from the beginning.

By "faith" I mean the Creed and the acceptance of the Creed; by
"devotion" I mean such religious honors as belong to the objecis of
our faith, and the payment of those honors. Faith and devotion are as
distinct in fact as they are in idea. We cannot, indeed, be devout
without faith, but we may believe without feeling devotion. Of this
phenomenon every one has experience both in himself and in others; and
we express it as often as we speak of realizing a truth or not
realizing it. It may be illustrated, with more or less exactness, by
matters which come before us in the world. For instance, a great
author, or public man, may be acknowledged as such for a course of
years; yet there may be an increase, an ebb and flow, and a fashion,
in his popularity. And if he takes a lasting place in the minds of his
countrymen, he may gradually grow into it, or suddenly be raised to
it. The idea of Shakespeare as a great poet has existed from a very
early date in public opinion; and there were at least individuals then
who understood him as well, and honored him as much, as the English
people can honor him now; yet, I think, there is a national devotion
to him in this day such as never has been before. This has happened
because, as education spreads in the country, there are more men able
to enter into his {56} poetical genius, and, among these, more
capacity again for deeply and critically understanding him; and yet,
from the first, he has exerted a great insensible influence over the
nation, as is seen in the circumstance that his phrases and sentences,
more than can be numbered, have become almost proverbs among us. And
so again in philosophy, and in the arts and sciences, great truths and
principles have sometimes been known and acknowledged for a course of
years; but, whether from feebleness of intellectual power in the
recipients, or external circumstances of an accidental kind, they have
not been turned to account. Thus, the Chinese are said to have known
of the properties of the magnet from time immemorial, and to have used
it for land expeditions, yet not on the sea. Again, the ancients knew
of the principle that water finds its own level, but seem to have made
little application of their knowledge. And Aristotle was familiar with
the principle of induction; yet it was left for Bacon to develop it
into an experimental philosophy. Illustrations such as these, though
not altogether apposite, serve to convey that distinction between
faith and devotion on which I am insisting. It is like the distinction
between objective and subjective truth. The sun in the springtime will
have to shine many days before he is able to melt the frost, open the
soil, and bring out the leaves; yet he shines out from the first,
notwithstanding, though he makes his power felt but gradually. It is
one and the same sun, though his influence day by day becomes greater;
and so in the Catholic Church, it is the one Virgin Mother, one and
the same from first to last, and Catholics may acknowledge her; and
yet, in spite of that acknowledgment, their devotion to her may be
scanty in one time and place and overflowing in another.

This distinction is forcibly brought home to a convert, as a
peculiarity of the Catholic religion, on his first introduction to its
worship. The faith is everywhere one and the same; but a large liberty
is accorded to private judgment and inclination in matters of
devotion. Any large church, with its collections and groups of people,
will illustrate this. The fabric itself is dedicated to Almighty God,
and that under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, or some
particular saint; or again, of some mystery belonging to the Divine
name, or to the incarnation, or of some mystery associated with the
Blessed Virgin. Perhaps there are seven altars or more in it, and
these again have their several saints. Then there is the feast proper
to the particular day; and, during the celebration of mass, of all the
worshippers who crowd around the priest each has his own particular
devotions, with which he follows the rite. No one interferes with his
neighbor; agreeing, as it were, to differ, they pursue independently a
common end, and by paths, distinct but converging, present themselves
before God. Then there are confraternities attached to the church: of
the sacred heart, or the precious blood; associations of prayer for a
good death, or the repose of departed souls, or the conversion of the
heathen: devotions connected with the brown, blue, or red scapular;
not to speak of the great ordinary ritual through the four seasons,
the constant presence of the blessed sacrament, its ever recurring
rite of benediction, and its extraordinary forty hours' exposition.
Or, again, look through some such manual of prayers as the _Raccolta_,
and you at once will see both the number and the variety of devotions
which are open to individual Catholics to choose from, according to
their religious taste and prospect of personal edification.

Now these diversified modes of honoring God did not come to us in a
day, or only from the apostles; they are the accumulations of
centuries; and, as in the course of years some of them spring up, so
others decline and die Some are local, in memory of some particular
saint who happens to be the evangelist, or patron, or pride of the
{57} nation, or who is entombed in the church, or in the city where it
stands; and these, necessarily, cannot have an earlier date than the
saint's day of death or interment there. The first of such sacred
observances, long before these national memories, were the devotions
paid to the apostles, then those which were paid to the martyrs; yet
there were saints nearer to our Lord than either martyrs or apostles;
but, as if these had been lost in the effulgence of his glory, and
because they were not manifested in external works separate from him,
it happened that for a long while they were less thought of. However,
in process of time the apostles, and then the martyrs, exerted less
influence than before over the popular mind, and the local saints, new
creations of God's power, took their place, or again, the saints of
some religious order here or there established. Then, as comparatively
quiet times succeeded, the religious meditations of holy men and their
secret intercourse with heaven gradually exerted an influence out of
doors, and permeated the Christian populace, by the instrumentality of
preaching and by the ceremonial of the church. Then those luminous
stars rose in the ecclesiastical heavens which were of more august
dignity than any which had preceded them, and were late in rising for
the very reason that they were so specially glorious. Those names, I
say, which at first sight might have been expected to enter soon into
the devotions of the faithful, with better reason might have been
looked for at a later date, and actually were late in their coming.
St. Joseph furnishes the most striking instance of this remark; here
is the clearest of instances of the distinction between doctrine and
devotion. Who, from his prerogatives and the testimony on which they
come to us, had a greater claim to receive an early recognition among
the faithful? A saint of Scripture, the foster-father of our Lord, was
an object of the universal and absolute faith of the Christian world
from the first, yet the devotion to him is comparatively of late date.
When once it began, men seemed surprised that it had not been thought
of before; and now they hold him next to the Blessed Virgin in their
religious affection and veneration.

As regards the Blessed Virgin, I shall postpone the question of
devotion for a while, and inquire first into the doctrine of the
undivided church (to use your controversial phrase) on the subject of
her prerogatives.

What is the great rudimental teaching of antiquity from its earliest
date concerning her? By "rudimental teaching" I mean the _primâ facie_
view of her person and office, the broad outline laid down of her, the
aspect under which she comes to us in the writings of the fathers. She
is the second Eve.  [Footnote 11] Now let us consider what this
implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the first covenant.
The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented
us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam
had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which
were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the
head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of
her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all
things, entitled her "the mother of all the living;" a name surely
expressive not of a fact only but of a dignity; but further, as she
thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she
her own special place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In
those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. "The woman, being
seduced, was in the transgression." She listened to the evil angel;
she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She
co-operated not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and
personally in the sin; she brought it about. As the history stands,
she was a _sine qua non_, a positive, active cause of it. {58} And she
had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her,
she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue,
and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were
three parties concerned--the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at
the time of their sentence an event was announced for the future, in
which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the
woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve,
and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. "I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed."
The seed of the woman is the word incarnate, and the woman whose seed
or son he is is his mother Mary. This interpretation and the
parallelism it involves seem to me undeniable; but, at all events (and
this is my point), the parallelism is the doctrine of the fathers,
from the earliest times; and, this being established, by the position
and office of Eve in our fall, we are able to determine the position
and office of Mary in our restoration.

  [Footnote 11: _Vid_. "Essay on Development of Doctrine," 1845, p.
  384, etc.]

I shall adduce passages from their writings, with their respective
countries and dates; and the dates shall extend from their births or
conversions to their deaths, since what they propound is at once the
doctrine which they had received from the generation before them, and
the doctrine which was accepted and recognized as true by the
generation to whom they transmitted it.

First, then, St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165), St. Irenaeus (120-200),
and Tertullian (160-240). Of these Tertullian represents Africa and
Rome, St. Justin represents Palestine, and St. Irenaeus Asia Minor and
Gaul--or rather he represents St. John the Evangelist, for he had been
taught by the martyr St. Polycarp, who was the intimate associate, as
of St. John, 60 of the other apostles.

1. St. Justin:  [Footnote 12]

  [Footnote 12: I have attempted to translate literally without caring
  to write English. ]

  "We know that he, before all creatures proceeded from the Father by
  his power and will, . . . and by means of the Virgin became man,
  that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its
  beginning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For Eve, being
  a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the
  serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary,
  taking faith and joy, when the angel told her the good tidings, that
  the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the
  highest overshadow her, and therefore the holy one that was born of
  her was Son of God, answered. Be it to me according to thy
  word."--_Tryph_. 100.

2. Tertullian:

  "God recovered his image and likeness, which the devil had seized,
  by a rival operation. For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the
  word which was the framer of death. Equally into a virgin was to be
  introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life; that,
  what by that sex had gone into perdition, by the same sex might be
  brought back to salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary
  believed Gabriel; the fault which the one committed by believing,
  the other by believing has blotted out."--_De Carn. Christ_, 17.

3. St Irenaeus:

  "With a fitness, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, 'Behold
  thy handmaid, O Lord; be it to me according to thy word.' But Eve
  was disobedient; for she obeyed not, while she was yet a virgin. As
  she, having indeed Adam for a husband, but as yet being a virgin,
  . . . becoming disobedient, became the cause of death both to herself
  and to the whole human race, so also Mary, having the predestined
  man, and being yet a virgin, being obedient, became both to herself
  and to the whole human race the cause of salvation. . . . And on
  account of this the Lord said, that the first would be last and the
  last first. And the prophet signifies the same, saying, 'Instead of
  fathers you have children.' For, whereas the Lord, when born, was
  the first begotten of the dead, and received into his bosom the
  primitive fathers, he regenerated them into the life of God, he
  himself becoming the beginning of the living, since Adam became the
  beginning of the dying. Therefore also Luke, commencing the lines of
  generations from the Lord, referred it back to Adam, signifying that
  he regenerated the old fathers, not they him, into the gospel of
  life. And so the knot {59} of Eve's disobedience received its
  unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin,
  bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith."--
  _Adv. Haer_, iii. 22. 34.

And again:

  "As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced, so as to flee God,
  transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by
  means of the angel's speech, so as to bear God within her, being
  obedient to his word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the
  other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the virgin Mary
  might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had
  been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being
  preserved, a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's obedience."
  --_Ibid_. v. 19.

Now, what is especially noticeable in these three writers is, that
they do not speak of the Blessed Virgin as the physical instrument of
our Lord's taking flesh, but as an intelligent, responsible cause of
it; her faith and obedience being accessories to the incarnation, and
gaining it as her reward. As Eve failed in these virtues, and thereby
brought on the fall of the race in Adam, so Mary by means of them had
a part in its restoration. You imply, pp. 255, 256, that the Blessed
Virgin was only a physical instrument in our redemption; "what has
been said of her by the fathers as the chosen _vessel_ of the
incarnation, was applied _personally_ to her" (that is, by Catholics),
p. 151; and again, "The fathers speak of the Blessed Virgin as the
_instrument_ of our salvation, _in that_ she gave birth to the
Redeemer," pp. 155, 156; whereas St. Augustine, in well-known
passages, speaks of her as more exalted by her sanctity than by her
relationship to our Lord.  [Footnote 13] However, not to go beyond the
doctrine of the three fathers, they unanimously declare that she was
not a mere instrument in the incarnation, such as David, or Judah, may
be considered; they declare she co-operated in our salvation, not
merely by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon her body, but by specific
holy acts, the effect of the Holy Ghost upon her soul; that, as Eve
forfeited privileges by sin, so Mary earned privileges by the fruits
of grace; that, as Eve was disobedient and unbelieving, so Mary was
obedient and believing; that, as Eve was a cause of ruin to all, Mary
was a cause of salvation to all; that, as Eve made room for Adam's
fall, so Mary made room for our Lord's reparation of it; and thus,
whereas the free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it
follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary
co-operated in effecting a much greater good.

  [Footnote 13: Opp., t. 8, p. 2, col. 369, t. 6, col. 342.]

And, beside the run of the argument, which reminds the reader of St.
Paul's antithetical sentences in tracing the analogy between Adam's
work and our Lord's work, it is well to observe the particular words
under which the Blessed Virgin's office is described. Tertullian says
that Mary "blotted out" Eve's fault, and "brought back the female
sex," or "the human race, to salvation;" and St. Irenaeus says that
"by obedience she was the cause or occasion" (whatever was the
original Greek word) "of salvation to herself and the whole human
race;" that by her the human race is saved; that by her Eve's
complication is disentangled; and that she is Eve's advocate, or
friend in need. It is supposed by critics, Protestant as well as
Catholic, that the Greek word for advocate in the original was
paraclete; it should be borne in mind, then, when we are accused of
giving our Lady the titles and offices of her Son, that St. Irenaeus
bestows on her the special name and office proper to the Holy Ghost.

So much as to the nature of this triple testimony; now as to the worth
of it. For a moment put aside St. Irenaeus, and put together St.
Justin in the East with Tertullian in the West. I think I may assume
that the doctrine of these two fathers about the Blessed Virgin was
the received doctrine of their own {60} respective times and places;
for writers after all are but witnesses of facts and beliefs, and as
such they are treated by all parties in controversial discussion.
Moreover, the coincidence of doctrine which they exhibit, and, again,
the antithetical completeness of it, show that they themselves did not
originate it. The next question is, Who did? For from one definite
organ or source, place or person, it must have come. Then we must
inquire, what length of time would it take for such a doctrine to have
extended, and to be received, in the second century over so wide an
area; that is, to be received before the year 200 in Palestine,
Africa, and Rome? Can we refer the common source of these local
traditions to a date later than that of the apostles, St. John dying
within thirty or forty years of St. Justin's conversion and
Tertullian's birth? Make what allowance you will for whatever possible
exceptions can be taken to this representation; and then, after doing
so, add to the concordant testimony of these two fathers the evidence
of St. Irenaeus, which is so close upon the school of St. John himself
in Asia Minor. "A three-fold cord," as the wise man says, "is not
quickly broken." Only suppose there were so early and so broad a
testimony to the effect that our Lord was a mere man, the son of
Joseph; should we be able to insist upon the faith of the Holy Trinity
as necessary to salvation? Or supposing three such witnesses could be
brought to the fact that a consistory of elders governed the local
churches, or that each local congregation was an independent church,
or that the Christian community was without priests, could Anglicans
maintain their doctrine that the rule of episcopal succession is
necessary to constitute a church? And recollect that the Anglican
Church especially appeals to the ante-Nicene centuries, and taunts us
with having superseded their testimony.

Having then adduced these three fathers of the second century, I have
at least got so far as this, viz., no one, who acknowledges the force
of early testimony in determining Christian truth, can wonder, no one
can complain, can object, that we Catholics should hold a very high
doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin, unless indeed stronger
statements can be brought for a contrary conception of her, either of
as early, or at least of a later date. But, as far as I know, no
statements can be brought from the ante-Nicene literature to
invalidate the testimony of the three fathers concerning her; and
little can be brought against it from the fourth century, while in
that fourth century the current of testimony in her behalf is as
strong as in the second; and, as to the fifth, it is far stronger than
in any former time, both in its fulness and its authority. This will
to some extent be seen as I proceed.

4. St Cyril, of Jerusalem (315-386), speaks for Palestine:

  "Since through Eve, a virgin, came death, it behoved that through a
  virgin, or rather from a virgin, should life appear; that, as the
  serpent had deceived the one, so to the other Gabriel might bring
  good tidings."--_Cat_. xii. 15.

5. St. Ephrem Syrus (lie died 378) is a witness for the Syrians proper
and the neighboring Orientals, in contrast to the Graeco-Syrians. A
native of Nisibis, on the farther side of the Euphrates, he knew no
language but Syriac:

  "Through Eve the beautiful and desirable glory of men was
  extinguished; but it has revived through Mary."--_Opp. Syr._, ii. p.
  318.

Again:

  "In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, death passed
  upon all men; to-day, through Mary, we are translated from death
  unto life. In the beginning, the serpent filled the ears of Eve, and
  the poison spread thence over the whole body; to-day, Mary from her
  ears received the {61} champion of eternal happiness; what,
  therefore, was an instrument of death, was an instrument of life
  also."--iii. p. 607.

I have already referred to St. Paul's contrast between Adam and our
Lord in his Epistle to the Romans, as also in his first Epistle to the
Corinthians. Some writers attempt to say that there is no doctrinal
truth, but a mere rhetorical display, in those passages. It is quite
as easy to say so as to attempt so to dispose of this received
comparison, in the writings of the fathers, between Eve and Mary.

6. St. Epiphanius (320-400) speaks for Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus:

  "She it is who is signified by Eve, enigmatically receiving the
  appellation of the mother of the living. . . . It was a wonder that
  after the fall she had this great epithet. And, according to what is
  material, from that Eve all the race of men on earth is generated.
  But thus in truth from Mary the Life itself was born in the world,
  that Mary might bear living things and become the mother of living
  things. Therefore, enigmatically, Mary is called the mother of
  living things. . . Also, there is another thing to consider as to
  these women, and wonderful--as to Eve and Mary. Eve became a cause
  of death to man . . . and Mary a cause of life; . . . that life
  might be instead of death, life excluding death which came from the
  woman, viz., he who through the woman has become our life."
  --_Haer_. 78. 18.

7. By the time of St. Jerome (331-420), the contrast between Eve and
Mary had almost passed into a proverb. He says (Ep. xxii. 21, ad
Eustoch.), "Death by Eve, life by Mary." Nor let it be supposed that
he, any more than the preceding fathers, considered the Blessed Virgin
a mere physical instrument of giving birth to our Lord, who is the
life. So far from it, in the epistle from which I have quoted, he is
only adding another virtue to that crown which gained for Mary her
divine maternity. They have spoken of faith, joy, and obedience; St.
Jerome adds, what they had only suggested, virginity. After the manner
of the fathers in his own day, he is setting forth the Blessed Mary to
the high-born Roman lady whom he is addressing as the model of the
virginal life; and his argument in its behalf is, that it is higher
than the marriage state, not in itself, viewed in any mere natural
respect, but as being the free act of self-consecration to God, and
from the personal religious purpose which it involves:

  "Higher wage," he says, "is due to that which is not a compulsion,
  but an offering; for, were virginity commanded, marriage would seem
  to be put out of the question; and it would be most cruel to force
  men against nature, and to extort from them an angel's life."--20.

I do not know whose testimony is more important than St. Jerome's, the
friend of Pope Damasus at Rome, the pupil of St. Gregory Nazianzen at
Constantinople, and of Didymus in Alexandria, a native of Dalmatia,
yet an inhabitant, at different times of his life, of Gaul, Syria, and
Palestine.

8. St. Jerome speaks for the whole world, except Africa; and for
Africa in the fourth century, if we must limit so world-wide an
authority to place, witnesses St. Augustine (354-430). He repeats the
words as if a proverb; "By a woman death, by a woman life" (Opp. t. v.
Serm. 233); elsewhere he enlarges on the idea conveyed in it. In one
place he quotes St. Irenaeus's words as cited above (adv. Julian i.
4). In another he speaks as follows:

  "It is a great sacrament that, whereas through woman death became
  our portion, so life was born to us by woman; that, in the case of
  both sexes, male and female, the baffled devil should be tormented,
  when on the overthrow of both sexes he was rejoicing; whose
  punishment had been small, if both sexes had been liberated in us,
  without our being liberated through both."--_Opp. t. vi. De Agon,
  Christ_, c. 24.

{62}

9. St. Peter Chrysologus (400-450), Bishop of Ravenna, and one of the
chief authorities in the fourth General Council:

  "Blessed art thou among women; for among women, on whose womb Eve,
  who was cursed, brought punishment, Mary, being blest, rejoices, is
  honored, and is looked up to. And woman now is truly made through
  grace the mother of the living, who had been by nature the mother of
  the dying. . . . Heaven feels awe of God, angels tremble at him, the
  creature sustains him not, nature sufficeth not, and yet one maiden
  so takes, receives, entertains him, as a guest within her breast,
  that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb,
  she asks, she obtains, peace for the earth, glory for the heavens,
  salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for
  the earthly, the union of God himself with human flesh."--_Serm._
  140.

It is difficult to express more explicitly, though in oratorical
language, that the Blessed Virgin had a real, meritorious
co-operation, a share which had a "hire" and a "price" in the reversal
of the fall.

10. St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe in Africa (468-533). The homily
which contains the following passage is placed by Ceillier (t. xvi. p.
127) among his genuine works:

  "In the wife of the first man, the wickedness of the devil depraved
  her seduced mind; in the mother of the second Man, the grace of God
  preserved both her mind inviolate and her flesh. On her mind he
  conferred the most firm faith; from her flesh he took away lust
  altogether. Since then man was in a miserable way condemned for sin,
  therefore without sin was in a marvellous way born the God
  man."--_Serm_. 2, p. 124, _De Dupl. Nativ._

Accordingly, in the sermon which follows (if it is his), he continues,
illustrating her office of universal mother, as ascribed to her by St.
Epiphanius:

  "Come ye virgins to a virgin, come ye who conceive to her who
  conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a mother, ye that
  suckle to one who suckled, young girls to the young girl. It is for
  this reason that the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Lord Jesus
  Christ all these divisions of nature, that to all women who have
  recourse to her she may be a succor, and so restore the whole race
  of women who come to her, being the new Eve, by keeping virginity,
  as the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of
  men."

Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, which the fathers
have given us of Mary, as the second Eve, the mother of the living. I
have cited ten authors. I could cite more were it necessary. Except
the two last, they write gravely and without any rhetoric. I allow
that the two last write in a different style, since the extracts I
have made are from their sermons; but I do not see that the coloring
conceals the outline. And, after all, men use oratory on great
subjects, not on small; nor would they, and other fathers whom I might
quote, have lavished their high language upon the Blessed Virgin, such
as they gave to no one else, unless they knew well that no one else
had such claims as she had on their love and veneration.

And now I proceed to dwell for a while upon two inferences, which it
is obvious to draw from the rudimental doctrine itself; the first
relates to the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, the second to her
greatness.

1. Her _sanctity_. She holds, as the fathers teach us, that office in
our restoration which Eve held in our fall. Now, in the first place,
what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She
could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was
innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she
had--a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that
nature of hers, which she received from Adam, as Adam before her had
also received the same gift, at the very time (as it is commonly held)
of his original creation. This is Anglican doctrine as well as
Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a
dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of
the schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created {63} in grace--that is,
received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation,
or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for
my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says: "It is abundantly
manifest, from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors
of the church did, with a general consent, acknowledge that our first
parents, in the state of integrity, had in them something more than
nature--that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the
Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."

Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who
agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask, Was not Mary as
fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference that she, who was to
co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less
endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a helpmate to
her husband, did in the event but co-operate with him for its ruin? If
Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which
we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had a greater grace? And
this consideration gives significance to the angel's salutation of her
as "full of grace"--an interpretation of the original word which is
undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant
assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance,
answering to the word "favor;" whereas it is, as the fathers teach, a
real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had
this supernatural inward gift given her from the moment of her
personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift
from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know
how to resist this inference--well, this is simply and literally the
doctrine of the immaculate conception. I say the doctrine of the
immaculate conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or
less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and
it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of the fathers,
that Mary is the second Eve.

It is to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and devout
men stumble at this doctrine, and I can only account for it by
supposing that, in matter of fact, they do not know what we mean by
the immaculate conception; and your volume (may I say it?) bears out
my suspicion. It is a great consolation to have reason for thinking
so--for believing that in some sort the persons in question are in the
position of those great saints in former times who are said to have
hesitated about it, when they would not have hesitated at all if the
word "conception" had been clearly explained in that sense in which
now it is universally received. I do not see how any one who holds
with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our
first parents, has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the
Blessed Virgin. It has no reference whatever to her parents, but
simply to her own person; it does but affirm that, together with the
nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature,
she had a superadded fulness of grace, and that from the first moment
of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and not lost her
first grace, and suppose she had eventually had children, those
children from the first moment of their existence would, through
divine bounty, have received the same privilege that she had ever had;
that is, as she was taken from Adam's side, in a garment, so to say,
of grace, so they in turn would have received what may be called an
immaculate conception. They would have been conceived in grace, as in
fact they are conceived in sin. What is there difficult in this
doctrine? What is there unnatural? Mary may be called a daughter of
Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace
given to him three months before his birth, at the time {64} that the
Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately
conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our
Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her grace
came not three months merely before her birth, but from the first
moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.

But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was
conceived without _original sin_? If Anglicans knew what we mean by
original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of
original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original
sin," with us, cannot be called sin in the ordinary sense of the word
"sin;" it is a term denoting the _imputation_ of Adam's sin, or the
state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it
is understood to be sin in the same sense as actual sin. We, with the
fathers, think of it as something negative; Protestants as something
positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a change of nature, a
poison internally corrupting the soul, and propagated from father to
son, after the manner of a bad constitution; and they fancy that we
ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different
from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold
nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others;
that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's
sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake
of him who was to redeem her and us upon the cross, to her the debt
was remitted by anticipation; on her the sentence was not carried out,
except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time
came, as others. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original
sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something
negative, viz., this only, the _deprivation_ of that supernatural
unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their creation--deprivation
and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more
than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her
by God's free bounty from the very first moment of her existence, and
thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which
consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege in
order to fit her to become the mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit
her mentally, spiritually, for it; so that, by the aid of the first
grace, she might so grow in grace that when the angel came, and her
Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared, as far as a
creature could be prepared, to receive him into her bosom.

I have drawn the doctrine of the immaculate conception, as an
immediate inference, from the primitive doctrine that Mary is the
second Eve. The argument seems to me conclusive; and, if it has not
been universally taken as such, this has come to pass because there
has not been a clear understanding among Catholics what exactly was
meant by the immaculate conception. To many it seemed to imply that
the Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not come under
the penalty of the fall, that she was not redeemed; that she was
conceived in some way inconsistent with the verse in the _Miserere_
psalm. If controversy had in earlier days so cleared the subject as to
make it plain to all that the doctrine meant nothing else than that,
in fact, in her case the general sentence on mankind was not carried
out, and that by means of the indwelling in her of divine grace from
the first moment of her being (and this is all the decree of 1854 has
declared), I cannot believe that the doctrine would have ever been
opposed; for an instinctive sentiment has led Christians jealously to
put the Blessed Mary aside when sin comes into discussion. This is
expressed in the well-known words of St. Augustine. All have sinned
"except the holy Virgin Mary, {65} concerning whom, for the honor of
the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating
of sins" (de Nat. et Grat. 42); words which, whatever St. Augustine's
actual occasion of using them (to which you refer, p. 176), certainly,
in the spirit which they breathe, are well adapted to convey the
notion that, apart from her relation to her parents, she had not
personally any part in sin whatever. It is true that several great
fathers of the fourth century do imply or assert that on one or two
occasions she did sin venially or showed infirmity. This is the only
real objection which I know of; and, as I do not wish to pass it over
lightly, I propose to consider it at the end of this letter.

2. Now, secondly, her _greatness_. Here let us suppose that our first
parents had overcome in their trial, and had gained for their
descendants for ever the full possession, as if by right, of the
privileges which were promised to their obedience--grace here and
glory hereafter. Is it possible that those descendants, pious and
happy from age to age in their temporal homes, would have forgotten
their benefactors? Would they not have followed them in thought into
the heavens, and gratefully commemorated them on earth? The history of
the temptation, the craft of the serpent, their steadfastness in
obedience--the loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of Eve--the great
issue, salvation wrought out for all generations--would have been
never from their minds, ever welcome to their ears. This would have
taken place from the necessity of our nature. Every nation has its
mythical hymns and epics about its first fathers and its heroes. The
great deeds of Charlemagne, Alfred, Coeur de Lion, Wallace, Louis the
Ninth, do not die; and though their persons are gone from us, we make
much of their names. Milton's Adam, after his fall, understands the
force of this law, and shrinks from the prospect of its operation:

  "Who of all ages to succeed but, feeling
  The evil on him brought by me, will curse
  My head? Ill fare our ancestor impure;
  For this we may thank Adam."

If this anticipation has not been fulfilled in the event, it is owing
to the needs of our penal life, our state of perpetual change, and the
ignorance and unbelief incurred by the fall; also because, fallen as
we are, from the hopefulness of our nature we feel more pride in our
national great men than dejection at our national misfortunes. Much
more then in the great kingdom and people of God--the saints are ever
in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual ghosts, but as if present
bodily in their past selves. It is said of them, "Their works do
follow them;" what they were here, such are they in heaven and in the
church. As we call them by their earthly names, so we contemplate them
in their earthly characters and histories. Their acts, callings, and
relations below are types and anticipations of their mission above.
Even in the case of our Lord himself, whose native home is the eternal
heavens, it is said of him in his state of glory, that he is a "priest
for ever;" and when he comes again he will be recognized, by those who
pierced him, as being the very same that he was on earth. The only
question is, whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in
the economy of grace, whether, when she was on earth, she secured by
her deeds any claim on our memories; for, if she did, it is impossible
we should put her away from us, merely because she is gone hence, and
not look at her still, according to the measure of her earthly
history, with gratitude and expectation. If, as St. Irenaeus says, she
did the part of an advocate, a friend in need, even in her mortal
life, if, as St. Jerome and St. Ambrose say, she was on earth the
great pattern of virgins, if she had a meritorious share in bringing
about our redemption, if her maternity was earned by her faith and
obedience, if her divine Son was subject to her, and if she stood by
the {66} cross with a mother's heart and drank in to the full those
sufferings which it was her portion to gaze upon, it is impossible
that we should not associate these characteristics of her life on
earth with her present state of blessedness; and this surely she
anticipated, when she said in her hymn that "all generations shall
call her blessed."

I am aware that, in thus speaking, I am following a line of thought
which is rather a meditation than an argument in controversy, and I
shall not carry it further; but still, in turning to other topics, it
is to the point to inquire whether the popular astonishment, excited
by our belief in the Blessed Virgin's present dignity, does not arise
from the circumstance that the bulk of men, engaged in matters of the
world, have never calmly considered her historical position in the
gospels so as rightly to realize (if I may use the word a second time)
what that position imports. I do not claim for the generality of
Catholics any greater powers of reflection upon the objects of their
faith than Protestants commonly have, but there is a sufficient number
of religious men among Catholics who, instead of expending their
devotional energies (as so many serious Protestants do) on abstract
doctrines, such as justification by faith only, or the sufficiency of
holy Scripture, employ themselves in the contemplation of Scripture
facts, and bring out in a tangible form the doctrines involved in
them, and give such a substance and color to the sacred history as to
influence their brethren, who, though superficial themselves, are
drawn by their Catholic instinct to accept conclusions which they
could not indeed themselves have elicited, but which, when elicited,
they feel to be true. However, it would be out of place to pursue this
course of reasoning here; and instead of doing so, I shall take what
perhaps you may think a very bold step--I shall find the doctrine of
our Lady's present exaltation in Scripture.

I mean to find it in the vision of the woman and child in the twelfth
chapter of the Apocalypse.  [Footnote 14] Now here two objections will
be made to me at once: first, that such an interpretation is but
poorly supported by the fathers; and secondly, that in ascribing such
a picture of the Madonna (as it may be called) to the apostolic age, I
am committing an anachronism.

  [Footnote 14: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Development," p. 384, and
  Bishop Ullathorne's work on the "Immaculate Conception," p. 77.]

As to the former of these objections, I answer as follows: Christians
have never gone to Scripture for proofs of their doctrines till there
was actual need from the pressure of controversy. If in those times
the Blessed Virgin's dignity were unchallenged on all hands as a
matter of doctrine, Scripture, as far as its argumentative matter was
concerned, was likely to remain a sealed book to them. Thus, to take
an instance in point, the Catholic party in the English Church (say
the Non-jurors), unable by their theory of religion simply to take
their stand on tradition, and distressed for proof of their doctrines,
had their eyes sharpened to scrutinize and to understand the letter of
holy Scripture, which to others brought no instruction. And the
peculiarity of their interpretations is this--that they have in
themselves great logical cogency, yet are but faintly supported by
patristical commentators. Such is the use of the word [Greek text] or
_facere_ in our Lord's institution of the holy eucharist, which, by a
reference to the old Testament, is found to be a word of sacrifice.
Such again is [Greek text] in the passage in the Acts, "As they
_ministered_ to the Lord and fasted," which again is a sacerdotal
term. And such the passage in Rom. xv. 16, in which several terms are
used which have an allusion to the sacrificial eucharistic rite. Such,
too, is St. Paul's repeated message to the _household_ of Onesiphorus,
with no mention of Onesiphorus himself, but in one place, with the
addition of a prayer that "he might find mercy of the Lord" in the day
of {67} judgment, which, taking into account its wording and the known
usage of the first centuries, we can hardly deny is a prayer for his
soul. Other texts there are which ought to find a place in ancient
controversies, and the omission of which by the fathers affords matter
for more surprise; those, for instance, which, according to
Middleton's rule, are real proofs of our Lord's divinity, and yet are
passed over by Catholic disputants; for these bear upon a then
existing controversy of the first moment and of the most urgent
exigency.

As to the second objection which I have supposed, so far from allowing
it, I consider that it is built upon a mere imaginary fact, and that
the truth of the matter lies in the very contrary direction. The
Virgin and Child is _not_ a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is
represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the
paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant
in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the
attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the
doctrine of the high dignity of the mother, and, I will add, of her
power over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be
so dear to Christians, and so carefully preserved? The only question
to be determined, is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of
the first age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of
what Anglicans call the "undivided church" is certain; but lately
investigations have been pursued which place some of them at an
earlier date than any one anticipated as possible. I am not in a
position to quote largely from the works of the Cavaliere de Rossi,
who has thrown so much light upon the subject; but I have his "Imagini
Scelte," published in 1863, and they are sufficient for my purpose. In
this work he has given us from the Catacombs various representations
of the Virgin and Child; the latest of these belong to the early part
of the fourth century, but the earliest he believes to be referable to
the very age of the apostles. He comes to this conclusion from the
style and the skill of the composition, and from the history,
locality, and existing inscriptions of the subterranean in which it is
found. However, he does not go so far as to insist upon so early a
date; yet the utmost liberty he grants is to refer the painting to the
era of the first Antonines--that is, to a date within half a century
of the death of St. John. I consider then that, as you fairly use, in
controversy with Protestants, the traditional doctrine of the church
in early times, as an explanation of the Scripture text, or at least
as a suggestion, or as a defence, of the sense which you may wish to
put on it, quite apart from the question whether your interpretation
itself is traditional, so it is lawful for me, though I have not the
positive words of the fathers on my side, to shelter my own
interpretation of the apostle's vision under the fact of the extant
pictures of Mother and Child in the Roman Catacombs. There is another
principle of Scripture interpretation which we should hold with
you--when we speak of a doctrine being contained in Scripture, we do
not necessarily mean that it is contained there in direct categorical
terms, but that there is no other satisfactory way of accounting for
the language and expressions of the sacred writers, concerning the
subject-matter in question, than to suppose that they held upon it the
opinions which we hold; that they would not have spoken as they have
spoken _unless_ they held it. For myself I have ever felt the truth of
this principle, as regards the Scripture proof of the Holy Trinity; I
should not have found out that doctrine in the sacred text without
previous traditional teaching; but when once it is suggested from
without, it commends itself as the one true interpretation, from its
appositeness, because no other view of doctrine, which can be ascribed
to the inspired writers, so happily {68} solves the obscurities and
seeming inconsistencies of their teaching. And now to apply what I
have said to the passage in the Apocalypse.

If there is an apostle on whom, _à priori_, our eyes would be fixed,
as likely to teach us about the Blessed Virgin, it is St. John, to
whom she was committed by our Lord on the cross--with whom, as
tradition goes, she lived at Ephesus till she was taken away. This
anticipation is confirmed _à posteriori_; for, as I have said above,
one of the earliest and fullest of our informants concerning her
dignity, as being the second Eve, is Irenaeus, who came to Lyons from
Asia Minor, and had been taught by the immediate disciples of St.
John. The apostle's vision is as follows:

"A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and
the moon under her feet; and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And
being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be
delivered. And there was seen another sign in heaven; and behold a
great red dragon . . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was
ready to be delivered, that, when she should be delivered, he might
devour her son. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all
nations with an iron rod; and her son was taken up to God and to his
throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness." Now I do not deny, of
course, that, under the image of the woman, the church is signified;
but what I would maintain is this, that the holy apostle would not
have spoken of the church under this particular image _unless_ there
had existed a Blessed Virgin Mary, who was exalted on high, and the
object of veneration to all the faithful.

No one doubts that the "man-child" spoken of is an allusion to our
Lord; why, then, is not "the woman" an allusion to his mother? This
surely is the obvious sense of the words; of course it has a further
sense also, which is the scope of the image; doubtless the child
represents the children of the church, and doubtless the woman
represents the church; this, I grant, is the real or direct sense, but
what is the sense of the symbol? _who_ are the woman and the child? I
answer, They are not personifications but persons. This is true of the
child, therefore it is true of the woman.

But again: not only mother and child, but a serpent, is introduced
into the vision. Such a meeting of man, woman, and serpent has not
been found in Scripture, since the beginning of Scripture, and now it
is found in its end. Moreover, in the passage in the Apocalypse, as if
to supply, before Scripture came to an end, what was wanting in its
beginning, we are told, and for the first time, that the serpent in
Paradise was the evil spirit. If the dragon of St. John is the same as
the serpent of Moses, and the man-child is "the seed of the woman,"
why is not the woman herself she whose seed the man-child is? And, if
the first woman is not an allegory, why is the second? if the first
woman is Eve, why is not the second Mary?

But this is not all. The image of the woman, according to Scripture
usage, is too bold and prominent for a mere personification. Scripture
is not fond of allegories. We have indeed frequent figures there, as
when the sacred writers speak of the arm or sword of the Lord; and so
too when they speak of Jerusalem or Samaria in the feminine; or of the
mountains leaping for joy, or of the church as a bride or as a vine;
but they are not much given to dressing up abstract ideas or
generalizations in personal attributes. This is the classical rather
than the Scripture style. Xenophon places Hercules between Virtue and
Vice, represented as women; AEschylus introduces into his drama Force
and Violence; Virgil gives personality to public rumor or Fame, and
Plautus to Poverty. So on monuments done in the classical style, we
{69} see  virtues, vices, rivers, renown, death, and the like, turned
into human figures of men and women. I do not say there are no
instances at all of this method in Scripture, but I say that such
poetical compositions are strikingly unlike its usual method. Thus we
at once feel its difference from Scripture, when we betake ourselves
to the Pastor of Hermes, and find the church a woman, to St.
Methodius, and find Virtue a woman, and to St. Gregory's poem, and
find Virginity again a woman. Scripture deals with types rather than
personifications. Israel stands for the chosen people, David for
Christ, Jerusalem for heaven. Consider the remarkable representations,
dramatic I may call them, in Jeremiah, Ezechiel, and Hosea;
predictions, threatenings, and promises are acted out by those
prophets. Ezechiel is commanded to shave his head, and to divide and
scatter his hair; and Ahias tears his garment, and gives ten out of
twelve parts of it to Jeroboam. So, too, the structure of the imagery
in the Apocalypse is not a mere allegorical creation, but is founded
on the Jewish ritual. In like manner our Lord's bodily cures are
visible types of the power of his grace upon the soul; and his
prophecy of the last day is conveyed under that of the fall of
Jerusalem. Even his parables are not simply ideal, but relations of
occurrences which did or might take place, under which was conveyed a
spiritual meaning. The description of Wisdom in the Proverbs, and
other sacred books, has brought out the instinct of commentators in
this respect. They felt that Wisdom could not be a mere
personification, and they determined that it was our Lord; and the
later of these books, by their own more definite language, warranted
that interpretation. Then, when it was found that the Arians used it
in derogation of our Lord's divinity, still, unable to tolerate the
notion of a mere allegory, commentators applied the description to the
Blessed Virgin. Coming back then to the Apocalyptic vision, I ask, If
the woman must be some real person, who can it be whom the apostle
saw, and intends, and delineates, but that same great mother to whom
the chapters in the Proverbs are accommodated? And let it be observed,
moreover, that in this passage, from the allusion in it to the history
of the fall, she may be said still to be represented under the
character of the second Eve. I make a further remark; it is sometimes
asked, Why do not the sacred writers mention our Lady's greatness? I
answer, she was, or may have been, alive when the apostles and
evangelists wrote; there was just one book of Scripture certainly
written after her death, and that book does (if I may so speak)
canonize her.

But if all this be so, if it is really the Blessed Virgin whom
Scripture represents as clothed with the sun, crowned with the stars
of heaven, and with the moon as her footstool, what height of glory
may we not attribute to her? and what are we to say of those who,
through ignorance, run counter to the voice of Scripture, to the
testimony of the fathers, to the traditions of East and West, and
speak and act contemptuously toward her whom her Lord delighteth to
honor?


Now I have said all I mean to say on what I have called the rudimental
teaching of antiquity about the Blessed Virgin; but, after all, I have
not insisted on the highest view of her prerogatives which the fathers
have taught us. You, my dear friend, who know so well the ancient
controversies and councils, may have been surprised why I should not
have yet spoken of her as the Theotocos; but I wished to show on how
broad a basis her greatness rests, independent of that wonderful
title; and again, I have been loth to enlarge upon the force of a
word, which is rather matter for devotional thought than for polemical
dispute. However, I might as well not {70} write on my subject at all
as altogether be silent upon it.

It is, then, an integral portion of the faith fixed by ecumenical
council, a portion of it which you hold as well as I, that the Blessed
Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, or Mother of God; and this word, when
thus used, carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no taint of
extravagant affection; it has nothing else but a well-weighed, grave,
dogmatic sense, which corresponds and is adequate to its sound. It
intends to express that God is her Son, as truly as any one of us is
the son of his own mother. If this be so, what can be said of any
creature whatever which may not be said of her? what can be said too
much, so that it does not compromise the attributes of the Creator?
He, indeed, might have created a being more perfect, more admirable,
than she is; he might have endued that being, so created, with a
richer grant of grace, of power, of blessedness; but in one respect
she surpasses all even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of
her Creator. It is this awful title, which both illustrates and
connects together the two prerogatives of Mary, on which I have been
lately enlarging, her sanctity and her greatness. It is the issue of
her sanctity; it is the source of her greatness. What dignity can be
too great to attribute to her who is as closely bound up, as
intimately one, with the Eternal Word, as a mother is with a son? What
outfit of sanctity, what fulness and redundance of grace, what
exuberance of merits must have been hers, on the supposition, which
the fathers justify, that her Maker regarded them at all, and took
them into account, when he condescended "not to abhor the Virgin's
womb?" Is it surprising, then, that on the one hand she should be
immaculate in her conception? or on the other that she should be
exalted as a queen, with a crown of twelve stars? Men sometimes wonder
that we call her mother of life, of mercy, of salvation; what are all
these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God?

I shall say no more about this title here. It is scarcely possible to
write of it without diverging into a style of composition unsuited to
a letter; so I proceed to the history of its use.

The title of _Theotocos_ [Footnote 15] begins with ecclesiastical
writers of a date hardly later than that at which we read of her as
the second Eve. It first occurs in the works of Origen (185-254); but
he, witnessing for Egypt and Palestine, witnesses also that it was in
use before his time; for, as Socrates informs us, he "interpreted how
it was to be used, and discussed the question at length" (Hist. vii.
32). Within two centuries (431), in the general council held against
Nestorius, it was made part of the formal dogmatic teaching of the
church. At that time Theodoret, who from his party connections might
have been supposed disinclined to its solemn recognition, owned that
"the ancient and more than ancient heralds of the orthodox faith
taught the use of the term according to the apostolic tradition." At
the same date John of Antioch, who for a while sheltered Nestorius,
whose heresy lay in the rejection of the term, said, "This title no
ecclesiastical teacher has put aside. Those who have used it are many
and eminent, and those who have not used it have not attacked those
who did." Alexander again, one of the fiercest partisans of Nestorius,
allows the use of the word, though he considers it dangerous. "That in
festive solemnities," he says, "or in preaching or teaching,
_theotocos_ should be unguardedly said by the orthodox without
explanation is no blame, because such statements were not dogmatic,
nor said with evil meaning." If we look for those, in the interval
between Origen and the council, to whom Alexander refers, we find it
used again and again by the fathers in such of their works as are
extant: by {71} Archelans of Mesopotamia, Eusebius of Palestine,
Alexander of Egypt, in the third century; in the fourth, by Athanasius
many times with emphasis, by Cyril of Palestine, Gregory Nyssen of
Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzen of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, and
Ammonius of Thrace; not to speak of the Emperor Julian, who, having no
local or ecclesiastical domicile, speaks for the whole of Christendom.
Another and earlier emperor, Constantine, in his speech before the
assembled bishops at Nicaea, uses the still more explicit title of
"the Virgin Mother of God;" which is also used by Ambrose of Milan,
and by Vincent and Cassian in the south of France, and then by St.
Leo.

  [Footnote 15: _Vid_. "translation of St. Athanasius," pp. 420, 440,
  447.]

So much for the term; it would be tedious to produce the passages of
authors who, using or not using the term, convey the idea. "Our God
was carried in the womb of Mary," says Ignatius, who was martyred A.D.
106. "The word of God," says Hippolytus, "was carried in that virgin
frame." "The Maker of all," says Amphilochius, "is born of a virgin."
"She did compass without circumscribing the Sun of justice--the
Everlasting is born," says Chrysostom. "God dwelt in the womb," says
Proclus. "When thou hearest that God speaks from the bush," asks
Theodotus, "in the bush seest thou not the Virgin?" Cassian says,
"Mary bore her Author." "The one God only-begotten," says Hilary, "is
introduced into the womb of a virgin." "The Everlasting," says
Ambrose, "came into the Virgin him." "The closed gate," says Jerome,
"by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary."
"That man from heaven," says Capriolus, "is God conceived in the
womb." "He is made in thee," says Augustine, "who made thee."

This being the faith of the fathers about the Blessed Virgin, we need
not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion.
No wonder if their language should be unmeasured, when so great a term
as "Mother of God" had been formally set down as the safe limit of it.
No wonder if it became stronger and stronger as time went on, since
only in a long period could the fulness of its import be exhausted.
And in matter of fact, and as might be anticipated (with the few
exceptions which I have noted above, and which I am to treat of
below), the current of thought in those early ages did uniformly tend
to make much of the Blessed Virgin and to increase her honors, not to
circumscribe them. Little jealousy was shown of her in those times;
but, when any such niggardness of devotion occurred, then one father
or other fell upon the offender, with zeal, not to say with
fierceness. Thus St. Jerome inveighs against Helvidius; thus St.
Epiphanius denounces Apollinaris, St. Cyril Nestorius, and St. Ambrose
Bonosus; on the other hand, each successive insult offered to her by
individual adversaries did but bring out more fully the intimate
sacred affection with which Christendom regarded her. "She was alone,
and wrought the world's salvation and conceived the redemption of
all," says Ambrose;  [Footnote 16] "she had so great grace, as not
only to preserve virginity herself, but to confer it upon those whom
she visited." "The rod out of the stem of Jesse," says Jerome, "and
the eastern gate through which the high priest alone goes in and out,
yet is ever shut" "The wise woman," says Nilus, who "hath clad
believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with the clothing
of incorruption, and delivered them from their spiritual nakedness."
"The mother of life, of beauty, of majesty, the morning star,"
according to Antiochus. "The mystical new heavens," "the heavens
carrying the Divinity," "the fruitful vine," "by whom we are
translated from death to life," according to St. Ephrem. "The manna
which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, {72} which, as though
coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the churches
a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.

  [Footnote 16: "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 408]

Proclus calls her "the unsullied shell which contains the pearl of
price," "the church's diadem," "the expression of orthodoxy." "Run
through all creation in your thought," he says, "and see if there be
one equal or superior to the Holy Virgin, Mother of God." "Hail,
mother, clad in light, of the light which sets not," says Theodotus,
or some one else at Ephesus--"hail, all-undefiled mother of holiness;
hail, most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream." And St. Cyril
too at Ephesus, "Hail, Mary, Mother of God, majestic common-treasure
of the whole world, the lamp unquenchable, the crown of virginity, the
staff of orthodoxy, the indissoluble temple, the dwelling of the
illimitable, mother and virgin, through whom he in the holy gospels is
called blessed who cometh in the name of the Lord, .... through whom
the Holy Trinity is sanctified, through whom angels and archangels
rejoice, devils are put to flight, .... and the fallen creature is
received up into the heavens, etc, etc."   [Footnote 17] Such is but a
portion of the panegyrical language which St. Cyril used in the third
ecumenical council.

  [Footnote 17: Opp., t. 6, p. 355. ]

I must not close my review of the Catholic doctrine concerning the
Blessed Virgin without directly speaking of her intercessory power,
though I have incidentally made mention of it already. It is the
immediate result of two truths, neither of which you dispute: first,
that "it is good and useful," as the Council of Trent says,
"suppliantly to invoke the saints and to have recourse to their
prayers;" and secondly, that the Blessed Mary is singularly dear to
her Son and singularly exalted in sanctity and glory. However, at the
risk of becoming didactic, I will state somewhat more fully the
grounds on which it rests.

To a candid pagan it must have been one of the most remarkable points
of Christianity, on its first appearance, that the observance of
prayer formed so vital a part of its organization; and that, though
its members were scattered all over the world, and its rulers and
subjects had so little opportunity of correlative action, yet they,
one and all, found the solace of a spiritual intercourse, and a real
bond of union, in the practice of mutual intercession. Prayer, indeed,
is the very essence of religion; but in the heathen religions it was
either public or personal; it was a state ordinance, or a selfish
expedient, for the attainment of certain tangible, temporal goods.
Very different from this was its exercise among Christians, who were
thereby knit together in one body, different as they were in races,
ranks, and habits, distant from each other in country, and helpless
amid hostile populations. Yet it proved sufficient for its purpose.
Christians could not correspond; they could not combine; but they
could pray one for another. Even their public prayers partook of this
character of intercession; for to pray for the welfare of the whole
church was really a prayer for all classes of men, and all the
individuals of which it was composed. It was in prayer that the church
was founded. For ten days all the apostles "persevered with one mind
in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the Mother of
Jesus, and with his brethren." Then again at Pentecost "they were all
with one mind in one place;" and the converts then made are said to
have "persevered in prayer." And when, after a while, St. Peter was
seized and put in prison with a view to his being put to death,
"prayer was made without ceasing" by the church of God for him; and,
when the angel released him, he took refuge in a house "where many
were gathered together in prayer."

{73}

We are so accustomed to these passages as hardly to be able to do
justice to their singular significance; and they are followed up by
various passages of the apostolic epistles. St. Paul enjoins his
brethren to '"pray with all prayer and supplication at all times in
the Spirit, with all instance and supplication for all saints," to
"pray in every place," "to make supplication, prayers, intercessions,
giving of thanks for all men." And in his own person he "ceases not to
give thanks for them, commemorating them in his prayers," and "always
in all his prayers making supplication for them all with joy."

Now, was this spiritual bond to cease with life? or had Christians
similar duties to their brethren departed? From the witness of the
early ages of the church, it appears that they had; and you, and those
who agree with you, would be the last to deny that they were then in
the practice of praying, as for the living, so for those also who had
passed into the intermediate state between earth and heaven. Did the
sacred communion extend further still, on to the inhabitants of heaven
itself? Here too you agree with us, for you have adopted in your
volume the words of the Council of Trent which I have quoted above.
But now we are brought to a higher order of thoughts.

It would be preposterous to pray for those who are already in glory;
but at least they can pray for us, and we can ask their prayers, and
in the Apocalypse at least angels are introduced both sending us their
blessing and presenting our prayers before the divine Presence. We
read there of an angel who "came and stood before the altar, having a
golden censer;" and "there was given to him much incense, that he
should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which
is before the throne of God." On this occasion, surely, the angel
Michael, as the prayer in mass considers him, performed the part of a
great intercessor or mediator above for the children of the church
militant below. Again, in the beginning of the same book, the sacred
writer goes so far as to speak of "grace and peace" being sent us, not
only from the Almighty, but "from the seven spirits that are before
his throne," thus associating the Eternal with the ministers of his
mercies; and this carries us on to the remarkable passage of St.
Justin, one of the earliest fathers, who, in his "Apology," says, "To
him (God), and his Son who came from him, and taught us these things,
and the host of the other good angels who follow and resemble them,
and the prophetic Spirit, we pay veneration and homage." Further, in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul introduces, not only angels, but
"the spirits of the just" into the sacred communion: "Ye have come to
Mount Sion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to God,
the Judge of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to
Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament." What can be meant by having
"come to the spirits of the just," unless in some way or other they do
us good, whether by blessing or by aiding us? that is, in a word, to
speak correctly, by praying for us; for it is by prayer alone that the
creature above can bless or aid the creature below.

Intercession thus being the first principle of the church's life, next
it is certain again that the vital principle of that intercession, as
an availing power, is, according to the will of God, sanctity. This
seems to be suggested by a passage of St. Paul, in which the supreme
intercessor is said to be "the Spirit:" "The Spirit himself maketh
intercession for us; he maketh intercession for the saints according
to God." However, the truth thus implied is expressly brought out in
other parts of Scripture, in the form both of doctrine and of example.
The words of the man born blind speak the common sense of nature: "If
any man be a worshipper of God, him he heareth." {74} And apostles
confirm them: "The prayer of a just man availeth much," and "whatever
we ask we receive, because we keep his commandments." Then, as for
examples, we read of Abraham and Moses as having the divine purpose of
judgment revealed to them beforehand, in order that they might
deprecate its execution. To the friends of Job it was said, "My
servant Job shall pray for you; his face I will accept." Elias by his
prayer shut and opened the heavens. Elsewhere we read of "Jeremias,
Moses, and Samuel," and of "Noe, Daniel, and Job," as being great
mediators between God and his people. One instance is given us, which
testifies the continuance of so high an office beyond this life.
Lazarus, in the parable, is seen in Abraham's bosom. It is usual to
pass over this striking passage with the remark that it is a Jewish
expression; whereas, Jewish belief or not, it is recognized and
sanctioned by our Lord himself. What do we teach about the Blessed
Virgin more wonderful than this? Let us suppose that, at the hour of
death, the faithful are committed to her arms; but if Abraham, not yet
ascended on high, had charge of Lazarus, what offence is it to affirm
the like of her, who was not merely "the friend," but the very "Mother
of God?"

It may be added that, though it availed nothing for influence with our
Lord to be one of his company if sanctity was wanting, still, as the
gospel shows, he on various occasions allowed those who were near him
to be the means by which supplicants were brought to him, or miracles
gained from him, as in the instance of the miracle of the loaves; and
if on one occasion he seems to repel his mother when she told him that
wine was wanting for the guests at the marriage feast, it is obvious
to remark on it that, by saying that she was then separated from him
_because_ his hour was not yet come, he implied that, when that hour
was come, such separation would be at an end. Moreover, in fact, he
did, at her intercession, work the miracle which she desired.

I consider it impossible, then, for those who believe the church to be
one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of
God has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they
recognize the sanctity and greatness of the Blessed Virgin, not to
perceive immediately that her office above is one of perpetual
intercession for the faithful militant, and that our very relation to
her must be that of clients to a patron, and that, in the eternal
enmity which exists between the woman and the serpent, while the
serpent's strength is that of being the tempter, the weapon of the
second Eve and Mother of God is prayer.

As then these ideas of her sanctity and greatness gradually penetrated
the mind of Christendom, so did her intercessory power follow close
upon and with them. From the earliest times that mediation is
symbolized in those representations of her with uplifted hands, which,
whether in plaster or in glass, are still extant in Rome--that
church, as St. Irenaeus says, with which "every church, that is, the
faithful from every side, must agree, because of its more powerful
principality;" "into which," as Tertullian adds, "the apostles poured
out, together with their blood, their whole doctrines." As far,
indeed, as existing documents are concerned, I know of no instance to
my purpose earlier than A.D. 234, but it is a very remarkable one;
and, though it has been often quoted in the controversy, an argument
is not the weaker for frequent use.

St. Gregory Nyssen,  [Footnote 18] a native of Cappadocia in the
fourth century, relates that his namesake, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea,
surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the century preceding, shortly before he was
called to the priesthood, received in a vision a creed, which is still
extant, from the Blessed Mary at the hands of St. John.

  [Footnote 18: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Dev." p. 386.]

{75}

The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine,
which the heretics of the day depraved. "In such thoughts," says his
namesake of Nyssa, "he was passing the night, when one appeared, as if
in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his
garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general
mien. Amazed at the sight, he started from his bed, and asked who it
was, and why he came; but, on the other calming the perturbation of
his mind with his gentle voice, and saying he had appeared to him by
divine command on account of his doubts, in order that the truth of
the orthodox faith might be revealed to him, he took courage at the
word, and regarded him with a mixture of joy and fright. Then, on his
stretching his hand straight forward and pointing with his fingers at
something on one side, he followed with his eyes the extended hand,
and saw another appearance opposite to the former, in the shape of a
woman, but more than human. . . . When his eyes could not, bear the
apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his
doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but
learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective
appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's
shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery
of godliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this
matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a
formulary, well turned and complete, and so vanished. He, on the other
hand, immediately committed to writing that divine teaching of his
mystagogue, and henceforth preached in the church according to that
form, and bequeathed to posterity, as an inheritance, that heavenly
teaching, by means of which his people are instructed down to this
day, being preserved from all heretical evil." He proceeds to rehearse
the creed thus given, "There is one God, father of a living Word,"
etc. Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene faith, alludes
to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it
incredible that such a providence should befal a man whose whole life
was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical
writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one
voice."

Here she is represented as rescuing a holy soul from intellectual
error. This leads me to a further reflection. You seem, in one place
in your volume, to object to the antiphon, in which it is said of her,
"All heresies thou hast destroyed alone." Surely the truth of it is
verified in this age, as in former times, and especially by the
doctrine concerning her on which I have been dwelling. She is the
great exemplar of prayer in a generation which emphatically denies the
power of prayer _in toto_, which determines that fatal laws govern the
universe, that there cannot be any direct communication between earth
and heaven, that God cannot visit his earth, and that man cannot
influence his providence.



I cannot help hoping that your own reading of the fathers will on the
whole bear me out in the above account of their teaching concerning
the Blessed Virgin. Anglicans seem to me to overlook the strength of
the argument adducible from their works in our favor, and they open
the attack upon our mediaeval and modern writers, careless of leaving
a host of primitive opponents in their rear. I do not include you
among such Anglicans; you know what the fathers assert; but, if so,
have you not, my dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent
volume, and made far too much of the differences which exist between
Anglicans and us on this particular point? It is the office of an
Irenicon to smooth difficulties; I shall be pleased if I succeed in
removing some of yours. Let the public judge between us here. Had you
{76} happened in your volume to introduce your notice of our teaching
about the Blessed Virgin with a notice of the teaching of the fathers
concerning her, ordinary men would have considered that there was not
much to choose between you and us. Though you appealed ever so much to
the authority of the "undivided church," they certainly would have
said that you, who had such high notions of the Blessed Mary, were one
of the last men who had a right to accuse us of quasi-idolatry. When
they found you calling her by the titles of Mother of God, Second Eve,
and Mother of all Living, the Mother of life, the Morning Star, the
Stay of Believers, the Expression of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled
Mother of Holiness, and the like, they would have deemed it a poor
compensation for such language that you protested against her being
called a co-redemptress or a priestess. And, if they were violent
Protestants, they would not have read you with that relish and
gratitude with which, as it is, they have perhaps accepted your
testimony against us. Not that they would have been altogether right
in their view of you;--on the contrary, I think there is a real
difference between what you protest against and what with the fathers
you hold; but unread men and men of the world form a broad practical
judgment of the things which come before them, and they would have
felt in this case that they had the same right to be shocked at you as
you have to be shocked at us;--and further, which is the point to
which I am coming, they would have said that, granting some of our
modern writers go beyond the fathers in this matter, still the line
cannot be logically drawn between the teaching of the fathers
concerning the Blessed Virgin and our own. This view of the matter
seems to me true and important; I do not think the line _can_ be
satisfactorily drawn, and to this point I shall now direct my
attention. It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw
the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is
ever the case in concrete matters, which have life. Life in this world
is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things
grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No
rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law,
whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed
encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonisms and
remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself out of which they
arise. Life has the same right to decay as it has to wax strong. This
is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you
may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your
continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range,
and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and
restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only
this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much, wherever it is
possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of
thought, and to call it to account when abused.

If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas generally, much
more is it the case in matters of religion. Religion acts on the
affections; who is to hinder these, when once roused, from gathering
in their strength and running wild? They are not gifted with any
connatural principle within them which renders them self-governing and
self-adjusting. They hurry right on to their object, and often in
their case it is, more haste and worse speed. Their object engrosses
them, and they see nothing else. And of all passions love is the most
unmanageable; nay, more, I would not give much for that love which is
never extravagant, which always observes the proprieties, and can move
about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. What mother, what
husband or wife, what youth or maiden in love, {77} but says a
thousand foolish things, in the way of endearment, which the speaker
would be sorry for strangers to hear; yet they were not on that
account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are addressed. Sometimes
by bad luck they are written down, sometimes they get into the
newspapers; and what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from
the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the countenance, presents
but a melancholy exhibition when served up cold for the public eye. So
it is with devotional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as open
to criticism as they are beyond it. What is abstractedly extravagant,
may in religions persons be becoming and beautiful, and only fall
under blame when it is found in others who imitate them. When it is
formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as repulsive as
love-letters in a police report. Moreover, even holy minds readily
adopt and become familiar with language which they would never have
originated themselves, when it proceeds from a writer who has the same
objects of devotion as they have; and, if they find a stranger
ridicule or reprobate supplication or praise which has come to them so
recommended, they feel as keenly as if a direct insult were offered to
those to whom that homage is addressed. In the next place, what has
power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the
multitude; and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and
abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition
while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt
religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church, you must put up with
fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of
earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their
excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of
religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt
it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our
countrymen report so unfavorably from abroad:--a high grand faith and
worship which compel their admiration, and puerile absurdities among
the people which excite their contempt.

Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a religious system
that the religion is based upon reason, and develops into a theology.
Theology both uses logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both as a
protection and as the perversion of religion. Theology is occupied
with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries which
reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an
abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to
plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing its way, as it
can, through thick darkness and ethereal mediums. The Arians went
ahead with logic for their directing principle, and so lost the truth;
on the other hand, St. Augustine, in his treatise on the Holy Trinity,
seems to show that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of
lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting
ourselves; that for instance it is difficult to find the logical
reason for not speaking of three Gods as well as of one, and of one
person in the Godhead as well as of three. I do not mean to say that
logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or that in the hands
of an able disputant the balance of truth may not be restored. This
was done at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea, in the instances of
Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous and elaborate; and
is conducted by means of minute subtleties which will give it the
appearance of a game of skill in the case of matters too grave and
practical to deserve a mere scholastic treatment. Accordingly, St.
Augustine simply lays it down that the statements in question are
heretical, for the former is trltheism and the latter Sabellianism.
That is, good sense and a large {78} view of truth are the correctives
of his logic. And thus we have arrived at the final resolution of the
whole matter; for good sense and a large view of truth are rare gifts;
whereas all men are bound to be devout, and most men think they can
argue and conclude.

Now let me apply what I have been saying to the teaching of the church
on the subject of the Blessed Virgin. I have to recur to a subject of
so sacred a nature, that, writing as I am for publication, I need the
apology of my object for venturing to pursue it. I say then, when once
we have mastered the idea that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the
Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush
and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves? What awe and
surprise must attend upon the knowledge that a creature has been
brought so close to the Divine Essence? It was the creation of a new
idea and a new sympathy, a new faith and worship, when the holy
apostles announced that God bad become incarnate; and a supreme love
and devotion to him became possible which seemed hopeless before that
revelation. But beside this, a second range of thoughts was opened on
mankind, unknown before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was
understood that that incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is
perfectly distinct from the former, the one does not interfere with
the other. He is God made low, she is a woman made high. I scarcely
like to use a familiar illustration on such a subject, but it will
serve to explain what I mean when I ask you to consider the difference
of feeling with which we read the respective histories of Maria
Theresa and the Maid of Orleans; or with which the middle and lower
classes of a nation regard a first minister of the day who has come of
an aristocratic house and one who has risen from the ranks. May God's
mercy keep me from the shadow of a thought dimming the light or
blunting the keenness of that love of him which is our sole happiness
and our sole salvation! But surely, when he became man he brought home
to us his incommunicable attributes with a distinctiveness which
precludes the possibility of our lowering him by exalting a creature.
He alone has an entrance into our soul, reads our secret thoughts,
speaks to our heart, applies to us spiritual pardon and strength. On
him we solely depend. He alone is our inward life; he not only
regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) _semper gignit;_
he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this
sense he may be called, as in nature, so in grace, our real father.
Mary is only our adopted mother, given us from the cross; her presence
is above, not on earth; her office is external, not within us. Her
name is not heard in the administration of the sacraments. Her work is
not one of ministration toward us; her power is indirect. It is her
prayers that avail, and they are effectual by the _fiat_ of him who is
our all in all. Nor does she hear us by any innate power, or any
personal gift; but by his manifestation to her of the prayers which we
make her. When Moses was on the Mount, the Almighty told him of the
idolatry of his people at the foot of it, in order that he might
intercede for them; and thus it is the Divine presence which is the
intermediating power by which we reach her and she reaches us.

Woe is me, if even by a breath I sully these ineffable truths! but
still, without prejudice to them, there is, I say, another range of
thought quite distinct from them, incommensurate with them, of which
the Blessed Virgin is the centre. If we placed our Lord in that
centre, we should only be degrading him from his throne, and making
him an Arian kind of a God; that is, no God at all. He who charges us
with marking Mary a divinity, is thereby denying the divinity of
Jesus. Such a man does not know what divinity is. Our Lord cannot {79}
pray for us, as a creature, as Mary prays; he cannot inspire those
feelings which a creature inspires. To her belongs, as being a
creature, a natural claim on our sympathy and familiarity, in that she
is nothing else than our fellow. She is our pride,--in the poet's
words, "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." We look to her without
any fear, any remorse, any consciousness that she is able to read us,
judge us, punish us. Our heart yearns toward that pure virgin, that
gentle mother, and our congratulations follow her, as she rises from
Nazareth and Ephesus, through the choirs of angels, to her throne on
high. So weak, yet so strong; so delicate, yet so glory-laden; so
modest, yet so mighty. She has sketched for us her own portrait in the
magnificat. "He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid; for
behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. He hath
put down the mighty from their seat; and hath exalted the humble. He
hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent
empty away." I recollect the strange emotion which took by surprise
men and women, young and old, when, at the coronation of our present
queen, they gazed on the figure of one so like a child, so small, so
tender, so shrinking, who had been exalted to so great an inheritance
and so vast a rule, who was such a contrast in her own person to the
solemn pageant which centred in her. Could it be otherwise with the
spectators, if they had human affection? And did not the All-wise know
the human heart when he took to himself a mother? did he not
anticipate our emotion at the sight of such an exaltation? If he had
not meant her to exert that wonderful influence in his church which
she has in the event exerted, I will use a bold word, he it is who has
perverted us. If she is not to attract our homage, why did he make her
solitary in her greatness amid his vast creation? If it be idolatry in
us to let our affections respond to our faith, he would not have made
her what she is, or he would not have told us that he had so made her;
but, far from this, he has sent his prophet to announce to us, "A
virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel," and we have the same warrant for hailing her as God's
Mother, as we have for adoring him as God.

Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part it
tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the
announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to
receive it. This at least is its general character; and Butler
recognizes it as such in his "Analogy" when speaking of the Second and
Third Persons of the Holy Trinity: "The internal worship," he says,
"to the Son and Holy Ghost is no further matter of pure revealed
command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure
revelation; for the relations being known, the obligations to such
internal worship are _obligations of reason arising out of those
relations themselves_." [Footnote 19]

  [Footnote 19: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 50.]

It is in this way that the revealed doctrine of the incarnation
exerted a stronger and a broader influence on Christians, as they more
and more apprehended and mastered its meaning and its bearings. It is
contained in the brief and simple declaration of St John, "The Word
was made flesh;" but it required century after century to spread it
out in its fulness and to imprint it energetically on the worship and
practice of the Catholic people as well as on their faith. Athanasius
was the first and the great teacher of it. He collected together the
inspired notices scattered through David, Isaias, St. Paul, and St.
John, and he engraved indelibly upon the imaginations of the faithful,
as had never been before, that man is God, and God is man, that in
Mary they meet, and that in this sense Mary {80} is the centre of all
things. He added nothing to what was known before, nothing to the
popular and zealous faith that her Son was God; he has left behind him
in his works no such definite passages about her as those of St.
Irenaeus or St. Epiphanius; but he brought the circumstances of the
incarnation home to men's minds by the manifold evolutions of his
analysis, and secured it for ever from perversion. Still, however,
there was much to be done; we have no proof that Athanasius himself
had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin; but he laid the
foundations on which that devotion was to rest, and thus noiselessly
and without strife, as the first temple in the holy city, she grew up
into her inheritance, and was "established in Sion and her power was
in Jerusalem." Such was the origin of that august _cultus_ which has
been paid to the Blessed Mary for so many centuries in the East and in
the West. That in times and places it has fallen into abuse, that it
has even become a superstition, I do not care to deny; for, as I have
said above, the same process which brings to maturity carries on to
decay, and things that do not admit of abuse have very little life in
them. This of course does not excuse such excesses, or justify us in
making light of them, when they occur. I have no intention of doing so
as regards the particular instances which you bring against us, though
but a few words will suffice for what I need say about them:--before
doing so, however, I am obliged to make three or four introductory
remarks.

1. I have almost anticipated my first remark already. It is this: that
the height of our offending in our devotion to the Blessed Virgin
would not look so great in your volume as it does, had you not placed
yourself on lower ground than your own feelings toward her would have
spontaneously prompted you to take. I have no doubt you had some good
reason for adopting this course, but I do not know it. What I do know
is that, for the fathers' sake, who so exalt her, you really do love
and venerate her, though you do not evidence it in your book. I am
glad, then, in this place, to insist on a fact which will lead those
among us who know you not to love you from their love of her, in spite
of what you refuse to give her; and Anglicans, on the other hand, who
do know you, to think better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they
reflect that you do not actually go against us, but merely come short
of us in your devotion to her.

2. As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here
again we have a witness on our behalf of which you must be aware as
fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the
benefit. In proportion as this remarkable fact is understood, it will
take off the edge of the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our
devotions to our Lady. It must weigh with them when they discover that
we can enlist on our side in this controversy those seventy millions
(I think they so consider them) of Orientals who are separated from
our communion. Is it not a very pregnant fact that the Eastern
churches, so independent of us, so long separated from the West, so
jealous of antiquity, should even surpass us in their exaltation of
the Blessed Virgin? That they go further than we do is sometimes
denied, on the ground that the Western devotion toward her is brought
out into system, and the Eastern is not; yet this only means really
that the Latins have more mental activity, more strength of intellect,
less of routine, less of mechanical worship among them, than the
Greeks. We are able, better than they, to give an account of what we
do; and we seem to be more extreme merely because we are more
definite. But, after all, what have the Latins done so bold as that
substitution of the name of Mary for the name of Jesus at the end of
the collects and petitions in the breviary, nay, in the ritual and
liturgy? Not {81} merely in local or popular, and in semi-authorized
devotions, which are the kind of sources that supplies you with your
matter of accusation against us, but in the formal prayers of the
Greek eucharistic service, petitions are offered, not "in the name of
Jesus Christ," but "of the Theotocos." Such a phenomenon, in such a
quarter, I think, ought to make Anglicans merciful toward those
writers among ourselves who have been excessive in singing the praises
of the Deipara. To make a rule of substituting Mary with all saints
for Jesus in the public service, has more "Mariolatry" in it than to
alter the Te Deum to her honor in private devotion.

3. And thus I am brought to a third remark supplemental to your
accusation of us. Two large views, as I have said above, are opened
upon our devotional thoughts in Christianity; the one centring in the
Son of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither need obscure
the other; and in the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, neither
does. I wish you had either frankly allowed this in your volume, or
proved the contrary. I wish, when you report that "a certain
proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do
stop short in her," p. 107, that you had added your belief, that the
case was far otherwise with the great bulk of Catholics. Might I not
have expected it? May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained
at the omission? From mere Protestants, indeed, I expect nothing
better. They content themselves with saying that our devotions to our
Lady _must necessarily_ throw our Lord into the shade, and thereby
they relieve themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch at
any stray fact which countenances or seems to countenance their
prejudice. Now I say plainly I never will defend or screen any one
from your just rebuke who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets
Jesus. But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot hastily
admit it. There is this broad fact the other way: that if we look
through Europe we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations
and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have
given up devotion to his Mother, and that those, on the other hand,
who have been foremost in her honor, have retained their orthodoxy.
Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with
the north of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in
Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what would be the
state of its Established Church if the Liturgy and Articles were not
an integral part of its establishment; and when men bring so grave a
charge against us as is implied in your volume, they cannot be
surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglicanism.  [Footnote 20]
In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the
minister of her Son. She has protected him, as in his infancy, so in
the whole history of the religion. There is, then, a plain historical
truth in Dr. Fisher's words which you quote to condemn: "Jesus is
obscured, because Mary is kept in the background."

  [Footnote 20: I have spoken more more on this subject in my "Essay
  on Development," p. 438. "Nor does it avail to object, that, in this
  contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the
  divine, from the infirmity of out nature; for, I repeat, the
  question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must
  be asked, _whether the character of Protestant devotion toward our
  Lord has been that of worship at all:_ and not rather such as we pay
  to an excellent human being? . . . Carnal minds will ever create a
  carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of the
  saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God.
  Moreover. . . . great and constant as is the devotion which the
  Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and _has far
  more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of
  Christianity,_ and with certain extraordinary offices which she
  holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary_ in
  religion." Our late cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me
  this last sentence for the expression of his especial approbation.]

This truth, exemplified in history, might also be abundantly
illustrated, did my space admit, from the lives and writings of holy
men in modern times. Two of them, St. Alfonso Liguori and the Blessed
Paul of the Cross, for all their notorious devotion {82} to the
Mother, have shown their supreme love of her divine Son in the names
which a have given to their respective congregations, viz, "of the
Redeemer," and "of the Cross and Passion." However, I will do no more
than refer to an apposite passage in the Italian translation of the
work of a French Jesuit, Fr. Nepveu, "Christian Thoughts for every Day
in the Year," which was recommended to the friend who went with me to
Rome by the same Jesuit father there with whom, as I have already
said, I stood myself in such intimate relations; I believe it is a
fair specimen of the teaching of our spiritual books:

  "The love of Jesus Christ is the most sure pledge of our future
  happiness, and the most infallible token of our predestination.
  Mercy toward the poor, devotion to the Holy Virgin, are very
  sensible tokens of predestination; nevertheless they are not
  absolutely infallible; but one cannot have a sincere and constant
  love of Jesus Christ without being predestinated. . . . The
  destroying angel which bereaved the houses of the Egyptians of their
  first-born, had respect to all the houses which were marked with the
  blood of the Lamb."

And it is also exemplified, as I verily believe, not only in formal
and distinctive confessions, not only in books intended for the
educated class, but also in the personal religion of the Catholic
populations. When strangers are so unfavorably impressed with us,
because they see images of our Lady in our churches, and crowds
flocking about her, they forget that there is a Presence within the
sacred walls, infinitely more awful, which claims and obtains from us
a worship transcendently different from any devotion we pay to her.
That devotion might indeed tend to idolatry if it were encouraged in
Protestant churches, where there is nothing higher than it to attract
the worshipper; but all the images that a Catholic church ever
contained, all the crucifixes at its altars brought together, do not
so affect its frequenters as the lamp which betokens the presence or
absence there of the blessed sacrament. Is not this so certain, so
notorious, that on some occasions it has been even brought as a charge
against us, that we are irreverent in church, when what seemed to the
objector to be irreverence was but the necessary change of feeling
which came over those who were there on their knowing that their Lord
was away?

The mass again conveys to us the same lesson of the sovereignty of the
incarnate Son; it is a return to Calvary, and Mary is scarcely named
in it. Hostile visitors enter our churches on Sunday at mid-day, the
time of the Anglican service. They are surprised to see the high mass
perhaps poorly attended, and a body of worshippers leaving the music
and the mixed multitude who may be lazily fulfilling their obligation,
for the silent or the informal devotions which are offered at an image
of the Blessed Virgin. They may be tempted, with one of your
informants, to call such a temple not a "Jesus Church," but a "Mary
Church." But, if they understood our ways, they would know that we
begin the day with our Lord and then go on to his mother. It is early
in the morning that religious persons go to mass and communion. The
high mass, on the other hand, is the festive celebration of the day,
not the special devotional service; nor is there any reason why those
who have been at a low mass already, should not at that hour proceed
to ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for themselves and all
that is dear to them.

Communion, again, which is given in the morning, is a solemn,
unequivocal act of faith in the incarnate God, if any can be such; and
the most gracious of admonitions, did we need one, of his sovereign
and sole right to possess us. I knew a lady who on her death-bed was
visited by an excellent Protestant friend. She, with great tenderness
for her soul's welfare, asked her whether her prayers to the {83}
Blessed Virgin did not, at that awful hour, lead to forgetfulness of
her Saviour. "Forget him!" she replied with surprise; "why, he has
just been here." She had been receiving him in communion. When, then,
my dear Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our Lady, is
it not charitable to ask, even while you condemn it in itself, did the
author write nothing else? Did he write on the blessed sacrament? Had
he given up "all for Jesus?" I recollect some lines, the happiest, I
think, which that author wrote, which bring out strikingly the
reciprocity, which I am dwelling on, of the respective devotions to
Mother and Son:

  "But scornful men have coldly said
    Thy love was leading me from God;
  And yet in this I did but tread
    The very path my Savior trod.

  "They know but little of thy worth
    Who speak these heartless words to me;
  For what did Jesus love on earth
    One half so tenderly as thee?

  "Get me the grace to love thee more;
    Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead;
  And, Mother, when life's cares are o'er,
    Oh, I shall love thee then indeed.

  "Jesus, when his three hours were run,
    Bequeathed thee from the cross to me;
  And oh I how can I love thy Son,
    Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?"

4. Thus we are brought from the consideration of the sentiments
themselves, of which you complain, to the persons who wrote, and the
places where they wrote them. I wish you had been led, in this part of
your work, to that sort of careful labor which you have employed in so
masterly a way in your investigation of the circumstances of the
definition of the immaculate conception. In the latter case you have
catalogued the bishops who wrote to the Holy See, and analyzed their
answers. Had you in like manner discriminated and located the Marian
writers, as you call them, and observed the times, places, and
circumstances of their works, I think they would not, when brought
together, have had their present startling effect on the reader. As it
is, they inflict a vague alarm upon the mind, as when one hears a
noise, and does not know whence it comes and what it means. Some of
your authors, I know, are saints; all, I suppose, are spiritual
writers and holy men; but the majority are of no great celebrity, even
if they have any kind of weight. Suarez has no business among them at
all, for, when he says that no one is saved without the Blessed
Virgin, he is speaking not of devotion to her, but of her
intercession. The greatest name is St. Alfonso Liguori; but it never
surprises me to read anything unusual in the devotions of a saint.
Such men are on a level very different from our own, and we cannot
understand them. I hold this to be an important canon in the lives of
the saints, according to the words of the apostle, "The spiritual man
judges all things, and he himself is judged of no one." But we may
refrain from judging, without proceeding to imitate. I hope it is not
disrespectful to so great a servant of God to say, that I never read
his "Glories of Mary;" but here I am speaking generally of all saints,
whether I know them or not; and I say that they are beyond us, and
that we must use them as patterns, not as copies. As to his practical
directions, St. Alfonso wrote them for Neapolitans, whom he knew, and
we do not know. Other writers whom you quote, as De Salazar, are too
ruthlessly logical to be safe or pleasant guides in the delicate
matters of devotion. As to De Montford and Oswald, I never even met
with their names, till I saw them in your book; the bulk of our laity,
not to say of our clergy, perhaps know them little better than I do.
Nor did I know till I learnt it from your volume that there were two
Bernardines. St. Bernardine, of Sienna, I knew of course, and knew too
that he had a burning love for our Lord. But about the other,
"Bernardine de Bustis," I was quite at fault. I find from the
Protestant Cave that he, as well as his name-sake, made himself
conspicuous also for his zeal for the holy name, {84} which is much to
the point here. "With such devotion was he carried away," says Cave,
"for the bare name of Jesus (which, by a new device of Bernardine, of
Sienna, had lately began to receive divine honors), that he was urgent
with Innocent VIII. to assign it a day and rite in the calendar."

One thing, however, is clear about all these writers; that not one of
them is an Englishman. I have gone through your book, and do not find
one English name among the various authors to whom you refer, except,
of course, the name of that author whose lines I have been quoting,
and who, great as are his merits, cannot, for the reasons I have given
in the opening of my letter, be considered a representative of English
Catholic devotion. Whatever these writers may have said or not said,
whatever they may have said harshly, and whatever capable of fair
explanation, still they are foreigners; we are not answerable for
their particular devotions; and as to themselves, I am glad to be able
to quote the beautiful words which you use about them in your letter
to the "Weekly Register" of November 25th last. "I do not presume,"
you say, "to prescribe to Italians or Spaniards what they shall hold,
or how they shall express their pious opinions; and least of all did I
think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted that they took
from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his Mother." In these
last words, too, you have supplied one of the omissions in your volume
which I noticed above.

5. Now, then, we come to England itself, which after all, in the
matter of devotion, alone concerns you and me; for though doctrine is
one and the same everywhere, devotions, as I have already said, are
matters of the particular time and the particular country. I suppose
we owe it to the national good sense that English Catholics have been
protected from the extravagances which are elsewhere to be found. And
we owe it, also, to the wisdom and moderation of the Holy See, which
in giving us the pattern for our devotion, as well as the rule of our
faith, has never indulged in those curiosities of thought which are
both so attractive to undisciplined imaginations and so dangerous to
grovelling hearts. In the case of our own common people I think such a
forced style of devotion would be simply unintelligible; as to the
educated, I doubt whether it can have more than an occasional or
temporary influence. If the Catholic faith spreads in England, these
peculiarities will not spread with it. There is a healthy devotion to
the Blessed Mary, and there is an artificial; it is possible to love
her as a Mother, to honor her as a Virgin, to seek her as a Patron,
and to exalt her as a Queen, without any injury to solid piety and
Christian good sense: I cannot help calling this the English style. I
wonder whether you find anything to displease you in the "Garden of
the Soul," the "Key of Heaven," the "Vade Mecum," the "Golden Manual,"
or the "Crown of Jesus?" These are the books to which Anglicans ought
to appeal who would be fair to us in this matter. I do not observe
anything in them which goes beyond the teaching of the fathers, except
so far as devotion goes beyond doctrine.

There is one collection of devotions, beside, of the highest
authority, which has been introduced from abroad of late years. It
consists of prayers of various kinds which have been indulgenced by
the popes; and it commonly goes by the name of the "Raccolta." As that
word suggests, the language of many of the prayers is Italian, while
others are in Latin. This circumstance is unfavorable to a
translation, which, however skilful, must ever savor of the words and
idioms of the original; but, passing over this necessary disadvantage,
I consider there is hardly a clause in the good-sized volume in
question which even the sensitiveness of English Catholicism would
wish changed. Its anxious observance of doctrinal exactness is almost
a fault. {85} It seems afraid of using the words "give me," "make me,"
in its addresses to the Blessed Virgin, which are as natural to adopt
as in addressing a parent or friend. Surely we do not disparage divine
Providence when we say that we are indebted to our parents for our
life, or when we ask their blessing; we do not show any atheistical
leanings because we say that a man's recovery must be left to nature,
or that nature supplies brute animals with instincts. In like manner
it seems to me a simple purism to insist upon minute accuracy of
expression in devotional and popular writings. However, the
"Raccolta," as coming from responsible authority, for the most part
observes it. It commonly uses the phrases, "gain for us by thy
prayers," "obtain for us," "pray to Jesus for me," "speak for me,
Mary," "carry thou our prayers," "ask for us grace," "intercede for
the people of God," and the like, marking thereby with great emphasis
that she is nothing more than an advocate, and not a source of mercy.
Nor do I recollect in this book more than one or two ideas to which
you would be likely to raise an objection. The strongest of these is
found in the novena before her nativity, in which, _apropos_ of her
birth, we pray that she "would come down again and be re-born
spiritually in our souls;" but it will occur to you that St. Paul
speaks of his wish to impart to his converts, '"not only the gospel,
but his own soul;" and writing to the Corinthians, he says he has
"begotten them by the gospel," and to Philemon, that he had "begotten
Onesimus in his bonds;" whereas St. James, with greater accuracy of
expression, says "of his own will hath God begotten us with the word
of truth." Again we find the petitioner saying to the Blessed Mary,
"In thee I place all my hope;" but this is explained in another
passage, "Thou art my best hope after Jesus." Again, we read
elsewhere, "I would I had a greater love for thee, since to love thee
is a great mark of predestination;" but the prayer goes on, "Thy Son
deserves of us an immeasurable love; pray that I may have this grace
--a great love for Jesus;" and further on, "I covet no good of the
earth, but to love my God alone."

Then, again, as to the lessons which our Catholics receive, whether by
catechizing or instruction, you would find nothing in our received
manuals to which you would not assent, I am quite sure. Again, as to
preaching, a standard book was drawn up three centuries ago, to supply
matter for the purpose to the parochial clergy. You incidentally
mention, p. 153, that the comment of Cornelius à Lapide on Scripture
is "a repertorium for sermons;" but I never heard of this work being
used, nor indeed can it, because of its size. The work provided for
the purpose by the church is the "Catechism of the Council of Trent,"
and nothing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded there. On the
whole, I am sanguine that you will come to the conclusion that
Anglicans may safely trust themselves to us English Catholics as
regards any devotions to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of
them, over and above the rule of the Council of Trent.

6. And, now at length coming to the statements, not English, but
foreign, which offend you in works written in her honor, I will
frankly say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and
almost anger; for they seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a
power of "searching the reins and hearts" which is the attribute of
God alone; and I said to myself, how can we any more prove our Lord's
divinity from Scripture, if those cardinal passages which invest him
with divine prerogatives after all invest him with nothing beyond what
his Mother shares with him? And how, again, is there anything of
incommunicable greatness in his death and passion, if he who was alone
in the garden, alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after
{86} all is not alone, but shared his solitary work with his Blessed
Mother--with her to whom, when he entered on his ministry, he said for
our instruction, not as grudging her her proper glory, "Woman, what
have I to do with thee?" And then again, if I hate those perverse
sayings so much, how much more must she, in proportion to her love of
him? And how do we show our love for her, by wounding her in the very
apple of her eye? This I said and say; but then, on the other hand, I
have to observe that these strange words after all are but few in
number, out of the many passages you cite; that most of them exemplify
what I said above about the difficulty of determining the exact point
where truth passes into error, and that they are allowable in one
sense or connection, and false in another. Thus to say that prayer
(and the Blessed Virgin's prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression
in everyday prose; but, if it is explained to mean that there is
nothing which prayer may not obtain from God, it is nothing else than
the very promise made us in Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the
centre of all being, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is
only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the Creator and the
creature met together, and became one in her womb; and as such, I have
used the expression above. Again, it is at first sight a paradox to
say that "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background;"
yet there is a sense, as I have shown above, in which it is a simple
truth.

And so again certain statements may be true, under circumstances and
in a particular time and place, which are abstractedly false; and
hence it may be very unfair in a controversialist to interpret by an
English or a modern rule whatever may have been asserted by a foreign
or mediaeval author. To say, for instance, dogmatically, that no one
can be saved without personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin, would be
an untenable proposition: yet it might be true of this man or that, or
of this or that country at this or that date; and if the very
statement has ever been made by any writer of consideration (and this
has to be ascertained), then perhaps it was made precisely under these
exceptional circumstances. If an Italian preacher made it, I should
feel no disposition to doubt him, at least as regards Italian youths
and Italian maidens.

Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that
consideration and kindness which is your rule. At p. 106 you say, "It
is commonly said, that if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that 'it is
good and useful to pray to the saints,' he is not bound himself to do
so. Were the above teaching true, it would be cruelty to say so;
because, according to it, he would be forfeiting what is morally
necessary to his salvation." But now, as to the fact, where is it said
that to pray to our Lady and the saints is necessary to salvation? The
proposition of St. Alfonso is, that "God gives no grace except through
Mary;" that is, through her intercession. But intercession is one
thing, devotion is another. And Suarez says, "It is the universal
sentiment that the intercession of Mary is not only useful, but also
in a certain manner necessary;" but still it is the question of her
intercession, not of our invocation of her, not of devotion to her. If
it were so, no Protestant could be saved; if it were so, there would
be grave reasons for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom or
St. Athanasius, or of the primitive martyrs; nay, I should like to
know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes
her once. Our Lord died for those heathens who did not know him; and
his mother intercedes for those Christians who do not know her; and
she intercedes according to his will, and, when he wills to save a
particular soul, she at once prays for it. {87} I say, he wills indeed
according to her prayer, but then she prays according, to his will.
Though then it is natural and prudent for those to have recourse to
her who, from the church's teaching, know her power, yet it cannot be
said that devotion to her is a _sine quâ non_ of salvation. Some
indeed of the authors whom you quote go further; they do speak of
devotion; but even then they do not enunciate the general proposition
which I have been disallowing. For instance, they say, "It is morally
impossible for those to be saved who _neglect_ the devotion to the
Blessed Virgin;" but a simple omission is one thing, and neglect
another. "It is impossible for any to be saved who _turns away_ from
her;" yes; but to "turn away" is to offer some positive disrespect or
insult toward her, and that with sufficient knowledge; and I certainly
think it would be a very grave act if, in a Catholic country (and of
such the writers were speaking, for they knew of no other), with
ave-marias sounding in the air, and images of the Madonna at every
street and road, a Catholic broke off or gave up a practice that was
universal, and in which he was brought up, and deliberately put her
name out of his thoughts.

7. Though, then, common sense may determine for us that the line of
prudence and propriety has been certainly passed in the instance of
certain statements about the Blessed Virgin, it is often not easy to
prove the point logically; and in such cases authority, if it attempt
to act, would be in the position which so often happens in our courts
of law, when the commission of an offence is morally certain, but the
government prosecutor cannot find legal evidence sufficient to insure
conviction. I am not denying the right of sacred congregations, at
their will, to act peremptorily, and without assigning reasons for the
judgment they pass upon writers; but, when they have found it
inexpedient to take this severe course, perhaps it may happen from the
circumstances of the case that there is no other that they can take,
even if they would. It is wiser then for the most part to leave these
excesses to the gradual operation of public opinion--that is, to the
opinion of educated and sober Catholics; and this seems to me the
healthiest way of putting them down. Yet in matter of fact I believe
the Holy See has interfered from time to time, when devotion seemed
running into superstition; and not so long ago. I recollect hearing in
Gregory the XVI.'s time of books about the Blessed Virgin which had
been suppressed by authority; and in particular of a representation of
the immaculate conception which he had forbidden, and of measures
taken against the shocking notion that the Blessed Mary is present in
the holy eucharist in the sense in which our Lord is present; but I
have no means of verifying the information I received.

Nor have I time, any more than you have had, to ascertain how far
great theologians have made protests against those various
extravagances of which you so rightly complain. Passages, however,
from three well-known Jesuit fathers have opportunely come in my way,
and in one of them is introduced, in confirmation, the name of the
great Gerson. They are Canisius, Petavius, and Raynaudus; and as they
speak very appositely, and you do not seem to know them, I will here
make some extracts from them:

(1.) Canisius:

  "We confess that in the _cultus_ of Mary it has been and is possible
  for corruptions to creep in; and we have a more than ordinary desire
  that the pastors of the Church should be carefully vigilant here,
  and give no place to Satan, whose characteristic office it has ever
  been, while men sleep, to sow the cockle amid the Lord's wheat. . .
  . For this purpose it is his wont gladly to avail himself of the aid
  of heretics, fanatics, and false Catholics, as may be seen in the
  instance of this _Marianus cultus_. This _cultus_, heretics,
  suborned by Satan, attack with hostility Thus, too, certain mad
  heads are so {88} demented by Satan, as to embrace superstitions and
  idolatries instead of the true _cultus_ and neglect altogether the
  due measures whether in respect to God or to Mary. Such indeed were
  the Collyridians of old. . . . Such that German herdsman a hundred
  years ago, who gave out publicly that he was a new prophet and had
  had a vision of the Deipara, and told the people in her name to pay
  no more tributes and taxes to princes. .... Moreover, how many
  Catholics does one see who, by great and shocking negligence, have
  neither care nor regard for her _cultus_, but, given to profane and
  secular objects, scarce once a year raise their earthly minds to
  sing her praises or to venerate her!"--_De Mariâ Deiparâ_, p. 518.

(2.) Father Petau says, when discussing the teaching of the fathers
about the Blessed Virgin (de Incarn. xiv. 8):

  "I will venture to give this advice to all who would be devout and
  panegyrical toward the Holy Virgin, viz., not to exceed in their
  piety and devotion to her, but to be content with true and solid
  praises, and to cast aside what is otherwise. The latter kind of
  idolatry, lurking, as St. Augustine says, nay implanted, in human
  hearts, is greatly abhorrent from theology, that is from the gravity
  of heavenly wisdom, which never thinks or asserts anything but what
  is measured by certain and accurate rules. What that rule should be,
  and what caution is to be used in our present subject, I will not
  determine of myself, but according to the mind of a most weighty and
  most learned theologian, John Gerson, who in one of his epistles
  proposes certain canons, which he calls truths, by means of which
  are to be measured the assertions of theologians concerning the
  incarnation. . . By these truly golden precepts Gerson brings within
  bounds the immoderate license of praising the Blessed Virgin, and
  restrains it within the measure of sober and healthy piety. And from
  these it is evident that that sort of reasoning is frivolous and
  nugatory in which so many indulge, in order to assign any sort of
  grace they please, however unusual, to the Blessed Virgin. For they
  argue thus: 'Whatever the Son of God could bestow for the glory of
  his mother, that it became him in fact to furnish;' or again,
  'Whatever honors or ornaments he has poured out on other saints,
  those all together hath he heaped upon his mother;' whence they draw
  their chain of reasoning to their desired conclusion; a mode of
  argumentation which Gerson treats with contempt as captious and
  sophistical."

He adds, what of course we all should say, that, in thus speaking, he
has no intention to curtail the liberty of pious persons in such
meditations and conjectures, on the mysteries of faith, sacred
histories, and the Scripture text, as are of the nature of comments,
supplements, and the like.

(3.) Raynaud is an author full of devotion, if any one is so, to the
Blessed Virgin; yet, in the work which he has composed in her honor
("Diptycha Mariana"), he says more than I can quote here to the same
purpose as Petau. I abridge some portions of his text:

  "Let this be taken for granted, that no praises of ours can come up
  to the praises due to the Virgin Mother. But we must not make up for
  our inability to reach her true praise by a supply of lying
  embellishment and false honors. For there are some whose affection
  for religious objects is so imprudent and lawless, that they
  transgress the due limits even toward the saints. This Origen has
  excellently observed upon in the case of the Baptist, for very many,
  instead of observing the measure of charity, consider whether he
  might not be the Christ"--p. 9. ". . . St. Anselm, the first, or
  one of the first, champions of the public celebration of the Blessed
  Virgin's immaculate conception, says (de Excell. Virg.) that the
  church considers it indecent, that anything that admits of doubt
  should be said in her praise, when the things which are certainly
  true of her supply such large materials for laudation. It is right
  so to interpret St. Epiphanius also, when he says that human tongues
  should not pronounce anything lightly of the Deipara; and who is
  more justly to be charged with speaking lightly of the most holy
  Mother of God, than he who, as if what is certain and evident did
  not suffice for her full investiture, is wiser than the aged, and
  obtrudes on us the toadstools of his own mind, and devotions unheard
  of by those holy fathers who loved her best? Plainly as St. Anselm
  says that she is the Mother of God, this by itself exceeds every
  elevation which can be named or imagined, short of God. About so
  sublime a majesty we should not speak hastily from prurience of wit,
  or flimsy pretext of promoting piety; but with great maturity of
  thought; and, whenever the maxims of the church and the oracles of
  {89} faith do not suffice, then not without the suffrages of the
  doctors. . . . Those who are subject to this prurience of
  innovation, do not perceive how broad is the difference between
  subjects of human science and heavenly things. All novelty
  concerning the objects of our faith is to be put far away; except so
  far as by diligent investigation of God's word, written and
  unwritten, and a well founded inference from what is thence to be
  elicited, something is brought to light which, though already indeed
  there, had not hitherto been recognized. The innovations which we
  condemn are those which rest neither on the written nor unwritten
  word, nor on conclusions from it, nor on the judgment of ancient
  sages, nor sufficient basis of reason, but on the sole color and
  pretext of doing more honor to the Deipara."--p. 10.

In another portion of the same work, he speaks in particular of one of
those imaginations to which you especially refer, and for which,
without strict necessity (as it seems to me), you allege the authority
of à Lapide:

  "Nor is that honor of the Deipara to be offered, viz., that the
  elements of the body of Christ, which the Blessed Virgin supplied to
  it, remain perpetually unaltered in Christ, and thereby are found
  also in the eucharist. . . . This solicitude for the Virgin's glory
  must, I consider, be discarded; since, if rightly considered, it
  involves an injury toward Christ, and such honors the Virgin loveth
  not. And first, dismissing philosophical bagatelles about the
  animation of blood, milk, etc., who can endure the proposition that
  a good portion of the substance of Christ in the eucharist should be
  worshipped with a _cultus_ less than _latria_? viz., by the inferior
  _cultus_ of _hyperdulia?_ The preferable class of theologians
  contend that not even the humanity of Christ is to be materially
  abstracted from the Word of God, and worshipped by itself; how then
  shall we introduce a _cultus_ of the Deipara in Christ, which is
  inferior to the _cultus_ proper to him? How is this other than
  casting down of the substance of Christ from his royal throne, and a
  degradation of it to some inferior sitting-place? Is is nothing to
  the purpose to refer to such fathers as say that the flesh of Christ
  is the flesh of Mary, for they speak of its origin. What will
  hinder, if this doctrine be admitted, our also admitting that there
  is something in Christ which is detestable? for, as the first
  elements of a body which were communicated by the Virgin to Christ
  have (as these authors say) remained perpetually in Christ, so the
  same _materia_, at least in part, which belonged originally to the
  ancestors of Christ, came down to the Virgin from her father,
  unchanged, and taken from her grandfather, and so on. And thus,
  since it is not unlikely that some of these ancestors were
  reprobate, there would now be something actually in Christ which had
  belonged to a reprobate and worthy of detestation."--p. 237.

8. After such explanations, and with such authorities, to clear my
path, I put away from me, as you would wish, without any hesitation,
as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in
their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally
take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such
sentences, and phrases, as these: that the mercy of Mary is infinite;
that God has resigned into her hands his omnipotence; that
(unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son; that the
Blessed Virgin is superior to God; that he is (simply) subject to her
command; that our Lord is now of the same disposition as his Father
toward sinners, viz., a disposition to reject them, while Mary takes
his place as an advocate with Father and Son; that the saints are more
ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father; that Mary is
the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can
obtain a Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the
salvation of men if our Lord had died not to obey his Father, but to
defer to the decree of his mother; that she rivals our Lord in being
God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ
fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the
incarnate God bore the image of his Father, so he bore the image of
his mother; that redemption derived from Christ indeed its
sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and loveliness; that us we are
clothed with the merits of Christ, so we are clothed with {90} the
merits of Mary; that, as he is priest, in like manner is she
priestess; that his body and blood in the eucharist are truly hers and
appertain to her; that as he is present and received therein, so is
she present and received therein; that priests are ministers, as of
Christ, so of Mary; that elect souls are born of God and Mary; that
the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness his action by her, producing
in her and by her Jesus Christ in his members; that the kingdom of God
in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the
soul--and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary
things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul he flies there.

Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your book, nor,
as I think, do the vast minority of English Catholics know them. They
seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived them to be
said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to Scripture, or to
the fathers, or to the decrees of councils, or to the consent of
schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to the Holy See, or
to reason. They defy all the _loci theologici_. There is nothing of
them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in the Roman '"Raccolta,"
in the "Imitation of Christ," in Gother, Challoner, Milner, or
Wiseman, as far as I am aware. They do but scare and confuse me. I
should not be holier, more spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I
twisted my moral being into the reception of them; I should but be
guilty of fulsome, frigid flattery toward the most upright and noble
of God's creatures if I professed them, and of stupid flattery too;
for it would be like the compliment of painting up a young and
beautiful princess with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an
Achilles. And I should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting
to turn me off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be
the _scandalum parvulorum_ in my case, or the _scandalum
Pharisaeorum_, I leave others to decide; but I will say plainly that I
had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all,
than that Mary is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with
statements which can only be explained by being explained away. I do
not, however, speak of these statements as they are found in their
authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that
they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in your
pages. Were any of them the sayings of saints in ecstasy, I should
know they had a good meaning; still, I should not repeat them myself;
but I am looking at them not as spoken by the tongues of angels, but
according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of
English men and English women. And, as spoken by man to man, in
England, in the nineteenth century, I consider them calculated to
prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle
consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls.

9. And now, after having said so much as this, bear with me, my dear
friend, if I end with an expostulation. Have you not been touching us
on a very tender point in a very rude way? Is not the effect of what
you have said to expose her to scorn and obloquy who is dearer to us
than any other creature? Have you even hinted that our love for her is
anything else than an abuse? Have you thrown her one kind word
yourself all through your book? I trust so, but I have not lighted
upon one. And yet I know you love her well. Can you wonder, then--can
I complain much, much as I grieve--that men should utterly misconceive
of you, and are blind to the fact that you have put the whole argument
between you and us on a new footing; and that, whereas it was said
twenty-five years ago in the "British Critic," "Till Rome ceases to be
what practically she is, union is _impossible_ between her and
England," you declare, on the contrary, "It is _possible_ as soon as
Italy and England, {91} haying the same faith and the same centre of
unity, are allowed to hold severally their own theological opinions?"
They have not done you justice here because, in truth, the honor of
our Lady is dearer to them than the conversion of England.

Take a parallel case, and consider how you would decide it yourself.
Supposing an opponent of a doctrine for which you so earnestly
contend, the eternity of punishment, instead of meeting you with
direct arguments against it, heaped together a number of extravagant
descriptions of the place, mode, and circumstances of its infliction,
quoted Tertullian as a witness for the primitive fathers, and the
Covenanters and Ranters for these last centuries; brought passages
from the "Inferno" of Dante, and from the sermons of Whitfield; nay,
supposing he confined himself to the chapters on the subject in Jeremy
Taylor's work on "The State of Man," would you think this a fair and
becoming method of reasoning? and if he avowed that he should ever
consider the Anglican Church committed to all these accessories of the
doctrine till its authorities formally denounced Taylor and Whitfield,
and a hundred others, would you think this an equitable determination,
or the procedure of a theologian?



So far concerning the Blessed Virgin, the chief but not the only
subject of your volume. And now, when I could wish to proceed, she
seems to stop me, for the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is upon
us; and close upon its octave, which is kept with special solemnities
in the churches of this town, come the great antiphons, the heralds of
Christmas. That joyful season, joyful for all of us, while it centres
in him who then came on earth, also brings before us in peculiar
prominence that Virgin Mother who bore and nursed him. Here she is not
in the background, as at Eastertide, but she brings him to us in her
arms. Two great festivals, dedicated to her honor, to-morrow's and the
Purification, mark out and keep the ground, and, like the towers of
David, open the way to and fro for the high holiday season of the
Prince of Peace. And all along it her image is upon it, such as we see
it in the typical representation of the Catacombs. May the sacred
influences of this time bring us all together in unity! May it destroy
all bitterness on your side and ours! May it quench all jealous, sour,
proud, fierce antagonism on our side; and dissipate all captious,
carping, fastidious refinements of reasoning on yours! May that bright
and gentle lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, overcome you with her
sweetness, and revenge herself on her foes by interceding effectually
for their conversion!

I am, yours, most affectionately,
John H. Newman.

THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM,
_In fest. S. Ambrosii_, 1865.

{92}


From The Sixpenny Magazine.

HAVEN'T TIME


A CHAPTER FOR PARENTS.


"That boy needs more attention," said Mr. Green, referring to his
eldest son, a lad whose wayward temper and inclination to vice
demanded a steady, consistent, wise, and ever-present exercise of
parental watchfulness and authority.

"You may well say that," returned the mother of the boy, for to her
the remark had been made. "He is getting entirely beyond me."

"If I only had the time to look after him?" Mr. Green sighed as he
uttered these words.

"I think you ought to take more time for a purpose like this," said
Mrs. Green.

"More time!" Mr. Green spoke with marked impatience. "What time have I
to attend to him, Margaret? Am I not entirely absorbed in business?
Even now I should be at the counting-house, and am only kept away by
your late breakfast."

Just then the breakfast bell rang, and Mr. and Mrs. Green, accompanied
by their children, repaired to the dining-room. John, the boy about
whom the parents had been talking, was among the number. As they took
their places at the table he exhibited certain disorderly movements,
and a disposition to annoy his younger brothers and sisters. But these
were checked, instantly, by his father, of whom John stood in some
fear.

Before the children had finished eating, Mr. Green laid his knife and
fork side by side on his plate, pushed his chair back, and was in the
act of rising, when his wife said:

"Don't go yet. Just wait until John is through with his breakfast. He
acts dreadfully the moment your back is turned."

Mr. Green turned a quick, lowering glance upon the boy, whose eyes
shrank beneath his angry glance, saying as ho did so:

"I haven't time to stay a moment longer; I ought to have been at my
business an hour ago, But see here, my lad," addressing himself to
John, "there has been enough of this work. Not a day passes that I am
not worried with complaints about you. Now, mark me! I shall inquire
particularly as to your conduct when I come home at dinner-time; and,
if you have given your mother any trouble, or acted in any way
improperly, I will take you severely to account. It's outrageous that
the whole family should be kept in constant trouble by you. Now, be on
your guard!"

A moment or two Mr. Green stood frowning upon the boy, and then
retired.

Scarcely had the sound of the closing street-door, which marked the
fact of Mr. Green's departure, ceased to echo through the house, ere
John began to act as was his custom when his father was out of the
way. His mother's remonstrances were of no avail; and, when she
finally compelled him to leave the table, he obeyed with a most
provoking and insolent manner.

All this would have been prevented if Mr. Green had taken from
business just ten minutes, and conscientiously devoted that time to
{93} the government of his wayward boy and the protection of the
family from his annoyances.

On arriving at his counting-house, Mr. Green found two or three
persons waiting, and but a single clerk in attendance. He had felt
some doubts as to the correctness of his conduct in leaving home so
abruptly, under the circumstances; but the presence of the customers
satisfied him that he had done right. Business, in his mind, was
paramount to everything else; and his highest duty to his family he
felt to be discharged when he was devoting himself most assiduously to
the work of procuring for them the means of external comfort, ease,
and luxury. Worldly well-doing was a cardinal virtue in his eyes.

Mr. Green was the gainer, perhaps, of two shillings in the way of
profit on sales, by being at his counting-house ten minutes earlier
than would have been the case had he remained with his family until
the completion of their morning meal. What was lost to his boy by the
opportunity thus afforded for an indulgence in a perverse and
disobedient temper it is hard to say. Something was, undoubtedly,
lost--something, the valuation of which, in money, it would be
difficult to make.

Mrs. Green did not complain of John's conduct to his father at
dinner-time. She was so often forced to complain that she avoided the
task whenever she felt justified in doing so; and that was, perhaps,
far too often. Mr. Green asked no questions; for he knew, by
experience, to what results such questions would lead, and he was in
no mood for unpleasant intelligence. So John escaped, as he had
escaped hundreds of times before, and felt encouraged to indulge his
bad propensities at will, to his own injury and the annoyance of all
around him.

If Mr. Green had no time in the morning or through the day to attend
to his children, the evening, one might think, would afford
opportunity for conference with them, supervision of their studies,
and an earnest inquiry into their conduct and moral and intellectual
progress. But such was not the case. Mr. Green was too much wearied
with the occupation of the day to bear the annoyance of the children;
or his thoughts were too busy with business matters, or schemes of
profit, to attend to the thousand and one questions they were ready to
pour in upon him from all sides; or he had a political club to attend,
an engagement with some merchant for the discussion of a matter
connected with trade, or felt obliged to be present at the meeting of
some society of which he was a member. So he either left home
immediately after tea, or the children were sent to bed in order that
he might have a quiet evening for rest, business reflection, or the
enjoyment of a new book.

Mr. Green had so much to do and so much to think about that he had no
time to attend to his children; and this neglect was daily leaving
upon them ineffaceable impressions that would inevitably mar the
happiness of their after lives. This was particularly the case with
John. Better off in the world was Mr. Green becoming every day--better
off as it regarded money; but poorer in another sense--poorer in
respect to home affections and home treasures. His children were not
growing up to love him intensely, to confide in him implicitly, and to
respect him as their father and friend. He had no time to attend to
them, and rather pushed them away than drew them toward him with the
strong cords of affection. To his wife he left their government, and
she was not equal to the task.

"I don't believe," said Mrs. Green, one day, "that John is learning
much at the school where he goes. I think you ought to see after him a
little. He never studies a lesson at home."

"Mr. Elden has the reputation of being one of our best teachers. His
school stands high," replied Mr. Green. {94} "That may happen," said
Mrs. Green. "Still, I really think you ought to know, for yourself,
how John is getting along. Of one thing I am certain, he does not
improve in good manners nor good temper in the least. And he is never
in the house between school-hours, except to get his meals. I wish you
would require him to be at your counting-house during the afternoons.
School is dismissed at four o'clock, and he ranges the streets with
other boys, and goes where he pleases from that time until night.

"That's very bad,"--Mr. Green spoke in a concerned voice,--"very bad.
And it must be broken up. But as to having him with me, that is out of
the question. He would be into everything, and keep me in hot water
all the while. He'd like to come well enough, I do not doubt; but I
can't have him there."

"Couldn't you set him to do something?"

"I might. But I haven't time to attend to him, Margaret. Business is
business, and cannot be interrupted."

Mrs. Green sighed, and then remarked:

"I wish you would call on Mr. Elden and have a talk with him about
John."

"I will, if you think it best."

"Do so, by all means. And beside, I would give more time to John in
the evenings. If, for instance, you devoted an evening to him once a
week, it would enable you to understand how he is progressing, and
give you a control over him not now possessed."

"You are right in this, no doubt, Margaret."

But reform went not beyond this acknowledgment. Mr. Green could never
find time to see John's teacher, nor feel himself sufficiently at
leisure, or in the right mood of mind, to devote to the boy even a
single evening.

And thus it went on from day to day, from month to month, and from
year to year, until, finally, John was sent home from school by Mr.
Elden with a note to his father, in which idleness, disorderly
conduct, and vicious habits were charged upon him in the broadest
terms.

The unhappy Mr. Green called immediately upon the teacher, who gave
him a more particular account of his son's bad conduct, and concluded
by saying that he was unwilling to receive him back into his school.

Strange as it may seem, it was four months before Mr. Green "found
time" to see about another school, and to get John entered therein;
during which long period the boy had full liberty to go pretty much
where he pleased, and to associate with whom he liked. It is hardly to
be supposed that he grew any better for this.

By the time John was seventeen years of age, Mr. Green's business had
become greatly enlarged, and his mind more absorbed therein. With him
gain was the primary thing; and, as a consequence, his family held a
secondary place in his thoughts. If money were needed, he was ever
ready to supply the demand; that done, he felt that his duty to them
was, mainly, discharged. To the mother of his children he left the
work of their wise direction in the paths of life--their government
and education; but she was inadequate to the task imposed.

From the second school at which John was entered he was dismissed
within three months, for bad conduct. He was then sent to school in a
distant city, where, removed from all parental restraint and
admonition, he made viler associates than any he had hitherto known,
and took thus a lower step in vice. He was just seventeen, when a
letter from the principal of this school conveyed to Mr. Green such
unhappy intelligence of his son that he immediately resolved, as a
last resort, to send him to sea, before the mast--and this was done,
spite of all the mother's tearful remonstrances, and the boy's threats
that he would {95} escape from the vessel on the very first
opportunity.

And yet, for all this sad result of parental neglect, Mr. Green
devoted no more time nor care to his children. Business absorbed the
whole man. He was a merchant, both body and soul. His responsibilities
were not felt as extending beyond his counting-house, further than to
provide for the worldly well-being of his family. Is it any cause of
wonder that, with his views and practice, it should not turn out well
with his children; or, at least, with some of them?

At the end of a year John came home from sea, a rough, cigar-smoking,
dram-drinking, overgrown boy of eighteen, with all his sensual desires
and animal passions more active than when he went away, while his
intellectual faculties and moral feelings were in a worse condition
than at his separation from home. Grief at the change oppressed the
hearts of his parents; but their grief was unavailing. Various efforts
were made to get him into some business, but he remained only a short
time in any of the places where his father had him introduced.
Finally, he was sent to sea again. But he never returned to his
friends. In a drunken street-brawl, that occurred while on shore at
Valparaiso, he was stabbed by a Spaniard, and died shortly afterward.

On the very day this tragic event took place, Mr. Green was rejoicing
over a successful speculation, from which he had come out the gainer
by two thousand pounds. In the pleasure this circumstance occasioned,
all thoughts of the absent one, ruined by his neglect, were swallowed
up.

Several months elapsed. Mr. Green had returned home, well satisfied
with his day's business. In his pocket was the afternoon paper, which,
after the younger children were in bed, and the older ones out of his
way, he sat down to read. His eyes turned to the foreign intelligence,
and almost the first sentence he read was the intelligence of his
son's death. The paper dropped from his hands, while he uttered an
expression of surprise and grief that caused the cheeks of his wife,
who was in the room, to turn deadly pale. She had not power to ask the
cause of her husband's sudden exclamation; but her heart, that ever
yearned toward her absent boy, instinctively divined the truth.

"John is dead!" said Mr. Green, at length, speaking in a tremulous
tone of voice.

There was from the mother no wild burst of anguish. The boy had been
dying to her daily for years, and she had suffered for him worse than
the pangs of death. Burying her face in her hands, she wept silently,
yet hopelessly.

"If we were only blameless of the poor child's death!" said Mrs.
Green, lifting her tearful eyes, after the lapse of nearly ten
minutes, and speaking in a sad, self-rebuking tone of voice.

When those with whom we are in close relationship die, how quickly is
that page in memory's book turned on which lies the record of
unkindness or neglect! Already had this page been turned for Mr.
Green, and conscience was sweeping therefrom the dust that well-nigh
obscured the handwriting. He inwardly trembled as he read the
condemning sentences that charged him with his son's ruin.

"If we were only blameless of the poor child's death!"

How these words of the grieving mother smote upon his heart. He did
not respond to them. How could he do so at that moment?

"Where is Edward?" he inquired, at length.

"I don't know," sobbed the mother. "He is out somewhere almost every
evening. Oh! I wish you would look to him a little more closely. He is
past my control."

"I must do so," returned Mr. Green, speaking from a strong conviction
of the necessity of doing as his wife suggested; "if I only had a
little more time----"

{96}

He checked himself. It was the old excuse--the rock upon which all his
best hopes for his first-born had been fearfully wrecked. His lips
closed, his head was bowed, and, in the bitterness of unavailing
sorrow, he mused on the past, while every moment the conviction of
wrong toward his child, now irreparable, grew stronger and stronger.

After that, Mr. Green made an effort to exercise more control over his
children; but he had left the reins loose so long that his tighter
grasp produced restiveness and rebellion. He persevered, however; and,
though Edward followed too closely the footsteps of John, yet the
younger children were brought under salutary restraints. The old
excuse--want of time--was frequently used by Mr. Green to justify
neglect of parental duties; but a recurrence of his thoughts to the
sad ruin of his eldest boy had, in most cases, the right effect; and
in the end he ceased to give utterance to the words--"I haven't time."
However, frequently he fell into neglect, from believing that business
demanded his undivided attention.

------
[ORIGINAL.]


THE SONG OF THE SHELL.

WRITTEN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.


  There's a music aloft in the air
  As if devils were singing a song;
  There's a shriek like the shriek of despair.
  And a crash which the echoes prolong.

  There's a voice like the voice of the gale,
  When it strikes a tall ship on the sea;
  There's a rift like the rent of her sail.
  As she helplessly drifts to the lee.

  There's a rush like the rushing of fiends.
  Compelled by an horrible spell;
  There's a flame like the flaming of brands,
  Snatched in rage from the furnace of hell.

  There's a wreath like the foam on the wave,
  There's a silence unbroke by a breath;
  There's a thud like the clod in a grave,
  There are writhings, and moanings, and death!

------

{97}

From The Lamp.

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

BY ROBERT CURTIS.


CHAPTER XXVI.

The chief was well aware of the reputation which the priest had
obtained through the parish for medical skill, and was himself
convinced of how well he deserved it. Indeed, had the alternative
rested in any case between Father Farrell and the dispensary doctor,
there was not a parishioner who would not have preferred his pastor's
medical as well as spiritual aid.

The chief, instead of ordering off the dispensary doctor to see young
Lennon upon a rumor that he was worse, went quietly to Father Farrell,
who must know the truth, and be able to give good advice as to what
steps, if any, were necessary to adopt.

The matter turned out to be another black-crow story. Father Farrell
had also heard it in its exaggerated form, and had not lost a moment
in proceeding to the spot. Young Lennon had gone out to assist his
father in planting some potatoes--so far the rumor was correct. But he
had been premature in his own opinion of his convalescence. The very
first stoop he made he felt quite giddy; and although he did not fall
forward on his face, he was obliged to lean upon his father for
support for a few moments. This little experiment served to keep him
quiet for a while longer; but Father Farrell assured the chief that
matters were no worse than they had been--he might make his mind easy;
there was no injury beyond the flesh, which, of course, had become
much sorer, and must do so for a few days still.

The chief, however, suggested the prudence, if not the necessity, of
having a medical man to see him. "Not," said he, "but that I have as
much, if not more, confidence in your own skill and experience than in
any which is available in this wild district."

"That is rather an equivocal compliment; but perhaps it is fully as
much as I deserve," said the priest.

"Well, I don't mean it as such, Father Farrell; but you know a great
responsibility would rest upon me, should anything unfortunate occur."

"I see. It would not do in a court of justice to put a priest upon the
table in a medical position. I certainly could not produce a diploma.
You are quite right, my dear sir; you would be held responsible.
However, I can go the length to assure you that at present there is
not the slightest necessity for medical aid, particularly--between you
and me--under existing circumstances, which I understand very well.
The matter was a mere accident I am fully persuaded. Bat, supposing
for a moment that it was not, I know young Lennon since he was a child
running to school in his bare feet, with 'his turf and his
read-a-ma-daisy;' and I am convinced that no power on earth would
induce him to prosecute Tom Murdock."

"Why? are they such friends?"

"No; quite the reverse, and that is the very reason. But ask me no
more about it. Another objection I see to calling in the dispensary
doctor is this--that I am aware of an ill-feeling existing between him
and Tom {98} Murdock about a prize at a coursing-match, which the
doctor thinks was unfairly given to Tom Murdock through his influence
with the judge; and the doctor was heard to say in reference to it,
'that it was a long lane that had no turning.' Now here would be an
open for the doctor to put a turn on the lane, however straight it
might be in fact. He would not certify that Lennon's life was out of
danger--you would have to arrest Tom Murdock; young Lennon would go
distracted, and the two parishes would be in an uproar. Ill-will would
be engendered between all the young men of opposite sides, and all for
nothing; for young Lennon will be as well as ever he was in ten days.
These are my views of the case. But if your official responsibility
obliges you to differ with me, I am ready to hear you further."

This was a great oration of Father Farrell's, but it was both sensible
and true from beginning to end, and it convinced the chief of the
propriety of "resting on his oars" for a few days longer at all
events.

The result proved at least that there was more luck in leisure than
danger in delay. Emon-a-knock grew better; but it was by degrees. He
could not yet venture to attend to his usual daily labor, by which he
so materially contributed to the support of the family. The weather
was fine, and "the spring business" was going forward rapidly in all
directions. Poor Emon fretted that he was not able to add his
accustomed portion to the weekly earnings; but Father Farrell watched
him too closely. Once or twice he stole out to do some of their own
work, and let his father earn some of the high wages which was just
then to be had; but his own good sense told him that he was still
unable for the effort. At the end of an hour's work the old idea
haunted him that an attempt had been made to murder him, and if he had
been made a merchant-prince for it, he could not recollect how it had
happened. The only thing he did recollect distinctly about it was,
that Shanvilla won the day, and that he had been sent home in Winny
Cavana's cart and jennet--_that_, if he were in a raging fever, he
could never forget.

But it was a sad loss to the family, Emon's incapacity to work. He had
been now three weeks ill; and although the wound in his head was in a
fair way of being healed, there was still a confused idea in his mind
about the whole affair which he could not get rid of. At times, as he
endeavored to review the matter as it had actually occurred, he could
not persuade himself but that it was really an accident; and while
under this impression he felt quite well, and able for his ordinary
labor. But there were moments when a sudden thought would cross his
mind that it had been a secret and premeditated attempt upon his life;
and then it was that the confusion ensued which rendered him unable to
recollect. What if it were really this attempt--supposing that
positive proof could be adduced of the fact--what then? Would he
prosecute Tom Murdock? Oh, no. Father Farrell was right; but he had
not formed his opinion upon the true foundation. Emon-a-knock would
not prosecute, even if he could do so to conviction. He would deal
with Tom Murdock himself if ever a fair opportunity should arise; and
if not, he might yet be in a position more thoroughly to despise him.

In the meantime Lennon's family had not been improving in
circumstances. Emon was losing all the high wages of the spring's
work. Upon one or two occasions, when he stealthily endeavored to do a
little on his own land, while his father was catching the ready penny
abroad, he found, before he was two hours at work, the haunting idea
press upon his brain; and he returned to the house and threw himself
upon the bed confused and sad. In spite of this, however, the wound in
his head was now progressing more favorably, and {99} returning
strength renewed a more cheerful spirit within him. He fought hard
against the idea which at times forced itself upon him. The priest,
who was a constant visitor, saw that all was not yet right. He took
Emon kindly by the hand and said: "My dear young friend, do you not
feel as well as your outward condition would indicate that you ought
to be?"

"Yes, Father Farrell, I thank God I feel my strength almost perfectly
restored. I shall be able, I hope, to give my poor father the usual
help in a few days. The worst of it is that the throng of the spring
work is over, and wages are now down a third from what they were a
month or three weeks ago."

"If _that_ be all that is fretting you, Emon, cheer up, for there is
plenty of work still to be had; and if the wages are not quite so high
as they were a while back, you shall have constant work for some time,
which will be better than high wages for a start. I can myself afford
to make up for some of the loss this unfortunate blow has caused you.
You must accept of this." And he pulled a pound-note from his breeches
pocket.

If occasionally there were moments when Emon's ideas were somewhat
confused, they were never clearer or sharper than as Father Farrell
said this. It so happened that he was thinking of Winny Cavana at the
moment; indeed, it would be hard to hit upon the moment when he was
not. Shanvilla was proverbially a poor parish; and Father Farrell's
continual and expressed regret was, that he was not able personally to
do more for the poor of his flock. Emon was sharp enough, and stout
enough, to speak his mind even to his priest, when he found it
necessary.

He looked inquiringly into Father Farrell's face. "No, Father Farrell,
you _cannot_ afford it," he said. "It is your kindness leads you to
say so; and if you could afford it there are--and no man knows it
better than you do--many still poorer families than ours in the parish
requiring your aid. But under no circumstances shall I touch _that_
pound."

The priest was found out, and became disconcerted; but the matter was
coming to a point, and he might as well have it out.

"Why do you lay such an emphasis upon the word _that_?" said he. "It
is a very good one," he added, laughing.

"Well, Father Farrell, I am always ready and willing to answer you any
questions you may choose to ask me, for you are always discreet and
considerate. Of course I must always answer any questions you have a
right to ask; but you have no right to probe me now."

"Certainly not, Emon, but you know a counsel's no command."

"Your counsel, Father Farrell, is always good, and almost amounts to a
command. I beg your pardon, if I have spoken hastily."

"Emon, my good young friend, and I will add, my dear young friend, I
do not wish to probe you upon any subject you are not bound to give me
your confidence upon; but why did you lay such an emphasis just now on
the word _that_? If you do not wish to answer me, you need not do so.
But you must take _this_ pound-note. You see I can lay an emphasis as
well as you when I think it is required."

"No, Father Farrell. If the note was your own, I might take the loan
of it, and work it in with you, or pay you when I earned it. But I do
not think it is: there is the truth for you, Father Farrell."

"I see how it is, Emon, and you are very proud. However, the truth is,
the pound was sent to me anonymously for you from a friend."

"She might as well have signed her name in full," said Emon, sadly,
"for any loss that I can be at upon the subject--or perhaps you
yourself, Father Farrell."

"Well, I was at no loss, I confess. But you were to know nothing about
it, Emon; only you were so sharp. {100} There is no fear that your
intellects have been injured by the blow, at all events. It was meant
kindly, Emon, and I think you ought to take it--here."

"You think so, Father Farrell?"

"I do; indeed I do, Emon."

"Give it me, then," he said, taking it; and before Father Farrell's
face he pressed it to his lips. He then got a pen and ink, and wrote
something upon it. It was nothing but the date; he wanted no
memorandum of anything else respecting it. But he would hardly have
written even that, had he intended to make use of it.

The priest stood up to leave. He knew more than he chose to tell
Emon-a-knock. But there was an amicable smile upon his lips as he held
out his hand to bid him goodby.

Oh, the suspicion of a heart that loves!

"Father Farrell," he said, still holding the priest's hand, "is this
the note, the very note, the identical note, she sent me?"

"Yes, Emon; I would not deceive you about it. It is the very note;
which, I fear," he added, "is not likely to be of much use to you."

"Why do you say that, Father Farrell? You shall one day see the
contrary."

"Because you seem to me rather inclined to 'huxter it up,' as we say,
than to make use of it. Believe me, that was not the intention it was
sent with; oh, no, Emon; it was sent with the hope that it might be of
some use, and not to be hoarded up through any morbid sentimentality."

"Give me one instead of it. Father Farrell, and keep this one until I
can redeem it."

"I have not got another, Emon; pounds are not so plenty with me."

"And yet you would have persuaded me just now that it was your own and
that you could afford to bestow it upon me!"

"Pardon me, Emon, I would not have persuaded you; I was merely silent
upon the subject until your suspicions made you cross-examine me. I
was then plain enough with you. I used no deceit; and I now tell you
plainly that if you take this pound-note, you ought to use it;
otherwise you will give her who sent it very just cause for
annoyance."

"Then it shall be as she wishes and as you advise, Father Farrell. I
cannot err under your guidance. I shall use it freely and with
gratitude; but you need not tell her that I know who sent it."

"Do you think that I am an _aumadhawn_, Emon? The very thing she was
anxious to avoid herself. I shall never speak to her, perhaps, upon
the subject."

The priest then left him with a genuine and hearty blessing, which
could not fail of a beneficial influence.



CHAPTER XXVII.

The priest had been a true prophet and a good doctor, and perhaps it
was well for all parties concerned that the dispensary M.D. had been
dispensed with. Emon now recovered his strength every day more and
more. The wound in his head had completely healed. There was scarcely
a mark left of where it had been, unless you blew his beautiful soft
hair aside, when a slight hard ridge was just perceptible. Father
Farrell had procured him a permanent job of some weeks, at rather an
increase of wages from what was "going" at the time, for the spring
business was now over and work was slack. But a gentleman who had
recently purchased a small property in that part of the country, and
intended to reside, had commenced alterations in the laying-out of the
grounds about his "mansion;" and meeting Father Farrell one day, asked
him if he could recommend a smart, handy man for a tolerably long job.
There would be a good deal of "skinning" and cutting of sods, {101}
levelling hillocks, and filling up hollows, and wheeling of clay. For
the latter portion of the work, the man should have help. What he
wanted was a tasty, handy fellow, who would understand quickly what
was required as it was explained to him.

Father Farrell, as the gentleman said all this, thought that he must
have actually had Emon-a-knock in his mind's eye. He was the very man
on every account, and the priest at once recommended him. This job
would soon make up for all the time poor Emon had lost with his broken
head. And for his intelligence and taste Father Farrell had gone bail.
Thus it was that Emon after all had not broken the pound-note, but, in
spite of the priest, had hoarded it as a trophy of Winny's love.

Emon would have had a rather long walk every morning to his work, and
the same in the evening after it was over. But Mr. D---- on the very
first interview with young Lennon, was sharp enough to find out his
value as a rural engineer, and, for his own sake as well as Lennon's,
he made arrangements that he should stop at a tenant's house, not far
from the scene of his landscape-gardening, which was likely to last
for some time. Mr. D---- was not a man who measured a day's work by
its external extent. He looked rather to the manner of its
accomplishment, and would not allow the thing to be "run over." He did
not care for the expense; what he wanted was to have the thing well
done; and he gave Father Farrell great credit for his choice in a
workman. If he liked the job when it was finished, he did not say but
that he would give Lennon a permanent situation, as overseer, at a
fixed salary. But up to this time he had not seen, nor even heard of,
Winny Cavana, except what had been implied to his heart by the
priest's pound-note. He was further now from Rathcash chapel than
ever; nevertheless he would show himself there, "God willing," next
Sunday. What was Tom Murdock's surprise and chagrin on the following
Sunday to observe "that confounded whelp" on the road before him, as
he went to prayers--looking, too, better dressed, and as well and
handsome as ever! He thought he had "put a spoke in his wheel" for the
whole summer at the least; and before that was over, he had determined
to have matters irrevocably  _clinched_ if not _settled_ with Miss
Winifred Cavana.

After what manner this was to be accomplished was only known to
himself and three others, associates in his villany.

The matter had been already discussed in all its bearings. All the
arguments in favor of, and opposed to, its success had been exhausted,
and the final result was, that the thing should be done, and was only
waiting a favorable opportunity to be put in practice. Some matters of
detail, however, had to be arranged, which would take some time; but
as the business was kept "dark" there was no hurry. Tom Murdock's
secret was safe in the keeping of his coadjutors, whose "oath of
brotherhood" bound them not only to inviolable silence, but to their
assistance in carrying out his nefarious designs.

The sight of young Lennon once more upon the scene gave a spur to
Tom's plans and determination. He had hoped that that "accidental tip"
which he had given him would at least have had the effect of reducing
him in circumstances and appearance, and have kept him in his own
parish. He knew that Lennon was depending upon his day's wages for
even the sustenance of life; that there was a family of at least four
beside himself to support; and he gloated himself over the idea that a
month or six weeks' sick idleness, recovering at best when there was
no work to be had, would have left "that whelp" in a condition almost
unpresentable even at his own parish chapel. What was his
mortification, therefore, when he now beheld young Lennon before him
on the road!

{102}

"By the table of war," he said in his heart, "this must hasten my
plans! I cannot permit an intimacy to be renewed in that quarter. I
must see my friends at once."

Winny Cavana, although she had not seen Emon-a-knock since the
accident, had taken care to learn through her peculiar resources how
"the poor fellow was getting on." Her friend Kate Mulvey was one of
these resources.

Although it has not yet oozed out in this story, it is necessary that
it should now do so: Phil M'Dermott, then, was a great admirer of Kate
Mulvey. He was one of those who advocated an interchange of
parishioners in the courting line. He did not think it fair that
"exclusive dealing" should be observed in such cases.

Now, useless as it was, and forlorn as had been hitherto the hope,
Phil M'Dermott, like all true lovers, could not keep away from his
cold-hearted Kate. It was a satisfaction to him at all events "to be
looking at her;" and somehow since Emon's accident she seemed more
friendly and condescending in her manner to poor Phil. It will be
remembered that Phil M'Dermott was a great friend of Emon-a-knock's,
and it may now be said that he was a near neighbor. It was natural,
then, that Kate Mulvey should find out all about Emon from him, and
"have word" for Winny when they met. This was one resource, and Father
Farrell, as he sometimes passed Kate's door, was another. Father
Farrell could guess very well, notwithstanding Kate's careless manner
of asking, that his information would not rest in her own breast, and
gave it as fully and satisfactorily as he could.

Kate Mulvey, however, "would not for the world" say a word to either
Phil M'Dermott or Father Farrell which could be construed as coming
from Winny Cavana to Emon-a-knock; she had Winny's strict orders to
that effect. But Kate felt quite at liberty to make any remarks she
chose, as coming from herself.

Poor Emon, upon this his first occasion of, it may be said, appearing
in public after his accident, was greeted, after prayers were over,
with a genuine cordiality by the Rathcash boys, and several times
interfered with in his object of "getting speech" of Winny Cavana, who
was some distance in advance, in consequence of these delays.

But Winny was not the girl to be frustrated by any unnecessary prudery
on such an occasion.

"Father," she said, "there's Emon at our chapel to-day for the first
time since he was hurt. Let us not be behindhand with the neighbors to
congratulate him on his recovery. I see all the Rathcash people are
glad to see him."

"And so they ought, Winny; I'm glad you told me he was here, for I did
not happen to see him. Stand where you are until he comes up." And the
old man stood patiently for some minutes while Emon's friends were
expressing their pleasure at his reappearance.

Winny had kept as clear as possible of Tom Murdock since the accident
at the hurling match; so much so that he could not but know it was
intentional.

Tom had remarked during prayers that Winny's countenance had
brightened up wonderfully when young Lennon came into the chapel, and
took a quiet place not far inside the door; for he had been kept
outside by the kind inquiries of his friends until the congregation
had become pretty throng. He had observed too, for he was on the
watch, that Winny's eyes had often wandered in the direction of the
door up to the time when "that whelp" had entered; but from that
moment, when he had observed the bright smile light up her face, she
had never turned them from the officiating priest and the altar.

Tom had not ventured to walk home with Winny from the chapel for some
Sundays past, nor would he to-day. What puzzled him not a little was
what his line of conduct ought to be with respect to Lennon, whom he
had not seen since the accident. His course {103} was, however, taken
after a few moments' reflection. He did not forget that on the
occasion of the blow he had exhibited much sympathy with the sufferer,
and had declared it to have been purely accidental. He should keep up
that character of the affair now, or make a liar of himself, both as
to the past and his feelings.

"Beside," thought he, "I may so delay him that Miss Winifred cannot
have the face to delay for him so long."

Just then, as Emon had emancipated himself from the cordiality of
three or four young men, and was about to step out quickly to where he
saw Winny and her father standing on the road, Tom came up.

"Ah, Lennon!" he said, stretching out his hand, "I am glad to see you
in this part of the country again. I hope you are quite recovered."

"Quite, thank God," said Emon, pushing by without taking his hand.
"But I see Winny and her father waiting on the road, and I cannot stop
to talk to you;" and he strode on. Emon left out the "Cavana" in the
above sentence on purpose, because he knew the familiarity its
omission created would vex Tom Murdock.

"Bad luck to your impudence, you conceited cub, you!" was Murdock's
mental ejaculation as he watched the cordial greeting between him and
Winny Cavana, to say nothing of her father, who appeared equally glad
to see him.

Phil M'Dermott had come for company that day with Emon, and had
managed to join Kate Mulvey as they came out of chapel. She had her
eyes about her, and saw very well how matters had gone so far. For the
first time in her life she noticed the scowl on Tom Murdock's brow as
she came toward him.

"God between us and harm, but he looks wicked this morning!" thought
she; and she was almost not sorry when he turned suddenly round and
walked off without waiting for her so much as to "bid him the time of
day."

"That's more of it," said Tom to himself. "There is that one now
taking up with that tinker."

He felt something like the little boy who said, "What! will nobody
come and play with me?" But Tom did not, like him, become a good boy
after that.

He watched the Cavanas and Lennon, who had not left the spot where
Lennon came up with them until they were joined by Kate And Phil
M'Dermott, when they all walked on together, chatting and laughing as
if nobody in the world was wicked or unhappy.

He dodged them at some distance, and was not a little surprised to see
the whole party-"the whelp," "the tinker," and all--turn up the lane
and go into Cavana's house.

"_That will do_," said he; "I must see my friends this very night, and
before this day fortnight we'll see who will win the trick."

Emon-a-knock and Phil M'Dermott actually paid a visit to old Ned
Cavana's that Sunday. Tom Murdock had seen them going in, and he
minuted them by his silver hunting-watch--for he had one. His eye
wandered from the door to his watch, and from his watch to the door,
as if he were feeling the pulse of their visit. He thought he had
never seen Kate Mulvey looking so handsome, or Phil M'Dermott so clean
or so well-dressed.

But it mattered not. If Kate was a Venus, Tom will carry out his plans
with respect to Winny, and let Phil M'Dermott work his own point in
that other quarter. Not that he cared much for Winny herself, but he
wanted her farm, and he _hated "that whelp Lennon."_

They remained just twenty-five minutes in old Cavana's; this for Kate
Mulvey was nothing very wonderful, but for two young men--neither of
whom had ever darkened his doors before--Tom thought it rather a long
visit.

{104}

There they were now, going down the lane together, laughing and
chatting, all three seemingly in good humor.

Cranky and out of temper as he was, Tom's observation was correct in
more matters than one, Phil M'Dermott was particularly well-dressed on
this occasion, his first visit to Rathcash chapel. Perhaps after
to-day he may be oftener there than at his own.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Perhaps there was nothing extraordinary, after the encouragement which
Emon had met with upon his first appearance at Rathcash chapel after
"the accident," if he found it pleasanter to "overtake mass" there
than to come in quietly at Shanvilla. The walk did him good. Be this
as it may, he was now a regular attendant at a chapel which was a mile
and a half further from his home than his own.

Two Sundays had now come round since Tom Murdock had seen the
reception which "that whelp" had met with from the Cavanas, not only
as he came out of the chapel, but in asking him up to the house, and,
he supposed, giving him luncheon; for the visits had been repeated
each successive Sunday. Then that fellow M'Dermott had also come to
their chapel, and he and Kate Mulvey had also gone up with the
Cavanas. This was now the third Sunday on which this had taken place;
and not only Winny herself, but her father seemed to acquiesce in
bringing it about.

Tom's fortnight had passed by, and he had not "won the trick," as he
had threatened to do. "Well," thought he, "it cannot be done in a
minute. I have been dealing the cards, and, contrary to custom, the
dealer shall lead beside; and that soon."

Winny's happy smile was now so continuous and so gratifying to her
father's heart, that if he had not become altogether reconciled to an
increased intimacy with Edward Lennon, he had at all events become a
convert to her dislike to Tom Murdock, and no mistake.

In spite of all his caution, one or two matters had crept out as to
his doings, and had come to old Ned's ears in such a way that no doubt
could remain on his mind of their veracity. He began to give Winny
credit for more sharpness than he had been inclined to do; and it
crossed his mind once that, if Winny was not mistaken about Tom
Murdock's villany, she might not be mistaken either about _anybody
else's worth_. The thought had not individualized itself as yet. In
the meantime young Lennon's quiet and natural manner, his unvarying
attention and respect for the old man himself, and his apparent
carelessness for Winny's private company, grew upon old Ned
insensibly; and it was now almost as a fixed rule that he paid a
Sunday visit after mass at Rathcash, the old man putting his hand upon
his shoulder, and facing him toward the house at the end of the lane,
saying, "Come, Edward Lennon, the murphys will be teemed by the time
we get up, and no one can fault our bacon or our butter."

"_My_ butter, Emon," said Winny on one occasion, at a venture.

Her father looked at her. But there was never another word about it.

All this was anything but pleasing to Tom Murdock, who always sulkily
dogged them at some distance behind.

Now we shall not believe that Emon-a-knock was such a muff, or Winny
Cavana such a prude, as to suppose that no little opportunity was
seized upon for a kind soft word between them _unknownt_. Nor shall we
suppose that Kate Mulvey, who was always of the party, was such a
marplot as to obstruct such a happy casualty, should it occur,
particularly if Phil was to the fore.

Emon's careless, loud laugh along the road, as he escorted Kate to her
own door, gave evidence that his heart was light and that (as Kate
thought, though she did not question him) {105} matters were on the
right road for him. Winny, too, when they met, was so happy, and so
different from what for a while she had been, that Kate, although she
did not question her either, guessed that all was right with her too.

Matters, as they now seemed to progress, and he watched them close,
were daggers to Tom Murdock's heart. He had seen Winny Cavana, on more
than one evening, leave the house and take the turn toward Kate
Mulvey's. On these occasions he had the meanness and want of spirit to
watch her movements; and although he could not satisfy himself that
young Lennon came to meet her, he was not quite satisfied that he did
not.

Winny invariably turned into Kate Mulvey's, and remained for a long
visit. Might not "that hound" be there?--Tom sometimes varied his
epithets--might it not be a place of assignation? This was but the
suspicion of a low, mean mind like Tom Murdock's.

The fact is, since Tom's threat about "winning the trick" he had been
rather idle. His game was not one which could be played out by
correspondence--he was too cunning for that--and the means which he
would be obliged to adopt were not exactly ready at his hand. He saw
that matters were not pressing in another quarter yet, if ever they
should press, and he would "ride a waiting race," and win
unexpectedly. Thus the simile of Tom's thoughts still took their tone
from the race-course, and he would "hold hard" for another bit.
Circumstances, however, soon occurred which made him "push forward
toward the front" if he had any hope "to come in first."

Edward Lennon having finished his "landscape gardening" at Mr. D----s,
and the overseership being held over for the present, had got another
rather long job, on the far part of Ned Cavana's farm, in laying out
and cutting drains, where the land required reclaiming. He had shown
so much taste and intelligence, in both planning and performing, that
old Ned was quite delighted with him, and began to regret "that he had
not known his value as an agricultural laborer long before." There was
one other at least--if not two--who sympathized in that regret. At all
events, there he was now every day up to his hips in dirty red clay,
scooping it up from the bottom of little drains more than three feet
deep, in a long iron scoop with a crooked handle. This job was at the
far end of Ned's farm, and, in coming to his work, Lennon need hardly
come within sight of the house, for the work lay in the direction of
Shanvilla. Emon did not "quit work" until it was late; he was then in
anything but visiting trim, if such a thing were even possible. He,
therefore, saw no more of Winny on account of the job than if he had
been at work on the Giant's Causeway. But a grand object had been
attained, nevertheless--he was working for Ned Cavana, and had given
him more than satisfaction in the performance of the job, and on one
occasion old Ned had called him "Emon-a-wochal," a term of great
familiarity. This was a great change for the better. If young Lennon
had been as well acquainted with racing phraseology as Tom Murdock, he
also would have thought that he would "make a waiting race of it." But
the expression of _his_ thoughts was that he "would bide his time."

The Sundays, however, were still available, and Emon did not lose the
chance. He now because so regular an attendant at Rathcash chapel, and
went up so regularly with old Ned and his daughter after prayers, that
it was no wonder if people began to talk.

"I donna what Tom Murdock says to all this, Bill," said Tim Fahy to a
neighbor, on the road from the chapel.

"The sorra wan of me knows, Tim, but I hear he isn't over-well
plaised."

"Arrah, what id he be plaised at? Is it to see a Shanvilla boy,
without a cross, intherlopin' betune him an' his bachelor?"

"Well, they say he needn't be a bit afeared, Lennon is a very good
workman, {106} and undherstan's dhrainin', an' ould Ned's cute enough
to get a job well done; but he'd no more give his daughter with her
fine fortin' to that chap, than he'd throw her an' it into the
say--b'lieve you me."

"There's some very heavy cloud upon Tom this while back, any way; and
though he keeps it very close, there's people thinks it's what she
refused him."

"The sorra fear iv her, Tim; she has more sinse nor that."

"Well, riddle me this, Bill. What brings that chap here Sunda' afther
Sunda', and what takes him up to ould Ned Cavana's every Sunda' afther
mass? He is a very good-lookin' young fellow, an' knows a sheep's head
from a sow's ear, or Tim Fahy's a fool."

"_Och badhershin_, doesn't he go up to walk home wid Kate Mulvey, for
she's always iv the party?"

"And _badhershin_ yourself, Bill, isn't Phil M'Dermott always to the
fore for Kate?--another intherloper from Shanvilla. I donna what the
sorra the Rathcash boys are about."

Other confabs of a similar nature were carried on by different sets as
they returned from prayers, and saw the Cavanas with their company
turn up the lane toward the house. The young girls of the district,
too, had their chats upon the subject; but they were so voluble, and
some of them so ill-natured, that I forbear to give the reader any
specimen of their remarks. One or two intimate associates of Tom
ventured to quiz him upon the state of affairs. Now none but an
intimate friend, indeed, of Tom's should have ventured, under the
circumstances, to have touched upon so sore a subject, and those who
did, intimate as they were, did not venture to repeat the joke. No, it
was no joke; and that they soon found out. To one friend who had
quizzed him privately he said, "Suspend your judgment, Denis; and if I
don't prove myself more than a match for that half-bred _kiout_, then
condemn me."

But to another, who had quizzed him before some bystanders in rather a
ridiculous point of view, he turned like a bull-terrier, while his
face assumed a scowl of a peculiarly unpleasant character.

"It is no business of yours," he said, "and I advise you to mind your
own affairs, or perhaps I'll make you."

The man drew in his horns, and sneaked off, of course; and from that
moment they all guessed that the business had gone against Tom, and
they left off quizzing.

Tom felt that he had been wrong, and had only helped to betray
himself. His game now was to prevent, if possible, any talk about the
matter, one way or the other, until his plans should be matured, when
he doubted not that success would gain him the approbation of every
one, no matter what the means.

The preface to his plans was, to spread a report that he had gone back
to Armagh to get married to a girl with an immense fortune, and he
endorsed the report by the fact of his leaving home; but whether to
Armagh or not, was never clearly known.

Young Lennon went on with his job, at which old Ned told him "to take
his time, an' do it well. It was not," he said, "like digging a plot,
which had to be dug every year, or maybe twice. When it was wance
finished and covered up, there it was; worse nor the first day, if it
was not done right; so don't hurry it over, Emon-a-wochal. I don't
mind the expense; ground can't be dhrained for nothin', an' it id be a
bad job if we were obliged to be openin' any of the dhrains a second
time, an' maybe not know where the stoppage lay; so take your time,
and don't blame me if you botch it."

"You need not fear, sir," said Lennon. (He always said "sir" as yet.)
"You need not fear; if every drain of them does not run like the
stream from Tubbernaltha, never give me a day's work again."

{107}

"As far as you have gone, Emon, I think they are complate; we'll have
forty carts of stones in afore Saturda' night. I hope you have help
enough, boy."

"Plenty, sir, until we begin to cover in."

"Wouldn't you be able for that yourself? or couldn't you bring your
father with you? I'd wish to put whatever I could in your way."

"Thank you, sir, very much. I will do so if I want more help; but for
the lucre of keeping up his wages and mine, I would not recommend you
to lose this fine weather in covering in the drains."

"You are an honest boy, Emon, and I like your way of talkin', as well
as workin'; plaise God we won't see you or your father idle."

Up to this it will be seen that Emon was not idle in any sense of the
word. He was ingratiating himself, but honestly, into the good graces
of old Ned; "if he was not fishing, he was mending his nets;" and the
above conversation will show that he was not a dance at that same.

It happened, upon one or two occasions, that old Ned was with Emon at
leaving off work in the evening, and he asked him to "cum' up to the
house and have a dhrink of beer, or whiskey-and-wather, his choice."

But Emon excused himself, saying he was no fit figure to go into any
decent man's parlor in that trim, and indeed his appearance did not
belie his words; for he was spotted and striped with yellow clay, from
his head and face to his feet, and the clothes he brought to the work
were worth nothing.

"Well, you'll not be always so, Emon, when you're done wid the
scoopin'," said old Ned; and he added, laughing, "The divil a wan o'
me'd know you to be the same boy I seen cumin' out o' mass a Sunda'."

Emon had heard, as everybody else had heard, that Tom Murdock had left
home, and he felt as if an incubus had been lifted off his heart. Not
that he feared Tom in any one way; but he knew that his absence would
be a relief to Winny, and, as such, a relief to himself.

Emon was now as happy as his position and his hopes permitted him to
be; and there can be little doubt but this happiness arose from an
understanding between himself and Winny; but how, when, or where that
understanding had been confirmed, it would be hard to say.

Old Ned's remarks to his daughter respecting young Lennon were nuts
and apples to her. She knew the day would come, and perhaps at no far
distant time, when she must openly avow, not only a preference for
Emon, but declare an absolute determination to cast her lot with his,
and ask her father's blessing upon them. She was aware that this could
not, that it ought not to, be hurried. She hoped--oh, how fervently
she hoped!--that the report of Tom Murdock's marriage might be true:
that of his absence from home she knew to be so. In the meantime it
kept the happy smile for ever on her lips to know that Emon was daily
creeping into the good opinion of her father. Oh! how could Emon, her
own Emon, fail, not only to creep but to rush into the good opinion,
the very heart, of all who knew him? Poor enthusiastic Winny! But she
was right. With the solitary exception of Tom Murdock, there was not a
human being who knew him who did not love Edward Lennon. But where is
the man with Tom Murdock's heart, and in Tom Murdock's place, who
would not have hated him as he did?



CHAPTER XXIX.

Tom Murdock, seeing that his hopes by fair means were completely at an
end, and that matters were likely to progress in another quarter at a
rate which made it advisable not to let the leading horse get too far
ahead, {108} determined to make a rush to the front, no matter whether
he went the wrong side of a post or not--let that be settled after.

He had left home, and left a report behind him, which he took care to
have industriously circulated, that he had gone to Armagh, and was
about to be married to "a young lady" with a large fortune, and that
he would visit the metropolis, Fermanagh, and perhaps Sligo, before he
returned. But he did not go further than an obscure public-house in a
small village in the lower part of the county of Cavan. There he met
the materials for carrying out his plan. The object of it was shortly
this--to carry away Winny Cavana by force, and bring her to a
_friend's_ house in the mountains behind the village adverted to. Here
he was to have an old buckle-beggar at hand to marry them the moment
Winny's spirit was broken to consent. This man, a degraded clergyman,
as the report went, wandered about the country in green spectacles and
a short, black cloak, always ready and willing to perform such a job;
doubly willing and ready for this particular one from the reward which
Tom had promised him. If even the marriage ceremony should fail,
either through Winny's obstinacy or the clergyman's want of spirit to
go through with it in the face of opposition, still he would keep her
for ten days or a fortnight at this _friend's_ house, stopping there
himself too; and at the end of that time, should he fail in obtaining
her consent, he would quit the country for a while, and allow her to
return home "so blasted in character" that even "that whelp" would
disown her. There was a pretty specimen of a lover--a husband!

It was now the end of June. The weather had been dry for some time,
and the nights were clear and mild; the stars shone brightly, and the
early dawn would soon present a heavy dew hanging on the bushes and
the grass. The moon was on the wane; but at a late hour of the night
it was conspicuous in the heavens, adding a stronger light to that
given by the clearness of the sky and the brilliancy of the stars.

Rathcash and Rathcashmore were sunk in still repose; and if silence
could be echoed, it was echoed by the stillness of the mountains
behind Shanvilla and beyond them. The inhabitants of the whole
district had long since retired to rest, and now lay buried in sleep,
some of them in confused dreams of pleasure and delight.

The angel of the dawn was scarcely yet awake, or he might have heard
the sound of muffled horses' feet and muffled wheels creeping along
the road toward the lane turning up to Rathcash house, about two hours
before day; and he must have seen a man with a dark mask mounted on
another muffled horse at a little distance from the cart.

Presently Tom Murdock--there is no use in simulating mystery where
none exists--took charge of the horse and cart to prevent them from
moving, while three men stole up toward the house. Ay, there is
Bully-dhu's deep bark, and they are already at the door.

"That dog! he'll betray us, boys," said one of the men.

"I'd blow his brains out if this pistol was loaded," said another;
"and I wanted Tom to give me a cartridge."

"He wouldn't let any one load but himself, and he was right; a shot
would be twiste as bad as the dog; beside, he's in the back yard, and
cannot get out. Never heed him, but to work as fast as possible."

Old Ned Cavana and Winny heard not only the dog, but the voices.
Winny's heart foretold the whole thing in a moment, and she braced her
nerves for the scene.

The door was now smashed in, and the three men entered. By this time
old Ned had drawn on his trousers; and as he was throwing his coat
over his head to got his arms into the sleeves he was seized, and ere
you could count ten he was pinioned, with his arms behind him and his
legs tied {109} at the ankles, and a handkerchief tied across his
mouth. Thus rendered perfectly powerless, he was thrown back upon the
bed, and the room-door locked. Jamesy Doyle, who slept in the barn,
had heard the crash of the door, and dressed himself in "less than no
time," let Bully-dhu out of the yard, and brought him to the front
door, in at which he rushed like a tiger. But Jamesy Doyle did not go
in. That was not his game; but he peeped in at the window. No light
had been struck, so he could make nothing of the state of affairs
inside, except from the voices; and from what he heard he could make
no mistake as to the object of this attack. He could not tell whether
Tom Murdock was in the house or not, but he did not hear his voice.
One man said, "Come, now, be quick, Larry; the sooner we're off with
her the better."

Jamesy waited for no more; he turned to the lane as the shortest way,
but at a glance he saw the horse and cart and the man on horseback on
the road outside; and turning again he darted off across the fields as
fast as his legs could carry him.

Bully-dhu, having gained access to the house, showed no disposition to
compromise the matter. "No quarter!" was his cry, as he flew at the
nearest man to him, and seizing him by the throat, brought him to the
ground with a _sough_, where in spite of his struggles, he held him
fast with a silent, deadly grip. He had learned this much, at least,
by his encounter with the mastiff on New Year's day.

Careless of their companion's strait, who they thought ought to be
able to defend himself, the other two fellows--and powerful fellows
they were--proceeded to the bed-room to their left; they had locked
the door to their right, leaving poor old Ned tied and insensible on
the bed. Winny was now dressed and met them at the door.

"Are you come to commit murder?" she cried, as they stopped her in the
doorway; "or have you done it already? Let me to my father's room."

"The sorra harm on him, miss, nor the sorra take the hair of his head
well hurt no more nor your own. Come, put on your bonnet an' cloak,
an' come along wid us; them's our ordhers."

"You have a master, then. Where is he? where is Tom Murdock?--I knew
Tom _Murder_ should have been his name. Where is he, I say?"

"Come, come, no talk; but on wid your bonnet and cloak at wanst."

"Never; nor shall I ever leave this house except torn from it by the
most brutal force. Where is your master, I say? Is he afraid of the
rope himself which he would thus put round your necks?"

"Come, come, on wid your bonnet an' cloak, or, be the powers, we'll
take you away as you are."

"Never; where is your master, I say?"

"Come, Larry, we won't put up wid any more of her pillaver; out wid
the worsted."

Here Biddy Murtagh rushed in to her mistress's aid; but she was soon
overpowered and tied "neck and heels," as they called it, and thrown
upon Winny's bed. They had the precaution to gag her also with a
handkerchief, that she might not give the alarm, and they locked the
door like that at the other end of the house.

Larry, whoever he was, then pulled a couple of skeins of coarse
worsted from his pocket, while his companion seized Winny round the
waist, outside her arms; and the other fellow, who seemed expert, soon
tied her feet together, and then her hands. A thick handkerchief was
then tied across her mouth.

"Take care to lave plenty of braithin' room out iv her nose, Larry,"
said the other ruffian; and, thus rendered unable to move or scream,
they carried her to the road and laid her on the car. The horseman in
the mask asked them where the third man was, and they replied that he
must have {110} "made off" from the dog, for that they neither saw nor
heard him after the dog flew at him.

This was likely enough. He was the only man of the party in whom Tom
Murdock could not place the most unbounded confidence.

"The cowardly rascal," he said. "We must do without him."

But he had _not_ made off from the dog.

The cart was well provided--_to do Tom Murdock justice_--with a
feather-bed over plenty of straw, and plenty of good covering to keep
out the night air. They started at a brisk trot, still keeping the
horses' feet and the wheels muffled; and they passed down the road
where the reader was once caught at a dog-fight.

But to return, for a few minutes, to Rathcash house. Bully-dhu was
worth a score of old Ned Cavana, even supposing him to have been at
liberty, and free of the cords by which he was bound. The poor old man
had worked the handkerchief by which he had been gagged off his mouth,
by rubbing it against the bed-post. He had then rolled himself to the
door; but further than that he was powerless, except to ascertain, by
placing his chin to the thumb-latch, for he had got upon his feet,
that it was fastened outside. He then set up a lamentable demand for
help--upon Winny, upon Biddy Murtagh, and upon Bully-dhu. The dog was
the only one who answered him, with a smothered growl, for he still
held fast by the grip he had taken of the man's throat. Poor Bully!
you need not have been so pertinacious of that grip--the man has been
_dead_ for the last ten minutes! Finding that it was indeed so, from
the perfect stillness of the man, Bully-dhu released his hold, and lay
licking his paws and keeping up an angry growl, in answer to the old
man's cries.

We must leave them and follow Jamesy Doyle across the fields, and see
if it was cowardice that made him run so fast from the scene of
danger. Ah, no! Jamesy was not that sort of a chap at all. He was
plucky as well as true to the heart's core. Nor was his intelligence
and judgment at fault for a moment as to the best course for him to
adopt. Seeing the fearful odds of three stout men against him, he knew
that he could do better than to remain there, to be tied "neck and
crop" like the poor old man and Biddy. So, having brought Bully-dhu
round and given him 'his cue, he started off, and never drew breath
until he found himself outside Emon-a-knock's window at Shanvilla, on
his way to the nearest police station.

"Are you there, Emon?" said he, tapping at it.

"Yes," Emon replied from his bed; "who are you, or what do you want?"

"Jamesy Doyle from Rathcash house. Get up at wanst! They have taken
away Miss Winny."

"Great heaven I do you say so? Here, father, get up in a jiffy and
dress yourself. They have taken away Winny Cavana, and we must be off
to the rescue like a shot. Come in, Jamesy, my boy." And while they
were "drawing on" their clothes, they questioned him as to the
particulars.

But Jamesy had few such to give them, as the reader knows; for, like a
sensible boy, he was off for help without waiting for particulars.

The principal point, however, was to know what road they had taken.
Upon this Jamesy was able to answer with some certainty, for ere he
had started finally off, he had watched them, and he had seen the cart
move on under the smothered cries of Winny; and he heard the horseman
say, "Now, boys, through the pass between 'the sisters.'"

"They took the road to the left from the end of the lane, that's all I
know; so let you cut across the country as fast as you can, an' you'll
be at Boher before them. Don't delay me now, for I must go on to the
police station an' hurry out the sargent {111} and his men; if you can
clog them at the bridge till I cam' up with the police, all will be
rights an' we'll have her back wid us. I know very well if I had a
word wid Miss Winny unknown to the men, she would have sent me for the
police; but I took you in my way--it wasn't twenty perch of a round."

"Thank you, Jamesy, a thousand times! There, be off to the sergeant as
fast as you can; tell him you called here, and that I have calculated
everything in my mind, and for him and his men to make for
Boher-na-Milthiogue bridge as fast as possible. There, be off, Jamesy,
and I'll give you a pound-note if the police are at the bridge before
Tom Murdock comes through the pass with the cart."

"You may keep your pound, man! I'd do more nor that for Miss Winny."
And he was out of sight in a moment.

The father and son were now dressed, and, arming themselves with two
stout sticks, they did not "let the grass grow under their feet." They
hurried on until they came to the road turning down to where we have
indicated that our readers were once caught at a dog-fight. Here Emon
examined the road as well as he could by the dim light which
prevailed, and found the fresh marks of wheels. He could scarcely
understand them. They were not like the tracks of any wheels he had
ever seen before, and there were no tracks of horses' feet at all,
although Jamesy had said there was a horseman beside the horse and
cart.

Emon soon put down these unusual appearances--and he could not well
define them for want of light--to some cunning device of Tom Murdock;
and how right he was!

"Come on, father," said he. "I am quite certain they have gone down
here. I know Tom Murdock has plenty of associates in the county Cavan,
and the pass between 'the sisters' is the shortest way he can take.
Beside, Jamesy heard him say the words. Our plan must be to cut across
the country and get to Milthiogue bridge before they get through the
pass and so escape us. What say you, father--are you able and willing
to push on, and to stand by me? Recollect the odds that are against
us, and count the cost."

"Emon, I'll count nothing; but I'll--

"Here, father, in here at this gap, and across by the point of Mullagh
hill beyond; we must get to Boher before them."

"I'll count no cost, Emon, I was going to tell you. I'm both able and
willing, thank God, to stand by you. You deserve it well of me, and so
do the Cavanas. God forbid I should renuage my duty to you and them!
Aren't ye all as wan as the same thing to me now?"

Emon now knew that his father knew all about Winny and him.

"Father," said he, "that is a desperate man, and he'll stop at
nothing."

"Is it sthrivin' to cow me you are, Emon?"

"No, father; but you saw the state my mother was in as we left."

"Yes, I did, and why wouldn't she? But shure that should not stop us
when we have right on our side; an' God knows what hoult, or distress,
that poor girl is in, or what that villain may do to her; an' what
state would your mother be in if you were left a desolate madman all
your life through that man's wickedness?"

These were stout words of his father, and almost assured Emon that all
would be well.

"Father," he continued, "if we get to the bridge before them, and can
hold it for half an hour, or less, the police will be up with Jamesy
Doyle, and we shall be all right."

The conversation was now so frequently interrupted in getting over
ditches and through hedges, and they had said so much of what they had
to say, that they were nearly quite silent for the rest of the way,
except where Emon pointed out to his father the easiest place to get
over a ditch, or through a hedge, or up the face of a {112} hill. Both
their hearts were evidently in their journey. No less the father's
than the son's: the will made the way.

The dappled specks of red had still an hour to slumber ere the dawn
awoke, and they had reached the spot; there was the bridge, the
Boher-na-Milthiogue of our first chapter, within a stone's throw of
them. They crept to the battlement and peered into the pass. As yet no
sound of horse or cart, or whispered word, reached their ears.

"They must be some distance off yet, father," said Emon; "thank God!
The police will have the more time to be up."

"Should we not hide, Emon?"

"Certainly; and if the police come up before they do, they should hide
also. That villain is mounted; and if a strong defence of the pass was
shown too soon, he would turn and put spurs to his horse."

As he spoke a distant noise was heard of horses' feet and unmuffled
wheels. The muffling had all been taken off as soon as they had
reached the far end of the pass between the mountains, and they were
now hastening their speed.

"The odds will be fearfully against us, father," said Emon, who now
felt more than ever the dangerous position he had placed his father
in, and the fearful desolation his loss would cause in his mother's
heart and in his home. He felt no fear for himself. "You had better
leave Tom himself to me, father. I know he will be the man on
horseback. Let you lay hold of the horse's head under the cart, and
knock one of the men, or both, down like lightning, if you can. You
have your knife ready to cut the cords that tie her?"

"I have, Emon; and don't you fear me; one of them shall tumble at all
events, almost before they know that we are on them. I hope I may kill
him out an' out; we might then be able for the other two. Do you think
Tom is armed?" he added, turning pale. But it was so dark Emon did not
see it.

"I am not sure, but I think not He cannot have expected any
opposition."

"God grant it, Emon! I don't want to hould you back, but don't be
'fool-hardy,' dear boy."

"Do you want to cow me, father, as you said yourself, just now?"

"No, Emon. But stoop, stoop, here they are."

Crouching behind the battlements of the bridge, these two resolute men
waited the approach of the cavalcade. As they came to the mouth of the
pass the elder Lennon sprang to the head of the horse under the cart,
and, seizing him with his left hand, struck the man who drove such a
blow as felled him from the shaft upon which he sat. Emon had already
seized the bridle of the horseman who still wore the mask, and pushing
the horse backward on his haunches, he made a fierce blow at the
rider's head with his stick. But he had darted his heels--spurs he
had none--into his horse's sides, which made him plunge forward,
rolling Emon on the ground. Forward to the cart the rider then rushed,
crying out, "On, on with the cart!" But Lennon's father was still
fastened on the horse's head with his left hand, while with his right
he was alternately defending himself against the two men, for the
first had somewhat recovered, who were in charge of it.

Tom Murdock would have ridden him down also, and turned the battle in
favor of a passage through; but Emon had regained his feet, and was
again fastened in the horse's bridle, pushing him back on his
haunches, hoping to get at the rider's head, for hitherto his blows
had only fallen upon his arms and chest. Here Tom Murdock felt the
want of the spurs, for his horse did not spring forward with life and
force enough upon his assailant.

A fearful struggle now ensued between them. The men at the cart had
not yet cleared their way from the {113} desperate opposition given
them by old Lennon, who defendant himself ably, and at the same time
attacked them furiously. He had not time, however, to cut the cords by
which Winny was bound. A single pause in the use of his stick for that
purpose would have been fatal. Neither had he been successful in
getting beyond his first position at the horse's head. During the
whole of this confused attack and defence, poor Winny Cavana, who had
managed to shove herself up into a sitting posture in the cart,
continued to cry out, "Oh, Tom Murdock, Tom Murdock! even now give me
up to these friends and be gone, and I swear there shall never be a
word more about it."

But Tom Murdock was not the man either to yield to entreaties, or to
be baffled in his purpose. He had waled Edward Lennon with the butt
end of his whip about the head and shoulders as well as he could
across his horse's head, which Lennon had judiciously kept between
them, at times making a jump up and striking at Tom with his stick.

Matters had now been interrupted too long to please Tom Murdock, and
darting his heels once more into his horse's sides, he sprang forward,
rolling young Lennon on the road again.

"All right now, lads!" he cried; "on, on with the cart!" and he rode
at old Lennon, who still held his ground against both his antagonists
manfully.

But all was not right. A cry of "The police, the police!" issued from
one of the men at the cart, and Jamesy Doyle with four policemen were
seen hurrying up the boreen from the lower road.

Perhaps it would be unjust to accuse Tom Murdock of cowardice even
then--it was not one of his faults--if upon seeing an accession of
four armed policemen he turned to fly, leaving his companions in for
it. One of them fled too; but Pat Lennon held the other fast.

As Tom turned to traverse the mountain pass back again at full speed,
Lennon, who had recovered himself, sprang like a tiger once more at
the horse's head. Now or never he must stay his progress.

Tom Murdock tore the mask from his face, and, pulling a loaded pistol
from his breast, he said: "Lennon, it was not my intention to injure
you when I saw you first spring up from the bridge to-night; nor will
I do so now, if your own obstinacy and foolhardy madness does not
bring your doom upon yourself. Let go my horse, or by hell I'll blow
your brains out! this shall be no mere tip of the hurl, mind you." And
he levelled the pistol at his head, not more than a foot from his
face.

"Never, with life!" cried Lennon; and he aimed a blow at Tom's
pistol-arm. Ah, fatal and unhappy chance! His stick had been raised to
strike Tom Murdock down, and he had not time to alter its direction.
Had he struck the pistol-arm upward, it might have been otherwise; but
the blow of necessity descended. Tom Murdock fired at the same moment,
and the only difference it made was, that instead of his brains having
been blown out, the ball entered a little to one side of his left
breast.

Lennon jumped three feet from the ground, with a short, sudden shout,
and rolled convulsively upon the road, where soon a pool of bloody mud
attested the murderous work which had been done.

The angel of the dawn now awoke, as he heard the report of the pistol
echoing and reverberating through every recess in the many hearts of
Slieve-dhu and Slieve-bawn. Tom Murdock fled at full gallop; and the
hearts of the policemen fell as they heard the clattering of his
horse's feet dying away in quadruple regularity through the mountain
pass.

Jamesy Doyle, who was light of foot and without shoe or stocking,
rushed forward, saying, "Sergeant, I'll follow him to the end of the
pass, {114} an' see what road he'll take." And he sped onward like a
deer.

"Come, Maher," said the sergeant, "we'll pursue, however hopeless.
Cotter, let you stop with the prisoner we have and the Young woman;
and let Donovan stop with the wounded man, and stop the blood if he
can."

Sergeant Driscol and Maher then started at the top of their speed, in
the track of Jamesy Doyle, in full pursuit.

There were many turns and twists in the pass between the mountains. It
was like a dozen large letter S's strung together.

Driscol stopped for a moment to listen. Jamesy was beyond their ken,
round one or two of the turns, and they could not hear the horse
galloping now.

"All's lost," said the sergeant; "he's clean gone. Let us hasten on
until we meet the boy; perhaps he knows which road he took."

Jamesy had been stooping now and then, and peering into the coming
lights to keep well in view the man whom he pursued. Ay, there he was,
sure enough; he saw him, almost plainly, galloping at the top of his
speed.  Suddenly he' heard a crash, and horse and rider rolled upon
the ground.

"He's down, thank God!" cried Jamesy, still rushing forward with some
hope, and peering into the distance. Presently he saw the horse trot
on with his head and tail in the air, without his rider, while a dark
mass lay in the centre of the road.

"You couldn't have betther luck, you bloodthirsty ruffian, you!" said
Jamesy, who thought that it was heaven's lightning that, in justice,
had struck down Tom Murdock; and he maintained the same opinion ever
afterward. At present, however, he had not time to philosophize upon
the thought, but rushed on.

Soon he came to the dark mass upon the road. It was Tom Murdock who
lay there stunned and insensible, but not seriously hurt by the fall.
There was nothing of heaven's lightning in the matter at all. It was
the common come-down of a stumbling horse upon a bad mountain road;
but the result was the same.

Jamesy was proceeding to thank God again, and to tie his legs, when
Tom came to.

Jamesy was sorry the man's _thrance_ did not last a little longer,
that he might have tied him, legs and arms. With his own handkerchief
and suspenders. But he was late now, and not quite sure that Tom
Murdock would not murder him also, and "make off afoot."

Here Jamesy thought he heard the hurried step of the police coming
round the last turn toward him, and as Tom was struggling to his feet,
a bright thought struck him. He "whipt" out a penknife he had in his
pocket, and, before Tom had sufficiently recovered to know what he was
about, he had cut his suspenders, and given the waist-band of his
trousers a _slip_ of the knife, opening it more than a foot down the
back.

Tom had now sufficiently recovered to understand what had happened,
and to know the strait he was in. He had a short time before seen a
man named Wolff play Richard III. in a barn in C.O.S.; and if he did
not roar lustily, "A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" he
thought it. But his horse was nearly half a mile away, where a green
spot upon the roadside tempted him to delay a little his journey home.

Tom was not yet aware of the approach of the police. He made a
desperate swipe of his whip, which he still held in his hand, at the
boy, and sprung to his feet. But Jamesy avoided the blow by a side
jump, and kept roaring, "Police, police!" at the top of his voice. Tom
now found that he had been outwitted by this young boy. He was so
hampered by his loose trousers about his heels that he could make no
run for it, and soon became the prisoner of Sergeant Driscol and his
companion. Well done, Jamesy!



TO BE CONTINUED.


{115}

Translated from Le Monde Catholique.

FREDERICK HURTER.


Frederick Hurter, the illustrious historian of Pope Innocent III.,
died on the 27th of August, 1865, in Gratz, Austria, in the
sevens-eighth year of his age. Of all the great Catholic characters
which we have lost during the past year, there were undoubtedly very
few who have shed a greater brilliancy on our era, and still our loss
has, comparatively, passed unnoticed. Germany has certainly paid some
homage to the memory of that great Christian; but outside that country
almost general silence has enshrouded his tomb. In France, for
example, not more than three or four religious newspapers have devoted
to him even a few lines, and these all derived from a common source,
and we should not be surprised if many of our own readers should now
learn for the first time, from this notice, the death of a man so
justly celebrated.

To what, then, have we to ascribe this forgetfulness or indifference?
Perhaps a simple comparison of dates will account for it. Hurter died,
as we have stated, in the latter part of August, and La Moricière in
the early part of the following month. It is therefore natural to
conjecture that the memory of the great historian was almost
forgotten, or for the time absorbed, in the midst of the extraordinary
manifestations and triumphal funeral ceremonies which have honored the
remains of the immortal vanquished of Castelfidardo. It must be
admitted, however, that such was not just; it would have been better
to allow to each his legitimate share of respect, and, without
derogating from the glory of La Moricière, render also to Hurter the
honor to which he was so justly entitled. Beside, their names were
destined to be associated, for both have fought under the same flag,
although in a different manner. Both have been the champions of the
Papal See, one with his brave sword and the other with his not less
brave pen; and both have left magnificent footprints in the religious
annals of the nineteenth century.

Another explanation of this apparent neglect, more natural and perhaps
more truthful, might be found in the character of Frederick Hurter
itself, and in that of his last writings. A long time previous to his
death he had achieved the zenith of his fame; the latter part of his
long life being devoted to learned studies of undoubted merit and
immense advantage, but which have not had the same general attraction
as his earlier productions, particularly with the French people. We
freely acknowledge that this fact does but little credit to the
Catholic mind of France, but it is nevertheless undeniable. A kind of
comparative obscurity has covered with us the latter portion of
Hurter's life, and this, in our opinion, is the principal reason that
the news of his death has not created a deeper sensation in this
country.

In order to repair, as far as it lies in our power, this injustice
which the Catholics of Germany might well consider unfair or
ungrateful, we would like to render, in these few pages, at least a
feeble homage to the illustrious dead. We desire to gather together a
few of the glorious remembrances which are associated with his name,
and, above all, to point out that insatiable love of truth and justice
which {116} was the distinguishing feature of his character and which
seems to have pervaded his whole being under all circumstances and at
all times.

Frederick Emmanuel Hurter was born of Protestant parents on the 19th
of May, 1787, in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. His father was prefect of
Lugano; his mother remarkable for her intellect as well as for her
decision of character, having sprung from the noble family of the
Zieglers. When scarcely six years old, the child was deeply moved at
hearing an account of the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, and before
he had attained the age of twelve years he had conceived such a
distaste for the excesses of the revolutionary spirit then prevailing
that it seems never to have forsaken him. At this early age he was an
eager student of the "History of the Seven Years' War," and declared
himself in favor of Maria Theresa and against the King of Prussia. Two
years afterward a discussion having arisen between himself, his
school-fellows, and his teacher, on the relative merits of Pompey and
Caesar, he promptly and energetically took the part of the former,
believing that in the character of the latter was to be seen the
personification of the revolutionary spirit. These were the first
germs of that admirable sense of right which distinguished him on all
occasions. There could even then be foreseen in that child the future
man destined at some day to be the defender of the most august power
in the world.

From his youth upward, and doubtless from the same feeling of being
right, he applied himself with marked attention to ascertain the true
history of that most misrepresented epoch, the middle ages, its
monastic institutions, and its great pontiffs. Of the latter St.
Gregory VII. seemed to have most attracted him, and his youthful mind
seems to have delighted in comparing him with the great men of ancient
Rome.

Having finished his preliminary studies in his native town, Hurter
studied in the different classes of theology at the University of
Göttingen, whence he obtained his diploma, and, having been first
appointed pastor of an obscure village, was soon removed to
Schaffhausen.

In 1824 he was appointed chancellor of the consistory; but neither his
theological studies nor the duties of his office as pastor, a calling
he had embraced through deference for his father rather than from
personal inclination, diverted him from the object of his early
predilections. Thus, while at Göttingen he found leisure to write a
"History of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths." It was his first essay
as historian, being at the time only twenty years old.

Later he wrote a book on the following subject, proposed by the
National Institute of France: "The Civil State during the Government
of the Goths, and the Fundamental Principles of the Legislation of
Theodoric and his Successors." But this work remained among his
manuscripts unpublished. It was at Schaffhausen that he resumed his
favorite studies on the middle ages, and completed them. His great
attraction was not, as might be expected, Gregory VII., but Innocent
III., probably on account of a collection of letters written by that
great pontiff, published by Baluze, and which he had formerly bought
at public sale at Göttingen. He certainly had not then the remotest
idea that that book would at some future day form the foundation of
his fame, and the means of a radical change in his Christian and
social life. He commenced his book on Innocent III. in 1818, but it
was not until 1833 that the first volume appeared. The second was
published the year following. In 1835 he became president of the
consistory, an office which placed him at the head of the clergy of
his district, and which he resigned after fulfilling its duties for
six years. He published the third volume of his "History of Pope
Innocent" in the meantime, and in {117} 1842 the fourth and last
volume was given to the press.

This "History" was not only a great literary success, it was more. It
produced a decided revolution in historical science. The effect of it
in Switzerland, Germany, and in fact the whole of Europe, was immense.
The extraordinary part enacted by that great Pope was seen for the
first time in its proper light. By the irresistible logic of facts,
Hurler demonstrated how the august institutions of the papacy
accomplished its mission with a success which, up to his time, had
never been conjectured. Every one became convinced that it was the
papacy alone that had mastered and tempered the overwhelming forces of
the half-civilized nations of Europe, in order to more eternal and
spiritual ends. "Since then," says Hurter himself, in his preface to
the third German edition of his first volume, page 21, "a great number
of inveterate errors were corrected, many traditional prejudices
dissipated, many doubts removed; certain minds drew light therefrom,
others found a guide in it, and others attained _conviction_ from its
pages. Comparing the present with the past, people became more
circumspect in their judgments and less inconsistent in their
conclusions, and at last an answer was found to the famous question of
the Roman governor, "What is truth?" (_Quid est veritas?_) "Truth is
what is based on the indisputable proofs of history and agrees with
the nature of all things." Sebastian Brunner, a distinguished German
writer, after reading the "History of Innocent III.," gave the
following opinion of its author: "I hold Mr. Hurter to be the greatest
of historians; no one previous to him embraces a whole century in so
admirable a picture. Hurter is the apostolic historian of the
nineteenth century." This apostleship of Frederick Hurter was the more
efficient, being exercised by a Protestant, and, what was more, by the
president of a consistory. And beside, who would not yield to the
testimony of a man whose loyalty and integrity were above all
suspicion, and who had made it the rule of his life to observe the
most rigid impartiality in all his own views; to seek nothing but the
truth, and to honor virtue and merit wherever met, without excepting
those who differed from him, so as to neglect nothing in the
accomplishment of his task in the most perfect possible manner? His
indeed were admirable qualities, particularly when we consider how
history was written in those times by writers looked upon as models
and masters. But let us not enlarge on this topic; the "History of
Innocent" is found in every library; let us rather show how that book
earned for its author a reward far greater than mere worldly
reputation.

His literary success, and, what was more, the undeniable services he
had rendered to the Catholic cause, could not but excite the jealousy
and dislike of his fellow Protestants. His "Excursion to Vienna and
Presburg," which was published soon after he visited Austria, in 1839,
excited their anger to the highest degree. Blinded by their passions,
they resolved to put him on trial, so as to find him guilty and so
depose him. In his "Exposé of the Motives of his Conversion" he states
that they put him the unfair question, "Are you a Protestant at
heart?" "This question," he continues, "had no relation whatever with
the alleged facts bearing on my public office, but only with my
'History of Innocent III.' and with a visit to Vienna. I refused to
answer, because they wanted rather to discover what I disbelieved than
what I believed." This refusal excited a violent storm of indignation
against him. After trying many times to avert it, and after suffering
the most unworthy attacks with patience and fortitude, he seized his
pen and fulminated his defense under the following title, "President
Hurter and his Pretended Colleagues."

More painful trials still awaited him. Two of his daughters, one
immediately after the other, became afflicted with {118} a malady
which was soon to deprive him of them, and, while prayers for their
recovery were being offered up in all the Catholic convents of
Switzerland, his puritanical opponents exhibited the most uncharitable
joy, thrusting the dagger of grief still further into a parent's
heart. A less energetic character would doubtless have succumbed to
such cruel wounds, but Hurter remained true to the maxim of the poet:

  "Justum et tenacem propositi virum
  Non civium ardor, prava jubentium,
  Non vultus instantis _tyranni_
     Mente quatit solida. . ."

"The race of those tyrants is not yet extinct," he somewhere says. "I
find still men who desire every one to bow before them, and that
everything they do against those who dare discard such a miserable
servitude should be commended."   [Footnote 21] Hurter did better than
to imitate the ancient philosopher; he accepted his trials with truly
Christian resignation, perceiving in them the call of God to newer and
higher duties. "I discovered in them," he writes, "the means of my
salvation and my sanctification. I look upon the storm which has burst
over me as a signal on the road I have to follow. At the same time I
received the deep conviction that no peace was to be expected with
such people. My choice was therefore made. I threw off titles,
offices, and incomes, and went back to private life because I was
disgusted with a sect which, through rationalism, upset all Christian
dogmas, and, through pietism, tramples morals under foot."   [Footnote
22] What hearty frankness, what Noble feelings, and what a true sense
of justice!

  [Footnote 21: Third ed., 1st vol. (Pref. P. V.)]

  [Footnote 22: "Life of Fr. Hurter," by A. de Saint Cheron, p. 120.
  Some of the details of this article are extracted from this work, as
  well as from an article published in "Le Catholique" of Mayence, of
  September, 1865.]


Justice he demanded as well for others as for himself; therefore he
did not fear to defend the Catholic cause in his books. In his work on
the "Convents of Argovia and their Accusers" (1841), and on the
"Persecutions of the Catholic Church in Switzerland" (1843), he
denounces the tyranny of his Protestant compatriots in unmeasured
terms. For this reason, also, he went to Paris in 1843 to plead,
although in vain, the cause of the Catholics in Switzerland.

Having, as we have seen, resigned his position, he had ample leisure
to devote himself to the more profound study of the Catholic doctrine,
the dogmas of which he had already inwardly admitted. The "Symbolism"
of Moehler he found of great utility, and the "Exposition of the Holy
Mass," by Innocent III., served greatly to strengthen his religious
convictions.

Hurter, however, was not precipitate. He desired that in taking so
important a step conviction should be preceded by mature deliberation.
About this time he writes: "He would certainly be mistaken who should
think that I entered the _interior_ of the Catholic Church because I
was solely led away by its external forms. I was neither a wanderer
nor hair-brained. Undoubtedly the exterior impressed me; but I was
not, however, therefore relieved from examining its fundamental
principles with due care, or from studying the interior with proper
caution. I entered it first through curiosity, a mere visitor, as it
were, and I examined everything that I saw like one who, wanting to
purchase a house, first looks closely at every part of it before
closing the bargain. In that way I think I acquired, on many points,
truer and more complete ideas than the frequenters of the house, and
those who have spent their lives in it. I have too long postponed my
free decision not to have earned the right to be able to decide
whether the house suits me or not, or if any changes be required."

It is interesting to see, in his "Exposition of Motives," the
narration of all the doubts under which he labored previous to making
a final decision; how his mind gradually approached to a knowledge of
the truth as he progressed in his investigation; how a thousand
external circumstances, designed by Providence, powerfully {119}
contributed to shake his will, and finally how his conversion was less
his own work than the effect of that divine favor solicited by
Catholic charity, of which he speaks so feelingly in his "Geburt und
Wiedergebart."

The struggle was at last over. On the 16th of June, the feast of St.
Francis Regis, he formally made his abjuration before Cardinal Ostini,
formerly nuncio in Switzerland, at the Roman college, and five days
afterward, on the feast of St. Louis de Gonzaga, he received the
blessed sacrament in the presence of an immense congregation of the
faithful. The prophetic words of Gregory XVI. were then confirmed:
"_Spero che lei sera mio figlio_" (I hope that one day you will be my
son). The church and her head numbered one child more. God had thus
rewarded by his grace the perfect sincerity which the humble penitent
had ever made the rule of his life. We may also be allowed to believe
that the sweet protection of the Mother of God had efficaciously
operated in his favor, for even while a Protestant he had many times
pleaded her cause with his brethren.

The news of his conversion created quite different feelings. If the
great Catholic family rejoiced, and with unanimous voice thanked God
for having favorably heard their prayers, Protestantism felt wounded
to the very heart. The reason is easily understood. The edifying
example of humility exhibited by a man like Hurter was necessary to
win over a great number of souls until then irresolute and wavering,
as some planets attract their satellites in space.

As to him, full of gratitude toward God, his soul replete with light
and peace, his head high and serene, he went back to his native town
to resume his literary labors in retirement, as well as to undergo a
series of new persecutions, the last consecration of the Christian. "I
am not so narrow-minded," he wrote some time afterward, "that I did
not expect wicked judgments, base calumnies, and every kind of insult.
Facts have, however, far exceeded my anticipations, and I must confess
that I did not think those men capable of going so far in their
wickedness." Finally it became impossible for Hurter to remain longer
at Schaffhausen, and, beside, a new and better career was soon opened
for him. He received from Vienna an invitation to become the
historiographer of the empire. He accepted the appointment and entered
upon the fulfilment of its duties. Safe from the interruptions caused
by the troubles of 1848, he soon after accepted the position, of privy
councillor and the patent of nobility which were tendered him.

The last portion of his life was devoted to the practice of Christian
virtues and to the completion of his great work on Ferdinand II. To
this book he devoted twenty years' arduous labor, and was fortunate
enough to complete it one year previous to his death.

In commencing this work Hurter collected all his powerful faculties,
intending to display in its composition all that remarkable mental
energy with which he had been gifted by nature. With incredible
patience he examined one after another thousands of documents of all
kinds long buried in the archives of the empire, and most of which
were utterly unknown even to the learned. He could not understand to
be history that which was not supported by undeniable documents. _Quod
non est in actis, non est in mundo_, was his maxim--a maxim, alas!
which is too often neglected by the generality of our modern
historians. Nothing excelled his perseverance, I might almost say his
rapture, when he desired to throw light on an obscure fact, to fill a
hiatus, or to discover any historical truth. Never, perhaps, were
scruples of accuracy, and at the same time independence of thought and
courage in expression, carried to greater limits. Let us add, that
when composing the "History of Ferdinand II." he was filled with a
strong sympathy for his subject, and {120} in his admiration for that
great man he could, like Tacitus, console himself with the sight of
like grievances, and say with the Roman historian: _Ego hoc quoque
laboris praemium petam, ut me a conspectu malorum, quae nostra tot per
annos vidit aetas, tantisper, aum prisca illa tota mente repeto,
avertam, omnis expers curae quae scribentis animum, etsi non flectere
a vero, sollicitum tamen efficere possit._

This work of Hurter's consists of eleven volumes. The first seven
comprise the history of events from the reign of Archduke Charles,
father of Ferdinand II., to the coronation of the latter prince; the
remaining four being exclusively devoted to the reign of Ferdinand. In
this comprehensive review of the events of that epoch the illustrious
author has shown, by the light of true history, the great emperor and
all the principal personages by whom he was surrounded, or in any way
connected; particularly portraying the Archduke Charles, the
Archduchess Maria, that splendid model of a Christian mother, Gustavus
Adolphus of Sweden, Tilly, and Wallenstein. Hurter studied the
character of the latter with particular zeal, first in his sketch of
the "Material to be used for the History of Wallenstein" (1855), and
then in the more elaborate monography, "The last Four Years of
Wallenstein" (1862), and finally in the "History of Ferdinand" itself.
He arrives at the conclusion that the Duke of Friedland had really
been guilty of treason, and that his tragic end is in no way to be
attributed to Ferdinand. At the same time he does full justice to the
great qualities of Wallenstein, acknowledging in him great capacity
for organization, wonderful activity, and almost regal liberality; nor
does he hesitate to class him among not only the greatest men of his
age, but of all time.

But, as may be well understood, his great central figure was
Ferdinand, whom he considers a most admirable and accomplished type of
all the virtues surrounding royalty, notwithstanding his memory has
been burthened with such foul calumnies by Protestant historians and
their copyists. To relieve his name from these unjust aspersions was a
task worthy of the genius of the historian of Innocent III. Having
shown in the life of that pontiff the true embodiment of the Christian
principles of the supreme priesthood, should he not also point out a
temporal prince as the personification of genuine Catholic royalty?

We would desire to reproduce here the incomparable portrait of
Ferdinand as it has been drawn by Hurter in his last volume, but,
unfortunately, the limits of this article do not permit it. What
compensates us, in some measure, for being able to give only so feeble
an idea of that great work is, that we hope soon to see the _studies_
undertaken to speak of it more fully. We hope also that a competent
translator will be soon found to give to France that work which, with
the "History of Innocent III.," will immortalize the name of Hurter.

Yes, the great historian shall live in his writings, in which he has
shown a soul so strong, so firm, so just, so humble, and yet so proud;
so earnestly devoted to truth and so deeply adverse to falsehood,
meanness, and hypocrisy. He will live in those countless works of
charity of which he was the ever efficient author. He will live in the
remembrance of so many hearts he has edified by his pious example,
strengthened by his advice, and brought back to the true path by his
admonitions. He will live, also, in the perpetual and grateful regard
of a company, always so dear to him, to which he has given one of his
sons, and whose motto he was proud to quote on the frontispiece of his
great work. _Ad majorem Dei gloriam_.

We will end this sketch by repeating the words which an apostolic
missionary, now a cardinal, once applied to the great historian; they
cannot be {121} better or more happily chosen to sum up his whole
life. Twenty years ago, after being a witness to his conversion, the
Abbé de Bonnechose, writing from Rome, says of him: "_Justum deduxit
Dominus per vias rectas et ostendit illi regnum Dei, et dedit illi
scientiam sanctorum; honestavit illum in laboribus et complevit
labores illius_" (Sap. x.) Yes, Hurter's mind was right, and God led
him by the hand. He has shown him his kingdom on earth, the church of
Christ, and the chair of Peter, where his authority sits enthroned,
where he speaks and governs in the person of his vicar. It was he who
endowed him with a knowledge of the science and philosophy of his
doctrine and of the divine mysteries of the faith, and inspired in him
those noble ideas the end and aim of which ought always to be the
worship and exaltation of the true church, and the defence of the
pontificate when calumniated. He has blessed the labors which have
been conducted with such success, filling them with spirit and energy,
to the end that they may bear the fruits of immortality! _Honestavit
illum in laboribus et complevit labores illius._

J. MARTINOF.

------

WORDS OF WISDOM.

TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY DR. BOWRING.

  To seek relief from doubt in doubt,
    From woe in woe, from sin in sin--
  Is but to drive a tiger out,
    And let a hungry wolf come in.

  Who helps a knave in knavery.
  But aids an ape to climb a tree!
  On an ape's head a crown you fling;
  Say--Will that make the ape a king?

  Know you why the lark's sweet lay
    Man's divinest nature reaches?
  He is up at break of day
    Learning all that nature teaches.

  The record of past history brings
  Wisdom of sages, saints, and kings;
  The more we read those reverend pages
  The more we honor bygone ages!

  Whate'er befit--whate'er befal.
  One general law commandeth all:
  There's no confusion in the springs
  That move all sublunary things.
  All harmony is heaven's vast plan--
  All discord is the work of man!

{122}


From The Sixpenny Magazine.

IRELAND AND THE INFORMERS OF 1798.


There has lately issued from the press a work under the title which
heads our article, and which is amusing and instructive in the highest
degree. Were it not written by a man whose ability and character are
pledges for his veracity, we should rank it with Harrison Ainsworth's
efforts, and designate it as an almost impossible romance. It has, as
we think, appeared at a very opportune and timely juncture, and, in
our opinion, Mr. Fitzpatrick is entitled to great praise for the
talent, industry, and research evidenced in his volume.

Francis Higgins, the hero of Mr. Fitzpatrick's remarkable biographical
sketch, and familiarly known by the title of "The Sham Squire," was
born nobody exactly knows where, and reared nobody knows how. He
commenced his career, however, in stirring times, and when great
events were in their parturition, during which the history of Ireland
presents a series of panoramic images--a mixture of light and
shadow--instances of devoted fidelity and abounding rascality--
groupings of mistaken enthusiasm, selfish venality, and the most
abhorrent domestic treason--such as we in vain look for in the annals
of any other country or any other age. It is supposed that Higgins was
born in a Dublin cellar, and while yet of tender years became
successively "errand-boy, shoeblack, and waiter in a
public-house"--improving trades for one of so ripe a spirit, but which
he soon left, directed by a vaulting ambition, in order to become a
writing-clerk in an attorney's office. While in this position, he
commenced practice on his own account, by rejecting popery as
unfashionable and impolitic, and by forging a series of legal
documents purporting to show to all "inquiring friends" that he was a
man of property and a government official. He had an object in this,
as he was by this time to appear in a new character, as the lover of
Miss Mary Anne Archer, who possessed a tolerable fortune and a foolish
old father. Miss Archer happened to be a Roman Catholic, and was
strong in her faith; but this was only a trifle to Higgins, who again
forsook the new creed for the old, and proved thereby, like Richard,
"a thriving wooer." They were married, and the Archer _père_ did at
last what he ought to have done at first, ferreted out the real
antecedents of his precious son-in-law, and discovered that he had a
very clever fellow to deal with; while his daughter, finding, after a
short time, that her husband was "by no means a desirable one," fled
back to her bamboozled parent, who straightway indicted the pretender.
Higgins was found guilty and imprisoned for a year, and it was during
Judge Robinson's charge to the jury that he fastened the name of the
"Sham Squire" on the prisoner, a sobriquet which stuck to him
persistently during the remainder of his life, and proved a greater
infliction to his vanity than an apparently heavier penalty would have
been. This was in 1767. "Poor Mary Anne" died of a broken heart, and
her parents survived her for only a short lime; while the widower, in
order to make his prison life endurable, paid his addresses to the
daughter of the gaoler and eventually married her, as her father was
pretty well to do in the world, the situation being a {123}
money-making one, as the order of that day was, as proved before the
Irish House of Commons, that "persons were unlawfully kept in prison
and loaded with irons, although not duly committed by a magistrate,
until they had complied with the most exorbitant demands." When the
Sham's term of a year's imprisonment ended, he had life to begin anew,
and for some years we find him exercising many vocations, such as
"setter" for excise officers, billiard-marker, hosier, etc. For an
assault as a "setter," he was again tried and again convicted; but
nothing daunted, as his old webs were broken, he proceeded in the
construction of new. In 1775, we not only find him "a hosier," but
president of the Guild of Hosiers; and in 1780 his services were
engaged by Mr. David Gibbal, conductor of the "Freeman's Journal,"
then, as now, one of the most popular and well-conducted papers in
Ireland. But from the period of the Sham Squire's connection with it,
it seems to have degenerated, as in April, 1784, the journals of the
Irish House of Commons show an "order" that "Francis Higgins, one of
the conductors of the 'Freeman's Journal,' do attend this house
to-morrow morning." He did so, and escaped with a reproof. Having
gained some knowledge of law in the solicitor's office, we now find
him anxious to become an attorney, which end he accomplished by the
aid and influence of his friend and patron John Scott, afterward
chief-justice, and elevated to the peerage as Lord Clonmel, rather for
his political talents than his professional ones. From 1784 to 1787
Higgins also acted as deputy coroner for Dublin. By a series of
manoeuvres he became the sole proprietor of the "Freeman's Journal,"
and became at once what is called in Ireland "a castle hack." Both as
attorney and editor, the Sham Squire was now a man of importance, and
many called in on him. Shrewd, sharp, and clever, with a glib tongue
and a facile pen, no business was either too difficult or too dirty
for him. He was made a justice of the peace by Lord Carhampton, who,
as Colonel Luttrell, was designated by Grattan as "a clever bravo,
ready to give an insult, and perhaps capable of bearing one;" in fact,
the last allusion was deserved, as Luttrell had been called "vile and
infamous" by Scott without resenting it. Lord Carhampton became
commander-in-chief in Ireland, and during the outbreak of '98 was a
merciless foe to the rebels who fell into his hands. Higgins, by this
time, had become a great man, and lived in St. Stephen's Green, in
magnificent style, keeping his coach and entertaining the nobility. He
was a loyalist of the rosiest hue, and thought no mission too
derogatory by which he might show his zeal. He attended divine service
regularly, and that over, proceeded to "Crane Lane," in order to count
over and receive his share of the gains in a gambling house of which
he was principal proprietor, and which his influence with the police
magistrates prevented the suppression of--then to his editorial
duties, which were to uphold the measures of government and its
officials, and to lampoon, cajole, or threaten all who dared to oppose
them.

It was in the disastrous period of '98, however, that the Sham
Squire's most sterling qualities came into active requisition, as
evidenced by the following extract of a letter written by the
Secretary Cooke to Lord Cornwallis, then lord lieutenant of Ireland.
"Francis Higgins," he writes, "proprietor of the 'Freeman's Journal,'
was the person who procured for me all the intelligence respecting
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and got--to set him, and has given me
otherwise much information--£300;" meaning thereby that his
excellency should sanction that annual amount for "secret service,"
out of a sum of £15,000, specially laid aside for that purpose. Beside
this, however, a lump sum of £1000 was given to Higgins on the 20th of
June, 1798, for the betrayal of his friend; and, independent of this,
a confederate of his named Francis Magan, a barrister, {124} and a
close ally of Lord Edward, and who positively "set" the unfortunate
nobleman at Higgins's instigation, received £600 and a pension of £200
per annum for the worthy deed. Probably the most startling of all
these revelations of domestic treachery was the conduct of Leonard
McNally, barrister at law, and selected "for his ability, truth, zeal,
and sterling honesty," as Curran's assistant in defending the
prisoners implicated in the rebellion. This fellow seems to have
outsoared even Higgins and Magan in his duplicity, since not alone did
he keep government duly informed of the movements of the suspected,
but when on their trial he exhibited the greatest activity in
suggesting points for their defence, seconding his celebrated leader
in his unwearied endeavors to save them, although he had previously
made known to the law officers what course the accused men's counsel
meant to take for the day, so that Curran and his legal friends were
puzzled and surprised at having their best-concocted measures
anticipated and baffled, although not a man of them ever thought of
looking to "honest Mac" as the cause. For this and other services
McNally received some thousands, and was gratified, in addition, with
a pension of £300 per annum. Singularly enough, the terrible secrets
of Magan and McNally were well kept until long after their deaths, and
until the publication of the "Cornwallis Papers" enabled inquirers to
strike on the true vein. Both these men are said to have been
corrupted by the Sham Squire, who seems to have been the
Mephistopheles of his time; but a still more notorious "informer,"
because an open one, was Reynolds--Tom Reynolds--who was promised a
pension of £2000 a year and a seat in parliament for his services, but
did not receive quite so much. In 1798, however, he received £5000 and
a pension of £1000 a year; and as his demands were always importunate,
it is known that during the remainder of his life he extracted £45,740
from his employers. Reynolds went abroad and died there, as Ireland
would hardly have been for him either a safe or a pleasant residence;
but Magan and McNally lived at home for many a goodly year, and were
looked upon as honest men and sterling patriots to the last. Higgins
did not long survive his victims; he died suddenly, in 1802, worth
£20,000, a greater part of which, strange to say, he left for
charitable purposes!

In reviewing thus the history of this Irish Jonathan Wild and his
detestable comrogues, our object must, we hope, be evident. Their
lives and actions are instructive in many ways, and never promised to
be more so than now. What happened then may happen again; treason will
be dogged by traitors to the end. Fear and avarice are omnipotent
counsellors, and, when coupled with talent and ingenuity, marvellous
indeed are the misery they can cause and the wide-spread devastation
that travels in their track. That a needy and unscrupulous vagabond
like Higgins should hunt his dearest friends to the scaffold is not to
be wondered at; but that men of position and education like Reynolds,
McNally, and Magan should join in the chase, and for years after look
honest men in the face, evinces a hardihood of disposition and a
callosity of conscience which, as a lesson, is instructive, and, as an
utter disregard of remorseful feeling, appears all but impossible. No
doubt such miscreants excuse their crimes on a plea of loyalty, and
the plea would be all-sufficient had they not stipulated for the
price, and had they not exulted in receiving it. There is something
especially abhorrent to our natures in those wretches who voluntarily
plunge into the ranks of anarchy and disaffection at one time, and
then, when cowardice or cupidity overcomes them, overleap all the
boundaries of honor and faith, and trade on the blood or suffering of
the unfortunate men who placed their liberties or lives in their
safe-keeping.

{125}

In the notes which Mr. Fitzpatrick has appended to his biography of
the "Sham Squire" as "addenda" we have some well-authenticated and
racy revelations of many of the singular Irish characters who
flourished during the last thirty or forty years of the last century,
and in the first few years of the beginning of this. Ireland appears
to have been the "paradise of adventurers" in that day, as the times
appear to have been out of joint, and the habits and general _morale_
of the upper and middle ranks were to the last degree loose and
irregular. As the manners and modes of action of a people are in a
considerable degree fashioned and influenced by the example set them
by those who are placed in authority over them, it is not too much to
assert that a great deal of the lax morality, unscrupulous spirit, and
general demoralization were produced by some of the occupants of the
vice-regal throne, and their "courts," the character and course of
life of whom are painted by our author in anything but a seductive
way. Brilliancy, show, pleasure, wit, and extravagance were the order
of the day; lords-lieutenant were either dissipated _roués_, or
incompetent imbeciles, and in either case they were sure to be coerced
or cajoled by a mercenary tribe of political adventurers, who directed
their actions and influenced their minds. We at once see by the
wholesale corruption practised to bring about the Union, how utterly
depraved must have been the men who openly or covertly prostituted
themselves, when it was in contemplation; and never was political
profligacy more open and more daring in its violation of honor,
probity, and principle than in the abject submission of the Irish
parliament, and its unhesitating anxiety to sell themselves, souls and
bodies, to those who tempted them, and who had studied them far too
accurately not to be sure of their prey. Amongst those who consented
to accept the remuneration thus profusely offered them the lawyers
bore a very prominent part; in fact, government could hardly have
succeeded without their aid; of these, Fitzgibbon, afterward Lord
Clare and chancellor, was the most forward and efficient. There was
never a man better adapted for the work he had to do. Bold, active,
astute, and unscrupulous, he could be all things to all men; those
whom he could not cajole, he frightened; equally ready with the pen,
the pistol, and the tongue, he was neither to be daunted nor silenced;
terrible in his vengeance, no windings of his victims could escape
him; and extravagant in his generosity (when the public purse had to
bear the blunt), his jackals and partisans felt that their reward was
sure, and therefore never hesitated to comply with his most exact
demands. Few men had a larger number of followers, therefore, and no
man ever made a more unscrupulous use of them. He had nothing of the
recusant about him, however, and first and last he was consistent to
his party and to the Protestant creed which he had adopted in early
life, for he had been born and partly reared in the Roman Catholic
faith. In his personal demeanor he was a lion-hearted man; when hissed
in the streets by the populace he calmly produced his pistols; and
once, on hearing that a political meeting against the Union was being
held, he rushed into the middle of the assembled mass, commanded the
high-sheriff to quit the chair, and so closed the meeting. On the
bench he was equally fearless, and when recommended to beware of
treachery, his answer was, "They dare not; I have made them as tame as
cats." "If I live," he said, "to see the Union completed, to my latest
hour I shall feel an honorable pride in reflecting on the share I had
in contributing to effect it." He did live to see it, and to take his
seat in the British parliament; but matters were altogether altered
there. In his maiden effort he was rebuked by Lord Suffolk, called to
order by the lord chancellor, while the Duke of Bedford indignantly
snubbed him by {126} exclaiming, "We would not bear such insults from
our _equals_, and shall we, my lords, tolerate them at the hands of
mushroom nobility?" while, to cap the climax, Pitt, after hearing him,
turned to Wilberforce, and said loud enough to be heard by Lord Clare,
"Good G--d! did you ever, in all your life, listen to so
thorough-paced a scoundrel as that!" Disappointed and despairing, he
returned to Ireland, and died of a broken heart, while almost the last
words he uttered to a friend were, "Only to think of it! I that had
all Ireland at my disposal cannot now procure the nomination of a
single gauger!"

John Scott, afterward Lord Chief-Justice Clonmel, was another
prominent actor in those busy times. His birth was lowly, but his
talents were considerable; he was light and flippant rather than
profound, and he felt to the last a terrible mortification that his
claims had been postponed to those of Lord Clare. He had neither the
grasp of mind, nor the unhesitating manner of the chancellor, however;
he was apt to surround himself with companions, like the "Sham
Squire," for instance, who might be pleasant but were by no means
reputable. Beside, his character for probity was distrusted; his first
uprise in life was his wholesale appropriation of the property of a
Catholic friend which he held in trust, as Catholics, at that time,
could not retain property in their hands, and which he refused to
disgorge. He was both venal and vindictive, and but too often
prostituted his authority in pursuit of his passions. On one occasion,
however, he was signally discomfited. A man of the name of Magee, who
owned and edited the "Evening Post," had frequently come under the
lash, and was treated with no mercy. Magee's vengeance took a curious
form. Lord Clonmel was an ardent lover of horticulture, and had spent
many thousand pounds in making his suburban villa a "model." Magee
knew this, and as the chief demesne was skirted by an open common from
which a thick hedge alone separated it, the journalist proclaimed a
rural _fête_, on an enormous scale, to be held on the vacant ground,
and to which the whole Dublin population, gentle and simple, were
invited. Meats and liquors were given to an unlimited extent, and, in
the evening, when the "roughs" were primed with whiskey, several pigs
(shaved and with their tails well soaped) were let out as part of the
amusement of the day. By preconcert, the affrighted animals were
driven against Lord Clonmel's inclosure, which they speedily
over-leaped, followed by the mob. Trees, shrubs, flowers, vases, and
statues were in a wonderfully short time demolished in the "fun,"
while, to make the matter still more deplorable, the owner of the
property thus wantonly devoted to revenge stood on the steps of his
own hall-door, and with alternate fits of imprecation and entreaty
besought the spoilers to desist, but in vain. Toward the close of his
life, Lord Clonmel became a hypochondriac, and, supposing himself to
be a tea-pot, hardly ventured to stir abroad lest he should be broken.
On one occasion, his great forensic antagonist, Curran, was told that
Clonmel was going to die at last, and was asked if he believed it. "I
believe," was the reply, "that he is scoundrel enough to live or die
_just as it meets his convenience_." Shortly before his death he said
to Lord Cloncurry, "My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man, or what
the world calls so; I am chief-justice and an earl; but were I to
begin life again, I would rather be a chimney-sweeper, than consent to
be connected with the Irish government."

Another "celebrity" was John Taler, "bully, butcher, and buffoon," who
was afterward a peer and a judge. He was a bravo in the house and a
despot on the bench. He jested with the wretched he condemned, and
seemed never so happy as when {127} the scaffold was before his eyes.
He was ignorant but ferocious, and when he could not conquer an
opponent he would browbeat him.

"Give me a long day, my lord," said a culprit, whom he had just
doomed.

"I am sorry to say I can't oblige you, my friend," replied Lord
Norbury, smiling; "but I promise you a strong rope, which I suppose
will answer your purpose as well."

When he died, and was about to be lowered into the grave himself, the
tackle was rather short.

"Tare-an-agers, boys, don't spare the _rope_ on his lordship; don't
you know he was always fond of it?" said one of the standers-by.

"I never saw a human face that so closely resembles that of a
bull-dog!" remarked one barrister to another in court.

"Let him get a grip of your throat, and you will find the resemblance
still closer," was the reply.

These and a hundred others, their equals, instruments, and
subordinates, may be supposed to represent the Irish "turnspit"
element; it must be acknowledged, however, that in contradistinction
to them, there were sounding examples of men of a different and far
superior class, such as the Leinsters, Charlemonts, Plunketts,
Currans, Ponsonbys, and so forth, who would have adorned any country,
and who certainly contributed to relieve their own from the almost
intolerable odium which the wholesale venal profligacy of a large
number had brought upon it.

------

From Once a Week.

THE LEGEND OF THE LOCKHARTS.

I.

  King Robert on his death-bed lay, wasted in every limb,
  The priests had left, Black Douglas now alone was watching him;
  The earl had wept to hear those words, "When I am gone to doom,
  Take thou my heart and bear it straight unto the Holy Tomb."

II.

  Douglas shed bitter tears of grief--he loved the buried man.
  He bade farewell to home and wife, to brother and to clan;
  And soon the Bruce's heart embalm'd, in silver casket lock'd,
  Within a galley, white with sails, upon the blue waves rock'd.

III.

  In Spain they rested, there the king besought the Scottish earl
  To drive the Saracens from Spain, his galley sails to furl;
  It was the brave knight's eagerness to quell the Paynim brood.
  That made him then forget the oath he'd sworn upon the rood.

IV.

  That was his sin; good angels frown'd upon him as he went
  With vizor down and spear in rest, lips closed, and black brow bent:
  Upon the turbans, fierce he spurr'd, the charger he bestrode
  Was splash'd with blood, the robes and flags he trampled on the road.

{128}

V.

  The Moors came fast with cymbal clash and tossing javelin,
  Ten thousand horsemen, at the least, on Castille closing in;
  Quick as the deer's foot snaps the ice, the Douglas thundered through,
  And struck with sword and smote with axe among the heathen crew.

VI.

  The horse-tail banners beaten down, the mounted archers fled--
  There came full many an Arab curse from faces smear'd with red,
  The vizor fell, a Scottish spear had struck him on the breast;
  Many a Moslem's frighten'd horse was bleeding head and chest.

VII.

  But suddenly the caitiffs turn'd and gathered like a net,
  In closed the tossing sabres fast, and they were crimson wet,
  Steel jarr'd on steel--the hammers smote on helmet and on sword,
  But Douglas never ceased to charge upon that heathen horde.

VIII.

  Till all at once his eager eye discerned amid the fight
  St. Clair of Roslyn, Bruce's friend, a brave and trusty knight.
  Beset with Moors who hew'd at him with sabres dripping blood--
  Twas in a rice-field where he stood close to an orange wood.

IX.

  Then to the rescue of St. Clair Black Douglas spurred amain,
  The Moslems circled him around, and shouting charged again;
  Then took he from his neck the heart, and as the case he threw,
  "Pass first in fight," he cried aloud, "as thou wert wont to do."

X.

  They found him ere the sun had set upon that fatal day,
  His body was above the case, that closely guarded lay.
  His swarthy face was grim in death, his sable hair was stain'd
  With the life-blood of a felon Moor, whom he had struck and brain*d.

XI.

  Sir Simon Lockhart, knight of Lee, bore home the silver case.
  To shrine it in a stately grave and in a holy place,
  The Douglas deep in Spanish ground they left in royal tomb.
  To wait in hope and patient trust the trumpet of the doom.


{129}


[ORIGINAL.]

REMINISCENCES OF DR. SPRING.  [Footnote 23]

  [Footnote 23: "Personal Reminiscences of the Life and Times of
  Gardiner Spring, Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in the City
  of New York." 2 vols. 12mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.]

Few persons who have lived much in New York during the last quarter of
a century are not familiar with the dignified, resolute, yet kindly
countenance of the pastor of the Brick Presbyterian church. Fewer
still are ignorant of his reputation as a leading and representative
man in his denomination; a keen polemic; a great promoter of
missionary, tract, and Bible societies; and, we may add, a very
determined enemy of the Pope of Rome and all his aiders and abettors.
For more than fifty-five years he has preached to the same
congregation which gave him a call when he was first licensed as a
minister. During his career thirteen Presidents of the United States,
from Washington to Lincoln, have died; three Kings of England have
been laid in their graves; the horrors of the Reign of Terror, the
execution of Louis XVI., the rise and fall of the first Napoleon, the
shifting scenes of the Restoration, the Orleans rule, the second
Republic and the second Empire, have hurried each other across the
stage of French history. He has long passed the scriptural term of the
life of man; and now, at the almost patriarchal age of eighty-one, he
gives us a collection of reminiscences of what he has seen and done
during this protracted and eventful career.

It would be natural to suppose that such a book by such a man must be
full of interest. As one of the recognized leaders of a rich and
influential religious denomination, and one of the oldest and most
respectable citizens of the first city of America, how many historical
characters must he have met! to how many important events must he have
been a witness! But any one who takes up these volumes in the hope of
obtaining through them a clearer view of persons and times gone by,
will be disappointed. They are interesting, it is true, but not, we
will venture to say, in the way their author meant them to be. They
cause us to wonder that the doctor should have seen so much and
remembered so little. Yet as a picture of the life of a representative
Presbyterian preacher and a complete exposure of the utter emptiness
of the Presbyterian religion, these garrulous and random
"Reminiscences" are the most entertaining pages we have read for many
a month. We propose to cull for our readers a few of the most
interesting passages.

Dr. Spring was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Feb. 24, 1785. His
father was a minister, of whom the son says that "he would not shave
his face on the Lord's day, nor allow his wife to sew a button on her
son's vest; and on one occasion, when his nephew, the late Adolphus
Spring, Esq., arrived in haste on a Saturday evening with the message
that his father was on his bed of death, he would not mount his horse
for the journey of seventy miles until the Sabbath sun had gone down."
Though young Gardiner used to wonder, when a boy, why he was not
allowed to participate in the customary sports of children, he seems
to have preserved a warm affection for both his parents, of whom he
speaks in a loving and reverential tone which we cannot too carefully
respect. The thought that most affected him on their death was {130}
"_that he had lost their prayers._" Gardiner was sent to Yale College
at the age of fifteen, and during "a remarkable outpouring of the
Spirit" upon that rather unregenerate institution, in the year 1803,
he became, for a season, "hopefully pious." He had been uneasy for
some time about the state of his soul, and one afternoon he resolved
to pray, several hours, if necessary, until his sins were forgiven.
"There," he says, "in the south entry of the old college, back side,
middle room, third story, I wrestled with God as I had never wrestled
before." The result of this spiritual struggle we do not profess to
understand. He says that he rose from his knees without any hope that
he had found mercy, yet feeling considerably relieved. For several
weeks he went about, peaceful and happy, when, unluckily, the Fourth
of July came, with its speeches and fireworks, and his "religious
hopes and impressions all vanished as a morning cloud, and as the
early dew." It was five or six years before they came back again.

When he graduated his father came to hear him speak, and at the close
of the exercises gave him his blessing and told him to shift for
himself. So, there he was, twenty years old, with four dollars in his
pocket and a profession yet to be acquired. He borrowed two hundred
and fifty dollars from a generous friend, obtained a situation as
precentor in a church, opened a singing school, and applied himself
zealously to the study of law. Before long he married a young lady as
poor as himself, and went with her in 1806 to Bermuda, where he taught
school for some time very successfully; but rumors of war between this
country and Great Britain drove him back to the United States, and in
his twenty-fourth year he entered upon the practice of the law at New
Haven.

In the meanwhile those uneasy feelings of the soul, which he seems
unable to analyze (though we warrant a good confessor would quickly
have solved his perplexities) had not left him at peace. He writes to
his father from Bermuda upon the state of his interior man:

  "I should wish to go to heaven, because I should be pleased, with
  its employment. Were all my sins mortified and I rendered perfectly
  holy, I think I should the happy. . . . . Sometimes I can say, Lord,
  I believe; help thou mine unbelief. .... I am avaricious; and in the
  present state of my family, make money my god. I strain honesty _as
  far as I can_ to gain a little."

This was certainly not a satisfactory condition of things. The lust
for mammon seems strong enough, but the aspirations for heaven might
well have been rather more ardent. He goes to church and sings and
weeps, and the minister and elders crowd around him to see what is the
matter. He goes to prayer-meeting at last in New Haven, and there the
conversion--such as it is--is effected: "As the exercises closed and
the crowded worshippers rose to sing the doxology, I felt that I could
'praise God from whom all blessings flow.' Praise! praise! It was
delightful to praise him! On the 24th of April following, I united
with the visible church under Mr. Stuart's pastorate, and began to be
an active Christian."

We must say that this seems to be a very simple and easy process of
getting out of the power of the devil. Conversion, according to Dr.
Spring's idea, is simply an emotion of the mind, a spasm of sentiment.
It includes neither satisfaction for the past, nor the performance of
any definite religious duty in the present or the future. Any one who
can excite himself into the belief that he is regenerate, or tickle
his mind into the pleasant state indicated by the man who, when asked,
"How it felt to get religion?" replied that "it was just like having
warm water poured down your back"--any such one, we say, may rest
assured of his eternal safety. Dr. Spring is no more exacting with
other candidates for conversion than he was with himself. To a sick
man who inquires "what he shall do?" he answers: "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

{131}

"But will you not tell me _how_ I shall go to him?"

"Yes, I can tell you; you must not go in your own strength; for your
strength is weakness. You must not go in your own righteousness, for
you have none. You must feel your need of Christ, and see that he is
just the Saviour adapted to your wants. You must adore, and love, and
trust him. . . . . Commit to him your entire salvation, and in all
holy 'obedience live devoted to his service.'" Now in all this there
is just one practical suggestion, namely, to "live devoted to God's
service"--and that the man could not follow because he was dying. Let
our readers contrast Dr. Spring's death-bed ministrations with what a
Catholic priest would have said and done in similar circumstances. The
priest would have given definite instruction and divine sacraments;
the preacher has nothing better to offer than a few commonplace
generalities from his last Sunday's sermon.

But we must return to the reverend doctor's biography. Close upon the
heels of his conversion came the resolution to be a minister. The
pecuniary difficulties in the way of this change of profession were
soon obviated by the generosity of a rich widow of Salem. There was
another obstacle, however, of a more serious nature. This was Mrs.
Spring. She was "not a professed Christian." She was "a worldly
woman." She sought the honors of the world. She did not want to be a
minister's wife. The doctor had a great respect for her. He was afraid
to tell her of his resolution. We must let him describe in his own
words how he got out of the difficulty:

  "I then began a course of conduct which I have ever since pursued,
  and that was, in all cases where my own duty was plain, and my
  resolution formed, quietly to carry my resolution into effect, and
  meet the storm afterward. I did so in the present instance, though
  there was no other storm than a plentiful shower of tears. I said
  nothing to my wife; nothing to any one except Mr. Evarts. I sent my
  wife on a visit to my only sister, the wife of the Hon. Bezaleel
  Taft, at Uxbridge, the native place of my father, where I engaged in
  a few weeks to meet her, and make a further visit to Newburyport.
  She had no suspicion of my views, and left me with the confident
  expectation that she would return to New Haven.

  "In the meantime, after she left me, I was busily employed in
  arranging my affairs for my removal to Andover. I announced my
  purpose to the church at the next prayer-meeting, and received a
  fresh impulse from their prayers and benedictions. Mr. Evarts took
  my office and my business, and closed up my unsettled accounts with
  his accustomed accuracy, and my ledger now records them. Mr. Smith,
  my old teacher, laughed at me; Judge Daggett was silent. Judge
  Rossiter said to me, 'Mr. Spring, the pulpit is your place; you were
  formed for the pulpit rather than the bar.' My business in New Haven
  was closed; my debts paid; my household furniture, small as it was,
  was carefully stowed away; my law library, worth about four hundred
  dollars, was disposed of, and I was on my way to Uxbridge,
  Newburyport, Salem, and Andover.

  "When I reached Uxbridge, and was once more in the bosom of my
  little family, I felt that the trial had come. I could not at once
  disclose my plans to my wife, and was saved that painful interview
  by the suspicions of Mr. Taft, who told her that he believed I was
  going to be a clergyman! She laughed at him; but she saw a change in
  my deportment, and began to suspect it herself. I told her all. She
  went to her chamber and wept for a long time. But she came down,
  subdued indeed, but placid as a lamb, and simply said, 'It is all
  over now; I am ready.' Oh, how kindly has God watched over me! It
  seems as though the promise was fulfilled, 'Return unto thy country
  and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee.' Some day or two
  before we left Uxbridge, Mr. Taft said to me, 'Brother Spring, I
  have a case before Justice Adams this morning; you are still a
  lawyer, and I want you to go and argue it with me.' The thought
  struck me pleasantly, and I resolved to go; but instead of assisting
  him, without his knowledge I engaged myself to what I thought the
  weaker party; and my last effort at the bar was in battling with my
  sister's husband, and in the place of my father's nativity."

{132}

After eight months devoted to the study of theology at the Andover
seminary, Mr. Spring was licensed to preach and received a call from
the Brick church in New York. As a preliminary to his ordination, it
was necessary for him to preach a trial sermon before the presbytery,
and to submit to an examination as to his orthodoxy. In this latter
test he did not give unqualified satisfaction, nevertheless they
passed him, and he was duly ordained to the pastorship. As a salve, we
suppose, for their consciences, the presbytery deputed the Rev. Dr.
Milledollar, one of their number, to talk with the young minister, and
try to reason him out of certain heterodox opinions which he
entertained upon the subject of human ability. The result of the
interview was that, in Dr. Milledollar's judgment, "the best way of
curing a man of such views was to dip his head in cold water."

It was but a dismal religion of which he now became the minister.
Tears, gloom, discomfort, and brokenness of heart were the
characteristics of the spiritual life, and peace of mind was an
alarming symptom of the dominion of the devil. "Newark is again highly
favored," writes the minister to his parents: "there are not less than
five hundred persons _very solemn_." "My people appear solemn; they
were so at the lecture on Thursday evening." "I preached on Monday to
a very solemn audience at my own house." "The state of things in the
congregation, notwithstanding the war, is looking up. Our public
meetings and our social gatherings are more full and more solemn." He
visits Paris, and there passes an evening with a small party of his
countrymen: "We could not refrain from weeping during the whole time
we were together." The quantity of tears shed in the course of the
book is positively appalling. Of course there is nothing that remotely
resembles the gift of tears with which Almighty God sometimes rewards
and consoles his saints. It is merely a perpetual gush of mawkish
sentimentality, and we defy anybody to read these "Reminiscences"
without having before him an image of the whole Brick church with
chronic redness of the eyes. A member of the congregation went to the
doctor once with a request that he would baptize a child. He was not
one of the weepers, or, as Dr. Spring expresses it, "not a religious
man." The opportunity was too good to be lost. The doctor labored with
him, preached at him, probably wept at him, tried to impress him with
the solemnity and privilege of the transaction, did not baptize his
child, but finally prayed with him and urged him to come again. The
result of the exhortation is a good commentary upon the whole system
of sentimental spasmodic religion: "He went away," says Dr. Spring,
"and being requested by his wife to have another interview with me,
replied, 'No; _you will not catch me there again_.'" We suppose that
the child was not baptized; but that, according to Dr. Spring, and in
spite of the Bible, makes very little difference. It was his rule "to
baptize only those children, one of whose parents was a professed
Christian"--that is to say, a member of the church; and except in one
instance he has never varied from this strict practice. "That," he
says, "was in the case of a sick and dying grandchild, whose father
was a man of prayer, but not a communicant, and I myself professed to
stand _in loco parentis_, I now look upon the whole transaction as
wrong."

Dr. Spring has done a great deal of theological fighting in his day;
but his foes have been chiefly those of his own household. Now and
then he has carried the war into foreign countries, as at the time of
the famous School Question in New York, when he had a tilt with Bishop
Hughes before the Common Council, and got decidedly the worst of it;
but for the most part he has devoted himself to intestine feuds. The
controversy between Hopkinsians {133} and Calvinists in the
Presbyterian denomination; the disputes in the American Bible Society;
the schism in the Young Men's Missionary Society of New York; the
effort to create a division in the American Home Missionary Society;
the controversies about the New Haven school of theology and the
exscinding acts of the General Assembly;--these and many other
religious quarrels took up a great deal of the doctor's time, and he
still writes about them with no little acrimony and personal feeling.
We subjoin a few extracts:

  "The wrath of the Philadelphia Synod is praising the Lord. We shall
  have a battle in the spring, and lay a heavy hand upon that report.
  I shall not hesitate to take my life in my hand if Providence allows
  me to go to the Assembly."--_vol. i., p._70.

  "The Rev. Ezra Stiles Ely had published his celebrated work,
  entitled 'The Contrast,' the object of which is to show the points
  of difference between the views of Hopkinsian and Calvinistic
  theology. It was addressed to prejudice and ignorance, and was aimed
  at the youthful pastor of the Brick church."--_Vol. i., p._ 129.

  "I find my heart strangely _suspicious_. Sometimes I am resolved to
  withdraw from the Missionary and Education cause, because I foresee
  they will be scenes of contention. But then, again, I know they are
  exposed to evils, and the church is exposed to evils, through the
  mismanagement of these excellent institutions, which perhaps I may
  prevent."--_Vol ii., p_. 78.

We doubt whether Dr. Spring's clerical brethren like the following
passage; but anyhow, there is a great deal of truth in it:

  "There have been spurious revivals in my day, and the means of
  promoting them are the index of their character. In such seasons of
  excitement, great dependence is placed on the way and means of
  _getting them up_, and little of the impression [sic] that not a
  soul will be converted unless it be accomplished by the power of
  God. Whatever the words of the leaders may profess, their conduct
  proclaims, 'Mine own arm hath done this!' There is a familiarity, a
  boldness, an irreverence in their prayers, which ill becomes worms
  of the dust in approaching him before whom angels veil their faces.
  A pious and poor woman, in coming out from a religious service thus
  conducted, once said, 'I cannot think what it is that makes our
  ministers _swear_ so in their prayers.' They count their converts,
  and when they survey their work, there is a triumph, a self-reliant
  exultation over it, which looks like the triumph of the pagan
  monarch, when he exclaimed, 'Is not this great Babylon which I have
  built!' And hence it is that so many of the subjects of such a work,
  after the excitement is over, find that their own hearts have
  deceived them, that they are no longer affected by solemn preaching
  and solemn prayers, that _their past emotions were nothing more than
  the operations of nature, and that when these natural causes have
  exhausted their power there is no religion left."--Vol. i., p_. 219.

Dr. Spring gives a curious illustration of the length to which
excitement sometimes carries the poor victims of the revivalists, in
the case of a Mrs. Pierson, "around whose lifeless body her husband
assembled a company of _believers_, with the assurance that if they
prayed in faith, she would be restored to life. Their feelings were
greatly excited, their impressions of their success peculiar and
strong. They prayed and prayed again, and prayed _in faith_, but they
were disappointed," vol. i., p. 229.

He is rather free sometimes in his criticisms upon his brother
ministers. He listens to a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Finney, a noted
revivalist, and says that there was nothing exceptionable in it
"except a vulgarity that indicated a want of culture, and a coarseness
unbecoming the Christian pulpit." He hears a Mr. Broadway preach at
sea, and thus records his impressions: "I must say he is a _John Bull_
of a preacher. What a pity that men who need to be taught what are the
first principles of the oracles of God, should undertake to teach
others!" We dare say Dr. Spring's judgment of both these gentlemen was
sound; but we see no propriety in printing it.

He made several voyages to Europe, and travelled through France,
Germany, and Great Britain. Respecting the state of Protestantism in
France, he makes some significant admissions:

  "Protestantism in France is not what I have been in the habit of
  considering it. {134} I knew it was in a measure corrupt, but not to
  the extent in which I actually find it. I do not think that the
  Romanists, as a body, have much confidence in the Roman religion.
  But the mischief is that when thinking men throw off the bonds of
  Romanism, _they relapse into infidelity_. . . . .
  True religion in France _finds its most bitter and unwearied enemies
  in Protestants themselves_. The Protestants of this country are high
  Arians, if not absolute Socinians. There are now [1835] three
  hundred and fifty-eight Protestant pastors in France, beside their
  few vacant churches. _But there are comparatively few among them all
  who love and obey the truth."--Vol, ii., pp._ 260, 361.

The pages devoted to his European tours are remarkable
exemplifications of the truth of the old adage, that _coelum, non
animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt_. Wherever he goes, his breadth
of vision seems bounded by his own pulpit. The venerable cathedrals of
Europe, rich with the noblest memories, and the great historic places
haunted by the grandest associations of the past, fill him with no
thoughts more elevated than those awakened by the Brick church. He
sees everything distorted through the medium of his own inveterate
prejudices. If he visits a religious shrine, he can think of nothing
but the abominations of the scarlet woman of Babylon. If he sees a
convent, he tells us a cock-and-bull story about subterranean passages
paved with the bones of infants. If he witnesses some grand and
imposing ceremonial, he throws up his eyes, rushes out of the church,
and, while he shakes the dust off his feet, groans over the wickedness
of the Romish priests and their blasphemous mummeries, farcical shows,
and hypocritical disguises. One Sunday, while at Paris, he went with
the well-known missionary. Dr. Jonas King, and some other American
friends, to visit a hill called Mont Calvaire, near the city, to which
numbers of pilgrims were then resorting. They filled their pockets
with tracts, which they distributed, right and left, among the
thousands that were going up and down the mountain. They even
interrupted kneeling worshippers at their prayers to give them tracts.
These valuable gifts were received with avidity, for, as the narrator
elsewhere explains, our respectable parsons were mistaken for Catholic
missionaries. A few days afterward they made another excursion of the
same sort to Mont Calvaire. We give the conclusion of the adventure in
the words of Dr. King, from whose journal Dr. Spring copies it:

  "Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, and Miss Bertau, and Mr. Storrow's children,
  had gone to Mount Calvary to distribute tracts and Testaments. Dr.
  Spring and myself, having filled our pockets, and hats, and hands,
  with tracts and Testaments, set off with the hope to find them. Just
  as we began to ascend the mountain, we met them coming at a
  distance. On meeting them, they informed us that they had been
  stopped by the Commissary of the Police, and that a gendarme, by
  order of the missionaries (Rom. C. M.), had taken away their tracts
  and Testaments, and prohibited them in the name of the law to
  distribute any more on Mount Calvary. Mr. W. advised us not to
  proceed with the intention of distributing those which we had. We
  however, went, giving to every one we met, till we came in sight of
  the _gendarmes_, when we ceased giving, but occasionally let some
  fall from our pockets, which the wind, which was very high,
  scattered in all directions, and were gathered up by the crowd. At
  length we arrived at the top of the mountain, took our stand on the
  highest elevation near the cross, and there, in our own language,
  offered up, each of us, a prayer to the God of heaven for direction,
  and to have mercy on those tens of thousands that we saw around us,
  bowing before graven images. _I then felt in some degree
  strengthened to go on, and, taking a tract from my pocket, presented
  it to a lady who stood near me, and who appeared to be a lady of
  some distinction._ She received it with thanks, and I was not
  noticed by the _gendarmes_. Dr. S. let some fall from his pocket,
  and we made our way down to one of the stations. There he laid some
  on the charity-box, while I stood before him, to hide what he did.
  We then went to another station, and I gave ten or twelve to a lady,
  whom I charged to distribute them."

The heroism of these Presbyterian missionaries, who go up and down
hill, dropping divine truth from their coat-tails, reminds us of a
crazy old lady {135}so in New York, whose will was lately contested
before our courts. She had peculiar ideas of her own on the subject of
politics and the war, and used to inscribe her thoughts on great paper
kites, and give them to little boys to fly in the Central Park, in the
belief that the words would somehow or another be disseminated through
the city. Imagine St. Francis Xavier setting sail for the Indies with
his hat, and pockets, and hands full of tracts, scattering them
broad-cast along the inhospitable shores, or trusting them to the
breezes, like those charitable Buddhists Father Huc tells of, who go
up a high mountain on windy days, and throw into the air little paper
horses, which being blown away are, as they believe, miraculously
changed into real horses for the benefit of belated travellers.
Suppose Father Matthew, instead of preaching a crusade against
drunkenness, had contented himself with sneaking into shibeens and
taverns, and, behind the friendly shelter of a companion's back, had
deposited little bundles of temperance tracts on the top of every
barrel of whiskey, as if he expected them to explode like a torpedo,
and fill the air with virtue. Or what would Dr. Spring think if some
Sunday, in the midst of his prayer, two or three Catholic priests
should march into the Brick church and distribute Challoner's
Catechisms up and down the aisles, making the "solemn" Presbyterians
get up from their knees to receive them? It would not be a bit more
outrageous than the doctor's behavior during the mission on Mont
Calvaire.

American travellers in Europe, especially of the fanatical sort, are
but too apt to disgrace themselves and their country by their conduct
in sacred places. Here is another extract from Dr. Spring's book which
no respectable American can read without blushing. The incident
occurred in the famous cathedral of Rouen, built by William the
Conqueror, and reckoned the finest specimen of Gothic architecture in
France:

  "A little circumstance occurred here that was somewhat amusing. [!]
  Mr. Van Rensallear, in order to procure some little relic of the
  place, instead of gathering some flowers, broke off the _nose_ of
  one of the marble saints! He hoped to escape the detection of the
  guide, but unfortunately, on leaving the cathedral, we had to pass
  the mutilated statue, and were charged with the sacrilege. It was a
  lady saint whose sanctity our gallantry had thus violated, and we
  had to meet the most terrific volleys of abuse. A few glittering
  coins, however, obtained absolution for us, but neither entreaty nor
  cash could obtain the _nose_."

That must have been a funny scene one Sunday in crossing the ocean,
when the doctor and his wife, and the rest of the passengers, held
service under difficulties:

  "We assembled for praise and prayer. Susan was quite sea-sick, yet
  she came on deck. The day was cold, and she sat with _a hot potato
  in each hand to keep her warm_."

This is certainly the oddest preparation for approaching the throne of
grace that we ever heard of.

Mrs. Spring is a prominent figure all through the book, giving her
reverend husband advice and comfort, and helping him in the work of
the ministry, especially with regard to the women of the flock. He
laments in his introductory chapter that the death of his "beloved
Mrs. Spring must leave a vacuum in these pages which nothing can
fill." In the second volume he gives a long and detailed account of
her sufferings in child-bed when she "became the mother of a lovely
daughter." When she died in 1860, he wrote in his diary as follows:

  "I have been her husband and she my wife for four-and-fifty years;
  our attachment has been mutual, and strong and sweet to the end. I
  had no friend on earth in whom I had such reliance; no counsellor so
  wise; no comforter so precious. For the last thirty years we have
  rarely differed in opinion; when we did, I generally found she was
  right and I was was wrong; and when I persevered in my {136}
  judgment she knew how to yield her wishes to mine, and would
  sometimes say with a smile, 'God has set the man above the woman.
  You are _king_, my husband; but I am the queen!' In all my ministry,
  in sickness and in health, at home and abroad, by night and by day,
  I never knew her own convenience, comfort, or pleasure take the
  place of my duty to the people of my charge. . . . . I bless God
  that I had such a wife--that I had her at all, and that I had her so
  long. . . . My darling wife, I give you joy: but what shall I do
  without you?"

This last question is soon answered in an unexpected manner. Only
eight pages further on, Dr. Spring, aged eighty, records the following
passage:

  "_April 13th,_ 1865.--My sweet wife was too valuable a woman ever to
  be forgotten. The preceding sketch furnishes but the outline of her
  excellences, which I have presented more at large at the close of
  the sermon commemorative of one who was my first love. I never
  thought I could love another. But I was advanced beyond my
  threescore years and ten, partially blind, and needed a helper
  fitted to my age and condition; no one needs such a helper more than
  a man in my advanced years. I sought, and God gave me another wife.
  A few days only more than a year after the death of Mrs. Spring, on
  the 14th of August, 1861, I was married to Abba Grosvenor Williams,
  the only surviving child of the late Elisha Williams, Esq., a
  distinguished member of the bar. She is the heiress of a large
  Property, and retains it in her own hands. She is intent on her duty
  as a wife, watchful of my wants, takes good care of me, is an
  excellent housekeeper, and instead of adding to the expenses of my
  household, shares them with her husband."--Vol. ii., pp. 91, 92.

With this extract, Dr. Spring may be left to the charity of our
readers. We have said nothing of the vanity which allows him freely to
quote the commendations of his friends on his efforts in the pulpit
and his publications through the press; because, inconsistent as it
may be with a very elevated piety, it is a weakness that might be
pardoned in such an old man. But we cannot help remarking how on every
page he gives evidence of the utter baselessness of the thing he calls
religion; the unsubstantial, unsatisfying character of those human
emotions which he perpetually mistakes for the operations of the Holy
Ghost; and the strangely unreal, unsanctified nature of the fit of
mental perturbation which he denotes conversion and labors so hard to
produce. The conclusion to which every unprejudiced person must come,
on closing the volumes, is that Dr. Spring has lived in vain.

------

{137}

MISCELLANY.

_Arabian Laughing Plant_.--In Palgrave's "Central and Eastern Arabia"
some particulars are given in regard to a carious narcotic plant. Its
seeds, in which the active principal seems chiefly to reside, when
pounded and administered in a small dose, produce effects much like
those ascribed to Sir Humphrey Davy's laughing gas; the patient
dances, sings, and performs a thousand extravagances, till after an
hour of great excitement to himself and amusement to the bystanders,
he falls asleep, and on awaking has lost all memory of what he did or
said while under the influence of the drug. To put a pinch of this
powder into the coffee of some unexpecting individual is not an
uncommon joke, nor is it said that it was ever followed by serious
consequences, though an over quantity might perhaps be dangerous. The
author tried it on two individuals, but in proportions if not
absolutely homoeopathic, still sufficiently minute to keep on the safe
side, and witnessed its operation, laughable enough but very harmless.
The plant that hears these berries hardly attains in Kaseem the height
of six inches above the ground, but in Oman were seen bushes of it
three or four feet in growth, and wide-spreading. The stems are woody,
and of a yellow tinge when barked; the leaf of a dark green color, and
pinnated with about twenty leaflets on either side; the stalks smooth
and shining; the flowers are yellow, and grow in tufts, the anthers
numerous, the fruit is a capsule, stuffed with greenish padding, in
which lie imbedded two or three black seeds, in size and shape much
like French beans; their taste sweetish, but with a peculiar opiate
flavor; the smell heavy and almost sickly.



_The Congelation of Animals_.--It is generally supposed that certain
animals cannot be frozen without the production of fatal results, and
that others can tolerate any degree of congelation. Both these views
have been shown to be incorrect in a paper read before the French
Academy, by M. Pouchet. The writer arrives at the following
conclusions: (1.) The first effect produced by the application of cold
is contraction of the capillary blood-vessels. This may be observed
with the microscope. The vessels become so reduced in calibre that the
blood-globules are unable to enter them. (2.) The second effect is the
alteration in form and structure of the blood-globules themselves.
These alterations are of three kinds: (_a_) the nucleus bursts from
the surrounding envelope; (_b_) the nucleus undergoes alteration of
form; (_c_) the borders of the globule become crenated, and assume a
deeper color than usual. (3.) When an animal is completely frozen, and
when, consequently, its blood-globules have become disorganized, it is
dead--nothing can then re-animate it. (4.) When the congelation is
partial, those organs which have been completely frozen become
gangrenous and are destroyed. (5.) If the partial congelation takes
place to a very slight extent, there are not many altered globules
sent into the general circulation; and hence life is not compromised.
(6.) If, on the contrary, it is extensive, the quantity of altered
globules is so great that the animal perishes. (7.) On this account an
animal which is partially frozen may live a long time if the
congelation is maintained, the altered globules not entering into the
general circulation; but, on the contrary, it dies if heat be suddenly
applied, owing to the blood becoming charged with altered globules.
(8.) In all cases of fatal congelation the animal dies from
decomposition or alteration of the blood-globules, and not from
stupefaction of the nervous system.



_Ordnance and Targets_.--The Admiralty having erected a new target,
representing a portion of the side of the _Hercules_, experiments were
made at Shoeburyness which proved that a thickness of armor casing had
been attained which afforded perfect security against even the largest
guns recently constructed. The target has a facing of {138} 9-inch
armor-plates, and contains altogether eleven inches thickness of iron.
Against this three 12-ton shunt guns were fired, at a distance of only
200 yards, with charges varying from 45 lbs. to 60 lbs. of powder. One
steel shot, of 300 lbs. weight, 10-1/2 inches in diameter, fired with
60 lbs. of powder, at a velocity of 1,450 feet per second, barely
broke through the armor, without injuring the backing. Sir William
Armstrong has expressed his conviction, in the _Times_, that the
600-pounder gun will be unable to penetrate this target, and that it
will, in fact, require a gun carrying 120 lbs. of powder and steel
shot to pierce this massive shield. Mr. W. C. Unwin has pointed out,
in a letter to the _Engineer_, that for similar guns with shot of
similar form, and charges in a constant ratio to the weight of the
shot, the velocity is nearly constant. Then, assuming the resistance
of the plates to be as the squares of their thicknesses, it follows
that when the diameter of the shot increases, as well as the thickness
of the armor, the maximum thickness perforated will (by theory) vary
as the cube root of the weight of the shot, or, in other words, as the
calibre of the gun; and the weight of the shot necessary to penetrate
different thicknesses of armor will be as the cubes of those
thicknesses. The ratio deduced from the Shoeburyness experiments is
somewhat less than this, being as the 2.5 power and the 5.2 power
respectively. Practical formula deduced from experiments are given,
which agree with Sir William Armstrong's conclusion, and prove that a
gun which can effectively burn a charge of at least 100 lbs. of powder
will be required to effectually penetrate the side of the _Hercules_.


_The Moa's Egg_.--Since our last issue a splendid specimen of the egg
of the Dinornis has been exhibited in this country, put up to auction,
and "bought in" by the proprietors for £125. Some interesting details
concerning the history of gigantic birds' eggs have been supplied by a
contemporary, and we quote them for our readers: In 1854, M. Geoffroy
de St. Hilaire exhibited to the French Academy some eggs of the
Epyornis, a bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. The larger of
these was 12.1 inches long, and 11.8 inches wide; the smaller one was
slightly less than this. The Museum d'Histoire Naturelle at Paris also
contains two eggs, both of which are larger than the one recently put
up for sale, the longer axis of which measures 10 inches, and the
shorter 7 inches. In the discussion which followed the reading of M.
de St. Hilaire's paper, M. Valenciennes stated it was quite impossible
to judge of the size of a bird by the size of its egg, and gave
several instances in point. Mr. Strickland, in some "Notices of the
Dodo and its Kindred," published in the "Annals of Natural History"
for November, 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a
highly respectable French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven,
Madagascar, an enormous egg, which held "_thirteen wine quart bottles
of fluid_." The natives stated that the egg was found in the jungle,
and "observed that such eggs were _very, very rarely_ met with." Mr.
Strickland appears to doubt this, but there seems no reason to do so.
Allowing a pint and a half to each of the so-called "quarts," the egg
would hold 19-1/2 pints. Now, the larger egg exhibited by St. Hilaire
held 17-1/2 pints, as he himself proved. The difference is not so very
great. A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain
Cook found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a
nest "of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the
ground, and was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and
two feet eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and
Travels," xiii. 318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the
south coasts of New Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage,
etc.," London, 1818, he says: "They were built upon the ground, from
which they rose above two feet, and were of vast circumference and
great interior capacity; the branches of trees and other matter of
which each nest was composed being enough to fill a cart."--_The
Reader_.



_The Birds of Siberia_.--In an important treatise, published under the
patronage of the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, and
which is the second of a series intended to be issued on Siberian
zoology, the author, Herr Radde, not only records the species, but
gives an account of the period of the migration of Siberian birds. He
{139} gives a list of 368 species, which he refers to the following
orders: Rapaces, 36; Scansores, 19; Oscines, 140; Gallinaceae, 18;
Grallatores, 74; and Natatores, 81. Concerning the migration of
birds, Herr Radde confirms the result arrived at by Von Middendorf in
his learned memoir, "Die Isepiptesen Russlands;" the most important of
them being, (1) that the high table-land of Asia and the bordering
ranges of the Altai, Sajan, and Dauria retard the arrival of the
migratory birds; (2) eastward of the upper Lena, toward the east
coast of Siberia, a considerable retardation of migrants is again
noticeable; and (8) the times of arrival at the northern edge of the
Mongolian high steppes are altogether earlier than those of the same
species on the Amoor.


_Plants within Plants_.--In one of the recent numbers of the "Comptes
Rendus," N. Trécul gives an account of some curious observations,
showing that plants sometimes are formed within the cells of existing
ones. He considers that the organic matter of certain vegetable cells
can, when undergoing putrefaction, transform itself into new species,
which differ entirely from the species in which they are produced. In
the bark of the elder, and in plants of the potato and stone-crop
order, he found vesicles full of small tetrahedral bodies containing
starchy matter, and he has seen them gradually transformed into minute
plants by the elongation of one of their angles.



_The Extract of Meat_.--Baron Liebig, who has favored us with some
admirable samples of this excellent preparation, has also forwarded to
us a letter in which he very clearly explains what is the exact
nutritive value of the _extractum carnis_: "The meat," says the baron,
"as it comes from the butcher, contains two different series of
compounds. The first consists of the so-called albuminous principles
(albumen, fibrin) and of glue-forming membrane. Of these, fibrin and
albumen have a high nutritive power, although not if taken by
themselves. The second series consists of crystallizable substances,
viz., creatin, creatinin, sarcin, which are exclusively to be found in
meat; further, of non-crystallizable organic principles and salts
(phosphate and chloride of potassium), which are not to be found
elsewhere. All of these together are called the extractives of meat.
To the second series of substances beef-tea owes its flavor and
efficacy, the same being the case with the _extractum carnis_, which
is, in fact, nothing but solid beef-tea--that is, beef-tea from which
the water has been evaporated. Beside the substances already
mentioned, meat contains, as a non-essential constituent, a varying
amount of fat. Now neither fibrin nor albumen is to be found in the
_extractum carnis_ which bears my name, and gelatine (glue) and fat
are purposely excluded from it. In the preparation of the extract the
albuminous principles are left in the residue. This residue, by the
separation of all soluble principles, which are taken up in the
extract, loses its nutritive power, and cannot be made _an article of
trade_ in any palatable form. Were it possible to furnish the market
at a reasonable price with a preparation of meat containing both the
albuminous and extractive principles, such a preparation would have to
be preferred to the _extractum carnis_, for it would contain all the
nutritive constituents of the meat. But there is, I think, no prospect
of this being realized." These remarks show very clearly the actual
value of the extract. It is, in fact, concentrated beef-tea; but it is
neither the equivalent of flesh on the one hand, nor an imperfectly
nutritive substance on the other. It is, nevertheless, a most valuable
preparation, and now commands an extensive sale in these countries and
abroad; and it is, furthermore, the only valuable form in which the
carcases of South American cattle (heretofore thrown away as
valueless) can be utilized.--_Popular Science Review_.

------

{140}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.



LIFE OF THE MOST REVEREND JOHN HUGHES,
D.D., First Archbishop of New York.
With Extracts from his Private Correspondence. By John R.
G. Hassard. Pp. 519. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.

Mr. Hassard is one of our most promising writers. He contributed
several excellent articles to "Appleton's Cyclopaedia," edited "The
Catholic World" with judgment and good taste for several months at its
first establishment, and since that time has occupied the position of
editor of the Chicago "Republican." This is his first literary essay
of serious magnitude, and a more delicate or difficult task could not
well have been confided to his hands. He has fulfilled it with care,
thoroughness, and impartiality. The style in which it is written is
remarkably correct and scholarly, and exhibits a thorough acquaintance
with the English language as well as a pure and discriminating taste
in the choice of words. It is a kind of style which attracts no
attention to itself or to the author, but is simply a medium through
which the subject-matter of the work is presented to the reader's
mind; and this, in our view, is no small merit. The subject-matter
itself is prepared and arranged in a methodical, accurate, and
complete manner, which leaves nothing in that regard to be desired.
The work belongs to that class of historical compositions which
chronicle particular events and incidents, relate facts and
occurrences as they happened, and leave them, for the most part, to
make their own impression. The author has endeavored to take
photographs of his illustrious subject, and of the scenes of his
private and public life, but not to paint a picture or his character
and his times. Those who are already familiar with the scenes, the
persons, and the circumstances brought into view in connection with
the personal history of the archbishop, and who were personally
acquainted with himself, could ask for no more than is furnished in
this biography. We have thought, however, in reading it, that other
readers would miss that filling up and those illuminating touches from
the author's pen which would make the history as vivid and real to
their minds as it is made to our own by memory. A graphic and complete
view of the history of the Catholic Church, so far as Archbishop
Hughes was a principal actor in it, and of the results of his labors
in the priesthood and episcopate, is necessary to a just estimate of
his ecclesiastical career, is still a _desideratum_. In saying this,
we do not intend to find fault with Mr. Hassard for not supplying it.
He has accomplished the task which he undertook in a competent manner,
and produced a work of sterling merit and lasting value. We could wish
that the biographies of several other distinguished prelates, of the
same period, might be written with the same minuteness and fidelity,
and, above all others, those of Bishop England and Archbishop Kenrick.
Very few men could endure the ordeal of passing through the hands of a
biographer so coldly impartial as Mr. Hassard. But those who are able
to pass through it, and who still appear to be great men, and to have
lived a life of great public service, may be certain that their
genuine, intrinsic worth will be recognized after their death, and not
be thought to be the coinage of an interested advocate, or the
furbished counterfeit whose glitter disappears in the crucible.
Moreover, the reader of history will be satisfied that he gets at the
reality of things, and the writer of history that he has authentic
data and materials on which to base his judgments of men and events.
No doubt this species of history would disclose many defects and
weaknesses, many human infirmities and errors, in the individuals who
figure in it, and lay bare much that is unsightly and repulsive in the
state of things as described. This is true of all ecclesiastical
history. Truth dissipates many romantic and poetic illusions of the
imagination, which loves to picture to itself an ideal state of
perfection and ideal heroes far different from the real world and real
men. Nevertheless, it manifests more clearly the heroic and divine
element really existing and working in the world and in men, and
manifesting itself especially in the Catholic Church. {141} We
believe, therefore, that the divinity of the Catholic religion would
only be more clearly exhibited, the more thoroughly its history in the
United States was brought to light. We believe, also, that the
character and works of its valiant and loyal champions will be the
more fully vindicated the more dispassionately and impartially they
are tried and judged.

A calm consideration of the condition of Catholicity, thirty-five or
forty years ago in this country, in contrast with its present state,
will enable us to judge of the work accomplished by the men who have
been the principal agents in bringing about the change. Let us reflect
for a moment what a difference it would have made in the history of
the Catholic religion here, if some eight or ten of the principal
Catholic champions had not lived; and we may then estimate the power
and influence they have exerted. Leaving aside the numerical and
material extension of the Catholic Church under the administration of
its prelates and the clergy of the second order, we look at the change
in public sentiment alone, and the vindication of the Catholic cause
by argument at the bar of common reason, where it has gained a signal
argumentative triumph over Protestantism and prejudice, through the
ability and courage of its advocates and the soundness of their cause.
The principal men among the first champions of the Catholic faith who
began this warfare were, in the Atlantic states, Dr. Cheverus, Dr.
England, Dr. Hughes, and Dr. Power. We speak from an intimate and
perfect knowledge of the common Protestant sentiment on this matter,
and with a distinct remembrance of the dread which these last three
names, and the veneration which the first of them, inspired. Every one
who knows what the almost universal sentiment of the Protestant
community respecting the Catholic religion and its hierarchy was, is
well aware that it was a sentiment of intense abhorrence mingled with
fear. It was looked upon as a system of preternatural wickedness and
might, and yet, by a strange inconsistency, as a system of utter folly
and absurdity, which no reasonable and conscientious man could
intelligently and honestly embrace. The priesthood were regarded as a
species of human demons, and those among them who possessed
extraordinary ability, were believe to have a diabolical power to make
the worse appear the better reason and the devil an angel of light.
Those whose sanctity was so evident that it broke down all prejudice,
as Bishop Cheverus, were supposed not to be initiated into the
mysteries of the Catholic religion, but to be at heart really
Protestants, blinded to the errors of their system by education, and
duped by their more cunning associates, like "Father Clement" in the
well-known tale of that name. The Catholic clergy were shunned and
ostracised, looked on as outlaws and public enemies, worthy of no
courtesy and no mercy. Their religion was regarded as unworthy of a
hearing, a thing to be scouted and denounced, trampled upon like a
noxious serpent and crushed, _if possible_. _Contempt_ would be the
proper word to express the common estimation of it, if there had not
been too much fear and hatred to make contempt possible. Its
antagonists wished and tried to despise it and its advocates, but
could not. Every sort of calumny and vituperation was showered upon
them by the preachers, the lecturers, and the writers for the press
who made Catholicity their theme. Some, perhaps many, honorable
exceptions, which were always multiplying with time, must be
understood, particularly in Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston. John
Hughes, the poor Irish lad, who had knelt behind the hay-rick on his
father's farm to pray to God and the Blessed Virgin to make him a
priest, who had come to this country with no implement to clear his
way to greatness but the pick and shovel which he manfully grasped,
was one of those who were chosen to lead the van in the assault
against this rampart of prejudice. That he vanquished his proud and
scornful antagonists is an undoubted fact. Beginning his studies, as a
favor reluctantly conceded to him on account of his importunity, at a
later period than usual, with a grammar in one hand and a spade in the
other, he was first a priest, faithful to his duty among many
faithless, courageous and enterprising among many who were timid,
strong among many weak, staunch and unflinching in a time of schism,
scandal, and disaster, and bold enough not only to lay new foundations
for the church of Philadelphia, which others have since built upon,
while the old ones were half crumbled, and to repress mutiny and
disorder in the ranks of his own people, but to {142} attack,
single-handed, the enemies who were exulting over the discord and
feebleness which they thought foreboded the disruption of the Catholic
body. This, too, almost without encouragement, and with no hearty
support from those who were older and more thoroughly trained and
equipped in the service than himself. He became the coadjutor and
successor of the very man who had refused his first application to be
allowed to purchase the privilege of studying under him, by his daily
labor. He died the metropolitan of a province embracing all New York,
New Jersey, and New England, and including eight suffragan bishoprics
with more than a million of Catholics; confessedly the most
conspicuous man among his fellow-bishops in the view of Catholics and
Protestants alike, one of the most trusted and honored of his compeers
at the See of Rome, well known throughout Catholic Christendom, a
confidential adviser and a powerful supporter of the United States
government, a recognized illustrious citizen of the American republic
as well as one of the ornaments of his native country, with all the
signs and tributes of universal honor and respect at his funeral
obsequies which are accorded to distinguished personal character or
official station. Let the most severe and impartial critic apply his
mind to separate, in this distinguished and useful career, the
personal and individual force impelling the man through it, from the
concurrence of Divine Providence, the aid of favorable circumstances
and high position, the supernatural power of the character with which
he was marked, and of the system which he administered, and the
strength and volume of the current of events on which he was borne,
and, if we mistake not, he will find something strong enough to stand
all his tests. An ordinary man might have worked his way into the
priesthood, fulfilled its duties with zeal and success, attained the
episcopal and metropolitan dignity, won respect by his administration,
and left a flourishing diocese to his successor. But an ordinary man
could never have gained the power and influence possessed by
Archbishop Hughes. Our early and original impressions of his
remarkable power of intellect and will have been strengthened and
fixed by reading his biography, and the greatness of the influence
which he exerted in behalf of the Catholic religion is, to our mind,
established beyond a doubt. His chivalrous and valiant combat with
John Breckinridge, at Philadelphia, was a victory not only decisive
but full of results. We know, from a distinct remembrance of the
opinions expressed at the time, that Mr. Breckinridge was generally
thought, by Protestants, to have been discomfited. We have heard him
speak himself of the affair with the tone of one who had exposed
himself to a dangerous encounter with an enemy superior to himself,
for the public good, and barely escaped with his life. We remember
taking up the book containing the controversy, from a sentiment of
curiosity to know what plausible argument could possibly be offered
for the Catholic religion, and undergoing, in the perusal, a
revolution of opinion, which rendered a return to the old state of
mind inherited from a Puritan education impossible. This we believe is
but an instance exemplifying the general effect of the controversy
upon candid and thinking minds, not hopelessly enslaved to prejudice.
We remember hearing him preach in the full vigor of his intellectual
and physical manhood, in the cathedral of New York, soon after his
consecration, and the impression of his whole attitude, countenance,
manner of delivery, and cast of thought is still vivid and _unique_.
Those who have seen the archbishop only during the last fifteen years,
have seen a breaking-down, enfeebled, almost worn-out man, incapable
of steady, vigorous exertion, and oppressed by a weight of care and
responsibility which was too great for him. To judge of his ability
fairly it is necessary to have seen and heard him in his prime, before
ill-health had sapped his vigor. And to appreciate the best and most
genial qualities and dispositions of the man, it is necessary to have
met him in familiar, unrestrained intercourse, apart from any official
relation and away from his diocese--or, at least, in those times when
all official anxieties and cares of government were put aside and his
mind relaxed in purely friendly conversation. That he was a great man,
a true Christian prelate, and accomplished a great work in the service
of the church, of his native countrymen, and of the country of his
adoption, is, we believe, the just verdict of the most competent
judges and of the public at large upon the facts of his life. He will
not be forgotten, for his life and acts are too closely {143}
interwoven with public history and his influence has been too marked
to make that possible. We trust that those who enjoy the blessings of
a securely and peacefully established Catholic Church will not be
disposed to forget the men who, in more troubled times, have won by
their valor the heritage upon which we have entered. The record of
their lives and labors is of great value, and this one, in particular,
is worthy of the perusal of every Catholic and every American, and has
in it a kind of romantic charm and dramatic grouping which does not
belong to the life of one who has been more confined to the seclusion
of study or the ordinary pastoral routine.

We regret the mention made of Dr. Forbes's defection, and the
publicity which is again given to painful matters which had become
buried in oblivion. It appears to us that, as Dr. Forbes has not
publicly assailed either the church or the late archbishop, it was
unnecessary to allude to him in any way, and it would have been more
generous to have suppressed the remarks made in the archbishop's
private correspondence. The mechanical execution of the work is in
good style, and we recommend it to our readers as necessary to every
Catholic library.


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., Late Professor of Rhetoric
and Oratory, and also Professor of the Pastoral Charge in Yale
College, and Noah Porter, D.D., Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy
and Metaphysics in Yale College. Royal quarto, pp. 1840. Springfield,
Mass.: G. & C. Meiriam. 1866.

There have been published, within the last twenty-five years, several
editions of "Webster's Dictionary," but the present one, the title of
which is given above, seems to be the crowning effort of dictionary
making. It surpasses all other editions of the same work both in its
typography, its illustrations--some 3,000 in number--and its
philological completeness. "Webster's Dictionary" has always been of
high authority in this country, and is now held in great repute in
England, where it is accepted by several writers as the best authority
in defining the English language. The present edition is a most
beautiful one, and contains all the modern words which custom has
engrafted upon our language. It also contains, in its pronouncing
table of Scripture proper names, a supplementary list of the names
found in the Douay Bible, but not in King James's version. In fact,
care has been taken to make this edition as free as possible from
partisan and theological differences in regard to the definitions of
certain words which heretofore got a peculiarly Protestant twitch when
being defined. The publishers deserve great praise for the manner in
which they have done their portion of the work; it is a credit and an
honor to the American press.


THE CRITERION; OR, THE TEST OF TALK ABOUT FAMILIAR THINGS:
A Series of Essays. By Henry T. Tuckerman. 12mo., pp. 377. New York:
Hurd & Houghton. 1866.

Mr. H. T. Tuckerman is a man of letters, and we thought he would not
be likely to put his name to anything discreditable to an enlightened
author; but, to judge from many things in the above production, we
think he has missed his vocation, and would find more appropriate
employment as a contributor to the publications of the American Tract
Society, or the magazine put forth, monthly, by the "Foreign and
Christian Union." Else, why is every pope "shrewd," every priest an
"incarnation of fiery zeal?" why "the lonely existence and the subtle
eye of the Catholic?" why "the medical Jesuit, who, like his religious
prototype, operates through the female branches, and thus controls the
heads of families, regulating their domestic arrangements, etc.?" why
"Bloody Mary" and "Rom_ish?_" why is "superstition the usual trait of
Romanists?" and this: "One may pace the chaste aisles of the
Madeleine, and feel his devotion stirred, perhaps, by the dark
catafalque awaiting the dead in the centre of the spacious floor; and
then what to him is the doctrine of transubstantiation?" (!) We are
truly sorry to see these indications of a spirit with which we think
the author will find very little sympathy outside the clique of
benighted readers of the publications above quoted.

{144}

CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.
By C. J. Vaughan, D.D., Vicar of Doncaster. 18mo., pp. 269. Alexander
Strahan, London and New York. 1865.

This beautiful little volume contains twelve sermons, or rather
religious essays, written in a pleasing style, but altogether too
lengthy and too exhaustive in character. We have no doubt but that the
author is a good preacher, and if these essays were ever preached by
him as sermons, they were listened to with pleasure. But in their
present shape, enlarged, systematized, and--shall we say--almost too
carefully prepared for the press, they are a little tiresome. One
feels in reading them how much the naturalness, as well as the
elegance of diction, is marred by the vague evangelical phraseology,
"coming to Christ," "laying hold on Christ," etc., which occurs so
constantly in these pages. The author, being a Low Evangelical
Churchman, gives us, of course, "justification by faith" and the
Calvinistic view of the Fall. Yet, in the latter half of the volume he
seems to speak more like one who imagines that man has something to do
for his own justification, and takes a higher and nobler view of
humanity. We give the following passage from the last sermon, entitled
"Cast out and found," as a good specimen of what we should call
practical preaching. "When Jesus found him, he said unto him. Dost
thou believe on the Son of God? 'Thou!' The word is emphatic in the
original, 'Thou--believest thou?' We are glad to escape into the
crowd, and shelter ourselves behind a church's confession. But a day
is coming, in which nothing but an individual faith will carry with it
either strength or comfort. It will be idle to say in a moment of keen
personal distress, such as probably lies before us in life and
certainly in death and in judgment, 'Every one believes--all around
us believe--the world itself believes in the Son of God:' there is no
strength and no help there: the very object of Christ's finding thee
and speaking to thee is to bring the question home, 'Dost _thou_
believe?' A trying, a fearful moment, when Christ, face to face with
man's soul, proposes that question! Perhaps that moment has not yet
come to you. You have been fighting it off. You do not wish to come to
these close quarters with it. The world does not press you with it.
The world is willing enough that you should answer it in the general;
and even if you ever say, 'I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our
Lord,' it shall be in a chorus of voices, almost robbing the
individual of personality, and making 'I' sound like 'we.' But if ever
your religion is to be a real thing, if ever it is to enable you to do
battle with a sin, or to face a mortal risk, if ever it is to be a
religion for the hour of death, or for the day of judgment, you must
have had that question put to you by yourself, and you must have
answered it from the heart in one way. Then you will be a real
Christian, not before!"

The book is elegantly got up in the style and care for which the
publisher is noted.



BOOKS RECEIVED.

From P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. New York:
Nos. 18, 19, and 20 of Darras' History of the Church.


From P. Donahoe, Boston: The Peep o' Day; or,
John Doe, and the Last Baron of Crana. By
the O'Hara Family. 12mo., pp. 204 and 243.


From Hon. Wm. H. Seward. Secretary of State,
Washington, his speech on the "Restoration
of the Union," delivered in New York, Feb. 22, 1866.


From Peter F. Cunningham, Philadelphia: The Life of Blessed John
Berchmans, of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the French. With
an Appendix, giving an account of the Miracles after Death which have
been approved by the Holy See. From the Italian of Father Boreo, S.J.
1 vol. 12mo., pp. 358.


From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore: The Apostleship of Prayer. A Holy
League of Christian Hearts united with the Heart of Jesus, to obtain
the Triumph of the Church and the Salvation of Souls. Preceded by a
Brief of the Sovereign Pontiff Plus IX., the approbation of several
Archbishops and Bishops and Superiors of Religious Congregations. By
the Rev. H. Ramiero, of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the
latest French Edition, and Revised by a Father of the Society. With
the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding. 12mo., pp. 393.


From Kelly & Piet, Baltimore: Life in the Cloister; or, Faithful and
True. By the author of "The World and Cloister." 12mo., pp. 224.

------
{145}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. III., NO. 14--MAY, 1866.



[ORIGINAL.]


PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.


INTRODUCTION.

We wish to state distinctly and openly, at the outset of this work,
that the solution given of the problems therein discussed is a
solution derived from the Catholic faith. Its sole object will be to
make an exposition of the doctrines of the Catholic faith bearing on
these problems. By an exposition, is not meant a mere expansion or
paraphrase of the articles of the Creed, but such a statement as shall
include an exhibition of their positive, objective truth, or
conformity to the real order of being and existence; and of their
reasonableness or analogy to the special part of that universal order
lying within the reach of rational knowledge. In doing this we choose
what appears to us the best and simplest method. It differs, however,
in certain respects, from the one most in vogue, and therefore
requires a few preliminary words of explanation.

The usual method is, to proceed as far as possible in the analysis of
the religious truths provable by reason, to introduce afterward the
evidences of revealed religion, and finally to proceed to an
exposition of revealed doctrines. We have no wish to decry the many
valuable works constructed on this plan, but simply to vindicate the
propriety of following another, which is better suited to our special
purpose. We conceive it not to be necessary to follow the first method
in explaining the faith of a Christian mind, because the Christian
mind itself does not actually attain to faith by this method. We do
not proceed by a course of reasoning through natural theology and
evidences of revelation to our Christian belief. We begin by
submitting to instruction, and receiving all it imparts at once,
without preliminaries. The Christian child begins by saying "Credo in
Unum Deum." This is the first article of his faith. It is proposed to
him, by an authority which he reveres as divine, as the first and
principal {146} article of a series of revealed truths. If that act is
right and rational, it can be justified on rational grounds. It can be
shown to be in conformity to the real order. If it is in conformity to
the real order, it is in conformity also to the logical order. The
exposition of the real order of things is the exposition of truth, and
is, therefore, sound philosophy. A child who has attained the full use
of his reason and received competent instruction, either has, or has
not, a faith; not merely objectively certain, but subjectively also,
as certain and as capable of being rationally accounted for, though
not by his own reflection, as that of a theologian. If he has this
subjective certitude, a simple explication of the creditive act in his
mind will show the nature and ground of it in the clearest manner. If
he has not, children and simple persons who are children in science,
_i.e._, the majority of mankind, are incapable of faith--a conclusion
which oversets theology.

We have now indirectly made known what our own method will be; namely,
to present the credible object in contact or relation with the
creditive subject, as it really is when the child makes the first
complete act of faith. Instead of inviting the reader to begin at the
viewing point of a sceptic or atheist, and reason gradually up from
certain postulates of natural reason, through natural theology, to the
Catholic faith, we invite him to begin at once at the viewing point of
a Catholic believer, and endeavor to get the view which one brought up
in the church takes of divine truth. We do not mean to ask him to take
anything for granted. We will endeavor to show the internal coherence
of Catholic doctrine, and its correspondence with the primitive
judgments of reason. We cannot pretend to exhibit systematically the
evidence sustaining each portion of this vast system. It would only be
doing over again a work already admirably done. We must suppose it to
be known or within the reach of the knowledge of our readers, and in
varying degrees admitted by different classes of them, contenting
ourselves with indicating rather than completing the line of argument
on special topics.

The Catholic reader will see in this exposition of the Catholic idea
only that which he already believes, stated perhaps in such a way as
to aid his intellectual conception of it. The Protestant reader,
accordingly as he believes less or more of the Catholic Creed, will
see in it less or more to accept without argument, together with much
which he does not accept, but which is proposed to his consideration
as necessary to complete the Christian idea. The unbeliever will find
an affirmation of the necessary truths of pure reason, together with
an attempt to show the legitimate union between the primitive ideal
formula and the revealed or Christian formula, binding them into one
synthesis, philosophically coherent and complete.

II.

RELATION OF THE CREDIBLE OBJECT
AND THE CREDITIVE SUBJECT.

Let us begin with a child, or a simple, uneducated adult, who is in a
state of perpetual childhood as regards scientific knowledge. Let us
take him as a creditive subject or Christian believer, with the
credible object or Catholic faith in contact with his reason from its
earliest dawn. Before proceeding formally to analyze his creditive
act, we will illustrate it by a supposed case.

Let us suppose that, when our Lord Jesus Christ was upon earth, he
went to visit a pagan in order to instruct him in the truths of
religion. We will suppose him to be intelligent, upright, and sincere,
with as much knowledge of religious truth as was ordinarily attainable
through the heathen tradition. Let us suppose him to receive the
instructions of Christ with faith, to be baptized, and to remain ever
after a firm and undoubting {147} believer in the Christian doctrine.
Now by what process does he attain a rational certitude of the truth
of the revelation made by the lips of Christ?

In the first place, the human wisdom and virtue of our Lord are
intelligible to him by the human nature common to both, and in
proportion to his own personal wisdom and goodness. Having in himself,
by virtue of his human nature, the essential type of human goodness,
he is able to recognize the excellence of one in whom it is carried to
its highest possible perfection. The human perfection visible in Jesus
Christ predisposes him to believe his testimony. The testimony that
Jesus Christ bears of himself is that he is the Son of God. This
declaration includes two propositions. The chief term of the first
proposition is "God." The chief term of the second proposition is
"Jesus Christ." The first term includes all that can be understood by
the light of reason concerning the Creator and his creative act. The
second term includes all that can be apprehended by the light of faith
concerning the interior relations of God, the incarnation of the Son,
or Word, the entire supernatural order included in it, and the entire
doctrine revealed by Christ. The idea expressed by the first term is
already in the mind of the pagan, as the first and constitutive
principle of his reason. His reflective consciousness of this idea and
his ability to make a correct and complete explication of its contents
are very imperfect. But when the distinct affirmation and explication
of the idea of God are made to him by one who possesses a perfect
knowledge of God, he has an immediate and certain perception of the
truth of the conception thus acquired by his intelligence. God has
already affirmed himself to his reason, and Christ, in affirming God
to his intellect, has only repeated and manifested by sensible images,
and in distinct, unerring language, this original affirmation.

It is otherwise with the affirmation which Christ makes respecting the
second term. God does not affirm to his reason by the creative act the
internal relations of Father and Son, completed by the third, or Holy
Spirit, and therefore, although it is a necessary truth, and in itself
intelligible as such, it is not intelligible as a necessary truth to
his intellect. The incarnation, redemption, and other mysteries
affirmed to him by Christ, are not in themselves necessary truths, but
only necessary on the supposition that they have been decreed by God.
The certitude of belief in all this second order of truths rests,
therefore, entirely on the veracity of God, authenticating the
affirmation of his own divine mission made by Jesus Christ. We must,
therefore, suppose that this affirmation is made to the mind of the
pagan with such clear and unmistakable evidence of the fact that the
veracity of God is pledged to its truth, that it would be irrational
to doubt it. Catholic doctrine also requires us to suppose that Christ
imparts to him a supernatural grace, as the principle of a divine
faith and a divine life based upon it. The nature and effect of this
grace must be left for future consideration.

These truths received on the faith of the testimony of the Son of God
by the pagan are not, however, entirely unintelligible to his natural
reason. We can suppose our Lord removing his difficulties and
misapprehensions, showing him that these truths do not contradict
reason, but harmonize with it as far as it goes, and pointing out to
him certain analogies in the natural order which render them partially
apprehensible by his intellect. Thus, while his mind cannot penetrate
into the substance of these mysteries, or grasp the intrinsic reason
of them after the mode of natural knowledge, it can nevertheless see
them indirectly, as reflected in the natural order, and by
resemblance, and rests its undoubting belief of them on the revelation
made by Jesus Christ, attested by the veracity of God.

{148}

In this supposed case, the pagan has the Son of God actually before
his eyes, and with his own ears can hear his words. This is the
credible object. He is made inwardly certain that he is the Son of God
by convincing evidence and the illustration of divine grace. This is
the creditive subject, in contact with the credible object. It
exemplifies the process by which God has instructed the human race
from the beginning, a process carried on in the most perfect and
successful manner in the instance we are about to examine of a child
brought up in the Catholic Church.

The mind of the child has no prejudices and no imperfect conceptions
derived from a perverted and defective instruction to be rectified.
Its soul is in the normal and natural condition. The grace of faith is
imparted to it in baptism, so that the rational faculties unfold under
its elevating and strengthening influence with a full capacity to
elicit the creditive act as soon as they are brought in contact with
the credible object. This credible object, in the case of the child,
as in that of the pagan, is Christ revealing himself and the Father.
He reveals himself, however, not by his visible form to the eye, or
his audible word to the ear, but by his mystical body the church,
which is a continuation and amplification of his incarnation. The
church is visible and audible to the child as soon as his faculties
begin to open. At first this is only in an imperfect way, as Jesus
Christ was at first only known in an imperfect way to the pagan above
described. As he merely knew Christ at first as a man, and in a purely
human way, so the child receives the instruction of his parents,
teachers, and pastors, in whom the church is represented, in regard to
the truths of faith, just as he does in regard to common matters. He
begins with a human faith, founded in the trusting instincts of
nature, which incline the young to believe and obey their superiors.
As soon as his reason is capable of understanding the instruction
given him, he is able to discover the strong probability of its truth.
He sees this dimly at first, but more and more clearly as his mind
unfolds, and the conception of the Catholic Church comes before it
more distinctly. Some will admit that even a probability furnishes a
sufficient motive for eliciting an act of perfect faith. This is the
doctrine of Cardinal de Lugo, and it has been more recently propounded
by that extremely acute and brilliant writer, Dr. John Henry Newman.
[Footnote 24]

  [Footnote 24: Since the above was written the author has seen reason
  to suspect that he misunderstood Dr. Newman. The point will be more
  fully discussed hereafter.]

According to their theory, the undoubting firmness of the act of faith
is caused by an imperate act of the will determining the intellect to
adhere firmly to the doctrine proposed, as revealed by God. There are
many, however, who will not be satisfied with this, and we acknowledge
that we are of the number. It appears to us that the mind must have
indubitable certitude that God has revealed the truth in order to a
perfect act of faith. Therefore we believe that the mind of the child
proceeds from the first apprehension of the probability that God has
revealed the doctrines of faith to a certitude of the fact, and that,
until it reaches that point, its faith is a human faith, or an
inchoate faith, merely. The ground and nature of that certitude will
be discussed hereafter. In the meantime, it is sufficient to remark
that the child or other ignorant person apprehends the very same
ground of certitude in faith with the mature and educated adult, only
more implicitly and obscurely, and with less power to reflect on his
own acts. Just as the child has the same certainty of facts in the
natural order with an adult, so it has the same certainty of facts in
the supernatural order. When we have once established the proper
ground of human faith in testimony in general, and of the certitude of
our rational judgments, we have no need of a particular application to
the case of {149} children. It is plain enough that, so soon as their
rational powers are sufficiently developed, they must act according to
this universal law. So in regard to faith. When we have established in
general its constitutive principles, it is plain that the mind of the
child, just as soon as it is capable of eliciting an act of faith,
must do it according to these principles.

The length of lime, and the number of preparatory acts requisite,
before the mind of a child is fully capable of eliciting a perfect act
of faith, cannot be accurately determined, and may vary indefinitely.
It may require years, months, or only a few weeks, days, or hours.
Whenever it does elicit this perfect act, the intelligible basis of
the creditive act may be expressed by the formula, _Christus creat
ecclesiam_,   [Footnote 25] In the church, which is the work of Christ
and his medium or instrument for manifesting himself, the person and
the doctrine of Christ are disclosed. In the first term of the
formula, _Christus_, is included another proposition, viz., _Christus
est Filius Dei_.   [Footnote 26] Finally, in the last term of the
second proposition is included a third, _Deus est creator mundi_.
[Footnote 27] The whole may be combined into one formula, which is
only the first one explicated, _Christus, Filius Dei, qui est creator
mundi, creat ecclesiam._[Footnote 28]

  [Footnote 25:  Christ creates the Church.]

  [Footnote 26: Christ Is the Son of God.]

  [Footnote 27:  God is the creator of the world.]

  [Footnote 28: Christ, the Son of God, who is the creator of the
  world, creates the Church.]

In this formula we have the synthesis of reason and faith, of
philosophy and theology, of nature and grace. It is the formula of the
natural and supernatural worlds, or rather of the natural universe,
elevated into a supernatural order and directed to a supernatural end.
In the order of instruction, _Ecclesia_ comes first, as the medium of
teaching correct conceptions concerning God, Christ, and the relations
in which they stand toward the human race. These conceptions may be
communicated in positive instruction in any order that is convenient.
When they are arranged in their proper logical relation, the first in
order is _Deus creat mundum_, including all our rational knowledge
concerning God. The second is _Christus est Filius Dei_, which
discloses God in a relation above our natural cognition, revealing
himself in his Son, as the supernatural author and the term of final
beatitude. Lastly comes _Christus creat ecclesiam_, in which the
church, at first simply a medium for communicating the conceptions of
God and Christ, is reflexively considered and explained, embracing all
the means and institutions ordained by Christ for the instruction and
sanctification of the human race, in order to the attainment of its
final end. In the conception of God the Creator, we have the natural
or intelligible order and the rational basis of revelation. In the
conception of the Son, or Word, we have the super-intelligible order
in its connection with the intelligible, in which alone we can
apprehend it. God reveals himself and his purposes by his Word, and we
believe on the sole ground of his veracity. The remaining conceptions
are but the complement of the second.

All this is expressed in the Apostles' Creed. In the first place, by
its very nature, it is a symbol of instruction, presupposing a
teacher. The same is expressed in the first word, "Credo," explicitly
declaring the credence given to a message sent from God. The first
article is a confession of God the Father, followed by the confession
of the Son and the Holy Ghost. After this comes "Sanctam Ecclesiam
Catholicam," with the other articles depending on it, and lastly the
ultimate term of all the relations of God to man, expressed in the
words "Vitam aeternam."

Having described the actual attitude of the mind toward the Creed at
the time when its reasoning faculty is developed, and the method by
which {150} instruction in religious doctrines is communicated to it,
we will go over these doctrines in detail, in order to explain and
verify them singly and as a whole. The doctrine first in order is that
which relates to God, and this will accordingly be first treated of,
in the ensuing number.

------

From The Dublin University Magazine


GLASTONBURY ABBEY, PAST AND PRESENT,

THE RISE OF THE BENEDICTINES.   [Footnote 29]

  [Footnote 29: Authorities.--Acta Sanctoram: Butler's Lives of the
  Saints; Gregory's Dialogues; Mabillon Acta Sanct.; Ord; Benedicti;
  Zeigelbauer's Hist. Rei Liter.; Fosbrooke and Dugdale.]

As Glastonbury Abbey was one of the chief ornaments of the Benedictine
Order; as that order was one of the greatest influences, next to
Christianity itself, ever brought to bear upon humanity; as the
founder of that order and sole compiler of the rule upon which it was
based must have been a legislator, a leader, a great, wise, and good
man, such as the world seldom sees, one who, unaided, without example
or precedent, compiled a code which has ruled millions of beings and
made them a motive-power in the history of humanity; as the work done
by that order has left traces in every country in Europe--lives and
acts now in the literature, arts, sciences, and social life of nearly
every civilized community--it becomes imperatively necessary that we
should at this point investigate these three matters--the man, the
rule, and the work:--the man, St. Benedict, from whose brain issued
the idea of monastic organization; the rule by which it was worked,
which contains a system of legislation as comprehensive as the
gradually compiled laws of centuries of growth; and the work done by
those who were subject to its power, followed out its spirit, lived
under its influence, and carried it into every country where the
gospel was preached.

Far away in olden times, at the close of the fifth century, when the
gorgeous splendor of the Roman day was waning and the shades of that
long, dark night of the middle ages were closing in upon the earth;
just at that period when, as if impelled by some instinct or led by
some mysterious hand, there came pouring down from the wilds of
Scandinavia hordes of ferocious barbarians who threatened, as they
rolled on like a dark flood, to obliterate all traces of civilization
in Europe--when the martial spirit of the Roman was rapidly
degenerating into the venal valor of the mercenary--when the western
empire had fallen, after being the tragic theatre of scenes to which
there is no parallel in the history of mankind--when men, aghast at
human crime and writhing under the persecutions of those whom history
has branded as the "Scourge of God," sought in vain for some shelter
against their kind--when human nature, after that struggle between
refined corruption and barbarian ruthlessness, lay awaiting the night
of troubles which was to fall upon it as a long penance for human
crime--just at this critical period in the world's history appeared
the man who was destined to rescue from the general destruction of
Roman life the elements of a future civilization; to provide an asylum
to which art might flee with her choicest treasures, where science
might labor in safety, where {151} learning might perpetuate and
multiplied its stores, where the oracles of religion might rest
secure, and where man might retire from the woe and wickedness of a
world given up to destruction, live out his life in quiet, and make
his peace with his God.

That man was St. Benedict, who was born of noble parents about the
year 480, at Norcia, a town in the Duchy of Spoleto; his father's name
was Eutropius, his grandfather's Justinian. Although the glory of Rome
was on the decline, her schools were still crowded with young
disciples of all nations, and to Rome the future saint was sent to
study literature and science. The poets of this declining age have
left behind them a graphic picture of the profligacy and dissipation
of Roman life---the nobles had given themselves up to voluptuous and
enervating pleasures, the martial spirit which had once found vent in
deeds with whose fame the world has ever since rung, had degenerated
into the softer bravery which dares the milder dangers of a love
intrigue, or into the tipsy valor loudest in the midnight brawl. The
sons of those heroes who in their youth had gone out into the world,
subdued kingdoms, and had been drawn by captive monarchs through the
streets of Rome in triumph, now squandered the wealth and disgraced
the name of their fathers over the dice-box and the drinking cup.
Roman society was corrupt to its core, the leaders were sinking into
the imbecility of licentiousness, the people were following their
steps with that impetuosity so characteristic of a demoralized
populace, whilst far up in the rude, bleak North the barbarian, with
the keen instinct of the wild beast, sat watching from his lonely
wilds the tottering towers of Roman glory--the decaying energies of
the emasculated giant--until the moment came when he sallied forth and
with one hardy blow shattered the mighty fabric and laid the victors
of the world in abject slavery at his feet. Into this society came the
youthful Benedict, with all the fresh innocence of rustic purity, and
a soul already yearning after the great mysteries of religion;
admitted into the wild revelry of student life, that prototype of
modern Bohemianism, he was at once disgusted with the general
profligacy around him. The instincts of his youthful purity sickened
at the fetid life of Rome, but in his case time, instead of
reconciling him to the ways of his fellows, and transforming, as it so
often does, the trembling horror of natural innocence into the wild
intrepidity of reckless license, only strengthened his disgust for
what he saw, and the timid, thoughtful, pensive student shrank from
the noisy revelry, and sought shelter among his books.

About this time, too, the idea of penitential seclusion was prevalent
in the West, stimulated by the writings and opinions of St. Augustine
and St. Jerome. It has been suggested that the doctrine of asceticism
was founded upon the words of Christ, "If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."  [Footnote
30] St. Gregory himself dwells with peculiar emphasis upon this
passage, which he expounds thus, "Let us listen to what he said in
this passage--let him who will follow me deny himself; in another
place it is said that we should forego our possessions; here it is
said that we should deny _ourselves_, and perhaps it is not laborious
to a man to relinquish his possessions, but it is very laborious to
relinquish _himself_. For it is a light thing to abandon what one has,
but a much greater thing to abandon what _one is_."   [Footnote 31]
Fired by the notion of self-mortification imparted to these words of
Christ by their own material interpretation, these men forsook the
world and retired to caves, rocks, forests, anywhere out of sight of
{152} their fellow-mortals--lived on bitter herbs and putrid water,
exposed themselves to the inclemency of the winter and the burning
heats of summer.

  [Footnote 30: Matt. xvi. 24.]

  [Footnote 31: St. Greg. Hom, 32 in Evangel.]

Such was the rise and working of asceticism, which brought out so many
anchorites and hermits. Few things in the history of human suffering
can parallel the lives of these men.

As regards conventual life, that is, the assemblage of those who
ministered in the church under one roof, sharing all things in common,
that may be traced back to the apostles and their disciples, who were
constrained to live in this way, and, therefore, we find that wherever
they established a church, there they also established a sort of
college, or common residence, for the priests of that church. This is
evident from the epistles of Ignatius, nearly all, of which conclude
with a salutation addressed to this congregation of disciples,
dwelling together, and styled a "collegium." His epistle to the Church
at Antioch concludes thus, "I salute the sacred College of Presbyters"
(Saluto Sanctum Presbyterorum Collegium). The Epistle ad Philippenses,
"Saluto S. Episcopum et sacrum Presbyterorum Collegium"--so also the
epistles to the Philadelphians, the Church at Smyrna, to the
Ephesians, and to the Trallians.

But when St. Benedict was sent as a lad to Rome, the inclination
toward the severer form of ascetic life, that of anchorites and
hermits, had received an impulse by the works of the great fathers of
the church, already alluded to; and the pensive student, buried in
these more congenial studies, became imbued with their spirit, and was
soon fired with a romantic longing for a hermit life. At the tender
age of fifteen, unable to endure any longer the dissonance between his
desires and his surroundings, he flood from Rome, and took refuge in a
wild, cavernous spot in the neighboring country. As he left the city
he was followed by a faithful nurse, Cyrilla by name, who had brought
him up from childhood, had tended him in his sojourn at Rome, and now,
though lamenting his mental derangement, as she regarded it, resolved
not to leave her youthful charge to himself, but to watch over him and
wait upon him in his chosen seclusion. For some time this life went
on, St. Benedict becoming more and more attached to his hermitage, and
the nurse, despairing of any change, begged his food from day to day,
prepared it for him, and watched over him with a mother's tenderness.
A change then came over the young enthusiast, and he began to feel
uneasy under her loving care. It was not the true hermit life, not the
realization of that grand idea of solitude with which his soul was
filled; and under the impulse of this new emotion he secretly fled
from the protection of his foster-mother, and, without leaving behind
him the slightest clue to his pursuit, hid himself among the rocks of
Subiaco, or, as it was then called, Sublaqueum, about forty miles
distant from Rome. At this spot, which was a range of bleak, rocky
mountains with a river and lake below in the valley, he fell in with
one Romanus, a monk, who gave him a monastic dress, with a hair shirt,
led him to a part on the mountains where there was a deep, narrow
cavern, into which the sun never penetrated, and here the young
anchorite took up his abode, subsisting upon bread and water, or the
scanty provisions which Romanus could spare him from his own frugal
repasts; these provisions the monk used to let down to him by a rope,
ringing a bell first to call his attention. For three years he pursued
this life, unknown to his friends, and cut off from all communication
with the world; but neither the darkness of his cavern nor the
scantiness of his fare could preserve him from troubles. He was
assailed by many sore temptations.

One day that solitude was disturbed by the appearance of a man in the
{153} garb of a priest, who approached his cave and began to address
him; but Benedict would hold no conversation with the stranger until
they had prayed together, after which they discoursed for a long time
upon sacred subjects, when the priest told him of the cause of his
coming. The day happened to be Easter Sunday, and as the priest was
preparing his dinner, he heard a voice saying, "You are preparing a
banquet for yourself, whilst my servant Benedict is starving;" that he
thereupon set out upon his journey, found the anchorite's cave, and
then producing the dinner, begged St. Benedict to share it with him,
after which they parted. A number of shepherds, too, saw him near his
cave, and as he was dressed in goat-skins, took him at first for some
strange animal; but when they found he was a hermit, they paid their
respects to him humbly, brought him food, and implored his blessing in
return.

The fame of the recluse of Subiaco spread itself abroad from that time
through the neighboring country; many left the world and followed his
example; the peasantry brought their sick to him to be healed,
emulated each other in their contributions to his personal
necessities, and undertook long journeys simply to gaze upon his
countenance and receive his benediction. Not far from his cave were
gathered together in a sort of association a number of hermits, and
when the fame of this youthful saint reached them they sent a
deputation to ask him to come among them and take up his position as
their superior. It appears that this brotherhood had become rather lax
in discipline, and, knowing this, St. Benedict at first refused, but
subsequently, either from some presentiment of his future destiny, or
actuated simply by the hope of reforming them, he consented, left his
lonely cell, and took up his abode with them as their head.

In a very short time, however, the hermits began to tire of his
discipline and to envy him for his superior godliness. An event then
occurred which forms the second cognizance by which the figure of St.
Benedict may be recognized in the fine arts. Endeavors had been made
to induce him to relax his discipline, but to no purpose; therefore
they resolved upon getting rid of him, and on a certain day, when the
saint called out for some wine to refresh himself after a long
journey, one of the brethren offered him a poisoned goblet. St.
Benedict took the wine, and, as was his custom before eating or
drinking anything, blessed it, when the glass suddenly fell from his
hands and broke in pieces. This incident is immortalized in
stained-glass windows, in paintings, and frescoes, where the saint is
either made to carry a broken goblet, or it is to be seen lying at his
feet. Disgusted with their obstinacy he left them, voluntarily
returned to his cavern at Subiaco, and dwelt there alone. But the
fates conspired against his solitude, and a change came gradually over
the scene. Numbers were drawn toward the spot by the fame of his
sanctity, and by-and-bye huts sprang up around him; the desert was no
longer a desert, but a colony waiting only to be organized to form a
strong community. Yielding at length to repeated entreaties, he
divided this scattered settlement into twelve establishments, with
twelve monks and a superior in each, and the monasteries were soon
after recognized, talked about, and proved a sufficient attraction to
draw men from all quarters, even from the riotous gaieties of
declining Rome.

We will mention one or two incidents related of St. Benedict, which
claim attention, more especially as being the key to the artistic
mysteries of Benedictine pictures. It was one of the customs in this
early Benedictine community for the brethren not to leave the church
immediately after the divine office was concluded, but to remain for
some time in silent mental prayer. One of the brethren, however, took
no delight in this holy {154} exercise, and to the scandal of the
whole community used to walk coolly out of the church as soon as the
psalmody was over. The superior remonstrated, threatened, but to no
purpose; the unruly brother persisted in his conduct. St. Benedict was
appealed to, and when he heard the circumstances of the case, said he
would see the brother himself. Accordingly, he attended the church,
and at the conclusion of the divine office, not only saw the brother
walk out, but saw also what was invisible to every one else--a _black
boy_ leading him by the hand. The saint then struck at the phantom
with his staff, and from that time the monk was no longer troubled,
but remained after the service with the rest.

St. Gregory also relates an incident to the effect that one day as a
Gothic monk was engaged on the border of the lake cutting down
thistles, he let the iron part of his sickle, which was loose, fall
into the water. St. Maur, one of Benedict's disciples--of whom we
shall presently speak--happened to be standing by, and, taking the
wooden handle from the man, he held it to the water, when the iron
swam to it in miraculous obedience.

As we have said, the monasteries grew daily in number of members and
reputation; people came from far and near, some belonging to the
highest classes, and left their children at the monastery to be
trained up under St. Benedict's protection. Amongst this number, in
the year 522, came two wealthy Roman senators, Equitius and Tertullus,
bringing with them their sons, Maurus, then twelve years of age, and
Placidus, only five. They begged earnestly that St. Benedict would
take charge of them, which he did, treated them as if they had been
his own sons, and ultimately they became monks under his rule, lived
with him all his life, and after his death became the first
missionaries of his order in foreign countries, where Placidus won the
crown of martyrdom. Again, St. Benedict nearly fell a victim to
jealousy. A priest named Florentius, envying his fame, endeavored to
poison him with a loaf of bread, but failed. Benedict once more left
his charge in disgust; but Florentius, being killed by the sudden fall
of a gallery, Maurus sent a messenger after him to beg him to return,
which he did, and not only wept over the fate of his fallen enemy, but
imposed a severe penance upon Maurus for testifying joy at the
judgment which had befallen him. The incident of the poisoned loaf is
the third artistic badge by which St. Benedict is to be known in art,
being generally painted as a loaf with a serpent coiled round it.
These artistic attributes form a very important feature in monastic
painting, and in some instances become the only guide to the
recognition him the subject. St. Benedict is sometimes represented
with all these accompaniments--the broken goblet, the loaf with the
serpent, and in the background the figure rolling in the briers. St.
Bernard, who wrote much and powerfully against heresy, is represented
with the accompanying incident in the background of demons chained to
a rock, or being led away captive, to indicate his triumphs over
heretics for the faith. Demons placed at the feet indicate Satan and
the world overcome. Great preachers generally carry the crucifix, or,
if a renowned missionary, the standard and cross. Martyrs carry the
palm. A king who has resigned his dignity and entered a monastery has
a crown lying at his feet. A book held in the hand represents the
gospel, unless it be accompanied by pen and ink-horn, when it implies
that the subject was an author, as in the case of Anselm, who is
represented as holding in his hands his work on the incarnation, with
the title inscribed, "_Cur Deus Homo_," or it may relate to an
incident in the life, as the blood-stained book, which St. Boniface
holds, entitled "De Bono Mortis," a work he was devotedly fond of,
always {155} carried about with him, and which was found after his
murder in the folds of his dress stained with his blood. But the
highest honor was the stigmata or wounds of Christ impressed upon the
hands, feet, and side. This artistic pre-eminence is accorded to St.
Francis, the founder of the order which bears his name, and to St.
Catharine, of Siena. A whole world of history lies wrapped up in these
artistic symbols, as they appear in the marvellous paintings
illustrative of the hagiology of the monastic orders which are
cherished in half the picture galleries and sacred edifices of Europe,
and form as it were a living testimony and a splendid confirmation of
the written history and traditions of the church.

Although, at the period when we left St. Benedict reinstalled in his
office as superior, Christianity was rapidly being established in the
country, yet there were still lurking about in remote districts of
Italy the remains of her ancient paganism. Near the spot now called
Monte Cassino was a consecrated grove in which stood a temple
dedicated to Apollo. St. Benedict resolved upon clearing away this
relic of heathendom, and, fired with holy seal, went amongst the
people, preached the gospel of Christ to them, persuaded them at
length to break the statue of the god and pull down the altar; he then
burned the grove and built two chapels there--the one dedicated to St.
John the Baptist and the other to St. Martin. Higher up upon the
mountain he laid the foundation of his celebrated monastery, which
still bears his name, and here he not only gathered together a
powerful brotherhood, but elaborated that system which infused new
vigor into the monastic life, cleared it of its impurities,
established it upon a firm and healthy basis, and elevated it, as
regards his own order, into a mighty power, which was to exert an
influence over the destinies of humanity inferior only to that of
Christianity itself. St. Benedict, with the keen perception of genius,
saw in the monasticism of his time, crude as it was, the elements of a
great system. For five centuries it had existed and vainly endeavored
to develop itself into something like an institution, but the grand
idea had never yet been struck out--that idea which was to give it
permanence and strength. Hitherto the monk had retired from the world
to work out his own salvation, caring little about anything else,
subsisting on what the devotion of the wealthy offered him from
motives of charity; then, as time advanced, they acquired possessions
and wealth, which tended only to make them more idle and selfish. St.
Benedict detected in all this the signs of decay, and resolved on
revivifying its languishing existence by starting a new system, based
upon a rule of life more in accordance with the dictates of reason. He
was one of those who held as a belief that to live in this world a man
must do something--that life which consumes, but produces not, is a
morbid life, in fact, an impossible life, a life that must decay, and
therefore, imbued with the importance of this fact, he made labor,
continuous and daily labor, the great foundation of his rule. His vows
were like those of other institutions--poverty, chastity, and
obedience--but he added labor, and in that addition, as we shall
endeavor presently to show, lay the whole secret of the wondrous
success of the Benedictine Order. To every applicant for admission,
these conditions were read, and the following words added, which were
subsequently adopted as a formula: "This is the law under which thou
art to live and to strive for salvation; if thou canst observe it,
enter; if not, go in peace, thou art free." No sooner was his
monastery established than it was filled by men who, attracted by his
fame and the charm of the new mode of life, came and eagerly implored
permission to submit themselves to his rule. Maurus and Placidus, his
favorite disciples, still {156} remained with him, and the tenor of
his life flowed on evenly.

After Belisarius, the emperor's general, had been recalled, a number
of men totally incapacitated for their duties were sent in his place.
Totila, who had recently ascended the Gothic throne, at once invaded
and plundered Italy; and in the year 542, when on his triumphant
march, after defeating the Byzantine army, he was seized with a strong
desire to pay a visit to the renowned Abbot Benedict, who was known
amongst them as a great prophet. He therefore sent word to Monte
Cassino to announce his intended visit, to which St. Benedict replied
that he would be happy to receive him. On receiving the answer he
resolved to employ a stratagem to test the real prophetic powers of
the abbot, and accordingly, instead of going himself, he caused the
captain of the guard to dress himself in the imperial robes, and,
accompanied by three lords of the court and a numerous retinue, to
present himself to the abbot as the kingly visitor. However, as soon
as they entered into his presence, the abbot detected the fraud, and,
addressing the counterfeit king, bid him put off a dress which did not
belong to him. In the utmost alarm they all fled back to Totila and
related the result of their interview; the unbelieving Goth, now
thoroughly convinced, went in proper person to Monte Cassino, and, on
perceiving the abbot seated waiting to receive him, he was overcome
with terror, could go no further, and prostrated himself to the
ground.   [Footnote 32] St. Benedict bid him rise, but as he seemed
unable, assisted him himself. A long conversation ensued, during which
St. Benedict reproved him for his many acts of violence, and concluded
with this prophetic declaration: "You have done much evil, and
continue to do so; you will enter Rome; you will cross the sea; you
will reign nine years longer, but death will overtake you on the
tenth, when you will be arraigned before a just God to give an account
of your deeds." Totila trembled at this sentence, besought the prayers
of the abbot, and took his leave. The prediction was marvellously
fulfilled; in any case the interview wrought a change in the manner of
this Gothic warrior little short of miraculous, for from that time he
treated those whom he had conquered with gentleness. When he took
Rome, as St. Benedict had predicted he should, he forbade all carnage,
and insisted on protecting women from insult; stranger still, in the
year 552, only a little beyond the time allotted him by the
prediction, he fell in a battle which he fought against Narses, the
eunuch general of the Greco-Roman army. St. Benedict's sister,
Scholastica, who had become a nun, discovered the whereabouts of her
lost brother, came to Monte Cassino, took up her residence near him,
and founded a convent upon the principles of his rule. She was,
therefore, the first Benedictine nun, and is often represented in
paintings, prominent in that well-known group composed of herself, St.
Benedict, and the two disciples, Maurus and Placidus.

  [Footnote 32: "Quem cum a longe sedentem cerneret, non ausus
  accedero sese in terram dedit."--St. Greg. Dial., lib. ii., c. 14.]

It appears that her brother was in the habit of paying her a visit
every year, and upon one occasion stayed until late in the evening, so
late that Scholastica pressed him not to leave; but he persisting, she
offered a prayer that heaven might interpose and prevent his going,
when suddenly a tempest came on so fierce and furious that he was
compelled to remain until it was over, when he returned to his
monastery. Two days after this occurrence, as he was praying in his
cell, he beheld the soul of his beloved sister ascending to heaven in
the form of a dove, and the same day intelligence was brought him of
her death. This vision forms the subject of many of the pictures in
Benedictine nunneries. One short month after the decease of this
affectionate sister, St. {157} Benedict, through visiting and
attending to the sick and poor in his neighborhood, contracted a fever
which prostrated him; he immediately foretold his death, and ordered
the tomb in which his sister lay in the church to be opened. On the
sixth day of his illness he asked to be carried to it, where he
remained for some time in silent, prayerful contemplation; he then
begged to be removed to the steps of the high alter, where, having
received the holy viaticum, he suddenly stretched out his arms to
heaven and fell back dead. This event took place on Saturday, the 21st
March, 543, in the 63d year of his age. He was buried by the side of
his sister Scholastica, on the very spot, it is said, where he threw
down the altar of Apollo. In the seventh century, however, some of his
remains were dug up, brought to France, and placed in the Abbey of
Fleury, from which circumstance it took the name of St. Benoit, on the
Loire. After his death his disciples spread themselves abroad over the
continent and founded monasteries of his name and rule. Placidus
became a martyr, and was canonized; Maurus founded a monastery in
France, was also introduced to England, and from his canonized name,
St. Maurus, springs one of the oldest English names--St. Maur,
Seymaur, or Seymour.

Divesting this narrative of its legendary accompaniments, and judging
of St. Benedict, the man, by the subsequent success of his work, and
the influence of his genius upon the whole mechanism of European
monasticism, and even upon the destinies of a later civilization, we
are compelled to admit that he must have been a man whose intellect
and character were far in advance of his age. By instituting the vow
of labor, that peculiarity in his rule which we shall presently
examine more fully, he struck at the root of the evils attending the
monasticism of his times, an evil which would have ruined it as an
institution in the fifth century had he not interposed, and an evil
which in the sixteenth century alone caused its downfall in England.

Before proceeding to examine the rule upon which all the greatness of
the Benedictine order was based, it will be necessary to mention the
two, earliest mission efforts of the order. The first was conducted
under the immediate direction of St. Benedict himself, who in the year
534 sent Placidus, with two others, Gordian and Donatus, into Sicily,
to erect a monastery upon land which Tertullus, the father of
Placidus, had given to St. Benedict. Shortly after the death of the
saint, Innocent, bishop of Mans, in France, sent Flodegarde, his
archdeacon, and Hardegarde, his steward, to ask for the assistance of
some monks of St. Benedict's monastery, for the purpose of introducing
the order into France. St. Maurus was selected for the mission, and,
accompanied by Simplicius, Constantinian, Antony, and Faustus, he set
out from Monte Cassino, and arrived in France the latter end of the
year 543; but to their great consternation, upon reaching Orleans,
they were told that the Bishop of Mans was dead, and another hostile
to their intentions had succeeded him. They then bent their steps
toward Anjou, where they founded the monastery of Glanfeuil, from
whose cloisters issued the founders of nearly all the Benedictine
institutions in France. From these two centres radiated that mighty
influence which we shall now proceed to examine.

As we have in a former paper sketched the internal structure of the
monastery, we will before going further fill each compartment with its
proper officers, people the whole monastery with its subjects, and
then examine the law which kept them together.

The abbot was, of course, the head and ruler of the little kingdom,
and when that officer died the interval between his death and the
installation {158} of his successor was beautifully called the
"widowhood of the monastery." The appointment was considered to rest
with the king, though the Benedictine rule enjoined a previous
election by the monks and then the royal sanction. This election was
conducted in the chapter-house: the prior who acted as abbot daring
the time the mitre was vacant summoned the monks at a certain hour,
the license to elect was then read, the hymn of the Holy Ghost sung,
all who were present and had no vote were ordered to leave, the
license was repeated--three scrutators took the votes separately, and
the chanter declared the result--the monks then lifted up the elect on
their shoulders, and, chanting the _Te Deum_, carried him to the high
altar in the church, where he lay whilst certain prayers were said
over him; they then carried him to the vacant apartments of the late
abbot, which were thrown open, and where he remained in strict
seclusion until the formal and magnificent ceremony of installation
was gone through. In the meantime the aspect of the monastery was
changed, the signs of mourning were laid aside, the bells which had
been silent were once more heard, the poor were again admitted and
received relief, and preparations were at once commenced for the
installation. Outside also there was a commotion, for the peasantry,
and in fact all the neighborhood, joined in the rejoicings. The
immense resources of the refectory were taxed to their utmost, for the
installation of the lord abbot was a feast, and to it were invited all
the nobility and gentry in the neighborhood. On the day of the
ceremony the gate of the great church was thrown open to admit all who
were to witness the solemn ceremony, and, as soon as the bells had
ceased, the procession began to move from the cloisters, headed by the
prior, who was immediately followed by the priest of the divine
office, clad in their gorgeous ceremonial robes; then followed the
monks, in scapulary and cowled tunic, and last of all the lay brethren
and servants; the newly elect and two others who were to officiate in
his installation remained behind, as they were not to appear until
later. The prior then proceeded to say mass, and just before the
gospel was read there was a pause, during which the organ broke out
into strains of triumphant music, and the newly chosen abbot with his
companions were seen to enter the church, and walk slowly up the aisle
toward the altar. As they approached they were met by the prior (or
the bishop, if the abbey were in the jurisdiction of one), who then
read the solemn profession, to which the future abbot responded; the
prior and the elect then prostrated themselves before the high altar,
in which position they remained whilst litanies and prayers were
chanted; after the litany the prior arose, stood on the highest step
of the altar, and whilst all were kneeling in silence pronounced the
words of the benediction; then all arose, and the abbot received from
the hands of the prior the rule of the order and the pastoral staff, a
hymn was sung, and, after the gospel, the abbot communicated, and
retired with his two attendants, to appear again in the formal
ceremony of introduction. During his absence the procession was
re-formed by the chanter, and, at a given signal, proceeded down the
choir to meet the new abbot, who reappeared at the opposite end
bare-footed, in token of humility, and clad no longer in the simple
habit of a monk, but with the abbot's rich dalmatic, the ring on his
finger, and a glittering mitre of silver, ornamented with gold, on his
brow. As soon as he had entered he knelt for a few moments in prayer
upon a carpet, spread on the upper step of the choir; when he arose he
was formally introduced as the lord high abbot, led to his stall, and
seated there with the pastoral staff in his hand. The monks then
advanced, according to {159} seniority, and, kneeling before him, gave
him the kiss of peace, first upon the hand, and afterward, when
rising, upon the month. When this ceremony was over, amid the strains
of the organ and the uplifted voices of the choir, the newly
proclaimed arose, marched through the choir in full robes, and,
carrying the pastoral staff, entered the vestiary, and then proceeded
to divest himself of the emblems of his office. The service was
concluded, the abbot returned to his apartments, the monks to the
cloisters, the guests to prepare for the feast, and the widowhood of
the abbey was over. The sway of the abbot was unlimited--they were all
sworn to obey him implicitly, and he had it in his power to punish
delinquents with penances, excommunication, imprisonment, and in
extreme cases with corporal punishment--he ranked as a peer, was
styled "My Lord Abbot," and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
kept an equal state and lived as well as the king on the throne: some
of them had the power of conferring the honor of knighthood, and the
monarch himself could not enter the monastery without permission. The
next man in office to the abbot was the prior,  [Footnote 33] who, in
the absence of his superior, was invested with full powers; but on
other occasions his jurisdiction was limited--in some monasteries he
was assisted by sub-priors, in proportion to the size of the
institution and number of its inmates.

  [Footnote 33: Heads of priories were priors also, but they were
  equally subject to their respective abbeys.]

After the prior in rank came the precentor or chanter, an office only
given to a monk who had been brought up in the monastery from a child.
He had the supervision of the choral service, the writing out the
tables of divine service for the monks, the correction of mistakes in
chanting, which he led off from his place in the centre of the choir;
he distributed the robes at festivals, and arranged processions. The
cellarer was intrusted with the food, drink, etc., of the monastery,
also with the mazers or drinking cups of the monks, and all other
vessels used in the cellar, kitchen, and refectory; he had to attend
at the refectory table, and collect the spoons after dinner. The
treasurer had charge of the documents, deeds, and moneys belonging to
the monastery; he received the rents, paid all the wages and expenses,
and kept the accounts. The sacristan's duties were connected with the
church; he had to attend to the altar, to carry a lantern before the
priest, as he went from the altar to the lecturn, to cause the bell to
be rung; he took charge of all the sacred vessels in use, prepared the
host, the wine, and the altar bread. The almoner's duty was to provide
the monks with mats or hassocks for their feet in the church, also
matting in the chapter-house, cloisters, and dormitory stairs; he was
to attend to the poor, and distribute alms amongst them, and in the
winter warm clothes and shoes. After the monks had retired from the
refectory, it was his duty to go round and collect any drink left in
the mazers to be given away to the poor. The kitchener was filled by a
different monk every week in turn, and he had to arrange what food was
to be cooked, go round to the infirmary, visit the sick and provide
for them, and superintend the labors of his assistants. The infirmarer
had care of the sick; it was his office to administer to their wants,
to give them their meals, to sprinkle holy water on their beds every
night after the service of complin. A person was generally appointed
to this duty who, in case of emergency, was competent to receive the
confession of a sick man. The porter was generally a grave monk of
mature age; he had an assistant to keep the gate when he delivered
messages, or was compelled to leave his post. The chamberlain's
business was to look after the beds, bedding, and shaving room, to
attend to the dormitory windows, and to have the chambers swept, and
the straw of the beds changed once every year, and under his {160}
supervision was the tailory, where clothes, etc., were made and
repaired. There were other offices connected with the monastery, but
these were the principal, and next to these came the monks who formed
the convent with the lay brethren and novices. If a child were
dedicated to God by being sent to a monastery, his parents were
required to swear that he would receive no portion of fortune,
directly or indirectly; if a mature man presented himself, he was
required to abandon all his possessions, either to his family or to
the monastery itself, and then to enter as a novitiate. In order to
make this as trying as possible, the Benedictine rule enjoined that no
attention should be at first paid to an applicant, that the door
should not be even opened to him for four or five days, to test his
perseverance. If he continued to knock, then he was to be admitted to
the guests' house, and after more delay to the novitiate, where he was
submitted to instruction and examination. Two months were allowed for
this test, and if satisfactory, the applicant had the rule read to
him, which reading was concluded with the words used by St. Benedict
himself, and already quoted: "This is the law under which thou art to
live, and to strive for salvation. If thou canst observe it, enter; if
not, go in peace, thou art free." The novitiate lasted one year, and
during this time the rule was read and the question put thrice. If at
the end of that time the novice remained firm, he was introduced to
the community in the church, made a declaration of his vows in
writing, placed it on the altar, threw himself at the feet of the
brethren, and from that moment was a monk. The rule which swayed this
mass of life, wherever it existed, in a Benedictine monastery, and
indirectly the monasteries of other orders, which are only
modifications of the Benedictine system, was sketched out by that
solitary hermit of Subiaco. It consists of seventy-three chapters,
which contain a code of laws regulating the duties between the abbot
and his monks, the mode conducting the divine services, the
administration of penalties and discipline, the duties of monks to
each other, and the internal economy of the monastery, the duties of
the institution toward the world outside, the distribution of charity,
the kindly reception of strangers, the laws to regulate the actions of
those who were compelled to be absent or to travel; in fine,
everything which could pertain to the administration of an institution
composed of an infinite variety of characters subjected to one
absolute ruler. It has elicited the admiration of the learned and good
of all subsequent ages. It begins with the simple sentence: "Listen, O
son, to the precepts of the master! Do not fear to receive the counsel
of a good father, and to fulfil it fully, that thy laborious obedience
may lead thee back to him from whom disobedience and weakness have
alienated thee. To thee, whoever thou art, who renouncest thine own
will to fight under the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and takest
in hand the valiant and glorious weapons of obedience, are my words at
this moment addressed." The first words, "Ausculta, O fili!" are often
to be seen inscribed on a book placed in the hands of St. Benedict, in
paintings and stained glass. The preamble contains the injunction of
the two leading principles of the rule; all the rest is detail,
marvellously thorough and comprehensive. These two grand principles
were obedience and labor--the former became absorbed in the latter,
for he speaks of that also as a species of labor--"Obedientiae
laborem;" but the latter was the genius, the master-spirit of the
whole code. There was to be labor, not only of contemplation, in the
shape of prayer, worship, and self-discipline, to nurture the soul,
but labor of action, vigorous, healthy, bodily labor, with the pen in
the scriptorium, with the spade in the fields, with the hatchet in the
forest, or with the trowel on the walls. Labor of some sort there must
be daily, but no idleness: that was branded as "the {161} enemy of the
soul"--"Otiositas inimica est animiae." It was enjoined with all the
earnestness of one thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the great
Master, who said, "Work whilst it is yet day, for the night cometh,
when no man shall work;" who would not allow the man he had restored
to come and remain with him--that is, to lead the life of religious
contemplation, but told him to "go home to thy friends, and tell them
how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion
on thee!" That is the life of religious activity. The error of the
early monasticism was the making it solely a life of contemplation.
Religious contemplation and religious activity must go together. In
the contemplation the Christian acquires strength, in the activity he
uses that strength for others; in the activity he is made to feel his
weakness and driven to seek for aid in contemplation and prayer.

But, beside being based upon divine authority and example, this
injunction of labor was formed upon a clear insight into and full
appreciation of one of the most subtle elements of our constitution.
It is this, that without labor no man can live; exist he may, but not
live. This is one of the great mysteries of life--its greatest
mystery; and its most emphatic lesson, which, if men would only learn,
it would be one great step toward happiness, or at least toward that
highest measure of happiness attainable below. If we can only realize
this fact in the profundity of its truth, we shall have at once the
key to half the miseries and anomalies which beset humanity. Passed
upon man, in the first instance, by the Almighty as a curse, yet it
carried in it the germ of a blessing; pronounced upon him as a
sentence of punishment, yet there lurked in the chastisement the
Father's love. Turn where we may, to the pages of bygone history or to
the unwritten page of everyday life, from the gilded saloons of the
noble to the hut of the peasant, we shall find this mysterious law
working out its results with the unerring precision of a fundamental
principle of nature. Where men obey that injunction of labor, no
matter what their station, there is in the act the element of
happiness, and wherever men avoid that injunction there is always the
shadow of the unfulfilled curse darkening their path. This is the
great clue to the balance of compensation between the rich and the
poor. The rich man has no urgent need to labor; his wealth provides
him with the means of escape from the injunction, and there is to be
found in that man's life, unless he, in some way, with his head or
with his hands, works out his measure of the universal task, a
dissonance and a discord, a something which, in spite of all his
wealth and all his luxury, corrupts and poisons his whole existence.
It is a truth which cannot be ignored--no man who has studied life
closely has failed to notice it, and no merely rich man lives who has
not felt it and would not confess to its truth, if the question were
pressed upon him. But in the case of the man who works, there is in
his daily life the element of happiness, cares flee before him, and
all the little caprices and longings of the imagination--those
gad-flies which torment the idle--are to him unknown. He fulfils the
measure of life; and whatever his condition, even if destitute in
worldly wealth, we may be assured that the poor man has great
compensations, and if he sat down with the rich man to count up
grievances would check off a less number than his wealthier brother.
Whatever his position, man should labor diligently; if poor he should
labor and he may become rich, and if rich he should labor still, that
all the evils attendant upon riches may disappear. Pure health steals
over the body, the mind becomes dear, and the little miseries of life,
the petty grievances, the fantastic wants, the morbid jealousies, the
wasting weariness, and the terrible sense of vacuity which haunt {162}
the life of one-half of the rich in the world, all flee before the
talisman of active labor; nor should we be discouraged by failure, for
it is better to fail in action than to do nothing. After all, what is
commonly called failure we shall find to be not altogether such if we
examine more closely. We set out upon some action or engagement, and
after infinite toil we miss the object of that action or engagement,
and they say we have failed; but there is consolation in this
incontrovertible fact, that although we may have missed the particular
object toward which our efforts have been directed, yet we have not
altogether failed. There are many collateral advantages attendant upon
exertion which may even be of greater importance than the attainment
of the immediate object of that exertion, so that it is quite possible
to fail wholly in achieving a certain object and yet make a glorious
success. Half the achievements of life are built up on failures, and
the greater the achievement, the greater evidence it is of persistent
combat with failure. The student devotes his days and nights to some
intellectual investigation, and though he may utterly fail in
attaining to the actual object of that search, yet he may be drawn
into some narrow diverging path in the wilderness of thought which may
lead him gradually away from his beaten track on to the broad open
light of discovery. The navigator goes out on the broad ocean in
search of unknown tracts of land, and though he may return, after long
and fruitless wanderings, yet in the voyages he has made he has
acquired experience, and may, perchance, have learned some fact or
thing which will prove the means of saving him in the hour of danger.
Those great luminaries of the intellectual firmament--men who devoted
their whole lives to investigate, search, study, and think for the
elevation and good of their fellows--have only succeeded after a long
discipline of failure, but by that discipline their powers have been
developed, their capacity of thought expanded, and the experience
gradually acquired which at length brought success. There is, then, no
total failure to honest exertion, for he who diligently labors must in
some way reap. It is a lesson often reiterated in apostolic teaching
that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth;" and the truth of that
lesson may be more fully appreciated by a closer contemplation of
life, more especially this phenomenon of life in which we see the
Father's love following close upon the heels of his chastisement. The
man who works lives, but he who works not lives but a dying and a
hopeless life.

That vow of labor infused new vitality into the monks, and instead of
living as they had hitherto done upon the charity of the public, they
soon began not only to support themselves, but to take the poor of
their neighborhood under their own especial protection. Whenever the
Benedictines resolved on building a monastery, they chose the most
barren, deserted spot they could find, often a piece of land long
regarded as useless, and therefore frequently given without a price,
then they set to work, cleared a space for their buildings, laid their
foundations deep in the earth, and by gradual but unceasing toil,
often with their own hands, alternating their labor with their
prayers, they reared up those stately abbeys which still defy the
ravages of age. In process of time the desert spot upon which they had
settled underwent a complete transformation--a little world populous
with busy life sprang up in its midst, and far and near in its
vicinity the briers were cleared away--the hard soil broken
up--gardens and fields laid out, and soon the land, cast aside by its
owners as useless, bore upon its fertile bosom flowers, fruit, corn,
in all the rich exuberance of heaven's blessing upon man's
toil--plenty and peace smiled upon the whole scene--its halls were
vocal with the voice of praise and the incense of charity arose {163}
to heaven from its altars. They came upon the scene poor and
friendless--they made themselves rich enough to become the guardians
of the poor and friendless; and the whole secret of their success, the
magic by which they worked these miracles, was none other than that
golden rule of labor instituted by the penetrating intellect of their
great founder; simple and only secret of all success in this world,
now and ever--work--absolute necessity to real life, and, united with
faith, one of the elements of salvation.

Before we advance to the consideration of the achievements of the
Benedictine order, we wish to call attention to a circumstance which
has seldom, if ever, been dwelt upon by historians, and which will
assist us in estimating the influence of monachism upon the embryo
civilization of Europe.

It is a remarkable fact that two great and renowned phases of life
existed in the world parallel to each other, and went out by natural
decay just at the same period: chivalry and monasticism. The latter
was of elder birth, but as in the reign of Henry VIII. England saw the
last of monasticism, so amid some laughter, mingled with a little
forced seriousness, did she see the man who was overturning that old
system vainly endeavoring to revive the worn-out paraphernalia of
chivalry. The jousts and tournaments of Henry's time were the sudden
flashing up of that once brilliant life, before its utter extinction.
Both had been great things in the world--both had done great things,
and both have left traces of their influence upon modern society and
modern refinement which have not yet been obliterated, and perhaps
never will be. It may then be interesting and instructive if we were
to endeavor to compare the value of each by the work it did in the
world. The origin of monasticism we have already traced; that of
chivalry requires a few comments. Those who go to novels and romances
for their history, have a notion that chivalry existed only in the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the periods chosen
for the incidents of those very highly colored romances which belong
to that order of writing. There is also a notion that it sprang out of
the Crusades, which, instead of being its origin, were rather the
result of the system itself. The real origin of chivalry may be fairly
traced to that period when the great empire of the West was broken up
and subdivided by the barbarians of the North. Upon the ruins of that
empire chivalry arose naturally. The feudal system was introduced,
each petty state had a certain number of vassals, commanded by
different chiefs, on whose estates they lived, and to whom they swore
fealty in return for their subsistence; these again looked up to the
king as head.

By-and-bye, as the new form of life fell into working order, it became
evident that these chiefs, with their vassals, were a power in
themselves, and by combination might interfere with, if not overthrow,
the authority of the king himself. Their continued quarrels amongst
themselves were the only protection the king had against them, but
gradually that ceased, and a time came when there was no occupation
for the superfluous valor of the country; retainers lay about
castleyards in all the mischief of idleness, drunken and clamorous;
the kings not yet firmly seated on their thrones looked about for some
current into which they might divert this dangerous spirit. The
condition of things in the states themselves was bad enough; the laws
were feebly administered; it was vain for injured innocence to appeal
against the violence of power; the sword was the only lawgiver, and
strength the only opinion. Women were violated with impunity, houses
burned, herds stolen, and even blood shed without any possibility of
redress for the injured. This state of things was the foundation of
chivalry. {164} Instinctively led, or insidiously directed to it,
strong men began to take upon themselves the honor of redressing
grievances, the injured woman found an armed liberator springing up in
her defence, captives were rescued by superior force, injuries
avenged, and the whole system--by the encouragement of the petty kings
who saw in this rising feeling a vent for the idle valor they so much
dreaded--soon consolidated itself, was embellished and made attractive
by the charm of gallantry, and the rewards accorded to the successful
by the fair ladies who graced the courts. Things went on well, and
that dangerous spirit which threatened to overturn royalty now became
its greatest ornament. In process of time it again outgrew its work,
and with all the advantages of organization and flatteries of success,
it once more became the tenor of the crowned heads of Europe. At this
crisis, however, an event occurred which, in all probability, though
it drained Europe of half her manhood, saved her from centuries of
bloodshed and anarchy; that event was the banishment of the Christians
and the taking of Jerusalem by the Saracens. Here was a grand field
for the display of chivalry. Priestly influence was brought to bear
upon the impetuous spirits of these chevaliers, religious fervor was
aroused, and the element of religious enthusiasm infused into the
whole organization; fair ladies bound the cross upon the breasts of
their champions, and bid them go and fight under the banners of the
Mother of God. The whole continent fired up under the preaching of
Peter the Hermit; all the rampant floating chivalry of Europe was
aroused, flocked to the standards of the church, and banded themselves
together in favor of this Holy War; whilst the Goth, the Vandal, and
the Lombard, sitting on their tottering thrones, encouraged by every
means in their power this diversion of the prowess they had so much
dreaded, and began to see in the troubles of Eastern Christianity a
fitting point upon which to concentrate the fighting material of
Europe out of their way until their own position was more thoroughly
consolidated. The Crusades, however, came to an end in time, and
Europe was once more deluged with bands of warriors who came trooping
home from Eastern climes changed with new ideas, new traditions, and
filled with martial ardor. But now the Goth, the Vandal, and the
Lombard had made their position secure, and the knights and chieftains
fell back naturally upon their old pursuit of chivalry, took up arms
once more in defence of the weak and injured against the strong and
oppressive. That valor which had fought foot to foot with the swarthy
Saracen, had braved the pestilence of Eastern climes and the horrors
of Eastern dungeons, soon enlisted itself in the more peaceable lists
of the joust and tournament, and went forth under the inspiration of a
mistress's love-knot to do that work which we material moderns consign
to the office of a magistrate and the arena of a quarter sessions.

It was in this later age of chivalry, when the religious element had
blended with it, and it was dignified with the traditions of religious
championship, that the deeds were supposed to be done which form the
subject of those wonderful romances;--that was more properly the
perfection of the institution; its origin lay, as we have seen, much
further back.

As regards the difference between the work and influence of chivalry
and monasticism, it is the same which always must exist between the
physical and the moral--the one was a material and the other was a
spiritual force. The orders of chivalry included all the physical
strength of the country, its active material; but the monastery
included all its spiritual power and thinking material. Chivalry was
the instrument by which mighty deeds were done, but the intellect
which guided, directed, and in {165} fact used that instrument was
developed and matured in the seclusion of the cloister. By the
adoption of a stringent code of honor as regards the plighted word,
and a gallant consideration toward the vanquished and weak, chivalry
did much toward the refinement of social intercommunication and
assuaging the atrocities of warfare. By the adoption, also, of a
gentle bearing and respectful demeanor toward the opposite sex, it
elevated woman from the obscurity in which she lay, and placed her in
a position where she could exercise her softening influence upon the
rude customs of a half-formed society; but we must not forget that the
gallantry of chivalry was, after all, but a glossing over with the
splendors of heroism the excrescences of a gross licentiousness--a
licentiousness which mounted to its crisis in the polished gallantry
of the court of Louis XIV. Monasticism did more for woman than
chivalry. It was all very well for _preux chevaliers_ to go out and
fight for the honor of a woman's name whom they had never seen; but we
find that when they were brought into contact with woman they behaved
with like ruthless violence to her whatever her station may have
been--no matter whether she was the pretty daughter of the herdsman,
or the wife of some neighboring baron, she was seized by violence,
carried off to some remote fortress, violated and abandoned.
Monasticism did something better, it provided her when she was no
longer safe, either in the house of her father or her husband, with an
impregnable shelter against the licentious pursuit of these _preux
chevaliers_; it gave her a position in the church equal to their own;
she might become the prioress or the lady abbess of her convent; she
was no longer the sport and victim of chivalrous licentiousness, but a
pure and spotless handmaiden of the Most High--a fellow-servant in the
church, where she was honored with equal position and rewarded with
equal dignities--a far better thing this than chivalry, which broke
skulls in honor of her name, whilst it openly violated the sanctity of
her person. It may be summed up in a sentence. Monasticism worked long
and silently at the foundation and superstructure of society, whilst
chivalry labored at its decoration.

When we mention the fact that the history of the mere literary
achievements of the Benedictine order fills four large quarto volumes,
printed in double columns, it will be readily understood how
impossible it is to give anything like an idea of its general work in
the world in the space of a short summary. That book, written by
Zeigelbauer, and called "Historia Rei Literariae Ordinis Sancti
Benedicti," contains a short biography of every monk belonging to that
order who had distinguished himself in the realms of literature,
science, and art. Then comes Don Johannes Mabillon with his ponderous
work, "Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti." These two authorities
gave a minute history of that marvellous institution, of whose glories
we can only offer a faint outline.

The Benedictines, after the death of their founder, steadily
prospered, and as they prospered, sent out missionaries to preach the
truth amongst the nations then plunged in the depths of paganism. It
has been estimated that they were the means of converting upwards of
thirty countries and provinces to the Christian faith. They were the
first to overturn the altars of the heathen deities in the north of
Europe; they carried the cross into Gaul, into Saxony and Belgium;
they placed that cross between the abject misery of serfdom and the
cruelty of feudal violation; between the beasts of burden and the
beasts of prey--they proclaimed the common kinship of humanity in
Christ the Elder Brother.

Strange to say, some of its most distinguished missionaries were
natives of our own country. It was a {166} Scottish monk, St. Ribanus,
who first preached the gospel in Franconia--it was an English monk,
St. Wilfred, who did the same in Friesland and Holland in the year
683, but with little success--it was an Englishman, St. Swibert, who
carried the cross to Saxony, and it was from the lips of another
Englishman, St. Ulfred, that Sweden first heard the gospel--it was an
Englishman and a Devonshire man, St. Boniface, who laid aside his
mitre, put on his monk's dress, converted Germany to the truth, and
then fell a victim to the fury of the heathen Frieslanders, who
slaughtered him in cold blood. Four Benedictine monks carried the
light of truth into Denmark, Sweden, and Gothland, sent there in the
ninth century by the Emperor Ludovicus Pius. Gascony, Hungary,
Lithuania, Russia, Pomerania, are all emblazoned on their banners as
victories won by them in the fight of faith; and it was to the
devotion of five martyr monks, who fell in the work, that Poland
traces the foundation of her church.

It is a remarkable fact in the history of Christianity, that in its
earliest stage--the first phase of its existence--its tendency was to
elevate peasants to the dignity of apostles, but in its second stage
it reversed its operations and brought kings from their thrones to the
seclusion of the cloister--humbled the great ones of the earth to the
dust of penitential humility. Up to the fourth century Christianity
was a terrible struggle against principalities and powers: then a time
came when principalities and powers humbled themselves at the foot of
that cross whose followers they had so cruelly persecuted. The
innumerable martyrdoms of the first four centuries of its career were
followed by a long succession of' royal humiliations, for, during the
sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, in addition to what took
place as regards other orders, no less than ten emperors and twenty
kings resigned their crowns and became monks of the Benedictine order
alone. Amongst this band of great ones the most conspicuous are the
Emperors Anastasius, Theodosius, Michael, Theophilus, and Ludovicus
Pius. Amongst the kings are Sigismund of Burgundy, Cassimir of Poland,
Bamba of Spain, Childeric and Theodoric of France, Sigisbert of
Northumberland, Ina of the West Saxons, Veremunde of Castille, Pepin
of Italy, and Pipin of Acquitaine. Adding to these their subsequent
acquisitions, the Benedictines claim up to the 14th. century the honor
of enrolling amongst their number twenty emperors and forty-seven
kings: twenty sons of emperors and forty-eight sons of kings--amongst
whom were Drogus, Pipin, and Hugh, sons of Charlemagne; Lothair and
Carlomen, sons of Charles; and Fredericq, son of Louis III. of France.
As nuns of their order they have had no less than ten empresses and
fifty queens, including the Empresses Zoa Euphrosyne, St. Cunegunda,
Agnes, Augusta, and Constantina; the Queens Batilda of France, Elfreda
of Northumberland, Sexburga of Kent, Ethelberga of the West Saxons,
Ethelreda of Mercia, Ferasia of Toledo, Maud of England. In the year
1290 the Empress Elizabeth took the veil with her daughters Agnes,
queen of Hungary, and the Countess Cueba; also Anne, queen of Poland,
and Cecily, her daughter. In the wake of these crowned heads follow
more than one hundred princesses, daughters of kings and emperors.
Five Benedictine nuns have attained literary distinction--Rosinda, St.
Elizabeth, St. Hildegardis, whose works were approved of by the
Council of Treves, St. Hiltrudis, and St. Metilda.

For the space of 239 years 1 month and 26 days the Benedictines
governed the church in the shape of 48 popes chosen from their order,
most prominent among whom was Gregory the Great, through whose means
the rule was introduced into England. Four of these pontiffs came from
the original {167} monastery of Monte Cassino, and three of them
quitted the throne and resumed the monastic life--Constantine II.,
Christopher I., and Gregory XII. Two hundred cardinals had been monks
in their cloisters--they produced 7,000 archbishops, 15,000 bishops,
fifteen of whom took off their mitres, resumed their monks' frock, and
died in seclusion; 15,000 abbots; 4,000 saints. They established in
different countries altogether 87,000 monasteries, which sent out into
the world upwards of 15,700 monks, all of whom attained distinction as
authors of books or scientific inventors. Rabanus established the
first school in Germany. Alcuin founded the University of Paris, where
30,000 students were educated at one time, and whence issued, to the
honor of England, St. Thomas à Becket, Robert of Melun, Robert White,
made cardinal by Celestine II., Nicholas Broakspear, the only
Englishman ever made Pope, who filled the chair under the title of
Adrian IV., and John of Salisbury, whose writings give us the best
description of the learning both of the university and the times.
Theodore and Adrian, two Benedictine monks, revived the University of
Oxford, which Bede, another of the order, considerably advanced. It
was in the obscurity of a Benedictine monastery that the musical scale
or gamut--the very alphabet of the greatest refinement of modern
life--was invented, and Guido d'Arezzo, who wrested this secret from
the realms of sound, was the first to found a school of music.
Sylvester invented the organ, and Dionysius Exiguus perfected the
ecclesiastical computation.

England in the early periods of her history contributed upwards of a
hundred sons to this band of immortals, the most distinguished of whom
we will just enumerate--St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, whose
life Bede has written, and whose "Ordinationes" and "De Vita
Monastica" have reached to our times. St. Benedict Biscop, the founder
of the monasteries of St. Peter and St. Paul, at Wearmouth and Jarrow,
a nobleman by birth, and a man of extraordinary learning and ability,
to whom England owes the training of the father of her ecclesiastical
history, the Venerable Bede. St. Aldhelm, nephew of King Ina, St.
Wilfrid, St Brithwald, a monk of Glastonbury, elevated to the dignity
of Archbishop of Canterbury, which he held over thirty-seven years.
His works which have come down to us are a "Life of St. Egwin, bishop
of Worcester," and the "Origin of the Monastery of Evesham." Tatwin,
who succeeded him in the archbishopric. Bede the Venerable, who was
skilled in all the learning of the times, and; in addition to Latin
and Greek, was versed in Hebrew; he wrote an immense number of works,
many of which are lost, but the best known are the greater portion of
the "Saxon Chronicle," which was continued after his death as a
national record; and his "Ecclesiastical History," which gives to
England a more compendious and valuable account of her early church
than has fallen to the lot of any other nation. He was also one of the
earliest translators of the Scriptures, and oven on his death-bed
dictated to a scribe almost up to the final moment; when the last
struggle came upon him he had reached as far as the words, "But what
are they among so many," in the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel,
and the ninth verse. St. Boniface, already alluded to as the apostle
of Germany, was a native of Devonshire. He was made Archbishop of
Mentz, but being possessed with an earnest longing to convert the
heathen Frieslanders, he retired from his archbishopric, and putting
on his monk's dress took with him no other treasure than a book he was
very fond of reading, called "De Bono Mortis," went amongst these
people, who cruelly beat him to death in the year 755; and the book
stained with his blood {168} was cherished as a sacred relic long
after. Alcuin, whom we have already mentioned as the founder of the
University of Paris, was a Yorkshireman, and was educated under Bede.
He lived to become the friend of Charlemagne, and next to his
venerable master was the greatest scholar and divine in Europe; he
died about the year 790. John Asser, a native of Pembrokeshire, is
another of these worthies. It is supposed that Alfred endowed Oxford
with professors, and settled stipends upon them, under his influence,
he being invited to the court of that monarch for his great learning.
He wrote a "Commentary" upon Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae,
the "Life of King Alfred," and the "Annals of Great Britain." St.
Dunstan, a monk of Glastonbury, the best known of all these great
Englishmen, died Archbishop of Canterbury; but as we shall have much
to say of him hereafter we pass on to St. Ethelwold, his pupil, also a
monk at Glastonbury, distinguished for his learning and piety, for
which he was made abbot of the Monastery of Abingdon, where he died in
the year 984. Ingulphus, a native of London, was made Abbot of
Croyland, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1075. A history of the abbey
over which he presided has been attributed to him, but its
authenticity has been gravely disputed. Alfric, a noted grammarian.
Florence, of Worcester, was another great annalist, who in his
"Chronicon ex Chronici" brings the history down to the year 1119, that
in which he died; his book is chiefly valuable as a key to the "Saxon
Chronicle." William, the renowned monk of Malmesbury, the most elegant
of all the monastic Latinists, was born about the time of the Norman
Conquest. His history consists of two parts, the "Gesta Regum
Anglorum," in five books, including the period between the arrival of
the Saxons and the year 1120. The "Historia Novella," in three books,
brings it down to the year 1142. He ranks next to Bede as an historic
writer, most of the others being mere compilers and selectors from
extant chronicles. He also wrote a work on the history of the English
bishops, called "De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum," in which he speaks
out fearlessly and without sparing: also a treatise on the antiquity
of Glastonbury Abbey, "De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae;" his
style is most interesting, and he is supposed to have written
impartially, separating the improbable from the real, and gives us
what can readily be appreciated as a fair and real picture of the
state of things, more especially of the influence and policy of the
Norman court, and the opening of the struggle between the two races.
Eadmer was another contemporaneous celebrity with William of
Malmesbury; he was the author of a history of his own times, called
"Historia Novorum sive Sui Secula," which is spoken of very highly by
William of Malmesbury; it contains the reigns of William the Conqueror
and Rufus, and a portion of that of Henry I., embracing a period
extending from 1066 to 1122. Matthew Paris, another historian who
lived about the year 1259, closes our selection from the long list of
British worthies who were members of the Benedictine order.

When we reflect that all the other monastic systems, not only of the
past, but even of the present day, are but modifications of this same
rule, and that it emanated from the brain, and is the embodiment of
the genius of the solitary hermit of Monte Cassino, we are lost in
astonishment at the magnitude of the results which have sprung from so
simple an origin. That St. Benedict had any presentiment of the future
glory of his order, there is no sign in his rule or his life. He was a
great and good man, and he produced that comprehensive rule simply for
the guidance of his own immediate followers, without a thought beyond.
But it was blessed, {169} and grew and prospered mightily in the
world. He has been called the Moses of a favored people; and the
comparison is not inapt, for he lead his order on up to the very
borders of the promised country, and after his death, which, like that
of Moses, took place within sight of their goal, they fought their way
through the hostile wilds of barbarism, until those men who had
conquered the ancient civilizations of Europe lay at their feet, bound
in the fetters of spiritual subjection to the cross of Christ. The
wild races of Scandinavia came pouring down upon southern Europe in
one vast march of extermination, slaying and destroying as they
advanced, sending before them the terror of that doom which might be
seen in the desolation which lay behind them; but they fell,
vanquished by the power of the army of God, who sallied forth in turn
to reconquer the world, and fighting not with the weapons of fire and
sword, but, like Christian soldiers, girt about with truth, and having
on the breastplate of righteousness, they subdued these wild races,
who had crushed the conquerors of the earth, and rested not until they
had stormed the stronghold, and planted the cross triumphantly upon
the citadel of an ancient paganism. Time rolled on, and the gloom of a
long age of darkness fell upon a world whose glory lay buried under
Roman ruins. Science had gone, literature had vanished, art had flown,
and men groped about in vain in that dense darkness for one ray of
hope to cheer them in their sorrow. The castle of the powerful baron
rose gloomily above them, and with spacious moat, dense walls, and
battlemented towers, frowned ominously upon the world which lay abject
at its feet. In slavery men were born, and in slavery they lived. They
pandered to the licentiousness and violence of him who held their
lives in his hands, and fed them only to fight and fail at his
bidding. But far away from the castle there arose another building,
massive, solid, and strong, not frowning with battlemented towers, nor
isolated by broad moats; but with open gates, and a hearty welcome to
all comers, stood the monastery, where lay the hope of humanity, as in
a safe asylum. Behind its walls was the church, and clustered around
it the dwelling-places of those who had left the world, and devoted
their lives to the service of that church, and the salvation of their
souls. Far and near in its vicinity the land bore witness to assiduous
culture and diligent care, bearing on its fertile bosom the harvest
hope of those who had labored, which the heavens watered, the sun
smiled upon, and the winds played over, until the heart of man
rejoiced, and all nature was big with the promise of increase. This
was the refuge to which religion and art had fled. In the quiet
seclusion of its cloisters science labored at its problems and
perpetuated its results, uncheered by applause and stimulated only by
the pure love of the pursuit. Art toiled in the church, and whole
generations of busy fingers worked patiently at the decoration of the
temple of the Most High. The pale, thoughtful monk, upon whose brow
genius had set her mark, wandered into the calm retirement of the
library, threw back his cowl, buried himself in the study of
philosophy, history, or divinity, and transferred his thoughts to
vellum, which was to moulder and waste in darkness and obscurity, like
himself in his lonely monk's grave, and be read only when the spot
where he labored should be a heap of ruins, and his very name a
controversy amongst scholars.

We should never lose sight of this truth, that in this building, when
the world was given up to violence and darkness, was garnered up the
hope of humanity; and these men who dwelt there in contemplation and
obscurity were its faithful guardians--and this was more particularly
the case with that great order whose foundation we {170} have been
examining. The Benedictines were the depositaries of learning and the
arts; they gathered books together, and reproduced them in the silence
of their cells, and they preserved in this way not only the volumes of
sacred writ, but many of the works of classic lore. They started
Gothic architecture--that matchless union of nature with art--they
alone had the secrets of chemistry and medical science; they invented
many colors; they were the first architects, artists, glass-stainers,
carvers, and mosaic workers in mediaeval times. They were the original
illuminators of manuscripts, and the first transcribers of books; in
fine, they were the writers, thinkers, and workers of a dark age, who
wrote for no applause, thought with no encouragement, and worked for
no reward. Their power, too, waxed mighty; kings trembled before their
denunciations of tyranny, and in the hour of danger fled to their
altars for safety; and it was an English king who made a pilgrimage to
their shrines, and prostrate at the feet of five Benedictine monks,
bared his back, and submitted himself to be scourged as a penance to
his crimes.

Nearly fourteen hundred years have rolled by since the great man who
founded this noble order died; and he who in after years compiled the
"Saxon Chronicle" has recorded it in a simple sentence, which, amongst
the many records of that document, we may at least believe, and with
which we will conclude the chapter--"This year St. Benedict the Abbot,
father of all monks, went to heaven."

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT,

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.



1. Some old men came to Abbot Antony, who, to try their spirits,
proposed to them a difficult passage of Scripture.

As each in turn did his best to explain it, Antony said: "You have not
hit it."

Till Abbot Joseph said: "I give it up."

Then cried Antony: "_He_ has hit it; for he owns he does not know it."


2. When the Abbot Arsenius was at the point of death, his brethren
noted that he wept. They said then: "Is it so? art thou too afraid, O
father?"

He answered: "It is so; and the fear that is now upon me has been with
me ever since I became a monk."

And so he went to sleep.


3. Abbot Pastor said: "We cannot keep out bad thoughts, as we cannot
stop the wind rushing through the door; but we can resist them when
they come."



4. Abbot Besarion said, when he was dying: "A monk ought to be all
eye, as the cherubim and seraphim."



5. They asked Abbot Macarius how they ought to pray.

The old man made answer: "No need to be voluble in prayer; but stretch
forth thy hands frequently, and say, 'Lord, as thou wilt, and as thou
knowest, have mercy on me.' And if war is coming on, say, 'Help!' And
he who himself knoweth what is expedient for thee, will show thee
mercy."



6. On a festival, when the monks were at table, one cried out to the
servers, "_I_ eat nothing dressed, so bring me some salt."

Blessed Theodore made reply: "My brother, better were it to have even
secretly eaten flesh in thy cell than thus loudly to have refused it."



7. An old man said: "A monk's cell is that golden Babylonian furnace
in which the Three Children found the Son of God."

------

{171}


[ORIGINAL]

CHRISTINE:

A TROUBADOUR'S SONG,

IN FIVE CANTOS.

BY GEORGE H. MILES.   [Footnote 34]

  [Footnote 34: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year
  1886, by Lawrence Kehoe, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court
  of the United States for the Southern District of New York.]

(Continued)



THE THIRD SONG.

I.


  Fronting the vine-clad Hermitage,--
  Its hoary turrets mossed with age,
  Its walls with flowers and grass o'ergrown,--
      A ruined Castle, throned so high
      Its battlements invade the sky,
  Looks down upon the rushing Rhone.
  From its tall summits you may see
  The sunward slopes of Côte Rotie
  With its red harvest's revelry;
  While eastward, midway to the Alpine snows,
  Soar the sad cloisters of the Grande Chartreuse.

  And here, 'tis said, to hide his shame,
  The thrice accursed Pilate came;
  And here the very rock is shown.
      Where, racked and riven with remorse,
      Mad with the memory of the Cross,
  He sprang and perished in the Rhone.
  'Tis said that certain of his race
  Made this tall peak their dwelling place.
  And built them there this castle keep
  To mark the spot of Pilate's leap.

{172}

  Full many the tale of terror told
      At eve, with changing cheek,
  By maiden fair and stripling bold,
  Of these dark keepers of the height
  And, most of all, of the Wizard Knight,
      The Knight of Pilate's Peak.
  His was a name of terror known
      And feared through all Provence;
  Men breathed it in an undertone.
      With quailing eye askance,
  Till the good Dauphin of Vienne,
      And Miolan's ancient Lord,
  One midnight stormed the robber den
      And gave them to the sword;
  All save the Wizard Knight, who rose
  In a flame-wreath from his dazzled foes;
  All save a child, with golden hair.
  Whom the Lord of Miolan deigned to spare
      In ruth to womanhood,
  And she, alas, is the maiden fair
      Who wept in the walnut wood.

  But who is he, with step of fate,
  Goes gloomily through the castle gate
       In me morning's virgin prime?
  Why scattereth he with frenzied hand
  The fierce flame of that burning brand,
      Chaunting an ancient rhyme?
  The eagle, scared from her blazing nest,
  Whirls with a scream round his sable crest.
  What muttereth he with demon smile.
  Shaking his mailed hand the while
      Toward the Chateau of La Sône,
  Where champing steed and bannered tent
  Gave token of goodly tournament,
      And the Golden Dolphin shone?
  "Woe to the last of the Dauphin's line,
  When the eagle shrieks and the red lights shine
      Bound the towers of Pilate's Peak!
  Burn, beacon, burn!"--and as he spoke
  From the ruined towers curled the pillared smoke,
  As the light flame leapt from the ancient oak
      And answered the eagle's shriek.
  Man and horse down the hillside sprang
  And a voice through the startled forest rang--
      "I ride, I ride to win my bride.
      Ho, Eblis! to thy servants side;
            Thou hast sworn no foe
            Shall lay me low
  Till the dead in arms against me ride."

{173}


II.

  Deliciously, deliciously
      Cometh the dancing dawn,
  Christine, Christine comes with it,
      Leading in the morn.
          Beautiful pair!
      So cometh the fawn
          Before the deer.
  Christine is in her bower
      Beside the swift Isère
  Weaving a white flower
      With her dark brown hair.
      Never, O never,
          Wandering river.
      Though flowing for ever,
          E'er shalt thou mirror
      Maiden so fair!

  Hail to thee, hail to thee,
      Beautiful one;
  Maiden to match thee,
      On earth there is none.
  And there is none to tell
      How beautiful thou art:
  Though oft the first Rudel
      Has made the Princes start,
  When he has strung his harp and sung
      The Lily of Provence,
  Till the high halls have rung
      With clash of lifted lance
  Vowed to the young
      Christine of France.

      Ah, true that he might paint
  The blooming of thy cheek.
  The blue vein's tender streak
      On marble temple faint;
      Lips in whose repose
      Ruby weddeth rose.
      Lips that parted show
      Ambushed pearl below:
  Or he may catch the subtle glow
      Of smiles as rare as sweet,
  May whisper of the drifted snow
      Where throat and bosom meet.
  And of the dark brown braids that flow
      So grandly to thy feet.
      Ah, true that he may sing
      Thy wondrous mien.

{174}

  Stately as befits a queen,
  Yet light and lithe and all awing
      As becometh Queen of air
  Who glideth unstepping everywhere.
  And he might number e'en
      The charms that haunt the drapery--
  Charms that, ever changing, cluster
  Round thy milk-white mantle's lustre,--
      Maiden mantle that is part of thee.
      Maiden mantle that doth circle thee
          With the snows of virgin grace;
  Halo-like around thee wreathing,
  Spirit-like about thee breathing
          The glory of thy face.

  But these dark eyes, Christine?
      Peace, poet, peace,
      Cease, minstrel, cease!
  But these dear eyes, Christine?
      Mute, O mute
      Be voice and lute!
  O dear dark eyes that seem to dwell
  With holiest things invisible,
      Who may read your oracle?
  Earnest eyes that seem to rove
      Empyrean heights above,
  Yet aglow with human love.
      Who may speak your spell?
  Dear dark eyes that beam and bless,
  In whose luminous caress
  Nature weareth bridal dress,--
  Eyes of voiceless Prophetess,
      Your meanings who may tell!
          O there is none!
      Peace, poet, peace.
      Cease, minstrel, cease,
          For there is none!
  O eyes of fire without desire,
      O stars that lead the sun!
          But minstrel cease,
          Peace, poet, peace.
      Tame Troubadour be still;
          Voice and lute
          Alike be mute,
      It passeth all your skill!

      Sooth thou art fair,
      O ladye dear.
          Yet one may see
  The shadow of the east in thee;

{175}

          Tinting to a riper flush
          The faint vermilion of thy blush;
          Deepening in thy dark brown hair
          Till sunshine sleeps in starlight there.
  For she had scarce seen summers ten,
      When erst the Hermit's call
      Sent all true Knights from bower and hall
  Against the Saracen.
  Young, motherless, and passing fair,
  The Dauphin durst not leave her there,
      Within his castle lone,
  To kinsman's cold or casual care,
      Not such as were his own:
  And so the sweet Provençal maid
  Shared with her sire the first Crusade.
  And you may hear her oft,
  In accents strangely soft.
  Still singing of the rose's bloom
      In Sharon,--of the long sunset
      That gilds lamenting Olivet,
  Of eglantines that grace the gloom
      Of sad Gethsemane;
  And of a young Knight ever seen
  In evening walks along the green
      That fringes feeble Siloë.

  Young, beautiful, and passing fair--
  The ancient Dauphin's only heir,
      The fairest flower of France,--
  Knights by sea and Knights by land
  Came to claim the fair white hand,
      With sigh and suppliant lance;
          And many a shield
          Displayed afield
  The Lily of Provence.
      Ladye love of prince and bard
      Yet to one young Savoyard
          Swerveless faith she gave--
      To the young knight ever seen
      When moonlight wandered o'er the green
          That gleams o'er Siloë's wave.
  And he, blest boy, where lingers he?
      For the Dauphin hath given slow consent
      That, after a joyous tournament,
  The stately spousals shall be.

  Christine is in her bower
      That blooms by the swift Isère,
  Twining a white flower
      With her dark brown hair.

{176}

      The skies of Provence
      Are bright with her glance,
  And nature's matin organ floods
      The world with music from the myriad throats
      Of the winged Troubadours, whose joyous notes
  Brighten the rolling requiem of the woods.
      With melody, flowers, and light
          Hath the maiden come to play,
      As fragile, fair, and bright
          And lovelier than they?
      O no, she has come to her bower
          That blooms by the dark Isère
      For the bridegroom who named the first hour
          Of day-dawn to meet her there:
      But the bridal morn on the hills is born
          And the bridegroom is not here.
      Hie thee hither, Savoyard,
      On such an errand youth rides hard.
      Never knight so dutiful
      Maiden failed so beautiful:
          And she in such sweet need,
          And he so bold and true!--
  She will watch by the long green avenue
      Till it quakes to the tramp of his steed;
  Till it echoes the neigh of the gallant Grey
        Spurred to the top of his speed.

  In the dark, green, lonely avenue
      The Ladye her love-watch keepeth,
  Listening so close that she can hear
      The very dripping of the dew
          Stirred by the worm as it creepeth;
              Straining her ear
          For her lover's coming
              Till his steed seems near
          In the bee's far humming.
      She stands in the silent avenue,
          Her back to a cypress tree;
      O Savoyard once bold and true,
          Late bridegroom, where canst thou be?
      Hark! o'er the bridge that spans the river
          There cometh a clattering tread,
      Never was shaft from mortal quiver
          Ever so swiftly sped.
              Onward the sound,
              Bound after, bound,
          Leapeth along the tremulous ground.

{177}

  From the nodding forest darting.
  Leaves, like water, round them parting.
      Up the long green avenue,
      Horse and horseman buret in view.
  Marry, what ails the bridegroom gay
      That he strideth a coal black steed,
  Why cometh he not on the gallant Grey
      That never yet failed him at need?
  Gone is the white plume, that clouded his crest,
  And the love-scarf that lightly lay over his breast;
  Dark is his shield as the raven's wing
  To the funeral banquet hurrying.
  Came ever knight in such sad array
  On the merry morn of his bridal day?
  The Ladye trembles, and well she may;
  Saints, you would think him a fiend astray.
  A plunge, a pause, and, fast beside her.
  Stand the sable horse and rider.
  Alas, Christine, this shape of wrath
  In Palestine once crossed thy path;
  His arm around thy waist, I trow,
  To bear thee to his saddle-bow.
      But thy Savoyard was there.
  In time to save, tho' not to smite,
  For the demon fled into the night
      From Miolan's matchless heir.
  Alas, Christine, that lance lies low--
      Lies low on oaken bier!

  Low bent the Wizard, till his plume
  O'ershadowed her like falling doom:
  She feels the cold casque touch her ear,
  She hears the whisper, hollow, clear,--
  "From Acre's strand, from Holy Land,
  O'er mountain crag, through desert sand,
  By land, by sea, I come for thee.
  And mine ere sunset shalt thou be!
  Dost know me, girl?"
              The visor raises--
  God, 'tis the Knight of Pilate's Peak!
      As if in wildered dream she gazes,
  Gazing as one who strives to shriek.
  She cannot fly, or speak, or stir,
  For that face of horror glares, at her
      Like a phantom fresh from hell.
  She gave no answer, she made no moan;
  Mute as a statue overthrown.
  Her fair face cold as carved stone,
      Swooning the maiden fell.

{178}

  The sun has climbed the golden hills
  And danceth down with the mountain rills.
  Over the meadow the swift beams run
  Lifting the flowers, one by one,
  Sipping their chalices dry as they pass,
  And kissing the beads from the bending grass.
  The Dauphin's chateau, grand and grey,
  Glows merrily in the risen day;
  His castle that seemeth ancient as earth,
  Lights up like an old man in his mirth.
  Through the forest old, the sunbeams bold
      Their glittering revel keep,
  Till, in arrowy gold, on the chequered wold
      In glancing lines they sleep.
  And one sweet beam hath found its way
  To the violet bank where the Ladye lay.
  O radiant touch! perchance so shone
  The hand that woke the widow's son.

  She sighs, she stirs; the death-swoon breaks;
      Life slowly fires those pallid lips;
  And feebly, painfully, she wakes,
      Struggling through that dark eclipse.
  Breathing fresh of Alpine snows,
  Breathing sweets of summer rose.
  Murmuring songs of soft repose,
  The south wind on her bosom blows:
  But she heeds it not, she hears it not;
      Fast she sits with steady stare.
      The dew-drops heavy on her hair,
      Her fingers clasped in dumb despair,
          Frozen to the spot:
  While o'er her fierce and fixed as fate,
  The fiend on his spectral war-horse sate.
  A horrible smile through the visor broke,
  And, quoth he,
              "I but watched till my Ladye woke.
  Get thee a flagon of Shiraz wine,
  For the lips must be red that answer mine!"
  Cleaving the woods, like the wind he went.
  His face o'er his shoulder backward bent,
  Crying thrice--"We shall meet at the Tournament!"

      Clasping the cypress overhead,
      Christine rose from her fragrant bed.
      And a prayer to Mother Mary sped.
      Hold not those gleaming skies for her
      The same unfailing Comforter?
      And those two white winged cherubim,
      She once had seen, when Christmas hymn
          Chimed with the midnight mass,
      Scattering light through the chapel dim,
          Alive in me stained glass--

{179}

  What fiend could harm a hair of her.
  While those arching-wings took care of her?
  And our Ladye, Maid divine,
  Mother round whose marble shrine
  She wreathed the rose of Palestine
      So many sinless years,
  Will not heaven's maiden-mother Queen
      Regard her daughter's tears!
  Yes!--through the forest stepping slow,
  Tranquil mistress of her woe,
      Goeth the calm Christine;
  And but for yonder spot of snow
  Upon each temple, none may know
      How stem a storm hath been.
  For never dawned a brighter day,
  And the Ladye smileth on her way,
  Greeting the blue-eyed morn at play
      With earth in her spangled green.
          A single cloud
          Stole like a shroud
  Forth from the fading mists that hid
  The crest of each Alpine pyramid;
  Unmovingly it lingers over
  The mountain castle of her lover;
      While over Pilate's Peak
  Hangs the grey pall of the sullen smoke,
  Leaps the lithe flame of the ancient oak
      And the eagle soars with a shriek.
  Full well she knew the curse was near.
  But that heart of hers had done with fear.
  By St. Antoine, not steadier stands
      Mont Blanc's white head in winter's whirl
      Than that calm, fearless, smiling girl
  With her bare brow upturned and firmly folded hands.

      Back to her bower so fair
          Christine her way, is wending;
      Over the dark Isère
          Silently she's bending,
      Thus communing with the stream.
      As one who whispers in a dream:
      "Waters that at sunset ran
      Round the Mount of Miolan;
      Stream, that binds my love to me,
      Whisper where that lover be;
      Wavelets mine, what evil things
      Mingle with your murmurings;
      Tell me, ere ye glide away.
      Wherefore doth the bridegroom stay?
      Hath the fiend of Pilate's Peak
      Met him, stayed him, slain him--speak!

{180}

  Speak the worst a Bride may know,
  God hath armed my soul for woe;
  Touching heaven, the virgin snow
  Is firmer than the rock below.
  Lies my love upon his bier,
  Answer, answer, dark Isère!
  Hark, to the low voice of the river
  Singing '_Thy love is lost for ever!_'
  Weep with all thy icy fountains,
  "Weep, ye cold, uncaring mountains,
      I have not a tea!
  Stream, that parts my love from me,
  Bear this bridal rose with thee;
  Bear it to the happy hearted,
  Christine and all the flowers have parted!"

  They are coming from the castle,
      A bevy of bright-eyed girls,
  Some with their long locks braided,
      Some with loose golden curls.
  Merrily 'mid the meadows
      They win their wilful way;
  Winding through sun and shadow,
      Rivulets at play.
  Brows with white rosebuds blowing,
      Necks with white pearl entwined.
  Gowns whose white folds imprison
      Wafts of the wandering wind.
  The boughs of the charmèd woodland
     Sing to the vision sweet.
  The daisies that crouch in the clover
      Nod to their twinkling feet.
  They see Christine by the river,
      And, deeming the bridegroom near,
  They wave her a dewy rose-wreath
      Fresh plucked for her dark brown hair.
  Hand in hand tripping to meet her,
      Birdlike they carol their joy.
  Wedding soft Provençal numbers
      To a dulcet old strain of Savoy.

{181}

THE GREETING.

  Sister, standing at Love's golden gate.
          Life's second door--
      Fleet the maidentime is flying.
      Friendship fast in love is dying,
  Bridal fate doth separate
      Friends evermore.

  Pilgrim seeking with thy sandalled feet
          The land of bliss;
      Sire and sister tearless leaving,
      To thy beckoning palmer cleaving--
  Truant sweet, once more repeat
          Our parting kiss.

  Wanderer filling for enchanted isle
          Thy dimpling sail;
      Whither drifted, all uncaring.
      So with faithful helmsman faring,
  Stay and smile with us, awhile,
          Before the gale.

  Playmate, hark! for all that once was ours
          Soon rings the knell:
      Glade and thicket, glen and heather,
      Whisper sacredly together;
  Queen of ours, the very flowers
          Sigh forth farewell.

  Christine looked up, and smiling stood
  Among the choral sisterhood:
  But some who sprang to greet her, stayed
  Tiptoe, with the speech unsaid;
  And, each the other, none knew why.
  Questioned with quick, wondering eye.
  One by one, their smiles have flown.
  No lip is laughing but her own;
  And hers, the frozen smile that wears
  The glittering of unshed tears.
  "Ye nave sung for me, I will sing for ye,
      My sisters fond and fair."
  And she bent her head till the chaplet fell
      Adown in the deep Isère.


THE REPLY.

      Bring me no rose-wreath now:
  But come when sunset's first tears fall.
  When night-birds from the mountain call--
          Then bind my brow,

      Roses and lilies white--
  But tarry till the glow-worms trail
  Their gold-work o'er the spangled veil
          Of falling night

{182}

      Twine not your garland fair
  Till I have fallen fast asleep;
  Then to my silent pillow creep
          And leave it there--

      There in the chapel yard!--
  Come with twilight's earliest hush,
  Just as day's last purple flush
          Forsakes the sward.

      Stop where the white cross stands.
  You'll find me in my wedding suit,
  Lying motionless and mute,
          With folded hands.

      Tenderly to my side:
  The bridegroom's form you may not see
  In the dim eve, but he will be
          Fast by his bride.

      Soft with your chaplet move.
  And lightly lay it on my head:
  Be sure you wake not with rude tread
          My jealous love.

      Kiss me, then quick away;
  And leave us, in unwatched repose,
  With the lily and the rose
          Waiting for day!


  But hark! the cry of the clamorous horn
  Breaks the bright stillness of the morn.
  From moated wall, from festal hall
  The banners beckon, the bugles call,
  Already flames, in the lists unrolled
  O'er the Dauphin's tent, the Dolphin gold.
  A hundred knights in armor glancing.
  Hurry afield with pennons dancing,
  Each with a vow to splinter a lance
  For Christine, the Lily of Provence.
          "Haste!" cried Christine;
      "Sisters, we tarry late.
      Let not the tourney wait
          For its Queen!"
      And, toward the castle gate,
  They take their silent way along the green.



TO BE CONTINUED


------

{183}



From The Literary Workman.

JENIFER'S PRAYER.

BY OLIVER CRANE.

IN THREE PARTS.



PART II.

Mary Lorimer returned in safety to Beremouth under Horace Erskine's
care, welcomed as may be supposed by the adopted father and her
mother. Not that "Mother Mary," as Lady Greystock in the old Claudia
Brewer days used to call her, could ever welcome Horace. She had never
liked him; she had always felt that there was some unknown wrong about
his seeking and his leaving Claudia; she had been glad that a long
absence abroad had kept him from them while her darling Mary had been
growing up; and it was with a spasm of fear that she heard of his
spending that autumn at her sister's. And yet she had consented to his
bringing Mary home. Yes, she had consented, for Mr. Brewer in his
overflowing hospitality had asked him to come to them--had regretted
that they had seen so little of him of late years--and had himself
suggested that he should come when Mary returned.

Nine years does a great deal; it may even pay people's debts
sometimes. But it had not paid Horace Erskine's debts: on the
contrary, it had added to them with all the bewildering peculiarities
that belong to calculations of interests and compound interests. He
had got to waiting for another man's death. How many have had to
become in heart death-dealers in this way! It was known that he would
be his uncle's heir, and his uncle added to what he supposed Horace
possessed a good sum yearly; making the man rich as he thought, and
causing occasionally a slight passing regret that Horace was so
saving. "He might do so much more if he liked on his good income," the
elder Mr. Erskine would say. But he did not know of the many sums for
ever paying to keep things quiet till death, the great paymaster,
should walk in and demand stern rights of himself, the elder, and pass
on the gold that we all must leave behind to the nephew, the younger
one.

But in the nine years that had passed since the coward took his
revenge on a brave woman by doing that which killed her husband, great
things had happened to pretty Minnie Lorimer. The "county people" had
been after her--those same old families who had flouted her mother,
and prophesied eternal poverty to her poor pet baby--fatherless, too!
a fact that finished the story of their faults with a note of peculiar
infamy.

That a man of good family should marry without money, become the
father of a lovely child, and _die_--that the mother should go back to
that old poverty-stricken home where that stiff-looking maid-servant
looked so steadily into the faces of all who stood and asked
admittance--that they should pretend to be happy!--altogether, it was
really too bad.

Why did not Mrs. Lorimer, widow, go out as a governess? Who was to
bring up that unfortunate child on a paltry one hundred a year? Of
course {184} she begged for help. Of course they were supported by Mr.
Erskines's charity. A pretty humiliation of Lorimer's friends and
relations!

Altogether, the whole of the great Lansdowne Lorimer connection had
pronounced that to have that young widow and her daughter belonging to
them was a trial very hard to bear. They had not done talking when
Mary made that quiet walk to church--no one but her mother and Jenifer
being in the secret--and reappeared in the county after a few months'
absence as mistress of Beremouth. Mr. Brewer had counted his money,
and had told the world what it amounted to. And this time he never
apologized, he only confessed himself a person scarcely deserving of
respect, because he had done so little good with the mammon of
unrighteousness. But Mary now would tell him how to manage. He did
perhaps take a little to the humble line. He hoped the world would
forget and forgive his former shortcomings; such conduct would
assuredly not now be persevered in; and that resolution was fulfilled
without any doubt. The splendors of Beremouth were something to talk
about, and the range of duties involved in a large hospitality were
admirably performed.

Old Lady Caroline, whose pianoforte survived in Mrs. Morier's house at
Marston, considered the matter without using quite as many words as
her neighbors. "That man will be giving money to Lorimer's child." She
was quite right. He had already invested five thousand pounds for
Minnie. Lady Caroline (what an odd pride hers was!) went to Beremouth,
and got upon business matter with "Mother Mary."

She would give that child five thousand pounds in her will if Mr.
Brewer would not give her anything. Alas! it was already given. Mr.
Brewer used to count among his faults that, with him, it was too much
a word and a blow, especially when a good action was in question, and
this curious unusual fault he had decidedly committed in the case of
Minnie Lorimer. The money was hers safe enough, invested in the hands
of trustees. "Safe enough," said Mr. Brewer exultingly; and then,
looking with a saddened air on Lady Caroline, he added, gravely, that
it couldn't be helped! "The man's a saint or a fool, I can't tell
which," was Lady Caroline's very cute remark. "The most unselfish
idiot that ever lived. Does Mary like him, or laugh at him, I wonder?"

But Lady Caroline cultivated Mr. Brewer's acquaintance. Not in an evil
way, but because she had been brought up to _use_ the world, and to
slave all mankind who would consent to such persecution. Not wickedly,
I repeat, but with a fixed intention she cultivated Mr. Brewer, and
she got money out of him.

Mr. Brewer still made experiments with ten pounds. He helped Lady
Caroline in her many charities, as long as her charities were confined
to food and clothing, so much a week to the poor, and getting good
nursing for the sick. But once Lady Caroline used that charity purse
for purposes of "souping"--it has become an English word, so I do not
stop to explain it--and then Mr. Brewer scolded her. Nobody had ever
disputed any point with Lady Caroline. But Mr. Brewer explained, with
a most unexpected lucidity, how it would be _right_ for him to make
her a Catholic, and yet _wrong_ for her to try her notions of
conversion on him.

Lady Caroline kept up the quarrel for two years. She upbraided him for
his neglect, on his own principles, of Claudia. She abused him for the
different conduct pursued about his son. Mr. Brewer confessed his
faults and stood by his rights at the same time. Two whole years Lady
Caroline quarrelled, and Mr. Brewer never left the field. And
afterward, some time after, when Lady Caroline was in her last
illness, she said: "I believe that man Brewer may be right after all."
When she was dead young Mary Lorimer had double the sum that had {185}
been originally offered, and Freddy her largest diamond ring.

But another thing had to come out of all this. Mrs. Brewer became a
Catholic; and that fact had made her recall her daughter to her
side--that fact had made Horace Erskine say, at the inn at Hull, that
he dreaded for the girl he, spoke to the influence of the home and the
people she was going to--that fact had brought that passion of tears
to Mary Lorimer's eyes, and had made her feel so angrily that he had
taken an advantage of her.

Here, then, we are back again to the time at which we began the story.
Mary got home and was welcomed.

The day after their arrival, if we leave Beremouth and its people, and
go into Marston to Mrs. Morier, "old Mrs. Morier" they called her now,
we shall see Jenifer walk into the pleasant upstairs drawing-room,
where the china glittered on comer-shelves, and large jars stood under
the long inlaid table, and say to her mistress: "Eleanor is come, if
you please, ma'am."

Mrs. Morier looked up from her knitting. She had been sitting by the
window, and the beautiful old lady looked like a picture, as Jenifer
often declared, as she turned the face shadowed by fine lace toward
her servant with a sweet, gentle air, and smiling said, "And so you
want to go to Clayton--and Eleanor is to stay till you come back?"
"Yes, ma'am--it's the anniversary." "Go, then," said the gentle lady.
"And you must not leave me out of your prayers, my good Jenifer; for
you may be sure that I respect and value them." "I'll be back in good
time," said Jenifer; and the door closed, and Mrs. Morier continued
her knitting.

Soon she saw from the window that incomparable Jenifer. Her brown
light stuff gown, the black velvet trimming looking what Jenifer
called _rich_ upon the same. Buttons as big as pennies all the way
down the front--the good black shawl with the handsome border that
had been Mr. Brewer's own present to her on the occasion of his
wedding; the fine straw bonnet and spotless white ribbon--the crowning
glory of the black lace veil--oh, Jenifer was _somebody_, I can tell
you, at Marston; and Jenifer looked it.

It was with nothing short of a loving smile that Mrs. Morier watched
her servant. Servant indeed, but true, tried, and trusty friend also;
and when the woman was out of sight, and Mrs. Morier turned her
thoughts to Jenifer's prayer, and what little she knew of it, she
sighed--the sigh came from deep down, and the sigh was lengthened, and
her whole thoughts seemed to rest upon it--it was breathed out, at
last, and when it died away Mrs. Morier sat doing nothing in peaceful
contemplation till the door opened, and she whom we have heard called
Eleanor came in with inquiries as to the proper time for tea.

I think that this Eleanor was perhaps about eight-and-twenty years of
age. She was strikingly beautiful. Perhaps few people have ever seen
anything more faultlessly handsome than this young woman's form and
face. She looked younger than she was. The perfectly smooth brow and
the extraordinary fair complexion made her look young. No one would
have thought, when looking at Eleanor, that she had ever _worked_. If
the finest and loveliest gentlewoman in the world had chosen to put on
a lilac cotton gown, and a white checked muslin apron, and bring up
Mrs. Morier's early tea, she would perhaps have looked a little like
Eleanor; provided her new employment had not endowed her with a
momentary awkwardness. But admiration, when looking at this woman, was
a little checked by a sort of atmosphere of pain--or perhaps it was
only patience--that surrounded the beautiful face, and showed in every
gesture and movement, and rested on the whole being, as it were.

{186}

Eleanor suffered. And it was the pain of the mind and heart, not of
the body--no one who had sufficient sensibility to see what I have
described could ever doubt that the inner woman, not the outer fleshly
form of beauty, suffered; and that the woe, whatever it was, had
written _patience_ on that too placid brow.

"And are they all well at Dr. Rankin's?" "Very well, ma'am, I believe.
I saw Lady Greystock in her own rooms an hour before I came away. I
said that I was coming here, and she said"--Eleanor smiled--"Lady
Greystock said, ma'am, 'My duty to grandmamma Morier--mind you give
the message right.'"

"Ah," said Mrs. Morier, "Lady Greystock is wonderfully well." "There
is nothing the matter with her, ma'am." "Except that she never goes to
Beremouth." What made the faint carnation mount to Eleanor's
face?--what made the woman pause to collect herself before she
spoke?--"Oh, ma'am, she is right not to try herself. She'll go there
one day." "I suppose you like being at Dr. Rankin's?" "Very much. My
place of wardrobe-woman is not hard, but it is responsible. It suits
me well. And Mrs. Rankin is very good to me. And I am near Lady
Greystock." "How fond you are of her!" "There is not anything I would
not do for her," said the woman with animation. "I hope, indeed Dr.
Rankin tells me to believe, that I have had a great deal to do with
Lady Greystock's cure. She has treated me like a sister; and I can
never feel for any one what I feel for her." "Lady Greystock always
speaks of you in a truly affectionate way. She says you have known
better days." "_Different_ days; I don't say _better_. I have nothing
to wish for. Ever since the time that Lady Greystock determined on
staying at Blagden, I have been quite happy." "You came just as she
came." "Only two months after." "And did you like her from the first?"
"Oh, Mrs. Morier, you know she was very ill when she came. I never
thought of love, but of every care and every attention that one woman
could show to another. Had it been life for life, I am sure she might
have had _my_ life--that was all that I _then_ thought. But when she
recovered and loved me for what I had done for her, then it was love
for love. Lady Greystock gave me a new life, and I will serve her as
long as I may for gratitude, and as a thanksgiving."

When Eleanor was gone, her pleasant manner, her beauty, the music of
her voice, and the indescribable grace that belonged to her remained
with Mrs. Morier as a pleasant memory, and dwelling on it, she
lingered over her early tea, and ate of hashed mutton, making
meditation on how Eleanor had got to be Jenifer's great friend; and
whether their both being Catholics was enough to account for it.

This while Jenifer walked on toward Clayton. She stood at last on the
top of a wide table-land, and looked from the short grass where the
wild thyme grew like green velvet, and the chamomile gave forth
fragrance as you trod it under foot, down a rugged precipice into the
little seaport that sheltered in the cove below. The roofs of the
strange, dirty, tumble-down houses were packed thickly below her. The
nature of the precipitous cliff was to lie in terraces, and here and
there goats and donkeys among the branching fern gave a picturesque
variety to the scene, and made the practical Jenifer say to herself
that Clayton Cove was not "that altogether abominable" when seen to
the best advantage on the afternoon of a rich autumn day. A zigzag
path, rather difficult to get upon on account of the steepness of the
broken edge and the rolling stones, led from Jenifer's feet down to
the terraces; short cuts of steps and sliding stones led from terrace
to terrace, and these paths ended, as it appeared to the eye, in a
chimney-top that sent up a volume of white smoke, and a {187} pleasant
scent of wood and burning turf. By the side of the house that owned
the chimney, which was whitewashed carefully, and had white blinds
inside the green painted wood-work of small sash windows, appeared
another roof, long, high, narrow, with a cross on the eastern gable,
and that was the Catholic chapel--the house Father Daniels lived in;
and after a moment's pause down the path went Jenifer with all the
speed that a proper respect for her personal safety permitted. When
the woman got to the last terrace, she opened a wicket gate, and was
in a sunny garden, still among slopes and terraces, and loaded with
flowers. Common flowers no doubt, but who ever saw Father Daniels's
Canterbury bells and forgot them? There, safe in the bottom walk,
wide, and paved with pebbles from the beach, Jenifer turned not to the
right where the trellised back-door invited, but to the left, where
the west door of the chapel stood open--and she walked in. There was
no one there. She knelt down. After a while she rose, and kneeling
before the image of our Lady, said softly: "Mother, she had no mother!
Eleven years this day since that marriage by God's priest, and at his
holy altar--eleven years this day since that marriage which the laws
of the men of this country deny and deride. Mother, she had no mother!
Oh, mighty Mother! forget neither of them. Remember her for her
trouble, and him for his sin." Not for vengeance but for salvation,
she might have added; but Jenifer had never been accustomed to explain
her prayers. Then she knelt before the adorable Presence on the altar,
and her prayer was very brief--"My life, and all that is in it!"--was
it a vain repetition that she said it again and again? Again and
again, as she looked back and thought of what _it had been_; as she
thought of that which _it was_; and knew of the future that, blessed
by our Lady's prayers, she should take it, whatever it might be, as
the will of God. And so she said it; by so doing offering _herself_.
One great thing had colored all her life; had, to her, been _life_--
_her_ life; she, with that great shadow on the past, with the weight
of the cross on the present, with the fear of unknown ill on the
future, gathered together all prayer, all hope, all fear, and gave it
to God in those words of offering that were, on her lips, an earnest
prayer; the prayer of submission, of offering, of faith--"_My life,
and all that is in it_."

Jenifer could tell out her wishes to the Mother of God, and had told
them, in the words she had used, but it was this woman's way to have
no wishes when she knelt before God himself. "My life, and all that is
in it;" that was Jenifer's prayer.

After a time she left the chapel, putting pieces of money, many, into
the church box, and went into the house. She knew Mrs. Moore, the
priest's housekeeper, very well. She was shown into Father Daniels's
sitting-room. He was a venerable man of full seventy years of age, and
as she entered he put down the tools with which he was carving the
ornaments of a wooden altar, and said, "You are later than your note
promised. I have therefore been working by daylight, which I don't
often do." She looked at the work. It seemed to her to be very
beautiful. "It is fine and teak-wood," said Father Daniels; "part of a
wreck. They brought it to me for the church. We hope to get up a
little mariner's chapel on the south side of the church before long,
and I am getting ready the altar as far as I can with my own hands.
'Mary, star of the sea'--that will be our dedication. The faith
spreads here. Mistress Jenifer; and I hope we are a little better than
we used to be." And Father Daniels crossed himself and thanked God for
his grace that had blessed that wild little spot, and made many
Christians there. {188} Jenifer smiled, as the holy man spoke in a
playful tone, and she said, "It is the anniversary, father." "Of
Eleanor's marriage. Yes. I remembered her at mass. Has she heard
anything of him?" "Yes, father; she has heard his real name, she
thinks. She has always suspected, from the time that she first began
to suspect evil, that she had never known him by his real name--she
never believed his name to be Henry Evelyn, as he said when he married
her."

"And what is his real name?"

"Horace Erskine," said Jenifer.

"What!" exclaimed Father Daniels, with an unusual tone of alarm in his
voice. "The man who was talked of for Lady Greystock before she
married--the nephew of Mrs. Brewer's sister's husband!" "Yes, sir."
"Is she sure?" "No. She has not seen him. But she has traced him, she
thinks. Corny Nugent, who is her second cousin, and knew them both
when the marriage took place, went as a servant to the elder Mr.
Erskine, and knew Henry Evelyn, as they called him in Ireland, when he
came back from abroad. He _thought_ he knew him. Then Horace Erskine,
finding he was an Irishman, would joke him about his religion, and how
he was the only Catholic in the house, and how he was obliged to walk
five miles to mass. Time was when Mr. Erskine, the uncle, would not
have kept a Catholic servant. But since Mr. and Mrs. Brewer married,
he has been less bigoted. He took Corny Nugent in London. It was just
a one season's engagement. But when they were to return to Scotland
they proposed to keep him on, and he stayed. After a little Horace
Erskine asked him about Ireland; and even if he knew such and such
places; and then he came by degrees to the very place--the very
people--to his own knowledge of them. Corny gave crafty answers. But
he disliked the sight of the man, and the positions he put him into.
So he left. He left three months ago. And he found out Eleanor's
direction, and told her that surely--surely and certainly--her
husband, Henry Evelyn, was no other than his late master's nephew, who
had been trying to marry more than one, only always some unlooked-for
and unaccountable thing had happened to prevent it. Our Lady be
praised, for her prayers have kept off that last woe--I make no
doubt--thank God!"

"How many years is it since they married?" "Eleven, to-day. I keep the
anniversary. He is older than he looks. He is thirty-two, this year,
if he did not lie about his age, as well as everything else. He told
Father Power he was of age. He said, too--God forgive him--that he was
a Catholic."

"But when I followed Father Power at Rathcoyle," said the priest,
"there was no register of the marriage. I was sent for on the
afternoon of the marriage day. I found Father Power in a dying state.
He was an old man, and had long been infirm. The marriage was not
entered. It was known to have taken place. Your niece and her husband
were gone. I walked out that evening to your brother's farm. He knew
nothing of the marriage. He had received a note to say that Eleanor
was gone with her husband, and that they would hear from them when
they got to England. Why Father Power, who was a saintly man, married
them, I do not know. It was unlawful for him to marry a Catholic and a
Protestant. If your sister went through no other marriage, she has no
claim on her Protestant husband. If she could prove that he passed
himself off as a Catholic, she might have some ground against
him--but, can she?"

"No, sir; on the contrary, she knew that she was marrying a
Protestant; she had hopes of converting him; she learnt from {189}
himself, afterward, that he had deceived the priest. She had said to
him that she would many him if Father Power consented. He came back
and said that the consent had been given. He promised to marry her in
Dublin conformably to the license he had got there--or there he had
lived the proper time for getting one, so he declared. But I have
ceased to believe anything he said. Then my brother wrote the girl a
dreadful letter to the direction in Liverpool that she had sent to
him. Then, after some months, she wrote to me at Marston. She was
deserted, and left in the Isle of Man. She supported herself there for
more than a year. I told Mr. Brewer that I knew a sad story of the
daughter of a friend, and one of her letters, saying her last gold was
changed into silvery and that she was too ill and worn oat to win
more, was so dreadful, that I feared for her mind. So Mr. Brewer went
to Dr. Rankin, and got her taken in as a patient, at first, and when
she got well she was kept on as wardrobe-woman. She had got a tender
heart; when she heard of Lady Greystock's trial, she took to her. Dr.
Rankin says he could never have cured Lady Greystock so perfectly nor
so quickly, but for Eleanor."

"That is curious," said Father Daniels, musingly. "Have you been in
Ireland since the girl left it with her husband?"

"I never was there in my life. My mother was Irish, and she lived as a
servant in England. She married an Englishman, and she had two
daughters, my sister--Eleanor's mother--and myself. My mother went
back to Ireland a year after her husband's death, on a visit, and she
left my sister and me with my father's family. She married in Ireland
almost directly, and married well, a man with a good property, a
farmer. She died, and left one son. My sister and I were four and five
years older than this half-brother of ours. Then time wore on and my
sister Ellen went to Ireland, and she married there, and the fever
came to the place where they lived, and carried them both off, and she
left me a legacy--my niece Eleanor--oh, sir I with such a holy letter
of recommendation from her death-bed. Poor sister! Poor, holy soul!
Our half-brother asked to have Eleanor to stay with him when she knew
enough to be useful on the farm. He was a good Christian, and I let
him take the girl. She was very pretty, people said, and I wished her
to marry soon. Then there came--sent, he said, by a great rich English
nobleman--a man who called himself a gardener, or something of that
sort. He lodged close by; he made friends with my brother. He was
often off after rare bog-plants, and seemed to lead a busy if an easy
life. He would go to mass with them. But they knew he was a
Protestant. Eleanor knew that her uncle would not consent to her
marrying a Protestant. But, poor child, she gave her heart away to the
gentleman in disguise. He had had friends there--a fishing party. Sir,
he never intended honorably; but they were married by the priest, and
he got over the holy man, whom everybody loved and honored, with his
falseness, as he had got over the true-hearted and trusting woman whom
he had planned to desert."

"Well," said Father Daniels, "you know I succeeded this priest for a
short time at Rathcoyle. He died on that wedding day. I never
understood how it all happened. I left a record to save Eleanor's
honor; but she has no legal claim on her husband--it ought not to have
been done." Jenifer shrank beneath the plainness of that truth--"_My
life, and all that is in it,_" her heart said, sinking, as it were, at
the sorrow that had come on the girl whom her sister had left to her
with her dying breath.

"She ought not to have trusted a man who was a Protestant, and not
willing to marry her in the only way that is legal by the Irish
marriage-law." "_My life, and all that is in it._" {190} So hopelessly
fell on her heart every word that the priest spoke, that, but for that
offering of all things to God, poor Jenifer could scarcely have borne
her trial.

"And if this Henry Evelyn should turn out to be Horace Erskine, why,
he will marry some unhappy woman some time, of course, and the law of
the land will give him one wife, and by the law of God another woman
will claim him. Oh, if people would but obey holy church, and not try
to live under laws of their own inventing." "_My life, and all that is
in it!_" Again, only that could have made Jenifer bear the trials that
were presented to her.

"And if gossip spoke truth he was very near marrying Lady Greystock
once--Mr. Brewer, himself, thought it was going to be." One more great
act of submission--"_My life, and all that is in it!_"--came forth
from Jenifer's heart. She loved Mr. Brewer, with a faithful sort of
worship--if such a trial as that had come on him through her
trouble!--_that_ was over; _that_ had been turned aside; but the
thought gave rise to a question, even as she thanked God for the
averted woe.

'"Is it Eleanor's duty to find out if Henry Evelyn and Horace Erskine
are one?" "Yes," said the priest "Yes; it is. It is everybody's duty
to prevent mischief. It is her duty, as far as lies in her power, to
prevent sin."

"And if it proves true--that which Corny Nugent says, what then?"

"Be content for the present. It is a very difficult case to act in."

Poor Jenifer felt the priest to be sadly wanting in sympathy--she
turned again to him who knows all and feels all, and she offered up
the disappointment that _would_ grow up in her heart--"_My life, and
all that is in it!_"

She turned to go; and then Father Daniels spoke so kindly, so
solemnly, with such a depth of sympathy in the tone of his voice--"God
bless you, my child;" and the sign of the cross seemed to bless her
sensibly. "Thank you, father!" And, without lifting her eyes, she left
the room and the house; and still saying that prayer that had grown to
be her strength and her help, she went up the steep rugged path to the
spreading down; and then she turned round and looked on the great sea
heaving, lazily under the sunset rays, that painted it in the far
distance with gold and red, and a silvery light, till it touched the
ruby-colored sky, and received each separate ray of glory on its
breast just where earth and heaven seemed to meet--just where you
could fancy another world looking into the depths of the great sea
that flowed up into its gates. It seemed to do Jenifer good. The whole
scene was so glorious, and the glory was so far-spreading--all the
world seemed to rest around her bathed in warm light and basking in
the smile of heaven. She stood still and said again, in a sweet soft
voice: "_My life, and all that is in it!_"

Her great dread that day when Mr. Brewer had told her to put him and
his into her prayer, had been lest the punishment of sin should come
on the man who had deserted her dear girl, and lest that sin's effect
in a heart-broken disease should fall on the girl herself.

When Mr. Brewer said, "Put me and mine into that prayer, Jenifer," the
thought had risen that she would tell him of Eleanor. She had told
him, and he had helped her. But she had never thought that, by acting
on the impulse, the two women whose hearts Horace Erskine had crushed,
as a wilful child breaks his playthings when he has got tired or out
of temper, had been brought together under one roof, and made to love
each other. Yet so it had been. The woman who could do nothing but
pray _had_ prayed; and a thing had been done which no human
contrivance could have effected. And as Jenifer stood gazing on the
heavens that grew brighter and brighter, and on the water that
reflected every glory, and seemed to bask with a living motion in the
great magnificence that was poured upon it, she recollected how great
a pain had been {191} spared her; she thought how terrible it would
have been if Claudia Brewer had married Horace Erskine--Horace
Erskine, the husband of the deserted Eleanor; and she gave thanks to
God.

Now she drew her shawl tighter round her, and walked briskly on. She
got across the down, and over a stone stile in the fence that was its
boundary from the road. She turned toward Marston, and walked fast--it
was almost getting cold after that glorious sunset, and she increased
her pace and went on rapidly. She soon saw a carriage in the road
before her, driving slowly, and meeting her. When it came near enough
to recognize her, the lady who drove let her ponies go, and then
pulled up at Jenifer's side. "Now, Mistress Jenifer," said Lady
Greystock, looking bright and beautiful in the black hat, and long
streaming black feather, that people wore in those days, "here am I to
drive you home. I knew where you were going. Eleanor tells me her
secrets. Do you know that? This is an anniversary; and you give gifts
and say prayers. Are you comfortable? I am going to drive fast to
please the ponies; they like it, you know." And very true did Lady
Greystock's words seem; for the little creatures given their heads
went off at a pace that had in it every evidence of perfect good will.
"I came to drive you back, and to pick up Eleanor, and drive her to
Blagden after I had delivered you up safely to grandmamma Morier.
Mother Mary came to see me this afternoon. You had better go and see
Minnie soon. Jenifer"--Jenifer looked up surprised at a strange tone
in Lady Greystock's voice---"Jenifer," speaking very low, "if you can
pray for my father and his wife, and all he loves, pray now. It would
be hard for a man to be trapped by the greatness of his own good
heart."

"Is there anything wrong, my dear?" Jenifer spoke softly, and just as
she had been used to speak to the Claudia Brewer of old days.

"I can't say more," Lady Greystock replied; "here we are at Marston."
Then she talked of common things; and told James, the man-servant, to
drive the horses up and down the street while she bade Mrs. Morier
"Good night." And they went into the house, and half an hour after
Lady Greystock and Eleanor had got into the pony carriage, and were
driving away. The quiet street was empty once more. The little
excitement made by Lady Greystock and her ponies subsided. Good-byes
were spoken, and the quiet of night settled down on the streets and
houses of Marston.

Jenifer had wondered over Lady Greystock's words; and comforted
herself, and stilled her fears, and set her guesses all at rest by
those few long-used powerful words--"_My life, and all that is in
it!_" She offered life, and gave up its work and its trials to God;
and Jenifer, too, was at rest then.

But at Clayton things were not quite in the same peaceful state as in
that little old-fashioned inland town. Clayton was very busy; and
among the busy ones, though busy in his own way, was Father Daniels.

That morning a messenger had brought him a packet from Mrs. Brewer;
for "Mother Mary" since becoming a Catholic had wanted advice, and
wanted strength, and she had sought and found what she wanted, and now
she had sent to the same source for further help. As soon as Jenifer
was gone, Father Daniels put away his teak-wood and his carving tools,
and packed up his drawings and his pencils. He was a man of great
neatness, and his accuracy in all business, and his fruitful
recollection of every living soul's wants, as far as they had ever
been made known to him, were charming points of his character--
points, that is, natural gifts, that the great charity which belonged
to his priesthood adorned and made meritorious.  {192} While he
"tidied away his things," as his housekeeper Mrs. Moore used to say,
bethought and he prayed--his mind foresaw great possible woe; he knew,
with the knowledge that is made up of faith and experience united,
that some things seem plainly to know no other master than prayer.
People are prayed out of troubles that no other power can touch. Every
now and then this fact seems to be imprinted in legible characters on
some particular woe, actual or threatened; and though Father Daniels,
like a holy priest, prayed always and habitually, he yet felt, as we
have said, with respect to the peculiar entanglements that the letter
from Mrs. Brewer in the morning and the revelation made by Jenifer in
the afternoon seemed to threaten. So, when he again sat down, it was
with Mrs. Brewer's letter before him on the table, and a lamp lighted,
and "the magnifiers," to quote Mrs. Moore again, put on to make the
deciphering of Mrs. Erskine's handwriting as easy as possible. Mrs.
Brewer's was larger, blacker, plainer--and her note was short. It only
said: "Read my sister's letter, which I have just received. It seems
so hard to give up the child; it would be much harder to see her less
happy than she has always been at home. I don't like Horace Erskine.
It is as if I was kept from liking him. I really have no reason for my
prejudice against him. Come and see me if you can, and send or bring
back the letter." Having put this aside. Father Daniels opened Mrs.
Erskine's letter. It must be given just as it was written to the
reader:

  DEAREST MARY:

  "You must guess how dreadful your becoming a Catholic is to us. I
  cannot conceive why, when you had been happy so long--these thirteen
  years--you should do this unaccountable thing now. There must have
  been some strange influence exercised over you by Mr. Brewer. I
  feared how it might be when, nine years ago, your boy was born, and
  you gave him up so weakly. However, I think you will see plainly
  that you have quite forfeited a mother's rights over Mary. She is
  seventeen, and will not have a happy home with you now. Poor child,
  she would turn Catholic to please you, and for peace sake, perhaps.
  But you cannot _wish_ such a misery for her. She will, I suppose,
  soon be the only Protestant in your house. I can't help blaming old
  Lady Caroline, even after her death; for she certainly brought the
  spirit of controversy into Beremouth, and stirred up Mr. Brewer to
  think of his rights. Now, I write to propose what is simply an act
  of justice on your part, though really, I must say, an act of great
  grace on the part of my husband. Horace is in love with Mary. As to
  the fancy he was supposed to have for Claudia, I _know_ that _that_
  was only a fancy. He was taken with her wilful, spoilt-child
  ways--you certainly did not train her properly--and he wanted her
  money. Of course as you had been married four years without
  children, he did not suspect anything about Freddy. It was an
  entanglement well got rid of; and Claudia wanted no comforting, that
  was plain enough. But it is different now. Horace _is_ in love
  _now_. And if Mary is not made a Catholic by Mr. Brewer and you and
  old Jenifer, she will say, 'Yes,' like a good child. We are
  _extremely_ fond of her. And Mr. Erskine generously offers to make a
  very handsome settlement on her. I consider a marriage, and a very
  speedy one, with Horace the best thing; now that you have, by your
  own act, made her home so homeless to her. I am sure you ought to be
  very thankful for so obviously good an arrangement of difficulties.
  Let me hear from you as soon as Horace arrives. He is going to speak
  to you directly.
   "Your affectionate sister,
      "Lucia Erskine.

  "P.S.--As Mr. Brewer has always said that, Mary being his adopted
  child, he should pay her on her marriage the full interest of the
  money which will be hers at twenty-one, {193} of course Horace
  expects that, as we do. Lady Caroline's ten thousand, Mr. Brewer's
  five thousand, and the hundred a year for which her father insured
  his life, and which I find that you give to her, will, with Horace's
  means, make a good income; and to this Mr. Erskine will, as Mary is
  my niece, add very liberally. I cannot suppose that you can think of
  objecting. L. E."

Father Daniels read this letter over very carefully. Then he placed
it, with Mrs. Brewer's note, in his pocket-book, and immediately
putting on his hat, and taking his stick, he walked into the kitchen.

"Where's your husband?" to Mrs. Moore.

"Mark is only just outside, sir."

"I shall be back soon. Tell him to saddle the cob." One of Mr.
Brewer's experiments had been to give Father Daniels a horse, and to
endow the horse with fifty pounds a year, for tax, keep, house-rent,
physic, saddles, shoes, clothing, and general attendance. It was, we
May say as we pass on, an experiment which answered to perfection. The
cob's turnpikes alone remained as a grievance in Mr. Brewer's mind. He
rather cherished the grievance. Somehow it did him good. It certainly
deprived him of all feeling of merit. All thought of his own
generosity was extinguished beneath the weight of a truth that could
not be denied--"that cob is a never-ending expense to Father Daniels!"
However, this time, without a thought of the never-ending turnpike's
tax, the cob was ordered; being late, much to Mr. and Mrs. Moore's
surprise; and Father Daniels walked briskly out of the garden, down
the village seaport, past the coal-wharves, where everything looked
black and dismal, and so pursued his way on the top of the low edge of
the cliff, to a few tidy-looking houses half a mile from Clayton,
which were railed in from the turfy cliff-side, and had painted on
their ends, "Good bathing here." The houses were in a row. He knocked
at the centre one, and it was opened by a man of generally a seafaring
cast. "Mr. Dawson in?" "Yes, your reverence. His reverence, Father
Dawson, is in the parlor;" and into the parlor walked Father Daniels.
It was a short visit made to ascertain if his invalid friend could say
mass for him the next morning at a later hour than usual--the hour for
the parish mass, in fact; and to tell him why. They were dear friends
and mutual advisers. They now talked over Mrs. Erskine's letter.

"There can be no reason in the world why Miss Lorimer should not marry
Horace Erskine if she likes him, provided he is not Henry Evelyn. He
stands charged with being Henry Evelyn, and of being the doer of Henry
Evelyn's deeds. You must tell Mrs. Brewer. It is better never to tell
suspicions, if you can, instead, tell facts. In so serious a matter
you may be obliged to tell suspicions, just to keep mischief away at
the beginning. Eleanor must see the man. As to claiming him, that's
useless. She acted the unwise woman's part, and she most bear the
unwise woman's recompense. He'll find somebody to marry him, no doubt;
but no woman ought to do it; no marriage of his can be right in God's
sight. So the course in the present instance is plain enough." Yes, it
was plain enough; so Father Daniels walked back to Clayton and mounted
the cob, and rode away through the soft sweet night air, and got to
Beremouth just after ten o'clock.

"I am come to say mass for you to-morrow," he said to Mr. Brewer, who
met him in the hall. "No, I won't go into the drawing-room. I won't
see any one to-night. I am going straight to the chapel."

{194}

"Ring for night prayers then in five minutes, will you?" said Mr.
Brewer. And Father Daniels, saying "Yes," walked on through the hall,
and up the great stair-case to his own room and the chapel, which,
were side by side. In five minutes the chapel bell was rung by the
priest. Mrs. Brewer looked toward her daughter. "Mary must do as she
likes;" said Mr. Brewer, in his open honest way driving his wife
before him out of the room. There stood Horace Erskine. It was as if
all in a moment the time for the great choice had come. They were at
the door--the girl stood still. They were gone, they were crossing the
hall; she could hear Mr. Brewer's shoes on the carpet--not too late
for her to follow. Her light step will catch theirs--they may go a
little further still before the very last moment comes. Her mother or
Horace? How dearly she loved her mother, how her child's heart went
after her, all trust and love--and Horace, _did_ she love him?--love
him well enough to stay _there--there_ and _then_, at a moment that
would weigh so very heavily in the scale of good and evil, right or
wrong? If he had not been there she might have stayed, if she stayed
now that he was there, should she not stay with him--more, leave her
mother and stay with him? Thought is quick. She stood by the table;
she looked toward the door, she listened--Horace held out his
hand--"With me, Mary--with _me_!" And she was gone. Gone even while he
spoke, across the hall, up the stairs and at that chapel door just as
this last of the servants, without knowing, closed it on her. Then
Mary went to her own room just at the head of the great stair-case,
and opened the doors softly, and knelt down, keeping it open, letting
the stair-case lamp stray into the darkness just enough to show her
where she was. There she knelt till the night prayers were over, and
when Mr. Brewer passed her door, she came out, a little glad to show
them that she had not been staying down stairs with Horace. He smiled,
and put his hand inside her arm and stopped her from going down. "My
dear child," he said, "I have had the great blessing of my life given
to me in the conversion of your mother. If God's great grace, for the
sake of his own blessed mother, should fall on you, you will not
quench it, my darling. Meanwhile, I shall never have a better time
than _this_ time to say, that I feel more than ever a father to you.
That if you will go on treating me with the childlike candor and trust
that I have loved to see in you, you will make me happier than you can
ever guess at, dear child." And then he kissed her, and Minnie eased
her heart by a few sobs and tears, and her head rested on his
shoulder, and she thanked him for his love. Then Father Daniels came
out of the chapel, and advanced to where they stood. Mary had long
known the holy man. He saw how it was in an instant. "Welcome home,
Mary; you see I come soon. And now--when I am saying mass to-morrow,
stay quietly in your own room, and pray to be taught to love God. Give
yourself to him. Don't trouble about questions. His you are. Rest on
the thought--and we will wait on what may come of it. I shall remember
you at mass to-morrow. Good-night. God bless you."

"I can't come down again. My eyes are red," said Mary, to Mr. Brewer,
when they were again alone. And he laughed at her. "I'll send mamma
up," he said. And Mary went into her room. But she had taken no part
_against_ her mother; so her heart said, and congratulated itself. She
had not left her, and stayed with Horace. She had had those few words
with her step-father. That was over, and very happily too. She had
seen Father Daniels again. It was getting speedily like the old
things, and the old times, before the long visit to Scotland, where
Horace Erskine was the sun of her {195} new world. Somehow she felt
that he was losing power every moment--also she felt, a little
resentfully, that there had been things said or thought, or
insinuated, about the dear home she was loving so well, which were
unjust, untrue, unkind; nay, more, cruel, shameful!--and so wrong to
unite _her_ to such ideas; to make her a party to such thoughts. In
the midst of her resentment, her mother came in. "Nobody ever was so
charming looking," was the first thought. "How young she looks--how
much younger and handsomer than Aunt Erskine. What a warm loving
atmosphere this house always had, and _has_." The last word with the
emphasis of a perfect conviction. "And so you have made your eyes red
on papa's coat--and I had to wipe the tears off with my
pocket-handkerchief. Oh, you darling, I am sure Horace Erskine thought
we had beaten you!" Then kisses, and laughter; not quite without a tear
or two on both, sides, however. "Now, my darling, Horace has told us
his love story--and so he is very fond of you?" "Mamma, mamma, I love
you better than all the earth." Kisses, laughter, and just one or two
tears, all over again.

"My darling child, you have been some months away from us--do you
think you can quite tell your own mind on a question which is
life-long in its results? I mean, that the thing that is pleasant in
one place may not be so altogether delightful in another. I should
like you to decide so great a question while in the full enjoyment of
your own rights _here_. This is your _home_. _This_ is what you will
have to exchange for something else when you marry. You are very young
to marry--not eighteen, remember. Whenever you decide that question, I
should like you to decide it on your own ground, and by your own
mother's side."

"I wonder whether you know how wise you are?" was the question that
came in answer. "Do you know, mother, that I cried like a baby at
Hull, because I felt all you have said, and even a little more, and
thought he was unkind to press me. You know Aunt Erskine had told me;
and Horace, too, in a way--and he said at Hull he dreaded the
influence of this place, and--and--" "But there is nothing for _you_
to dread. This home is yours; and its influence is good; and all the
love you command here is your safety." Mrs. Brewer spoke boldly, and
quite with the spirit of heroism. She was standing up for her rights.
But Mr. Brewer stood at the door. "The lover wants to smoke in the
park in the moonlight. Some information just to direct his thoughts,
you little witch," for his step-child had tried to stop his mouth with
a kiss--

"Papa, I am so happy. I won't, because I can't, plan to leave
everything I love best in the world just as I come back to it." "But
you must give Erskine some kind of an answer. The poor fellow is
really very much in earnest. Come and see him." "No, I won't," said
Mary, very much as the wilful Claudia might have uttered the words.
But Mary was thinking that there was a great contrast between the
genial benevolence she had come to, and the indescribable _something_
which was _not_ benevolence in which she had lived ever since her
mother had become a Catholic. Mr. Brewer almost started. "I mean,
papa, that I must live here unmolested at least one month before I can
find out whether I am not always going to love _you_ best of all
mankind. Don't you think you could send Horace off to Scotland again
immediately?" "Bless the child! Think of the letters that have
passed--you read them, or knew of them?" "_Knew_ of them," said Mary,
nodding her head confidentially, and looking extremely naughty. "Well;
and I asked him here!" "Yes; I know that." "And you now tell me to
send him away! {196} My dear!" exclaimed Mr. Brewer, looking
appealingly at his wife. "Dearest, you must tell Mr. Erskine that Mary
really would like to be left quiet for awhile. Say so now; and
to-morrow you can suggest his going soon, and returning in a few
weeks." "And to-morrow I can have a cold and lie in bed. Can't I?"
said Mary. But now they ceased talking, and heard Horace Erskine go
out of the door to the portico. "There! he's gone. And I am sure I can
smell a cigar--and I could hate smoking, couldn't I?" Mother and
father now scolded the saucy child, and condemned her to solitude and
sleep. And when they were gone the girl put her head out of the open
window, and gazed across the spreading park, so peaceful in its
far-stretching flat, just roughened in places by the fern that had
begun to get brown under the hot sun; and then she listened to the
sound of the wind that came up in earnest whispers from the woody
corners, and the far-off forests of oak. The sound rose and fell like
waves, and the silence between those low outpourings of mysterious
sound was loaded with solemnity.

Do the whispering woods praise him; and are their prayers in the tall
trees? She was full of fancies that night. But the words Father
Daniels had said to her seemed to her to come again on the
night-breeze, and then she was quiet and still. And yet--and
yet--though she _tried_ to forget, and _tried_ to keep her mind at
peace, the spirit within would rise from its rest, and say that she
had left an atmosphere of evil speaking and uncharitableness; that
malice and harsh judgment had been hard at work, and all to poison
_home_, and to win her from it.

And while she was trying to still these troublings of the mind, Mr.
Brewer, by her mother's side, was reading for the first time Mrs.
Erskine's letter, which Father Daniels had returned. "My dear, my
dear," said Mr. Brewer, "a very improper letter. I think Mary is a
very extraordinary girl not to have been prejudiced against me. I
shall always feel grateful to her. And as to this letter, which I call
a very painful letter, don't you think we had better burn it?" And so,
by the assistance of a lighted taper, Mr. Brewer cleared that evil
thing out of his path for ever.

"Eleanor," said Lady Greystock, "how lovely this evening is. The moon
is full, and how glorious! Shall we drive by a roundabout way to
Blagden? James," speaking to the man who occupied the seat behind,
"how far is it out of our way if we go through the drive in Beremouth
Park, and come out by the West Lodge into the Blagden turnpike road?"
"It will be two miles further, my lady. But the road is very good, and
the carriage will run very light over the gravelled road in the park."
"Then we'll go." So on getting to the bottom of the street in which
Mrs. Morier lived, Lady Greystock took the road to Beremouth; and the
ponies seemed to enjoy the change, and the whole world, except those
three who were passing so pleasantly through a portion of it, seemed
to sleep beneath the face of that great moon, wearing, as all full
moons do, a sweet grave look of watching on its face.

"Isn't it glorious? Isn't it grand, this great expanse and this
perfect calm? Ah, there goes a bat; and a droning beetle on the wing
just makes one know what silence we are passing through. How pure the
air feels. Oh, what blessings we have in life--how many more than we
know of. I think of that in the still evenings often. Do you,
Eleanor?"

"Yes, Lady Greystock." But Eleanor spoke in a very calm,
business-like, convinced sort of manner; not the least infected by the
tears of tenderness and the poetical feeling that Lady Greystock had
betrayed.

{197}

"Yes, Lady Greystock And when in great moments"--"Great moments! I
like that," said Claudia--"when I have those thoughts I think of
you." "Of me?" "Yes. And I am profoundly struck by the goodness of
God, who endowed the great interest of my life with so powerful an
attraction for me. I must have either liked or disliked you. I am so
glad to love you."

"Eleanor, I wish you would tell me the story of your life." They had
passed through the lodge gates now, and were driving through Beremouth
Park. "You were not always what you are now."

"You will know it one day," said Eleanor, softly. "Oh, see how the
moon comes out from behind that great fleecy cloud; just in time to
light us as we pass through the shadows which these grand oaks cast.
What lines of silver light lie on the road before us. It is a treat to
be out in such a place on such a night as this. Stay, stay, Lady
Greystock. What is that?"

Lady Greystock pulled up suddenly, and standing full in the moonlight,
on the turf at the side of the carriage, was a tall, strong-built man.
He took off his cap with a respectful air, and said, "I beg pardon. I
did not intend to stop you. But if you will allow me I will ask your
servant a question." He addressed Lady Greystock, and did not seem to
look at Eleanor, though she was nearest to him. Eleanor had suddenly
pulled a veil over her face; but Lady Greystock had taken hers from
her hat, and her uncovered face was turned toward the man with the
moonlight full upon it. He said to the servant, "Can you tell me where
a person called Eleanor Evelyn is to be found? Mrs. Evelyn she is
probably called. I want to know where she is." Before James, who had
long known the person by his mistress's side as Mrs. Evelyn, could
speak, or recover from his very natural surprise, Eleanor herself
spoke. "Yes," she said, "Mrs. Evelyn lives not far from Marston. I
should advise you to call on Mrs. Jenifer Stanton, who lives at
Marston with Mrs. Morier. She will tell you about her." "She who lives
with Madam Morier, of course?" said the man. "Yes; the same."
"Goodnight."

"Good night," said Lady Greystock in answer, and obeying Eleanor's
whispered "Drive on," she let the ponies, longing for their stable,
break into their own rapid pace, and, soon out of the shadows, they
were in the light--the broad, calm, silent light--once more.



TO BE CONTINUED

------

{198}


Translated from Le Correspondant

A PRETENDED DERVISH IN TURKESTAN.  [Footnote 35]

BY ÉMILE JONVEAUX

  [Footnote 35: "Herman Vambéry's Travels In Central Asia." Original
  German edition. Leipzic: Brockhaus,1865. Paris: Xavier. French
  translation by M. Forgues. Paris: Hachette.]


A brilliant imagination, a sparkling and ready wit, an indomitable
energy, the happy gift of seeing and painting man and things in a
lively manner, such are the qualities which we remark at first in the
new explorer of central Asia. But he is not only a bold traveller, a
delightful story-teller, full of spirit and originality, we must
recognize also in him a learned orientalist, an eminent ethnologist
and linguist.

Born in 1832, in a small Hungarian town, he began at an early age to
study with passion the different dialects of Europe and Asia,
endeavoring to discover the relations between the idioms of the East
and West. Observing the strong affinity which exists between the
Hungarian and the Turco-Tartaric dialects, and resolved to return to
the cradle of the Altaic tongues, he went to Constantinople and
frequented the schools and libraries with an assiduity which in a few
years made of him a true effendi. But the nearer he approached the
desired end, the greater was his thirst for knowledge. Turkey began to
appear to his eyes only the vestibule of the Orient; he resolved to go
on, and to seek even in the depths of Asia the original roots of the
idioms and races of Europe.  [Footnote 36] In vain his friends
represented to him the fatigues and perils of such a tour. Infirm as
he was (a wound had made him lame), could he endure a long march over
those plains of sand where he would be obliged to fight against the
terror of tempest, the tortures of thirst--where, in fine, he might
encounter death under a thousand forms? and then, how was he to force
his way among those savage and fanatic tribes, who are afraid of
travellers; and who a few years before had destroyed Moorcraft,
Conolly, and Stoddart? Nothing could shake the resolution of Vambéry;
he felt strong enough to brave suffering, and as to the dangers which
threatened him from man, his bold and inventive spirit would furnish
him the means to avert them in calling to his assistance their very
superstitions. Was he not as well versed in the knowledge of the Koran
and the customs of Islam as the most devout disciple of the Prophet?
He would disguise himself in the costume of a pilgrim dervish, and so
would go through Asia, distributing everywhere benedictions, but
making secretly his scientific studies and remarks. His foreign
physiognomy might, it is true, raise against him some obstacles. But
he counted on his happy star, and, above all, on his presence of mind,
to succeed at last. These difficulties were renewed often in the
course of his adventurous tour; more than once the suspicious look of
some powerful tyrant was fixed upon him as if to say: "Your features
betray you; you are a European!" The extraordinary coolness, the
ingenious expedients to which Vambéry had recourse in these
emergencies, give to the story of his travels an interest which
novelists and dramatists might envy. To this powerful charm, the work
of which we give a rapid sketch unites the merit of containing {199}
the most valuable notes on the social and political relations, the
manners and character, of the races which inhabit Central Asia.



  [Footnote 36: The linguistic and ethnographical studies form a
  separate volume, which the author proposes to publish very soon.]


I.

It was early in July, 1862, that Vambéry, leaving Tabriz, began his
long and perilous journey. Persia, at this period of the year, does
not offer the enchanting spectacle which the enthusiastic descriptions
of poets lead us to imagine. This boasted country displays only to the
eye a heaven of fire, burning and desert plains, through the midst of
which sometimes advances slowly a caravan covered with dust, exhausted
by fatigue and heat. After a monotonous and painful march of fifteen
days, our traveller sees at last rising from the horizon the outlines
of a number of domes, half lost in a bluish fog. This is Teheran, the
celestial city, the seat of sovereignty, as the natives pompously call
it.

It was not easy to penetrate into this noble city; a compact crowd
filled the streets, asses, camels, mules laden with straw, barley, and
other marketable articles jostled each other in the strangest
confusion. "Take care! Take care!" vociferated the passers-by; each
one pressed, pushed, and blows of sticks and even of sabres were
distributed with surprising liberality. Vambéry succeeded in getting
safe and sound out of this tumult; he repaired to the summer residence
of the Turkish ambassador, where all the effendis were assembled under
a magnificent silken tent. Haydar Effendi, who represented the sultan
at the court of the Shah, had known the Hungarian traveller in
Constantinople; he received him most cordially, and very soon the
guests, gathered round a splendid banquet, began to call up souvenirs
of Stamboul, of the Bosphorus, and their delightful landscapes, so
different from the arid plains of Persia.

The contrast of character is not less noticeable between the two
nations who divide the supremacy of the Mohammedan world. The Ottoman,
in consequence of his close relations with the West, is more and more
penetrated by European manners and civilization, and gains by this
contact an incontestable superiority. The Persian preserves more the
primitive type of the Orientals, his mind is more poetic, his
intelligence more prompt, his courtesy more refined; but proud of an
antiquity which loses itself in the night of time, he is deeply
hostile to our sciences and arts, of which he does not comprehend the
importance. Some choice spirits, indeed, have endeavored to rejuvenate
the worm-eaten institutions of Persia, and to lead their country in
the way of progress. The pressing solicitations of the minister
Ferrukh Khan engaged, some years ago, several nations of Europe,
Belgium, Prussia, Italy, to send ambassadors in the hope of forming
political and commercial relations with Iran; but their efforts were
checked, Persia not being ripe for this regeneration.

Thanks to the generous hospitality of Haydar Effendi, Vambéry was
rested from his fatigues. Impatient to continue his journey, he wished
to take immediately the road to Herat; his friends dissuaded him from
it, because the hostilities just declared between the sultan of this
province and the sovereign of the Afghans rendered communications
impossible. The northern route was quite as impracticable; it would
have been necessary to cross during the winter months the vast deserts
of central Asia. The traveller was forced to await a more favorable
season. To remove gradually the obstacles which prevented the
realization of his plan, he began immediately to draw around him the
dervishes who every year pass through Teheran on their way to Turkey.
These pilgrims or hadjis never fail to address themselves to the
Ottoman embassy, for they are all _Sunnites_ and {200} recognize the
emperor of Constantinople as their spiritual head; Persia, on the
contrary, belongs to the sect of the _Shiites_, who may be called the
Protestants of Islam, with so profound a horror have they inspired the
faithful believers of Khiva, Bokhara, Samarcande, etc. Vambéry, who
proposed to visit all these fanatic states, had then adopted the
character of a pious and zealous Sunnite. Very soon it was noised
abroad among the pilgrims that Reschid Effendi (_nom de guerre_ of our
traveller) treated the dervishes as brothers, and that he was no doubt
himself a dervish in disguise.

In the morning of the 20th of March, 1862, four hadjis presented
themselves before him whom they regarded as the devoted protector of
their sect. They came to complain of Persian officials who, on their
return from Mecca, had imposed upon them an abusive tax long since
abolished. "We do not demand the money of his excellency the
ambassador," said he who appeared to be the chief; "the only object of
our prayers is, that in future the Sunnites may be able to visit the
holy places without being forced to endure the exactions of the
infidel Shiites." Surprised at the disinterestedness of this language,
Vambéry considered more attentively the austere countenances of his
guests. In spite of their miserable clothing, a native nobility
discovered itself in them; their words were frank, their looks
intelligent. The little caravan of which they made a part, composed in
all of twenty-four persons, was returning to Bokhara. The resolution
of the European was immediately taken; he said to the pilgrims that
for a long time he had had an extreme desire to visit Turkestan, this
hearth of Islamite piety, this holy land which contained the tombs of
so many saints. "Obedient to this sentiment," said he, "I have quitted
Turkey; for many months I have awaited in Persia a favorable
opportunity, and I thank God that have at last found companions with
whom I may be able to continue my journey and accomplish my purpose."

The Tartars were at first much astonished. How could an effendi,
accustomed to a life of luxury, resolve to encounter so many dangers,
to endure so many trials? The ardent faith of the pretended Sunnite
was hardly efficient to explain this prodigy, so the dervishes felt
themselves bound to enlighten him on the sad consequences to which
this excess of zeal might expose him. "We shall travel," they said,
"for whole weeks without encountering a single dwelling, without
finding the least rivulet where we can quench our thirst. More than
that, we shall run the risk of perishing by the robbers who infest the
desert, or of being swallowed up alive by tempests of sand. Reflect
again, seigneur effendi, we would not be the cause of your death."
These words were not without their effect, but, after coming so far,
Vambéry was not easily discouraged. "I know," said he to the pilgrims,
"that this world is an inn where we sojourn for some days, and from
which we soon depart to give place to new travellers. I pity those
restless spirits who, not content with having thought of the present,
embrace in their solicitude a long future. Take me with you, my
friends; I am weary of this kingdom of error, and I long to leave it."

Perceiving in him so firm a resolve, the chiefs of the caravan
received the pretended Reschid as a travelling companion. A fraternal
embrace ratified this engagement, and the European felt not without
some repugnance the contact of these ragged garments which long use
had impregnated with a thousand offensive odors.

Following the advice of one of the dervishes, Hadji Bilal, who
entertained a particular friendship for him, the traveller cut his
hair, adopted the Bokhariot costume, and the better to play the part
of a pilgrim, an enemy of all worldly superfluity, he left behind his
bedding, his linen, everything, in {201} short, which in the eyes of
the Tartars had the least appearance of refinement or luxury. Some
days after, he rejoined his companions in the caravansery where the
hadjis had promised to meet him. There Vambéry ascertained, to his
great surprise, that the miserable garments which had disgusted him so
much were the state robes of the dervishes; their travelling dress was
composed of numerous rags, arranged in the most picturesque manner and
fastened at the waist by a fragment of rope. Hadji Bilal, raising his
arms in the air, pronounced the prayer of departure, to which all the
assistants responded by the sacramental _amen_, placing the hand upon
the beard.

Vambéry quitted Teheran not without sadness and misgiving. In this
city, placed on the frontiers of civilization, he had found devoted
friends; now, in the company of strangers, he was about to face at
once the perils of the desert and those, more to be feared, which
threatened him from the cruelty of the inhabitants of the cities. He
was roused from these reflections by joyous ballads sung by many of
the pilgrims, others related the adventures of their wandering life or
boasted of the charms of their native country, the fertile gardens of
Mergolan and Khokand. Sometimes their patriotic and religious
enthusiasm led them to intone verses from the Koran, in which Vambéry
never failed to join with a zeal which did honor to the strength of
his lungs. He had then the satisfaction of observing the dervishes
look at one another and say, in an undertone, that Hadji Rescind was a
true believer, who, without doubt, thanks to the good examples before
his eyes, would soon walk in the steps of the saints.

At the end of five days the pilgrims reached the mountain of
Mazendran, the western slope of which extends its base to the Caspian
sea. Here the sterility of the country yields to the freshest, the
richest vegetation; splendid forests, prairies covered with thick
grass, extend themselves everywhere before the charmed eye of the
traveller, and from time to time the murmur of a waterfall delights
his ear. The sight of this smiling country drove away all the sad
presentiments which had possessed the soul of Vambéry; mounted upon a
gently-treading mule, he arrives full of confidence at Karatèpe, where
he is to embark upon the Caspian sea. There an Afghan of high birth,
whom the pretended Reschid had met upon his journey, and who knew the
consideration which he enjoyed at the Ottoman embassy, offered him the
hospitality of his house. The news of the arrival of pilgrims had
collected a great number of visitors; squatted along the walls of the
houses, they fixed upon Vambéry looks of mingled distrust and
curiosity. "He is not a dervish," said some, "you can see that by his
features and complexion." "The hadjis," replied others, "pretend that
he is a near relation of the Turkish ambassador." All then, shaking
their heads with a mysterious air, said in an undertone, "Only Allah
can know what this foreigner is after." During this time, Vambéry
pretended to be plunged in a profound meditation; in which as a
Protestant, he committed a grave imprudence, for the Orientals, liars
and hypocrites themselves, cannot believe in frankness, and always
infer the contrary of whatever is told them. These suspicions,
moreover, had nearly frustrated at the outset the bold designs of the
European. The captain of the Afghan ship, employed in provisioning the
Russian garrison, had consented for a small sum to take all the hadjis
in his ship across the arm of the sea which divides Karatèpe from
Ashourada. But learning the reports which were in circulation
regarding our traveller, he refused to permit him to embark; "his
attachment for the Russians not allowing him," he said, "to facilitate
the secret designs of an emissary of Turkey." In vain Hadji Bilal,
Hadji Salih, and others of the caravan endeavored to change his {202}
resolution. All was useless, and Vambéry was doubting whether he
should not be forced to retrace his steps, when his companions
generously declared that they would not proceed without him.

Toward evening, the dervishes learned that a Turcoman named Yakaub
proposed from a religious motive, and without desiring any recompense,
to take them in his boat. The motive of this unexpected kindness was
very soon discovered. Yakaub, having drawn Vambéry apart, confessed to
him in an embarrassed tone, which contrasted singularly with his wild
and energetic physiognomy, that he nourished a profound and hopeless
passion for a young girl of his tribe; a Jew, a renowned magician who
resided at Karatèpe, had promised to prepare an infallible talisman if
the unhappy lover were able to procure for him thirty drops of essence
of rose direct from Mecca. "You hadjis," added the Tartar, casting
down his eyes, "never quit the holy places without bringing away some
perfume; and as you are the youngest of the caravan, I hope that you
will comprehend my vexation better than the others, and that you will
help me." The companions of Vambéry had in fact several bottles of the
essence, of which they gave a part to the Turkoman, and this precious
gift threw the son of the desert into a genuine ecstasy.

The voyagers passed two days on a _kèseboy_ a boat provided with a
mast and two unequal sails, which the Tartars use for the transport of
cargoes. It was almost night when Yakaub cast anchor before Ashourada,
the most southerly of the Russian possessions in Asia. The czar
maintains constantly on this coast steamers charged with repressing
the depredations of the Turkomen, which formerly inspired terror
throughout the province. All natives before approaching the port of
Ashourada must be provided with a regular passport, and must submit to
the inspection of the Russian functionaries. This visit caused Vambéry
some alarm; would not the sight of his features, a little too
European, provoke from the Russian agent an indiscreet exclamation of
surprise? and would not his incognito be betrayed? Happily, on the day
of their arrival Easter was celebrated in the Greek Church, and, on
account of this solemnity, the examination was a mere formality. The
pilgrims continued their voyage, and landed the next day at
Gomushtèpe, a distance of only three leagues from Ashourada.



II.

The hadjis were received by a chief named Khandjan, to whom they had
letters of recommendation. The noble Turkoman was a man of about forty
years; his fine figure, his dress of an austere simplicity, the long
beard which fell upon his breast, gave him a dignified and imposing
air. He advanced toward his guests, embraced them several times, and
led the way to his tent. The news of the arrival of dervishes had
already spread among the inhabitants; men, women, and children threw
themselves before the pilgrims, disputing with one another the honor
of touching their garments, believing that they thus obtained a share
in the merits of these saintly personages. "These first scenes of
Asiatic life," says Vambéry, "astonished me so much that I was
constantly doubting whether I should first examine the singular
construction of their tents of felt, or admire the beauty of the
women, enveloped in their long silken tunics, or yield to the desire
manifested by the arms and hands extended toward me. Strange
spectacle! Young and old, without distinction of sex or rank, pressed
eagerly round these hadjis covered yet with the holy dust of Mecca.
Fancy my amazement when I saw women of great beauty, and even young
girls, rush through the crowd to embrace me. These demonstrations of
sympathy and respect, however, became fatiguing when we {203} arrived
at the tent of the chief _ishan_ (priest), where our little caravan
assembled. Then began a singular contest. Each one solicited as a
precious boon the right of receiving under his tent the poor
strangers. I had heard of the boasted hospitality of the nomad tribes
of Asia, but I never could have imagined the extent of it. Khandjan
put an end to the dispute by himself distributing among the
inhabitants his coveted guests. He reserved only Hadji Bilal and
myself, who were considered the chiefs of the caravan, and we followed
him to his _ooa_ (tent)."

A comfortable supper, of boiled fish and curdled milk, awaited the two
pilgrims. The touching kindness with which he had been received, the
comfort by which he was surrounded, filled Vambéry with a joy which
accorded ill with the gravity of his assumed character of dervish. His
friend Hadji Bilal felt bound to advise him upon this subject. "You
have remarked already," said he, "that my companions and I distribute
_fatiha_ (blessings) to every one. You must follow our example. I know
it is not the custom in _Roum_ (Turkey), but the Turkomen expect it
and desire it. You will excite great surprise if, giving yourself out
for a dervish, you do not take completely the character of one. You
know the formula of this blessing; you must, then, put on a serious
face and bestow your benedictions. You can add to them _nefes_ (holy
breathings) when you are called to the sick; but do not forget to
extend at the same time your hand, for every one knows that the
dervishes subsist by the piety of the faithful, and they never leave a
tent without receiving some little present."

The Hungarian traveller profited so well by the advice of Hadji Bilal
that, five days after his arrival at Gomushtèpe, a crowd of believers
and sick people besieged him from the moment that he rose, soliciting,
one his blessing, another his sacred breathing, a third the talisman
that was to cure him. Thanks to the complaisance and marvellous tact
which characterized him, Vambéry henceforth identified himself
completely with the venerable personage of Hadji Reschid, and never
during a period of two years escaped him the smallest gesture or word
which could possibly betray him. His reputation for sanctity increased
every day, and procured for him numerous offerings, which he received
with a truly Mussulman gravity. This increasing confidence permitted
the European to form with the Turkomen frequent intimacies, of which
he profited to study the social relations of these tribes, to discover
the innumerable ramifications of which they are composed, and to form
an exact idea of the bonds which unite elements in appearance so
heterogeneous and confused. But he was obliged to exercise great
prudence; a dervish, wholly preoccupied with heavenly things, never
ought to ask the smallest question in regard to affairs purely
worldly. Fortunately, the Tartars, so terrible and so impetuous, when
they have completed their forays, pass the remainder of their time in
absolute idleness, and then they amuse themselves with interminable
political and moral discussions. Vambéry, dropping his beads with an
exterior of pious revery, lent an attentive ear to all these
conversations, of which he never lost the slightest detail.

One thing which surprised him among the Turkomen was to see that if
all are too proud to obey, no one seems ambitious to command. "We are
a people without a head," they say; "and we wish no head. Every one is
king in our country," Yet, notwithstanding the absence of all
restraint, of all authority, these savage robbers, the terror of their
neighbors, live together amicably, and we find among them fewer
robberies and murders, and more morality than among the majority of
the Asiatic people. {204} This is explained by the action of an
all-powerful law, which exercises over the inhabitants of the desert
more empire than religion itself; we speak of the _Deb_, that is to
say, the custom, the traditions. An invisible sovereign, obeyed
everywhere, it sanctions robbery and slavery, and all the
prescriptions of Islam fall to the ground before it. "How," asked
Vambéry one day of a Tartar famous for his robberies and his great
piety, "how can you sell your Sunnite brother, when the Prophet has
said expressly: Every Mussulman is free?" "Bah!" he replied, "the
Koran, this book of God, is more precious than a man, and yet you buy
and sell it; Joseph, the son of Jacob, was a prophet, and yet they
sold him, and was he ever the worse for it?" The influence of Deb
extends throughout central Asia; in converting themselves to the
worship of Mohammed, the nomad tribes have taken only the exterior
form; they adored formerly the sun, the fire, and other natural
phenomena--they personify them to-day under the name of Allah.

Many ancient and singular customs are found everywhere in central
Asia; marriage is accompanied by characteristic rites. The young girl,
in her rich bridal costume, bravely bestrides a furious courser, whom
she urges to his utmost speed; with one hand she holds the rein, with
the other she presses to her bosom a lamb just killed, which the
bridegroom, mounted also on a fast horse, endeavors to take from her.
All the young people of the tribe take a part in the eager pursuit,
and the sandy desert then becomes the theatre of this fantastic
contest.

The ceremonies prescribed for funerals are not less singular. When a
member of a Turkoman family dies, the mourners come every day for an
entire year, at the hour when the deceased expired, to utter sobs and
cries, in which the relations are bound to join. This custom seems to
prove that the Tartars, superior in this respect to civilized people,
consecrate to their dead a remembrance more profound and more durable;
but, in fact, one must abate a little of this praise; the tears and
prolonged mourning are only a matter of form, and Vambéry often could
hardly suppress a smile when he saw the head of the family tranquilly
smoking his pipe or enjoying his repast, interrupting himself now and
then to join the noisy lamentations of the choir. It is the same with
the ladies; they cry, they weep in the most lugubrious fashion,
without ceasing to turn the wheel or rock the cradle. But what then?
is not human nature the same everywhere, and do the Turkoman ladies
differ so much from our inconsolable widows, to whom, as La Fontaine
says with good-natured malice, "mourning very soon becomes an
ornament."

Vambéry, venerated as one of the elect of the prophet, often passed
his evenings among these Tartar families. Then, surrounded by a large
audience, the troubadour, accompanying himself upon the guitar,
chanted the poetry of Koroghi, of Aman Mollah, or more frequency of
Makhdumkuli, the Ossian of the desert, whom his compatriots regard as
a demigod. This holy personage, who had never studied in the colleges
of Bokhara, received the gift of all science by a divine inspiration.
He was one day transported in a dream to Mecca, in presence of the
Prophet and of the first caliphs. Seized with respect and fear at the
sight of this august assembly, he prostrated himself, and, throwing
around him a timid look, perceived Omar, the patron of the Turkomen,
who, with a benevolent air, signed him to approach. He received then
the benediction of the Prophet, a light blow on the forehead, which
awakened him. From this moment a celestial poesy flowed from his lips;
he composed heroic hymns which the Tartars regard to-day as the most
beautiful productions of the human mind.

{205}

About this time, a mollah having undertaken a trip to Atabeg and the
Göklen, our traveller seized the occasion to examine the Greek ruins
which perpetuate among these savage people the remembrance of the
conquests of Alexander. He recognized the wall built by the Macedonian
hero to oppose a barrier to the menacing stream of the desert tribes.
The legend of the Turkomen shows how the oriental imagination clothes
the events of history with poetic and religious fiction. Alexander,
they say, was a profoundly religious Mussulman; and as the saints
exercise all power over the invisible world, he commanded the spirits
of darkness, and it was by his order that the genii built the sacred
wall.

Notwithstanding the generous hospitality of Khandjan, Vambéry began to
get tired of his residence at Gomushtèpe. The continual raids of the
Turkomen peopled their tents with a crowd of Persian slaves, whose
tortures revolted any one who had a spark of humanity. These unhappy
beings, surprised for the most part in a nocturnal attack, were
dragged from their families, and loaded with heavy chains which
betrayed the slightest movement and hindered every attempt at flight.
Khandjan himself possessed two young Iranians of eighteen and twenty
years, and, singularly enough, this man, so good and so hospitable,
overwhelmed these young men with injuries and insults on the slightest
pretext. Our traveller could not, without betraying himself, manifest
the least compassion for these poor slaves. Notwithstanding, the pity
which they sometimes surprised in his looks induced them to address
him. They begged him to write to their relatives, imploring them to
sell cattle, gardens, and dwellings in order to release them from this
frightful captivity; for the Turkomen often maltreat their prisoners
merely in the hope of obtaining a great ransom for them.

Vambéry then learned with joy that the khan of Khiva, for whom the
physicians had prescribed the use of buffalo's milk, had sent his
chief of caravans to Gomushtèpe to buy two pair of these animals, in
order to have them acclimated in his own country. To join an officer
who knew the invisible paths of the desert better than the most
experienced guides, was an unexpected good fortune for the pilgrims,
and Vambéry urged Hadji Bilal to improve so good an opportunity; but
Hadji Bilal was surprised at the impatience of his friend, and
remarked that it was extremely childish. "It is of no use to be in a
hurry," said he; "you will remain on the banks of the Gorghen until
destiny shall decree that you quench your thirst at another river, and
it is impossible to tell when the will of Allah will be manifested."
This answer was not particularly satisfactory to Vambéry; but he could
not attempt the desert alone; he was forced then to submit to the
oriental slowness of his companions.

The little caravan was to return to Etrek, the capital of a tribe of
warriors, to wait until the chief of caravans should join it. One of
the most renowned chiefs of this tribe came just at this time to
Gomushtèpe. His name was Kulkhan-_le-Pir_ (chief). His sombre and wild
physiognomy, little calculated to inspire confidence, never brightened
at the sight of the pious pilgrims; nevertheless, out of regard for
Khandjan, he consented to take the hadjis under his protection,
recommending to them to be ready to start with him in two days, for he
awaited in order to return to his tent at Etrek only the arrival of
his son, who had gone on a raid. Kulkhan spoke of this expedition with
the paternal pride which makes the heart of a European beat in
learning that his son has covered himself with glory on the field of
battle. Some hours later, the young man, followed by seven Turkomen,
appeared on the banks of the Gorghen. A great crowd had gathered, and
admiration was painted upon every face when the proud cavaliers threw
themselves with their {206} prey, ten magnificent horses, into the
midst of the river, which they crossed swimming. They landed
immediately, and even Vambéry, in spite of the contempt with which
these acts of pillage inspired him, could not take his eyes from these
bold warriors, who, in their short riding-habit, the chest covered
with their abundant curling hair, gaily laid down their arms.

About noon the next day the traveller quitted Gomushtèpe, and was
escorted for a considerable distance by Khandjan, who wished to fulfil
punctually all the duties of hospitality. It was not without heartfelt
regret that he parted from this devoted host, from whom he had
received so many marks of interest. The pilgrims travelled toward the
north-east; their road, which led them from the coast, was bordered by
many mounds raised by the Turkomen in memory of their illustrious
dead. When a warrior dies, every man of his tribe is bound to throw at
least seven shovelsful of earth upon his grave. So these mausoleums
often appear like little hills. This custom must be very ancient among
the Asiatics; the Huns brought it into Europe, and we find traces of
it to-day in Hungary. Half a league from Gomushtèpe the little caravan
reached magnificent prairies, the herbage of which, knee-high, exhaled
a delicious fragrance. But these blessings of nature are thrown away
upon the Turkomen, who, wholly occupied in robbery and pillage, never
dream of enriching themselves by peaceful, pastoral occupations.
"Alas!" thought our European, "what charming villages might shelter
themselves in this fertile and beautiful country. When will the busy
hum of life replace the silence of death which broods over these
regions?"

Approaching Etrek, the landscape suddenly changes. This lonely verdure
is exchanged for the salt lands of the desert, whose rank odor and
repulsive appearance seem to warn the traveller of the sufferings
which await him in these immense solitudes. Little by little Vambéry
felt the ground become soft under foot; his camel slipped, buried
himself at each step, and gave such evident signs of intending to
throw him in the mud, that he thought it prudent to dismount without
waiting for a more pressing invitation. After tramping an hour and a
half in the mire the pilgrims reached Kara Sengher (black wall), where
rose the tent of their host, Kulkhan-le-Pir. The district of Etrek is,
to the populations of Mazendran and Taberistan, a by-word of terror
and malediction. "May you be carried to Etrek," is the most terrible
imprecation which fury can extort from a Persian. One cannot pass
before the tents of the Turkomen of Etrek without seeing the unhappy
Iranian slaves, wasted by fatigue and privations, and bent under the
weight of their chains. But the nomad tribes of Tartary offer a
singular mixture of vice and virtue, of justice and lawlessness, of
benevolence and cruelty. Vambéry, in his character of dervish, made
frequent visits among the Tartars. He always returned loaded with
presents and penetrated with gratitude for their charitable
hospitality. To this sentiment succeeded a profound horror at the
barbarous treatment inflicted upon their slaves. At Gomushtèpe such a
spectacle had already revolted him; and yet this city, compared to
Etrek, might be considered the _Ultima Thule_ of humanity and
civilization.

One day, returning to his dwelling, Vambéry met one of the slaves of
Kulkhan, who, in a piteous tone, begged him to give him to drink. This
unfortunate being had labored ever since morning in a field of melons,
exposed to the heat of a burning sun, without any other food than salt
fish, and without a drop of water to quench his thirst. The sight of
this poor sufferer, and of the cheers which ran down over his thick
black beard, made Vambéry forget the danger {207} to which an
imprudent compassion might expose himself. He gave his bottle to the
slave, who drank eagerly and fled, not without having passionately
thanked his benefactor.

Another time the European and Hadji Bilal called on a rich Tartar,
who, learning that Vambéry was a disciple of the Grand Turk, cried,
with great glee, "I will show you a spectacle which will delight you;
we know how well the Russians and the Turks agree, and I will show you
one o£ your enemies in chains." He then called a poor Muscovite slave,
whose pallid features and expression of profound sadness touched
Vambéry to the heart. "Go and kiss the feet of this effendi," said the
Turkoman to the prisoner. The poor fellow was about to obey, but our
traveller stopped him by a gesture, saying that he had that morning
begun a great purification and that he did not wish to be defiled by
the touch of an infidel.

At last a messenger came to inform the pilgrims that the chief of
caravans was about to leave, and that he would meet them at noon the
next day on the shore opposite Etrek. The hadjis therefore began their
journey, escorted by Kulkhan-le-Pir, who, thanks to the introduction
of Kulkhan, neglected nothing for the security of his guests. Now, as
these districts are infested by brigands and very dangerous for
caravans, the protection of this _graybeard_ was very useful to the
travellers. Kulkhan was, in fact, the spiritual guide and grand
high-priest of these fierce robbers; he united to a character
naturally ferocious a consummate hypocrisy which made him a curious
type of the desert chiefs. One ought to have heard this renowned
bandit, who had ruined so many families, explaining to his assembled
disciples the rites prescribed for purifications, and telling them how
a good Mussulman ought to cut his moustache, etc. A sort of pious
ecstasy, a perfect serenity, the fruit of a good conscience, was
visible meanwhile upon the countenances of these men, as if they
already enjoyed a foretaste of the delight of Mohammed's paradise.

The chief of caravans now joined the pilgrims. Vambéry desired very
much to win the good graces of so important a man, and was, therefore,
much alarmed when he saw that this dignitary, who had received the
other pilgrims with marks of great respect, treated him with great
coldness. Hadji Bilal eagerly undertook the defence of his friend.
"All this," he cried angrily, "is no doubt the work of that miserable
Mehemmed, who, even while we were in Etrek, tried to make us believe
that our Hadji Reschid, so holy and so learned in the Koran, was a
European in disguise! The Lord, pardon my sins!" This was the favorite
exclamation of the good dervish in his moments of greatest agitation.
"Be patient," he added, addressing his companion, "once arrived at
Khiva, I will set this opium-eater right." Mehemmed was an Afghan
merchant, born at Kandahar, who had frequently met Europeans. He
thought he discovered in Vambéry a secret agent travelling, no doubt,
with great treasure, and he hoped, by frightening him, to extort from
him considerable sums; but the European was too cunning to be taken in
this trap, and he found a secure protection in his reputation for
sanctity and in the generous friendship of Hadji Bilal.

This incident had no immediate consequences. The chief of caravans,
who was now chief of the united caravans, ordered each pilgrim
carefully to fill his bottle, for they would travel now many days
without meeting any spring. Vambéry followed the example of his
companions, but with a negligent air which Hadji Salih thought himself
bound to reprove. "You do not know yet," said he, "that in the desert
each drop of water becomes a drop of life. The thirsty traveller
watches over his bottle as a miser over his treasure; it is as
precious to him as his eye-sight."

They travelled the whole day over a sandy soil, at times slightly
undulating, but where it was impossible to discover the least trace of
a path. The sun alone indicated their course, and during the night the
_kervanbashi_ (chief of caravans) guided himself by the polar star,
called by the Turkomen the iron pin, because it is motionless.
Gradually the sand gave place to a hard and flinty soil, on which
through the silent night resounded the foot-fall of the camels. At
day-break the caravan stopped to take some hours of rest, and
presently Vambéry perceived the kervanbashi engaged eagerly in
conversation with Hadji Bilal and Hadji Salih, the subject of which
their looks, constantly directed toward him, sufficiently indicated.
He pretended not to observe it, and occupied himself with renewed
earnestness in turning over the pages of the Koran. Some moments after
his friends came to him, and said "his foreign features excited the
distrust of the kervanbashi, for this man had already incurred the
anger of the king because he had some years before conducted to Khiva
a European, whom this single journey had enabled to put down on paper
with diabolical art all the peculiarities of the country, and he never
should be able to save his head if he committed another such blunder.
It is with great difficulty," added the dervishes, "that we have
persuaded him to take you with us, and he has made it a condition,
first, that you shall consent to be searched, and secondly, that you
will swear, by the tomb of the Prophet, that you will not carry about
you secretly a _wooden pen_ as these detestable Europeans always do."

These words, we may imagine, were not very agreeable to Vambéry, but
he had too much self-control to permit his agitation to be seen.
Pretending to be very angry, he turned toward Hadji Salih, and, loud
enough to be heard by the chief of caravans, replied, "Hadji, you have
seen me in Teheran, and you know who I am; say to the kervanbashi that
an honest man ought not to listen to the gossip of an infidel." This
pretended indignation produced the desired effect; no one afterward
expressed a doubt in regard to the pilgrim. Vambéry could not resolve
to keep his promise, and, whatever it might have cost him to deceive
his friends, he continued to make in secret some rapid notes. "Let one
imagine," says he, to excuse himself, "the latter disappointment of a
traveller who arriving at last, after long efforts and great peril,
before a spring for which he has eagerly sighed, finds himself
forbidden to moisten his parched lips."

The caravan advanced slowly through the desert; in compassion for the
camels, who suffered much from the sand, upon which they could hardly
walk, the pilgrims dismounted when the road became very bad. These
forced marches were a severe trial to Vambéry on account of his
lameness; but he endeavored to forget, his fatigue and to take a part
in the noisy conversations of his companions. The nephew of the
kervanbashi, a Turkoman of Khiva, entertained a particular affection
for him; full of respect for his character as dervish, and won by the
benevolence of his looks, he took great pleasure in talking to him of
his _tent_, the only manner in which the prescriptions of the Prophet
permitted him to speak of the young wife whom he had left at home.
Separated for a whole year from the object of his tenderness, Khali
Mallah appealed to the science of the pretended hadji to pierce the
veil which absence had placed between himself and his family. Vambéry
gravely took the Koran, pronounced some cabalistic words, closed his
eyes, and opened the book precisely at a passage in which women are
spoken of. He interpreted the sacred text so as to draw from it an
oracle sufficiently vague, at which the young Tartar was transported
with joy.

On the 27th of May the travellers reached the table-lands of
Korentaghi, a chain of mountains surrounded by vast valleys, to the
west of which extend ruins probably of Greek origin. {209} The nomads
who inhabit this district came in crowds to visit the caravan, and for
some hours the encampment had the appearance of a bazaar. The
merchants and drovers who accompanied the kervanbashi concluded
important bargains with the natives, mostly on credit; but Vambéry was
surprised to see the debtor, instead of giving the note as a guarantee
to the creditor, tranquilly put it in his own pocket. Our European
could not refrain from speaking of this, and he received from one of
the merchants this answer of a patriarchal simplicity: "What should I
do with the paper? it would not do me any good; but the debtor
requires it in order to remind him of the amount of the debt and of
the time when it is to be paid."

Two days after a dark blue cloud appeared in the horizon toward the
north; this was Petit-Balkan, the elevation, the picturesque
landscapes, and the rich mineral resources of which are celebrated in
all Turkoman poetry. The travellers passed along the chain of
mountains, perceiving here and there green and fertile prairies, and
yet the profound solitude of these beautiful valleys filled the soul
with a vague sadness. Beyond commences the Great Desert, where the
traveller marches for many weeks without finding a drop of water to
quench his thirst, or a tree to shelter him from the rays of the sun.
In winter the cold is intense, in summer the heat; but the two seasons
present an equal danger, and frequent tempests swallow up whole
caravans under drifts of snow or whirlwinds of sand.

"In proportion," says Vambéry, "as the outlines of Balkan disappear
from the horizon, the limitless desert shows itself, terrible and
majestic. I had often thought that imagination and enthusiasm enter
largely into the profound impression produced by the sight of these
immense solitudes. I deceived myself. In my own beloved country I have
often seen vast plains of sand; in Persia I have crossed the salt
desert; but how different were my feelings to-day! It is not
imagination, it is nature herself who lights the sacred torch of
inspiration. The interminable hills of sand, the utter absence of
life, the frightful calm of death, the purple tints of the sun at his
rising and setting, all warn us that we are in the Great Desert, all
fill our souls with an inexpressible emotion."

After travelling many days, the provision of water beginning to be
exhausted, Vambéry knew for the first time the horrible tortures of
thirst. "Alas!" he thought, "saving and blessed water, the most
precious of all the elements, how little have I known your value! what
would I not give at this moment for a few drops of your divine
substance!" The unfortunate traveller had lost his appetite, he
experienced an excessive prostration, a devouring fire consumed his
veins, he sank upon the ground in a state of complete exhaustion.
Suddenly he heard resound the magic words, "Water! water!" He looked
up and saw the kervanbashi distribute to each of his companions two
glasses of the precious liquid. The good Turkoman had the habit
whenever he crossed the desert of hiding a certain quantity of water,
which he distributed to the members of his caravan when their
sufferings became intolerable. This unexpected succor revived the
strength of Vambéry, and he acknowledged the justice of the Tartar
proverb: "The drop of water given in the desert to the traveller dying
of thirst, effaces a hundred, years of sin."

The next day numerous tracks of gazelles and wild asses announced to
the travellers that springs were to be found in the neighborhood;
thither they hastened to fill their bottles, and, relieved now from
all anxiety lest water should fail them before their arrival at Khiva,
they gave themselves up to transports of joyful enthusiasm. Toward
evening they reached the table-land of Kaflankir, an island {210} of
verdure in the midst of a sea of sand. Its fertile soil, covered with
luxuriant vegetation, gives asylum to a great number of animals; two
deep trenches surround this oasis, which the Turkomen say are ancient
branches of the Oxus. The caravan, instead of going directly to Khiva,
made a circuit to avoid a tribe of marauders; the first of June it
arrived within sight of the great Tartar city, which, with its domes,
its minarets, its smiling gardens, the luxuriant vegetation which
surrounds it, appeared to the travellers, worn by the monotony of the
desert, an epitome of the delights of nature and of civilization.



III.

On entering the city their admiration was somewhat lessened. Khiva is
composed of three or four thousand houses, constructed of earth,
scattered about in all directions and surrounded by a wall, also of
clay, ten feet high. But at every step the pious Khivites offered them
bread and dried fruits, begging their blessing. For a long time Khiva
had not received within its walls so great a number of hadjis; every
face expressed astonishment and admiration, and on all sides resounded
acclamations of welcome. Entering into the bazaar, Hadji Bilal intoned
a sacred canticle, in which his companions joined; the voice of
Vambéry predominated; and his emotion was very great when he saw the
surrounding crowd rush toward him, to kiss his hands, his feet covered
with dust, and even the rags which composed his dress.

According to the usage of the country, the travellers returned
immediately to the caravan which served as custom-house. The principal
_mehrum_ (royal chamberlain) fulfilled the functions of director;
hardly had he addressed the usual questions to the kervanbashi when
the miserable Afghan before spoken of, furious at having been thwarted
in his avaricious designs, advancing, cried in a tone of raillery: "We
have brought to Khiva three interesting quadrupeds, and a biped who is
not less so." The first part of the expression, of course, alluded to
the buffaloes which had been brought from Gomushtèpe; the second was
pointed at Vambéry. Instantly all eyes were fixed upon him, and he
could distinguish among the murmurs of the crowd the words: "Spy,
European, Russian." Imagine his agitation! The khan of Khiva, a cruel
fanatic, had the reputation of reducing to slavery or destroying by
horrible tortures all suspected strangers. In this emergency Vambéry
was not intimidated; often he had considered the possible consequences
of his bold enterprise, and looked death in the face.

The mehrum, lifting his brows, considered the foreign countenance of
the unknown, and rudely ordered him to approach. Vambéry was about to
reply when Hadji Bilal, who did not know what was going on, eagerly
entered to introduce his friend to the Khivite officer; the exterior
of the Turkoman dervish inspired so much confidence that suspicions
were instantly changed into respectful excuses.

This peril avoided, Vambéry could not deny that his European features
raised in his way every moment new difficulties; he must have a
powerful protector always ready to defend him. He presently remembered
that an important man, named Shukrullah Bay, who had been for ten
years ambassador to the sultan from the khan of Khiva, must know
Constantinople and every official of that city. Vambéry thought he
should find in this dignitary the support which he desired, and he
repaired the same day to the _medusse_ (college) of Mohammed Emin
Khan, where he resided. Informed that an effendi, recently arrived
from Stamboul, wished to see him, the ex-minister immediately
appeared. His surprise, already very great, was not diminished when he
saw enter a mendicant covered with {211} rags and frightfully
disfigured; but after exchanging a few words with his strange visitor,
his distrust vanished; he addressed him question after question
regarding his friends whom he had left at Constantinople, and, from
the mere pleasure of hearing him speak of them, he forgot to raise a
doubt regarding the supposed quality of the traveller. "In the name of
God, my dear effendi," said he at last, "how could you quit such a
paradise as Stamboul to come into our frightful country?" The
pretended Reschid sighed deeply. "Ah, pir!" he replied, putting a hand
upon his eyes in sign of obedience. Shukrullah was too good a
Mussulman not to understand these words; he was persuaded that his
guest belonged to some order of dervishes, and had been charged by his
_pir_ (spiritual chief) with some mission which a disciple was bound
to accomplish even at the peril of his life. Without asking any
farther explanations, he merely inquired the name of the order to
which Vambéry was attached. Vambéry mentioned the Nakish bendi,
[Footnote 37] implying that Bokhara was the end of his pilgrimage, and
he retired, leaving the Khivite minister marvelling at his learning,
his wit, his sanctity, and his extensive acquaintance.

  [Footnote 37: A celebrated order which originated in Bokhara, where
  its principal establishment still exists.]

The khan, hearing of the arrival of a Turk, the first who had ever
come from Constantinople to Khiva, sent in all haste a _yasoul_
(officer of the court) to give the European a small present and inform
him that the _hazret_ (sovereign) would give him audience the same
evening, for he greatly desired to receive the blessing of a dervish
born in the holy land. Our voyager, therefore, accompanied by
Shukrullah Bay, who made it a point to present him, repaired to the
palace of the formidable monarch. We will leave Vambéry to relate
himself this curious interview:

"It was the hour of public audience, and the principal entrance and
halls of the palace were filled with petitioners of every rank, sex,
and age. The crowd respectfully made way at our approach, and my ear
was agreeably tickled when I heard the women say to each other: 'See
the holy dervish from Constantinople; he comes to bless our khan, and
may Allah hear his prayer!' Shukrullah Bay had taken care to make it
known that I was very intimate with the highest dignitaries in
Stamboul, and that nothing should be omitted to render my reception
most solemn. After waiting a few moments, two yasouls came to take me
by the arm, and, with the most profound demonstrations of respect,
conducted me in the presence of Seid Mehemmed Khan.

"The prince was seated upon a sort of platform, his left arm resting
upon a velvet cushion, his right hand holding a golden sceptre.
According to the prescribed ceremonial, I raised my two hands, a
gesture which was immediately imitated by the khan and others present;
then I recited a verse from the Koran, followed by a prayer much used
beginning with the words: '_Allahuma Rabbina_.' I concluded with an
_amen_, which I pronounced with a resounding voice, holding my beard
with both hands. '_Kaboul bolgay!_' (may thy prayer be heard),
responded in unison all the assistants. Then I approached the
sovereign and exchanged with him the _mousafeha_,  [Footnote 38] after
which I retired a few steps. The khan addressed me several questions
regarding the object of my journey, and my impressions in crossing the
Great Desert.

  [Footnote 38: Salute prescribed by the Koran, during which the right
  and left hand of each party are placed flatly one upon the other. ]

"'My sufferings have been great,' I replied, 'but my reward is greater
yet, since I am permitted to behold the splendor of your glorious
majesty. I return thanks to Allah for this favor, and I see in it a
good omen for the rest of my pilgrimage.'

{212}

"The king, evidently flattered, asked how long I proposed to remain at
Khiva, and if I were provided with the necessary funds for pursuing my
journey.

"'My intention,' I replied, 'is to visit before my departure the tombs
of the saints who repose in the vicinity of Khiva. As to the means of
pursuing my journey, I give myself no anxiety. We dervishes occupy
ourselves very little with such trifles. The sacred breathing which I
have received from the chief of my order suffices, moreover, to
sustain me four or five days without any other nourishment; therefore
the only prayer which I address to heaven is that your majesty may
live a hundred and twenty years.'

"My words had gained the good graces of the khan; he offered me twenty
ducats, and promised to make me a present of an ass. I declined the
first of these presents, because poverty is the necessary attribute of
a dervish; but I accepted the animal with gratitude, not without
piously remarking that the precept of the Prophet requires that a
white ass should be used for pilgrimages. The king assured me that I
should have one of this color, and he put an end to the interview,
begging me to accept at least during my short residence in his capital
two _tenghe_ (1 franc 50 centimes) a day for my maintenance.

"I retired joyfully, receiving at every step the respectful homage of
the crowd, and regained my own dwelling. Once alone, I uttered a sigh
of satisfaction, thinking of the danger which I had incurred, and the
happy manner in which I had escaped it. This dissolute khan, savage
and brutal tyrant, had treated me with unexampled kindness; I was now
free from all fear, and at liberty to go where I liked. During the
entire evening, the audience of the khan was present to my mind; I saw
again the Asiatic despot, with his pallid countenance, his eyes deeply
sunk in the orbits, his beard sprinkled with white, his white lips and
trembling voice. So, I thought, Providence has permitted that
fanaticism itself should serve as a bit to this suspicious and cruel
tyrant."

It was soon understood in Khiva that the dervish of Constantinople was
in great favor with the khan, therefore the notables of the city
delayed not to overwhelm him with visits and invitations; the
_oulemas_ especially, anxious to enlighten themselves with his light,
asked him a thousand questions regarding various religious
observances. Vambéry, repressing his impatience, was obliged to spend
whole hours instructing these fervent disciples on the manner of
washing the feet, the hands, the face; explaining to them how, not to
violate any precept, the true believers ought to sit down, to rise, to
walk, sleep, etc. The pretended pilgrim, who was supposed to be a
native of Stamboul, venerated seat of religion, passed for an
infallible oracle, for the sultan of Constantinople and the grandees
of his court are regarded at Khiva as the most accomplished observers
of the law. They there represent the Turkish emperor as _coiffé_ in a
turban at least fifty or sixty yards long, wrapped in a long trailing
robe, and wearing a beard which falls to the girdle. To inform the
Khivites that this prince dresses like a European, and has his clothes
cut by Dusautoy, would only excite their pious indignation; any one
who would attempt to disabuse them on these points would pass for an
impostor, and would only risk his own life. Vambéry was obliged to
answer the most ridiculous questions: one wished to know if in the
whole world there was any city to be compared to Khiva; another, if
the meals of the grand sultan were sent to him every day from Mecca,
and if it only took one minute for them to come from the Kaaba to the
palace at Constantinople. What would these pious enthusiasts say if
they could know with what honor _Chateau-Lafitte and Chateau-Margeaux_
figure upon the table of the actual successor of the Prophet?

{213}

The convent which gave asylum to the pilgrims served also as a public
square; it contained a mosque, the court of which, ornamented with a
piece of water surrounded with beautiful trees, was the favorite
lounge of all the idle people in town. The women came there to fill
the heavy jugs which they afterward carried to their dwellings. More
than one of these recalled to the European the daughters of his dear
Hungary; he took great pleasure in watching them, and never refused
them his blessing, his powder of life, or even his sacred breathing,
which had the power of curing all infirmities. On these occasions, the
sick person squatted upon the threshold of the door, the pretended
dervish, moving his lips as if in prayer, extended a hand over the
patient, then he breathed three times upon her and uttered a profound
sigh. Very often the innocent creatures fancied that they had
experienced immediate relief, so great is the power of the
imagination!

During the time that Vambéry was at Khiva, a fair had assembled there
from twenty leagues round all the rich natives. Most of these came to
the markets not so much to buy and sell as to gratify that love of
display so inveterate among the Orientals; their purchases were often
limited to a few needles or similar trifles; but it was an excellent
occasion to parade their beautiful horses, to display their richest
clothes and their finest weapons. Khiva, moreover, is the centre of an
active commerce; beside the fruits, which enjoy great renown, and are
exported to Persia, Turkey, Russia, and China, the stalls of the fair
contain excellent manufactured articles. Beside the _urgendi
tchapani_, a kind of dressing robe made of woollen or silken stuffs of
two colors, are displayed the linens of Tash-hauz, the bronzes of
Khiva, muslins, calicoes, cloth, sugar, iron sent by Russia to be
exchanged for cotton, silk, and furs, which the caravans deliver in
the spring at the markets of Orenbourg, and in the autumn at those of
Astrakan. The transactions with Bokhara are equally important: they
export thither robes and linens, and receive in exchange tea, spices,
paper, and fancy articles.

Vambéry, divided between the friendship of Hadji Bilal and his daily
increasing intimacy with Shukrullah Bay, led a very agreeable life at
Khiva. Unhappily this calm was troubled by the secret intrigues of the
mehter (minister of the interior), who was a personal enemy of the
Khivite ambassador. He persuaded the khan that our traveller was a
secret agent of the sultan of Bokhara, and Seid Mehemmed resolved to
have a second interview with the would-be dervish, and submit him to a
strict examination. Vambéry, exhausted by the extreme heat, was taking
a siesta in his cell when he was warned by a messenger to report
himself to the sovereign. Surprised at this unexpected order, he
departed with some anxiety. In order to reach the palace he was
obliged to cross the grand square, where were assembled all the
prisoners taken in a recent war against the neighboring tribe of the
Tchandors, and the sight of these unfortunate beings impressed him
most painfully. The khan in company with the mehter awaited his
arrival; he overwhelmed him with artful questions, and said that,
knowing how thoroughly versed he was in the worldly sciences, he
should like very much to see him write some lines after the manner of
Stamboul. The necessary materials having been brought, Vambéry wrote
the following epistle, when, under pompous flowers of rhetoric, he
slipped in a bit of raillery pointed at the mehter, who was extremely
vain of his own beautiful writing:

{214}

  "Most majestic, powerful, terrible, and formidable monarch and
  sovereign:

  "Inundated with the royal favor, the poorest and most humble of your
  servants has, until this day, consecrated little time to the study
  of penmanship, for he remembers the Arab proverb: 'Those who have a
  beautiful handwriting have ordinarily very little wit.' But he knows
  also the Persian adage: 'Every defect which pleases a king becomes a
  virtue.' This is why he ventures respectfully to present these
  lines."

The khan, charmed with the pompous eloquence of our traveller, made
him sit beside him, offered him tea and bread, and had with him a long
political conversation, the subject of which had been agreed upon
beforehand. In his quality of dervish, the adroit European maintained
an austere silence. Seid Mehemmed drew from him with great difficulty
some sententious phrases, which offered not the slightest pretext to
the malicious designs of the mehter.

On leaving the royal audience, a yasoul conducted Vambéry to the
treasurer to receive his daily allowance. He was obliged to cross a
vast court, where a horrible spectacle awaited him. Three hundred
Tchandors, covered with rags and wasted by hunger till they looked
like living skeletons, were expecting the sentence which was to decide
their fate. The younger ones, chained one to another by iron collars,
were to be sold as slaves or given as presents to the favorites of the
king. More cruel punishments were reserved for those whose age caused
them to be considered as chiefs. While some of them were conducted to
the block upon which already many heads had fallen, eight of these
unhappy old men were thrown upon the ground while the executioner tore
out their eyes. It is impossible to enter upon the frightful details
of these barbarous punishments. Arriving at the office of the
treasurer, Vambéry found him singularly occupied in sorting silken
vestments of dazzling colors, covered with large golden embroidery.
These were the _khilat_, or robes of honor, which were to be sent to
the camp to recompense the services of the warriors; they were
designated as robes of four, twelve, twenty, or forty heads. This
singular mode of distinguishing them, which the designs upon the
tissue in no way explained, having excited the curiosity of Vambéry,
he inquired the reason. "What!" was the reply, "have you never seen
similar ones in Turkey? In that case, come to-morrow to assist at the
distribution of these glorious emblems. The most beautiful of these
vestments are intended for those soldiers who have brought forty
enemies' heads, the most simple for those who have furnished only
four." In spite of the horror which this custom inspired, the European
could not without exciting suspicion refuse the invitation thus
extended to him. Accordingly, the next morning he saw arrive in the
principal square of Khiva a hundred cavaliers covered with dust; each
one of them led at least one prisoner fastened to the pommel of the
saddle, or to the tail of his horse; women and children bound in the
same manner making a part of the booty. Beside, all the soldiers
carried behind them large bags filled with heads cut off from the
vanquished. They delivered the captives to the officer in charge, and
then emptied their bags, rolling out the contents upon the ground with
as much indifference as if they had been potatoes. These noble
warriors received in exchange an attestation of their great exploits,
and this billet would give them a right after a few days to a
pecuniary recompense.

These barbarous customs are not peculiar to Khiva; they are found in
all central Asia. Tradition, law, and religion agree in sanctioning
them. During the first years of his reign, the khan of Khiva, wishing
to display his zeal for the Mussulman faith, proceeded with the utmost
rigor not only against the heretic Tchandors, but also against his own
subjects who were found guilty of the least infraction of the
commandments of the Prophet. The oulemas endeavored to moderate the
too ardent piety of the king; but, notwithstanding their intervention,
not a day passes without {215} some person admitted to audience of the
khan being dragged from the palace, after hearing the words,
equivalent to his death-warrant: "_Alib barin!_" (take him away).

Notwithstanding the cruelties by which Khiva is disgraced, it was in
this city that  Vambéry passed, under the costume of a dervish, the
most agreeable days of his journey. Whenever he appeared in public
places he was surrounded by a crowd of the faithful, who heaped
presents upon him. Thus, though he never accepted considerable sums,
and though he shared the offerings of the pious believers with his
brethren the hadjis, his situation was much improved; he was provided
with a well-lined purse, and a vigorous ass; in short, he was
perfectly equipped for his journey. His companions were very anxious
to arrive at Bokhara, fearing that the heat might render it
impracticable to cross the desert, and they urged Vambéry to terminate
his preparations for departure. Before quitting Khiva our European
wished to bid adieu to the excellent protector to whose hospitable
reception he owed so much.

"I was deeply moved," he says, "to hear the arguments which the good
Shukrullah Bay employed to dissuade me from my enterprise. He painted
Bokhara under the most gloomy colors, the distrustful and hypocritical
emir, hostile to all strangers, and who had even treacherously put to
death a Turk sent to him by Reschid Pacha. The anxiety of this worthy
old man, so convinced at first of the reality of my sacred character,
surprised me extremely. I began to think that he had penetrated the
secret of my disguise, and perhaps divined who I was. Accustomed to
European ideas, Shukrullah Bay understood our ardor for scientific
researches, for in his youth he had passed many years in St.
Petersburg, and often also, during his residence in Constantinople, he
had formed affectionate intimacies with Europeans. Was it on this
account that he had manifested so warm a friendship for me? In parting
from him I saw a tear glisten in his eye; who can tell what sentiment
caused it to flow?"

Vambéry gave the khan a last benediction. The prince recommended to
him on his return from Samarcande to pass through his capital, for he
wished to send with the pilgrim a representative, charged to receive
at Constantinople the investiture which the masters of Khiva wish to
obtain from every new sultan. This was by no means the plan of our
traveller. "_Kismet_," he replied, with his habitual presence of mind;
a word altogether in the spirit of his character, and which signifies
that one commits a grave sin when one counts upon the future.

------

{216}

From Aubrey De Vere's May Carols.

MATER DIVINAE GRATIAE.


  The gifts a mother showers each day
    Upon her softly-clamorous brood:
  The gifts they value but for play,--
    The graver gifts of clothes and food,--

  Whence come they but from him who sows
    With harder hand, and reaps, the soil;
  The merit of his laboring brows,
    The guerdon of his manly toil?

  From him the grace: through her it stands
    Adjusted, meted, and applied;
  And ever, passing through her hands,
    Enriched it seems, and beautified.

  Love's mirror doubles love's caress:
    Love's echo to love's voice is true:--
  Their sire the children love not less
    Because they clasp a mother too.

------

  As children when, with heavy tread,
    Men sad of face, unseen before,
  Have borne away their mother dead--
    So stand the nations thine no more.

  From room to room those children roam,
    Heart-stricken by the unwonted black:
  Their house no longer seems their home:
    They search; yet know not what they lack.

  Years pass: self-will and passion strike
    Their roots more deeply day by day;
  Old servants weep; and "how unlike"
    Is all the tender neighbors say.

  And yet at moments, like a dream,
    A mother's image o'er them flits:
  Like hers their eyes a moment beam;
    The voice grows soft; the brow unknits.

  Such, Mary, are the realms once thine,
    That know no more thy golden reign.
  Bold forth from heaven thy Babe divine!
    O make thine orphans thine again!

------

{217}


From The Month


PAMPHLETS ON THE EIRENICON.


The appearance of a work such as the "Eirenicon," from the pen of one
in so conspicuous a position as Dr. Pusey, was sure to attract general
attention, and to call forth a great number of comments and answers
more or less favorable to it or severe upon it. It gives an occasion
for, and indeed invites, the frankest discussion of a very wide range
of most important questions; and in doing so it has rendered a great
service to the cause of truth. Many of these questions are of that
kind which those whom the "Eirenicon" itself may be supposed more
particularly to represent have been in the habit of avoiding, at all
events in public, although their own ecclesiastical position depended
entirely upon them. It is a very great gain that these should now be
opened for discussion, at the invitation of one who has long passed as
a leader among Anglicans. Moreover, a book which handles so many
subjects and contains so many assertions has naturally raised
questions as to itself which require consideration. It is a
comparatively easy matter to look on it as a simple overture for
peace, or to speculate on the possibility of that "union by means of
explanations" which Dr. Pusey tells us is his dearest wish. Even here
we are directly met by the necessity of further investigations. Dr.
Pusey puts a certain face on the Thirty-nine Articles, and on Catholic
doctrines and statements with regard to the questions to which those
Articles refer. Is he right in his representation either of the
definitions of his own communion or of the support which those
definitions may receive from authorities external to it? Is it true
that the "Catholic" interpretation is the legitimate sense of the
Articles? Is it true that that interpretation is supported by Roman
and Greek authorities? Is there no statement, for instance, in the
Council of Trent about justification to which any in the Anglican
communion can object? It must be quite obvious that a great number of
sanguine assertions such as these require examination in detail; and
surely no one can complain if they are not admitted on Dr. Pusey's
word. Then again, unfortunately, he was not content with painting his
own communion in his own colors; he must needs give a description of
the Catholic system also. He has told us--and we are both willing and
bound to believe him--that he has not drawn this sketch in a hostile
spirit; perhaps he will some day acknowledge--which is much more to
the point--that he has drawn it in great and lamentable ignorance, the
consciousness of which ought to have deterred him from attempting it.
Surely there are some enterprises which are usually undertaken by none
but the dullest or the most presumptuous of men. Such an enterprise is
that of giving an account of a practical system which influences and
forms the hearts and minds of thousands of our fellow-creatures, when
we have ourselves lived all our days as entire strangers to it. If it
be something simply in the natural order, such as the polity or the
customs of a foreign nation, we do not feel so much surprise at the
blunders made by the {218} writer who undertakes to describe them, as
at his temerity in making the attempt. This is, of coarse, enhanced
greatly in proportion as we ascend into the higher spheres of the
spiritual and supernatural life. It is strange enough to see any
sensible man writing as if he could fairly characterize the devotional
sentiments and religious thoughts of men of a different belief; but it
becomes something more than strange when this venturesome critic
proceeds not only to characterize, but to condemn and to denounce in
the strongest language that which he might in all reason and modesty
have supposed himself, at least, not quite able fully to comprehend;
and this at the very time that he is proposing peace.

We are not, however, here concerned with this more painful view of the
subject. We are only pointing out that the elaborate chapter of
accusation against the Catholic Church which Dr. Pusey has drawn up
could not fail to be received with great indignation on the part of
Catholics, and that the overtures which accompany it cannot be fairly
dealt with until it has been thoroughly sifted by criticism as well as
by controversy. How can we explain a "system" which we deny to exist?
Of course, no Catholic will acknowledge Dr. Pusey's representation as
anything but a monstrous caricature. Of course, also, the chief heads
of accusation can be easily dealt with one by one, and positive
statements given as to what is really taught, thought, and felt by
Catholics with regard to them. But this leaves the book untouched. How
came these charges to be made? What grounds has Dr. Pusey for
asserting that to be true which we all know to be so false? Does he
quote rightly? Has he understood the books he cites, where he has read
them? And has he read them through? Are the authors whom he gives as
fair specimens of Catholic teaching acknowledged as writers of credit,
or are some of them even on the Index? Has he ever understood the
Catholic doctrines on which he is severe, such as the immaculate
conception and the papal infallibility, or the meaning of the Catholic
authorities whom he seems to set in some sort of opposition to others,
such as Bossuet and the bishops, whose answers he quotes from the
"Pareri?" It is true that questions like this are to some extent
personal; but Dr. Pusey makes it necessary to ask them, and he is the
one person in the world who ought to wish that they should be
thoroughly handled. We cannot believe that he approves of the tactics
of some Anglican critics, who speak as if the ark of their sanctuary
were rudely touched when it is said that he can be mistaken or
ignorant about anything. He has never shown any lack of controversial
courage. Up to the present time we are not aware of a single
publication of any note from the Catholic side of the question which
has not exposed some one or two distinct and important errors of fact,
quotation, historical statement, or some grave misconception of
doctrine on his part; and this, it is to be observed, has hitherto
only been done incidentally by writers who have not addressed
themselves to the systematic examination of the "Eirenicon" as a work
of learning.

Lastly, this miscellaneous work has occasioned a call which, also, we
are glad to feel sure, will be adequately answered; a call for calm
and learned statements from Catholic theologians on some of the chief
controversial questions touched on by Dr. Pusey. What is the real
unity of the church? What is the true doctrine of her infallibility
and of that of the Roman Pontiff? and how are the commonly alleged
(though so often refuted) objections--as, for instance, that about
what Dr. Pusey calls _formal heresy_ of Liberius--to the met? What is
really meant by the immaculate conception, and what was in truth the
history of the late definition?  {219}  These, and a few more
important matters--such as the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the
historical truth as to the cases of Meletius and the African
churches--will be treated at length in the forthcoming volume of
essays announced under the title of "Peace through the Truth." The
case of the Anglican ordinations has been incidentally raised by Dr.
Pusey; but it will be natural for Catholic critics to wait for a
volume on the subject which has been announced by Mr. F. G. Lee. As
far as the alleged sanction of those ordinations by Cardinal Pole is
concerned, Dr. Pusey does not seem inclined to raise the question
again.

We have thus a tolerably large promise of work for theological writers
and readers; and it cannot but be looked on as a good sign that so
strong an impulse to controversial activity should have been given by
one who has not hitherto been fond of inviting attention to the
difficulties of his own position. It is but natural that the more
solid and erudite works called forth by the "Eirenicon" should be the
last to appear; and any one who has read but a few pages of that work
will understand the difficulty which its writer has imposed on any
conscientious critic by a frequently loose way of quoting, and an
occasional habit of giving no authority at all for statements that
certainly require more proof than a bare assertion. But we have
already the beginning of a most valuable collection of publications by
men of the highest position, dealing either with detached portions of
Dr. Pusey's work or in a summary way with its general plan; and some
service has been done by letters in the papers, such as those of Canon
Estcourt and Mr. Rhodes. Father Gallwey's "Sermon" has been widely
circulated; Canon Oakeley has given us an interesting pamphlet on the
"Leading Topics of the Eirenicon;" Dr. Newman has written a letter to
its author, and is understood to be preparing a second; and his grace
the Archbishop of Westminster has dealt with several of Dr. Pusey's
assertions in his "Pastoral Letter on the Reunion of Christendom." We
propose now to deal shortly with some of these publications, which,
though they belong to the earlier and more incidental stage of the
controversy, are of the highest value in themselves and on account of
the position of their authors.  [Footnote 39]

  [Footnote 39:  We have found it impossible to deal with so important
  and authoritative a è as his Grace's "Letter" in our present paper.]

We must first, however, speak of a work put forth by Dr. Pusey as a
sequel or a companion to the "Eirenicon." This is a republication
(with leave of the author) of the celebrated Tract 90, preceded by an
historical preface from Dr Pusey's own pen, and followed by a letter
of Mr. Keble on "Catholic Subscription to the Articles," which was
widely circulated, though not published, in 1861. Of the tract itself
we need not, of course, speak. Dr. Pusey's preface, however, is open
to one or two obvious remarks. It is remarkable for the manner in
which he identifies himself with the Mr. Newman of the day, though it
appears that the proof of the tract in question was submitted to Mr.
Keble, and its publication urged by him, while Dr. Pusey himself was
only made aware of its existence by the clamor with which it was
received. Then, again, the remarkable difference of view between Dr.
Pusey and Mr. Newman as to the "Catholic" interpretation of the
Articles forces itself again upon our notice. From the tract itself
all through, and its explanations by its author at the time and since,
it is perfectly clear that nothing more was meant by it than to claim
such latitude of interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles as would
admit the "Catholic" sense on equal terms, as it were, with the
anti-Catholic; and the same view is urged by Mr. Keble in his letter.
The writer of the tract supposes that the Anglican formularies were
drawn {220} up with designed ambiguity, in order to catch Catholic
subscriptions. He compares the tactics adopted by the framers of the
Articles to those which were followed by M. Thiers: "A French
minister, desirous of war, nevertheless, as a matter of policy, draws
up his state papers in such moderate language that his successor, who
is for peace, can act up to them without compromising his own
principles. . . . The Protestant confession was drawn up with the
purpose of including Catholics; and Catholics now will not be
excluded. What was an economy in the reformers is a protection to us"
(Tract 90, conclusion). This is a plain common-sense view of the
matter, and is abundantly supported by history. But it obviously
leaves a stain on the Anglican establishment, which will appear of
vital or of trifling importance according to the different views under
which that community is regarded. If it is looked upon as a political
and national organization, it was no doubt a stroke of prudence so to
frame the formularies as to include both sides. If it is considered as
a church of Christ, it can hardly be anything but discreditable that
it should thus compromise divine truth. But Dr. Pusey's view of the
"Catholic interpretation," as expressed both in his present preface
and in the "Eirenicon," claims for it the exclusive title of the
natural and legitimate sense. It may seem almost incredible that any
one should maintain this; but so it is. Dr. Pusey thus speaks of the
"Protestant" interpretations: "We had all been educated in a
traditional system, which had practically imported into the Articles a
good many principles _which were not contained in them nor suggested
by them;_ yet which were habitually identified with them. . . . . We
proposed no system to ourselves, but laid aside piece by piece the
system of ultra-Protestant interpretation, which had incrusted round
the Articles. This doubtless appeared in our writings from time to
time; but the expositions to which we were accustomed, and which were
to our minds the genuine expositions of the Articles, had never before
been brought into one focus, as they were in Tract 90. . . . Newman
explained that it was written solely against this system of
interpretation, which brought meanings into the Articles, not out of
them, and also why he wrote it at all" (Pref., v.-vii.) Yet the words
of Mr. Newman's explanation, which are quoted immediately after this
last passage, distinctly contradict the interpretation of the tract
put forward by Dr. Pusey. Mr. Newman says that the Anglican Church, as
well as the Roman, in his opinion, has a "traditionary system beyond
and beside the letter of its formularies. . . . . And this
traditionary system not only inculcates what I cannot conceive
(receive?), but would exclude any difference of belief from itself.
_To this exclusive modern system_ I desire to oppose myself; and it is
as doing this, doubtless, that I am incurring the censure of the four
gentlemen who have come before the public. _I want certain points to
be left open which they would close._. . .  In thus maintaining that
we have open questions, or, as I have expressed it in the tract,
'ambiguous formularies,' I observe, first, that I am introducing no
novelty." He then gives an instance which shows that the principle is
admitted. Again, he says: "The tract is grounded on the belief that
the Articles _need_ not be so closed as the received methods of
teaching closes them, and _ought_ not to be for the sake of many
persons" (Letter to Dr. Jelf, quoted by Dr. Pusey, p. vii.)

It is obvious that the interpretations contained in the tract, however
admissible on the hypothesis of their author, become little less than
extravagant when they are considered in the light in which Dr. Pusey
now puts them forward; and it is but fair to Dr. Newman and others to
point out the change. Moreover, it is not {221} impossible that this
republication of the tract, together with the avowals made in the
"Eirenicon" as to the interpretation of the Articles, may be
considered as a kind of challenge thrown out on the part of Dr. Pusey
and his followers to the authorities of the establishment and the
parties within it that are most opposed to "Catholic" opinions. It may
be considered fairly enough that if this "claim to hold all Roman
doctrine"--as far as those well-used words apply to it--is allowed to
pass unnoticed, the position of the "Anglo-Catholic" clergy in the
establishment will be made as secure as silent toleration on the part
of authorities can make it.  [Footnote 40] Be it so by all means; but
let it be understood that the claim now made is quite different from
that made by Mr. Newman in 1841; and that if it enjoys immunity from
censure, on account of the far greater latitude now allowed in the
establishment to extreme opinions of every color except one, it has
still to free itself from the charge of being one of the most
grotesque contortions of language that has ever been seriously
advocated as permissible by reasonable men. One of the Articles, for
instance--to take the case adduced by Canon Oakeley--says that
"transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of the bread and
wine) in the Supper of the Lord cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is
repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of
a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions." On the
other hand, let us place the Tridentine Canon: "If any one saith that
in the sacred and holy sacrament of the eucharist the substance of the
bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of
the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole
substance of the wine into the blood--the species only of the bread
and wine remaining--which conversion the Catholic Church most aptly
calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema." (Sess. xiii.) Not only
does Dr. Pusey assert that there is a sense in which the two
statements are compatible, but he maintains that such an
interpretation is the one single obvious grammatical and legitimate
interpretation of the words of the Anglican Article. We can only
imagine one process of reasoning by which this conclusion can be
maintained; and we have little doubt that if Dr. Pusey's argument were
drawn out it would come to this. The Articles must mean "Catholic"
doctrine, whether they seem to do so or not, because the Anglican
Church is a true and orthodox portion of the Catholic Church. And a
part of the proof that she is such a portion consists in the fact that
her formularies signify Catholic doctrine!

  [Footnote 40: Canon Oakeley, in the pamphlet of which we shall
  presently speak, says of Dr. Pusey's interpretation: "Dr. Pusey's
  avowal, moreover, not merely involves the acceptance of that
  interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles for which Mr. Newman was
  censured by nearly every bishop of the establishment, but goes
  beyond that interpretation in a Catholic direction, inasmuch as it
  comprehends the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Mr. Newman, I
  believe, never thought to be included within the terms of the
  Articles. It also goes beyond Mr. Newman's argument in his tract,
  _in that it supports the Catholic sense of the Articles to be their
  obvious and only true sense._ Instead of being merely one of the
  senses which are compatible with honest subscription. And here I
  must say, in passing, that I think Dr. Pusey somewhat unfair on Mr.
  Ward in attributing to him the unpopularity of Tract 90, since, in
  extending the interpretation of the tract to our doctrine of the
  blessed eucharist. Dr. Pusey is in fact adopting Mr. Ward's
  Construction of the Articles, and not Mr. Newman's" (p, 6).]

The other noticeable feature in Dr. Pusey's preface is an attempt to
throw the blame of the undoubted unpopularity of Tract 90 upon Mr.
Ward rather than on the tract itself. Mr. Ward was probably at one
time the best-abused person of all the followers of the tractarian
movement; and if powerful reasoning, keen logic, unflinching openness,
and courageous honesty are enough to make a person merit wholesale
abuse, Mr. Ward certainly deserved it. But to attribute the
unpopularity of No. 90 to him is simply to forget dates and distort
facts. {222} In 1841, when the clamor against No. 90 was at its
height, Mr. Ward, though well known in Oxford for his decided opinions
and thorough honesty in avowing them, and though highly influential
(as he could not fail to be) over those who came within his reach, was
hardly known in the country at large. Dr. Pusey's mistake has been
pointed out by Canon Oakeley in the appendix to his pamphlet, of which
we shall speak presently. He observes that the word "non-natural"--of
which he gives a very plain and simple explanation, which quite
vindicates it from the interpretation commonly put upon it--was not
used till the appearance of "The Ideal of a Christian Church" in 1844.

Canon Oakeley's pamphlet, like everything that he writes, is graceful
and courteous, lucid and cogent; and it ought to have all the greater
weight with Dr. Pusey from the evident disinclination of the author to
think or speak with severity. In fact, Dr. Pusey has already
[Footnote 41] had occasion to correct an over-sanguine conclusion as
to his own position which had been formed by Canon Oakeley in
consequence of certain explanations which he addressed to a Catholic
paper.

  [Footnote 41: In his second letter to the "Weekly Register."]

We think that the fullest credit should be given to Dr. Pusey for
these explanations; but they must not be allowed to counterbalance
assertions which he has never withdrawn, and seems never to have meant
to withdraw. He has only negatively declared something about the
intention he had in making them. He says they were not meant to hurt
Catholics; he does not say that they were not meant to frighten
Anglicans. We refer, of course, to the large number of pages which he
has devoted to attacks on what he chooses to consider as the practical
system of Catholicism, chiefly with regard to the _cultus_ of our
Blessed Lady, and which no Catholic can read without intense
indignation. He has heaped up a number of extracts from books of very
little authority, and put forward as characteristics of the Catholic
system the pious contemplations of individuals, as well as tenets
which have been actually condemned. The charge is urged with all the
recklessness of an advocate, with eager rhetoric rather than calm
argument, with all the looseness of insinuation and inaccuracy of
quotation which mark the productions of a heated partizan.   [Footnote
42]

  [Footnote 42: A writer in the current number of "Macmillan's
  Magazine" (Feb., 1866) observes: "We could scarcely transcribe all
  that is here set forth without offending the religious taste of our
  readers, and appearing to gloat over the degradation of a church
  which, amidst all its aberrations and after all ita crimes, is a
  part of Christendom. We may reasonably hope, also, that there is
  something to be said upon the other side: for, without casting any
  suspicion upon Dr. Pusey's honesty, we must remember that he is
  personally under a strong temptation to scare the wavering members
  of his party from defection to the Church of Rome" (p. 277). This is
  the opinion of an intensely anti-Catholic writer; and it would be
  easy to quote scores of similar criticisms. A letter from Oxford, in
  the "London Review" of February 3, says: "It seems a gentle irony,
  certainly, to call a book an 'Eirenicon' which most mercilessly
  exposes the errors, perversions, and tendencies of those whom it
  proposes to conciliate. A great portion of the book might have been
  written by the most distinguished Papophobe--we will not say Dr.
  Cumming, for the style does not remind us of his publications." The
  writer in "Macmillan" adds an observation on another point which is
  well worthy of Dr. Pusey's consideration: "Dr. Pusey's argument,
  both against Mariolatry and Papal infallibility, _appeals to
  principles essentially rationalistic_, which are capable, as we
  conceive, of being turned with fatal effect against himself" (p.
  230).]

No part of his book shows more earnestness than this. Such being the
case, it seems to us very strange that any one should expect Catholics
to be satisfied with a simple assurance from Dr. Pusey that "nothing
was further from my wish than to write anything which should be
painful to those in your communion."  [Footnote 43]

  [Footnote 43: Dr. Pusey to the "Weekly Register," Nov. 25, 1865.]

We suppose that if some one were to write a pamphlet of a hundred
pages full of the hardest and most vulgar insinuations against
something that Dr. Pusey holds dear and sacred, his opinion of it
would hardly be changed by the assurance, unaccompanied by a single
retraction, "I never meant to hurt your feelings." He would naturally
ask in what sort of atmosphere such a person had lived, to be able to
think that such things _could_ be said without being "painful." He
disclaims {223} all desire to "prescribe to Italians and Spaniards
what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions."
But he is not speaking of Spaniards or Italians only in many of the
most offensive passages of his work. He says, for instance, that it
"is a practical question, affecting our whole eternity: What shall I
do to be saved? The practical answer to the Roman Catholic seems to me
to be, Go to Mary, and you will be saved; in our dear Lord's own words
it is, Come unto me; in our own belief it is, Go to Jesus, and you
will be saved" (p. 182). Can anything be more shocking than the
contrast insinuated here? Or, again, when he says in another place,
"One sees not where there shall be any pause or bound, short of that
bold conception, 'that every prayer, both of individuals and of the
church, should be addressed to St. Mary?'" Dr. Pusey must be perfectly
aware of the effect of words like these from him upon the mass of his
readers. It is certainly no sufficient _withdrawal_ of them to write a
letter to a Catholic newspaper, of limited circulation, saying that he
"never thought of imputing to any of the writers whom he quoted that
they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his
mother." Whatever he may think about the writers themselves, he
certainly asserts in the face of the world that they teach others to
do this. He asserts that there is a "system" in the Catholic Church,
of which this is the effect. If he "had no thought of criticising holy
men who held it," he still will not take Catholic explanations of
their words, which show that they did _not_ hold it; and his own words
imply, or at all events admit of, a reservation, that such is the
tendency of the system, from which certain individuals escape in
consequence of their holiness. Now, it is this assertion about the
system of the church which offends Catholics. They care little about
their own "feelings;" they resent false charges against the church all
the more when they proceed from one who professes to be nearer to them
than others, and to be a lover of peace, and who might easily have
satisfied himself that his accusations were groundless. People have
not complained of Dr. Pusey's intention in saying these things, but of
his having said them. They willingly accept his statement as to his
intention; but misrepresentations retain their mischievous character
till they have been formally withdrawn, whatever may have been the
temper in which they have been put forward.

It is, moreover, obvious that this, which to ordinary eyes is the
prominent feature in Dr. Pusey's volume, must be taken into account in
all conclusions concerning the present state of mind among Anglicans
that are founded upon the reception which the "Eirenicon" has met with
among them. We think that there are but few among them, as there are
certainly very few among Catholics, who attach much practical
importance to the vague and dreamy ideas about corporate union by
means of mutual explanations which are put forward in other parts of
the work. It is perfectly clear that Dr. Pusey's account of the
Articles would be repudiated at once by all the Anglican authorities;
and equally clear that the points to which he still objects, such as
the papal infallibility and the dogma of the immaculate conception,
are among those which can never be conceded on the side of the church.
The proposals for union are not, therefore, generally looked upon as
matters for practical consideration; though, as Dr. Newman has
remarked, they may hereafter lead to results of the highest
importance. What has struck the Anglican public in the book is its
attack on Catholicism, which has, no doubt, surprised Protestants as
much as Catholics by its violence. We say, therefore, that to consider
Dr. Pusey's unrebuked declaration about the possibility of union as a
great sign of progress among Anglicans, without {224} taking into
consideration the other features of the work which he has put forth,
is to ignore the most essential circumstances of the case. Canon
Oakeley compares the outcry with which similar declarations were once
received on Mr. Ward's part and his own with the indifference and
absence of opposition now evinced toward Dr. Pusey. It is true that
the cases are in some respects parallel; but there is this vital
difference, that neither Mr. Ward nor Canon Oakeley accompanied their
declarations as to Roman doctrine with virulent abuse of Roman
practice; and we may feel pretty certain that the "Ideal of a
Christian Church" would never have been made the ground of an
academical condemnation of its author if it had contained the hundred
pages on the _cultus_ of the Blessed Virgin on which Dr. Pusey has
expended so much care, and which he has adorned with so much apparent
erudition. Englishmen judge roughly, and in the main fairly; and they
will look on the proposals for union as an amiable eccentricity in a
writer who has pandered so lovingly to their favorite prejudices.

Canon Oakeley has drawn out very clearly another very important
qualification, which must modify our feelings of joy at the apparent
progress of Anglicans in general toward greater tolerance of Catholic
opinions among themselves. He has shown that this seemingly good sign
is in reality only an indication of increasing indifference to
doctrine of every kind. It is the reflection on the broad mirror of
public opinion of the uniformly latitudinarian tendency of the
authorities of the establishment, as evinced in the succession of
judicial decisions of which we have all heard so much. It is not
wonderful that Puseyism should share in this universal indulgence. We
have also to thank Canon Oakeley for a calm and forcible vindication
of the Catholic devotion to our Blessed Lady, which has been made the
subject of so violent an attack by Dr. Pusey--perhaps more in the form
of an apology than was necessary--and for some very sensible remarks
on the dream of "corporate union."

There is one writer in England whose words on this subject will be
listened to with almost equal interest by Catholics and Protestants.
The conflict passes into a new phase with the appearance of Dr. Newman
upon the scene. It is "the great Achilles moving to the war." The
gleam of well-worn armor flashes on the eye, and the attention of both
armies is riveted on him as he lifts his spear. He cannot mutter his
favorite motto:

[Greek text]

for it is but lately that he struck down and kicked off the field a
swaggering bully from the opposite ranks hardly worthy of his steel.
It is different now. He will begin in Homeric fashion with a
complimentary harangue to the champion on the other side; but then
will come the time for blows--blows of immense force, dealt out with a
gentle affectionateness which enhances their effect tenfold. Dr.
Newman begins by a generous tribute to Dr. Pusey himself, and to those
whom he may be supposed to influence. No one can speak more strongly
on the paramount rights of conscience, which is not to be stifled for
the sake of making a path easy or removing a wearisome difficulty. Dr.
Pusey is allowed to have every right to mention the conditions on
which he proposes union, though Dr. Newman does not agree with them,
and thinks that he would himself not hold to them; he has also the
right to state what it is that he objects to, as requiring
explanation, in the Catholic system. But then the tone changes, and
business begins. Dr. Newman tells his old friend in the plainest way
that "there is much both in the matter and manner of his volume
calculated to wound those who love him well, but truth more;" and he
points out the {225} glaring inconsistency of "professing to be
composing an Irenicon while treating Catholics as foes;" and
characterizes, in his happy way, the proceeding of Dr. Pusey as
"discharging an olive branch as from a catapult." The hundred pages on
the subject of the Blessed Virgin which are contained in the
"Eirenicon" are so palpably "one-sided" that no one can venture to
deny it. Few have characterized them in stronger terms than Dr.
Newman. "What could an Exeter Hall orator, what could a Scotch
commentator on the Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the
controversy by the picture he drew of us?" Further on he pointedly
reminds Dr. Pusey that he all the time knew better. After a proof from
the fathers as to the doctrine in question, he says, "You know what
the fathers assert; but if so, have you not, my dear friend, been
unjust to yourself in your recent volume, and made far too much of the
differences which exist between Anglicans and us on this particular
point? It is the office of an Irenicon to smooth difficulties" (p.
83); and again, "As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek
Church; and here again we have a witness in our behalf, _of which you
must be aware as fully as we are_, and of which you must really mean
to give us the benefit" (p. 95); and again, "Then I think you have not
always made your quotations with that consideration and kindness which
is your rule" (p. 111). The calm gentleness of the language will
certainly not conceal from Dr. Pusey the gravity and severity of the
rebuke thus administered. Moreover, Dr. Newman has complaints of his
own to urge. With the most questionable taste Dr. Pusey has actually
brought "to life one of" Dr. Newman's "own strong sayings, in 1841,
about idolatry;" he has at least been understood to father upon him
the well-known saying, that "the establishment is the great bulwark
against infidelity in this land;" he has used some words from Dr.
Newman's notes to St. Athanasius in a collection of passages from the
fathers, the apparent purpose of which is to defend some Anglican
doctrine about the sufficiency of Holy Scripture against a supposed
Catholic contradiction. Dr. Newman also most clearly distinguishes his
own intention in publishing Tract 90 from that of Dr. Pusey in its
recent republication.

The introduction to the letter before us concludes with a passage of
singular interest, in which Dr. Newman vindicates the right of a
convert to speak freely about the system of the church to which he has
submitted. We must confess that we hardly understood the passages in
Dr. Pusey's work, to which reference is here made, as denying the
right of free comment to a convert, in the sense in which Dr. Newman
affirms it. Dr. Pusey has a standard and measure of his own (external
to the Anglican establishment), by which he criticises, approves, or
condemns this or that feature in it; and he distinctly contemplates at
least the possibility of his being driven to quit it by its formal
adoption of heresy. Certainly, to submit to the Catholic Church, and
yet retain the right of measuring her in such a way by an external
standard, would be a contradiction in terms. But this does not touch
the right of a convert either to choose freely, according to his own
tastes and leanings, among those varieties of devotion and practice
which the church expressly leaves to his choice, or to express his
opinion on such subjects (so that it be done with charity), or on any
other matters which fall within the wide and recognized range of open
questions. If Dr. Pusey meant to deny this right, he will be convinced
by the frank use made of it by Dr. Newman in the passage before us. No
one, certainly, will assail _him_ as unorthodox; yet he takes his
stand openly on one particular side with regard to some of the moot
questions of the day, as to which certainly a large {226} number of
English Catholics will be as ready to say that they do not altogether
agree with him as to acknowledge that he has a perfect right to the
opinions which he expresses. Perhaps we should rather say that they
will profess their admiration for the authors whom he so far at least
disavows as to question their right to be treated in controversy as
the legitimate and exclusive representatives of English Catholicism;
for we need not understand Dr. Newman's words about the late Father
Faber and the editor of the "Dublin Review" as meaning more than this;
and his point, as against Dr. Pusey, is fully secured by the
indisputable fact that those distinguished men have never considered
themselves, or let others consider them, as such representatives.

The greater part, however, of Dr. Newman's present letter is given to
an exquisite defence of Catholic doctrine and devotion as regards our
Blessed Lady. Its power and beauty are so great as to fill us with
inexpressible sadness at the thought that Dr. Newman has written
comparatively so little on similar subjects since he has been a
Catholic. This short and very condensed sketch on one particular point
has given him an opportunity of exercising, on however limited a
scale, those powers as to which he is simply unrivalled. There is the
keen penetration of the sense of Scripture, and of the relation
between different and distinct parts of the Holy Volume. After putting
forward the patristic view of our Blessed Lady as the second Eve, Dr.
Newman has occasion to defend that interpretation of the vision of the
woman in the Apocalypse which understands it of her. This has given
him occasion to explain how it is that this interpretation may be the
true one, although there is no great amount of positive testimony for
it in the fathers, and to refute from the general principles of
scriptural language that which looks upon the image as simply a
personification of the church. This passage is a real and great gain
in scriptural interpretation. Then, again, here is the masterly and
discriminating erudition, not dealing with the fathers as an
ill-arranged and incoherent mass of authorities, but giving to each
witness his due place and weight, pointing out what parts of the
church and what apostolical tradition he represents, and blending the
different sufferages into one harmonious statement. History is brought
in to trace the gradual development of devotion on points as to which
doctrine, on the other hand, was always uniform; and to give a natural
and simple explanation of the chronological order in which the heart,
as it were, of the church seems to have mastered the different
portions of the wonderful deposit which the apostles sowed in her
mind. The effect of Dr. Newman's explanation of the comparatively
later growth of certain devotions, which in themselves might have been
expected to precede others, is not only to remove the apparent
difficulty, but to make every other view appear more difficult than
that which he gives. Equally beautiful and convincing is his
explanation in the appendix of the historical account which may be
given of the strange sayings of certain fathers as to our Blessed Lady
having possibly fallen into faults of infirmity. Some most accurate
and delicate tests for the discernment of a real tradition are here
given, as well as reasons for the apparent absence of such a tradition
in a special case. Dr. Newman is one of the few writers who show us,
first, that they thoroughly understand a difficulty or an objection;
then, that they can make it even stronger; and then, that they can not
only say something against it, or crush it, but even unravel it, and
show that it was to be expected. In every one of these respects Dr.
Pusey is his exact contrary. Then again, Dr. Newman brings together a
series of passages from the fathers of the "undivided church"--to use
the now term invented, we believe, by Mr. Keble--of which, of course,
{227} Dr. Pusey was aware, but of which he has said nothing in his
"Eirenicon." These testify amply not only to the doctrine but to the
devotion of the fourth and fifth centuries as to our Blessed Lady. He
is, of course, sparing of quotations in a work like the present; but
he crowns his argument from authority by a number of passages not from
popular books of devotion among the Greeks, but from their liturgies
and authoritative formularies--on which Dr. Pusey would have founded
a strong argument to the effect that our Lady is elevated to the place
of our Lord, if he had been able to find them in circulation among
Catholics. In fact, a number of formal Greek devotions end with the
words, "through the Theotocos," instead of "per Dominum nostrum Jesum
Christum." The contrast between the cogency and appositeness of every
word of Dr. Newman's few quotations (almost universally given at
length), and the utter illusiveness and bewildering misapplication of
the clouds upon clouds of citations paraded in Dr. Pusey's volume, is
wonderfully striking. Nor, again, is the difference less great between
the two when a personal remark has to be made. Dr. Newman has no hard
words for any one. He does not shrink from pointing out faults, as we
have already said. He tells Dr. Pusey plainly enough that he does not
think that he even understands what the immaculate conception means;
and when he speaks of Anglicans being ignorant of the Catholic
doctrine of original sin, he seems carefully to omit exempting Dr.
Pusey from the general statement. He says again pointedly, "He who
charges us with making Mary a divinity is thereby denying the divinity
of Jesus. _Such a man does not know what divinity is._" He complains
of the unfairness--of which, we are sorry to say, Dr. Pusey seems
habitually guilty--of taking a strong and apparently objectionable
passage from an author who, either in the immediate context or
elsewhere, has qualified it by other statements, which any one but a
partizan writer would feel bound to take into consideration and to
place by its side, without giving the reader any intimation that such
qualifications exist. "When, then, my dear Pusey, you read anything
extravagant in praise of our Lady, is it not charitable to ask, even
while you condemn it in itself, Did the author write nothing else?"
(p. 101). He refuses to receive Dr. Pusey's collection of strong
passages as a fair representation of the minds of the authors from
whom they are quoted. He speaks of their "literal and absolute sense,
as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers
doubtless did not use them" (p. 118). And again: "I know nothing of
the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say"
(p. 120). But with all this strong and decisive language, which we may
be sure is the very gentlest that he can use, and implies an estimate
of the "Eirenicon" by no means in accordance with that of its
admirers, he is so uniformly calm and affectionate in manner that we
cannot but hope that Dr. Pusey and others who think with him will be
won over to think more seriously of the extreme gravity of their step
in casting forth upon the world of English readers so extremely
intemperate an accusation against the Catholic Church as that which
they have put in circulation. Nor can we abandon the hope that they
will listen to Dr. Newman's clear and unanswerable statement of the
doctrine of the fathers as to our Blessed Lady, and see how truly he
has pointed to the flaws and defects in their own thoughts with regard
to her. They will certainly be hardly able to deny that they have
misunderstood not only the immaculate conception, against which they
have talked so loudly, but even, it may be, original sin itself; nor
do we think that it can be questioned that he has put his finger upon
the fundamental error--not to say heresy---to which all their low
conceptions as to the Blessed Mother of God {228} are to be assigned
as their ultimate cause. Dr. Pusey, as Dr. Newman remarks, seems to
have no idea that our Blessed Lady had any other part or position in
the incarnation than as its _physical instrument_--much the same part,
as it were, that Juda or David may have had. The fathers, on the
contrary, from the very first, speak of her "as an intelligent,
responsible cause of our Lord's taking flesh;" "her faith and
obedience being accessories to the incarnation, and gaining it as her
reward" (p. 38). Dr. Newman insists on this vital and all-important
difference more than once, and seems to consider it the explanation of
the strange blindness of these students of antiquity. If they can once
gain a new and more Catholic idea as to that which is the foundation
alike of our Blessed Lady's greatness and the devotion of the church
to her--and certainly they must be very blind or very obstinate not to
see the reasons for such an idea in Dr. Newman's pages--then the
"Eirenicon" will have produced incidentally a far greater blessing to
themselves and others than if its strange interpretation of the
Anglican Articles had been allowed as legitimate in England, and there
had been half a score of Du Pins in France ready to enter into
negotiations with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the basis of its
propositions. These good men have in fact been living and teaching and
studying the fathers with one of the great seminal facts, so to speak,
of Christianity absent from their minds or entirely undeveloped in
them. "It was the creation of a new idea and a new sympathy, a new
faith and worship, when the holy apostles announced that God had
become incarnate; we a supreme love and devotion to him became
possible, which seemed hopeless before that revelation. _But beside
this, a second range of thoughts was opened on mankind, unknown
before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was understood that that
incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is perfectly distinct from
the former--the one does not interfere with the other."_ We conceive
that these words will fall strangely on the ears of Dr. Pusey, though
they might not perhaps do so on those of the author of the "Christian
Year" and the "Lyra Innocentium;" and if they do so, after the
incontestable proof which Dr. Newman has adduced from the early
fathers of their view of the position of our Blessed Lady in the
economy of the incarnation, it will only remain for Dr. Pusey either
to confute that proof or to acknowledge that he has been reasoning on
that great mystery without the guidance of the church, deaf to the
teaching of the fathers, and that he has incurred the usual fate of
men who so reason. May the prayers of the Blessed Mother, against
whose honor he has raised his voice so harshly, save him from closing
his eyes still more firmly!

It appears to be one of the characteristics of Dr. Newman to look at
particular questions and phases of opinion with regard to a wider and
more comprehensive range of thought than other men. Possibly his
retired position favors this habit of mind; but it is, of course, far
more naturally to be attributed to a loftier intellectual stature and
a wider knowledge of history than others possess. Such a man is
eminently fitted for a controversy like the present, in which the word
peace has been blurted forth in so uncouth a manner, while yet it is
not the less the expression of the real and powerful longings of a
thousand hearts. It is a most unpromising overture, but it is an
overture nevertheless. Dr. Newman is not only fitted to deal with it
on account of his tender and large sympathies, and of the affectionate
solicitude with which he has always treated his former friends; he is
able also not indeed to go to the very verge of Catholic doctrine for
their sakes, or to encourage delusive hopes of a compromise which
would patch up rather than unite, but to speak with calm {229}
accuracy, looking on his own times as a philosophical historian of the
church may look at them by-and-bye, and point out what may be
accidental, transient, local, in the features of the religion of the
present day. No one can be less inclined to exaggerate, for instance,
the differences between English and Italian devotion; and we have
seldom felt ourselves in a more Italian atmosphere, out of Italy, than
in the oratory at Edgbaston. But he is not afraid of giving full
weight to national differences of character, nor of avowing himself a
hearty Englishman. In the same way, without going into the question of
fact as to alleged extravagances--which, after all, is of no real
cogency in the argument--he is ready to admit that there may be such,
and puts forward a simple common-sense argument to show that such may
be expected in the living working of energetic ideas generally, and
especially of such ideas in matters of religion, which acts on the
affections. This is the true philosophical answer; and it by no means
excludes other answers that might be given to particular charges,
which might be proved to be false in fact, or to apply to matters so
grave as that the church would never be allowed to permit the alleged
corruption.

Dr. Newman never shrinks from allowing the full force of any principle
that he has laid down. Thus, he has distinguished between faith as to
our Blessed Lady's position in the kingdom of her Son and the devotion
to her founded upon that faith. The faith may have been from the
beginning, and actually was so, as he proves from the early fathers;
but the full devotion may not all at once have been developed; or
again, it may have been checked in particular countries at a
particular time, and so make no show in the writings of some fathers
of that age, in consequence of the baneful influence of a prevalent
heresy which cut at the faith itself. This, which is really almost
self-evident, enables him not only to explain the passages in St.
Chrysostom and St. Basil which are sometimes objected to, but to grant
that there are no certain traces of _devotion_, strictly so called, to
our Blessed Lady in the writings of others beside these. There need
not be, according to his principles. It must be remembered that all
these statements admit of great development and explanation; they are
germs of thought, and are only put forward most concisely in Dr.
Newman's present letter. It is more to our present purpose to observe
how ready he is to look through the cloud of charges, great and small,
which Dr. Pusey has blown in the face of Catholics, and to discern in
the book of his old friend a new and important turning-point in the
Anglican controversy. He thinks that the indignation of Catholics has
led them in consequence to misconceive Dr. Pusey, so as not, it would
seem, to give him credit for really pacific intentions. We think that
no one has denied--what, indeed, it does not become a critic to
question--the reality of a purpose distinctly avowed; but at the same
time we must repeat that it has never been denied by Dr. Pusey, nor do
we think it ever can be denied, that the book was written with a clear
and distinct intention so to represent Catholicism as to deter people
from submitting to it except on certain terms pointed out by the
author. Possibly Dr. Newman only means that Catholics have been more
alienated by Dr. Pusey's most unhandsome attack than attracted by his
professions of friendship; and certainly never was a friendly
expostulation, never was an earnest request for explanation on certain
points which appear to be difficulties in the way of a much-desired
union, proposed in a way less calculated to conciliate. Dr. Newman,
therefore, neither wonders nor complains at the strong feeling with
which the "Eirenicon" has been received; but he looks beyond the
present moment, and, recalling the former phases of opinion as to
{230} Catholicism which have prevailed among Anglicans, he sees in Dr.
Pusey's proceeding nothing less than the putting "the whole argument
between you and us on a new footing"--a footing which may really and
profitably be used by those who desire peace. No English Catholic but
will most heartily rejoice in this statement of Dr. Newman; and surely
one of our first feelings must be that of thankfulness that he is
among us at a time like this, and that circumstances will give him a
more patient hearing and a more ready acceptance, on the part of those
whose souls may be staked on the issue of this controversy, than he
might otherwise meet with. From him, at least, Anglicans will hear no
extreme or novel doctrine; him, at least, they will never accuse of
not loving everything that is English. He, if any one, may convince
them that no true child of the "undivided church" would be found at
the present day outside the communion of the Holy See; that the church
is the same now as she ever was, and as she ever will be; that she can
never compromise with her enemies, though she yearns with unutterable
love to take back every wanderer to her heart.

Experience has happily shown that the great Shepherd of souls leads
men on in a way they neither discern nor desire, when they have once
set themselves to wish and pray for greater light; and that prophecies
of ill and suspicions of sinister purposes, which have not lacked
ample foundation, have yet been often defeated in the indulgent
dispensations of grace. Nor, indeed, at the present time, are all the
signs of the sky evil. In its most disagreeable and inexcusable
features the "Eirenicon" is not, we are convinced, a fair
representation of the mind of a great number who might commonly be
supposed to sympathize with its author. He has put himself for the
moment at their head; and they are, of course, slow to repudiate his
assistance; but we do not believe that the earnest men who publish so
many Catholic devotions, and who, however mistakenly, attempt to
reproduce in their own churches the external honors paid by Catholics
to him whom they also think that they have with them, would willingly
make themselves responsible for the hundred pages with which Dr.
Newman's present pamphlet is engaged. The advance toward Catholicism
among the Anglicans has, in fact, left Dr. Pusey some way behind other
and younger men. Even as to himself, he is hardly further away than
others have been who are now within the church.

Only it must not be forgotten that the largest and most charitable
thoughts as to the meaning and intentions of individuals, and the most
hopeful anticipations as to the ultimate result of their movements, do
not exhaust the duties imposed upon Catholic writers at the present
moment. Let us see ever so much of good in demonstrations such as
this, and believe that there is a still greater amount of good which
we do not see. We may forbear to press men harshly, to point out
baldly the inconsistencies of their position; we may put up with the
rudeness of the language in which they propose peace. They may be
haughty and ungenerous now; but this is not much to bear for the sake
of that unity which those who know it love better than those who are
strangers to it. Let us be ready, as far as persons are concerned, to
be tender in exposing faults even wanton, and misconceptions which, as
we think, common industry and fairness might have obviated. For Dr.
Pusey himself we can wish no severer punishment than that he should be
able some day to look upon his own work with the eyes of a Catholic.
He has himself shown us, by the use which he has made of old
expressions of Dr. Newman and others, who have long since repudiated
them, that the retraction of charges against the Catholic Church by
their authors does not prevent {231} others from repeating them. We
are sorry to say--what we still believe will be acknowledged as true
by all who have been at the pains--pains not taken by some who have
written on this subject--of not merely considering the animus and
motives of Dr. Pusey, but of examining his book in detail, and taking
its measure as a work of erudition and controversy--that, unattractive
in style, rambling, incoherent, vague, and intentionally "loose" as it
is, it has one great quality, however unintentional--that of being a
perfect storehouse of misrepresentation. We speak simply as critics,
and we disclaim all attempts to account for the phenomenon. It
contains an almost unparalleled number of misstatements of every kind
and degree. Its author's reputation will give weight and currency to
these. Though never perhaps likely to be a popular book, it will still
take its place in Protestant libraries, and will be much used in
future controversies. No one can tell how often we shall have certain
extraordinary statements about the sanctification of the Blessed
Virgin, her active and passive conception, the protest of the Greek
Church against the doctrine, Bellarmine's assertion about general
councils, transubstantiation, extreme unction, and the like, brought
up against us; and the erroneous conclusions founded upon them cannot
be neglected by the defenders of Catholic truth. It is, therefore,
essential not that Dr. Pusey should be attacked in an unkindly spirit,
but that his book should be handled critically, and, as far as may be,
whatever it contains of misstatement, misquotation, unfair insinuation
and conclusion catalogued and exposed. It must be remembered that
there is a great demand for the materials of anti-Catholic
controversy. Dr. Pusey does not subscribe to the societies which
mostly hold their meetings in Exeter Hall in the month of May; but he
might well be made a life-governor of all of them in consideration of
this book. It will be used by the zealots who try to win the poor
peasants of Connaught to apostasy by means of food and clothing, and
by the more decorous "Anglo-Continentals," who are just now rubbing
their hands at the prospects of infidelity in Italy. Alas! it not only
teems with snares for the learned and conscientious, but it is full of
small insinuations for the ignobler herd of paid agents and
lecturers--"what the poorer people believe in Rome," what Catholic
churches are called in south India, what Cardinal Wiseman is reported
to have said of Archbishop Affré, "who died in recovering his people
at the barricades." These things may be passed by as simply faults of
taste; but the pretensions of the book to learning, and its historical
and doctrinal statements, cannot be admitted without sifting. Dr.
Pusey has imposed an unwelcome task on Catholic critics. At the very
time that they would be conciliating his followers, they are forced to
attack him. It has seemed to us indeed that ordinary care in examining
authorities, an attention to the common-sense rule that strangers
cannot understand a system from without, the use of the many means at
his disposal of ascertaining the Catholic meaning of Catholic
language, more self-restraint in assertion, in urging arguments that
appeared telling and conclusions that were welcome to himself, and
somewhat less of confidence in his own attainments as a theologian,
would have spared those who wish him well this painful undertaking at
a time when they would gladly say no word that may sound harsh to his
ears. But, after all, truth is more precious than peace, and peace can
only be had through the truth; and we can cordially return to Dr.
Pusey the assurance which he himself has proffered to Catholics, that
those engaged in the ungrateful task of subjecting his volume to the
analysis of criticism have no intention whatever of wounding his
feelings.

------
{232}


[ORIGINAL.]

CURIOSITIES OF ANIMAL LIFE.


There is an old aphorism which says that "all life comes from an
egg"--_omne vivum ex ovo_; but this, like a good many other old
aphorisms, is only a convenient and attractive way of stating a
falsehood. It is very true that almost all animals, from man down to
the mollusk, pass through the egg stage at an early period of their
existence; but we purpose to show our readers in this article that
there are others which appear to be sometimes exempted from the common
lot of their kind, and which indeed come into the world in such
curious fashions that we may almost say of them, in the words of
Topsey, that they "never were born; 'spect they _growed_."

To begin with, what is an egg? According to the popular idea, it is an
oval-shaped body, consisting of a hard, thin shell inclosing a whitish
substance called the albumen, within which is a yellowish matter
called the yolk; it is the embryo form of the young of birds and some
other animals, which finally emerge from the shell after the egg has
been acted upon for some time by the heat of the parent's body. Now
this definition may do well enough as a loose description of the more
familiar varieties of eggs, but it will not do for all. It will
perhaps surprise the unscientific reader to be told that every animal
whatever produces eggs. A "mare's nest" is the popular expression of a
myth, an absurdity; but _mare's eggs_ are no myths; they are just as
real as hen's eggs; only we never see them, because they are hatched
in the parent's body before the young colt is brought forth. The same
is true of the eggs of all the other quadrupeds and of viviparous
animals in general.

An egg, therefore, like the seed of a plant, is the germ from which
the embryo is developed. It may have a shell, or it may not; it may be
comparatively large, like birds' eggs, or it may be so small as to be
with difficulty discerned by the naked eye. When it is first formed it
is simply an aggregation of fluid matter, very minute in size, and
exceedingly simple in structure. By degrees this fluid is transformed
into the small particles or granules which form the yolk; the yolk
shapes itself into a multitude of _cells_--little microscopic bodies
consisting of an external membrane, or cell-wall, and of an inner
nucleus, which may be either solid or fluid; and in due process of
time a number of cells combine and form a living being. The albumen,
or "white," is, like the shell, an accessory. It performs important
functions in the development of the young from the germ, but we will
not stop to explain them here; the true egg is the yolk. In the lowest
forms of animal life the egg is a mere cell, with a light spot in one
part of it, and the creature which is developed from it is almost as
simple in structure as the egg itself.

The ordinary mode of reproduction, as we have already said, is by the
formation of an egg in the body of the parent, from which the young
may be hatched either before or after they are brought into the world.
But there are certain of the lower orders of animals which sometimes
multiply and {233} perpetuate their kind in other ways also. Professor
Henry James Clark, of Harvard University, has lately published an
interesting treatise   [Footnote 44] on animal development, in which
he gives some curious instances of the phenomena to which we refer. We
have drawn a good deal of what we have just said about the structure
of eggs from his valuable work, and we purpose now to follow him in
his remarks upon the processes of reproduction by what is called
_budding_ and _division_.

  [Footnote 44: "Mind in Nature; or, The Origin of Life and the Mode
  of Development of Animals." 8vo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.]

Let us look first at that exceedingly beautiful and wonderful animal
commonly called the sea anemone, on account of the delicate fringed
flower so much loved by poets. You may often find it on our coasts
contracted into a lump of gelatinous substance looking like
whitish-brown jelly;   [Footnote 45] watch it for a while, and you
will see the body rise slightly, while a delicate crown of tentacles,
or feelers, steals out at the top. The jelly-like mass continues to
increase in height, and the wreath of tentacles gradually expands.
Soon you will perceive that this graceful fringe surrounds a wide
opening; this is the animal's mouth. When expanded to its full size
the anemone is about three or four inches in height. The body consists
of a cylindrical gelatinous bag, the bottom of which is flat and
slightly spreading at the margin. The upper edge of this bag is turned
in, so as to form a sack within a sack; this is the stomach. The whole
summit of the body is crowned by the soft plumy fringes which give it
such a remarkable resemblance to a flower. At the base it has a set of
powerful muscles, by which it attaches itself to rocks and shells so
firmly that it can hardly be removed without injury. Another set of
muscles enables it to contract itself almost instantaneously into a
shapeless lump. It is extremely sensitive, not only shrinking from the
slightest touch, but even drawing in its tentacles if so much as a
dark cloud passes over it. Anemones may be found, say the authors of
"Sea-side Studies," "in any small pools about the rocks which are
flooded by the tide at high water. Their favorite haunts, however,
where they occur in greatest quantity, are more difficult to reach;
but the curious in such matters will be well rewarded, even at the
risk of wet feet and a slippery scramble over rocks covered with damp
sea-weed, by a glimpse into their more crowded abodes. Such a grotto
is to be found on the rocks of East Point at Nahant. It can only be
reached at low tide, and then one is obliged to creep on hands and
knees to its entrance in order to see through its entire length; but
its whole interior is studded with these animals, and as they are of
various hues, pink, brown, orange, purple, or pure white, the effect
is like that of brightly-colored mosaics set in the roof and walls.
When the sun strikes through from the opposite extremity of this
grotto, which is open at both ends, lighting up its living
mosaic-work, and showing the play of the soft fringes whenever the
animals are open, it would be difficult to find any artificial grotto
to compare with it in beauty. There is another of the same kind on
Saunders's ledge, formed by a large boulder resting on two rocky
ledges, leaving a little cave beneath, lined in the same way with
variously-colored sea anemones, so closely studded over its walls that
the surface of the rock is completely hidden. They are, however, to be
found in larger or smaller clusters, or scattered singly, in any rocky
fissures overhung by sea-weed and accessible to the tide at high
water."

  [Footnote 45: "Sea-side Studies in Natural History." By Elizabeth
  Alexander Agassiz. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865.]

Mr. Gosse, in his "History of British Sea Anemones and Corals,"
mentions the existence of a singular connection between a certain
variety of these animals and a species of hermit crab that lives in
the deserted {234} shell of a mollusk. An anemone is always found
attached to the shell which the crab inhabits, and is so placed that
its fringed month comes just below the mouth of the crab. Whatever
food comes within reach of either animal can, therefore, be shared in
common. The crab is so far from objecting to this community of goods
that he seems unhappy without his companion. Though he is a hermit, he
is not exempt from the common lot of housekeepers; he submits every
now and then to the trouble of _moving-day_.

Mr. Gosse observed one in the act of changing houses. No sooner had he
taken possession of the new shell than he began removing the anemone
from the old one, running his claw under it to separate it from the
shell, and then bringing it to the new house, where, having placed it
in its customary position, he held it down until it had attached
itself, and now and then pressed it closer, or gave it a pat to hasten
the process. In another instance, observed by Mr. Holdsworth, the
crab, after vainly trying for more than an hour to remove his
companion anemone, deserted his new quarters and went back to the old,
rather than submit to a separation.

The anemone, for all that it is so delicate and graceful in
appearance, is a gluttonous little beast, eats raw meat in the
aquarium, and when upon its native coast sucks mussels and cockles out
of their shells. Queer compound of plant and animal in appearance, its
natural kingdom seems still more doubtful than ever if we watch it
while it is undergoing certain processes of reproduction. It does
indeed generally produce its young by maternal gestation; eggs are
formed in the cavity that surrounds its stomach, and at the proper
time the young swim out of the parent's mouth. But it has other modes
of propagation, one of which is almost exactly like the process of
raising plants from suckers. Very often you may see, growing out of
the lower part of the body of the anemone, and as a general thing near
the edge of the basal disc by which it attaches itself to the shell or
rock, little rounded protuberances, like buds; well, they are
buds--the buds of young anemones. In a short time six small tentacles
make their appearance on the top of each bud. A minute oblong aperture
opens in the midst of them. A digestive cavity is formed. The curious
internal structure of the animal (which we have not space here to
describe) is gradually developed. The bud becomes elongated and
enlarged every way. The tentacles multiply; the small aperture grows
into a mouth; and finally the young anemone drops off from its parent
and floats away to shift for itself. Professor Clark has seen as many
as twenty thus detach themselves in the course of a single month. This
is the process of generation by _budding_ or _gemmation_, of which we
spoke on a previous page.

But we have not yet exhausted the list of wonders displayed by this
extraordinary plant-animal. We have seen that it has at least two ways
of being born; what will our readers say when we assure them that it
has not only two but _four?_ The remaining two both come under the
head of what is called _voluntary self-division_. One of them is
strikingly like the propagation of plants by cuttings. Little pieces
break off from the anemone at the base and float away. For a long time
they give no sign of life; but when they have recovered, so to speak,
from the shock of separation, they begin to shoot out their tentacles
and grow up into perfect individuals. The fourth method of generation
is still more wonderful. Now and then you find an anemone whose upper
disc is contracted in a peculiar manner at opposite sides. The
contraction increases until the disc loses its circular form and
presents the shape of the figure 8. The two halves of the 8 next
separate, and you {235} have an anemone with two mouths, each
surrounded by its own set of tentacles. Then the processes of
constriction and separation continue all down the body of the animal
from summit to base, and the result is two perfect anemones, each
complete in its organization. It is well that the lower orders of
creatures have none of the laws of inheritance and primo-geniture that
bother mankind, or such irregular methods of coming into the world
might breed a great deal of trouble among them. Here, for instance,
you have two anemones, which we will call A and B, formed by the
splitting asunder of a single individual; what relation are they to
each other? Are they brother and sister or parent and child? And if
the latter, how is any one to decide which is the parent? Then suppose
A raises offspring in the usual way from eggs, what relation are these
young to B? Are they sisters, or nieces, or grandchildren?

Let us now look at another animal, the stentor, or trumpet-animalcule.
This is a minute infusorian, very common in ponds and ditches, where
it forms colonies on the stems of water-weeds or submerged sticks and
stones. Some of the varieties have a deep blue color, and a settlement
of them looks very much like a patch of blue mould. The stentor is
shaped like a little tube, about one-sixteenth of an inch in length,
spread out at the upper end like a trumpet, and tapering at the lower
almost to a point. When it has fixed upon a place of abode, it
constructs a domicile, consisting of a gelatinous sheath, perhaps half
as high as itself. It lives inside this sheath, with its smaller
extremity attached to the bottom of it, and its wide, funnel-shaped
end projecting above the top. When disturbed it retreats into the
house and shrinks into a globular mass. The disc of the trumpet end is
not perfectly regular; on one side the edge turns inward so as to form
a notch, and curls upon itself in a spiral form. Within this spiral is
the mouth, and a long funnel-shaped throat reaches from it to the
digestive cavity. Opposite the mouth there is a globular cavity, from
which a tube extends to the lower extremity of the body. The cavity
seems to perform the functions of a heart, and the tube takes the
place of veins and arteries. Once in three-quarters of a minute this
heart-like organ contracts and forces the fluid which it contains into
the tube; the latter in its turn, after expanding very sensibly to
receive the flow, contracts and returns it to the heart.

The stentor propagates by budding, like the anemone. The first change
that takes place is a division of this contractile vesicle into two
distinct organs at about mid-height of the body, the lower portion
developing a globular cavity like the upper one. Soon after this a
shallow pit opens in the side of the stentor, in a line with the new
vesicle. This pit is the future mouth. A throat or oesophagus is next
fashioned; and all being ready for the accommodation of the new animal
the process of division begins, and goes on so rapidly that it is all
done in about two hours.

A still more curious animal, in some respects, than either of those we
have just mentioned is the hydra, one of the simplest of the
zoophytes. To all intents and purposes it is nothing but a narrow
sack, about half an inch in length, open at one end, where the mouth
is situated, and attaching itself by the other to pond-lilies,
duck-weeds, or stones on the margins of lakes. Around the mouth it has
from five to eight slender tentacles, which are used as feelers and
for the purpose of seizing the food. What it does with its food after
it has swallowed it is, strange as the statement may sound, a question
to which naturalists have not yet found a satisfactory answer; for the
hydra has no digestive organs, and its stomach is merely a pouch
formed by the folding in of the outer skin. It has no glands, no
mucous membrane, no appliances of any sort for the performance of the
chemical process {236} which we call digestion. You may turn a hydra
inside out and it will get along just as well as it did before, and
swallow its prey with just as good an appetite. The French naturalist
Trembley was the first to notice this remarkable fact. With the blunt
end of a small needle he pushed the bottom of the sack through the
body and out at the mouth, just as you would invert a stocking. He
found that the animal righted itself as soon as it was left alone; so
he repeated the operation, and this time made use of persuasion, in
the form of a bristle run crosswise through the body, to induce the
victim to remain inside out. In the course of a few days its interior
and exterior departments were thoroughly reorganized, and it ate as if
nothing had happened. Trembley next undertook to engraft one
individual upon another! For this purpose he crammed the tail of one
deep down into the cavity of another, and, in order to hold them in
their position, stuck a bristle through both. What was his surprise to
find them, some hours afterward, still spitted upon the bristle, but
hanging _side by side_ instead of one within the other! How they had
got into such a position he could not imagine. He arranged another
pair, and on watching them the mystery was solved. The inner one first
drew up its tail and pushed it out through the hole in the outer one's
side where the bristle entered. Then it pulled its head out after the
tail, and sliding along the spit completely freed itself from its
companion. This it repeated as often as the experiment was tried in
that way. It then occurred to M. Trembley that if the inner hydra were
turned inside out, so as to bring the stomachs of the two animals in
contact, union would take place more readily; and so it proved. The
little creatures seemed much pleased with the arrangement, and made no
attempt to escape. In a short time they were united as one body, and
enjoyed their food in common.

It was perhaps only natural to expect that animals which care so
little about their individuality that two specimens can be turned into
one, would be equally ready to multiply themselves by the simple
process of being cut to pieces. In other words, you may make one hydra
out of two, or two out of one, just as you please. M. Trembley divided
them in every conceivable manner. He cut them in two, and, instead of
dying, one half shot out a new head and the other developed a new
tail. He sliced them into thin rings, and each slice swam away, got
itself a set of tentacles, and grew into a perfectly formed
individual. He split them into thin longitudinal strips, and each
strip reproduced what was wanting to give it a complete body. Some he
split only part way down from the mouth, and the result was a hydra,
like the fabled monster, with many heads. The famous cat with nine
lives is nothing to these little zoophytes. They seem sublimely
indifferent not only to the most fearful wounds, but even to disease
and, we are tempted to add, decomposition itself. A part of the body
decays, and the hydra simply drops it off, like a worn-out garment,
and lives on as if it had lost nothing.

If it can do all this, we need not wonder that it can reproduce its
kind by budding. Indeed, after we have seen a living creature split
itself up into a dozen distinct individuals any other process of
generation must seem tame by comparison. At certain seasons of the
year very few hydras can be found which have not one, two, or three
young ones growing out of their bodies. The budding begins in the form
of a simple bulging from the side of the parent, something like a
wart. This is gradually elongated, and after a time tentacles sprout
from the free end, and a mouth is formed. The young is now in a
condition to seek its own prey. Its independence is finally
accomplished by a constriction of the base of the new body at the
point where it is attached to the old stock, until finally it cuts
itself off. Before {237} this separation takes place, however, it has
often begun to reproduce its own young, and so we sometimes see a
large colony of hydras all connected together, like minute branching
waterweed.

After all, you may say, it is not so very wonderful that a simple
animal like the hydra, which has no intestines, and scarcely any
special organs whatever, should be able to reproduce its lost parts,
or to multiply itself by the simple processes of growth and subsequent
division. Well, then, let us take a more complex creature, and we have
a remarkable example at hand in a certain marine worm called
_myrianida fasciata_. It is an inch or two in length, tapering off
gradually from the head. The body is marked with numerous rings or
joints, attached to which are oar-like appendages, serving not only as
instruments of propulsion but also as gills, or breathing organs. An
intestine extends from the head in a direct course to the posterior.
Blood-vessels are arranged about it like a net-work, and connect with
similar vessels in the gills. It has an organ which serves the purpose
of a heart, a nervous cord swollen at every joint into knots or
ganglions, and, in the head, one principal ganglion, which may be
considered as the brain. Its reproductive organs are situated only in
the posterior rings, and are located there in reference to the
peculiar mode of generation which we are about to describe. The young
worm begins to grow immediately in front of the parent's tail, that is
to say, between the last joint or ring and the next before the last,
and is formed by the successive growth of new rings. Before it is old
enough to be cast off another appears between its anterior end and the
next joint of the old stock; and so on until we have six worms at
once, all strung together behind the parent, and hanging, so to speak,
from one another's tails. They drop off separately, in the order of
their age. Now in this case, you will observe, there must be a
division of several organs--the intestine, the blood-vessels, and the
nervous cord; and each of the six young must develop a heart, a brain,
and a pair of eyes. An odd result of their method of growth (the first
one being formed, you will remember, not behind the parent but
_between_ her last two rings) is that the eldest offspring
appropriates the tail of his mother, while his five brothers and
sisters have to find tails of their own. We are here tempted to
indulge in a curious speculation: this first born produces its young
in the same way itself was produced, and passes on its inherited tail
to the next generation. The eldest born of that generation bequeaths
it to the next, and so on. What becomes of that ancestral tail in the
course of years? Does it at last wear out and drop off? Does the worm
that bears it die after a time without leaving any children? Or is it
possible that the process of entail has been going on without
interruption ever since the year one of the world, and that there may
be a _myrianida fasciata_ now living with a tail as old as creation?
Not very probable, certainly; but if any solution has been offered of
the great tail problem, we do not happen to have heard of it.

Professor Clark also tried various experiments upon the common flat
worm, or _planaria_, which may be found so readily in our ponds,
creeping over stones and aquatic plants, and is so easily recognized
by its opaque white color, and the liver-colored ramifications of its
intestine. He cut the creature in two, and immediately after the
operation the halves crawled away as if nothing had happened; the
anterior part preceding an ideal tail, and the posterior one following
an equally imaginary head and brain. He watched the pieces from day to
day, and found that each reproduced its missing half by a slow process
of budding and growth. This _planaria_ may be cut into several pieces,
and each will reproduce what is requisite to complete the mangled
organism. If the tail of a lizard be broken off, a {238} new one will
grow; and crabs, lobsters, spiders, etc., are known to replace their
amputated limbs. The instances we now and then meet with of what are
called _monsters_--two-headed dogs, calves with six legs, and, more
rarely, even double-headed human beings, are examples of the
phenomenon of budding--which is very common, by the way, among fishes;
and there is an animalcule called the _amoeba_ which shows a more
remarkable tenacity of life than any of the other creatures we have
mentioned, since you may divide and subdivide it until it is
physically impossible to reduce it to particles any smaller, and yet
each piece will live.



The discovery that animals may originate in so many ways independent
of maternal gestation naturally suggests the inquiry whether further
researches may not develop still other methods of reproduction, in
which the new-born creature shall have no connection whatever with any
previously existing individual. Thus we are brought back to the
question which was thought to have been settled long ago, whether
generation ever takes place spontaneously, as Aristotle and the old
physicists supposed it did. Later naturalists, following the Italian,
Redi, utterly rejected the supposition; but within the present century
it has found many reputable supporters, and Professor Clark is one of
them. When organic matter decays, numbers of _infusoria_, or
microscopic plants and animals, arise in it. Where do they come from?
Do the disorganized particles, set free by the process of
decomposition, combine into new forms, which are then endowed with
life by the direct action of Almighty power; or is the decaying
substance merely the _nest_ in which minute eggs or seeds, borne
thither upon the air, or dropped by insects, find conditions suitable
for their development in the ordinary natural way? The question is not
easily answered. Many of these germs are so excessively minute as to
defy detection. Some of the infusoria are no larger than the
twenty-four-thousandth of an inch in diameter, and it is estimated
that a drop of water might contain five hundred millions of them. It
is obvious that the germs of such little creatures must be invisible
even with the best microscope. The problem can only be solved by
placing a portion of the decomposing matter under such conditions that
any germs it may contain shall infallibly be killed and that none can
possibly reach it; then, if infusoria appear, we shall know that they
have been generated spontaneously. The great difficulty is in securing
these conditions. For the development of the living forms we require
both water and air. How are we to be certain that there are no living
germs in the organic matter before we begin the experiment? that there
are none in the water? that none are brought by the air? The action of
heat has been relied upon for the destruction of germs in the organic
matter and the water, and it has been sought to purify the air from
them by passing it through sulphuric add; but experience has shown
that sulphuric add does not kill the germs; so of course experiments
performed in that way prove nothing. Professor Clark quotes a series
of very delicate experiments tried by Professor Jeffries Wyman, of
Harvard University, which seem to us to come nearer to proving
spontaneous generation than any others with which we are acquainted.
He proceeded in three different methods, as follows:

1. The organic matter, consisting of a solution of beef or mutton
juice (or, in a few instances, vegetable matter), was placed in a
flask fitted with a cork through which passed a glass tube. The cork
was pushed deeply into the mouth of the flask, and the space above it
was filled with an adhesive cement, composed of resin, wax, and
varnish. The tube was drawn to a narrow neck a little way above the
cork, and bent at right angles, and {239} the end of it inserted in an
iron tube, where it was secured by a cement of plaster of Paris. The
rest of the iron tube was filled with wires, leaving only very narrow
passages between them. The solution in the flask was then boiled--in
some cases as long as two hours--in order to kill any germs which
might be enclosed, and to expel the air. The iron tube and wires at
the same time were heated to redness. When the boiling had continued
long enough the heat was withdrawn from beneath the flask, and the
steam was allowed slowly to condense. As it did so, air flowed in
between the red-hot wires, which had been kept at a temperature high
enough, it was supposed, to destroy any germs in the air that passed
through them. The flask was then hermetically sealed by fusing the
glass tube with the blow-pipe. When opened, several days afterward, it
was found to contain animal life.

2. A similar solution was placed in a flask the neck of which, instead
of being supplied with a cork and tube, was drawn out and bent at
right angles, and then fitted to the iron tube containing wires. The
experiment was performed as by method No. 1, and with the same result.

3. That there might be no suspicion of imperfectly sealed joints, a
solution was put into a flask with a narrow neck, and the neck itself
was then closed by fusing the glass. The whole flask was then immersed
in boiling water. At the expiration of a few days living infusoria
were found in two instances out of four.

Now these experiments undoubtedly prove that generation sometimes
occurs spontaneously, provided it be true, as Professor Clark assumes,
that there was no imperfection in the closing of the flasks (which we
see no reason to doubt), and that the infusorial germs are destroyed
by boiling. We confess that it is hard to believe they could have
survived such a heat as was applied to them in these cases; but is it
certain that they could not? A writer in an English review a few years
ago, whom we believe to have been Mr. G. H. Lewes, announced that he
had boiled certain germs _an hour and three-quarters_, and yet they
remained perfectly unaltered. At most, therefore, we can regard
spontaneous generation as a probable phenomenon.

Whether spontaneous generation, if it occurs at all, occurs by the
formation of an egg from which the animalcule is hatched, or by the
immediate formation of the adult, Professor Clark does not attempt to
say; but the French naturalist M. Pouchet, who is one of the foremost
advocates of the theory, holds that an egg is produced first. If this
is true we shall have a striking correlative to the proposition with
which we began this paper: not only can living creatures be developed
where no egg has been deposited, but eggs can be produced where there
is no animal to lay them. _Omne ovum e vivo_ will be no more true than
_Omne vivum ex ovo._

------

{240}


From Chambers's Journal

POOR AND RICH.

  In a shattered old garret scarce roofed from the sky,
  Near a window that shakes as the wind hurries by,
  Without curtain to hinder the golden sun's shine,
  Which reminds me of riches that never were mine--
  I recline on a chair that is broken and old.
  And enwrap my chilled limbs--now so aged and cold--
  'Neath a shabby old coat, with the buttons all torn.
  While I think of my youth that Time's footprints have worn.
  And remember the comrades who've one and all fled,
  And the dreams and the hopes that are dead with the dead.

  But the cracked plastered walls are emblazoned and bright
  With the dear blessed beams of the day's welcome light.
  My old coat's a king's robe, my old chair is a throne,
  And my thoughts are my courtiers that no king could own;
  For the truths that they tell, as they whisper to me,
  Are the echoes of pleasures that once used to be,
  The glad throbbings of hearts that have now ceased to feel,
  And the treasures of passions which Time cannot steal;
  So, although I know well that my life is near spent,
  Though I'll die without sorrow, I live with content.

  Though my children's soft voices no music now lend;
  Without wife's sweet embraces, or glance of a friend;
  Yet my soul sees them still, as it peoples the air
  With the spirits who crowd round my broken old chair.
  If no wealth I have hoarded to trouble mine ease,
  I admit that I doted on gems rich as these;
  And when death snatched the casket that held each fair prize,
  It flew to my heart where it happily lies;
  So, 'tis there that the utt'rings of love now are said
  By those dear ones, whom all but myself fancy dead.

  So, though fetid the air of my poor room may be.
  It still has all the odors of Eden for me.
  For my Eve wanders here, and my cherubs here sing,
  As though tempting my spirit like theirs to take wing.
  Though my pillow be hard, where so well could I rest
  As on that on which Amy's fair head has been pressed?
  So let riches and honor feed Mammon's vain heart,
  From my shattered old lodging I'll not wish to part;
  And no coat shall I need save the one I've long worn.
  Till the last thread be snapped, and the last rent be torn.

------

{241}


From The Lamp.

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


BY ROBERT CURTIS.


[CONCLUSION.]


CHAPTER XXX.

While the above exploits were being performed by Jamesy Doyle and the
police, a sad scene indeed was being enacted at the bridge. Winny
Cavana, whose bonds had been loosed, had rushed to where Emon lay with
his head in his father's lap, while the two policemen, Cotter and
Donovan, moved up with their prisoner. They not only handcuffed him,
but had tied his legs together, and threw him on the side of the road,
"to wait their convenience," while they rendered any assistance they
could to the wounded man.

The father had succeeded in stanching the blood, which at first had
poured freely from the wound. With the assistance of one of the
police, while the other was tying the prisoner, he had drawn his son
up into a sitting posture and leaned him against the bank at the side
of the road, and got his arm round him to sustain him. He was not shot
dead; but was evidently very badly wounded. He was now, however,
recovering strength and consciousness, as the blood ceased to flow.

"Open your eyes, Emon dear, if you are not dead, and look at your own
Winny," she said; "your mad Winny Cavana, who brought you here to be
murdered! Open your eyes, Emon, if you are not dead! I don't ask you
to speak."

Emon not only opened his eyes, but turned his face and looked upon
her. Oh, the ghastly smile he tried to hide!

"Don't speak, Emon; but tell me with your eyes that you are not dying.
No, no, Emon--Emon-a-knock! demon as he is, he could not murder you.
Heaven would not permit so much wickedness!"

Emon looked at her again. A faint but beautiful smile--beautiful now,
for the color had returned to his cheeks--beamed upon his lips as he
shook his head.

"Yes, yes, he has murdered him," sobbed the distracted father; "and I
pity you, Winny Cavana, as I hope you will pity his poor mother; to
say nothing of myself."

"No, no, do not say so! He will not die, he _shall_ not die!" And she
pressed her burning that's to his marble forehead. It was smooth as
alabaster, cold as ice.

"Win--ny Ca--va-na, good-by," he faintly breathed in her ear. "My
days, my hours, my very moments are numbered. I feel death trembling
in every vein, in every nerve. I could--could--have--lived for
you--Winny; but even--to--die for you--is--a blessing,
because--successful. One last request--Winny, my best beloved, is
--all--I have--to ask; spare me--a spot in Rathcash--chapel-yard, in
the space allotted to--the--Cavanas. I feel some wonderful strength
given me just now. It is a special mercy that I may speak with you
before I go. But, Winny, my own precious, dearest love, do not deceive
yourself. If I reach home to receive my mother's blessing before I
die, it is the most--" and he leaned his head against his father's
breast.

"No more delay!" cried Winny energetically, "Time is too precious to
be lost; bring the cart here, and let us take him home at once, and
send for {242} the doctor. Oh, policeman, one of you is enough to
remain with the prisoner here; do, like a good man, leave your gun and
belts here, and run off across the fields as fast as you can, and
bring Dr. Sweeney to Rathcash house."

"To Shanvilla," faintly murmured the wounded man; "and bring Father
Farrell."

"Yes, yes, to Shanvilla, to be sure," repeated Winny; "my selfish
heart had forgotten his poor mother."

Emon opened his eyes at the word mother, and smiled. It was a smile of
thanks; and he closed them again.

The policeman had obeyed her request in a moment; and, stripped of ail
incumbrances, he was clearing the hedges, ditches, and drains toward
Dr. Sweeney's.

They then placed Lennon, as gently as if he were made of wax, into the
cart, his head lying in Winny's lap, and his hand clasped in hers,
while the distracted father led the horse more like an automaton than
a human being. They proceeded at a very gentle pace, for the cart had
no springs, and Winny knew that a jolt might be fatal if the blood
burst forth afresh. The policeman followed with his prisoner at some
distance; and ere long, for the dawn had become clear, he saw his
comrades coming on behind him, a long way off. But there was evidently
a man beside themselves and Jamesy Doyle. He sat down by the side of
the road until they came up.

How matters stood was then explained to Sergeant Driscoll aside.
Cotter told him he had no hopes that ever Lennon would reach home
alive; that Donovan had gone off across the country for the doctor and
the priest, and his _carabine_ and belts were on the cart.

"We will take that prisoner from you, Cotter," said Driscoll, "and do
you get on to the cart as fast as you can; you may be of use. I don't
like to bring this villain Murdock in sight of them; you need not say
we have got him at all. We will go on straight to the barrack by the
lower road, and let you go up to Lennon's with the cart. But see here,
Cotter--do not speak to the wounded man at all, and don't let anybody
else speak to him either. We don't want a word from him; sure we all
saw it as plain as possible."

Cotter then hastened on, and soon overtook the cart. He merely said,
in explanation of being by himself, that his comrades had come up, and
that he had given his prisoner to them and hastened on to see if he
could be of any use.

Winny soon suggested a use for the kind-hearted man--to help poor Pat
Lennon into the cart, and to lead the horse. This was done without
stirring hand or foot of the poor sufferer; and the father lay at
Emon's other side scarcely less like death than he was himself.

When they came to the end of the road which turned to Rathcash and
Shanvilla, Winny, as was natural, could have wished to go to Rathcash.
She knew not how her poor father had been left, or what might be his
fate. She could not put any confidence in the assurance of such
ruffians, that a hair of his head should not be hurt; and did not one
of the villains remain in the house? Yes, Winny, one of them _did
remain_ in the house, but he _did no harm to your father_.

With all her affection and anxiety on her father's account, Winny
could not choose but to go on to Shanvilla. The less moving poor Emon
got the better, and to get from under his head now and settle him
afresh would be cruel, and might be fatal. Winny, therefore, sat
silent as Cotter turned the horse's head toward Shanvilla, where, ere
another half-hour had added to the increasing light, they had arrived.

Winny Cavana, who knew what a scene must ensue when they came to the
door, had sent on Cotter to the house; the father again taking his
place at the horse's head. He was to tell Mrs. Lennon that an accident
had happened--no, no, not _that_; but that {243} Emon had been hurt;
and that they were bringing him home quietly for fear of exciting him.

These precautions were of no use. Mrs. Lennon had waited but for the
word "hurt," which she understood at once as importing something
serious. She rushed from the house like a mad woman, and stood upon
the road gazing up and down. Fortunately Winny had the forethought to
stop the cart out of sight of the house to give Cotter time to execute
his mission, and calm Mrs. Lennon as much as possible. It was a lucky
thought, and Cotter, who was a very intelligent man, was equal to the
emergency.

As Mrs. Lennon looked round her in doubt, Cotter cried out, "Oh, don't
go that road, Mrs. Lennon, for God's sake!" and he pointed in the
direction in which the cart was not. It was enough; the ruse had
succeeded; and Mrs. Lennon started off at full speed, clapping her
hands and crying out: "Oh! Emon, Emon, have they killed you at last?
have they killed you? Oh! Emon, Emon, my boy, my boy!" And she clapped
her hands, and ran the faster. She was soon out of sight and hearing.

"Now is your time," said Cotter, running back to the cart; "she is
gone off in another direction, and we'll have him on his bed before
she comes back."

They then brought the cart to the door, and in the most gentle and
scientific manner lifted poor Emon into the house and laid him on his
bed.

"God bless you, Winny!" he said, stretching out his hand. "Don't, like
a good girl, stop here now. Return to your poor father, who must be
distracted about you. I'm better and stronger, thank God, and will be
able to see you again before I--"

"Whist, whist, Emon mavourneen, don't talk that way; you are better,
blessed be God! I must, indeed, go home, Emon, as you say, for my
heart is torn about my poor father. God bless you, Emon, my own Emon!"
And she stooped down and kissed his pale lips.

Cotter and she then left the house and made all the speed they could
toward Rathcash. They had not gone very far when Cotter heard Mrs.
Lennon coming back along the road, and they saw her turn in toward her
own house.

Bully-dhu having satisfied himself that nothing further was to be
apprehended from the senseless form of a man upon the kitchen floor,
and finding it impossible to burst open the door where his master was
confined, thought the next best thing that he could do was to bemoan
the state of affairs outside the house, in hope of drawing some help
to the spot. Accordingly he took his post immediately at the
house-door, still determined to be on the safe side, for fear the man
was scheming. Here he set up a long dismal and melancholy howl.

"My father is dead," said Winny; "there is the Banshee."

"Not at all, Miss Winny; that is a dog."

"It is all the same; Bully-dhu would not cry that way for nothing;
there is somebody dead, I'm sure."

"It is because he knew you were gone, Miss Winny, and he did not know
where to look for you; that's all, you may depend."

"Thank you, Cotter; the dog might indeed do that same. God grant it is
nothing worse!"

By this time they were at the door, and Cotter followed Bully-dhu into
the house. Winny, without looking right or left, rushed to her
father's room. She found it locked, but, quickly turning the key, she
burst in. It was now broad daylight, and she saw at a glance her
father stretched upon the bed, still bound hand and foot. She flew to
the table, and taking his razor cut the cords. The poor old man was
quite exhausted from suspense, excitement, and the fruitless physical
efforts he had been making to free himself.

"Thank God, father!" she exclaimed; "I hope you are not hurt."

{244}

"No, dear. Give me a sup of milk, or I will choke."

Poor Winny, in the ignorance of her past habits, called out to Biddy
to bring her some.

Biddy answered with a smothered cry from the inner room. Cotter flew
to the door and unlocked it. In another moment he had set her free
from her cords, and she darted across the kitchen to minister to the
old man's wants at Winny's direction.

Poor Bully-dhu then pointed out to Cotter the share he had taken in
the night's work, and it might almost be said quietly "gave himself
up." At least he showed no disposition to escape. He lay down at the
dead man's head, sweeping the floor with an odd wag of his bushy tail,
rather proud than frightened at what he had done. That it was his
work, Cotter could not for a moment doubt. The man's throat had by
this time turned almost black, and there were the marks of the dog's
teeth sunk deep at each side of the windpipe, where the choking grip
of death had prevailed.

Cotter then brought a quilt from the room where he had released Biddy
Murtagh, and spread it over the corpse, and was bringing Bully-dhu out
to the yard, when he met Jamesy Doyle at the door. Jamesy took charge
of him at once, and brought him round to the yard, where for the
present he shut him up in his wooden house; but he did not intend to
neglect him.

Jamesy told Cotter that Sergeant Driscoll and his men had taken their
prisoners safe to the barracks, and desired him to tell Cotter to join
them as soon as soon as possible.

"I cannot join them yet awhile, Jamesy; we have a corpse in the
house."

"God's mercy! an' shure it's not the poor ould masther?" said Jamesy.

"No; I don't know who he is. He must have been one of the
depredators."

"An' th' ould masther done for him!--God be praised? More power to his
elbow!"

"No, Jamesy, it was not the old master. It was Bully-dhu that choked
him--see here;" and he turned down the quilt.

"The divil a word of lie you're tellin', sir; dear me, but he gev' him
the tusks in style. Begorra, Bully, I'll give you my own dinner
to-day, an' tomorrow, an' next day for that. See, Mr. Cotter, how the
Lord overtakes the guilty at wanst, sometimes. Didn't he strike down
Tom Murdock wid lightning, an' he batin' me out a horseback? an I'd
never have cum up wid him only for that."

Cotter could not help smiling at Jamesy's enthusiasm.

"What are you laughin' at, Mr. Cotter? Maybe it's what you don't give
in to me; but I tell you I seen the flash of lightning take him down
ov the horse, as plain as the daylight. Where's Miss Winny?"

"Whist, whist, boy, don't be talking that way. Never heed Miss Winny;
she's with her father. I would not like her to see this dead man here;
don't be talking so loud. Is there any place we could draw him into,
until we find out who he is?"

"An' _I'd_ like to show him to Miss Winny, for Bully-dhu's sake. Will
I call her?"

"If you do, I'll stick you with this, Jamesy," said Cotter, getting
angry, and tapping his bayonet with his finger.

"Begorra, an' that's not the way to get me to do anything, I can tell
you; for I--"

"Well, there's a good boy, James; you have proved your cell one
tonight; and now for God's sake don't fret poor Miss Winny worse than
what she is already, and it would nearly kill her to see this dead man
here now--it would make her think of some one else dead,
Jamesy--_thigum thu_?

"_Thau_, begorra--you're right enough."

{245}

"Where can we bring him to? is there any outhouse or place?"

"To be sure there is; there's the barn where I sleep; cum out wid him
at wanst. I'll take him by the heels, an' let you dhraw him along the
floore by his shoulders."

There was a coolness and intrepidity about all Jamesy's acts and
expressions which surprised Cotter. With all his experience he had
never seen the same in so young a boy--except in a hardened villain;
and he had known Jamesy for the last four years to be the very
contrary. Cotter, however, was not philosopher enough to know that an
excess of principle, and a total want of it, might produce the same
intrepidity of character.

Cotter took the dead man under the shoulders and drew him along, while
Jamesy took him by the feet and pushed him.

Neither Winny, nor Biddy, nor the old man knew a word about this part
of the performance. Jamesy saw the propriety of keeping it to himself
for the present. Cotter locked the barn-door and took away the key
with him. He told Jamesy that he would find out from the other
prisoner "who the corpse was," and that he would call again with
instructions in the course of the day. He then hastened to the
barrack, and Jamesy went in to see Miss Winny and the ould masther.
The message which Cotter had sent her by Jamesy was this--"To keep up
her heart, and to hold herself in readiness for a visit from the
resident magistrate before the day was over."



CHAPTER XXXI.

It was still very early. The generality of the inhabitants were not
yet up, and Winny sighed at the long sad day which was before her. She
had first made her father tell her how the ruffians had served him,
and after hearing the particulars she detailed everything which had
befallen herself. She described the battle at the bridge, as well as
her sobs would permit her, from the moment that Lennon sprang up from
behind the battlement to their rescue until the fatal arrival of the
police, as she called it, upon the approach of whom "that demon fired
his pistol at my poor Emon as close as I am to you, father."

"Well, well; Winny, don't lave the blame upon the police; he would
have fired at Lennon whether they cum up or not, for Emon never would
have let go his holt."

"True enough, father. I do not lay it upon them at all. Emon would
have clung to his horse for miles if he had not shot him down."

"Beside, Jamesy says the police has him fast enough. Isn't that a
mercy at all events, Winny?"

"It is only the mercy of revenge, father, God forgive me for the
thought. The law will call it justice."

"And a just revenge is all fair an' right, Winny. He had no pity on an
innocent boy, an' why should you have pity on a guilty villain?"

"Pity! No, father, I have no pity for him. But I wish I did not feel
so vengeful."

"But how did the police hear of it, Winny, or find out which way they
went; an' what brought Jamesy Doyle up with them?"

"We must ask Jamesy himself about that, father," she said; and she
desired Biddy to call him in, for he was with Bully-dhu.

Jamesy was soon in attendance again, and they made him sit down, for
with all his pluck he looked weary and fatigued. They then asked him
to tell everything, from the moment he first heard the men smashing
the door.

Jamesy Doyle's description of the whole thing was short and decisive,
told in his own graphic style, with many "begorras," in spite of
Winny's remonstrances.

"Begorra, Miss Winny, I tould Bully-dhu what they were up to, an' I
let him in at the hall doore, an' {246} when I seen him tumble the
fust man he met, and stick in his windpipe without so much as a growl,
I knew there was one man wouldn't lave that easy, any way; an' I med
off for the polis as fast as my legs and feet could carry me."

"And how did--how--did--poor Emon hear of it?" sighed Winny.

"Arra blur-an-ages, Miss Winny, didn't I cut across by Shanvilla, an'
tould him every haporth? Why, miss, he'd murdher me af I let him lie
there dhramin', an' they carrin' you off, Miss Winny."

"Oh, Jamesy, why did you not go straight for the police, and never
mind Emon-a-knock?" she said.

"Ah! Winny dear," said her father, "remember that there was nearly
half-an-hour's battle at the bridge before the police came up; and had
your persecutor that half-hour's law, where and what would you be
now?"

"I did not care. I would have fought my battle alone against twenty
Tom Murdocks. They might have ill-used me, and then murdered me, but
what of that? Emon-a-knock would live, perhaps to avenge me; but
now--now--oh, father, father! I wish he had murdered me along with
Emon. But, God forgive me, indeed I am very sinful; I forgot you,
father dear. Here, Biddy, get the kettle boiling; we all want a cup of
tea;" and she put her handkerchief to her swimming eyes.

Jamesy had thrown himself in his clothes on some empty sacks in a
corner of the kitchen, saying, "Miss Winny, I'm tired enough to sleep
anywhere, an' I'll lie down here."

"Hadn't you better go to your own bed in the barn, Jamesy, where you
can take off your clothes? I am sure you would be more comfortable."

"No, Miss Winny, I'm sure I would not. Beside, the policeman tuck--"
Jamesy stopped himself. "What the mischief have I been saying?"
thought he.

"The policeman took what, Jamesy?" said Winny.

"He tuck the key, miss. He said no one should g'win there till he cum
back."

"Oh, very well, Jamesy; lie down, and let me throw this quilt over
you. But, God's mercy, if here is not a pool of blood! I wonder what
brought it here? Oh, am I doomed to sec nothing but blood--blood? What
is this, Jamesy, do you know?"

"I do, miss. It was Bully-dhu that cut one of the men when they cum
in; and no cure for him, Miss Winny!"

"Why, he must have cut him severely, James; the whole floor is covered
with blood."

"Cut him, is it? Begorra, Miss Winny, he kilt him out-an-out. I may as
well tell you the thruth at wanst."

"For heaven's sake, you do not mean to say that he actually killed
him, Jamesy?"

"That's just what I do mane. Miss Winny, an' I may as well tell you,
for Mr. Cotter will be here by-an-bye with the coroner and a jury to
hould an inquest. Isn't he lyin' there abroad in the barn as stiff as
a crowbar, an' as ugly as if he was bespoke, miss? Didn't I help Mr.
Cotter to carry him out, or rather to dhrag him? for begorra he was as
heavy as if he was made of lead!"

"Fie, fie, James, you should not talk that way of any poor
fellow-being--for shame!"

"An' a bad fellow-bein' he was, to cum here to carry you away. Miss
Winny, an' maybe to murdher you in the mountain, or maybe worse. My
blessin' on you, Bully-dhu!"

Winny was shocked at the cool manner in which Jamesy spoke of such a
frightful occurrence. She was afraid she would never make a Christian
of him.

Cotter and a comrade soon returned and took charge of the body until
the coroner should arrive. They had served summonses upon twelve or
fourteen of the most respectable neighbors--good men and true. They
had ascertained that the deceased was a man named John Fahy, from the
{247} county of Cavan, a reputed Ribbonman. The cart had belonged to
him, but of course there was no name upon it. The news of the whole
affair had already spread like fire the moment the people began to get
about; and two brothers of Fahy's arrived to claim the body before the
inquest was over.

Jamesy Doyle was the principal witness "before the fact." His evidence
was like himself all over. Having been sworn by the coroner, he did
not think that sufficient, but began his statement with another oath
of his own--the reader knows by this time what it was. The coroner
checked him, and reminded him that he was already on his solemn oath,
and that light swearing of that kind was very unseemly, and could not
be permitted. He advised him to be cautions.

Jamesy had sense enough to take his advice, although he seldom took
Winny's upon the same subject.

"When first I heerd the _rookawn_ I got up, an' dhrew on my clothes,
an' cum round the corner of the house. I seen three men stannin' at
the doore, an' I heerd wan of 'em ordher it to be bruck in. I knew
there was but two women an' wan ould man, the masther, in the house,
an' I knew there was no use in goin' in to be murdhered, an' that I
could be of more use a great dale outside. Bully-dhu was roarin' like
a lion in the back yard, an' couldn't get out. I knew Bully was well
able for wan of 'em, any way, if not for two, an' I let him out an'
brought him to the hall-doore. The minit ever I let him out iv the
yard he was as silent as the grave, an' I knew what that meant. Well,
I brought him to the doore, an' pointed to the deceased, for he was
the first man I seen in from me. Well, without with your lave or by
your lave, Bully had him tumbled on the floore, an' his four big teeth
stuck in his windpipe. 'That'll do,' says I, 'as far as wan of ye
goes, any way;' an' I med off for the police. I wasn' much out about
Bully, your worship, for the man never left that antil Mr. Cotter an'
I helped him out into the barn."

Cotter was then examined. His evidence was "that he had found the
deceased lying dead on the kitchen floor; that the dog on entering lay
down at his head and put his paw upon his breast, as if pointing out
what he had done." That was all he knew about it.

The doctor was then examined--surgeon, perhaps, we should call him on
this occasion--and swore "that he had carefully examined the deceased;
that he had been choked; and that the wounds in the throat indicated
that they had been inflicted by the teeth of a large, powerful dog; no
cat nor other animal known in this country could have done it."

This closed the evidence. The coroner made a short charge to the jury,
and the verdict was "that the deceased, John Fahy, as they believed
him to be, had come by his death by being suffocated _and choked_ by a
large black dog called Bully-dhu, belonging to one Edward Cavana, of
Rathcash, in the parish, etc., etc.; but that inasmuch as he, the said
deceased, was in the act of committing a felony at the time, for
which, if convicted in a court of law, he would have forfeited his
life, they would not recommend the dog to be destroyed."

The coroner said "he thought this was a very elaborate verdict upon so
simple a case; and disagreed with the jury upon the latter part of the
verdict. The dog could not have known that, and it was evident he was
a ferocious animal, and he thought he ought to be destroyed."

"He did know it, your honor," vociferated Jamesy Doyle. "Didn't I tell
him, and wasn't it I pointed out the deceased to him, and tould him to
hould him? If it was th' ould masther or myself kilt him, you couldn't
say a haporth to aidher of us, let alone the dog."

If this was not logic for the coroner, it was for the jury, who
refused to change their verdict. But the {248} tack to the verdict,
exonerating poor Bully-dhu, was almost unnecessary, where he had such
a friend in court as Jamesy Doyle; for he, anticipating some such
attempt, had provided for poor Bully's safety. His first act after
Cotter had left in the morning was to get a chum of his, who lived not
for off, to take the dog in his collar and strap to an uncle's son, a
first cousin of his, about seven miles away, to tell him what had
happened, and to take care of the dog until the thing "blew over," and
that "Miss Winny would never forget it to him."

Billy Brennan delivered the dog and the message safely; "he'd do more
nor that for Miss Winny;" or for that matter for the dog himself, for
they were great play-fellows in the dry grass of a summer's day. Now
it was a strange fact, and deserves to be recorded for the curious in
such things, that although Bully-dhu had never seen Jamesy's cousin in
his life, and that although he was a surly, distant dog to strangers,
he took up with young Barny Foley the moment he saw him. He never
stirred from his side, and did not appear inclined to leave the place.

Before the inquest had closed its proceedings the two brothers of the
deceased man adverted to had arrived to take away the dead body. It
was well for poor Bully-dhu, after all, that Jamesy had been so
thoughtful, although it was quite another source of danger he had
apprehended. The two Fahys searched high and low for the dog, one of
them armed secretly with a loaded pistol, but both openly with huge
crab-tree sticks to beat his brains out, in spite of coroner,
magistrate, police, or jury. But they searched in vain. They offered
Jamesy, not knowing the stuff he was made of, a pound-note "to show
them where the big black dog was." His answer, though mute, was just
like him. He put his left thumb to the tip of his nose, his right
thumb to the little finger of the left hand, and began to play the
bagpipes in the air with his fingers.

They pressed it upon him and he got vexed.

"Begorra," said be, "af ye cum here to-night after midnight to take
Miss Winny away, I'll show him to you, an' maybe it wouldn't be worth
the coroner's while to go home."

"He may stay where he is, for that matther," said one of the brothers.
"He'll have work enough tomorrow or next day at Shanvilla;" and they
turned away.

"Ay, and the hangman from the county of _Cavan_ will have something to
do soon afther," shouted Jamesy after them, who was never at a loss
for an answer. He had the last word here, and it was a sore one.

As the brothers Fahy failed in their search for Bully, they had
nothing further that they dare vent their grief and indignation upon.
It was no use in bemoaning the matter there amongst unsympathizing
strangers; so they fetched the cart to the barn-door and laid the
corpse into it, covering it with a white sheet which they had brought
for the purpose.

"Will I lind you a hand, boys?" said Jamesy, as they were struggling
with the weight of the dead man at the barn-door.

The scowl he got from one of the brothers would have discomfited a boy
less plucky or self-possessed than Jamesy Doyle; but he had not said
it in irony. No one there appeared inclined to give any help, and
Jamesy actually did get under the corpse, and "_helped_ him into the
cart," as he said himself.

The unfortunate men then left, walking one at each side of their dead
brother. And who is there, except perhaps Jamesy Doyle, who would not
pity them as they rumbled their melancholy way down the boreen to the
road?

{249}


CHAPTER XXXII.

About two hours later in the day "the chief" arrived to "visit the
scene," as he was bound to do before he made his report.

He was received courteously and with respect by Winny Cavana, who
showed him into the parlor. He considerately began by regretting the
unfortunate and melancholy occurrence which had taken place; but of
course added, the satisfaction it was to him, indeed that it must be
to every one, that the perpetrators had been secured, particularly the
principal mover in the sad event.

Winny made no remark, and "the chief" then requested her to state in
detail what had occurred from the time the men broke into the house
until the shot was fired which wounded the man. She seemed at first
disinclined to do so; but upon that gentleman explaining that she
would be required to do so on her oath, when the magistrate called to
take her information, she merely sighed, and said:

"I suppose so; indeed I do not see why I should not."

She then gave him a plain and succinct account as far as their conduct
to herself was concerned, and referred him to her father and the
servants for the share they had taken toward them.

He then obtained from old Cavana, Biddy Murtagh, and Jamesy Doyle what
they knew of the transaction; and thus fully primed and loaded for his
report, he left, telling Winny Cavana "the stipendiary magistrate had
left home the day before, but that he would be back the next day; and
she might expect an official visit from him, as he would make
arrangements with him that she should not be brought from her home,
when no doubt the prisoners would be remanded for the doctor's report
of the wounded man."

The morning after "the chief" had been at Rathcash house, Winny
Cavana, almost immediately after breakfast, told Jamesy Doyle to get
ready and come with her to Shanvilla. She was anxious to ascertain
from personal knowledge how poor Emon was going on. She was distracted
with the contradictory reports which Biddy Murtagh brought in from
time to time from the passers-by upon the road. Winny had little, if
any, hope at all that Edward Lennon would survive. She had been
assured by Father Farrell, in whose truth and experience she placed
the greatest confidence, that it was _impossible_, although he might
linger for a few days. The doctor, too, had pronounced the same solemn
doom. Her thoughts as she hastened toward Shanvilla were full of awe
and _determination_. She had spent the night, the entire night, for
she had never closed an eye, in laying down a broad short map of her
future life, and it was already engraven on her mind. She had been
clever in drawing such things at the school where she had him been
educated, and her thoughts now took that form.

Her poor father while he lived; herself before and after his death;
the Lennons one and all; Kate Mulvey, Phil M'Dermott, Jamesy Doyle,
Biddy Murtagh, and Bully-dhu were the only spots marked upon the map;
but they were conspicuous, like the capital towns of counties. There
was but one river on the map, and it could be traced by Winny's tears.
It was the great river of "the Past," and rose in the distant
mountains of her memory which hemmed in this map of her fancy. It
flowed first round old Ned and the Lennons, who were bounded by Winny
on the north, south, east, and west. It passed by Kate Mulvey and Phil
M'Dermott, and thence passing by Jamesy Doyle, Biddy Murtagh, and
Bully-dhu, it emptied itself into the Irish ocean of Winny's
affectionate heart.

Winny knew that she would meet Father Farrell at Emon's bedside; he
scarcely ever left it; and she knew {250} that he would not deceive
her as to his real state. She knew, too, that he would not refuse her
a sincere Christian advice and counsel upon the sudden resolve which
had taken possession of her heart.

Father Farrell saw her coming from Emon's window, and went to meet her
at the door. They stood in the kitchen alone. The poor father and
mother had been kept out of Emon's room by the priest, and were
bewailing their fate in their own room.

"I am glad you are come, Winny, dear," said he. "The poor fellow has
not ceased to speak of you and pray for you from the first, when he
does transgress his orders not to speak at all."

"How is he, oh, how is he, Father Farrell?"

"Stronger just now, but dying, Winny Cavana. Let nothing tempt you to
deceive yourself. He has been so much stronger for the last hour or so
that I was just going to send my gig for yon. He said it would soothe
his death-bed, which he knows he is on, Winny, to see you and have
your blessing."

"He shall have my blessing, and I shall claim every right to give it
to him. Father Farrell," she added, solemnly, but with a full,
untrembling tone, "will you marry me to Edward Lennon?"

The priest almost staggered back from her for a moment.

"Yes, Father Farrell, you have heard aright, and I solemnly and
sincerely repeat the question. Listen: You must know that never on
this earth will I wed any other. I shall devote myself and the greater
portion of any wealth I may possess to the church for charitable
purposes after Edward Lennon, my future husband--future here and
hereafter--is dead. I wish to call him husband by that precious right
which death will so soon rob me of. Even so, Father Farrell; give me
that right, short though it be. It will enable me legally to provide
for his honest, stout-hearted father and his broken-hearted mother,
without the lying lips of slander doubting the motive. Oh, Father
Farrell, it is the only consolation left me now to hope for, or in
your power to bestow."

The priest was struck dumb. Her eyes, her breath, pleaded almost more
than her words.

Father Farrell sat down upon a form.

"Winny Cavana," he said, "do not press me--that is, I mean, do not
hurry me. The matter admits of serious consideration, and may not be
altogether so unreasonable or extraordinary as it might at first
appear. But I say that it requires consideration. Walk abroad for a
few minutes and let me think."

"No, father. You may remain here for a few minutes and think. Let me
go in and see my poor Emon."

"Yes, yes, you shall; but I must go in along with you, Winny. I can
come out again if I find that more consideration is necessary."

Winny saw that she had gained her point. They then entered the room,
and Emon cast such a look of gratitude and love upon Winny as calmed
every doubt upon the priest's mind, for he was afraid that Emon
himself would object, and that the scene would injure him.

Winny was soon at Emon's side, with his hand clasped in hers.

"You are come, Winny dear, to bid me a final good-by--in this world,"
he murmured. "God bless you for your goodness and your love for me!"

"I am come, Emon dear, to fulfil that love in the presence of heaven,
and with Father Farrell's sanction--am I not, Father Farrell?"

"I never doubted it, Winny dear."

"And you shall not doubt it now. You shall die declaring it. Emon--
Emon, my own Emon-a-knock, I am come to claim the promise you gave me
to make me your wife."

"Great God, Winny I are you mad?--she not mad. Father Farrell?"

{251}

"No, Emon dear, she really is not mad. She will devote herself and her
whole future life to charity and the love of a better world than this.
She can do that not only as well, but better, in some respects, as
your widow than otherwise. I have considered the matter, and I cannot
see that there are any just reasons to deny her request."

"Then I shall die happy, though it be this very night. But oh, Winny,
Winny, think of what you are about; time will soften your grief, and
you may yet be happy with ano--"

"Stop, Emon dear--not another word; for here, before heaven and Father
Farrell, I swear never shall I marry any one in this world but you.
Here, Father Farrell, begin; here is a ring you gave me yourself,
Emon, and although not a wedding-ring it will do very well--we will
make one of it."

Father Farrell then brought in Emon's father and mother, and married
Winny Cavana to the dying man.

She stooped down and kissed his pallid lips. Big drops of sweat burst
out upon his forehead, and Father Farrell saw that the last moment was
at hand. Winny held his hand between both hers, and said, "Emon, you
are now mine--mine by divine right, and I resign you to the Lord." And
she looked up to heaven through the roof, while the big tears rolled
down her pale cheeks.

"Winny," said Emon, in a solemn but distinct voice, "I now die happy.
For this I have lived, and for this I die. I cannot count on even
hours now; my moments are numbered. I feel death trembling round my
heart. But you have calmed its approach, Winny dear. Your love and
devotion at a moment like this is the happiest pang that softens my
passage to the grave. I can now claim a right to what you promised me
as a favor--my portion of your space in Rathcash chapel-yard. God
bless you, Winny dear!--Good-by--my--wife!"

Yes, Emon had lived and had died for the love of her who was _now his
widow_.

As Emon had ceased to speak, a bright smile broke over his whole
countenance, and he rendered his last sigh into the safe-keeping of
his guardian angel, until the last great day.

Winny knew that he was dead, though his breath had passed so gently
forth that he might have been only falling asleep. She continued to
hold his hand, and to gaze upon his still features, while Father
Farrell's lips moved in silent prayer, more for the living than the
dead.

"Come, Winny," he at last said, "you cannot remain here just at
present. Come along with me, and I will bring you in my gig to your
father's house, where I will tell him all myself."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Father Farrell," she said, turning
resignedly with him. "Tell poor Pat Lennon what has happened; their
pity for me as a companion in their grief may help to soften their
own. Tell him, of course, Father Farrell, that I shall take all the
arrangements of the funeral upon myself--God help them and me!"

As they came from the dead man's room they met Pat Lennon in the
kitchen, and Winny, throwing her arms round his neck, caught the big
salt tears which were rolling down his face upon her quivering lips.

"I have a right to call you father now," she exclaimed. "You have lost
a son, but I will be your daughter," and she kissed him again and
again.


CHAPTER XXXIII.

On their way to Rathcash, Winny in the first instance told the priest
that "of course her poor husband should be buried in Rathcash
chapel-yard, and, as a matter in which she could not interfere, by
Father Roche." Here she stopped, but the kind-hearted priest took her
up at once.

{252}

"Of course, my dear child," he said, "that will be quite right.
Indeed, Winny, I should not wish to be the person so soon to add that
sad ceremony to the still sadder one I was engaged in to-day."

"Before God or man, Father Farrell, you will never have cause to
regret that act. It was my own choosing after deliberate
consideration, and I was best judge of my own feelings. I _can_ be
happy now. I never _could_ be happy if it were otherwise."

"God grant it, my love," said the priest.

"But still, Father Farrell," she continued, "I have something more for
you to do for me. Will you not, like a good man, take all the
arrangement of the funeral upon yourself? I will pay every penny of
the expenses, and let them not be niggardly. Thank God, Father
Farrell, I can do so now without reproach."

The kind, sympathizing priest engaged to do everything which was
requisite in the most approved of manner. The more he reflected upon
what he had done, the less fault he had to find with himself. There
was a calm, resigned tone about all that Winny now said very different
from what he might have anticipated from his knowledge of her temper
and disposition, had the fatal moment taken place when the shot was
fired, or even subsequently before she became Edward Lennon's wife.
Bitter revenge, he thought, would have seized her soul toward the man
who had deprived her of all hope or source of happiness in this world.
Now the only time she trusted her tongue to speak of him was an
exclamation--"May God forgive him!"

They soon arrived at Rathcash house, where Father Farrell paid a long
visit to old Ned Cavana. His kindness quite gained upon the old man,
and, before he left, he acquainted him with the facts of his
daughter's position and the death of her husband.

The old man sat silent for some time after the truth had been made
known to him. Winny stood hoping for a look of encouragement and
forgiveness; but the old man gave it not. At length, with that
impatience habitual to her disposition, she rushed into his arms and
wept upon his breast.

"Oh, father!" she exclaimed, "I could never be the wife of any man
living after poor Emon's death in defence of my life; ay, more than my
life, of my honor."

"But oh, Winny, Winny! to sacrifice yourself for a man so near the
grave! There was no hope for him, I heerd."

"None, father. I was aware of that. Had there been, I should have
waited patiently. I told Father Farrell here my plans, and the same
thing as swore that I would not alter them. He will now tell them to
you, father dear; and I shall lie down for a couple of hours, for
indeed I want rest of both body and mind."

She then kissed her father again and again, and blessed him, or rather
she prayed God to do so, and went to her room.

Father Farrell then explained all Winny's views to her distracted
father, observing, as he had been enjoined to do, the tenderest love
and respect for the old man; taking nothing "for granted;" but at the
same time showing the utmost confidence that all matters would still
be arranged for his daughter in the same manner he had often explained
to her to be his intention. "One step she was determined on," Father
Farrell said; "and that was to join a religious sisterhood of charity
in the north. Nothing should ever tempt her to marry."

"I'll sell this place at wance," said old Ned. "It's not a month since
I had a rattlin' bid for it; but my landlord--and he's member for the
county, you know--tould me with his own lips, that if ever I had a
mind to part with it, he'd give me a hundred pounds more for it than
any one else."

"That was Winny's wish, Ned; and that you should remove with her to
the north, where she would settle you comfortably, and where she could
{253} see you almost every day in the week."

"Almost," repeated old Ned, sorrowfully.

"Well, perhaps every day, Ned, for that matter."

"Well, Father Farrell, I would not wish to stay here any longer afther
what has happened. I'll sell the place out an' out at wance. I have
nothing to do but to write to my landlord. I could not bear to be
lookin' across at Mick Murdock's afther what tuck place. I think my
poor Winny is right; an' that it was the Lord put it all into her
head. Athen, Father Farrell, maybe it was yourself laid it down for
the little girl?"

"No, Ned; she laid it all down for me. I was going to reason with her
at first, but she put her hand upon my mouth, and told me to stop;
that nothing should alter her plans. I considered her words, Ned, for
a while, and I gave in; not on account of her determination, but
because I thought she was right. And I think so still; even to the
marrying of Emon on his death-bed."

"Indeed, Father Farrell, you have aised my mind. Glory be to God that
guided her!"

"Amen," said the priest.

Father Farrell had now in the kindest manner dealt with old Ned
Cavana, according to Winny's wishes and instructions; so that it was
an easy matter for Winny herself on that evening, when she had joined
her father after a refreshing sleep, to explain more in detail her
intentions as regarded herself, and her wishes as regarded her
friends--those capitals of counties which were marked on the map of
her imagination.

Old Ned was like a child in her hands; and no mother ever handled her
first-born babe more fondly than Winny dealt with her poor old father.

"Ducks an' dhrakes iv it, Winny asthore; ducks an' dhrakes iv it,
Winny dear! Isn't it all your own; what do I want with it, mavrone,
but to see you happy? an' haven't you laid out a plan for both
yourself an' myself that can't be bet, Winny mavoureen?"

The old man was perfectly satisfied with the map, and studied it so
well that he had it by heart before he went to bed, and could have
told you the boundaries of all Winny's wishes to the breadth of a
hair, as he kissed her for the last time that night.

I will spare the reader a detail of the melancholy _cortège_ of poor
Emon-a-knock's funeral, which proceeded from Shanvilla to Rathcash
chapel-yard the day but one after.

Winny had expressed a wish to attend it, but had yielded to the joint
advice of Father Farrell and Father Roche to resist the impulse.

Emon-a-knock had been well and truly loved in life, and was now
sincerely regretted in death. Father Farrell, at the head of the
procession, was met by Father Roche bare-headed at the chapel-gate of
Rathcash, and the melancholy ceremony was performed amidst the silent
grief of the immense crowd around. Poor Emon's last wish was complied
with, and he now occupied his last resting-place with the Cavanas of
Rathcash.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

It was still about an hour after noon when Winny beheld from the
parlor window at which she stood a very exciting cavalcade upon the
road, slowly approaching the house. At once she became acquainted with
the whole concern. "The chief" had fore-warned her that she might
expect a visit from the magistrate the moment he returned; and her
intelligence at once recognized the addition of the police and
prisoners some distance in rear of the car.

Winny's heart beat quick and high as she saw them draw nigh and turn
up the lane. It would be mock heroism to say that it did not. She knew
{254} that Tom Murdock, the murderer of her husband, must be one of
the prisoners, but she did not know why they were bringing him
there--for the police had now made the turn. She thought the
magistrate might have spared her that fresh excitement--that renewal
of her hate. But the magistrate was one of those who had anticipated
the law by his sense of justice and his practice. He was one who gave
every one of his majesty's subjects fair play, and it was therefore
his habit to have the accused face to face with the accuser when
informations were taken and read.

Poor Winny was rather fluttered and disturbed when they entered,
notwithstanding "the chief" had considerately prepared her for the
visit. She did not lose her self-possession, however, so much as to
forget the respect and courtesy due to gentlemen, beside being
officers of the law. She asked them down into the parlor, and
requested of them to be seated. They accepted her civility in silence,
seeing enough in her manner to show them that she was greatly
distressed, and required a little time to compose herself'. She was,
however, the first to speak.

"I suppose, gentlemen, you are come respecting this sad affair. I told
this gentleman here all I knew about it yesterday."

"Yes, but matters are still worse today, although there was no hope
even then that they would be better. Of course it will relieve you so
far at once to tell you that we are aware of the position in which you
now stand toward the deceased."

"Yes, sir. It was with a wish that the world might know it I took the
step I did. I had Father Farrell's approval of it, and my own
parish-priest's as well; but subsequently--"

"My good girl, we did not come here to question the propriety or
otherwise of either your actions or your motives. Nor do I for one
hesitate to say that I believe both to have been unexceptionable. But
it will be necessary that you should make an information upon oath as
to what took place from the first moment the men came to the door,
until the shot was fired by which Edward Lennon came by his death."

"I suppose, sir, you must have much better evidence than mine as to
the firing of the shot. I can only swear to the fact of two men having
tied me up and carried me away on a cart, and that there was a third
man on horseback with a mask upon his face; that when we came to Boher
bridge, the deceased Edward Lennon and his father came to our rescue;
that there was a long and distracting struggle at the bridge, which
lasted with very doubtful hopes of success for my deliverance until
Jamesy Doyle, our servant-boy, came up with the police; that the man
on horseback with the mask, whom I verily believe to have been Thomas
Murdock, turned to fly; that the deceased Edward Lennon fastened in
his horse's bridle to prevent him; that a deadly struggle ensued
between them, and that the man on horseback fired at the deceased, who
fell, I may say, dead on the road. The sight left my eyes, sir, and
except that we brought the dying man home on the cart, I know no more
about it of my own knowledge, sir."

"A very plain, straightforward, honest story as I ever heard," said
the magistrate. "But it will be necessary for you, when upon your
oath, to state whether you know, that is, whether you recognized, the
man on horseback at time."

"I could not recognize his features, sir, on account of the mask he
wore; but I did recognize his voice as that of Tom Murdock, and I know
his figure and general appearance."

"That will do now, Mrs. Lennon. I shall only trouble you to repeat
slowly and distinctly what you have already said, so that I can write
it down."

The magistrate then unlocked his leather writing-case, took out the
necessary forms for informations, and was {255} not long embodying
what Winny had to say in premier shape.

He then went through the same form with old Ned, with Biddy Murtagh,
and with Jamesy Doyle.

When the magistrate had all the informations taken and arranged, he
directed Sergeant Driscoll to bring in the prisoners, that he might
read them over and swear the several informants in their presence.
Winny became very nervous and fidgety, and would have left the room,
but the magistrate assured her that it was absolutely necessary that
she should remain, at least while her own informations were being
read. He would read them first, and she might then retire. He
regretted very much that it was necessary, but he would not detain her
more than a couple of minutes at most.

Tom Murdock and the other prisoner were then brought in; and Winny
having identified the other man, her informations were read in a loud,
distinct voice by the magistrate, and she acknowledged herself bound,
etc, etc.

"You may now retire, Mrs. Lennon," said the magistrate; and she
hastened to leave the room.

Tom Murdock stood near the door out of which she must pass, his hands
crossed below his breast in consequence of the handcuffs. He knew that
there was no chance of escape, no hope of an alteration or mitigation
of his doom in this world. Everything was too plain against him. There
were several witnesses to his deed of death, and the damning words by
which it was accompanied, and he knew that the rope must be his end.
Well, he had purchased his revenge, and he was willing to pay for it.
He determined, therefore, to put on the bravado, and glut that revenge
upon his still surviving victim.

"Emon-a-knock is dead. Miss Cavana," said he, as Winny would have
passed him to the door, her eyes fastened on the ground; "but not
buried yet", he added, with a sardonic smile. "I wish I were free of
these manacles, that I might follow his _remains_ to Shanvilla
chapel-yard."

"You would go wrong," she calmly reply. "He is indeed dead, but not
buried yet. But he is my dead husband, and will lie with the Cavanas
in the chapel-yard of Rathcash, and rise again with them; and I would
rather be possessed of the inheritance of the six feet of grass upon
his grave than be mistress of Rathcash, and Rathcashmore to boot.
Where will you be buried, Tom Murdock? Within the precincts of--the
jail? To rise with-but no! I shall not condemn beyond the grave; may
God forgive you! I cannot."

Even Tom Murdock's stony heart was moved. "Winny Cavana, do you think
God can?" he said, turning toward her; but she had passed out of the
door.

The magistrate then read the informations of the other witnesses,
while Tom Murdock and the other prisoner, stood apparently listening,
though they heard not a word.

Jamesy Doyle's informations were word for word characteristic of
himself. He insisted upon having the flash of lightning inserted
therein, as an undoubted fact, "if ever he saw one knock a man down in
his life."

The magistrate and "the chief" had then some conversation with old Ned
and Winny, who had returned at their request to the parlor. It was of
a general character, but still respecting the melancholy occurrence,
or indeed occurrences, the magistrate said, for he had heard of the
death of the man who had been killed by the "watch-dog." Ere they left
they took Jamesy aside upon this subject, as the only person who knew
anything of this part of the business, and the magistrate requested
him to state distinctly what he knew of the transaction.

Jamesy was _distinct_ enough, as the reader will believe, from the
specimens he has already had of his style of communicating facts.

"Tell me, my good boy," said the magistrate, "did you _set_ the dog at
{256} the deceased?" laying a strong emphasis on the word.

"Beghorra, your honor, Bully-dhu didn't want any settin' at all. The
minnit he seen the man inside in the kitchen, he stuck in his thrapple
at wanst. I knew he'd hould him till I come back, an' I med off for
the police."

"Are you aware, my young champion, that if you set the dog at the
deceased you would be guilty of manslaughter at least, if not murder?"

"Of murdher, is id? Oh, tare anages, what's this for? Begorra, af that
be law it isn't justice. Didn't they tie th' ould masther neck an'
heels? Didn't they tie Miss Winny and carry her off to murdher her, or
maybe worse? Didn't they tie Biddy Murtagh? and wouldn't they ha' tied
me af they could get hoult of me? an' would you want Bully-dhu to sit
on his boss, lookin' on at all that, your honor?"

"That may be all true, Jamesy, but I do not think the law would
exonerate you, for all that, if you set the dog at the deceased man."

"Well, begorra, I pointed at the man, your honor; but I tell you
Bully-dhu wanted no settin' at him at all; af he did I'd have given it
to him; and I think the law would onerate me for that same. See here
now, your honor. Af th' ould masther had a double-barrel gun, an' shot
the two men as dead as mutton that was goin' to tie him up, wouldn't
the law be well plaised wid him? and if I had a pistol, an' shot every
man iv 'em, wouldn't your honor make a chief iv me at least, instead
of sending me to jail? and why wouldn't Bully-dhu, who had on'y a pair
of double-barrel tusks, do his part an' help us? I'm feedin' an'
taichin' that dog, your honor, since he was a whelp, an' he never
disappointed me yet--there now!"

There was certainly natural logic in all this, which the magistrate,
with all his experience of the law, found it difficult to contradict.
A notion had come into his head at one time that if Jamesy Doyle had
set the dog at John Fahy, he might be guilty of his death,
notwithstanding the said John Fahy had been committing a felony at the
time. But there was no proof that he had set the dog at the man beyond
his own admission, and the question had not been raised. Jamesy was
willing to avow his responsibility, as far as it went, in the most
open and candid manner, and not only that, but to _justify_ it, which
he had indeed done in a most extraordinary, clever manner. Then what
had been his conduct all through? Had it not been that of a
courageous, faithful boy, who had risked his own life in obstructing
the escape of the murderer? and was he not the most material witness
they had--the only one who had never lost sight of the man who had
shot Edward Lennon, until he himself had secured him for the police?
"No, no," reflected the magistrate; "it would be absurd to hold Jamesy
Doyle liable for anything, but the most qualified approbation of his
conduct from first to last."

"Well, Jamesy," said he, out of these thoughts, "we will take your own
opinion in favor of yourself for the present. There is no doubt of
your being forthcoming at the next assizes?"

"Begorra, your honor, I'll stick to the ould masther and Miss Winny,
an' I don't think they're likely to lave this."

"That will do, Jamesy. Come, Mr.----, I think we have taken up almost
enough of these poor people's time. We may be going."

A word or two about old Mick Murdock ere we close this chapter, as the
reader, not having seen or heard of him for some days, will no doubt
be curious to know what he had been doing, and how he comported
himself during so trying and exciting a scene.

During the period which Tom had spent in the obscure little
public-house {257} upon the mountain road in the county Cavan, his own
report that, he had gone to the north had done him no service; for the
addition which he had tacked to it, about "going to get married to a
rich young lady," was not believed by a single person for whose
deception it had been spread abroad. That sort of thing had been so
often repeated without fulfilment that people reversed the cry of the
wolf upon the subject.

There was nothing now for it with those to whom Tom was indebted but
to go to his father, in hopes of some arrangement being made to even
secure them in their money. Several bills of exchange--some overdue,
and some not yet at maturity--with his name across them, were brought
to old Mick for sums varying from ten to fifteen and twenty pounds.
Old Mick quietly pronounced them one and all to be _forgeries_. Tom
and he had had some very sharp words before he went away. He had
called the poor old man a "----old niggard" to his face, and he heard
the words "cannot lost very long," as Tom slapped the door behind him.

Old Mick would have only fretted at all this had his son returned in a
reasonable time to his home, and, as usual, made promises of
amendment, or had even written to him. It was the first time that ever
a forged acceptance had been presented to him for payment, and Tom's
prolonged absence without any preconcerted object to account for it
weighed heavily upon the old man's heart as to his son's real
character. Tom was all this time, as the reader is aware, planning a
bold stroke to secure Winny Cavana's fortune to pay off these
forgeries. But we have seen with what a miserable result.

It was impossible to hide the glaring fact of Tom Murdock's
apprehension and committal to jail upon the dreadful charge of murder
from his father. It rang from one end of the parish to the other. But
instead of rushing to meet his son, clapping his hands, and
exclaiming, "Oh! wiristhrue, wiristhrue! what's this for?" poor old
Mick was completely prostrated by the news; and there he lay in his
bed, unable to move hand or foot from the poignancy of his grief and
disgrace.

If Tom Murdock has broken his poor old father's heart, and he never
rises from that bed, it is only another item in his great account.



CHAPTER XXXV.

The reader will recollect that the incidents recorded in the two last
chapters took place toward the latter end of June. We will, therefore,
have time, before the assizes come on, to let him know how far Winny's
fancy map was perfected.

For herself, then, first. She had determined to become a member of a
convent in the north of Ireland, giving up the world with all its
vanities--she knew nothing of its pomps--and devoting her time, her
talents, and whatever money she might finally possess, to religious
and charitable purposes. She had not delayed long after the magistrate
and "the chief" had left, and she had experienced a refreshing sleep,
in taking her father into her confidence to the fullest extent of her
intuitions, not only as regarded herself, but with respect to those
friends whom she had set down upon the map to be provided for.

"Father," she said, continuing a conversation, "there is no use in
your moving such a thing to me. It is no matter at what time you
project it for me; my mind is made up beyond even the consideration of
the question. I will never marry. Do not, like a dear good father that
you have ever been, move it to me any more."

"Indeed, Winny, I could not add a word more than I have already sed;
an' if that fails to bring you round, {258} share I'm dumb, Winny
asthore. God's will be done! I'm dumb."

"It is his will I am seeking, father. What matter if we are the last
of the Cavanas, as you say? Beside, my children would not be Cavanas;
recollect that, father."

"I know that, Winny jewel; but they'd be of th' ould stock all the
same. Their grandfather would be a Cavana, if he lived to see them."

"Be thankful for what you have, father dear. There never was a large
clan of a name but some one of them brought grief to it."

"Ay, Winny asthore; but there is always wan that makes up for it by
their superior goodness. Look at me that never had but the wan, an'
wasn't she, an' isn't she, a threasure to me all the days of my life?
Look at that, Winny."

"And there is your next-door neighbor, father, never had but the one,
and instead of a treasure, has he not been a curse? Look you at that,
father."

Old Ned was silent for some moments, and Winny did not wish to
interrupt his thoughts. She hoped he was coming quite round to her way
of thinking with respect to her never "getting married;" and she was
right.

"Well, Winny asthore," he said, after a pause, "shure you're doin' a
good turn for your sowl hereafther at any rate; an' I'll be led an'
sed by your own sinse of goodness in the matther. For myself, Winny,
wheresomever you go I'll go, where I'll see you sometimes--as often as
you can, Winny. Be my time long or short, I know that you will never
see me worse, if not betther nor what I always was. But it isn't aisy
to lave this place, Winny asthore, where I'm livin' since I was the
hoith of your knee with your grandfather an' your grandmother--God
rest their sowls! There isn't a pebble in the long walk in the garden,
nor a pavin'-stone in the yard, that I couldn't place upon paper
forenent you there this minnit, and tell you the color of them every
wan. There's scarcely a blade of grass in the pasthure-fields that I
couldn't remember where it grows in my dhrames. There isn't a
furze-blossom in the big ditch but what I'd know it out iv the bud it
cum from. There isn't a thrush nor a blackbird about the place but
what I know themselves an' their whistles as well as I know your own
song from Biddy Murtagh's or Jamesy Doyle's. Not a robin-redbreast in
the garden, Winny, that doesn't know me as well as I know you; an' I
could tell you the difference between the very chaffinches--I could,
Winny, I could."

"I know all that, father dear, and I know it will not be easy to break
up all them happy thoughts in your mind. But then you know, father
dear, I could not stop here looking across at the house where that man
lived. God help me, father, I do not know what to do!"

Poor old Ned saw that she was distressed, and was sorry he had drawn
such a picture of his former happiness at Rathcash. The recollection
of these little matters had run upon his tongue, but it was not with
any intention of using them as an argument to change Winny's plans.

"Winny," he said, "I didn't mane to fret you; shure I know what you
say is all thrue. I could not stop here myself no more nor what you
could, Winny, afther what has happened. Dear me, Winny jewel, how soon
you seen through that fellow, an' how glad I am that you didn't give
in to me! But now, Winny asthore, let us quit talking of him, and
listen to what I have to say to you. 'Tis just this. My landlord, who
you know is member for the county, tould me any time I had a mind to
sell my intherest in Rathcash, that he'd give me a hundred pounds more
for it than any one else. I'll write to him tomorrow, plaise God,
about it. You know Jerry Carty? Well, he is afther offerin' me seven
hundred {259} pounds into my fist for my good-will of the place. As
good luck would have it, I did not put any price upon it when my
landlord spoke to me about sellin' it. I can tell him now that I have
a mind to sell it, an' I won't hide the raison aidher. I can let him
know what Carty is willin' to give me for it, an' he's sure to give me
eight hundred pounds. You know, Winny, that your six hundred pounds is
in the bank b'arin' intherest for you, an' what you don't dhraw is
added to it every half year. But that's naidher here nor there, Winny,
for it will be all your own the very moment this place is sould, an',
as I sed before, you may make ducks and dhrakes iv it. Shure I know,
Winny, that'll you never see me want for a haporth while I last, be it
long or short. But, Winny dear, let us live in the wan house; that's
all I ax, mavourneen macree."

"That will be about fourteen hundred pounds in all, father."

"A thrifle more nor that, I think, Winny. Maybe you did not know how
much or how little it was, when you laid it out the way you tould me."

"No, not exactly, father; but I knew I must have been very much within
the mark; I took care of that."

"Go over it again for me, Winny dear, af it wouldn't be too much
throuble."

"Not in the least, father. You know I took Kate Mulvey first, and
determined to settle three hundred pounds upon her for a fortune
against 'she meets with some young man,' as the song says. And I
believe, father, Phil M'Dermott, the whitesmith, will be about the
man. He is very fond of Kate, but he would not marry any woman until
he had saved enough of money to set up a house comfortly and decently
upon. Three hundred pounds fortune with Kate will set them up in good
style, and I shall see the best friend I ever had happy. Then, father,
there are the Lennons, my poor dear husband's parents, whom I shall
next consider. Pat Lennon, poor Emon's father, risked his life most
manfully in my defence. Were it not for his resolute attack upon the
two men with the cart, and the obstruction he gave them, they would
have carried me through the pass long before the police and Jamesy
Doyle came up; and the probability is that you would never have seen
your poor Winny again. I purpose purchasing the good-will of that
little farm and house from which the Murphys are about to emigrate,
and settle a small gratuity upon them during their lives."

"Annuity, I suppose you mane, Winny; but it's no matther. How much
will that take, Winny?"

"About two hundred pounds, father, including the--what is it you call
it, father?'

"Annuity, Winny, annuity; I didn't think you were so--"

"Annuity," she repeated before he had got the other word out, and he
was glad afterward.

"Well, Winny, that's only five hundred out of somethin' over six."

"Then I'll give Biddy Murtagh a hundred pounds, and she must live as
cook and house-maid with Kate; and I'll lodge twenty pounds in the
savings-bank for Jamesy Doyle. Perhaps I owe him more than the whole
of them put together."

"That will be the first duck, Winny."

"How is that, father?'

"Why, it's well beyant the six hundred, Winny, which was all you were
goin' upon at first; but you may now begin with whatever we get by the
sale of Rathcash."

"Well, father, I would only wish to suggest the distribution of that,
for you know I have no call to it, and God grant that it may be a long
day until I have."

"Faix, an' Winny, af that be so, you've left yourself bare enough. But
don't be talkin' nonsense, child. What would I want with it? Won't
{260} you take care iv me, Winny asthore? an' won't you want the most
iv it where you are agoin? an' didn't you tell me already that you'd
like me to let you give it to the charities of that religious
establishment? Shure, there's no use in my askin' you any more not to
go into it."

"None indeed, father, for I am resolved upon it. But you shall live in
the town with me, and I can take care of you the same as if I was in
the house with you. There shall be nothing that you can want or wish
for that you shall not have, and no day that it is possible that I
will not see you."

"What more had I here, Winny, except the crops coming round from the
seed to the harvest, an' the cattle, an' the grass, an' the birds in
the bushes? Dear, oh dear, yes! Hadn't I yourself, Winny asthore,
forenent me at breakust, dinner, an' supper; an' warn't you for ever
talkin' to me of an evenin', with your stitchin' or your knittin'
across your lap; an', Winny jewel, wasn't your light song curling
through the yard, an' the house, afore I was up in the mornin'? But
now--now--Winny--oh, Winny asthore, mavourneen macree! but your poor
old father will miss yourself, no matther how kind your plans may be
for his comfort. Shure, the very knowledge that you were asleep in the
house with me was a blessin'."

"Father," she said, "God bless you! I will be back with you in a few
minutes--do not fret;" and she left him, and shut herself up in her
room.

But he did fret; and he was no sooner alone than the big tears burst
uncontrollably forth into a pocket-handkerchief, which he continued to
sop against his face.

Winny had thrown herself upon her knees at the bedside, and prayed to
God to guide her. Her thoughts and prayers were too dignified and holy
for tears. But they had made a free course to the pinnacle of the
mercy-seat, and she rose with her soul refreshed by the glory which
had responded to her cry for guidance.

She returned to her father, a radiant smile of anticipated pleasure
playing round her beautiful lips. There was no sign of grief, or even
of emotion, on her cheeks.

"Father," she said, "I have been seeking guidance from the Almighty in
this matter; and the old saying that 'charity begins at home'--that is
moral charity in this instance--has been suggested to my heart. We
shall not part, father, even temporarily. Where you live, I shall
live. I have been told, father, just now, while upon my knees, that to
do all the good I have projected need not oblige me to join as an
actual member of any charitable or religious society. No, father, I
can carry out all my plans without the necessity of living apart from
you; we will therefore, father dear, still live together. But let us
remove when this place is sold to B----, where the establishment I
have spoken of is situated, and there, with my knitting or my
stitching on my lap before you in the evenings, I can carry on all my
plans in connection with the institution without being an actual
member, which might involve the necessity of my living in the house.
But, father dear, I hope you do not disapprove of any of them, or of
the distribution of the money, so far as I have laid it out."

It was then quietly and finally arranged between them that as soon as
Rathcash was sold, and the stock and furniture disposed of, they would
remove to B----, in a northern county. They there intended to take a
small house, either in the town or precincts--the latter old Ned
preferred--where Winny could join the Sisters of Charity, at least in
her acts, if not as a resident member. The money was to be disposed of
as Winny had laid out, and legal deeds were to be prepared and
perfected; and poor Winny, notwithstanding the sudden cloud which had
darkened the blue heaven of her {261} life, was to be as happy as the
day was long.



CHAPTER XXXVI.



Within a month from the scene between Winny and her father described
above, Rathcash bad been purchased and paid for. There had been "a
great auction" of the stock, crops, and furniture. The house was shut
up, the door locked, and the windows bolted. No smoke curled from the
brick chimneys through the poplars. No sleek dark-red cows stood
swinging their tails and licking their noses, while a fragrant smell
of luscious milk rose through the air. No cock crew, no duck quacked,
no Turkey gobbled, and no goose gabbled. No dog bayed the moon by
night. Bully-dhu was at the flitting. The corn-stands and haggard were
naked and cold, and the grass was beginning to grow before the door.
The whole place seemed solitary and forlorn, awaiting a new tenant, or
whatever plans the proprietor might lay out for its future occupation.
Winny and her father had torn themselves from the spot hallowed to the
old man by years of uninterrupted happiness, and to the young girl by
the memory of a blissful childhood and the first sunshine of the
bright hope which is nearest to a woman's heart, until that fatal
night when vengeful crime broke in and snapt both spells asunder.
Rathcash and Rathcashmore had been a byword in the mouths of young and
old for the nine days limited for the wonder of such things.

If the goodness of his only child had broken the heart of one old man
from the reflection that her earthly happiness had been hopelessly
blighted, and his fond plans and prospects for her crushed for ever,
the villany and wickedness of another had not been less certain in a
similar result. Old Mick Murdock--ere his son stood before an earthly
tribunal to answer for his crimes--had been summoned before the court
of heaven.

The assizes came round, "the charge was prepared, the judge was
arrayed--a most _ter_rible show." Old Cavana and his daughter were, as
a matter of course, summoned by the crown for the prosecution, as were
also Pat Lennon, Jamesy Doyle, Biddy Murtagh, and the policemen who
had come to the rescue.

Old Ned was the first witness, Winny the second, Jamesy Doyle the
third. Then Biddy Murtagh and Pat Lennon, and finally, before the
doctor's medical evidence was given, the policemen who came to the
rescue, particularly he who had seen the shot fired and the man fall.

This closed the evidence for the Crown. There was no case, there could
be no case, for the prisoner, beyond the futile cross-examination of
the witnesses, by an able and tormenting counsellor, old Bob B----y,
whose experience in this instance was worse than useless.

The reader need hardly follow on to the result. Tom Murdock was
convicted and sentenced to death; and ere three weeks had elapsed he
had paid the penalty of an ungovernable temper and a revengeful
disposition upon the scaffold.

Poor Winny had pleaded hard with the counsel for the crown, and even
with the attorney-general himself--who prosecuted in person--that Tom
Murdock might be permitted to plead guilty to the abduction, and be
sentenced to transportation for life. But the attorney-general, who
had all the informations by heart, said that the animus had been
manifest all through, from even prior to the hurling-match, which was
alluded to by the prisoner himself as he fired the shot, and that he
would most certainly arraign the prisoner for the murder. And so he
was found guilty; and Winny, with her heart full of plans of peace and
charity, was obliged to forge the first link in a chain the {262}
succeeding ones of which dragged Tom Murdock to an ignominious grave.

Old Ned and Winny, accompanied by faithful Bully-dhu, had returned to
B----, where the old man read and loitered about, watching every
figure which approached, hoping to see his angel girl pass on some
mission of holy charity, dressed in her black hood and cape.

Accompanied by Bully-dhu, he picked up every occurrence in the street,
and compiled them in his memory, to amuse Winny in the evenings, in
return for her descriptions of this or that case of distress which she
had relieved. Thus they told story about, not very unlike tragedy and
farce!

A sufficient time had now elapsed, not only for the deeds to have been
perfected, but for the provisions which they set forth to have been
carried out. Pat Lennon had already removed to the comfortable cottage
upon the snug little farm which had been purchased for him by Winny,
and the "annuity" she had settled upon him was bearing interest in the
savings-bank at C. O. S.

Phil M'Dermott was one of the best to do men in that side of the
country, and his wife (if you can guess who she was) was the nicest
and the handsomest he (now that Winny was gone) that you'd meet with
in the congregation of the three chapels within four miles of where
she lived. Jamesy Doyle had been transferred--head, body, and
bones--to the establishment, where he excelled himself in everything
which was good and useful and--_handy_. Many a figary was got from
time to time after him in the forge, filed up bright and nice, and if
he does not "sorely belie" his abilities and aptitude, he will one day
become a "whitesmith" of no mean reputation.

Biddy Murtagh was to have gone as cook and thorough servant to _Mrs.
M'Dermott;_ but the hundred pounds which had been lodged to her credit
in the bank soon smoothed the way between her and Denis Murrican--a
Shanvilla boy, you will guess--who induced her to become cook, but not
thorough servant, I hope, to himself; so Kate M'Dermott--how strange
it seems not to write 'Kate Mulvey'!--was obliged to get somebody
else.

Poor Winny, blighted in her own hopes of this world's happiness, had
turned her thoughts to a surer and more abiding source. She had seen
her plans for the happiness of those she loved carried out to a
success almost beyond her hopes. Her poor old father, getting whiter
and whiter as the years rolled on, attained a ripe and good old age,
blessed in the fond society of the only being whom he loved on earth.
Winny herself found too large a field for individual charity and good
to think of joining any society, however estimable, during her
father's lifetime, and was emphatically _the_ Sister of Charity in the
singular number.

But poor old Ned has long since passed away from this scene of earthly
cares, and sleeps in peace in his own chapel-yard, between _two
tombs_. Long as the journey was, Winny had the courage and
self-control to come with her father's bier, and see his coffin laid
beside that of him who had been so rudely snatched away, and whom she
had so devotedly loved. Poor Bully-dhu was at the funeral, and gazed
into the fresh-made grave in silent, dying grief. When all was over,
and the last green sod slapped down upon the mound, he could nowhere
be found. He had suddenly eluded all observation. But ere a week had
passed by, he was found dead upon his master's grave, after the whole
neighborhood had been terrified by a night of the most dismal howling
which was ever heard.

Winny returned to the sphere of her usefulness and hope, where for
many years she continued to exercise a course of unselfish charity,
which made many a heart sing for joy.

{263}

But she, too, passed away, and was brought home to her last
resting-place in Rathcash chapel-yard, where the three tombs are still
to be seen. Were she now alive she would yet be a comparatively young
woman, not much past sixty-four or sixty-five years of age. But it
pleased God, in his inscrutable ways, to remove her from the circle of
all her bounty and her love. Had it not been so, this tale would not
have yet been written.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

"REQUIEM AETERNAM."


  Lo! another pilgrim, weary
    With his toils, hath reached the goal.
  And we lift our "_Miserere_"
    For the dear departed soul;
  God of pity and of love!
  May he reign with thee above!

  By the pleasures he surrendered,
    By the cross so meekly borne.
  By the heart so early tendered.
    By each sharp and secret thorn,
  And by every holy deed--
  For our brother's rest we plead!

  'Mid the throng who rest contented,
    Earth to him was but a waste.
  And the sweets this life presented,
    Were but wormwood to his taste.
  Faith had taught him from the first
  For the fount of life to thirst

  Faith, the sun that rose to brighten
    All his pathway from the font:
  Then no phantom e'er could frighten,
    Nor the sword of pain or want:
  "For," he said, "though pain be strong,
  Time shall vanquish it ere long."

  When he spoke of things eternal,
    How the transient seemed to fade!
  And we saw the goods supernal
    Stand revealed without a shade:
  "Surely 'twas a spirit spoke,"
  Was the thought his language woke.

{264}

  Thought prophetic! _now_ a spirit
    Speaketh from the world unseen:
  And the faith we, too, inherit
    Telleth what the tidings mean:
  "Friend and stranger! oh, prepare--
  Make the wedding garment fair."

  Yet our brother's strength was mortal;
    Bore he naught of earthly taint?
  Did he pass the guarded portal
    In the armor of a saint?
  Lord of holiness! with dread
  On this awful ground we tread.

  He was merciful and tender
    To the erring and the weak;
  Therefore will thy pity render
    Unto him the grace we seek.
  Whilst we bring to mercy's fount
  Pledges uttered on the Mount.

  He remembered the departed
    As we now remember him:
  Bright, and true, and simple-hearted.
    Till the lamp of life grew dim:
  Friend was he of youth and age--
  Now a child--and now a sage.

  If those footsteps unreturning
    Leave on earth no lasting trace:
  If no kindred heart be yearning
    Tearful in his vacant place:
  If oblivion be his lot
  Here below, we murmur not;
  Only let his portion be
  Evermore, dear Lord, _with thee!_

MARIE.

Beaver, PA.

------

{265}


From The Dublin University Magazine.


TINTED SKETCHES IN MADEIRA.


CHAPTER I.

Notwithstanding that Madeira enjoys an imperishable distinction for
its matchless scenery, its sunny skies, and its healthful climate, yet
the character of its inhabitants seems to have been but little
studied, and still less the singular usages and customs which indicate
their nationality. Impressed with the idea that to supply some
information on these particulars might heighten the interest
experienced for the Madeirans as an isolated little community, I have
compiled a few pages descriptive of their social and domestic life,
intending them, however, merely as supplementary to the valuable
information afforded by others.

Passing over the novel and amusing circumstance of landing at Funchal,
which has already been so often described, I find myself in a
boi-caro, or ox-car, traversing narrow and intricate streets; the
murmur of waters and soft strains of instrumental music saluting my
ear, while a faint perfumed breeze stirs the curtains of my caro. By
some travellers the boi-caro has been likened to the body of a calèche
placed on a sledge, but to me it neither had then, nor has it assumed
since, any other appearance than that of a four-post bed, curtained
with oil-cloth, lined with some bright-colored calico, and having
comfortably cushioned seats. It is made of light, strong timber,
secured on a frame shod with iron. A pair of fat, sleek oxen are yoked
to this odd-looking carriage, while from thongs passed through their
horns bits of carved ivory or bone hang on their foreheads to protect
them from the influence of Malochio or Evil-eye.

Half an hour brought me to my destination, No.--,  Rua San Francisco.
This house in its structure resembles the generality of the better
class of houses in the island, the sleeping-rooms being sacrificed to
the magnificence of the reception-rooms, the vastness of which appears
to mock the ordinary wants of daily life. The walls are pure white,
lined with prints, paintings, and mirrors; the floors are either
covered with oil-cloth or highly polished; and the windows are shaded
by lace curtains and Venetian blinds; the furniture is modern, and of
English manufacture. I have been thus minute because the interiors of
all the superior dwellings have the same general character. I cannot,
however, say the same with regard to the tastes and habits of the
occupants. The British prince-merchant, with his spirit, his
intelligence, and his philanthropy, gives his days to the busy cares
of life, and his evenings to the quiet enjoyments of home; while the
Madeiran gentleman passes his days in luxurious indolence, and his
evenings in crowded rooms. The ladies present an equally strong
contrast, and yet, during one short period in each day, their tastes
and purposes seem to assimilate: when the brief and beautiful
twilight, with its freshness, its odors, and its music, induces even
the exclusive English-women to appear in the shaded balcony, and find
amusement in the passing scenes.

At this hour the peasantry may be seen returning to their homes in
little parties of four or five, each group being accompanied by a
musician playing on the national instrument, the machêtes, or
guitarette, and singing some plaintive air in which, occasionally, all
join. No sooner has one group passed, than the sweet, soft intonations
of other songsters are heard {266} approaching. Sometimes two or even
more parties will enter the street at the same time, when they at once
take up alternate parts, and that with such perfect taste and harmony
that when the notes begin to die away in the distance the listener's
car is aching with attention. These songs are usually of their own
composition, and are improvised for the occasion. They have but few
national ballads, and of these the subjects are either the
mischief-loving Malochio, or Macham and the unhappy Lady Anna, or the
fable of Madeira's having been cast up by the sea covered with
magnificent forests of cedar, which afterward, catching fire from a
sun-beam, burned for seven years, and then from the heated soil
produced the luxuriant vegetation with which it is now clothed.

It must not be supposed, however, that the peasantry are of a
melancholy disposition because it is their custom to make choice of
plaintive music to time their footsteps when returning at the close of
a golden day to their homes by the sea or on the rugged mountain
heights. On the contrary, the character of their minds combines all
the variety of the scenes amongst which they were nurtured, though the
leading trait is a desire for the gay and fanciful, whether in dress
or amusement; While they regard neither money nor time in comparison
with the gratification of witnessing the numerous ceremonies and
pageants which every other day fill the streets with richly-dad trains
of ecclesiastics, flashing cavalcades, and troops of youths and
maidens in festive wreaths and gay attire. The season of Lent affords
them almost daily opportunities for the indulgence of this taste.

At an early hour of the Monday morning in the first week in Lent the
ordinary stillness of the town is interrupted by loud and clamorous
sounds, such as sometimes assail the ear in a European town, at
midnight, when bands of revellers are reeling toward their homes.
Laughter, song, instrumental music, and the unsteady tramp of a crowd
meet the startled ear, suggesting the idea of the proximity of a
disorderly multitude. Opening the window cautiously you look down into
the street, and behold bands of men in masks and habited in every
variety of strange and ridiculous costume. Some few, however, display
both taste and wealth in the choice of their disguises, but the
generality of the crowd in their tawdry attire and hideous masks
appear to have studied only effectual concealment. For some hours
party after party continue to pass through the street, and as they
knock loudly at the doors, and even call on the inhabitants by name,
you discover that a feeling of impatience to have the shops opened and
the ordinary routine of business commenced is common to all, and, if
not gratified, may manifest itself in some open act of aggression.
Slowly and with evident reluctance the houses are opened, while the
curious and amused faces of children and servants may be seen peeping
from the trellised balconies down on the noisy crowd. After a time a
few men in ordinary costume begin to appear in the street, trying to
look unconscious and unsuspicious of any danger, and hurrying forward
with the important pre-occupied air of men of business. But neither
their courage nor cunning avails them anything. A shower of stale eggs
breaking on the stalwart shoulders of one merchant reminds him that
the more grave and English-like is his demeanor, the more is he
regarded as the proper subject for mirth; while a plate of flour
thrown over another would send a dusty miller instead of a dandy
flying into some open door for shelter, followed by the derisive
laughter of the insolent crowd.

Amazed at such an exhibition of unchecked violence, the stranger
inquires the meaning of the scene, and learns that it is merely the
customary way of celebrating in Funchal the day known as Shrove
Tuesday, the people having from time immemorial {267} enjoyed an
established license to indulge on that day in such rude practical
jokes as are warranted by the usages of all carnival seasons.

I may here observe that the Madeirans reckon their days from noon to
noon, instead of from midnight to midnight, though their impatience
for frolic and mischief frequently leads them, as on the present
occasion, into the error of beginning the day some hours too soon.
When, however, celebrating religious festivals, or on days set apart
for fasting and invoking of their patron saints--Nossa Senhora do
Monte and Sant Jago Minor--they carefully adhere to the established
rule.

As the day advances the crowd becomes bolder, and no one, no matter
what his age, rank, or nation, is suffered to pass unmolested. These
coarse carnival jests are continued not only through the day but
through the night, and until noon the next day, when the firing of
cannon from the fort announces the cessation of the privilege of
outraging society with impunity. Although, however, practical joking
is prohibited from that moment until the next anniversary of the same
day, masquerading is allowed from Shrove Tuesday till the week after
Easter, the English being the chief, if not the only, objects for
raillery and ridicule.

In general the most amicable feelings exist between the Madeirans and
all foreigners, yet the lower classes of the natives appear to derive
the utmost satisfaction in being openly permitted to caricature the
English, and under favor of their privileged disguise to display
John's eccentricities and weaknesses in the most ludicrous light,
while the jealousy of the authorities prohibits on his part the most
distant approach to retaliation.

As the last echo of the warning gun died away amongst the hills, the
sun's position in the heavens indicated the hour of noon, and
instantly the musical peals of numerous bells came floating to the ear
from every direction, while above their sweet harmonious sounds is
heard the booming of cannon from the vessels anchored in the roads,
and the loud blasts of trumpets from the fort and the barracks. A
stranger might be excused for supposing that the people were about to
renew the carnival, whereas they were only announcing, in conformity
with ecclesiastical law, the commencement of the season of Lent. This
was the first day, or Ash Wednesday, though by our manner of computing
time it was still the noon of Tuesday. At one o'clock the roar of
artillery from the Loo Rock and the shipping was silent, the martial
strains ceased, but the bells at short intervals continued to ring out
their melodious summons, which was responded to by hundreds of persons
in ordinary costume, all moving in the direction of the sé, or
cathedral, in the Praca Constitutionel. Mingling with this decorous
portion of the crowd were many of the most grotesquely attired masques
of the previous day, whose antics and buffoonery, jests and laughter,
formed the oddest contrast to the costume and bearing of the others.

Meanwhile, by one of those sudden changes so common in tropical
climates, the sky, which a short time before was so blue and serene,
began to show signs of a gathering storm. There was an ominous
stillness in the atmosphere, the dull leaden color overhead was
shedding its gloom everywhere, and I heard voices from the crowd
exclaiming, "Hasten forward there, the rain is coming--hasten!" A few
big drops just then fell with a plashing sound, and in a second or two
afterward down, with a terrific noise, poured the fierce wild rain,
coming on the streets with the noise of a waterfall, while on the
house-tops it fell with a sharp rattle, as if every drop was a
paving-stone.

In a few moments from the commencement of the rain the people had all
disappeared, the streets had assumed the appearance of rushing
streams, while the three fiumeras traversing the town kept up an {268}
unceasing roar, as the swollen waters rushed plunging toward the sea.

Formerly these fiumeras were uninclosed, and consequently after heavy
rains the torrents would enlarge their borders, spreading out on every
side and encompassing the town, until it assumed the appearance of
having been built in the midst of waves and currents. Now, however,
walls of strong masonry attest the wisdom and industry of the modern
Madeirans, and between these the rivers flow in shallow musical
streams in summer, or sweep on in deep, sullen floods during the rainy
seasons in spring and autumn. It sometimes, however, happens that,
though the rivers can no longer overleap their boundaries to career
round pillared edifices and lay bare their foundations, or, sweeping
up into their fierce embrace cottages and their inmates, inclosures
and their stalled cattle, hurry with them into the blue depths of the
bay of Funchal, they still, when increased by these mountain torrents,
which on leaving the heights are but whispering streamlets, gathering
depth and strength in their descent, will send boulders of many tons
weight over the high broad walls, followed by giant trees, planks of
timber, and jagged branches, as if from the heaving bosom of the angry
waters rocks and withered boughs are flung off with equal ease.



CHAPTER II.

From the period alluded to in the last chapter, namely, the beginning
of Lent, processions and public ceremonies become of such frequent
recurrence that I must either pass over a period of some weeks or fill
a volume in describing them. Believing the former course to be the
wisest, I shall pass on to the fourth Sunday in Lent. From an early
hour in the morning every bell-tower had been awakening the echoes
with its musical clamor, and every hamlet and village had responded to
the summons by sending forth crowds of hardy inhabitants in their best
attire, to join the gaily dressed multitudes thronging through the
narrow, angular streets of Funchal toward the Praca, in which, as I
have said, stands the sé, or cathedral. This building is
quaint-looking and massive, proclaiming the liberality, if not the
taste, of its founders. It is somewhat more than three centuries old,
having been completed in the year 1514, and is only now beginning to
assume that mellow and sombre hue which comports so well with the
character of such piles. By the hour of noon the Praca presented a sea
of human faces. The long seats beneath the shade of trees had been
resigned to the children, while the platform in the centre of the
square, occupied on ordinary occasions by the military bands, now
presented a waving parterre of the smiling and observant faces of
peasant girls, who, notwithstanding their proverbial timidity and
gentleness, had managed to secure that elevated position. Meantime the
balconies were filling fast with the families of the English and
German residents, all intent on seeing the remarkable pageant of the
day known as the "Passo."

Having obtained a front seat in the balcony of the English
reading-room, I had a full view of the animated and picturesque scene
beneath, the latter feature being heightened by the striking contrasts
exhibited between the costumes of the peasant women and those of the
same grade residing in the town. As one looked at the latter it was
not difficult to imagine they had just come from Europe with the tail
of the fashions. Bonnets, feathers, flowers, ballooned dresses, all
were foreign importations; while the women who had come down from
those cottages on the heights, which, on looking up at, appear like
pensile nests hanging from the crags, wore dresses of masapuja--a
mixture of thread and bright wools manufactured by themselves--small
shawls woven {269} in bright stripes, and on their heads the graceful
looking lenco, or handkerchief, in some showy, becoming color. Others
from the fishing villages wore complete suits of blue cloth, of a
light texture, even to the head-dress, which was the carapuca, or
conical shaped cap, ending in a drooping horn and a golden tassel;
while a few wore cotton dresses, and covered their heads with the
barrettea, a knitted cap in shape like an elongated bowl, and having a
woollen tuft at the top glittering with gold beads. The elder women
covered their shoulders with large bright shawls, while the younger
wore tightly-fitting bodices, fastened with gold buttons, and over
these small capes with pointed collars. All, whether old or young,
wore their dresses full, and sufficiently short to display to
advantage their small and beautifully formed feet.

In singular contrast with this simplicity of taste in their apparel,
is their desire for a profusion of ornaments. Accordingly, you will
find adorning the persons of the peasant women of Madeira rings and
chains and brooches of intrinsic value and much beauty, such as in
other countries people of wealth assume the exclusive right to wear.
An instance of this ruling passion came under my notice a short time
since, which I may mention here.

Through a long life of toil and poverty a peasant woman had regularly
laid by, from her scanty earnings, a small sum weekly. Her neighbors
commended her forethought and prudence, not doubting but that the
little hoard so persistently gathered was meant to meet the
necessities of the days when the feeble hands would forget their
cunning. At length the sum amounted to some hundreds of testatoes, or
silver five-pences, and then the poor woman's life-secret was
discovered. With a step buoyant for her years, and a smile which for a
moment brought back the beauty of her youth, she entered a jeweller's
shop, and exchanged the contents of her purse for a pair of costly
earrings. Had she been remonstrated with, she would have betrayed not
only her own but the national feeling on the subject, by saying--"I
lose nothing by the indulgence. At any moment I can find a purchaser
for real jewelry."

An hour passed, and signs of impatience were becoming visible in the
crowd, when the sounds of distant music caused a sudden and deep
silence. A feeling of awe seemed to have fallen at once on the
multitude, and every bronze-colored face was turned with a reverential
expression toward the street by which it was known the procession
would enter the Praca. Slowly the music drew near, now reaching us in
full strains, then seeming to die away in soft cadences. Meantime the
guns from the forts and shipping renewed their firing, and the bells
swung out their grandest peal. Curiosity was at its height, when the
foremost row of the procession met our view--four men walking abreast,
wearing violet-colored silk cassocks, with round capes reaching to the
girdles, and holding in their hands wax candles of an enormous size. A
long train, habited in the same way, followed these, and then came
four ecclesiastics in black silk gowns and Jesuits' caps, bearing
aloft a large and gorgeous purple banner, in the centre of which were
four letters in gold, "S.Q.P.R," being the initials of a sentence, the
translation of which is, "To the Senate and People of Rome."

After this followed another long line of men in violet, and then again
four clothed in black, carrying a wax image, large as life, on a
platform, meant to represent the garden of Gethsemane. Round the edge
were artificial trees about a foot and a half in height, having their
foliage and fruit richly gilt. The figure was clothed in a purple
robe, and on the brow was a crown of thorns. It was in a kneeling
position, and the face was bowed so low you could not distinguish the
features, but the attitude {270} gave you the impression that it was
making painful attempts to rise, which the weight of the huge cross on
the shoulders rendered ineffectual. Another train of candle-bearers
followed this, and then, in robes of rich black silk, and having on
their shoulders capes of finest lawn trimmed with costly lace, came
four priests holding up a gorgeous canopy, having curtains of white
silk and silver, which glittered and flashed as the faint breeze,
sweet with the perfume of flowers and fruit-trees, dallied amidst the
rich folds. From the centre of the canopy was suspended a silver dove,
its extended wings overshadowing the head of the bishop, who walked
beneath, robed in his most gorgeous sacerdotal habiliments. Between
his hands he carried the host, and as he passed along thousands of
prostrate forms craved his blessing. Following the canopy were more
men with tapers, and dressed in violet silk; then another purple
banner of even greater expansion than the first; then a lovely train
of little girls dressed to represent angels; then the band playing the
Miserere; and lastly a regiment of Portuguese soldiers. As soon as the
last of the men in violet had entered the cathedral, the door was
closed; the soldiers formed in lines on each side; the band was
silent; and, at the command of an officer, all uncovered their heads,
and stood in an attitude expressive of deep humiliation. This scene
was meant to represent that sorrowful yet glorious one enacted
eighteen centuries ago in the judgment hall of Pontius Pilate. The
little girls remained outside as well as the soldiery.

The dress of these children was tasteful and picturesque. They wore
violet-color velvet dresses, very short and full, and profusely
covered with silver spangles; white silk stockings and white satin or
kid shoes; rich white and silver wreaths, and bright, filmy, white
wings.

For an hour the cathedral door was kept closed, the soldiers remaining
all that time with bowed heads, motionless as statues. At length the
door was slowly opened, and one of the men wearing violet, having in
his hand a long wand, at the end of which appeared a small bright
flame, passed out, and proceeded to light up numerous tapers which had
been placed on the front of different houses in the Praca. As soon as
this was done, a command from an officer caused the men to resume
their caps and their upright attitude. Presently the rich, expressive
music of a full band was again heard playing the Miserere, and the
procession passed out between the glittering and bristling lines, its
numbers and its images increased.

Following close after the garden of Gethsemane, there was now an image
of the Virgin, attired in an ample purple robe and a long blue veil,
worked in silver. The exquisite taste and skill of the Madeiran
ladies, exerted upon the richest materials, had given to this figure a
lifelike appearance far surpassing that which usually distinguishes
other draped statues. Over the clasped hands the velvet seemed rather
to droop than lie in folds, while the expression of the attitude,
which was that of earnest supplication, as if craving sympathy for
some crushing woe, was heightened by the artistic arrangement of the
heavy plaits of the robe.

The men who carried this image, and those immediately preceding and
following it, wore blue instead of violet cassocks, while the little
angels who had brought up the van of the first procession were now
clustered about the bearers of the image of the Virgin.

From the cathedral the pageant passed on through the principal streets
into the country, the faint peal of the trumpets occasionally coming
back to the ear, mingled with the silvery sound of the bells, and the
deep boom of the minute-guns. At the foot of the Mount church,
however, various changes were effected. The little girls quietly
separated themselves from the crowd, and, being watched for by anxious
mothers and elder sisters, {271} were carried home. A deputy bishop
took the place of his superior beneath the canopy, other men relieved
the bearers of the banners and images, and other musicians released
those whose attendance had commenced with the dawn. All through the
day you could trace their course, only occasionally losing sight of
them, and all through the night too, by the light of the cedar-wood
torches borne by little boys, in snowy tunics, who had joined the
procession at the foot of the mount.

To understand how beautiful was the effect of this, you must look with
me on the unique and picturesque town of Funchal, running round the
blue waters of the bay, and rising up into the vineyards and groves
and gardens clothing the encircling hills. A golden light slumbers
over the whole scene, so pure and luminous that we can trace
distinctly every feature in the luxuriant landscape. The white houses
of the town crowned with terrinhas, or turrets, and having hanging
balconies glowing with flowers of rare beauty; the majestic palms
expanding their broad and beautiful heads over high garden walls; the
feathery banana waving gracefully on sunny slopes, where clumps of the
bright pomegranates display their crimson pomp; the shady plane-trees
running in rows along the streets; the snowy quintas or villas on the
hills, becoming fewer and more scattered toward the summit; the
churches and nunneries on higher elevations; and still further up the
white cottages of the peasantry, with their vine-trellised porches and
their gardens of pears, peaches, and apricots; while above and around
all these, forming a sublime amphitheatre as they tower to nearly six
thousand feet above the level of the sea, are the Pico Ruivo and Pico
Grande. A wreath of purple mist lay that day, as it almost always
does, on their topmost peaks, giving now and again glimpses of their
picturesque outline, as, like a soft transparent veil, it was folded
and unfolded by the breeze roaming over the solitudes of scented broom
and heather. Through such scenes, in view of all, moved the long,
glittering pageant just described.



CHAPTER III.

Everywhere the grave declares its victory--in beautiful Madeira as
elsewhere. An old servant, whose business it was to cut up fire-wood
and carry it into the house, has performed his last earthly duty and
finished life's journey. He dwelt with his mother and sister in a
cottage at the extremity of the garden; and I was only apprised of the
circumstances of his death by hearing loud cries coming up from the
shady walks, and the exclamations: "Alas, my son, my son!" and "Oh, my
brother!" repeated over and over in accents of uncontrollable grief.

It is customary, as soon as a death occurs in the family of one of the
peasant class, for all the survivors to rush forth into the open air,
and, with cries and lamentations, to call on the dead by every
endearing epithet and implore of them to return once more. The
neighbors being thus made acquainted with what has occurred, gather
round the mourners, and try to steal away the bitterness of their
grief by reminding them that all living shall share the same fate, and
that one by one each shall depart in his turn to make his bed in the
silent chamber of the grave. By such simple consolations--untaught
nature's promptings--they induce the bereaved ones to re-enter the
house and prepare the body for interment.

The heat of the climate renders hasty burial necessary in Madeira, and
the authorities are strict in enforcing it. From ten to twelve hours
is the longest period allowed by law between death and the grave, and
the very poor seldom permit even so much time to elapse; they merely
wait to ascertain to a certainty that the hand of death has released
the imprisoned {272} soul before they wrap up the body and carry it
with hurrying feet to "breathless darkness and the narrow house."

In such instances coffins are rarely used, and when they are, they are
hired by the hour. The usual way is to roll the body up tightly in a
sere cloth, then place it in a "death hammock" (which resembles an
unbleached linen sheet, tied at the ends to an iron pole); and hurry
with it to an unhonored grave.

A few days subsequent to the death of the old servant, the remains of
a little girl were borne past; the sight was so singular I think it
worth describing.

Moving slowly and solemnly along the street were a number of men,
habited in deep blue home-made cloth, the two foremost of whom carried
a light iron bier, on which lay the body of a little girl, whose brief
period of life numbered not more than five summers. A robe of soft,
clear, snowy muslin enveloped the motionless form like a cloud; on the
tiny feet, crossed in rest at last, were white silk stockings and
white shoes; and her little hands, which must so lately have found
gleeful employment in scattering the fragments of broken toys, were
now meekly folded on her bosom over a bouquet of orange blossoms. A
heavy wreath of the same flowers, mingled with a few leaves of the
allegro campo, encircled her young brow, which, as may be supposed,
wore that lovely, calm expression described by poets as the impress of
"heaven's signet-ring."

In almost every one of the varied scenes of life orange blossoms are
made use of in Madeira, either as types or emblems. Wreaths of them
grace the bride's young head, as being emblematical of the beauty and
purity of her character; as typical of a grief which shall be ever
fresh, chaplets of them crown the pale brows of the dead. On the
anniversary of a birth-day they are presented to the aged as an
embodiment of the truth that they shall again renew their youth; while
the proud triumphal arch is adorned with their snowy bells, as an
assurance that the occasion for which it was erected shall be held in
ever-enduring remembrance.

The little child on the rude bier, who looked as fair in her
death-sleep as these fairest of flowers, was being carried to the
cemetery belonging to the resident Roman Catholics, and known as
Laranjeira. There a priest was awaiting its arrival. He was standing
by the open grave, and when the body was laid at his feet he read over
it in Latin a short burial service, placed some grains of dust on the
pulseless bosom, and departed. Being carefully wrapped in a sere doth,
it was then placed in a shallow grave (according to custom) and
lightly covered with three or four inches of earth.

Laranjeira is situated on the west of the town. Passing up the
Augustias Hill the stranger sees a large, handsome gate near the
empress's hospital; this is the entrance to the graveyard. Inside is a
small flower-garden, tastefully laid out and neatly kept, through
which you pass to the broad stone steps leading to the fine gravel
walk running quite through the cemetery. Another walk, also of
considerable width, leads round it, while several narrower ones,
shaded by hedges of geraniums, roses, and lavender, are cut through it
in different directions. Inclosing the whole is a high wall, studded
with monumental tablets, on some of which praise and grief are
charactered in deep, newly-cut letters, while from many others time
has either obliterated every trace of writing, or the pains and the
heat have washed and bleached them into meaningless, cloudy white
slabs. There are but few monuments or even tombstones of any
pretension, though many of the latter bear English inscriptions. Rows
of cypress trees border the centre walk, and almost every grave in the
inclosure is overshadowed by a weeping willow.

{273}



CHAPTER IV.

It was the last week in Lent, and, according to our manner of
computing time, it was eleven o'clock A.M. of the day known as "Holy
Thursday." Reckoning, however, as the Madeirans do, it was the last
hour of that day, and the next would be the first of Good Friday.

An unusual silence had reigned in the town since the first streaks of
purple light appeared in the east, as if to render more remarkable the
din which at the hour above-named assailed the ears of the inhabitants
of Funchal. Strains of military music filled the air, mingled with the
tolling of bells and the firing of guns, which found a hundred echoes
in the adjoining hills. These sounds were the signals to the people of
Madeira that the time was drawing near when the most imposing
ceremonial of their religion would be celebrated. With the first
trumpet-notes the streets began to fill, every house sending forth its
inmates, whether rich or poor, old or young, either to witness or take
part in the spectacles of the day. As on all like occasions, the
peasantry, in their best attire, poured in with astonishing rapidity;
while crowding in with them were ladies in hammocks, clad in robes of
rainbow hues, and partially concealed from curious eyes by silken
curtains of pink or blue, which were matched in color by the vests of
the bearers, and the ribbons with long floating ends adorning their
broad-brimmed straw hats; and gentlemen on horseback, whom you at once
would recognize as natives by their short stature, their bright vests,
neckties, and hat-ribbons, and their profusion of rich, showy
ornaments. Quietly making their way on foot through this throng were
the English merchants, with their wives and daughters, distinguished
from those by whom they were surrounded by an air of severe reserve
and a studied simplicity of dress. A few handsome wheeled carriages
also appeared on the scene, and one or two of the awkward looking
boi-cars. All were taking the same direction, the Praca da
Constitutionel, and the common object was to gain admission to the
cathedral. At every turn the crowd augmented, and even masquers joined
in considerable numbers--but these latter brought neither jest nor
laughter with their presence; the ceremonies of the day had subdued
even them, causing them to abandon the vacant gaiety appertaining to
their attire for a demeanor more fitting the time and occasion.

Arrived at the cathedral, each party, no matter how exalted their
rank, encountered a delay in obtaining an entrance. The throng around
the door was great, and it was in vain that the soldiers endeavored to
keep the general crowd at a distance. Trained as the Madeirans are to
habits of deference to both military and ecclesiastical authority,
they become, like other people, audacious and headstrong when
assembled in large multitudes, and, in spite of both church and state,
they now sought an entrance by the exertion of physical force, and
some hundreds succeeded.

While, however, the struggle and contention at the door remained
unabated, the ceremonial which all were so anxious to witness had been
enacted within. To describe it is needless. The hour when the God-man
poured forth his soul even unto death is a sad and awful memory
familiar to us all. Let us, therefore, look at the scene which the
cathedral presents at two o'clock on that day.

The windows are boarded up on the outside, and within are covered with
curtains of heavy black cloth. The walls all round are hung with fine
stuff of the same color, concealing the paintings and other ornaments,
and the altar is hidden behind drapery of black velvet with
ghastly-looking borders of silver. Between this gloomy vail and the
cancelli, or railings, you see a magnificent catafalque, and on it
{274} a coffin covered and lined with rich black velvet. A pale,
corpse-like figure, wearing a crown of thorns, lies within, blood
flowing from the wounded brow (or appearing to flow) and from the
hands which lie outside the winding-sheet of snowy linen. Numerous
tapers surround the catafalque, but from some cause they carry such
weak, glimmering flames, that a dim, uncertain light pervades the
immediate precincts of the altar, leaving the rest of the building in
deep shadow. Habited in close-fitting black silk robes, and with heads
bowed down as in unspeakable sorrow, several priests stand round the
coffin, while fitful wails and sobs from the multitude show that the
scene is not without its effect.

An hour passed thus, and was succeeded by a sudden and dismal silence,
as if the great heart of the multitude had become exhausted with
sorrow, when the melancholy cadences of the Miserere coming down from
the huge organ as if rolling from the clouds, awoke up anew the grief
of the people, and low cries and half-stifled groans mingled freely
with the long-drawn, plaintive notes. Meantime the bishop, habited in
his most simple sacerdotal robes, came from the sacristy and stood at
the foot of the coffin, while four priests raised it from the
catafalque by means of loops of black silk and silver cord. The bishop
then moved forward, the dense crowd opening a lane for him as he
passed slowly round the church, followed by the four priests carrying
the coffin, and by others bearing the dim tapers. As He returned
toward the altar the people's sorrow seemed to increase, and every
head was stretched forward to catch a last glimpse of the coffin, when
just as the procession got within the cancelli a heavy curtain was let
fall, shutting in altar, catafalque, and tapers, and leaving the
cathedral in utter darkness.

This scene was meant to represent the burial in the tomb of Joseph of
Arimathea, and while the greater portion of the congregation were
weeping aloud, a voice was heard proceeding from the pulpit, and
pronouncing that preliminary sentence to a sermon known as the
"blessing."

In an instant the sounds of grief were hushed, and the mute audience
seemed to suppress their very breathing while they anxiously listened
to the words of the preacher.

Spoken in a tongue with which few visitors to the island are
acquainted, the discourse took to the ears of strangers the shape of a
varied murmur, whose tones and cadences played on the very
heart-strings of the auditors, awakening at will feelings of fear,
agony, remorse, and repentance. As he proceeded, the passion and
pathos of his accents increased, and when he ceased to speak a
desolate stillness pervaded the whole multitude. Presently two men
entered from a side door bearing dim tapers, and at the same moment
the great door leading into the Praca was opened, and the congregation
poured like a tide into the open air, while low, soft sighs and
murmurs falling on the ear told of feelings of relief which words were
powerless to express.

For a moment the throng leaving the church mingled with the multitude
without. The solid mass swayed like a troubled sea, and then quietly
broke up and scattered widely. Men in trade turned their faces
homeward, the business of life being, in their judgment, of more
importance than any further participation in the day's proceedings.
Elderly men and women of the lower classes sought out those houses and
temporary sheds, over the doors of which the four golden letters,
"P.V.A.B.," served the same purpose as the less mysterious British
announcement of "entertainment for man and horse;" while the young
peasants and artisans, forming an immense concourse, went shouting
toward the Mount road, leaving the streets leading to the beach free
from all obstacles, a circumstance of which the more respectable and
even aristocratic {275} portion of the multitude eagerly availed
themselves. Mingling with all parties were ragged-looking vendors of
curiosities, clamorous old beggars, and younger ones whose brilliant,
laughing black eyes contradicted the earnest appeal of the lips.

Should our taste or curiosity lead us to follow the mob to the Mount
road we behold one of those singular exhibitions which excite almost
to frenzy--a hideous, straw-stuffed figure, or effigy, of Pontius
Pilate, tied on the back of a poor, miserable, lean donkey. Amidst the
wildest shouts and fiercest turmoil this creature is dragged forward,
every one taxing his inventive faculties to discover new indignities,
by which to express his feelings of horror and disgust for the
original. While the tumultuous throng thus parade through the
principal streets of the town, the bay is seen covered by hundreds of
boats, people of almost every nation in Europe reclining beneath their
awnings as they sweep slowly over the blue waves toward the Loo Rock,
or idly glide in front of that well-known point, beneath which on the
sands a gallows had been erected in the morning.

Some hours passed, however, and there was no occurrence either to
gratify the taste or arouse the attention of the pleasure seekers. The
sun was drawing near the verge of the horizon, and the sea, assuming
the most intense shades of crimson, gold, and purple, differed only
from the magnificent canopy which it mirrored in that it gleamed with
a more wondrous splendor, as if a veil of diamonds floated and
trembled over its broad expanse. Not alone the sea, however, but the
whole landscape was bathed in the rich amber and purple floods of
light which on that evening streamed down from the ever changing
firmament. The sublime mountains of Pico Ruivo and Pico Grande were
crowned with radiance, the graceful hills, with their unnumbered giant
flowers, their gardens and vineyards, their rivulets and waterfalls,
glowed in the lustrous beams, while the brown sands on the
semi-circular beach, reaching from the picturesque basalts of Garajaô
to Ponta da Cruz, glittered as if a shower of diamond sparklets had
fallen on them.

At length loud and prolonged shouts, mingling with the music of
military bands, were heard approaching from the town, and immediately
after a riotous and excited crowd, amongst which appeared hundreds of
masquers, came pressing forward with extravagant gestures, and driving
before them toward the gallows the ill-used donkey and its foul and
hideous burthen.

A general movement at once took place among the boats, as the crew of
each sought to obtain the most favorable position for witnessing the
revolting spectacle of hanging the effigy, which was accomplished with
all the appalling ceremonies which might have been deemed necessary,
or which the law might have demanded, had the Governor of the Jews
been there in person.

The hatred of the exulting mob being at length satiated, the figure
was cut down and cast into the sea, calling forth a last volley of
execration as it rolled and floundered on the long blue swells, or
momentarily sunk out of sight in the troughs, while the ebbing tide
carried it out to the deep.


CHAPTER V.

It may appear strange, perhaps even incredible, that the lower classes
of Madeirans should have leisure, from their humble duties and the
labors required by their daily necessities, to attend at so many
festas and public ceremonies as we shall have occasion to describe,
and to indulge beside in their extravagant fancy for golden ornaments.
But the seeming enigma is easily solved. In the first place, the men
of the peasant class leave home for Demara every year, remaining away,
at high wages, from six to eight months, and then returning with money
sufficient to enable them to indulge {276} their families daring the
remainder of the year in their oriental taste for festas and finery.
Secondly, almost all the manual occupations connected with agriculture
devolve on the women, so that the absence of either husbands, sons, or
brothers neither retards nor diminishes the autumn fruits. Added to
this, they employ themselves during the evening hours, and at other
seasons when out-door labor is either impossible or unnecessary, in
those arts to which female faculties are particularly appropriate.
Nothing can exceed the exquisite beauty of the embroidery on cambric
and lace executed by some of the peasant women, and which comes from
their skilful fingers so perfectly white and pure that it is fit for
the wear of a princess the moment it is freed from the paper on which
the design had been traced, and over which it had been worked. Others,
not possessing such delicate taste as the embroiderers, exert their
ingenuity in knitting shawls, and veils, and pin-cushion covers, in
black or white thread, drawing on their own imaginations for new and
curious patterns; while some few devote their leisure time to netting
black silk shawls and scarfs, for which they also invent the designs.

The earnings of the women by the sale of these articles to strangers
are considerable, and so completely at their own disposal that they
can independently indulge, whenever opportunities offer, in their
taste for ornament and emotional spectacles. The wear and tear,
however, of such a mode of life deprive them at an early period of
their native beauty, leaving them at twenty-five little more than that
grace and freedom of attitude which they retain to the close of the
longest life.

The men also have their handicrafts, and the emoluments arising from
their exercise; and those of them who are either too old or too young,
or too indolent, or too sincerely attached to home to seek the toils
of labor and their reward in Demara, employ themselves in making
articles of inlaid wood, such as writing-desks, work-boxes,
paper-cutters, and pen-trays. The designs on many of these give
evidence of refined and skilful taste, while others only indicate a
fantastic ingenuity. The most perfect of these manufactures are
eagerly secured for the Portuguese market by agents, who generally
make an honest estimate of their value, while those of less merit are
set aside till some of the visitors to Madeira proportion their worth
by their own abundant wealth.

This digression has been so long that, instead of returning now to the
midnight wanderers mentioned at the close of the lost chapter, I shall
request my readers to imagine it ten o'clock A.M. on Saturday morning,
and, consequently, two hours before the commencement of the Sabbath of
the Madeirans. Once more the Praca da Constitutionel is filled with an
eager and picturesque throng--peasants, artisans, aristocrats,
merchants, masqueraders, beggars, and curiosity-venders all mingled
together, and all, either from motives of piety or inquisitiveness,
once more seeking admission to the cathedral, whose fine proportions
and gorgeous ornaments are still veiled in thick darkness.

By some magic influence the wealthier portion of the multitude have
all obtained entrance, and then, the cathedral being full, the door is
forcibly closed. Directly this occurs the crowd disperse, and while
strangers are still trying to unravel the mystery of such unusual
self-denial, troops of little children and young girls are entering
the Praca dressed in white, wearing silver-tissue wings, snowy festive
wreaths, and carrying on their arms beautiful baskets of cane-work
filled with ranunculuses and lilies. Boys in embroidered tunics and
carrying silver censers follow these, and presently numbers of these
men who had left that the children might take up their proper
positions, now return, having in the meantime provided themselves with
fire-arms and rockets.

{277}

While all these changes take place without, preachers are succeeding
each other every half hour in the pulpit within the cathedral. At
length one loud sonorous stroke on a gong, or some other metallic
substance, is heard from the sacristy, announcing the hour of noon,
and then in an instant, as if by magic, the wooden blinds without and
the black curtains within are gone from the windows, the veil which
had concealed the altar disappears, and a blaze of light fills the
edifice, displaying a scene resplendent with gold and gems, tapers and
flowers; while simultaneously with the pouring in of the light,
thrilling and enthusiastic voices singing, "Christ is risen! Christ is
risen!" join the peal which, like a roar of triumph, had burst from
the organ.

When the multitude have sufficiently recovered the stunning effects of
this scene to separate cause and effect, they perceive that every
pillar and column from pedestal to chapiter is enwreathed with
gorgeous ranunculuses and snowy lilies, mingled with the rich green
leaves of the allegro campo, that crowns and garlands of silver leaves
and artificial dew-drops are scattered profusely, yet with artistic
taste, over the high altar and the various side altars; while pendent
from that masterpiece of art--the sculptured ceiling of native
juniper--are rich chaplets of gold leaves and gems, seeming as if
ready to fall on and crown the heads of the worshippers.

After a short interval, the bishop, in dazzling robes, wearing his
jewelled mitre, and followed by a train of priests in gorgeous
vestments, is seen standing in front of the high altar, which on this
occasion is covered with a white satin cloth, worked in silver, while
huge candelabras, inlaid with precious stones, gleam in front of the
recesses known as the diaconicum and the prothesis. In the former are
kept the vessels belonging to the altar, and in the other the bread
and wine used at the celebration of the mass.

A short mass having been performed by priests and choir, the great
door is opened, and the people crowding into the Praca are met by the
little children and young girls strewing flowers over the streets, by
the graceful youths swinging silver censers and filling the ambient
air with light columns of costly incense; by bands playing the most
inspiriting airs; by masquers and others in ordinary costume sending
off rockets and Roman candles, and by hundreds of artisans bearing
fire-arms, the sharp report of which, mingling with the booming of
cannon, the braying of trumpets, and the soft chimes of bells, filled
the air with a most indescribable din.

In a few moments, however, a cloud overshadows the scene--a cloud
which comes not silently but with a whirring, joyful noise, and with
the beat of fleet pinions. Every one looks up, and behold, there are
the doves--doves in hundreds, sent off by nuns, and monks, and other
devotees, to proclaim in their broad-winged flight the welcome news
that "Christ is risen!"

Having witnessed all this, and while the joyful excitement is still
unabated, you enter your home, imagining that nothing of the peculiar
usages or customs of a place in which you are a stranger can follow
you there, save the sounds which float in through your shaded windows;
but an agreeable surprise awaits you. The Madeirans are too gentle and
affectionate in their dispositions to forget in a time of such
universal joy even the stranger who may differ from them in religion,
and, accordingly, you find awaiting you a little girl, neatly dressed,
and bearing in her hands a dish covered with a white lace veil. She
has been sent by the nuns, and delivers her present with a suitable
message.

Uncovering the dish you see a wreath of flowers round the edge, and in
the centre a little lamb made of sugar, lying amidst almond comfits of
{278} every delicate shade of Magenta, blue, and violet. A wreath of
sugar-flowers crowns the head of the lamb, and a similar one graces
its neck.

With this picturesque gift you may sometimes receive a present of
royal and heavenly bacon. These singularly-named dishes are composed
of eggs and sugar. The first is passed through a hair sieve, falling
in a heap of rings and curls on the dish; the other is made into thick
slices, and lies on the dish drowned in sweet syrup.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY.  [Footnote 46]

  [Footnote 46: Prospectus of The Catholic Publication Society. Tract
  No. 1, "Indifferentism in Religion and its Remedy." No. 2, "The Plea
  of Sincerity." No. 3, "The Forlorn Hope." No. 4, "Prisoner of
  Cayonne."]


Nothing in the history of the human mind can be more obvious, even to
a superficial observer, than the fact that every age has possessed
intellectual features peculiar to itself, growing out of its own
particular need. Thus we find the mental activity of one period
setting in a strong current toward moral and metaphysical speculation
and of another toward scientific discovery. When one has obtained
predominance, the other has been measurably neglected.

At the present time, however, the fact is otherwise. The diligence
heretofore manifested in the conquest of special subjects is now
diffused over a greater area; and the energies of the mind, instead of
being concentrated upon the profound and exhaustive knowledge of a few
branches of learning, are directed to the acquisition of a general
knowledge of many. Hence, popular instruction today, to be successful,
must be simplified and condensed, rendered suitable to popular
apprehension and fixed at a point demanding the least amount of mental
labor and promising immediate and tangible results.

It would need but little argument to show how these conditions of
knowledge have been brought about. The vast development and wonderful
discoveries of science within the last century, the increase of
commercial and mechanical industry, the settlement and growth of
America with its vast resources of wealth, are sufficient to account
for a material change in the intellectual status of Christendom.
Science by increasing the means of human enjoyment has increased the
extent of human wants; these, by the force of habit in one class and
the stimulus of ambition in another, have become in time absolute
necessities. Thus men engage in eager strife to attain what all unite
in esteeming essential to human happiness.

Now since our nature has moral and intellectual longings--however
subdued by the engrossing occupations of active life--which are still
absolute and imperative, up to a certain point, it would seem that
instruction to suit the exigency of the times must be conveyed in such
a manner and by such means as the opportunities and inclinations of
mankind require. You may easily gain attention to truth by a concise,
simple mode of addressing the intellect, demanding but little time and
not very severe thought, when you cannot secure it by presenting the
subject in a more profound way, by more elaborate proofs or by more
subtle and comprehensive views. If knowledge, therefore, cannot be
imparted in such a way as to suit both the capacity and convenience of
men, it can rarely be communicated at all. {279} What is deemed the
most important pursuit of a man's life is that to which he will pay
the greatest attention. If he cannot attain mental improvement by
means he considers easy and agreeable, the probabilities are that in a
great majority of cases he will neglect it. Here, however, there is
but little difficulty. Whenever a public necessity is fully
recognized, the means of supplying it will not be long wanting. Hence,
we see at the present time every art and science reduced to its
elementary principles and presented to the public mind in plain
rudimentary lessons, so that, while comparatively few are deeply
versed in any one subject, the great mass of thinkers are well
informed in the general outlines of many.

What has been said with regard to matters more strictly intellectual
may be affirmed with almost equal truth of such as are purely moral.
You may instruct a hundred men in their duty by means of a tract of
ten pages, setting forth incentives to virtue in a cogent argument or
forcible appeal, where you would scarcely be able to obtain a hearing
from one by means of an elaborate essay on ethics, however able or
convincing. Now, it is evident that a duty, carrying all the weight of
deep obligation, rests upon those who have the higher interests of
mankind at heart to provide for them the means of moral and
intellectual improvement; and not only so, but to furnish it in such a
shape as shall be most acceptable and productive of the most hopeful
and lasting results. That such an obligation exists, is apparent from
the general establishment of public and common schools and from the
numerous efforts constantly made to disseminate knowledge among the
masses. The ends here proposed, however, are animated by a sentiment
of general benevolence or political expediency. If, then, we owe to
society the moral and intellectual advancement of the people from
motives of public interest, surely our obligations are not diminished
by those higher considerations which readily suggest themselves to a
religious mind.

We are now prepared for the question, Are we doing our duty in this
matter? But to bring it nearer home and to address the more immediate
circle of our readers, Are we Catholic Christians doing what we know
to be required of us in the education of our people with sufficient
faithfulness to satisfy an enlightened conscience? Engrossed in more
selfish pursuits, have we not rather neglected this business and
turned it over to others who are only more responsible than ourselves?
We speak to Catholic laymen when we say it is greatly to be feared
that we are not wholly blameless. And here one word as regards the
relative positions of clergy and laity in the church and their mutual
want of co-operation in such things as may fairly come under the
charge of both.

Every one knows that among all sects of Protestants the laity perform
no inconsiderable amount of labor and share no little responsibility
with the pastor. As teachers and superintendents of Sunday-schools,
leaders of Bible classes, heads of missionary societies and the like,
their influence is much felt and their usefulness highly appreciated
by their co-religionists. Among Catholics, where the priests have
generally three times the ministerial duty of Protestants to perform,
the pastor of a church gets little or no aid from the laity. His
mission may extend over twenty miles of territory, and he is expected
not only to administer the sacraments to both sick and well, but to do
all that is necessary in the religious training of the children. In
fact, the instruction of the young is generally looked upon as
belonging peculiarly to his office. And yet it cannot be denied that
well-disposed laymen of moderate intelligence can at times, acting
under his advice and counsel, very materially assist the overworked
priest without trenching in the least upon his {280} vocation. The
benefit of such assistance could not but be sensibly felt in those
parishes which receive the services of a priest in common with others.
In the more thinly populated districts of our country the want of
priests is a crying necessity, known and felt by every prelate in the
land. It is morally impossible after mass said on Sunday morning, at
two points perhaps fifteen miles apart, that the priest can preach a
sermon and attend to other duties arising from the urgent and
imperative wants of his cure. He cannot administer holy baptism, hear
confessions, visit the sick, bury the dead, say mass, recite his
office, attend to church temporalities (no small affair in some
instances of itself) and yet find time to give the requisite
instruction to his people.

We can but be aware that regular pulpit instruction is a most
effectual mode of promoting piety and one of which we ought not to be
deprived. We require at least all the agencies for this purpose
enjoyed by others. The people, too, are eager for it. Mark the strict
attention with which Catholic congregations follow every word of the
preacher, and mark, too, the effect of an earnest and appropriate
sermon! It is plainly visible upon the faces of old and young. In
addition to this, the command given in Holy Scripture to preach is
imperative. Are we not, then, bound to more than ordinary exertion to
comply with it?

Such, unfortunately, is the proneness of men to forget their religious
duties that they require precept upon precept, often renewed and
diligently urged upon their minds. Surrounded by temptation,
forgetfulness of the great practical truths of religion is not strange
in the absence of direct spiritual teaching. The sacraments of the
church, especially the holy sacrifice of the altar, undoubtedly do
much to arrest spiritual decline in the people; but no one will deny
that frequent appeals to the conscience, and judicious instruction in
the principles of Catholic faith and morality, however conveyed to the
understanding, are valuable aids even to the worthy reception of the
sacraments.

It is to supply the deficiencies here aimed at that this enterprise,
with the hearty approbation of several prelates, has been undertaken,
which, if it shall receive the cordial support of the Catholic public,
will produce results the extent of which is not to be easily foreseen.
Those persons who have attempted the task are actuated with a settled
determination that it shall succeed; and it is not to be believed, in
a matter of so great moment, that they are to be left without the
substantial help of Catholics throughout the country. A society has
been formed, and its work has already begun, styled "The Catholic
Publication Society," to which the attention of our readers was called
in our last number. This society proposes to issue short tracts and
pamphlets conveying that species of instruction required by Catholics
in the most entertaining form, so as to engage the attention, affect
the hearts, and suit the wants of all classes. To none would such a
blessing be more welcome than to the poor, who are in an especial
manner, from their very defencelessness, under our protection. These,
though they may not read themselves, can listen to their children,
taught at school, who can read for them. Thus, in a simple narrative
or dialogue some important practical truths may be impressed upon the
mind which shall do good service in a moment of temptation. It is by
these means that other denominations are instructing their people and
producing an influence on many outside of their own communions.

The number of Catholics in this country, already large, is constantly
increasing, and unless we do something of the kind here suggested,
others will attempt it in our stead. Religious tracts from Protestant
societies are flying over the country like leaves before the autumn
wind, and it {281} would not be remarkable if our own people were
brought within the range of their influence.

Beside this, there is another field in which we have not only the
right to work, but which we cannot, or at least ought not to, neglect.
There are thousands of young men in the land of fair education who,
impelled by necessity or ambition, flock to the great commercial
centres. These, careless in matters of religion, having no settled
principles of faith, often called upon to confront great dangers and
temptations, seldom attend any place of worship; or if so, only to
relieve the ennui of Sunday. These are souls to be cared for. They
need instruction upon cardinal points of the Christian faith. They may
have received something akin to it in early youth, but it has been
forgotten. They are difficult to reach, and in no way can access to
them be gained more readily than by the publications of this society.
A few words of earnest advice, a hint as to the end of a vicious
career, or a warning of the uncertainty of life, may excite
reflection, and reflection is the first step toward reformation.

At a time like the present of vast intellectual activity, when myriads
of books are produced on all subjects embracing every description of
teaching, there must be abroad not only a great mass of error, but a
great number of unstable minds ready to receive it. Men imperfectly
educated, striving to master subjects far beyond their comprehension,
trained to no logical modes of thought, restrained by no respect for
authority, confounding scepticism with freedom of inquiry, are often
led by a dangerous curiosity to examine certain fundamental questions
which lie at the root of all knowledge, and which can only be safely
handled by the most learned and profound. Such is the class of persons
peculiarly to be benefited by Catholic teaching. A theology positive
and satisfying to the soul, that sets wholesome limits to human
knowledge, and is able to give adequate answers to great social and
moral problems, is best adapted to impress minds of this class. The
reading of three pages has before now convinced a man of the error of
his whole philosophical system, and may do it again.

The spirit of Catholic charity takes in all sorts and conditions of
men. The mission of the church is well defined, and may be summed up
in one word, namely, to convert the world to God; and as every day
brings its blessings upon labors that have been already undertaken to
secure this object, we have reason to hope that new efforts and fresh
zeal, well directed, will produce abundant fruits.

We cannot close this notice of the Catholic Publication Society
without adverting to one means of usefulness which we think it is
especially fitted to promote.

Such has been the virulence of hostility to the Catholic religion in
days gone by, such the monstrous credulity and unreasoning prejudice
of its foes, that it is not surprising to find a true knowledge of the
Catholic faith exceedingly rare. Within the last twenty years,
however, a great change has taken place. The general blamelessness of
life in those who honor their religion, fidelity to social and
political duties, and charity toward our enemies, have not been
without precious results. At the present moment religious bigotry can
no longer animate the hatred alike of wise and simple. One who comes
prepared to censure, must come prepared also for the conflict of
truth. Statements, facts, and opinions are closely scrutinized.
Everything is not now taken upon trust. The attitude of controversy
begets caution. Now, what advantages may we not hope to reap from this
one isolated fact? A fair hearing for the true exposition of Catholic
doctrine; not doctrine carefully prepared with exterior show of
fairness and then imputed to us for the purpose of being more easily
{282} destroyed; but of the truths of Christianity as taught by the
church for ages. When we can gain the unprejudiced ear of the world,
truly we may begin to hope for the day of Christian unity.

To disarm prejudice is of itself a work worthy of special effort. We
can hope to make no great progress in persuading men to listen to the
voice of Christian truth until we can convince them that our teaching
rests upon the basis of sound reason. Those who have been told that to
embrace Catholic doctrine is to surrender at discretion all the powers
of the mind, and even the evidence of the senses, must be undeceived
before they can be expected to make any progress in the impartial
investigation of it. But it is chiefly among Catholics themselves that
we predict the greatest success for this association. Of our own
people there are very many who need that instruction which hitherto we
have not had the adequate means of providing for them. We all feel how
important it is that every Catholic should be thoroughly intelligent
upon all that he is required to believe, and the reasons that exist
for requiring it. In every class of society Catholics are called upon
to render an account of the faith that is in them, to explain the
doctrines and ceremonies of their religion, and when unable to do so,
they both suffer the evil consequences of this ignorance themselves
and, by it, retard the spread of the knowledge of the truth among
those whom the church is equally commissioned to enlighten, guide, and
save.

We have advocated the aims of the Catholic Publication Society at
greater length than we at first intended, but feel that in
consideration of their importance we have not said too much. It is
impossible to over-estimate the good this society may, with God's
blessing, be made to accomplish. To make it effective, its
organization throughout the United States should be co-extensive with
the church itself. Our work in this country is getting ahead of us.
The religious needs of our people are rapidly increasing. If we are
not up and doing in proper season, we shall find that during our
repose the enemy has been sowing tares among the wheat. The harvest is
great, but the laborers few. Let us all, then, as God gives us grace
to know our duty, take this matter earnestly to heart, and let us not
suffer under the reproach of denying to our fellow-Christians all the
spiritual food they are willing to receive.

What is here proposed is truly a missionary work. Efforts of this kind
can only be successful by zealous labor and generous support; and we
sincerely hope, as the plan by which funds are to be raised becomes
generally known, the Catholic public will not deny liberal aid to so
worthy a cause. Almost every one can lend a helping hand. It will be
seen by reference to the Society's Prospectus that the sum of five
dollars constitutes a member for one year. Parents could hardly
gratify their children more than by subscribing for them. It gives
young folks the idea that they amount to something in this world when
they find their own names enrolled on the books of a religious
society. The sum of thirty dollars constitutes a member for five years
and of fifty dollars a life member. Patrons of one hundred and five
hundred dollars will not be wanting amongst so many generous and
appreciative Catholics as there are in the country. A number of these
last have already come forward in the city of New York, and subscribed
that amount to constitute a fund to enable the society to accomplish
its missionary work, and we are sure that this call will elicit a
similar ready response from many in other cities and towns who wait
only to know what to do for the advancement of their holy faith in
order to do it. Your parish priest is willing to spend and be spent in
your service. Show your gratitude by making him a member of one of the
above classes. He will accept it from you as a beautiful testimonial
of {283} your esteem and respect. It has also been suggested by an
eminent prelate and patron of the society that it would greatly
promote its success if a clergyman should be appointed in each diocese
by the ecclesiastical authority, to take charge of the society's
interests, and to act as its agent.

We trust as the enterprise becomes more extensively known that
generous hearts will be found to feel a voluntary interest in this
work and prompted to aid it without further solicitation. Let it not
be forgotten that one of the objects of this society is to supply
religious reading to the inmates of hospitals, almshouses, asylums,
and prisons--a class of persons whose spiritual welfare requires to be
specially looked after. Benevolence has no more sacred field than
among this unfortunate class; and we hope that those who have so often
proved themselves worthy of their faith by relieving the physical
wants of their fellow-creatures, will not be found indifferent to the
spiritual. In short, what we desire of our fellow-Catholics is, that
an interest in this matter should become general throughout the
country; and that each one should assist as he is able, either alone
or in conjunction with his neighbors. Several prelates have already
become patrons of this society, and the venerable Archbishop of
Baltimore has honored it by contributing the first tract.

While treating of the practical part of this subject, we desire to say
that priests residing in the remote parts of the country can be
furnished with the society's publications on precisely the same terms
as those living near at hand. They will be supplied at prices _never
exceeding cost_, postage prepaid. All Catholics, in every section of
our land, have an equal interest in its success.

Upon the co-operation of the clergy we, of course, confidently rely.
To aid them in their arduous duties is one of the objects of the
society. It will be a most powerful auxiliary to the priesthood in
spreading instruction among our own people and the truths of the
Catholic faith among all classes of our community. If they should ask
us what we would have them do, we reply--"Reflect upon the immense
importance of this enterprise to the souls of men; and, when you have
comprehended what a vast work of usefulness lies before this society,
your own intelligence and good dispositions will best suggest the
manner in which you can most successfully lend your aid."

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.


THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND A PORTION OF CHRIST'S ONE HOLY
CATHOLIC CHURCH, AND A MEANS OF RESTORING VISIBLE UNITY.
An Eirenicon, in a Letter to the Author of "The Christian Year." By E.
B. Pusey, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church,
Oxford. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866. (Reprint from the English
edition.)

Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon" has been extensively commented on by the
Catholic press both in England and on the Continent. Some of his
critics have regarded it with favorable eyes, as a sign of approach
toward the Catholic Church, and others with marked hostility, as an
evidence of determined opposition. We concur with the former class
most decidedly. The most remarkable of all the answers it has called
forth is that of Dr. Newman, republished in our April number, and
since then issued in a separate form, with all the notes, by Mr.
Kehoe. Dr. Newman confines himself to one point, however--the defence
of the {284} Catholic doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin. The
"Dublin Review" has given a very able criticism on the portion which
relates to the attitude of the Church of England. An admirable article
has also appeared in the learned Jesuit periodical, "Etudes
Religieuses," published at Paris, which is especially valuable for its
exposition of the doctrinal authority of the Holy See. As a general
answer to Dr. Pusey's specific proposals concerning the way of
reconciliation with Rome, we consider P. Lockhart's article, in the
"Weekly Register," as the most judicious and satisfactory. The
following letter, from Dr. Pusey to the editor, shows how he himself
appreciated this answer:

LETTER FROM DR. PUSEY
ON HIS HOPES OF REUNION.

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE WEEKLY REGISTER:
  CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, NOV. 22, 1865.

  Sir: I thank you, with all my heart, for your kind-hearted and
  appreciative review of my "Eirenicon." I am thankful that you have
  brought out the main drift and objects of it, what, in my mind,
  underlies the whole, to show that, in my conviction, there is no
  insurmountable obstacle to the union of (you will forgive the terms,
  though you must reject them) the Roman, Greek, and Anglican
  communions. I have long been convinced that there is nothing in the
  Council of Trent which could not be explained satisfactorily to us,
  if it were explained _authoritatively--i.e._  by the Roman Church
  itself, not by individual theologians only. This involves the
  conviction, on my side, that there is nothing in our Articles which
  cannot be explained rightly, as not contradicting any things held to
  be _de fide_ in the Roman Church. The great body of the faith is
  held alike by both; in those subjects referred to in our Art. XXII.
  I believe (to use the language of a very eminent Italian nobleman)
  "your [our] _maximum_ and our [your] _minimum_ might be found to
  harmonize." In regard to details of explanation, it was not my
  office, as being a priest only, invested with no authority, to draw
  them out. But I wished to indicate their possibility. You are
  relatively under the same circumstances. But I believe that the hope
  which you have held out, that the authorities in the Roman communion
  _might_ hold that "a reunion on the principles of Bossuet would be
  better than a perpetual schism," will unlock many a pent-up
  longing--pent-up on the ground of the apparent hopelessness that
  Rome would accord to the English Church any terms which it could
  accept.

  May I add, that nothing was further from my wish than to write
  anything which should be painful to those in your communion? A
  defence, indeed, of necessity, involves some blame; since, in a
  quarrel, the blame must be wholly on the one side or on the other,
  or divided; and a defence implies that it is not wholly on the side
  defended. But having smoothed down, as I believe honestly, every
  difficulty I could, to my own people, I thought that it would not be
  right toward them not to state where I conceive the real difficulty to
  lie. Nor could your authorities meet our difficulties unless they knew
  them. You will think it superfluous that I desired that none of this
  system, which is now matter of "pious opinion," should, like the
  doctrine of the immaculate conception be made _de fide_. But, in the
  view of a hoped-for reunion, everything which you do affects us. Let
  me say, too, that I did not write as a reformer, but on the
  defensive. It is not for us to prescribe to Italians or Spaniards
  what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious
  opinions. All which we wish is to have it made certain by authority
  that we should not, in case of reunion, be obliged to hold them
  ourselves. Least of all did I think of imputing to any of the
  writers whom I quoted that they "took from our Lord any of the love
  which they gave to his mother." I was intent only on describing the
  system which I believe is the great obstacle to reunion. I had not
  the least thought of criticising holy men who held it.

  As it is of moment that I should not be misunderstood by my own
  people, let me add that I have not intended to express any opinion
  about a visible head of the church. _We readily acknowledge the
  primary of the Bishop of Rome; the bearings of that primacy upon
  other local churches we believe to be a matter of ecclesiastical,
  not of divine law; but neither is there anything in the supremacy in
  itself to which we should object._ Our only fear is that it should,
  through the appointment of one bishop, involve the reception of that
  practical _quasi_--authoritative system which is, I believe, alike
  the cause and (forgive me) the justification in our eyes of our
  remaining apart.

  But, although I intended to be on the defensive, I thank you most
  warmly for that tenderness which enabled you to see my aim and
  objects throughout a long and necessarily miscellaneous work. And I
  believe that the way in which you have treated this our _bonâtell
  you fide_ "endeavor to find a basis for reunion, on the principle
  debated between Archbishop Wake and the Gallican divines two
  centuries ago," will, by rekindling hope, give a strong {285}
  impulse toward that reunion. Despair is still. If hope is revived in
  the English mind that Christendom may again be united, rekindled
  hope will ascend in the more fervent prayer to him who "maketh men
  to be of one mind in an house," and our prayers will not return
  unheard for want of love. Your obedient servant,

   E. B. PUSEY.


This letter, with others which have appeared from time to time, and
the whole course of Dr. Pusey's conduct, prove, in our estimation,
that he is acting with sincere good faith and goodwill toward the
Catholic Church. The long list of objections and charges which his
book contains, and which has irritated some Catholics so much, proves
only that Dr. Pusey's mind is troubled and bewildered, but not that
his heart is malevolent. The doctor is a very learned man, and a very
deep thinker, but in the mystic or contemplative order. He is not
either rapid or clear in his intellectual conceptions, nor is he
precise and methodical in the arrangement of the subject of which he
treats. He represents the best school of English evangelical and
scriptural divines, with the addition of extremely high-church
doctrines. No one can question his devout and deeply religious spirit,
the extraordinary purity and goodness of his life, or the zeal and
ability with which he has labored for fifty years to propagate several
of the most fundamental Catholic dogmas. His essay on baptismal
regeneration is the most thorough and exhaustive one in our language,
and we have never met with anything equal to it in any other. It has
had an incalculable influence over the theological mind of the
Episcopalian communion in England and America, in laying the
foundation of a right belief in sacramental grace, and thus preparing
the way for the reception of the entire Catholic system. The same may
be said, in part, respecting the doctrine of the real presence, the
authority of tradition, and other points. We look on him as a kind of
_avant courier_ not only of high-churchmen, but of orthodox
Protestants generally, laboring his way with difficulty through
thickets and morasses back to the Catholic Church, by dint of study,
meditation, and prayer. That he has come so near, bringing with him
the sympathy of so large a number, is a sign that an extraordinary
grace of the Holy Spirit is drawing the most widely separated members
of the Christian family back to unity and integrity of faith and
communion. We request our readers to take note of the fact that Dr.
Pusey, boldly and without censure, maintains that the articles of his
church can and ought to be explained in conformity with the decrees of
the Council of Trent. He proposes these decrees as the basis of
reconciliation. That there should still remain certain difficulties,
prepossessions, and misconceptions in his mind, is not strange; and
while these exist as a bar to a complete and cordial reception of the
entire Catholic system, there is no other way for him to do but to
state them as strongly as possible, so as to bring them under
discussion. There are only two of these difficulties which are
formidable. One relates to the office of the Blessed Virgin as Mother
of the Incarnate Word and Queen of Saints; the other, to that of the
Pope as Vicar of Christ and supreme Bishop of the Catholic Church. A
critical notice gives no opportunity for discussing such great and
grave questions, which demand an elaborate volume. The prelates and
theologians of the church will no doubt give them the full and ample
treatment which they deserve. We simply note the fact that the whole
ground of discussion is reduced in fact, by Dr. Pusey, to the nature
and extent of the Papal supremacy, on which depends the definition of
the body actually constituting the _Ecclesia Docens_ or teaching
church, and the dogmatic value of the decisions made by the Roman
Church with the concurrence of the bishops in her communion. It is
evident that the concession of the supremacy claimed by the Roman
Church involves the admission of all the dogmatic decisions of the
councils ratified by the popes as ecumenical, from the Eighth Council
to the Council of Trent; together with the dogmatic definition of the
immaculate conception, and the condemnations of heretical propositions
which have issued from the Holy See and are universally acknowledged
and enforced by all bishops in her communion. There is but one point,
therefore, really in controversy with the party of Dr. Pusey, as there
is but one with the so-called Greek Church, viz.: the Papal supremacy.

It will be noticed by every attentive reader that Dr. Pusey partially
admits {286} this doctrine already, and shows himself open to argument
on the subject. On the other great question, respecting the
prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he appears to show himself
also disposed to listen to explanations tending to remove his
misconceptions. In a letter to Dr. Wordsworth, published in the
"Weekly Register," of Jan. 27, Dr. Pusey says:

  "In regard to 'the immaculate conception,' . . . I may, however,
  take this opportunity of saying that I understand that Roman divines
  hold that all which is defined is, that the soul of the Blessed
  Virgin was infused pure into her body, and was preserved from both
  guilt and taint of original sin for those merits of our Lord, by
  whom she was redeemed, and that nothing is defined as to 'active
  conception,' i.e., that of her body. In this case, the words, 'in
  primo instanti conceptionis suae,' must be used in a different sense
  from that in which St. Thomas uses it of our Lord. The
  immaculateness of the conception would then differ in degree, not in
  kind, from that of Jeremiah, who was sanctified in his mother's
  womb."

It must be borne in mind that Dr. Pusey finds no fault with the
language of the Latin or Greek missals and breviaries respecting the
Blessed Virgin. Let the quotations from the Greek books in the notes
to Dr. Newman's letter be carefully examined, and it will be seen that
they fully sustain the common Catholic belief and practice. We have
been ourselves fully acquainted with the doctrine and practice of the
children of St. Alphonsus Liguori, who are considered as having
carried devotion to the Blessed Virgin to the greatest extreme. We
can, therefore, give our testimony that there is nothing in it which
is not identical in principle with the prescribed devotions of the
missal and breviary. The notion of there being a substitution of the
Blessed Virgin for Christ, or an overshadowing of the supreme worship
and love of God, anywhere in the Catholic Church, is a mere chimaera,
a spectral illusion of an alarmed imagination. We know what St.
Bernard, St. Alphonsus, and other approved writers have said. There is
nothing there beyond the language of St. Ephrem, the fathers of
Ephesus, the Greek liturgies, the _Salve Regina, Regina Coeli, Ave
Domina_, and litany of Loretto.

The array of quotations which Dr. Pusey has made from Catholic writers
will be found, on critical examination, to contain nothing formidable.
One of the works from which he quotes, that of Oswald, was placed on
the Index in 1855, and retracted by the author. Some of the other
passages are from works of a highly imaginative character, and contain
figurative or poetic expressions easily susceptible of an erroneous
sense when read by persons not intimately acquainted with the Catholic
religion. We think with Dr. Newman, with the late Archbishop Kenrick,
and with many other wise and holy men, that it is very ill-judged to
adopt such phraseology when it is sure to beget bewilderment and
misunderstanding. We have more need to teach the solid dogmas of faith
than to propagate pious opinions, and cultivate exotic, hot-house
flowers of piety. Dr. Newman has done more to establish a solid
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, by his brief theological essay, than
all the fanciful and rhetorical rhapsodies ever penned. We can forgave
Dr. Pusey for getting bewildered in perusing such a quantity of
poetry, accustomed as he is to Hebrew and other dry studies; but we
regret that he has displayed such an assortment of obscure and dark
sayings to bewilder others. We acquit him cheerfully of all blame for
it, but we nevertheless cannot help giving our deliberate judgment
that he has put forth one of the most mischievous books, to ordinary
and imperfectly informed minds, that has ever proceeded from the
English press. We cannot by any means recommend it to general perusal,
but those who do read it will do well to take its statements, on many
points, with great caution. We will conclude our remarks upon it with
noting some of its serious, albeit unintentional, misstatements:

1. The correspondence between Archbishop Wake and Du Pin was not a
_bonâ fide_ negotiation between that prelate and orthodox Gallicans,
but with Jansenists, in view of a coalition against the Roman Church.

2. There is no proof of any ratification ever having been made by Rome
of any ordinations according to the Anglican ordinal.

3. It is a mistake to say that extreme unction is given only to those
whose life is despaired of. It may be given {287} in all cases where a
probable danger of death is feared.

4. It is not admitted by Catholic writers that Russia was converted by
missionaries separated from the communion of the Roman Church.

5. It is a mistake to suppose that the prelates of the United States
gave no response to the Holy See respecting the definition of the
immaculate conception. The question was discussed in a full council,
and the judgment of' the prelates was transmitted to Rome in favor of
the definition. The Blessed Virgin, under the title of the Immaculate
Conception, was proclaimed, by a decree of the prelates, the patroness
of the Church of the United States, and the Sunday within the octave
of the feast has been made one of the principal solemnities of the
year.

Finally, a complete misconception of the whole question respecting
Papal infallibility and its limits underlies and vitiates all the
statements of the book on that subject. There is no dissension or
doubt existing in the Catholic episcopate in regard to any definition
of faith, or any doctrinal decisions whose acceptance is exacted by
the Holy See under pain of censure. The Pope and the bishops, as the
infallible _Ecclesia Docens_, are a unit. What one teaches and
requires to be believed, all teach alike. The unity of faith in the
episcopate was never so palpable a fact as it is at the present
moment. So far as relates to disciplinary authority over doctrinal
matters, the Roman Church is recognized in universal Catholic law as
the court of ultimate appeal, and all questions respecting the
interpretation of the definitions of the Council of Trent, which are
the great standard of orthodoxy, were expressly reserved to it by the
bull of confirmation, with the assent of the council itself, and by
the decree _De Recipiendis_, etc. There is no possibility, therefore,
of negotiating with the Catholic Church, or any portion of it, for
reconciliation, except through the head of the church. The conditions
of reconciliation are plain and distinct, and they will never be
modified so far as relates to doctrine or essential discipline.
Explanation, courtesy, benignant interpretation, full liberty in
regard to mere theological opinions, will be cheerfully accorded; but
no more.

It is vain to expect any propositions for reconciliation to come from
the hierarchy of the Protestant Episcopal Church of England or
America. We advise those who desire the reunion of Christendom to
consider, carefully, the claims of the Roman Church, and if they are
convinced of their validity to effect their own personal union with
the mother and mistress of churches. If they are not, we do not wish
them to come to us, either singly or in a body. Those who really
become Catholics will desire to become members of the Catholic Church
as she is, and not of a reformed body, conglomerated from the
Catholic, Russian, and Anglican churches, and will not thank us to
concede an iota of principle. Strict, dogmatic unity, and
unconditional submission to the supreme authority of the See of Peter,
is the only condition of union in ecclesiastical fellowship. The
Greeks themselves have exacted that the question of dogma should be
settled first, before any propositions of intercommunion with
Anglicans can be entertained; so that the hope of obtaining
recognition from them, with the question of dogma left open, has been
overthrown. Our other Protestant brethren have embroiled themselves
worse than ever over their projects for an anti-Catholic union of
sects. There is not the faintest chance of any reunion of Christians
except by a return to the centre of unity.

We are glad to see that Dr. Pusey has been passing some time with
Catholic bishops in France, and that there is a probability of his
going to Rome to confer with the Holy Father. We trust the learned and
venerable doctor will do so, and that he will find his doubts and
perplexities settled at the Seat of Truth, the chair of the Prince of
the Apostles, whence all unity takes its rise.


NOTES ON DOCTRINAL AND SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS.
By the late Frederick William Faber, D.D., etc. Vol. I. Mysteries and
Festivals. London; Richardson & Son, 1866. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.

Father Faber was a man of cultivated mind, rich imagination, high
poetic gifts, exuberant sensibility, and ardent devotion. His life was
rich in good works and his death deeply regretted. In a literary point
of view we consider his poetry as the best portion {288} of the
products of his fertile mind and pen. His spiritual works, however,
have attained a great popularity and a wide circulation, and no doubt
have done and will do great good to that large class who love and
require instructions deeply imbued with sentiment and emotion. The
present volume consists of sketches of instructions never finished,
and is intended as an aid in preparing sermons or conferences on
spiritual subjects. We are glad to see that F. Faber's life is in
preparation, and shall await its publication with interest. If well
done, it cannot fail to be one of the most attractive of biographies.
The life and writings of F. Faber are well suited to please and
benefit a large class of Protestants as well as Catholics. We have
heard not only Episcopalians and Unitarians speak in warm terms of the
pleasure they take in his books, but even an aged and venerable
Presbyterian clergyman recite his poetry with enthusiasm. We do not
consider his works to be beyond criticism, and, for those who are able
to bear it, we regard the more solid and plain food of F. Augustine
Baker and Father Lallemant as more wholesome. But every one has his
own proper gift, and that of Father Faber was evidently to make
spiritual doctrine sweet and palatable to a vast number of persons who
would not receive it except through the avenue of sensibility. His
works are a wilderness of flowers and foliage; nevertheless they
contain a doctrine which is substantially sound and useful, and their
general aim and tendency is to establish solid, practical piety and
virtue. The volume before us is replete with thoughts and conceptions
redolent with all the peculiar vividness and brilliancy of the
author's style, and exhibiting also extensive and profound knowledge
of theology. We con recommend it to clergymen who wish for a treasury
of choice materials wherewith to enrich and enliven their discourses,
as a more complete and suggestive manual than any we have in the
English language, and one which may be used to great advantage if used
judiciously. It would be a very unsafe experiment, however, to attempt
a close imitation of F. Faber's style, especially for young and
inexperienced preachers, who might meet the fate of Icarus attempting
to fly with waxen wings. We cannot, therefore, unreservedly recommend
this volume as containing the best _models_ for imitation, but only in
a qualified sense as extremely suggestive and quickening to thought
and sentiment, and thus furnishing the materials and ornaments for
discourses planned and constructed in a plainer and more sober style.
We think it likely to become a great favorite with a large class of
clergymen, especially those who are anxious to make their sermons as
attractive as possible, and well fitted to be of great service to them
in the way we have indicated.


THE GRAHAMES. By Mrs. Trafford
Whitehead. American News Company. 1 volume 12mo, pp. 382.

This is a commonplace, _fashionable_ novel, written in an inflated
style. Its sentiment is weak, its pathos twaddle, and its tone and
morality low and reprehensible. We hope none of our young people will
read it; but if they do that they will not imitate the heroine who
finds it her _mission_ to stay in a gentleman's house, in the capacity
of governess to a namby-pamby child, after she has discovered that the
lady is cold as ice, and the gentleman, whose eyes she cannot
understand, has _accidentally_ betrayed his penchant for herself.

The lady, as in duty bound, dies, and the governess, of course,
marries the gentleman.


CHRISTUS JUDEX: A Traveller's Tale.
By Edward Roth. 12mo, pp. 78. Philadelphia: F. Leypoldt. 1864.

This is a piece of composition full of beauty and marked by the most
refined taste. There is a chaste elegance, too, about the typography
and binding which is highly creditable to the publisher. It is just
such a book as one wishes to find to present as a gift to a friend. We
heartily recommend it to all our readers.

  [Transcriber's note: This section was printed in small type; many
  words are merely guesses.]

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From D. Appleton & Co., New York: The Temporal Mission of the Holy
Ghost; or Reason and Revelation, by Henry Edward, Archbishop of
Westminster 12mo, pp. 274.

F. W. Christ???, New York: Victor Hugo's Les Travalileurs de las Mer.
Edition special pour les Etats-Unis.

P. O'Shea, New York: Nos. 23, 24 and 25 of Darras' History of the
Church.

Brophy & Burch, Washington, D.C: Argument in the Supreme Court of
United States of America, by Alexander J. P. Careschi[?], in the case
of the Rev. Mr. Cummings, plaintiff in error, vs. the state of
Missouri, defendant in error.

{289}


THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


VOL. III., NO. 15.--JUNE, 1866.


[ORIGINAL]


PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.


III.

THE BELIEF IN GOD IS THE FIRST ARTICLE OF A RELIGIOUS CREED.

The first article of the Christian Creed is "Credo in Deum"--"I
believe in God." The Christian child receives this originally by
instruction before it attains the complete use of reason, and believes
it by a natural faith in the word of those who teach it. Afterward it
attains to a clearer and more distinct conception of its meaning and
truth. This conception, however, is still furnished to it by Christian
theology, and by theology itself is referred back to a revelation
whose beginning is coeval with the human race. The fact just stated in
regard to the belief of the Christian child is also true in regard to
the belief of mankind universally. Wherever the idea of God, as
exhibited by pure, theistic philosophy, is contained in the common
belief of the people, it is held as a portion of some religious system
purporting to be derived from revelation. It is learned from the
instruction of religious teachers, and transmitted by a sacred
tradition. We do not attain to the conception of God by the
spontaneous, unaided evolution of it in our individual reason. Those
nations which remain in the state of infancy, through a lack of the
civilizing and instructing power, do not attain to that conception.
The only way in which pure, theistic conceptions have ever been
communicated to any considerable number of persons previously
destitute of them, has been by the instruction of those who already
possessed them.

This tradition goes back to the original creation of the race. Mankind
was originally constituted by the Almighty in a state of civilized and
enlightened society, fully furnished with that sacred treasure which
tradition diffuses universally, and which constitutes {290} the
inherited capital on which all the precious gain and increase in
science, civilization, and every kind of intellectual and moral
wealth, are based. It is in this way that the conception of God, which
the founders of the human race received by immediate revelation, has
been preserved and transmitted by universal tradition. In the pure and
legitimate line of descent it has come down uncorrupted through the
line of patriarchs and prophets to Jesus Christ, who has promulgated
it anew in such a manner as to secure its inviolable preservation to
the end of time. Indirectly, and subject to various changes and
corruptions, it has descended through human language and law, through
civilization and science, through Gentile literature and mythology,
and through philosophy. Directly or indirectly, all the conceptions of
mankind respecting God, whether perfect or imperfect, crude or mature,
have been transmitted by tradition from the original and primitive
revelation made to the founders of the race.

The universal utterance of mankind is, and always has been, "Credo in
Deum." This is a common credence, possessed by the race from the
beginning, which the individual mind receives and acquiesces in with
more or less of intelligent belief and understanding, but never
totally eradicates from among its conceptions. It is a credence
perfectly enunciated in that divine revelation which the Christian
church possesses in its integrity, and communicates in the most
complete and explicit manner to all those who receive her
instructions.

Here may easily arise a misunderstanding. Some one will say: "You
appear to resolve all our knowledge of God into an act of faith in a
revelation handed down from the past. But the very conception of
revelation implies the previous conception of God, who makes the
revelation. Faith in a revealed doctrine is based on the veracity of
God, who reveals it. But in order that one may be able to make this
act of faith, he must previously know that God is, and that he is
veracious. Thus, we must believe that God is veracious because it is
revealed, and believe this revealed doctrine that he is veracious
because of his veracity. This is a vicious circle, and gives no basis
whatever for rational belief."

This objection has really been anticipated and obviated in the
preceding chapter. A full understanding of the answer to it will
require a careful reading of the present chapter entire, and perhaps
of the greater part of the succeeding ones. Just now, we simply reply
to the objector that we do not, as he imagines, resolve the evidence
of God's existence, and of other rational truths, into a tradition or
revelation. We hold firmly that these truths are provable by reason.
In speaking of revelation or tradition as our instructor in the
doctrine of God, what is meant is this: The correct and complete
formula, the divine word, or infallible speech, expressing in the
sensible signs of human language the explicit conception of that
divine idea which is constitutive of the soul's very rational
existence,--this _formula_ has been handed down by tradition from the
origin of the race. We do not propose this tradition as a mere
exterior authority to which the mind must submit blindly, from which
it must derive its rational activity, or in which it must locate its
criterion of rational certitude. We admit the obligation of proving
that this tradition is universal and divine. So far as the doctrines
it proposes are within the sphere of reason, we hold that reason
receives them because they are self-evident, or capable of being
deduced from that which is self-evident. Thus, for instance, in
proposing the veracity of God as the ground of faith in his
revelation, it is proposed as a truth evident by the light of reason.
Reason, however, is indebted to the instruction which comes by
tradition for that clear and distinct statement of the being and
attributes {291} of God, including his infinite and eternal veracity,
which brings the mind to a reflective consciousness of its own
primitive idea.

This may be illustrated by a comparison of the exterior word or
revelation with that interior word or revelation which creates the
soul and gives it the natural light of reason. The word of God spoken
in the creative act creates the rational soul, and affirms to it his
being and the existence of creatures, including that of the soul
itself. This is a revelation. All natural knowledge is a revelation
from God. Our belief in the reality of the outward world, and of our
own existence, is resolved into a belief in the reality of the
creative act of God, or of that spoken word by which he creates the
world. We see no difficulty here, because we see that the word of God,
in this case, enlightens the soul to see the truth of that which it
declares to it. We need not find any more difficulty in the case of
the exterior word. When this exterior, word declares plainly to an
ignorant mind the nature and attributes of God, and the obligation of
believing and obeying the truth revealed by him, this word also
enlightens that mind to perceive the truth of what it declares. It
illuminates the soul to see more distinctly the truths that are within
the sphere of reason by direct, rational perception; and to see
indirectly and indistinctly those truths which are above reason, in
the self-evident truth of God's veracity, and in the analogies and
correspondences which exist between these truths and those which are
directly apprehended by reason.

This is anticipating what is to be treated of expressly hereafter. We
trust it is now plain that we do not profess to derive the idea of God
in the human race, and in each individual mind, from a mere outward
tradition, or to prove its reality from a mere authoritative dictum of
revelation. What we really intend to do is, to exhibit the conception
of God contained in Christian theology, for the purpose of showing its
objective truth and reality by a rational method. In the first place,
we wish to bring out the conception itself as clearly as possible; to
describe a circle in language vast and perfect enough to include all
that is intelligible to human reason respecting God and his
perfections. In the second place, to review the different methods of
proving to reason the objective reality of this conception. And
finally, to propose what we believe to be the best and most complete
method of presenting to the reflective consciousness of the soul the
certitude of its positive judgment, affirming the being of God.
[Footnote 47]

  [Footnote 47: In the actual treatment of the subject, this order has
  been changed for the sake of convenience.]

A great task, certainly! Some may regard it as on evidence of
presumption to undertake it. Truly, if one should propose the
conception of the being of the infinite God as a mere hypothesis;
criticising and condemning the arguments of great men respecting it as
illogical and unsuccessful attempts to prove it; professing to have
discovered or invented some new process of demonstrating the problem,
and thus pretend to make that certain which has hitherto been doubtful
or probable, it would argue the height of arrogance and presumption.
We do not, however, propose any such thing. The idea of God
constitutes the very existence and life of the human soul. The
conception of God, more or less perfectly explicated, is the
possession of the human race universal, and in its completely
explicated form it is the possession of the church universal of all
ages. It is the treasure of universal theology and philosophy, handed
down by an universal and inviolable tradition not of mere dead words
and logical forms, but of the living thought and belief of all the
sages and saints of the earth. The truth that {292} God is, and is
infinitely perfect in his attributes, is the infallible and
irreversible judgment of the reason of mankind, whether naturally or
supernaturally enlightened. All that an individual can do is to
attempt to gain a distinct apprehension and a correct verbal
expression of the self-luminous idea which shines in all philosophy,
but especially in Christian Catholic philosophy. It is a mistake,
then, to consider an argument respecting the being of God as a mere
logical process, conducting from some known premises to an unknown
conclusion; a process in which any incorrectness in analysis or
deduction vitiates the result and leaves the unsolved problem to the
efforts of some new candidate for the honor of first discovering the
solution. The reflex conceptions of that infallible affirmation of God
to the soul which constitutes its rational existence must be
substantially correct. This is especially the case where revelation
furnishes a perfect and infallible outward expression of that inward
conception which the reflective reason is laboring to acquire.
Therefore we consider that there is a real agreement among all
theistic and Christian philosophers. All have true intellectual
conceptions of the idea of God. Yet there may be some of these
conceptions which, though true, are confused. Again, in the multiplied
reflex action of the mind upon itself and its own judgments and
conceptions, there may be some imperfections in the analysis or
critical examination of the component parts of the idea, in the
synthesis or construction of these component parts into an ideal
formula, and in the language by which verbal expression is given to
the conceptions of the mind. What is to be aimed at is, to obtain
intellectual conceptions which are clear and adequate to the idea, and
a verbal expression which is also clear and adequate to the mental
conception. In this direction lies the true path of progress in
Christian philosophy. It is a continual effort to apprehend more
clearly and adequately in the intelligence the conceptions given to
our reflective reason by revelation, and to express these conceptions
more clearly and intelligibly in language. Hence, so far as the
doctrine of God is concerned, philosophy can only strive after
formulas which express adequately the conception existing in every
mind which has brought the idea of God into reflective consciousness.
If this be true relatively to the common mind, it must be so much more
relatively to the instructed philosophic mind of the world, especially
the instructed theological mind of the church, where philosophy and
theology are developed in a scientific form. The individual may
reflect on that part of theology which his own intelligence has
appropriated and assimilated to itself, and may possibly advance
science by his reflections. But he cannot possibly cut himself off
from the intellectual tradition and the continuity of intellectual
life by which his reason lives and acts, without perpetrating
intellectual suicide. We despise and reject, therefore, all philosophy
or theology which severs itself from the great vital current and
pulsation of traditional wisdom and science. We despise also that
which merely repeats what it has learned, unless it has first made an
intelligent judgment that this is, in regard to whatever matter is
under discussion, the ultimatum that human reason can attain. One may
do some good by repeating and explaining to others what are, for him,
the last and most perfect words of wisdom which he has found in
studying the works of the great and wise teachers of men. This gives
him no claim to be honored as an original thinker or writer. He
diffuses but he does not advance science. It is better to do this than
to fall into error and folly, or at least to waste time and paper, by
vainly striving after originality for its own sake, or from a silly
motive of {293} vain-glory. Or one may really advance science by
original and valuable thoughts which are an elaboration of the truth
that has hitherto remained in a crude form; by a better analysis or
synthesis of common, universal conceptions; if nothing more, at least
by a better verbal expression and a more distinct and intelligible
method of exposition. For ourselves, we are satisfied to explain and
diffuse that wisdom which we have found in the writings of the
greatest and most profound thinkers, especially those who have created
or embellished Catholic theology. We strike out no new and unknown
path. We do not pretend even to push forward into any unexplored
region in the old one. All that is in this treatise may probably be
found elsewhere, and by many will be recognized as already familiar to
them. Although we do not choose to burden our pages with citations and
references, the reader may rely on it that in the main we follow the
common current of Catholic theology. If we sometimes deviate from it,
we are still, in most instances, following the steps of some one or
more of the giant pioneers who have gone on before, leaving a broad
trail to direct the weaker traveller in the path of science.

What has just been said is applicable to every subject treated in
these essays. In relation to the special subject now under
consideration, we are very anxious not to seem captious or rash in
criticising the common methods of argument employed by theologians. We
recognize the substantial solidity of the doctrine of God contained in
the best philosophers of all ages, so far as it agrees with
revelation; and the perfect soundness and completeness of the doctrine
as taught by Christian theologians. It is only the form and method
that we intend to criticise, so far as theological doctrine is
concerned; and, so far as relates to the purely human and rational
element of philosophy, only that which is peculiar to individuals,
schools, or periods, and not that which is common and universal. Let
us remember that we are not reasoning as sceptics, and, beginning from
a principle of philosophic doubt, ignoring all knowledge and belief,
and striving to work our way upward to something positive and certain.
Whether we are positively Christian in our belief or not, we are
taking the viewing-point of Christian faith, and making a survey of
the prospect visible to the eye from that point. It presents to us the
completely developed idea of God as always known and always believed
with certitude. What we are to do, then, is to find the most adequate
expression of that which faith has believed and reason been able to
understand during all time respecting God. We stand not alone, in the
ignorance of our isolated, individual minds, to create by a slow and
laborious task the truth and the belief of which our souls feel the
need. We stand in union with the human race, always in possession of
at least the elements of truth. We stand in union with that favored
portion of the human race which has always clearly and distinctly
believed in the absolute truth of the being and infinite perfection of
God, and in a distinct revelation from him. We are about to examine
this universal belief, and these intelligent judgments of cultivated
universal human reason, and to compare them with the principles and
judgments of our own reason. To ascertain what Christian Catholic
faith is, and how it is radicated in an intelligent indubitable
certitude of reason--this is what we are about to attempt; and the
first part of our task is to examine the Christian conception of God,
as expressed in theistic philosophy and Catholic theology. We intend
to prove that it is the original, permits have, constitutive idea of
human reason, brought, into distinct, reflective consciousness; made
intelligible to the understanding, so far as it is not immediately
intelligible in itself, by analogy; and correctly expressed by the
sensible signs of language.

{294}


IV.

DIFFERENT METHODS OF PROVING THE BEING OF GOD.

It is evident that we have no direct intellectual vision or beholding
of God. The goal is separated from him by an infinite and impassable
abyss. We cannot now take into account the person of Jesus Christ, or
of any who have been elevated to an intellectual condition different
from that which is proper to our present state on earth. Apart from
such exceptions, the soul even of the highest contemplative never
directly beholds God himself. In the words of St. Augustine; _"Videri
autem divinitas humano visu nullo modo potest; sed eo visu videtur,
quo jam qui vident, non homines sed ultra homines sunt."_ "The
divinity can in no way be seen by human vision: but it is seen by a
vision of such a kind that they who see by it are not men, but are
more than men."  [Footnote 48] Neither have we the power to comprehend
the intrinsic necessity of God's being and the intimate reason and
nature of his self-existence. If we had a natural power of seeing God
immediately, we would be naturally beatified, and all error or sin
would be impossible. Moreover, we have not even a formed and developed
conception of God innate to our reason, such as that which the
instructed and educated reason can acquire. For, if we had, it would
be in all minds alike without exception; everywhere and under all
circumstances the same, without any need of previous reflection or
instruction. What, then, is the genesis of our rational conception and
belief of the divine being and attributes? How is it evident that God
really is?

  [Footnote 48: De Trin. lib. ii. c. ii.]

The arguments employed by philosophers are usually divided into two
classes, those called _à priori_, and those called _à posteriori_.

An argument _à priori_ is one which deduces a truth from another truth
of a prior and more universal order. Therefore, to prove the being of
God _à priori_ we must go back to a truth either really and in itself
antecedent to his being, or antecedent in the primitive idea of
reason. That is to say, there must be an ideal world of truth
logically antecedent to God, and independent of him; an eternal nature
of things which is in itself necessary, and intelligible to our
reason, before it has any idea of God. Or else, the primitive,
constitutive idea of our reason must be an idea of some abstract being
of this nature which is not God, and which in the real order is not
antecedent to God, but only antecedent to him in the order of human
thought and knowledge. If the first is true, God is not the first
cause, the first principle, the infinite and eternal truth in himself,
the absolute essence, and the immediate object of his own
intelligence. The very conception of God which is sought to be proved
is destroyed and rendered unintelligible. This will appear more
clearly when we come to develop more fully hereafter the idea of God
and his attributes. In the order of real being there is and can be
nothing before God. There is no cause, no principle, no truth, no
intelligible idea more universal than God, and prior to him, from
which his being can be deduced as a consequence. In this sense, then,
an _à priori_ argument for the being of God is impossible.

If the second alternative is true, that we have a primitive idea of
something in our minds which is before the idea of God, the order of
ideas, of reason, of human thought, is not in harmony with the real
order. We apprehend the unreal and not the real. We see things as they
are not, and not as they are. The reason apprehends the abstract,
ideal universe, the eternal nature of things, the world of necessary
truth, as antecedent to God and independent of him, when it is not so.
If this were so, we could never attain to the true idea of God as
before all things and the principle of all. For reason most develop
{295} according to its primary and constitutive idea and its necessary
law of thought. If in this constitutive idea there is something before
God from which, as a prior principle, a more universal truth, the
being of God is deduced as a consequence and a secondary truth, we
must always look at things in this way, and can never directly behold
the real order of being as it is. Thus we can never attain the true
idea of God while we apprehend any intelligible object of thought as
prior to him who is really prior to all, and must be apprehended as
prior or else falsely apprehended.

An _à priori_ argument in this sense is, therefore, as impossible as
in the other.

Let us now examine more particularly some of the so-called _à priori_
arguments.

One is an argument from the conceptions, or, as they are commonly
called, the _ideas_, of space and time. It proceeds thus: We have an
idea of infinite space, and of infinite time, as necessary in the
eternal nature of things. Do what we will, we cannot banish these
ideas, or avoid thinking of space and time as necessary and eternal.
Therefore, there is an infinite, eternal being, of whose existence
space and time are the necessary effects.

This argument dazzles the mind by a certain splendor and overwhelms it
by a certain profundity and vastness of conception, but yet leaves it
confused and overpowered rather than convinced. It will not bear
analysis, as Leibnitz has successfully proved in his letters to Adam
Clarke, who defended it with all the acuteness and ingenuity which his
subtle and penetrating intellect could bring to bear on the question.

Nothing is, or can be, which is not either God or the creation of God.
Space and time, therefore, are either attributes of God, or created
entities, if they have any being or existence in themselves at all.
They are either identical with the essence of God, or they are
included within the creation and only coeval and co-extensive with it;
that is, bounded by finite and precise limits of succession and
extension. If the former, in perceiving them we perceive God directly.
This is not affirmed by the argument, which asserts that they are
effects of God's being and external to it. If the second, they are not
infinite; the idea of their infinity and necessity is an illusion, and
no argument can be derived from it. It is, beside, impossible to
conceive of space and time as entities, or existing things, distinct
and separate from other existences, and having certain defined limits.
The language used by those who distinguish them both from God and
creation, and call them necessary effects of the being of God, is
simply unintelligible. Their conception of infinite space and time is,
as Leibnitz calls it, a mere idol of the fancy, a phantasm
representing nothing real. There is no intelligible conception of
space and time as distinct both from God and creation. There is no
such thing in the order of reality or of thought as a _necessary_
effect of God's being, or any effect except that produced by his free
creative act. Into the idea of God nothing enters except God himself.
Supposing that God exists alone without having created, when we think
of God we think of all that can be thought as actual. His being fills
up his own intelligence, of which it is the only and complete object.
Into a true conception of that being our notions of space and time
cannot enter. Nevertheless, in apprehending space and time there must
be some real and intelligible idea which is apprehended. This idea is
the possibility of creation, which in God is necessary and infinite.
By his very essence, God has the power to create, and this power is
unlimited. The idea of a created universe necessarily includes the
idea of its existence in space and time. The possibility of space and
time are, therefore, included in the possibility of creation, and as
no limits can be placed to {296} the one, so none can be placed to the
other. Our apprehension of infinite space and time is an apprehension
of the infinite possibility of creation in God. We apprehend God under
the intuition of the infinite, the necessary, and the eternal. This
intuition of the infinite enters into all our thoughts. And therefore,
however much we may extend our conception of actual duration or
extension in regard to the created universe, we must always think the
possibility of that duration and extension being increased even to
infinity. Ideal space and time is that which we apprehend of real
space and time, with the thought of their possible extension to
infinity included. Real space and time are not entities distinct in
themselves, but relations of succession and co-existence among created
things. As in God alone, as distinct from creation, there is nothing
intelligible but the divine being, so in the creation there is nothing
intelligible but that which God has created. God and the existences
which God has made are all that the mind can think. Take away God and
finite, real things; nothing remains. Think of God as not creating,
and God is the sole object of thought. Add to this the thought of God
creating, and you have finite created entities. But you have nothing
more; and if you fancy there is anything more, such as space and time
in the abstract, you have a phantasm or idol of the imagination, which
is nothing. Real space and time must be relations of existing things,
and ideal space and time the possibility of relations among things
which might be; or they are nothing. Destroy real entities, and you
destroy all real relations. Deny the possibility of real entities, and
you destroy all ideal relations. This answers the puzzling question
sometimes asked, "Can God annihilate space?" He can annihilate real
space by annihilating the real universe from which it is inseparable.
He cannot annihilate ideal space, because it is in himself, as
included in his eternal idea of the possible creation, or of his own
infinite power to create. Our apprehensions of space and time are in
the intelligible and not in the sensible world. The sensible form
which they have results from the universal law that all intelligible
conceptions come to us through the sensible, and represented to us
through sensible signs. They must ultimately terminate in the idea of
God as pure spirit, without extension or successive duration. When we
think of extension in space we imagine a material figure, or an
atmosphere whose circumference we extend further and further in all
directions. When we think of duration in time, we think of a
succession of material or intellectual actions, whose series we extend
backward into the past or forward into the future. But, no matter how
far we carry these processes, a definite and limited extension and
duration is all that we reach. It is impossible that the idea of
infinite space and duration should be actually realized in the order
of finite and created things. The impossibility of placing any limit
to them which shall be final must, therefore, be referred to an idea
beyond all relations of space and time, and truly infinite, which we
imperfectly apprehend by analogy through these relations. This is the
idea of God as having an infinite power to create which is
inexhaustible by any actual creation, however vast. Only in this way
is the idea intelligible, and we must affirm God as real and infinite
being before we can correctly apprehend it.

It may be said that this is what is really meant by the argument from
space and time. We are willing to admit that it is what these eminent
writers really had in their minds. But it appears to us that they have
expressed it without sufficient clearness and precision, by reason of
the confusion which prevails in modern philosophy, and that it is not
really an _à priori_ argument, since it cannot be made {297}
intelligible without affirming the idea of God as prior to all other
ideas in the order of thought as well as in the order of being.

Another argument is derived from the possibility of conceiving that
there is a being absolutely perfect. We can conceive that there is a
being possessing all possible perfections. But actual existence is a
perfection. Therefore if we conceive of a being possessing _all_
perfection, we must conceive of him as having actual existence.

This amounts merely to saying that actual existence enters into our
conception of God. Where is the proof that that conception is not
merely in our mind? Does the fact that we are able to form a
conception of God prove that God really exists? Some will answer. Yes.
Because it is absurd to suppose that the mind can form an idea greater
than itself, and conceive of a possible order of being greater than
the real order. It is, indeed, absurd; but the absurdity cannot be
shown without at the same time showing the impossibility of finding
any principle of reason prior to the idea of God. Is that which the
reason perceives real being? Then the idea of the infinite is the
affirmation of an infinite being. It is impossible to conceive of a
possible being greater than the real being, because the real being is
directly affirmed as infinite in the idea of reason. The very idea we
are seeking to prove real presents itself as real to the reason before
we can even begin the process of proving it. It is itself prior to
every principle we are looking for as the most ultimate and the most
universal. There cannot be found anything from which we can reason _à
priori_ to that which is itself prior to all. We have began by
affirming our conclusion as the basis of our proof. At the end of our
argument we come back to our starting-point.

Is that which the reason perceives not real being? What, then, is it?
It will be said that it is an a idea. If so, this _à priori_ argument
proves only that the actual existence of God is conceivable, and that
it cannot be proved that there is no God. It may even make his real
existence appear to be probable, taken in connection with the other
arguments usually employed. At best, however, it leaves the idea of
God always under the form of an hypothesis, and affords no protection
against the corruption of the idea by pantheistic and materialistic
notions. Where is the passage from the abstract to the concrete, from
the mental conception to the objective reality? If our conceptions of
God lie in the order of an abstract world, and it is not the reality
which is the ultimate object of reason, how can we ever obtain
certitude that there is a real world corresponding to that abstract
world which exists in our own mind? Such is the reasoning of modern
materialism which is conducting vast numbers as near to absolute
atheism as the mind by its own nature is able to go. For the class of
men alluded to there are no realities except those of the sensible
world. The spiritual world of dogmatic truth, religious obligation,
and supernatural hopes, is ignored and neglected as merely abstract,
hypothetical, and having at best but a dubious claim on our attention;
one which may with safety and prudence be practically set aside for
the more obvious claims of the present life. The entire falsity of
this whole philosophy of the abstract, and the nullity of all
abstractions considered as self-subsisting objects of thought, will be
more directly shown hereafter. For the present we say no more on this
head, but proceed to consider another form in which the argument from
abstract, _à priori_ principles is presented.

We have an idea of the good, the beautiful, the true, as being
necessary, universal, and eternal. Therefore there must be a being in
whose mind these ideas exist, or of whom these qualities can be
affirmed. This argument has been answered in answering {298} the
foregoing one, with which it nearly coincides. Are these ideas
abstract, independent of reality, antecedent to the idea of real,
concrete being? Then they are forms of the mind, and leave it without
a direct perception of the existence of a real, concrete being,
infinitely good, beautiful, and true; or rather, the infinite
goodness, beauty, and truth in himself. Are these ideas immediate
affirmations of this real being? Then we have lost again our _a
priori_ principle, by finding that the conclusion is actually prior to
it. Either we affirm the intuition of the concrete, real object, from
which the abstract conception of the good, the beautiful, and the true
is derived, or we can prove only the existence of these conceptions in
the mind, and cannot argue from the conceptions to the reality, or in
any way perceive clearly the existence of the reality in an order
external to our own mind.

Let us pass now to the argument called _à posteriori_. This is a
method of reasoning exactly the reverse of the former; in which we
proceed from effects to their causes, and from particulars to the
universal. We endeavor to prove the existence of God from certain
facts which cannot be accounted for unless they are regarded as
effects of an absolute first cause.

We may consider this argument from two distinct points of view. First,
we may take it as an effort to deduce the existence of God from a
great number of facts, as the result of our knowledge of these
particular facts; an effort to prove by experiment and observation an
hypothesis which is proposed as a probable solution of the problem of
the universe. We suppose that we begin without the idea of God. We
acquire the knowledge of particular facts through sensation and
reflection. By noting a great number of facts, and reflecting upon
them, we ascend to general and abstract truths, and as a last result
arrive at the conception of the being of God as the most universal
truth, and the one which is the sum of all probabilities.

In the second place, we may take this argument as a method of
manifesting the way in which the action of the first cause is shown
forth in the universe. The idea of God is first affirmed, and the due
explication of the facts of the universe is then demonstrated to be
only an explication of the idea of God as first cause. The universe is
shown to be intelligible in its cause, and apart from it to be
unintelligible. Taken in this way the argument is identical with that
which we are about to propose a little later.

Taken in the former sense, it is not a demonstration of the existence
of God. Suppose that we can begin to reason without the idea of cause,
and we can never establish its necessity by induction. Eliminate the
idea of self-subsisting, necessary, eternal being, and suppose it
unknown, unimagined; we can never rise above the particular, isolated
sensations and perceptions of which we are conscious. If the facts
which are called effects are intelligible in themselves, they imply no
cause, and none can be proved from them. If they are not intelligible
in themselves, they are from the first intelligible only in their
cause, and the idea of cause is ultimate in the mind, antecedent to
all knowledge of particulars, the first premised of every conclusion.
It cannot then be proved as the conclusion of any syllogism; for all
arguments start from it as the primitive idea and first principle of
reason.

This method of argument belongs to that sceptical system of philosophy
which came in vogue with the theology of Protestantism, and has been
ever since working out its fatal results. It is the principle of
disintegration, doubt, and denial, transferred from the domain of
revealed dogma into the order of rational truths. Kant, the great
master of this philosophy, and one of the principal chiefs of modern
thought, carried out this philosophy to the denial of all possibility
of science, and therefore of all {299} Scientific knowledge of God,
immortality, and moral obligation. Having swept all natural and
revealed truths out of the domain of _pure_ reason, he made a feeble
attempt to establish their authority in the sphere of _practical_
reason. The individual man and the human race need the belief in God
to keep them in the order required for their well-being. Therefore we
may believe that there is a God. It is needless to say that these
dictates of practical reason are not respected by those who carry out
consistently and boldly the sceptical philosophy. The ravages made by
the principle of scepticism among those who have cast off all
traditional belief in Christianity are obvious to all eyes. But it is
not so generally acknowledged that the same philosophy has had a wide
and baneful influence over Christian theology. Some Christian writers
would avowedly sweep away science to give place to faith, not
reflecting that faith tumbles to the ground when its rational basis is
removed. Others follow the method of a philosophy constructed upon
that method, a method which is altogether unfit to be a medium of the
rational explanation of Christian dogmas. Hence, there is a schism
between theology and philosophy, leaving both these sciences in a
mutilated condition. The manifest inadequacy of the common
philosophical system brings it into contempt, and induces the effort
to transfer the seat of all certitude and all true science to
theology. Theology cannot make the first step without a basis of
rational certitude for faith and for conclusions drawn from premises
which are furnished by  faith. Consequently her efforts to walk on air
result to her discredit, and theology falls into contempt. This ends
in adopting Kant's practical reason as the basis of religious belief.
Philosophy and theology, as sciences of the highest order, are
deserted. Religion is defended and explained on the ground of its
probability and its utility. We cannot have science or make our belief
intelligible. It is safe and prudent to follow on in the way the great
majority of the wise and good have walked. Let us do so, and silence
the questionings of the intellect.  [Footnote 49] The language of
scepticism! This is the mental disease of our day. Scepticism in
regard to the doctrines of revelation; scepticism in regard to the
dictates of reason! No doubt, if faith had full sway, and no false
philosophy prevailed, theology would be sufficient by itself. For it
contains in solution the true philosophy; and the simple,
unsophisticated Christian intellect will take it up and absorb it
naturally without needing to have it administered in a separate state.
But where the mind has been sophisticated by false philosophy, it
cannot take theology until the antidote of true philosophy has been
given to it. Here is a lack in our English-speaking religious world.
And this lack is, perhaps, the reason why some of the best writers
speak so uncertainly of the rational basis of faith in revealed
truths, and even in the truth of God's existence. While they affirm
the certitude of their own inward belief, yet they acknowledge that
they can only construct an argument which in philosophy is probable.
That is to say, they have not a philosophy in which the ground of
their inward certitude is expressed in a distinct formula, and by
which they can make their readers conscious of a similar ground of
certitude in themselves. They have no philosophy corresponding to
their theology, and therefore, when they address the unbelieving or
doubting world, they are at a loss for a bridge to span the chasm
lying between it and themselves.

  [Footnote 49: These remarks are not levelled against any approved
  system of Catholic philosophy, but only against those which are in
  vogue in the non-Catholic world, or among certain Catholic writers
  of a modern date.]

There is at present a laudable and {300} encouraging desire manifested
by the leading thinkers and writers of different churches to bring out
the great fundamental truth that God is the author of nature and
revelation, in such a way as to stem the tide of scepticism. Guizot,
who is among the most eminent, if not the very first, of the modern
advocates of orthodox Protestantism, in the programme of a recent work
in defence of revealed religion which he has published, expresses the
opinion that the differences between his own co-religionists and
Catholics are of minor importance compared to the great pending
controversy with modern scepticism. This, with many other indications
of a growing cordiality in earnest Protestants toward Catholics who
are similarly earnest, makes us hope to receive from them as well as
from the members of our own communion a respectful and candid hearing
of what we have to say on this weighty subject.

And now, having done with the disagreeable task of criticism, we
entreat of our readers, if they have found the preliminary treatment
of the subject we are on abstruse and wearisome, to resume their
courage and push on a little further up the ascent toward the summit
of truth. The traveller, who struggles through thickets and over rocks
toward the top of a mountain is well rewarded by the landscape which
lies below and around him, lighted up by the radiance of the full orb
of day. So, gentle reader, whether you are believer or sceptic, there
is an eminence before us which we can attain, from which the fair
landscape of natural and supernatural truth is visible as far as the
outermost boundaries which fade away into the infinite. We wish to
lead you to this eminence, and to show you this landscape lighted up
with the radiance of the primal source of light, _the idea of God_,
the self-luminous centre of the universe of thought. We wish to show
you this idea of God in its absolute truth and certitude; clearly and
distinctly visible in that horizon which is within the scope of the
naked eye of reason, but whose boundaries are enlarged and its objects
magnified by the aid of that gigantic telescope called faith.

{301}

From Once a Week

A MONTH IN KILKENNY.

BY W. P. LENNOX.


There is little to attract the attention of the traveller between
Dublin and Kilkenny, except the fine range of mountains and the
Curragh of Kildare. The Newmarket of Ireland is a vast, unbroken,
bleak plain, consisting of 4,858 statute acres. It belongs to the
crown, and is appropriate to racing and coursing, the adjacent
proprietors having the privilege of grazing sheep thereon. The ranger
of the Curragh is appointed by the government, and has the entire
charge of this celebrated property. Of the race-meetings that take
place on this spot it is needless to speak, as they are recorded in
the newspapers of the day. Suffice it to say that the arrangements are
well carried out, the prizes considerable, the number of horses that
contend for them great, and the sport first-rate.

After changing trains at Kilkenny, I reached Parsonstown, where a
carriage awaited me, to convey me to Woodstock, the hospitable seat of
my brother-in-law, the Right Hon. William Tighe, and my sister, Lady
Louisa Tighe.

Inistioge, anciently called Inis-teoc, is a charmingly situated small
town overlooking the Nore, which is crossed by a picturesque bridge of
ten arches, ornamented on one side with Ionic pilasters. The town is
built in the form of a square, which being planted with lime-trees
gives it the appearance of a foreign town. In the centre of the square
is a small plain pillar, based on a pedestal of stone. This was the
shaft of an ancient stone cross, and bears an inscription to the
memory of David, Baron of Brownsfield, one of the Fitzgerald family,
who died in 1621. The emerald green turf, and the foliage of the
trees, in the square, give it a fresh appearance, and form an
agreeable contrast to the surrounding stone buildings. Inistioge was
once a royal borough, and famed for its religious establishments. It
also possessed a large Augustinian monastery. All that now remains of
it consists of two towers: one of them is incorporated with the parish
church; the other is square at the base and octagonal in the upper
stages. Of Woodstock itself, I will merely say that the house contains
a valuable library, some good paintings; the gardens can find no equal
in the United Kingdom; and the grounds, laid out with every diversity
that wood and water can bestow, are perfectly beautiful. At the back
rises a wooded hill, to the height of 900 feet, the summit crowned
with an ornamental tower; and as the demesne stretches for a
considerable distance along the Nore, there are some magnificent views
of

  "The stubborne Nenvre, whose waters grey,
  By fall Kilkenny and Rosseponte bend;"

which may be described in the words of the poet of the Thames--

  "Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull:
  Strong without rage; without o'erflowing fail."

One of our first excursions was to Kilkenny, on our way to which city
we stopped at Bennet's Bridge, to {302} witness the humors of a
horse-fair. This small town is famed as having been the place where
the Duke of Ormonde held a review in 1704, and which attracted such
hosts of visitors that an inn-keeper is said to have made as much by
his beds as paid his rent for seven years. I have attended many fairs
in England, Scotland, Wales, France, Holland, Germany, and Canada, but
never did I witness such an extraordinary sight as the one that
presented itself at Bennet's Bridge. The hamlet itself, and its
outskirts, were filled for more than a mile with horses, ponies, and
vehicles, attended by a mass of people consisting of dealers, farmers,
peasants, tramps, and beggars. There might be seen some "artful
dodger" trying to palm off to one less experienced than himself a
spicy-looking thorough-bred nag, whose legs showed evident marks of
many a hard gallop, declaring that for speed the animal was
unequalled, and that there was not a stone wall in the whole county
that could stop him; there might be noticed a gallant colonel of
hussars, attended by his "vet," selecting some clever three-year-olds,
with which to recruit the ranks of her majesty's service. "Bedad,
gineral," exclaims the vendor, "with such a regiment of horses you'd
ride over the whole French cavalry, with Napoleon at the head of it."
"A broth of a boy" may now be pointed out, charging a stone wall, with
a raw-boned brute that never attempts to rise at it, and who, turning
the animal round, and backing him strongly, makes an aperture, at the
same moment singing a snatch of an Irish song, most appropriate for
the occasion--"Brave Oliver Cromwell, he did them so pommel, that he
made a breach in her battlements." Next, a ragged urchin, without
shoes and stockings, with what might be termed "the original shocking
bad hat" and which--on the principle of exchange no robbery--I was
credibly informed he had taken from a field, set up to scare away the
crows. Then there was the usual number of idlers and lookers-on, and
an unusual amount of hallooing, shouting, screaming, and bellowing.

After devoting an hour to the humors of the fair, we proceeded to view
the remains of the abbey of Jerpoint, which was founded in 1180, by
Donogh, King of Ossory, for Cistercian monks. The monks, on the
arrival of the English, had interest sufficient with King John to get
a confirmation of all the lands bestowed on them by the King of
Ossory; and Edward III., in the thirty-fourth year of his reign, at
the instance of Phillip, then abbot, granted him a confirmation of
former charters. Oliver Grace, the last abbot, surrendered this abbey
on the 18th of March, the 31 Henry VIII. It then possessed about 1,500
acres of arable and pasture land, three rectories, the altarages and
tithes of thirteen other parishes; all these were granted in the reign
of Philip and Mary to James, Earl of Ormonde, and his heirs male, to
hold _in capite_, at the yearly rent of £49 3s. 9d. It is an
interesting ruin, and well worthy the attention of the antiquarian.
From Jerpoint we proceeded to Kilkenny Castle, the home of the
Ormondes.

Richard Strongbow, by his marriage with Eva, daughter of Dermot, King
of Leinster, came into possession of a great part of the province of
Leinster. Henry II. confirmed his right, with the reservation of the
maritime ports. On being appointed Lord Justice of Ireland in 1173, he
laid the foundation of a castle in Kilkenny, but it was scarcely
finished when it was demolished by the insurgent Irish. However,
William, Earl Marshal, descended from Strongbow, and also Lord
Justice, in 1195 began a noble pile on a more extensive scale, and on
the ancient site. A great part of this fine castle has survived the
convulsions of this distracted kingdom, and continues at this day a
conspicuous ornament of {303} the city of Kilkenny. A rising ground
was chosen, which on one side has a steep and abrupt descent to the
river Nore, which effectually protects it on that quarter by its rapid
stream; the other sides were secured by ramparts, walls, and towers,
and the entrance is through a lofty gate of marble of the Corinthian
order. Hugh Le DeSpenser, who obtained the castle by marriage, in
September, 1391, conveyed it and its dependencies to James, Earl of
Ormonde. In later days, the castle has been much improved; the
tapestry which adorns the walls of the entrance-hall and staircase
exhibits the history of Decius; it is admirably executed, and the
colors are fresh and lively. The ballroom, which is of great length,
contains a fine collection of portraits, landscapes, and
battle-pieces.

From the castle we visited the cathedral church of St. Canice, which
is the largest church in Ireland, with the exception of St. Patrick's
and Christ church, Dublin. There are a centre and two lateral aisles.
The roof of the nave is supported by five pillars, and a pilaster of
black marble on each side, upon which are formed five arches. Each
lateral aisle is lighted by four windows below, and the central aisle
by five above; they are in the shape of quatrefoils. The origin of
this beautiful structure is uncertain, but it is conjectured that it
was begun in 1180, when a small church was erected near the round
tower.

"Hugh Rufus laid the foundation of a noble edifice," say the old
writers, "and Bishop Mapilton, in 1233, and St. Leger, who succeeded
him, completed the fabric." In describing the church of St. Canice, I
cannot refrain from alluding to the extreme politeness of Father
Kavanagh, a Roman Catholic priest, who devoted his time to my party
and myself in pointing out the beauties of this venerable pile.

The Black Abbey was founded by William, Earl Marshal, about 1225, for
Dominican friars. The founder was interred here in 1231, and three
years after his brother Richard, who was slain in a battle with the
O'Mores and O'Conors on the Curragh of Kildare. Henry VIII. granted
this monastery to the burgesses and commonalty of the city of
Kilkenny. In the time of the elder James it served for a shire-house,
and in 1643 it was repaired, and a chapter of the order held in it.
Its towers are light and elegant, and some of the windows are most
artistically executed.

St. Mary's church contains some very interesting monuments, among them
one in memory of Sir Richard Shee, dated 1608, with its ten sculptured
figures at the base. There is one also to his brother, Elias Shee, of
whom Holinshed wrote that he was "a pleasant-conceited companion, full
of mirth without gall." On an unpretending tablet of black and white
marble appears the following inscription:

  "FREDERICK GEORGE HOWARD,
  SECOND SON OF THE EARL OF CARLISLE
  CAPTAIN OF THE 90TH REGIMENT
  DIED A.D. 1833, AET. 28.

 "Within this hallowed aisle, mid grief sincere,
  Friends, comrades, brothers late young Howard's bier;
  Gentle and brave, his country's arms he bore
  To Ganges' stream and Ava's hostile shore:
  His God through war and shipwreck was his shield,
  But stretched him lifeless on the peaceful field.
  Thine are the times and ways, all-ruling Lord!
  Thy will be done, acknowledged, and adored!"

The above lines are from the pen of the late Earl of Carlisle, who
never went near Kilkenny without paying a visit to the tomb of his
brother. Poor Howard was killed by leaping out of a curricle, which
was run away with between the barracks at Kilkenny and Newtownbarry,
where his regiment was quartered. Another monument attracted my
attention; it bore an inscription to the memory of Major-General Sir
Denis Pack, recording the military career of this distinguished
soldier. I knew the deceased officer well during the Belgian {304}
campaign, and a thousand recollections sprang up in my mind when I saw
the bust, by Chantrey, of as brave a man as ever served in the British
army. But to return.

Although the salmon fishing in Ireland has in many rivers sadly
degenerated within a few years, there is still excellent sport to be
had in many of the rivers and lakes. The Nore, which flows through the
county of Kilkenny, would be a first-rate river for salmon and trout
were it not for the number of weirs and the illegal destruction of the
fish by cross-lines and nets. At Mount Juliet, the romantic seat of
Lord Carrick, and Narlands, the river is partially preserved; and
here, as at Dunmore, the property of Lord Ormonde, the angling is
excellent. The general run of salmon flies suits the Nore; they should
be tied with dobbing of pig's wool, and a good deal of peacock in the
wing. For trout, the ordinary run of flies will be found to answer
well.

Among other fishing localities in Ireland may be mentioned Lough Ree,
a fine sheet of water about twenty miles in extent, studded with
numerous islands, around the shores of which, and on the shoals, trout
abound. The lake of Allua, about ten miles above Macroom, in the
county of Cork, was once famous for trout and salmon, which have of
late years diminished considerably, in consequence of the introduction
of pike, the tyrant of the waters. The lakes of Carvagh, in Kerry, of
Inchiquin, of Currana (near Derrynane), Lough Kittane (four miles from
Killarney), Lough Brin (in Kerry), Lough Atedaun, Lough Gill (in
Sligo), and Lough Erne, are well supplied with trout and salmon; while
the far-famed lakes of Killarney will furnish sport to those who seek
pastime, in addition to the enjoyment of witnessing the most beautiful
and romantic scenery that is to be found in the Emerald Isle. The
rivers, too, abound in fish. Among the best are the Liffey, Laune,
Tolka, Bann, Blackwater (in Cork), Suir, Annar, Nire (a mountain
stream rising in the Waterford mountains), Shannon, Lee, and Killaloe
(remarkable for its eels, as also for the gastronomic skill of the
inhabitants in dressing them).

I must now turn from the "gentle crafte" to otter-hunting, a sport
still carried on with spirit in Ould Ireland. The mephitic nature of
the otter renders him an easy prey to his pursuers, and his scent is
so strong that a good hound will at once challenge it. The lodging of
this subtle plunderer is called his _kennel_, or _couch_, and his
occasional lodgments and passages to and fro are called his _halts_.
So clever is he as an architect that he constructs his _couches_ at
different heights, so that, let the water rise or fall, he has a dry
tenement. Spring is the best season for otter-hunting, but it is
carried on during the summer in the Emerald Isle; and a day with the
amphibious tyrant of the finny tribe in the river Nore, which I
enjoyed last September, may not be uninteresting.

At about eleven o'clock on a bright sunny day, with a refreshing
breeze blowing on us from the south-east, we met at Coolmore, the seat
of Mr. P. Connellan. The harriers--belonging to my host, and
consisting of about six couple of handsome, well-sized hounds, about
seventeen inches high--met in a field close to the house, attended by
a whipper-in, admirably mounted. The pack seemed to possess all the
qualifications  of good harriers--fine heads, ear-flaps thin, nostrils
open, chests deep, embraced by shoulders broad but light, and wen
thrown back; the fore-legs straight, clean, bony, terminated by round,
ball-like feet, the hind-legs being angular, and the thighs powerful.
The beauty of the day had attracted a large party of both sexes from
the neighborhood, some of whom, and one young lady in particular,
managed a cot so ably, that she drew forth the following complement
{305} from one of the bold peasantry: "Bedad, miss, you'd do honor to
Cleopatra's galley." The principal part of the sportsmen and
sports-women were on foot, although a few were mounted, and among the
fair equestrians was a young lady whose seat and hand were perfect,
and who evidently wished to emulate the prowess of the Thracian
huntress. This modern Harpalyce, combining courage with feminine
deportment, was prepared to fly like the wind across the country, had
an occasion presented itself by the accidental discovery of a fleet
hare. Arrived at the river's side, two Saxons with loaded guns kept a
good lookout for the lurking prey, while the hounds swam across to a
small island, where an otter had been tracked by his _seal_ Shortly a
hound was heard to challenge, but on the approach of the pack the
"goose-footed prowler," having been hunted before, left his couch, and
diving under the water made head up the stream. Now every eye on shore
is intent on watching his _ventings_; his muzzle appears above the
surface for a second; again it disappears; and he can be tracked alone
by the bubbles of air he throws out. The sport is now exciting. One of
the police, armed with a primitive spear, which he had taken from a
river poacher, consisting of a three-pronged fork fixed into the end
of a long pole, is ready to hurl the weapon which has proved so fatal
to many a salmon, should the otter appear in view, while the staunch
hounds are close on the scent. "Have a care there," cries a keen
sportsman to the preserver of the peace. "Don't strike too quickly, or
bedad you may transfix a hound instead of the marauding animal." But
he is not doomed to die so inglorious a death as that caused by a
rusty fork, for before the crude spear is hurled the hounds have
seized him, and, after a desperate struggle, in which many of the
gallant pack were bitten, shake the life out of the captured prey.
While enjoying the sport of the morning, my attention was attracted to
a young lady on the opposite bank of the river, who, wising to join
our party, entered a small cot, and gallantly paddled herself across
the fast-flowing stream. So admirably did this "guardian Naiad of the
strand" guide her fragile bark, that I could not fail to congratulate
her upon her prowess. My compliments, however, fell very short of one
uttered by a ragged boatman, who exclaimed:

"Ay, and sure, miss, you must be one of the queen's company. Bedad,
miss, you are worthy of taking a cot into the Meditherranean."

While upon the clever sayings of the Irish, I must give an anecdote
which was told me by Sir John Power, of Kilfane, than whom a finer
sportsman or more hospitable man never existed. It seems that the
complaints made against the vulpine race by owners of poultry are not
confined to England, and upon one occasion a genuine Irishman, "Pat
Driscoll by name," claimed compensation for damage done to a turkey
and duck. This was awarded to him, when a week afterward he waited
upon the owner of Kilfane, and asked him for compensation for "a
beautiful cow killed by that nasty varmen, a fox." "A fox kill a cow!"
said Sir John; "impossible!" "Fait and sure he did," continued Pat.
"I'll tell you how it was. My cow was feeding in the meadow close to
my garden, and was eating a turnip, when up jumped a baste of a fox,
and frightened her so much that bedad the poor creature choked
herself." The good-humored baronet could not fail to be amused at
Driscoll's ready wit, but declined paying for the loss of the animal,
upon which Pat, not at all taken aback, remarked, "Well, Sir John,
it's rather hard upon me; but in future, instead of advertising your
meets at Kilfane or Thomastown, perhaps you will name _Kilmacoy_"
(pronounced "Kilmycow") "as more appropriate to case."

{306}

Chapters could be filled with Irish sayings, but space prevents my
giving more than one, which was told to me by a friend in whose
veracity I have perfect confidence. An English gentleman dining in the
house of an Irish lady, was greatly surprised at hearing the Butler
ask, "please, ma'am, will I strip?" "Yes", was the reply; "all the
company arrived." Turning to a neighbor, he inquired the meaning of
the expression, when he found it applied to taking the covers off the
dishes, and was quite foreign to the usual acceptation of the word
"strip."

------

[ORIGINAL.]

BANNED AND BLESSED.

  "And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth; . . . .
  Cursed is the earth in thy work.

  "And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us."


  Bud out, glad earth, in beauty,
    Ring out, glad earth, in song;
  The funeral pall is lifted
    That covered thee so long:
  The heavy curse laid on thee
    For Eden's primal wrong.

  Long ages gone, the angels
    Hailed thee with pure delight.
  The blooming of thy day-time.
    The radiance of thy night;
  And e'en thy Maker named thee
    As pleasant in his sight--

  Soon lost that early joyance,
    Brief worn that birth-day crown!
  The very stars of heaven
    Look sorrowfully down
  On fairest flowers withered
    Beneath man's sinful frown.

  Blinded, and banned, and broken,
    Along thy penance-path.
  Thy vesture streamèd over
    With the torrents of man's wrath;
  Thou treadest through the ether
    A thing of shame and scath.
                                                           {307}
  Lift up thy head, poor mourner,
    Shake the ashes from thy brow;
  Lay off thine age-worn sackcloth
    And wear the purple now:
  Amid the starry brethren,
    Who honor hath, as thou?

  The dust from off thy bosom
    The Maker deigns to wear;
  "The word made flesh," in heaven,
    Hath given thee such share
  No grandeur of thy brethren
    With it can hold compare.

  Blest art thou that his footsteps
    Along thy pathways trod;
  Blest art thou that his pillow
    Has been thy grassy sod;
  And blest the burial shelter
    Thou gavest to thy God.

  And for that little service,
    Divine the meed shall be:
  When "fervent heat" hath melted
    The starry choirs and thee,
  The moulded dust of Eden
    Shall live eternally.

  "The first-born of all creatures"
    Doth wear it on his throne,
  The vesture of humanity
    By which he claims his own.
  How infinite the pardon
    That doth thy penance crown!

                             GENEVIEVÉ SALES.
                             March 22, 1806

------

{308}

Translated from French.

L'ABBÉ GERBET.   [Footnote 50]

BY C. A. SAINTE-BEUVE.

  [Footnote 50: "Considérations sur le Dogme Générateur de la Piété
  Cathiolique." 4e édition, chez Vaton. 1859]


For a long time I have been reserving this subject for some feast-day,
for Corpus Christi or some festival of Mary, feeling that holiness
belongs to it; unction, grace mingled with science, and a reverential
smile. "But why," some of our readers will say,--"why does l'Abbé
Gerbet's name imply all this?" I shall try to show them the reason and
give some idea of one of the most learned, distinguished, and truly
amiable men that the church of France possesses, as well as one of our
best writers; and, without embarking on vexed or doubtful questions,
to delineate for them in soft tints the personality of the man and his
talent.

But in the first place, that I may connect with its true date this
modest name, which has rather courted oblivion than notoriety, let me
remind my readers that during the Restoration, about the year 1820,
when that regime, at first so unsettled, was beginning to enter into
complete possession of its powers, a movement arose on all sides among
the youthful spirits, ardently impelling them to literary culture and
philosophical ideas. In poetry Lamartine had given the signal of
revival, others gave it in history, others again in philosophy; and
among the young people there sprang up a universal spirit of
emulation, a unanimous determination to begin anew. It seemed as if,
like a fertile land, the French mind, after its compulsory rest of so
many years, were eagerly demanding every kind of cultivation. Yes, in
religion then, in theology, it was the same; a generation had sprung
up full of zeal and animation, who tried, not to renew what is in its
nature immutable, but to rejuvenate the forms of teaching and
demonstration, adapt them to the mental condition of the times, and
make the principle of Catholicity respected even by its opponents.
For, in the words of one of these young Levites in the beginning of
the movement, "to act upon the age, we must understand it."

I could cite the names of several men who, with shades of difference
known in the ecclesiastical world, had this in common, that they stood
at the head of the studious and intelligent young clergy: M. Gousset,
now cardinal archbishop of Rheims, and standing in the first rank of
theologians; Mgr. Affré, who met his death so gloriously as archbishop
of Paris; M. Douey, the present bishop of Montauban; and M. de
Salinis, bishop of Amiens. But at that time, between the years 1820
and 1822, one name alone among the clergy offered itself to men of the
world as a candidate for widespread fame. M. de Lamennais in his first
Catholic fame had enforced the attention of all by his "Essay on
Indifference," stirring a thousand thoughts even in the minds of the
astonished clergy.

And here for the first time we meet l'Abbé Gerbet. He was born in 1798
{309} at Poligny, in the Jura. After completing his first studies in
his native town, he passed through a course of philosophy in the
academy of Besançon; and in obedience to an instinctive vocation,
which awoke within him at the age of ten years, began his theological
studies in the same city. During the dangers of invasion, in
1814-1815, he went into the mountains to visit a curate, a relation or
friend of his family, and remained there to study. Thither came one
day a young student of the Normal School, Jouffroy, two years his
senior, who in going home to pass his vacation in the village of
Pontets, had paused a moment on the way. Jouffroy, though in the first
flush of youth and learning, and wearing the aureole upon his brow,
did not disdain to enter into discussion with the young provincial
seminarian. He combated the proofs of revelation, and especially
contested the age of the world, relying upon the testimony of the
famous Zodiac of Denderah, so often invoked in those days, and so soon
destroyed. The young seminarian, in the presence of this unknown
monument, could only answer: "Wait." These two young men never met
again, compatriots though they were, and from that day forth
adversaries; but l'Abbé Gerbet and Jouffroy, while carrying on a war,
pen in hand, never failed to do so in the most dignified terms of
controversy, and Jouffroy, whose heart was so good despite his
dogmatic language, always spoke of l'Abbé Gerbet, if I remember
rightly, with feelings of affectionate esteem.

On arriving in Paris at the close of the year 1818, l'Abbé Gerbet
entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, but his health, which was
already delicate, not allowing him to stay there long, he established
himself as a boarder in the House of Foreign Missions, where he
followed the rules of the seminarians. He was ordained priest in 1822
at the same time with l'Abbé do Salinis, whose inseparable friend he
has always remained.

A little later he was appointed assistant professor of the Holy
Scriptures in the Theological Faculty of Paris, and went to live in
the Sorbonne. Having no lectures to deliver, he soon began to assist
M. de Salinis, who had been made almoner in the college of Henry lV.,
and it was at this time that he first knew M. de Lamennais.

At twenty-four years of age, l'Abbé Gerbet had given evidence of
remarkable philosophical and literary talent, and had sustained a
Latin thesis with rare elegance in the Sorbonne. By nature he was
endowed with all the gifts of oratory, a sense of rhythmic movement,
measure, and choice of expression, and a graphic power which, in one
word, must become a talent for writing. To these endowments he added
an acute and elevated faculty for dialectics, fertile in distinctions,
which he sometimes took delight in multiplying, but without ever
losing himself among them. In the very beginning of his friendship
with M. de Lamennais, he felt, without perhaps acknowledging it to
himself, that that bold and vigorous genius, who was wont to open new
views and perspectives, as it were by main force, needed the
assistance of an auxiliary pen, more tempered, gentler and firm,--a
talent that could use evidence judiciously, fill up spaces, cover weak
points, and smooth away a look of menace and revolution from what was
simply intended as a broader expression and more accessible
development of Christianity. L'Abbé Gerbet clothed M. de Lamennais'
system as far as possible with the character of persuasion and
conciliation that belonged to it: to soften and graduate its
tendencies was properly the part he filled at this time of his youth.

Upon this system I shall touch in a few words that will suffice to
explain what I have to say of l'Abbé Gerbet's moral and literary
gifts. Instead of seeking the evidences of Christianity in such and
such texts of Scripture, or in a personal argument {310} addressed to
individual reason, M. de Lamennais maintained that it should, in the
first place, be sought in the universal tradition and historical
testimony of peoples, for he believed that even before the coming of
Jesus Christ and the establishment of Christianity a sort of testimony
was to be traced, confused certainly, but real and concordant, running
through the traditions of ancient races and discernible even in the
presentiments of ancient sages. It seemed to him demonstrable that
among all nations there had been ideas, more or less defined, of the
creation of man, of the fall and promised reparation, of the expiation
or expected redemption--in short, of all that should one day
constitute the treasures of Christian doctrine, and was then only the
scattered and persistent vestige of the primitive revelation. From
this he argued that the lights of ancient sages might be considered as
the dawn of faith, and that without, of course, being classed among
the fathers of the primitive church, Confucius, Zoroaster, Pythagoras,
Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato should be considered up to a certain
point as preparers for the gospel, and not be numbered among the
accursed. They might almost be called, in the language of the ancient
fathers, primitive Christians--at least they were like so many Magi
travelling more or less directly toward the divine cradle. By this
single view of an anterior Christianity disseminated through the
world, by this voyage, as it were, in search of Catholic truths
floating about the universe, the teaching of theology would have been
wonderfully widened and enlarged, for it necessarily comprised the
history of philosophical ideas. M. de Lamennais' system, which is
especially attractive when developed historically by the pen of l'Abbé
Gerbet, has not since then been recognized by the church. It appeared
to be at least delusive, if not false; but perhaps, even from the
point of view of orthodoxy, it can only merit the reproach of having
claimed to be the sole method, to the exclusion of all others;
combined with other proofs, and presented simply, as a powerful
accessory consideration, I believe that it has never been rejected.

It may be understood, however, even without entering into the heart of
the matter, that in 1824, when l'Abbé Gerbet, in concert with M. de
Salinis, established a religious monthly magazine, entitled the
"Catholic Memorial," and began to develop his ideas therein with
modesty and moderation, but also with that fresh confidence and ardor
that youth bestows, there was, to speak merely of the external form of
the questions, a something about it that gave the signal for the
struggle of a new spirit against the stationary or backward spirit.
The old-fashioned theologians, whether formalist or rationalistic, who
found themselves attacked, resisted and took scandal at the name of
traditions which were not only Catholic but scholastic and classic.
But in l'Abbé Gerbet they had to deal with a man thoroughly well read
in the writings of the fathers, and possessed of their true
significance. He could bring forward, in his turn, texts drawn from
the fountain-head in support of this freer and more generous method;
among other quotations, he liked to cite this fine passage from
Vincent de Lérius: "Let posterity, thanks to your enlightenment,
rejoice in the _conception_ of that to which antiquity gave respectful
credence without understanding [its full meaning]; but remember to
teach the same things that have been transmitted to you, so that,
while presenting them in a new light, you do not invent new
doctrines." Thus, while maintaining fundamental immutability, he took
pleasure in remarking that, in spite of slight deviations, the order
of scientific explanation has followed a law of progress in the
church, and has been successively developed; a fact which he {311}
demonstrated by the history of Christianity.

"The Catholic Memorial," in its very infancy, stirred the emulation of
youthful writers in the philosophical camp. It was at first printed at
Lachevardière's, where M. Pierre Leroux was proof-reader, and the
latter, on seeing the success of a magazine devoted to grave subjects,
concluded that a similar organ for the promotion of opinions shared by
himself and his friends might be established with even better results.
In that same year, 1824, "The Globe" began its career, and the two
periodicals often engaged in polemic discussions, like adversaries who
knew and respected each other while they clearly understood the point
of controversy. For the benefit of the curious, I note an article of
M. Gerbet's  [Footnote 51] (signed X.) which represents many others,
and is entitled "Concerning the Present State of Doctrines;"--the
objections are especially addressed to MM. Damiron and Jouffroy. It
was the heyday then of this war of ideas.

  [Footnote 51: 1825. Vol. 4th, p. 188. ]

L'Abbé Gerbet's life has been quite simple and uniform, marked by only
one considerable episode--his connection with l'Abbé de Lamennais, to
whom he lent or rather gave himself for years with an affectionate
devotion which had no term or limit except in the final revolt of that
proud and immoderate spirit. After fulfilling all the duties of a
religious friendship, after having waited and forborne and hoped,
Gerbet withdrew in silence. For a long time he had been all that
Nicole was to Arnauld--a moderator, softening asperities and averting
shocks as far as possible. He never grew weary until there was no
longer room for further effort, and then he returned completely to
himself. These ultra and exclusive methods are unsuited to his nature,
and he hastened to withdraw from them, and to forget what he would
never have allowed to break out and reach such a pass if he had been
acting alone. It needs but a word, but a breath, from the Vatican to
dissipate all that seems cloudy or obscure in l'Abbé Gerbet's
doctrines. His gentle clouds inclose no storm, and, in dispersing,
they reveal a depth of serene sky, lightly veiled here and there, but
pure and delicious.

I express the feeling that some of his writings leave upon the mind,
and especially the work that has just been reprinted, of which I will
say a few words. "Les Considérations sur le Dogme générateur de la
Piété Catholique," that is to say, Thoughts upon Communion and the
Eucharist, first appeared in 1829. It is, properly speaking, "neither
a dogmatic treatise nor a book of devotion, but something
intermediate." The author begins by an historical research into
general ideas, universally diffused throughout antiquity--ideas of
sacrifice and offering, as well as of the desire and necessity of
communication with an ever-present God, which have served as a
preparation and approach toward the mystery; but, mingled with
historical digressions and delicate or profound doctrinal
distinctions, we meet at every step sweet and beautiful words which
come from the soul and are the effusion of a loving faith. I will
quote a few, almost at hazard, without seeking their connection, for
they give us an insight into the soul of l'Abbé Gerbet. As, for
instance, concerning prayer:

  "Prayer, in its fundamental essence, is but the sincere recognition
  of this continual need (of drawing new strength from the source of
  life) and an humble desire of constant assistance; it is the
  confession of an indigence full of hope."

  "Wherever God places intelligences capable of serving him, there we
  find weakness, and there too hope."

And again:

  "Christianity in its fulness is only a bountiful alms bestowed on
  abject poverty."

{312}

  "Is there not something divine in every benefit?"

  "Charity enters not into the heart of man without combat; for it
  meets an eternal adversary there--pride, the first-born of
  selfishness, and the father of hatred."

  "The gospel has made, in the full force of the term, a revolution in
  the human soul, by changing the relative position of the two
  feelings that divide its sway: fear has yielded the empire of the
  heart to love."

L'Abbé Gerbet's book is full of golden words; but when we seek to
detach and isolate them, we see how closely they are woven into the
tissue.

The aim of the author is to prove that, from a Christian and Catholic
point of view, communion, accepted in its fulness with entire faith,
frequent communion reverently received, is the most certain,
efficacious, and vivid means of charity. In speaking of the excellent
book entitled "The Following of Christ," he says:

  "The asceticism of the middle ages has left an inimitable monument,
  which Catholics, Protestants, and philosophers are agreed in
  admiring with the most beautiful admiration, that of the heart. It
  is wonderful, this little book of mysticism, upon which the genius
  of Leibnitz used to ponder, and which roused something like
  enthusiasm even in the frigid Fontenelle. No one ever read a page of
  the 'Following of Christ,' especially in time of trouble, without
  saying as he laid the book down: 'That has done me good.' Setting
  the Bible apart, this work is the sovereign friend of the soul. But
  whence did the poor solitary who wrote it draw this inexhaustible
  love? (for he spoke so effectively only because of his great love.)
  He himself tells us the source in every line of his chapters on the
  blessed sacrament: the fourth book explains the other three."

I could multiply quotations of this kind, if they were suited to these
pages, and if it were not better to recommend the book for the
solitary meditation of my readers; I would point out to be remembered
among the most beautiful and consoling pages belonging to our language
and religions literature, all the latter part of Chapter VIII. Nothing
is wanting to make this exquisite little book of l'Abbé Gerbet's more
generally appreciated than it now is but a less frequent combination
of dialectics with the expression of affectionate devotion. Generally
speaking, the tissue of l'Abbé Gerbet's style is too close; when he
has a beautiful thing to say, he does not give it room enough. His
talent is like a sacred wood, too thickly grown;--the temple,
repository, and altar in its depths are surrounded on all sides, and
we can reach them only by footpaths. I suppose that this is because he
has always lived too near his own thoughts, never having had the
opportunity to develop them in public. Feeble health, and a delicate
voice which needs the ear of a friend, have never allowed this rich
talent to unfold itself in teaching or in the pulpit. If at any time
he had been induced to speak in public, he would have been obliged to
clear up, disengage, and enlarge not his views, but the avenues that
lead to them.

In 1838, being troubled with an affection of the throat, he went to
Rome and, always intending to return home soon, remained there until
1848. It was there that in the leisure moments of a life of devotion
and study, in which, too, the most elevated friendship had its share,
he composed the first two volumes of the work entitled "A Sketch of
Christian Rome," designed to impart to all elevated souls the feeling
and idea of the Eternal City. "The fundamental thought in this book,"
he says, "is to concentrate the visible realities of Christian Rome
into a conception and, as it were, a portrait of its spiritual
essence. An excellent interpreter in the way he has chosen for
himself, he goes on to speak of the monuments not with the dry science
of a modern antiquary, {313} or with the _naïf_ enthusiasm of a
believer of the middle ages, but with a reflective admiration which
unites philosophy to piety.

  "The study of Rome in Rome," he says again, "leads us to the living
  springs of Christianity. It refreshes all the good feelings of the
  heart, and, in this age of storms, sheds a wonderful serenity over
  the soul. We must not, of course, attach too much importance to the
  charm which we find in certain studies, for books written with
  pleasure to one's self run the risk of being written with less
  charity. But none the less should we thank the Divine Goodness when
  it harmonizes pleasure with duty."

In these volumes of l'Abbé Gerbet, introductions and dissertations
upon Christian symbolism and church history lead to observations full
of grace or grandeur, and to beautiful and touching pictures. The
Catacombs, which were the cradle and the asylum of Christianity during
the first three centuries, interested him especially, and inspired in
him thoughts of rare elevation. Here are some verses (for l'Abbé
Gerbet is a poet without pretending to be one) which give his first
impressions of them, and show the quality of his soul. The piece is
called "The Song of the Catacombs," and is intended to be sung.
[Footnote 52]

  [Footnote 52: We translate "Le Chant des Catacombes" into prose,
  that the noble ideas may be given with literal accuracy. The author
  intended it to be sung to the air of "Le Fil de La Vierge" (Scudo).
  We give one verse of the original:

  "Hier j'ai visité les grandes Catacombes
    Des temps anciens;
  J'ai touché de mon front les immortelles tombes
    Des vieux Chrétiens:
  Et ni l'astre du jour, ni les célestes sphères,
    Lettres du feu,
  Ne m'avaient mieux fait lire en profonds caractères
    Lo nom de Dieu."]

  "Yesterday I visited the great Catacombs of ancient times. I touched
  with my brow the immortal tombs of early Christians, and never did
  the star of day, nor the celestial spheres with their letters of
  fire, teach me more clearly to read in profound characters the name
  of God.

  "A black-frocked hermit, with blanched hair, walked on in front--
  old door-keeper of time, old porter of life and death; and we
  questioned him about these holy relics of the great fight, as one
  listens to a veteran's tales of ancient exploits.

  "A rock served as portico to the funeral vault; and on its fronton
  some martyr artist, whose name is known, no doubt, to the angels,
  had painted the face of Christ, with the fair hair, and the great
  eyes whence streams a ray of deep gentleness like the heavens.

  "Further on, I kissed many a symbol of holy parting upon the tombs.
  And the palm, and the lighthouse, and the bird flying to God's
  bosom; and Jonas, leaving the whale after three days, with songs, as
  we leave this world after three days of trouble called time.

  "Here it was that each one, standing beside his ready-made grave,
  like a living spectre, wrestled the fight out, or laid his head down
  in expectation! Here, that they might prepare a strong heart
  beforehand for the great day of suffering, they tried their graves,
  and tasted the first-fruits of death!

  "I sounded with a glance their sacred dust, and felt that the soul
  had left a breath of life lingering in these ashes; and that in this
  human sand, which weighs so lightly in our hands, lie, awaiting the
  great day, germs of the almost god-like forms of eternity.

  "Sacred places, where love knew how to suffer purely for the soul's
  good! In questioning you, I felt that its flame could never perish;
  for to each being of a day who died to defend the truth, the Being
  eternal and true, as the price of time, has given eternity.

  "Here at each step we behold, as it were, a golden throne, and while
  treading on tombs we seem to be on Mount Tabor. Go down, go down
  into the deep Catacombs, into their lowest recesses--go down, and
  your {314} heart shall rise and, looking up from these graves, see
  heaven!"

Beside these verses, which are not found in the volumes of "Christian
Rome," and are only a first utterance, should be placed, as an
original picture full of meaning, his words concerning the slow and
gradual destruction of the human body in the Catacombs. We all know
Bossuet's _mot_ (after Tertullian) in speaking of a human corpse: "It
becomes a something unutterable," he exclaims, "which has no name in
any language." The following admirable page from l'Abbé Gerbet's book
is, as it were, a development and commentary of Bossuet's words. At
this first station of the Catacombs he confines himself to the study
of the nothingness of life: "the work I do not say of death, but of
what comes after death;" the idea of awakening and of future life
follows later. Listen:

  "In your progress you review the various phases of destruction, as
  one observes the development of vegetation in a botanic garden from
  the imperceptible flower to large trees, rich with sap and crowned
  with great blossoms. In a number of sepulchral niches that have been
  opened at different periods one can follow, in a manner, step by
  step, the successive forms, further and further removed from life,
  through which _what is there_ passes before it approaches as closely
  as possible to pure nothingness. Look, first, at this skeleton; if
  it be well preserved in spite of centuries, it is probably because
  the niche where it lies was hollowed out of damp earth. Humidity,
  which dissolves all other things, hardens these bones by covering
  them with a crust which gives them more consistency than they had
  when they were members of a living body. But not the less is this
  consistency a progress of destruction; these human bones are turning
  to stone. A little further on is a grave where a struggle is going
  on between the power that makes the skeleton and the power that
  makes dust; the first defends itself, but the second is gaining
  ground, though slowly. The combat between life and death that is
  taking place in you, and will be over before this combat between one
  death and another, is nearly ended. In the sepulchre near by, of all
  that was a human frame nothing is left but a sort of cloth of dust,
  a little tumbled and unfolded like a small whitish shroud, from
  which a head comes out. Look, lastly, at this other niche; there is
  evidently nothing there but simple dust, the color of which even is
  a little doubtful from its slightly reddish tinge. There, you say,
  is the consummation of destruction! Not yet. On looking closely, you
  discern a human outline: this little heap, touching one of the
  longitudinal extremities of the niche, is the head; these two heaps,
  smaller and flatter, placed parallel to each other a little lower
  down, are the shoulders; these two are the knees. The long bones are
  represented by feeble trails, broken here and there. This last
  sketch of man, this vague, rubbed-out form, barely imprinted on an
  almost impalpable dust, which is volatile, nearly transparent, and
  of a dull, uncertain white, can best give us an idea of what the
  ancients called a _shade_. If, in order to see better, you put your
  head into the sepulchre, take care; do not move or speak, hold your
  breath. That form is frailer than a butterfly's wing, more swift to
  vanish than a dewdrop hanging on a blade of grass in the sunshine; a
  little air shaken by your hand, a breath, a tone, become here
  powerful agents that can destroy in a second what seventeen
  centuries, perhaps, of decay have spared. See, you breathed, and the
  form has disappeared. So ends the history of man in this world."

This seems to me quite a beautiful view of death, and one that prompts
the Christian to rise at once to that which is above destruction and
escapes the catacomb--the immortal principle of life, love, sanctity,
and {315} sacrifice. I can only indicate these noble and interesting
considerations to those who are eager to study in material Rome the
higher city and its significance.

Among l'Abbé Gerbet's writings I will mention only one other, which
is, perhaps, his masterpiece, and is connected with a touching
incident that will be felt most deeply by practically religious
persons, but of which they will not be alone in their appreciation. It
was before the year 1838, previously to the abbé's long residence in
Rome, that he became intimate with the second son of M. de la
Ferronais, former minister of foreign affairs. Young Count Albert de
la Ferronais had married a young Russian lady, Mdlle. d'Alopeus, a
Lutheran in religion, whom he eagerly desired to lead to the faith. He
was dying of consumption at Paris in his twenty-fifth year, and his
end seemed to be drawing near, when the young wife, on the eve of
widowhood, decided to be of her husband's religion; and one night at
twelve o'clock, the hour of Christ's birth, they celebrated in his
room, beside the bed so soon to be a bed of death, the first communion
of one and the last communion of the other. (June 29, 1836.) L'Abbé
Gerbet was the consecrator and consoler in this scene of deep reality
and mournful pathos, but yet so full of holy joy to Christians. It was
the vivid interest of this incomparable and ideal death-bed which
inspired him to write a dialogue between Plato and Fénélon, in which
the latter reveals to the disciple of Socrates all needful knowledge
concerning the other world, and in which he describes, under a
half-lifted veil, a death according to Jesus Christ.

  "O writer of Phaedon, and ever admirable painter of an immortal
  death, why was it not given to you to be the witness of the things
  which we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and seize with the
  inmost perceptions of the soul, when by a concurrence of
  circumstances of God's making, by a rare complication of joy and
  agony, the Christian soul, revealed in a new half-light, resembles
  those wondrous evenings whose twilight has strange and nameless
  tints! What pictures then and what apparitions! Shall I describe one
  to you, Plato? Yes, in heaven's name, I will speak. I witnessed it a
  few days ago, but at the end of a hundred years I should still call
  it a few days. You will not understand the whole of what I tell you,
  for I can only speak of these things in the new tongue which
  Christianity has made; but still you will understand enough. Know,
  then, that of two souls that had waited for each other on earth and
  had met," etc.

Then follows the story, slightly veiled and, as it were, transfigured,
but without hiding the circumstances. "Plato as a Christian would have
spoken thus," said M. de Lamartine of this dialogue, and the eulogium
is only just.

L'Abbé Gerbet could, no doubt, have written more than one of these
admirable dialogues if he had wished to devote himself to the work, or
if his physical organization had enabled him to labor continuously. He
processes all that is needed to make him the man for Christian
_Tusculanes_. Three times in my life have I had the happiness of
seeing him in places entirely suited to him, and which seemed to make
a natural frame for him: at Juilly, in 1831, in the beautiful shades
that Malebranche used to frequent; in 1839, at Rome, beneath the
arches of solitary cloisters; and yesterday, again, in the episcopal
gardens of Amiens, where he lives, near his friend, M. de Salinis.
Everywhere he is the same. Imagine a slightly stooping figure, pacing
with long, slow steps a peaceful walk, where two can chat comfortably
together on the shady side, and where he often stops to talk. Observe
closely the delicate and affectionate smile, the benign countenance,
in which something reminds us of {316} Fléchier and of Fénélon; listen
to the sagacious words, elevated and fertile in ideas, sometimes
interrupted by fatigue of voice, and by his pausing to take breath;
notice among doctrinal views, and comprehensive definitions that come
to life of themselves and prove their strength upon his lips, those
charming _mots_ and agreeable anecdotes, that talk strewn with
reiniscences and pleasantly adorned with amenity,--and do not ask if
it is any one else--it is he.

L'Abbé Gerbet has one of those natures which when standing alone are
not sufficient unto themselves, and need a friend; we may say that he
possesses his full strength only when thus leaning. For a long time he
seemed to have found in M. de Lamennais such a friend of firmer will
and purpose; but these strong wills often end, without meaning to do
so, by taking possession of us as a prey, and then casting us like a
slough. True friendship, as La Fontaine understood it, demands more
equality and more consideration. L'Abbé Gerbet has found a tender and
equal friend, quite suited to his beautiful and faithful nature, in M.
de Salinis; to praise one is to win the other's gratitude at once.
Will it be an indiscretion if I enter this charming household and
describe one day there, at least, in its clever and literary
attractions? L'Abbé Gerbet, like Fléchier, whom I have named in
connection with him, has a society talent full of charm, sweetness,
and invention. He himself has forgotten the pretty verses, little
allegorical poems, and couplets appropriate to festivals or occasional
circumstances, which he has scattered here and there, in all the
places where he has lived and the countries he passed through. He is
one of those who can edify without being mournful, and make hours pass
gaily without dissipation. In his long life, into which an evil
thought never glided, and which escaped all turbulent passions, he has
preserved the first joy of a pure and beautiful soul. In him a
discreet spirituality is combined with cheerfulness. I have by me a
pretty little scene in verse which he wrote a few days ago for the
young pupils of the Sacred Heart at Amiens, in which there is a faint
suggestion of Esther, but of Esther enlivened by the neighborhood of
Gresset. The bishop of Amiens always receives them on Sunday evenings,
and they come gladly to his _salon_, where there is no strictness, and
where good society is naturally at home. They play a few games, and
have a lottery, and, in order that no one may draw a blank, l'Abbé
Gerbet makes verses for the loser, who is called, I think, _le nigaud_
(the ninny). These _nigauds_ of l'Abbé Gerbet are appropriate and full
of wit; he makes them _by obedience_, which saves him, he says, from
all blame and from all thought of ridicule. It is difficult to detach
these trifles from the associations of society that call them forth;
but here is one of the little _impromptus_ made for the use and
consolation "of the losers;" it is called the "Evening Game:"

  "My children, to-day is our Lady's day;
  Now tell me, I pray, in her dear name,
  Should the hand that this morning a candle clasped,
  Hold cards to-night in a childish game?

  I would not with critical words condemn
  A pastime the world holds innocent,
  Let me but say that its levity
  May veil a lesson of deep intent

  Think at the drawing of each card
  That every day is an idle game.
  If at its close in the treasures of God
  There is no prize answering to your name.

  This evening game is an hour well passed
  If God be the guardian of your sports;
  And the day, closing as it dawned,
  Shall rejoin this morning's holy thoughts.

  I startle you all with my grave discourse;
  You would laugh and I preach with words austere;
  No worldly place this--'tis the bishop's house;
  So pardon this sermon, my children dear."

This is the man who wrote the book upon the eucharist and the dialogue
between Plato and Fénélon, and who had a plan of writing the last
conference of {317} St. Anselm on the soul; this is he whom the French
clergy could oppose with honor to Jouffroy, and whom the most
sympathetic of Protestants could combat only while revering him and
recognizing him as a brother in heart and intelligence. L'Abbé Gerbet
unites to these elevated virtues, which I have merely been able to
glance at, a gentle gaiety, a natural and cultivated charm, which
reminds one even in holiday games of the playfulness of a Rapin, a
Bougeant, a Bonhours. There has been much dispute lately as to the
studies and the degree of literary merit authorized by the clergy;
many officious and clamorous persons have been brought forward, and it
is my desire to notice one who is as distinguished as he is modest.

For a long time I have said to myself, If we ever have to elect an
ecclesiastic to the French Academy, how well I know who will be my
choice! And what is more, I am quite sure that philosophy in the
person of M. Cousin, religion by the organ of M. de Montalembert, and
poetry by the lips of M. de Lamartine, would not oppose me.

  Monday, Day after the Feast of Assumption,
  Aug. 16, 1832.

  [Since the above article was written, the Abbé Gerbet has had
  conferred on the episcopal dignity. He died about one year ago.--Ed.
  C. W.]

------

[ORIGINAL.]

OUR NEIGHBOR.

  Set it down gently at the altar rail,
    The faithful, aged dust, with honors meet;
  Long have we seen that pious face so pale
    Bowed meekly at her Saviour's blessed feet.

  These many years her heart was hidden where
    Nor moth nor rust nor craft of man could harm;
  The blue eyes seldom lifted, save in prayer,
    Beamed with her wished for heaven's celestial calm.

  As innocent as childhood's was the face,
    Though sorrow oft had touched that tender heart;
  Each trouble came as winged by special grace
    And resignation saved the wound from smart.

  On bead and crucifix her fingers kept
    Until the last, their fond, accustomed hold;
  "My Jesus," breathed the lips; the raised eyes slept.
    The placid brow, the gentle hand, grew cold.

  The choicely ripening cluster lingering late
    Into October on its shriveled vine
  Wins mellow juices which in patience wait
    Upon those long, long days of deep sunshine.

  Then set it gently at the altar rail,
    The faithful, aged dust, with honors meet;
  How can we hope if such as she can fail
    Before the eternal God's high judgment-seat?

------

{318}


From The Literary Workmen

JENIFER'S PRAYER.

BY OLIVER CRANE.

IN THREE PARTS.


[CONCLUSION.]


PART III.


Lady Greystock drove on briskly. They were out of the shadow of the
trees and again on the broad, white gleaming gravelled road that led
to the west lodge, and the turnpike road to Blagden. Not a word was
spoken. On went the ponies, who knew the dark shadows of the elms that
stood at intervals, in groups, two or three together, by the side of
the road, and threw their giant outlines across it, making the
moon-light seem brighter and brighter as it silvered the surface of
the broad carriage drive, and made the crushed granite sparkle--on
went the ponies, shaking their heads with mettlesome impatience when
the pulling of the reins offended them, not frightened at the whirling
of the great droning night insects, which flew out from the oak-trees
on the left, nor shying away from the shadows--on they went through
the sweet, still, soft, scented night air, and the broad, peaceful
light of the silent moon--on they went! Not one word mingled with the
sound of their ringing hoofs, not a breath was heard to answer to the
sighing of the leaves; the "good night" that had been spoken between
the stranger and themselves still seemed to live in the hearing of
those to whom he had spoken, and to keep them in a meditative and
painful silence.

At last the lodge was reached. The servant opened the gates; the
carriage was driven through; the high road was gained, and all
romantic mystery was over; the dream that had held those silent ones
was gone; and like one suddenly awoke, Lady Greystock said: "Eleanor!
how wonderful; you knew that man! Eleanor! he knew you; asked about
you; had been seeking you. Why was he there in the Beremouth
woods--appearing at this hour, among the ferns and grass, like a wild
creature risen from its lair? Eleanor! why don't you speak to me? Why,
when he spoke of you by your name, did you not answer for yourself?
Why did you send him to Jenifer? Oh! Eleanor; I feel there is
something terrible and strange in all this. I cannot keep it to
myself. I must tell my father. It can't be right. It cannot be for any
good that we met a man lurking about, and not owned by you, though he
is here to find you. Speak, Eleanor! Now that I am in the great high
road I feel as if I had gone through a terror, or escaped some strange
danger, or met a mystery face to face."

Lady Greystock spoke fast and in a low voice, and Eleanor, bending a
little toward her, heard every word.

"You _have_ met a mystery face to face," she said in a whisper, which,
however, was sufficiently audible. "I _did_ know that man. And I am
{319} not denying that he sought me, and that he had a right to seek
me. But many things have changed since those old days, when, if I had
obeyed him, I should have done better than I did. I know what he
wants; and Jenifer can give it to him. Here we are at Blagden; think
no more of it, Lady Greystock."

No answer was given to Eleanor's words; they met Dr. Blagden on the
steps at the door. "You are later than usual--all right?" "All quite
right," said Eleanor. "The beauty of the night tempted us to come home
through Beremouth," said Lady Greystock. "How lovely it would look on
such a sweet, peaceful night," said Mrs. Blagden, who now joined them;
and then Eleanor took the carriage wraps in her arms up stairs, and
Lady Greystock went into the drawing-room, and soon after the whole
household--all but Eleanor--were in bed.

Not Eleanor. She opened a box where she kept her letters, and many
small objects of value to her, and carefully shutting out the
moonlight, and trimming her lamp into brilliancy, she took out letter
after letter from Henry Evelyn calling her his beloved one, and his
wife; then the letter from Corny Nugent, saying that Henry Evelyn and
Horace Erskine were one; and the one thing that Corny Nugent had sent
to her as evidence--it seemed to be proof sufficient. It was a part of
a letter from Horace to his uncle, Mr. Erskine, which had been flung
into a waste-paper basket, and which, having the writer's signature,
Corny had kept, and sent to Eleanor. Not, as he said, that he knew the
man's handwriting, but that she did; and that, therefore, to her it
would have value as proving or disproving his own convictions.

Eleanor had never brought this evidence to the proof. She had laid by
Corny's letter, and the inclosure. She had put it all aside with the
weight of a great dread on her mind, and "Not yet, not yet," was all
she said as she locked away both the assertion and the proof.

But her husband was at Beremouth now. Yes; and on what errand? She
knew that too.

Mrs. Brewer had called that morning to see Lady Greystock. Mrs. Brewer
had come herself to tell Claudia that Mary would arrive, and that
Horace would bring her. She would not trust any one but herself to
give that information. She never let go the idea of Horace having
behaved in some wrong way to Claudia. She knew Claudia's disposition,
her bravery, her determination; and her guesses were very near the
truth. "Mother Mary" had those womanly instincts which jump at
conclusions; and the truths guessed at through the feelings are
truths, and remain truths for ever, though reason has never proved
them or investigation explained them.

Then, too, there was her sister's letter, which Mrs. Brewer had sent
to Father Daniels. There the passing fancy for Claudia had been spoken
of. In that letter the love of money had peeped out, and supplied the
motive; but Mrs. Brewer knew very well that Claudia's disposition was
not of a sort to have any acquaintance with passing fancies. If she
had loved Horace, she had loved with her whole heart; and if she had
been deceived in him, her whole heart had suffered, and her whole life
been overcast. "Mother Mary" had felt to some purpose; and now, only
herself should say to Lady Greystock that he was coming among them
again.

She had arrived at Blagden and she had told Claudia everything; what
Horace wished as to Mary, and what her sister and Mr. Erskine desired;
and she had not hidden her own unwillingness to lose her child, or her
own wish that Mary might have married, when she did marry, some one
more to her mother's mind, and nearer to her mother's {320} house. And
it was in remembrance of this conversation that Lady Greystock, when
she took Jenifer into the carriage, had said: "If you ever pray for my
father, and all he loves, pray _now_?"

Something of all this had been told by Lady Greystock to Eleanor. And
in the time that the aunt and niece had been together that day,
Eleanor had said to Jenifer, "He is down at the park wanting to marry
Miss Lorimer."

Jenifer's darling--Jenifer's darling's darling; how she loved "Mother
Mary," and Lansdowne Lorimer's child, only her own great and good
heart knew. What could she do but go to God, and his priest? What
human foresight could have prevented this? What human wisdom could set
things right? And after all, they did not _surely_ know that Eleanor's
husband and Claudia's lover were met in one man, and that man winning
the heart of lovely, innocent Mary Lorimer, and pressing marriage on
her. But for her prayer, Jenifer used to say, she should have gone out
of her mind. Oh, the comfort that grew out of the thought that GOD
KNEW! and that her life and all that was in it were given to him. Such
a shifting of responsibility--such a supporting sense of his never
allowing anything to be in that life that was not, in some way, for
his glory--such practical strength, such heart-sustaining power, grew
out of Jenifer's prayer that even Eleanor's numbed heart rested on it,
and she had learnt to be content to live, from hour to hour, a life of
submission and waiting.

But was the waiting to be over now?--was something coming? If so, she
must be prepared. And so, diligently, by the lamp-light, Eleanor
produced her own letters, and opened that torn sheet to compare the
writing. It was different in some things, yet the same. As she gazed,
and examined, and compared terminations, and matched the capital
letters together, she knew it was the same handwriting. Time had done
its work. The writing of the present was firmer, harder, done with a
worse pen, written at greater speed. But that was all the change. She
was convinced; and she put away her sorrow-laden store, locked them
safe from sight, said her night prayers, and went to bed. Not a sigh,
nor a tear. No vain regrets, no heart-easing groans. The time for such
consolations had long been passed with Eleanor. Within the last nine
years her life had as much changed as if she had died and risen again
into another world of intermediate trial. A very great change had been
wrought in her by Lady Greystock's friendship. Eleanor had become
educated. The clever, poetical girl, who had won Horace Erskine's
attention by her natural superiority to everything around her--even
when those surroundings had been of a comparatively high state of
cultivation, had hardened into the industrious and laborious woman.
When it pleased Lady Greystock to hear her sing, in her own sweet,
untaught way, the songs of her own country, she had sung them; and
then, when Lady Greystock had offered to cultivate the talent, she had
worked hard at improvement. She had been brought up by French nuns, at
a convent school, and had spoken their language from childhood; when
Lady Greystock got French books, it was Eleanor's delight to read
aloud; and she had made Mrs. Blagden's two little girls almost as
familiar with French as she was herself. Those things had given rise
to the idea that Mrs. Evelyn, as she was always called, had seen
better days; and no one had ever suspected her relationship to
Jenifer. Mr. Brewer alone knew of it. As to Mr. Brewer ever telling
anything that could be considered, in the telling, as a breach of
confidence, that was, of course, impossible.

That night--that night so important in our story, Jenifer, having done
all her duties by her mistress, which were really not a few, and
having seen that the girl who did the dirty {321} work was safe in the
darkness of a safely put out candle, opened her lattice to look on the
night. Her little room had a back view. That is, it looked over the
flagged kitchen court, and the walled-in flower garden, and beyond
toward the village of Blagden and the majestic woods at the back of
the house at Beremouth.

Jenifer had gone to bed, and had risen again, oppressed by a feeling
that something was, as she expressed it, "going on--something doing
somewhere--'something up,' as folks say, sir. I can't account for it.
I fancied I heard something--that I was wanted. And I thought at first
that some one was in my room. Then I went into mistress's room,
without my shoes, not to wake her. She was all right, sleeping like a
tender babe. Then I went to Peggy's room. The girl was asleep. I
sniffed up and down the passage, just to find if anything wrong in the
way of smoke or fire was about. No; all was pure and pleasant; and
then I went down stairs to make sure of the doors being locked.
Everything was right, sir"--such was Jenifer's account to Mr. Brewer;
who, when she paused at this point, asked: "What next did you do? Did
you go upstairs again to bed?" "I went upstairs," the woman answered,
"but not to bed. I sat at the window, and looked out over the garden,
and over the meadows beyond the old bridge, and on to Beremouth. And
the night was the brightest, fairest, loveliest night I ever beheld.
And so, sir, I said my prayers once more, and went again to bed; and
slept in bits and snatches, for still I was always thinking that
somebody wanted me, till the clock struck six; and then I got up."
"You don't usually get up at six, or before the girl gets up, do you?"
"No, sir; never, I may say. But I got up to ease my mind of its
burthens. And when Peggy had got up, and was down stairs, I started
off for the alms-house; I thought Mr. Dawson might be up to say mass
there, for it was St. Lawrence's Day." "Well?" "But there had been no
message about mass, and no priest was expected. And as I got back to
our door there was Mrs. Fell, the milk-woman. She had brought the milk
herself. I asked how that should be. She said they had had a cow like
to die in the night, and that their man had been up all night, and
that she was sparing him, for he had gone to lie down. Then I said,
'Why, I could never have heard any of you busy about the cattle in the
night'--you see they rent the meadows. But she said they were not in
the meadows; the beasts were all in the shed at the farm. 'But,' she
said, it's odd if you were disturbed, for a man came to our place just
before twelve o'clock, and asked for you.' 'For me!' I cried--'a man
at your place in the middle of the night, asking for me!' She said,
'Yes; and a decent-spoken body, too. But tired, and wet through and
through. He said he had fallen into the Beremouth deer pond, up in the
park. That is, he described the place clear enough, and we knew it was
the deer pond, for it could not be anywhere else!'" "And did you ask
where the man went to?" "No, sir. I lifted my eyes, and I saw him."
"And who was he?" "Oh, Mr. Brewer, it must all be suffered as he gives
it to me to suffer; but I am not clear about telling his name."

Mr. Brewer took out his watch and looked at it. "It is nearly ten
o'clock," he said. "Where's your mistress?"

"Settled to her work, sir."

Mr. Brewer held this long talk with Jenifer in that right-hand parlor
down stairs where he had paid that money to Mrs. Morier, when the
reader first made his acquaintance. He had great confidence in
Jenifer. He knew her goodness, and her patience, and her trust. He
knew something, too, of her trials, and also of her prayer; but he had
come there to investigate a very serious matter, and he was going
steadily through with it.

"Listen, Jenifer."

"Yes, sir."

{322}

"Last night, just after our night prayers, Father Daniels being in the
house, my friend, Mr. Erskine, who escorted my step-daughter, Mary
Lorimer, home, went out into the park, just, as was supposed, to have
a cigar before going to bed. Mrs. Brewer and I were in Mary's room
when we heard Mr. Erskine leave the house. He certainly lighted his
cigar. Mary's window was open, and we smelt the tobacco. Jenifer, he
never returned."

They were both standing and looking at each other. "My life, and all
that is in it!" Up went Jenifer's prayer, but voicelessly, to heaven.
"My life, and all that is in it!" But a strong faith that the one
terrible evil that her imagination pictured would not be in it, was
strong within her.

"He never returned. My man-servant woke me in my first sleep by
knocking at the bed-room door, and saying that Mr. Erskine had not
returned. I rose up and dressed myself. I collected the men and went
out into the park. We went to the south lodge, to ask if any one had
seen him. 'No,' they said. 'But the west lodge-keeper had been there
as late as near to ten o'clock, and he had said that a man had been in
their house asking a good many questions about Beremouth, and who we
had staying there, and if a Mr. Erskine was there, or ever had been
there, and inquiring what sort of looking man he was, whether he wore
a beard, or had any peculiarity? how he dressed, and if there had ever
been any report of his going to be married? They had answered his
questions, because they suspected nothing worse than a gossiping
curiosity; and they had given him a rest, and a cup of tea. He said
that a friend, a cousin of his, had lived as servant with Mr. Erskine;
and he also asked if Mr. Erskine would be likely to pass through that
lodge the next day, for that he had a great curiosity to see him. He
said that he had known him well once, and wanted greatly to see him
once more. He, after all this talking, asked the nearest way to
Marston. He was directed through the park, and he left them. Our
inquiries about Horace Erskine having been answered by this history
told by one lodge-keeper to the other, we could not help suspecting
that some one had been on the watch for the young man, and taking
Jones from the lodge, and his elder boy with us, we dispersed
ourselves over the park to seek for him, a good deal troubled by what
we had heard. We got to the deer pond, but we had sought many places
before we got there; it did not seem a likely place for a man to go to
in the summer night. We looked about--we went back to get
lanterns--they were necessary in the darkness made by the thick
foliage; one side was bright enough, and the pool was like a
looking-glass where it was open to the sloping turf, and the short
fern, which the deer trample down when they get there to drink; but
the side where the thorns, hollies, and yew-trees grow was as black as
night; and yet we thought we could see where the wild climbing plants
had been pulled away, and where some sort of struggle might have taken
place. As we searched, when we came back, we found strong evidence of
a desperate encounter; the branches of the great thorn-tree were
hanging split from the stem, and, holding the lantern, we saw the
marks of broken ground by the margin of the pond, as if some one had
been struggling at the very edge of it. Then, all at once, and I shall
never understand why we did not see it before--the moonbeams grew
brighter, I suppose--but there in the pond was the figure of a man;
not altogether in the water, but having struggled so far out as to get
his head against the bank, hid as it was with the grass and low
brush-wood, the ferns and large-leaved water-weeds; we laid bold of
the poor {323} fellow--it was Horace Erskine, Jenifer!"

"_My life, and all that is in it_." But the hope, the faith, rather,
was still alive, that that worst grief should not be in it--so she
prayed--so she felt--for Jenifer! "Master," she gasped, "not dead--not
dead--Mr. Brewer."

"Not dead!" he said gravely; "he would have been dead if we had not
found him when we did. He was bruised and wounded; such a sight of
ill-treatment as no eyes ever before beheld, I think. He must have
been more brutally used than I could have believed possible, if I had
not seen it. His clothes were torn; his face so disfigured that he
will scarcely ever recover the likeness of a man, and one arm is
broken." "But not dead?" "No; but he _may_ die; the doctor is in the
house, and the police are out after the man whom we suspect of this
horrible barbarity. Now, Jenifer, hearing some talk of a stranger who
seemed to know yon, I came here to ask you to tell me, in your own
honest way, your honest story."

But Jenifer seemed to have no desire to make confidences.

"Who told you of a stranger?"

"Have you not told me yourself, in answer to my first questions,
before giving you my reasons for inquiring?"

"No, sir; that won't do. I judge from what you said that you had heard
something of this stranger before you came here."

"I had, Jenifer." And Mr. Brewer looked steadily at her.

"Well, sir?"

"Jenifer, I have really come out of tenderness to you, and to those
who may belong to you."

"No one doubts your tenderness, sir; least of any could I doubt it.
Tell me who mentioned a stranger to you, so as to send you here to
me?"

"Lady Greystock's groom, coming to Beremouth early, and finding us in
great trouble, made a declaration as to a stranger who had appeared
and stopped his mistress as she was driving through the park last
night. He says this man asked if they could tell where Mrs. Evelyn
lived, and Mrs. Evelyn, immediately answering, said that she lived
somewhere in the neighborhood, and that he could learn by inquiring
for you. The groom says that the man evidently knew Mrs. Morier's
name, as well as year name; and that after speaking to him, Mrs.
Evelyn asked Lady Greystock to drive on, and that she drove rapidly,
and never spoke till they had almost got back to Blagden."

"It is quite true," said Jenifer. "He told me the same story this
day."

"Can you say where this man is? He will be found first or last; and it
is for the sake of justice that you should speak, Jenifer. The police
are on his track. Let me entreat you to give me every information.
Concealment is the worst thing that can be practised in such a case as
this--have you any idea where he is? I do not ask you who he is; you
will have to tell all, I fear, before a more powerful person than I
am. I only come as a friend, that you may not be induced to conceal
the evil-doer."

"The evil-doer," said Jenifer; "who says he did it?"

"I say he will be tried for doing it; and that a trial is good for the
innocent in such a case of terrible suspicion as this."

"May be," said Jenifer, "may be!"

Then, once more, that prayer, said, from her very heart, though
unspoken by her lips; and then these quiet words--"And as to the man
himself. He is my brother. My mother's child by her second husband."
"Your brother--he with whom Eleanor lived in Ireland?" "Yes, Mr.
Brewer; he of whom I told you when you saved Eleanor so {324} many
years ago. And as to where he is--step into the kitchen, sir, and you
may see him sleeping in a chair by the fire--any way, I left him
there, when I came to open the door to you."

Mr. Brewer had really come to Jenifer in a perfectly friendly way;
exactly as he had said--out of tenderness. He had known enough to send
him there, and to have those within call who would secure this
stranger, whoever he was, and wherever he was found. Now, known, he
walked straight into the kitchen, and there stopped to take a full
view of a man in a leathern easy chair, his arm resting on Jenifer's
tea-table, and sound asleep. A finer man eyes never saw. Strong in
figure, and in face of a remarkable beauty. He was sunburnt; having
pulled his neckcloth off, the skin of his neck showed in fair
contrast, and the chest heaved and fell as the strong breath of the
sleeper was drawn regularly and with healthy ease. It was a picture of
calm rest; it seemed like a pity to disturb it. There stood Mr. Brewer
safely contemplating one who was evidently in a state of blissful
unconsciousness as to danger to others or himself.

"Your brother?" repeated Mr. Brewer to Jenifer, who stood stiff and
upright by his side.

"My half-brother, James O'Keefe."

"There is some one at the front door; will you open it?"

Jenifer guessed at the personage to be found there. But she went
steadily through the front passage, and, opening the door, let the
policeman who had been waiting enter, and then she came back to the
kitchen without uttering a word. As the man entered Mr. Brewer laid
his hand on the sleeper's shoulder, and woke him. He opened his fine
grey eyes, and looked round surprised. "On suspicion of having
committed an assault on Mr. Horace Erskine last night, in the park at
Beremouth," said the policeman, and the stranger stood up a prisoner.
He began to speak; but the policeman stopped him. "It is a serious
case," he said. "It may turn out murder. You are warned that anything
you say will be used against you at your trial." "Are you a
magistrate, sir?" asked O'Keefe as he turned to Mr. Brewer. "Yea; I
am. I hope you will take the man's advice, and say nothing."

"But I may say I am innocent?" "Every word you say is at your own
risk." "I ran no risk in saying that I am innocent--that I never saw
this Horace Erskine last night--though if I had seen him--"

"I entreat you to be silent; you must have a legal adviser"--"I! Who
do I know?"' "You shall be well looked to, and well advised," said
Jenifer. "There are those in this town, in the office where Lansdowne
Lorimer worked, who will work for me."

It was very hard for Mr. Brewer not to promise on the spot that he
would pay all possible expenses. But the recollection of the
disfigured and perhaps dying guest in his own house rose to his mind,
and he had a painful feeling that he was retained on the other side.
However, he said to Jenifer that perfect truth and sober justice
anybody might labor for in any way. And with this sort of broad hint
he left the house, and Jenifer saw the stranger taken off in safe
custody, and, mounting his horse, rode toward Blagden. He asked for
his daughter; and he was instantly admitted, and shown upstairs into
her sitting-room--there he found Claudia, looking well and happy,
engaged in some busy work, in which Eleanor was helping her.

"Oh, my dear father!" and Lady Greystock threw the work aside, and
jumped up, and into the arms that waited for her.

It was always a sort of high holiday when Mr. Brewer come by himself
to visit his daughter. When the sound of the brown-topped boots was
{325} heard on the stairs, like a voice of music to Claudia's heart,
all human things gave way, for that gladness that her father's great
heart brought and gave away, all round him, to everybody,
everywhere--but _there_, there, where his daughter lived--there, among
the friends with whom she had recovered from a great illness and got
the better of a threatened, life-long woe--there Mr. Brewer felt some
strong influence making him _that_, which people excellently expressed
when they said of him--"he was more than ever himself that day."

Now Mr. Brewer's influence was to make those to whom he addressed
himself honest, open, and good. He was loved and trusted. It did not
generally enter into people's minds to deceive Mr. Brewer. Candor grew
and gained strength in his presence. Candor took to herself the
teachings of wisdom; candor listened to the advice of humility; candor
threw aside all vain-glorious garments when Mr. Brewer called for her
company, and candor put on, forthwith, the crown of truth. "My
darling!" said Mr. Brewer, as he kissed Claudia; "my darling!"

"Oh, my dear father--my father, my dear father!" so answered Claudia.

Then she pushed forward a chair; and then Eleanor made ready to leave
the room. "Yes, go; go for half an hour, Mrs. Evelyn. But don't be out
of the way; I have a fancy for a little chat with you, too, to-day." A
grave smile spread itself over Eleanor's placid face as she said she
should come back when Lady Greystock sent for her, and then she went
away. Once more, when she was gone, Mr. Brewer stood up and taking
Claudia's hand, kissed her. "My darling," he said, "I have something
to say, and I can only say it to you--I have some help to ask for, and
only you can help me. But are you strong enough to help me; are you
loving enough to trust me?"

"I will try to be all you want, father; I _am_ strong; I _can_
trust--but if you want to know how much I love you--why, you know I
can't tell you that--it is more than I can measure, I am afraid. Don't
look grave at me. It can't be anything very solemn, if _I_ can help
you; or anything of much importance, if my help is worth your having."

"Your help is absolutely necessary; at least necessary to my own
comfort--now, Claudia. Tell your father why you broke off your
engagement with Horace Erskine."

"_He_ did it"--she trembled. Her father took her little hand into the
grasp of his strong one, and held it with an eloquent pressure.

"He wanted more money, father. It came as a test. He was in debt. I
had loved him, as if--as if he had been what _you_ must have been in
your youth. You were my one idea of man. I had had no heart to study
but yours. I learnt that Horace Erskine was unworthy. He was a coward.
The pressure of his debts had crushed him into meanness. He asked me
to bear the trial, and to save him. I did. I did, father!"

"Yes, my darling."

He never looked at her. Only the strong fingers closed with powerful
love on the little hand within their grasp. "But you were fond of Sir
Geoffrey?"

"Yes; and glad, and grateful. I should have been very happy--but--"

"But he died," said her father, helping her.

"But Horace sent to Sir Geoffrey the miniature I had given
him--letters--and a lock of my poor curling hair--" How tight the
pressure of the strong hand grew. "I found the open packet on the
table"--she could not say another word. Then a grave, deep voice told
the rest for her--"And your honored husband's soul went up to God and
found the truth"--and the head of the poor memory-stricken daughter
found a refuge on her father's breast, and she wept there silently.

"And that made you ill, my darling; my dear darling Claudia--my own
{326} dear daughter! Thank you, my precious one. And you don't like
Beremouth now?"

"I love Beremouth, and everything about it," cried Lady Greystock,
raising her head, and gathering all her strength together for the
effort; "but I dare not see this man--and I would rather never look
again on the deer-pond in the park, because there he spoke: there he
promised--there I thought all life was to be as that still pool,
deep, and overflowing with the waters of happiness and their
never-ceasing music. We used to go there every day. I have not looked
on it since--I could not bear to listen to the rush of the stream
where it falls over the stones between the roots of the old trees,
between whose branches the tame deer would watch us, and where old
Dapple--the dear old beauty whose name I have never mentioned in all
these years---used to take biscuits from our hands. Does old Dapple
live, father? Dapple, who was called _'old'_ nine years ago?" And Lady
Greystock looked up, and took her hand from her father's grasp, and
wiped her eyes, and wetted her fair forehead from a bowl of water, and
tried by this question to get away from the misery that this sudden
return to the long past had brought to mind.

"Dapple lives," said Mr. Brewer. And then he kissed her again, and
thanked her, and said "they should love each other all the better for
the confidence he had asked and she had given."

"But why did you ask?"

"I want to have my luncheon at your early dinner," said Mr. Brewer,
not choosing to answer her. "You do dine early, don't you?"

"Yes, and to-day Eleanor was going to dine with me."

"Quite right. And I want to speak to her. Claudia, something has
happened. You most know all before long. Everybody will know. You had
better be in the room while I speak to Eleanor. Let us get it over.
But you had better take your choice. It is still about Horace that I
want to speak--to speak to Eleanor, I mean."

"I should wish to be present," said Claudia. And she rose and rang the
bell.

"Will you ask Mrs. Evelyn to come to us?" she said, when her servant
appeared. In a very few minutes in walked Eleanor.

"Mrs. Evelyn," said Mr. Brewer, "last night you directed a man to seek
Jenifer at Mrs. Morier's house. That man was James O'Keefe, Jenifer's
half-brother. You knew him?" "Yes, Mr. Brewer, I knew him." "But he
did not know you?" "No." "He asked about you. Why did you send him to
Marston?" "Because he could there learn all he wanted to know. I am
not going to bring the shadow of my troubles into this kind house."
"That was your motive?" "Yes. But I might have had more motives than
one. I think that was uppermost; and on that motive I believe that I
acted."

"That man was in the park. At the lodge-gate he had made inquiries
after my guest, Mr. Erskine. That man was at Mrs. Fell's, the
dairy-woman, at midnight. He was not through; he had, he said, fallen
into the water--he described the place, and they knew it to be the
deer-pond."

As Mr. Brewer went on in his plain, straightforward way, both women
listened to him with the most earnest interest; but as he proceeded
Eleanor Evelyn fixed her eye on him with an anxiety and a mingled
terror that had a visible effect on Mr. Brewer, who hesitated in his
story, and who seemed to be quite distracted by the manner of one
usually so very calm and so unfailingly self-processed.

"Now Mr. Erskine had gone out into the park late. Mr. Erskine, my dear
friends,--Mr. Erskine _never came back._" {327} He paused, and
collected his thoughts once more, in order to go on with his story.

"We went to seek for him. He was found at last, at the deer-pond,
surrounded by the evidences of a hard struggle having taken place
there, a struggle in which he had only just escaped with his life. He
has been ill-treated in a way that it is horrible to contemplate. He
is lying now in danger of death. And this morning I have assisted in
the capture of James O'Keefe, whom I found by Mrs. Morier's kitchen
fire, for this possible murder. I should tell you that Mr. Erskine is
just as likely to die as to live."

"Mr. Brewer," said Eleanor, rising up and taking no notice of Lady
Greystock's deathlike face,--"Mr. Brewer, is there any truth in a
report that has reached me from a man who was in the elder Mr.
Erskine's service in Scotland--a report to the effect that Mr. Horace
Erskine wished to propose marriage, or had proposed marriage, to Miss
Lorimer?"

"There _is_ truth in that report," said Mr. Brewer.

"Then I must see that man," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Before this terrible
affair can proceed, I must see Horace Erskine. If indeed it be true
that he has received this terrible punishment, I can supply a motive
for James O'Keefe's conduct that any jury ought to take into
consideration."

"But O'Keefe denies having ever seen him," said Mr. Brewer. "He does
not deny having inquired about him. He even said words before me that
would make me suppose that he had come into this neighborhood on
purpose to see him, and to take some vengeance upon him. Mr. Erskine
is found with the marks of the severest ill-usage about him, and you
say you can supply a motive for such a deed. O'Keefe, however, denies
all but the will to work evil; he confesses to the will to do the
deed, but denies having done it."

"I must see Mr. Erskine," was all that Eleanor answered. "I must see
Mr. Erskine. Whether he sees me or not, _I_ must see _him_."

The young woman was standing up--her face quite changed by the
expression of anxious earnestness that animated it.

"I must see Mr. Erskine. Mr. Brewer, you must so manage it that I must
see Mr. Erskine without delay."

"But you would do no good," said Mr. Brewer, in a very stern tone and
with an utter absence of all his natural sympathy. "The man is so
injured that his own mother could not identify him."

"Then may God have mercy on us!" cried Eleanor, sinking into a chair.
"If I could only have seen that man before this woe came upon us!"

And then that woman burst into one of those uncontrollable fits of
tears that are the offspring of despair. Lady Greystock looked at her
for a moment, and then rose from her chair. "Victories half won are
neither useful nor honorable," she said. "Wait, Eleanor, I will show
you what that man was."

She opened a large metal-bound desk, curiously inlaid, and with a look
of wondrous workmanship. She said, looking at her father, "I left this
at Beremouth, never intending to see it again, But it got sent here a
few years ago. It has never been opened since I locked it before my
wedding day." She opened it, and took out several packets and small
parcels. Then she opened one--it was a miniature case which matched
that one of herself which had been so cruelly sent to good, kind Sir
Geoffrey--she opened it "Who is that, Eleanor?" It was curious to see
how the eyes, blinded by tears, fastened on it "My husband--my
husband--Henry Evelyn. My husband, Mr. Brewer. Oh, Lady Greystock,
thank God that at any cost he did not run his soul still {328} farther
into sin by bringing on you and on himself the misery of a marriage
unrecognized by God."

"And because your unde, James O'Keefe, heard the report that got about
concerning that man and Miss Lorimer, he ran his own soul into a guilt
that may by this time have deepened into the crime of murder. Oh,
Eleanor! when shall we remember that 'vengeance is mine, saith the
Lord?'"

"_My life, and all that is in it!_" The words came forth softly, and
Mr. Brewer, turning round, saw Jenifer.

"He has been before the magistrates at Marston, Mr. Brewer. He has
denied all knowledge of everything about it. He is remanded on the
charge--waiting for more evidence--waiting to see whether Mr. Erskine
lives or dies. I hired a gig, and came off here to you as fast as I
could be driven. Mr. May, in the old office, says that if Mr. Erskine
dies, it will be hard to save him. But the doctor's man tells me Mr.
Erskine has neither had voice nor sight since he was found--I saw
Father Daniels in the street, and he, too, is evidence against the
poor creature. He knows of Corny Nugent's letter; and Corny wrote to
Jem also, so Jem told me, and he came off here to make sure that
Horace Erskine and Henry Evelyn were the same people. And he walked
from the Northend railway station, and asked his way to Beremouth, and
got a gossip with the gate-keeper, and settled to come on to Marston.
And he met Lady Greys took in the carriage, and asked where Eleanor
lived, and inquired his way. Did you know him, Eleanor?"

"Yes, I knew him directly; and it was partly because I knew him that I
directed him on to you."

"Then he lost his way, and took to getting out of the park by walking
straight away in the direction he knew Marston to be lying in. And he
got by what we call 'the threshetts,' sir--the water for keeping the
fishponds from shallowing--and there he must have fallen in, for he
says he climbed the hedge just after, and walked straight away through
the grass fields and meadows, and seeing the lights where the Fells
were tending the sick cow last night, he got in there, all dripping
wet, as the town-clock struck twelve. He does not deny to the
magistrates that if he had found Horace Erskine and Henry Evelyn to be
one and the same man, that he might have been tempted to evil; he does
not deny that. He says he felt sore tempted to go straight to
Beremouth House and have him out from sleep and bed, if to do so could
have been possible, and to have given him his punishment on the spot.
He says he wished as he wandered through the park that something might
send the man who had injured us all so sorely out to him, to meet him
in the way, that they might have come hand to hand, and face to face.
He says he has had more temptations since Corny Nugent's letter to
him, and more heart-stirrings in the long silent time before it came,
than he can reckon up; and that he has felt as if a dark spirit goaded
him to go round the world after that man, and never cease following
him till he had made his own false tongue declare to all the earth his
own false deeds--but something, he says, kept him back. Always kept
him back till now; till now, when Corny's last letter said that
Erskine was surely gone to Beremouth to be married. Then, he said, it
was as if something sent him--ah yes; and sent him _here_ to see the
man, to make sure who he was. To tell you, as a brother Catholic, the
whole truth--to keep from the dear convert mother the bitter grief of
seeing her child bound to a man whom she could never call that child's
husband. So {329} he came, Mr. Brewer. He came, and he was found
here--but he knows no more of the punishment of that poor man, that
poor girl's husband"--pointing to Eleanor--"than an unborn babe. As I
hear him speak, I trace the power of the prayer that I took up long
ago in my helplessness--when I could not manage my own troubles, my
own life, my own responsibilities, it came into my heart to offer all
to him. '_My life and all that is in it_.' You and yours have been in
it, Mr. Brewer. Your wife has been in it, her life, and her
child's--you, too, my dear," turning to Claudia,--"you whom I have
loved like one belonging to me--you have been in it; and that woman,
my sister's legacy to my poor helplessness. There were so many to care
for, to fear for, to suffer for, and to love--how could I put things
right, or keep off dangers? I could only give up all to the Father of
us all--'_My life, and all that is in it_.' And I tell you this, Mr.
Brewer--I tell it [to] you because my very soul seems to know it, and
my lips must utter it: In that life there will be no red-handed
punishment--no evil vengeance--no vile murder, nor death without
repentance. I cannot tell you, I cannot even guess, how that bad man
got into this trouble--I have no knowledge of whose hands he fell
into--but not into the hands of any one who belongs to me, or to that
life which has been so long given into God's keeping."

Jenifer stopped speaking. She had been listened to with a mute
attention. Her hearers could not help feeling convinced by her
earnestness. She had spoken gently, calmly, sensibly. The infection of
her entire faith in the providence of God seized them. They, too,
believed. Lady Greystock, the only one not a Catholic, said afterward
that she felt quite overpowered by the simple trust that Jenifer
showed, and the calm strength with which it endowed her. And Lady
Greystock was the first to answer her.

"It is no time for self-indulgence," she said. "Father, Eleanor and I
must both go to Beremouth. And we must stay there. We must be there on
the spot, to see how these things are accounted for--to know how
matters end--to help, as far as we may, to bring them right."

And so, before two hours were over, Jenifer was back in Mrs. Morier's
parlor, and Mary Lorimer was with her; sent there to stay; and Lady
Greystock and Mrs. Evelyn were at Beremouth.

There was silence in the house, that sort of woful silence that
belongs to the anxiety of a dreadful suspense. Toward evening there
were whispered hopes--Mr. Erskine was better, people thought. But the
severest injuries were about the neck and throat, the chest and
shoulders. His hair had been cut off in large patches where the head
wounds were--his face was disfigured with the bandages that the
treatment made necessary. He lay alive, and groaning. He was better.
When more was known about the injuries done to the throat and chest,
something less doubtful would be said as to his recovery. "If he can't
swallow, he'll die," said one nurse. "He can live long enough without
swallowing," said another. And still they waited.

At night, Eleanor and Lady Greystock stood in the room, with Mr.
Brewer, far off by the door, looking at him. There was no love in
either heart. The poor wife shrank away, almost wishing that the
period of desertion might last for ever.

A week passed, a terribly long week. He could swallow. He could speak.
He could see out of one eye. He had his senses. He had said something
about his arm. He would be ready in another week to give some account
of all he had gone {330} through. He would be able, perhaps, to
identify the man. In the meantime, James O'Keefe was safe in custody.
And Jenifer was saying her prayer--"_My life, and all that is in it;_"
still quite sure, with a strong, simple, never-failing faith, that the
great evil of a human and remorseless vengeance was not in it. And
yet, as time passed on, and, notwithstanding every effort made by the
police, backed by the influence of all that neighborhood, and by Mr.
Brewer himself, not a mark of suspicion was found against any one
else, it seemed to come home to every one's mind with the force of
certainty that James O'Keefe had tried to murder Horace Erskine--that
James O'Keefe had done this thing, and no one else.

Very slowly did Horace seem to mend--very slowly. When questions were
put to him in his speechless state, he seemed to grow so utterly
confused as to alarm his medical attendants. It was made a law at
Beremouth that he was to be kept in perfect quietness. James O'Keefe
was again brought before the magistrates, and again remanded; and
still this time of trial went on, and still, when it was thought
possible to speak to Horace on the subject of his injuries, he grew so
utterly confused that it was impossible to go on with the matter.

Was there to be no end to this misery? The waiting was almost
intolerable. The knowledge that now existed in that house of Horace
Erskine's life made it very easy to understand his confusion and
incoherency when spoken to of his injuries. But the lingering--the
weight of hope deferred--the long contemplation of the miserable
sufferer--the slowness of the passage of time, was an inexpressible
burthen to the inhabitants of Beremouth.

One sad evening, Lady Greystock and her father, on the terrace, talked
together. "Come with me to the deer-pond, Claudia." She shrank from
the proposal "Nay," he said, "come! You said at Blagden that half
victories were powerless things. You must not be less than your own
words. Come to the deer-pond--now." So she took his arm and they
walked away. It was the beginning of a sweet, soft night--the evening
breezes played about them, and they talked together in love and
confidence, as they crossed the open turf, and were lost in the
thickets that gathered round the gnarled oak and stunted yew that
marked the way to the pond.

It had been many years since Claudia had seen its peaceful waters;
terrible in dreams once; and now saddened by a history that would
belong to it for ever. They reached the spot, and stood there talking.

Suddenly they heard a sound, they started--a tearing aside of the
turning boughs--a sound, strong, positive, angry--then a gentle
rustling of the leaves, a soft movement of the feathery fern--and Lady
Greystock had let go her father's arm, and was standing with her hand
on the head, between the antlers, of a huge old deer--Dapple--"Don
Dapple," as the children had called him--and speaking to him
tenderly--"Oh, Dapple, do you know me? Oh, Dapple--alas! poor
beast--did you do it--that awful thing? Are you so fierce, poor
beast--were you the terrible avenger?" How her tears fell! How her
whole frame trembled! How the truth came on her as she looked into the
large, tearful eyes of the once tame buck, that had grown fanciful and
fierce in its age, and of whom even some of the keepers had declared
themselves afraid. Mr. Brewer took biscuit from his coat-pocket,
chance scraps from lunches, secreted from days before, when he had
been out on long rounds through the farms. These old Dapple nibbled,
and made royal gestures of satisfaction and approval--and there,
viewing his stately head in the water, where his spreading antlers
were mirrored, they left him to walk home, with one wonder out of
their hearts, and another--wondering awe at the thing that had
happened among them--to by their for ever.

{331}

They came back, they called the doctors, they examined the torn
clothes. They wondered they had never thought of the truth before.

Time went on. And at last, when Horace could speak, and they asked him
about the old deer at the pond, he said that it was so--it was as they
had thought. It had been an almost deadly struggle between man and
beast; and Horace was to bear the marks upon the face and form that
had been loved so well to his life's end. A broken-featured man, lame,
with a stiff arm, and a sightless eye--and the story of his ruined
life no longer a secret--known to all.

Lady Greystock and Mrs. Evelyn remained at Beremouth. Mary Lorimer was
left at her grandmother's under the care of the trusty Jenifer. James
O'Keefe had returned to Ireland, leaving his niece and her history in
good guardianship with Father Daniels and Mr. Brewer; and Freddy,
being at school, had been happily kept out of the knowledge of all but
the surface facts, which were no secrets from anybody, that a man who
had been seen in the park and was a stranger in the neighborhood had
been suspected of being the perpetrator of the injuries of which the
old deer had been guilty. Poor old deer--poor aged Dapple! It was with
a firm hand and an unflinching determination that the kindest man
living met the beast once more at the deer-pond, and shot him dead.
Mr. Brewer would trust his death to no hand but his own--and there in
the thicket where he loved to hide a grave was dug, and the monarch of
the place was buried in it.

Lady Greystock and Eleanor kept their own rooms, and lived together
much as they had done latterly at Blagden. When Horace Erskine was fit
to leave his bed-room, he used to sit in a room that had been called
"Mr. Brewer's." It was, in fact, a sort of writing-room, fitted up
with a small useful library and opening at the end into a bright
conservatory. He had seen Lady Greystock. He knew of Eleanor being in
the house. He knew also that his former relations with her were known,
and he never denied, or sought to deny, the fact of their Catholic
marriage.

No one ever spoke to him on the subject. The subject that was first in
all hearts was to see him well and strong, and able to act for
himself. One thing it was impossible to keep from him; and that was
the anger of Mr. Erskine, his unde, an anger which Lucia his wife did
not try to modify. Mrs. Brewer wrote to her sister; Mr. Brewer pleaded
with his brother-in-law. Not a thing could they do to pacify them.
Horace was everything that was evil in their eyes; his worst crime in
the past was his having made a Catholic marriage with a beautiful
Irish girl, and their great dread for the future was that he would
make this marriage valid by the English law. They blamed Mr. Brewer
for keeping Eleanor in the house; they were thankless to Mr. Brewer
for still giving to Horace care, kindness, and a home. Finally, the
one great dread that included all other dreads, and represented the
overpowering woe, was that contained in the thought that Horace might
repent, and become a Papist.

Mr. Brewer, when it came to that, set his all-conquering kindness
aside for the time, or, to adopt his wife's words when describing
these seeming changes in her husbands's character, "he clothed his
kindness in temporary armor, and went out to fight." He replied to Mr.
and Mrs. Erskine that for such a grace to fall on Horace would be the
answer of mercy to the prayer of a poor woman's faith--that he and all
his household joined in that prayer; that priests at the altar, and
nuns in their holy homes, were all praying for that great result; and
that for himself he would only say that for such a mercy to fall upon
his house would make him glad for ever.

There was no disputing with a man who could so openly take his stand
on {332} such a broad ground of hope and prayer in  such direct
opposition to the wishes of his neighbors. The Erskines became silent,
and Mr. Brewer had gained all he hoped for; peace, peace at least for
the time.

At last Horace was well enough to move, and Freddy's holidays were
approaching, and there was an unexpressed feeling that Horace was not
to be at Beremouth when the boy came back. Mr. Brewer proposed that
Horace should go for change of air to the same house in which Father
Dawson was lodging, just beyond Clayton, where the sea air might
refresh him, and the changed scene amuse his mind; and where, too, he
could have the benefit of all those baths, and that superior
attendance, described in the great painted advertisement that covered
the end of the lodging-houses in so promising a manner. Horace
accepted the proposal gladly. He grew almost bright under the
expectation of the change, and when the day came he appeared to
revive, even under the fatigue of a drive so much longer than any that
he had been before allowed to venture upon.

Mr. Dawson was to be kind, and to watch over him a little; and Father
Daniels was to visit him, and write letters for him, and be his,
adviser and his friend. Before he left Beremouth he had asked to see
Lady Greystock. She went with her father to his room quite with the
old Claudia Brewer cheerfulness prettily mingling with woman's
strength and woman's experience. He rose up, and said, "I wished to
ask you to forgive me, Lady Greystock--to forgive me my many sins
toward you!" She trembled a little, and said, "Mr. Erskine, may God
forgive _me_ my pride, my anger, my evil thoughts, which have made me
say so often I could never see nor pardon you." It seemed to require
all her strength to carry out the resolution with which she had
entered that room. "Of course," she went on, "the personal trial that
you brought upon me, here, in my young days, I know now to have been a
great blessing in a grief's disguise. Though not--_not yet_--a
Catholic, I know you were then, as now, a married man." Horace Erskine
never moved; he was still standing, holding by the heavy
writing-table, and his eyes were fastened on the carpet. She went on:
"Since then your wife, a beautiful and even an accomplished woman, has
become my own dear friend. We are living together, and until she has a
home of her own, we shall probably go on living together. I have
nothing, therefore, to say more, except--except--" Here her voice
trembled, and changed, and she was only just able to articulate her
last words so as to be understood by her hearers, "Except about my
dear husband's death--better death than life under misapprehension.
That too was a blessing perhaps. Let us leave it to the Almighty
Judge. I forgive you; if you wish to hear those words from my poor
erring lips, you may remember that I have said them honestly,
submitting to the will of _him_ who loves us, and from whom I seek
mercy for myself."

She turned round to leave the room. "Stop, Lady Greystock; stop!"
cried Horace. "In this solemn moment of sincerity, tell me--do you
think Eleanor loves me now?" "I would rather not give any opinion."
"If you have ever formed an opinion, give it. I entreat you to tell me
what is, as far as you know, the truth. Does Eleanor love me?" "Must I
speak, father?" "So solemnly entreated, I should say, _yes_." "Does
Eleanor love me?" groaned Horace. "No," said Lady Greystock; and
turning round quickly, she left her father alone with Horace, and went
out of the room.

Five years passed by. Freddy was growing into manhood, enjoying home
by his bright sister Lady {333} Greystock's side, and paying visits to
his other sister, the happy bride, Mrs. Harrington, of
Harrington-leigh, the master of which place, "a recent convert," as
the newspapers said, "had lately married the convert step-daughter of
Mr. Brewer, of Beremouth." Lady Greystock always lived with her father
now, united to him in faith, and joining him in such a flood of good
works that all criticism, all wonderment, all lamentation and argument
at "such a step!" was simply run down, overpowered, deluged, drowned.
The strong flowing stream of charity was irresistible. The solemn
music of its deep waters swallowed up all the surrounding cackle of
inharmonious talk. Nothing was heard at Beremouth but prayer and
praise--evil tongues passed by that great good house to exercise
themselves elsewhere. Evil people found no fitting habitation for
their wandering spirits in that home of holy peace. And all his life
Mr. Brewer walked humbly, looking at Claudia, and calling her "my
crown!" She knew why. He had repented with a great sorrow of those
early days when he had left her to others' teaching. He had prayed
secretly, with strong resolutions, to be blessed with forgiveness. And
at last the mercy came--"crowned at last. All the mercies of my life
crowned by the great gift of Claudia's soul." So the good man went on
his way a penitent. Always in his own sight a penitent. Always
recommending himself to God in that one character--as a penitent.

Five years were passed, and Lady Greystock had been at Mary's wedding,
and was herself at Beremouth, still in youth and beauty, once more the
petted daughter of the house--but Eleanor was there no longer. Full
three years had passed since Eleanor had gone to London with Lady
Greystock, and elected not to return. They heard from her however,
frequently; and knew where she was. When these letters came Claudia
would drive off to Marston to see Grandmamma Morier, still enjoying
life under Jenifer's care. The letters would be read aloud upstairs in
the pretty drawing-room where the fine old china looked as gay and
bright as ever, and where not a single cup and saucer had changed its
place. Jenifer would listen. Taking careful note of every expression,
and whispering--sometimes in the voice of humble prayer, sometimes in
soft tones of triumphant thanksgiving--"My life, and all that is in
it!"

But now this five years' close had been marked by a great fact; the
death of Horace Erskine's uncle, and his great estate passing to his
nephew, whom he had never seen since their quarrel with him, but whom
he had so far forgiven as not to alter his will.

Horace Erskine was in London; and his Beremouth friends were going up
to town to welcome him home after four years of life on the continent.

London was at its fullest and gayest. Mr. Erskine had been well known
there, making his yearly visits, taking a great house, and attracting
round him all the talent of the day. A very rich man, thoroughly well
educated, with a fine place in Scotland, and his beautiful wife Lucia
by his side, he found himself welcome, and made others in their turn
welcome too. Now all this was past. For two seasons London had missed
Mr. Erskine, and he had been regretted and lamented over, as a
confirmed invalid. Now he was dead. And after a little brief wonder
and sorrow the attention of the world was fixed upon his heir, and
people of fashion, pleasure, and literature got ready their best
smiles for his approval.

Horace had been well enough known once. Never exactly sought {334}
after by heads of homes, for he was too much of a speculation. He was
known to be in debt; and all inquiries as to his uncle's property had
been quenched again and again by those telling words, "no entail." But
Horace had had his own world; and had been only too much of a hero in
it. That world, however, had lost him; and as the wheels of fashion's
chariot fly fast, the dust of the light road rises as a cloud and
hides the past, and the people that belonged to Horace Erskine had
been left behind and forgotten. Now, however, Memory was alive, and
brushing up her recollections; and Memory had found a tongue, and was
hoping and prophesying to the fullest extent of friend Gossip's
requirements, when the news came that Horace Erskine had arrived. "He
has taken that charming house looking on to the park. Mr. Tudor had
seen him. Nobody would know him. Broken nose, my dear! And he was so
handsome. He is lame, too--or if not lame, he has a stiff shoulder. I
forget which it is. He was nearly killed by some mad animal in the
park at Beremouth. He behaved with the most wonderful courage,
actually fought and conquered! But he was gored and trampled
on--nearly trampled to death. I heard all the particulars at the time.
His chest was injured, and he was sent to a warmer climate. And there
he turned Papist. He did, indeed! and his uncle never forgave him. But
I suspect it was a love affair. You know he has brought his wife home.
And she is lovely, everybody who has seen her says. She is so very
still--too quiet--too statuesque--that is her only fault in fact. But
all the world is talking of her, and if you have not yet seen her lose
no time in getting introduced; she is the wonder of the day."

And so ran the talk--and such was Eleanor's welcome as Horace
Erskine's wife. Her husband had really repented, and had sought her,
and won her heart all over again, and married her once more.

To have these great triumphs of joy and justice in her life was
granted to Jenifer's Prayer.

------

From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY VERY REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.


1. Abbot Cyrus said to a brother: "If thou hadst no fight with bad
thoughts, it would be because thou didst bad actions; for they who do
bad actions are thereby rid of bad thoughts."

"But," said the other, "I have bad memories."

The abbot answered: "They are but ghosts; fear not the dead, but the
living."


2. When Agatho was dying, his brethren would have asked him some
matter of business. He said to them: "Do me this charity; speak no
more with me, for I am full of business already." And he died in joy.



3. An old man visited one of the fathers. The host boiled some
pot-herbs, and said: "First let us do the work of God, and then let us
eat."

------

{335}


[ORIGINAL.]

CHRISTINE:

A TROUBADOUR'S SONG,

IN FIVE CANTOS.

BY GEORGE H. MILES.   [Footnote 53]

  [Footnote 53: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year
  1866, by Lawrence Kehoe, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court
  of the United States for the Southern District of New York.]

(CONCLUDED.)


THE FOURTH SONG.

I.

  Amid the gleam of princely war
  Christine sat like the evening star,
  Pale in the sunset's pageant bright,
  A separate and sadder light.
            O bitter task
  To rear aloft that shining head,
    While round thee, cruel whisperers ask--
  "Marry, what aileth the Bridegroom gay?
  The heralds have waited as long as they may.
  Yet never a sign of the gallant Grey.
    Is Miolan false or dead?"

II.

  The Dauphin eyed Christine askance:
    "We have tarried too long," quoth he;
  "Doth the Savoyard fear the thrust of France?
  By the Bride of Heaven, no laggard lance
    Shall ever have guard of thee!"

{336}

  You could see the depths of the dark eyes shine
    And a glow on the marble cheek,
  As she whispered, "Woe to the Dauphin's line
  When the eagle shrieks and the red lights shine
    Bound the towers of Pilate's Peak."

  She levelled her white hand toward the west,
    Where the omen beacon shone;
  And he saw the flame on the castle crest.
  And a livid glare light the mountain's breast
    Even down to the rushing Rhone.

  Never braver lord in all the land
    Than that Dauphin true and tried;
  But the rein half fell from his palsied hand
  And his fingers worked at the jewelled brand
    That shook in its sheath at his side.

  For it came with a curse from earliest time,
    It was carved on his father's halls,
  It had haunted him ever from clime to clime,
  And at last the red light of the ancient rhyme
    Is burning on Pilate s walls!

  Yet warrior-like beneath his feet
    Trampling the sudden fear,
  He cried, "Let thy lover's foot be fleet--
  If thy Savoyard would wed thee, sweet.
    By Saint Mask, he were better here!

  "For I know by yon light there is danger near,
    And I swear by the Holy Shrine,
  Be it virgin spear or Miolan's heir.
  The victor to-day shall win and wear
    This menaced daughter of mine!"

  The lists are aflame with the gold and steel
    Of knights in their proud array,
  And gong and tymbalon chiming peal
  As forward the glittering squadrons wheel
    To the jubilant courser's neigh.

  The Dauphin springs to the maiden's side,
    And thrice aloud cries he,
  "Ride, gallants all, for beauty ride,
  Christine herself is the victor's bride.
    Whoever the victor be!"

{337}

  And thrice the heralds cried it aloud,
    While a wondering whisper ran
  From the central lists to the circling crowd,
  For all knew the virgin hand was vowed
    To the heir of Miolan.

  Quick at the Dauphin's plighted word
    Full many an eve flashed fire,
  Full many a knight took a truer sword,
  Tried buckle and girth, and many a lord
    Chose a stouter lance from his squire.

  Back to the barrier's measured bound
    Each gallant speedeth away;
  Then, forward fast to the trumpet's sound,
  A hundred horsemen shake the ground
    And meet in the mad melée.

  Crimson the spur and crimson the spear,
    The blood of the brave flows fast;
  But Christine is deaf to the dying prayer,
  Blind to the dying eyes that glare
    On her as they look their last.

  She sees but a Black Knight striking so well
    That the bravest shun his path;
  His name or his nation none may tell,
  But wherever he struck a victim fell
    At the feet of that shape of wrath.

  "'Fore God," quoth the Dauphin, "that unknown sword
    Is making a merry day!"
  But where, oh where is the Savoyard,
  For low in the slime of that trampled sward
    Lie the flower of the Dauphinée!

  And the victor stranger rideth alone,
    Wiping his bloody blade;
  And now that to meet him there is none.
  Now that the warrior work is done,
    He moveth toward the maid.

  Sternly, as if he came to kill,
    Toward the damsel he turneth his rein;
  His trumpet sounding a challenge shrill,
  While the fatal lists of La Sône are still
    As he paces the purple plain.

{338}

  A hollow voice through the visor cried,
    "Mount to the crupper with me.
  Mount, Ladye, mount to thy master's side.
  For 'tis said and 'tis sworn thou shalt be the Bride
    Of the victor, whoever he be."

  At sound of that voice a sudden flame
    Shot out from the Dauphin's eyes,
  And he said, "Sir Knight, ere we grant thy claim,
  Let us see the face, let us hear the name,
    Of the gallant who winneth the prize."

  "'Tis a name you know and a face you fear,"
    The Wizard Knight began;
  "Or hast thou forgotten that midnight drear,
  When my sleeping fathers felt the spear
    Of Vienne and Miolan?

  "Ay, quiver and quail in thy coat of mail,
    For hark to the eagle's shriek;
  See the red light burns for the coming bale!"
  And all knew as he lifted his aventayle
    The Knight of Pilate's Peak.

  From the heart of the mass rose a cry of wrath
    As they sprang at the shape abhorred,
  But he swept the foremost from his path,
  And the rest fell back from the fatal swath
    Of that darkly dripping sword.

  But uprose the Dauphin brave and bold,
    And strode out upon the green,
  And quoth he, "Foul fiend, if my purpose hold,
  By my halidome, tho' I be passing old,
    We'll splinter a lance for Christine.

  "Since her lovers are low or recreant.
    Her champion shall be her sire;
  So get a fresh lance from yonder tent.
  For though my vigor be something spent
    I fear neither thee nor thy fire!"

  Swift to the stirrup the Dauphin he sprang,
    The bravest and best of his race:
  No bugle blast for the combat rang;
  Save the clattering hoof and the armor clang,
    All was still as each rode to his place.

{339}

  With the crash of an April avalanche
    They meet in that merciless tilt;
  Back went each steed with shivering haunch.
  Back to the croup bent each rider staunch.
    Shivered each spear to the hilt.

  Thrice flies the Baron's battle-axe round
    The Wizard's sable crest;
  But the coal-black steed, with a sudden bound,
  Hurled the old Crusader to the ground,
    And stamped on his mailed breast.

  Thrice by the vengeful war-horse spurned,
    Lowly the Dauphin lies;
  While the Black Knight laughed as again he turned
  Toward the lost Christine, and his visor burned
    As he gazed at his beautiful prize.

  Her doom you might read in that gloating stare,
    But no fear in the maid can you see;
  Nor is it the calm of a dumb despair,
  For hope sits aglow on her forehead fair.
    And she murmurs, "At last--it is he!"

  Proudly the maiden hath sprung from her seat,
    Proudly she glanceth around,
  One hand on her bosom to stay its beat,
  For hark! there's a sound like the flying feet
    Of a courser, bound after bound.

  Clearing the lists with a leopard-like spring,
    Plunging at top of his speed.
  Swift o'er the ground as a bird on the wing.
  There bursts, all afoam, through the wondering ring,
    A gallant but riderless steed.

  Arrow-like straight to the maiden he sped.
    With a long, loud, tremulous neigh,
  The rein flying loose round his glorious head.
  While all whisper again, "Is the Savoyard dead?"
    As they gaze at the riderless Grey.

  One sharp, swift pang thro' the virgin heart,
    One wildering cry of woe.
  Then fleeter than dove to her calling nest,
  Lighter than chamois to Malaval's crest
    She leaps to the saddle bow.

{340}

  "Away!" He knew the sweet voice; away,
    With never a look behind;
  Away, away, with echoing neigh
  And streaming mane, goes the gallant Grey,
    Like an eagle before the wind.

  They have cleared the lists, they have passed her bower,
    And still they are thundering on;
  They are over the bridge--another hour,
  A league behind them the Leaning Tower
    And the spires of Saint Antoine.

  Away, away in their wild career
    Past the slopes of Mont Surjeu;
  Thrice have they swum the swift Isère,
  And firm and clear in the purple air
    Soars the Grand Som full in view.

  Rough is their path and sternly steep,
    Yet halting never a whit,
  Onward the terrible pace they keep,
  While the good Grey, breathing free and deep,
    Steadily strains at the bit.

  They have left the lands where the tall hemp springs,
    Where the clover bends to the bee;
  They have left the hills where the red vine flings
  Her clustered curls of a thousand rings
    Round the arms of the mulberry tree.

  They have left the lands where the walnut lines
    The roads, and the chestnuts blow;
  Beneath them the thread of the cataract shines,
  Around them the plumes of the warrior pines.
    Above them the rock and the snow.

  Thick on his shoulders the foam flakes lay.
    Fast the big drops roll from his chest,
  Yet on, ever on, goes the gallant Grey,
  Bearing the maiden as smoothly as spray
    Asleep on the ocean's breast.

  Onward and upward, bound after bound,
    By Bruno's Bridge he goes;
  And now they are treading holy ground,
  For the feet of her flying Caliph sound
    By the cells of the Grand Chartreuse.

{341}

  Around them the darkling cloisters frown,
    The sun in the valley hath sunk;
  When right in her path, lo! the long white gown,
  The withered face and the shaven crown
    And the shrivelled hand of a monk.

  A light like a glittering halo played
    Round the brow of the holy man;
  With lifted finger her course he stayed,
  "All is not well," the pale lips said,
    "With the heir of Miolan.

  "But in Chambery hangs a relic rare
    Over the altar stone:
  Take it, and speed to thy Bridegroom's bier;
  If the Sacristan question who sent thee there,
    Say, 'Bruno, the Monk of Cologne.'"

  She bent to the mane while the cross he signed
    Thrice o'er the suppliant head:
  "Away with thee, child!" and away like the wind
  She went, with a startled glance behind,
    For she heard an ominous tread.

  The moon is up, 'tis a glorious night,
    They are leaving the rock and the snow,
  Mont Blanc is before her, phantom white,
  While the swift Isère, with its line of light,
    Cleaves the heart of the valley below.

  But hark to the challenge, "Who rideth alone?"--
    "O warder, bid me not wait!--
  My lover lies dead and the Dauphin o'erthrown--
  A message I bear from the Monk of Cologne"--
    And she swept thro' Chambery's gate.

  The Sacristan kneeleth in midnight prayer
    By Chamber's altar stone.
  "What meaneth this haste, my daughter fair?"
  She stooped and murmured in his ear
    The name of the Monk of Cologne.

  Slowly he took from its jewelled case
    A kerchief that sparkled like snow.
  And the Minster shone like a lighted vase
  As the deacon unveiled the gleaming face
    Of the Santo Sudario.

{342}

  A prayer, a tear, and to saddle she springs,
    Clasping the relic bright;
  Away, away, for the fell hoof rings
  Down the hillside behind her--God give her wings!
    The fiend and his horse are in sight.

  On, on, the gorge of the Doriat's won,
    She is nearing her Savoyard's home,
  By the grand old road where the warrior son
  Of Hanno swept with his legions dun,
    On his mission of hatred to Rome.

  The ancient oaks seem to rock and reel
    As the forest rushes by her,
  But nearer cometh the clash of steel,
  And nearer falleth the fatal heel,
    With its flickering trail of fire.

  Then first the brave young heart grew sick
    'Neath its load of love and fear,
  For the Grey is breathing faint and quick,
  And his nostrils burn and the drops fall thick
    From the point of each drooping ear.

  His glorious neck hath lost its pride,
    His back fails beneath her weight.
  While steadily gaining, stride by stride,
  The Black Knight thunders to her side--
    Heaven, must she meet her fate?

  She shook the loose rein o'er the trembling head,
    She laid her soft hand on his mane,
  She called him her Caliph, her desert-bred,
  She named the sweet springs where the palm trees spread
    Their arms o'er the burning plain.

  But the Grey looked back and sadly scanned
    The maid with his earnest eyes--
  A moment more and her cheek is fanned
  By the black steed's breath, and the demon hand
    Stretches out for the virgin prize.

  But she calls on Christ, and the kerchief white
    Waves full in the face of her foe:
  Back with an oath reeled the Wizard Knight
  As his steed crouched low in the wondrous light
    Of the Santo Sudario.

{343}

  Blinded they halt while the maiden hies,
    The murmuring Arc she can hear,
  And, lo! like a cloud on the shining skies,
  Atop of yon perilous precipice,
    The castle of Miolan's Heir.

  "Fail not, my steed!"--Round her Caliph's head
    The relic shines like the sun:
  Leap after leap up the spiral steep,
  He speeds to his master's castle keep,
    And his glorious race is won.

  "Ho, warder!"--At sight of the gallant Grey
    The drawbridge thundering falls:
  Wide goes the gate at that jubilant neigh,
  And, glory to God for his mercy to-day,
    She is safe within Miolan's walls.


THE FIFTH SONG.

I.

  In the dim grey dawn by Miolan's gate
  The fiend on his wizard war-horse sate.
  The fair-haired maid at his trumpet call
  Creeps weeping and wan to the outer wall:
  "My curse on thy venom, my curse on thy spell,
  They have slain the master I loved too well.
  Thou saidst he should wake when the joust was o'er,
  But oh, he never will waken more!"
  She tore her fair hair, while the demon laughed,
  Saying, "Sound was the sleep that thy lover quaffed;
  But bid the warder unbar the gate,
  That the lost Christine may meet her fate."


II.

  "Hither, hither thou mailèd man
    With those woman's tears in thine eyes,
  With thy brawny cheek all wet and wan,
  Show me the heir of Miolan,
    Lead where my Bridegroom lies."

{344}

  And he led her on with a sullen tread.
    That fell like a muffled groan,
  Through halls as silent as the dead,
  'Neath long grey arches overhead,
    Till they came to the shrine of Moan.

  What greets her there by the torches' glare?
    In vain hath the mass been said!
  Low bends the sire in mute despair,
  Low kneels the Hermit in silent prayer.
    Between them the mighty dead.

  No tear she shed, no word she spoke,
    But gliding up to the bier,
  She took her stand by the bed of oak
  Where her Savoyard lay in his sable cloak,
    His hand still fast on his spear.

  She bent her burning cheek to his,
    And rested it there awhile.
  Then touched his lips with a lingering kiss,
  And whispered him thrice, "My love, arise,
    I have come for thee many a mile!"

  The man of God and the ancient Knight
    Arose in tremulous awe;
  She was so beautiful, so bright,
  So spirit-like in her bridal white,
  It seemed in the dim funereal light
    Twas an angel that they saw.

  "Thro' forest fell, o'er mount and dell,
    Like the falcon, hither I've flown.
  For I knew that a fiend was loose from hell,
  And I bear a token to break this spell
    From Bruno, the Monk of Cologne.

  "Dost thou know it, love? when fire and sword
    Flamed round the Holy Shrine,
  It was won by thee from the Paynim horde,
  It was brought by thee to Bruno's guard,
    A gift from Palestine.

  "Wake, wake, my love! In the name of Grace,
    That hath known our uttermost woe,
  Lo! this thorn-bound brow on thine I place!"
  And, once more revealed, shone the wondrous face
    Of the Santo Sudario.

{345}

  At once over all that ancient hall
    There went a luminous beam;
  Heaven's deepest radiance seemed to fall,
  The helmets shine on the shining wall,
    And the faded banners gleam.

  And the chime of hidden cymbals rings
    To the song of a cherub choir;
  Each altar angel waves his wings,
  And the flame of each altar taper springs
    Aloft in a luminous spire.

 And over the face of the youth there broke
    A smile both stern and sweet;
  Slowly he turned on the bed of oak,
  And proudly folding his sable cloak
    Around him, sprang to his feet.

  Back shrank the sire, half terrified,
    Both he and the Hermit, I ween;
  But she--she is fast to her Savoyard's side,
  A poet's dream, a warrior's bride,
    His beautiful Christine.

  Her hair's dark tangles all astray
    Adown her back and breast;
  The print of the rein on her hand still lay.
  The foam-flakes of the gallant Grey
    Scarce dry on her heaving breast.

  She told the dark tale and how she spurred
    From the Knight of Pilate's Peak;
  You scarce would think the Bridegroom heard.
  Save that the mighty lance-head stirred.
    Save for the flush in his cheek;

  Save that his gauntlet clasped her hair--
    And oh, the look that swept
  Between them!--all the radiant air
  Grew holier--it was like a prayer--
    And they who saw it wept.

  E'en the lights on the altar brighter grew
    In the gleam of that heavenly gaze;
  The cherub music fell soft as dew,
  The breath of the censer seemed sweeter too.
  The torches mellowed their requiem hue,
    And burnt with a bridal blaze.

{346}

  And the Baron clasps his son with a cry
    Of joy as his sorrows cease;
  While the Hermit, wrapt in his Rosary,
  Feels that the world beneath the sky
    Hath yet its planet of peace.

  But hark! by the drawbridge, shrill and clear,
    A trumpet's challenge rude:
  The heart of Christine grew faint with fear,
  But the Savoyard shook his mighty spear,
    And the blood in his forehead stood.

  "Beware, beware, 'tis the Fiend!" quoth she:
    "Whither now!" asks the ancient Knight,
  "What meanest thou, boy?--Leave the knave to me:
  Wizard, or fiend, or whatever he be,
  By the bones of my fathers, he shall flee
    Or ne'er look on morning light.

  "What, thou just risen from the grave,
    Atilt with an armèd man?
  Dost dream that youth alone is brave,
  Dost deem these sinews too old to save
    The honor of Miolan?"

  But the youth he answered with gentlest tone,
    "I know thee a warrior staunch.
  But this meeting is meant for me alone.
  Unhand me, my lord, have I woman grown?
  Wouldst stop the rushing of the Rhone,
    Or stay the avalanche?"

  He broke from his sire as breaks the flash
    From the soul of the circling storm:
  You could hear the grasp of his gauntlet crash
  On his quivering lance and the armor clash
    Round that tall young warrior form.

  "Be this thy shield?" the maiden cried,
    Her hand on the kerchief of snow;
  "If forth to the combat thou wilt ride,
  Face to face be the Fiend defied
    With the Santo Sudario!"

  But the young Knight laid the relic rare
    On the ancient altar-stone;
  "Holy weapons to men of prayer.
  Lance in rest and falchion bare
    Must answer for Miolan's son."

{347}

  Again the challenger's trumpet pealed
    From the barbican, shrill and clear;
  And the Savoyard reared his dinted shield,
  Its motto, gold on an azure field--
    "ALLES ZU GOTT UND IHR."

  To horse!--From the hills the dawning day
    Looks down on the sleeping plain;
  In the court-yard waiteth the gallant Grey,
  And the castle rings with a joyous neigh
    As the Knight and his steed meet again.

  And the coal-black charger answers him
    From the space beyond the gate,
  From the level space, where dark and dim
  In the morning mists, like giant grim,
    The Fiend on his war-horse sate.

  Oh, the men at arms how they stared aghast
    When the Heir of Miolan leapt
  To saddle-bow sounding his bugle-blast;
  How the startled warder breathless gasped.
    How the hoary old seneschal wept!

  And the fair-haired maid with a sob hath sprung
    To the lifted bridle rein;
  Fast to his knee her white arms clung,
  While the waving gold of her fair hair hung
    Mixed with Grey Caliph's mane.

  "O Miolan's heir, O master mine,
    O more than heaven adored,
  Live to forget this slave of thine,
  Wed the dark-eyed Maid of Palestine,
    But dare not yon demon sword!"

  But the Baron thundered, "Off with the slave!"
    And they tore the white arms away,
  "A woman 's a curse in the path of the brave;
  Level thy lance and upon the knave,
    For he laughs at this fool delay!

  "But pledge me first in this beaker bright
    Of foaming Cyprian wine;
  Thou hast fasted, God wot, like an anchorite.
  Thy cheeks and brow are a trifle white,
  And, 'fore heaven, thou shall bear thee in this fight
    As beseemeth son of mine!"

{348}

  The youth drank deep of the burning juice
    Of the mighty Marètel,
  Then, waving his hand to his Ladye thrice,
  Swifter than snow from the precipice,
    Spurred full on the infidel.

  "O Bridegroom bold, beware my brand!"
    The Knight of Pilate cries,
  "For 'tis written in blood by Eblis' hand,
  No mortal might may mine withstand
    Till the dead in arms arise."

  "The dead are up, and in arms arrayed,
    They have come at the call of fate:
  Two days, two nights, as thou know'st, I've laid
  On oaken bier"--and again there played
  That halo light round the Mother Maid
    In the niche by the castle gate.

  Each warrior reared his shining targe,
    Each plumed helmet bent.
  Each lance thrown forward for the charge,
  Each steed reined back to the very marge
    Of the mountain's sheer descent.

  The rock beneath them seemed to groan
    And shudder as they met;
  Away the splintered lance is thrown,
  Each falchion in the morning shone,
    One blade uncrimsoned yet

  But the blood must flow and that blade must glow
    E'er their deadly work be done;
  Steel rang to steel, blow answered blow,
  From dappled dawn till the Alpine snow
    Grew red in the risen sun.

  The Bridegroom's sword left a lurid trail,
    So fiercely and fleetly it flew;
  It rang like the rattling of the hail,
  And wherever it fell the sable mail
    Was wet with a ghastly dew.

  The Baron, watching with stern delight,
    Felt the heart in his bosom swell:
  And quoth he, "By the mass, a gallant sight!
  These old eyes have gazed on many a fight,
  But, boy, as I live, never saw I knight
    Who did his devoir so well!"

{349}

  And oh, the flush o'er his face that broke,
    The joy of his shining eyes,
  When, backward beaten, stroke by stroke,
  The wizard reeled, like a falling oak,
    Toward the edge of the precipice.

  On the trembling verge of that perilous steep
    The demon stood at bay.
  Calling with challenge stern and deep,
  That startled the inmost castle keep,
  "Daughter of mine, here's a dainty leap
    We must take together to-day.

  "Come, maiden, come!" Swift circling round,
    Like bird in the serpent's gaze,
  She sprang to his side with a single bound.
  While the black steed trampled the flinty ground
    To fire, his nostrils ablaze.

  "Farewell!" went the fair-haired maiden's cry,
    Shrilling from hill to hill;
  "Farewell, farewell, it was I, 'twas I,
  Who sinned in a jealous agony,
    But I loved thee too well to kill!"

  High reared the steed with the hapless pair,
    A plunge, a pause, a shriek,
  A black plume loose in the middle air,
  A foaming plash in the dark Isére,--
  Thus banished for ever the maiden fair
    And the Knight of Pilate's Peak.

  A mighty cheer shook the ancient halls,
    A white hand waved in the sun,
  The vassals all on the outer wall
  Clashed their arms at the brave old Baron's call,
    "To my arms, mine only one!"

  But oh, what aileth the gallant Grey,
    Why droopeth the barbèd head?
  Slowly he turned from that fell tourney
  And proudly breathing a long, last neigh,
    At the castle gate fell dead.


III.

  Lost to all else, forgotten e'en
  The dark eyes of his dear Christine,
  His fleet foot from the stirrup freed,
  The Knight knelt by his fallen steed.

{350}

  Awhile with tone and touch of love
  To cheer him to his feet he strove:
  Awhile he shook the bridle-rein--
  That glazing eye!--alas, in vain.
  Bareheaded on that fatal field.
  His gauntlet ringing on his shield,
  His voice a torrent deep and strong,
  The warrior's soul broke forth in song.


THE KNIGHT'S SONG

    And art thou, _art_ thou dead,--
  Thou with front that might defy
  The gathered thunders of the sky.
  Thou before whose fearless eye
    All death and danger fled!

    My Khalif, hast thou sped
  Homeward where the palm-trees' feet
  Bathe in hidden fountains sweet,
  Where first we met as lovers meet,
    My own, my desert-bred!

    Thy back has been my home;
  And, bending o'er thy flying neck,
  Its white mane waving without speck,
  I seemed to tread the galley's deck.
    And cleave the ocean's foam.

    Since first I felt thy heart
  Proudly surging 'neath my knee,
  As earthquakes heave beneath the sea,
  Brothers in the field were we;
    And must we, _can_ we part?

    To match thee there was none!
  The wind was laggard to thy speed:
  O God, there is no deeper need
  Than warrior's parted from his steed
    When years have made them one.

    And shall I never more
  Answer thy laugh amid the clash
  Of battle, see thee meet the flash
  Of spears with the proud, pauseless dash
    Of billows on the shore?

{351}

    And all our victor war,
  And all the honors men call mine,
  Were thine, thou voiceless warrior, thine;
  My task was but to touch the rein--
    There needed nothing more.

    Worst danger had no sting
  For thee, and coward peace no charm;
  Amid red havoc's worst alarm
  Thy swoop as firm as through the storm
    The eagle's iron wing.

    O more than man to me!
  Thy neigh outsoared the trumpet's tone.
  Thy back was better than a throne,
  There was no human thing save one
    I loved as well as thee!

    O Knighthood's truest friend!
  Brave heart by every danger tried,
  Proud crest by conquest glorified.
  Swift saviour of my menaced Bride,
    Is this, is _this_ the end?--

    Thrice honored be thy grave!
  Wherever knightly deed is sung.
  Wherever minstrel harp is strung,
  There too thy praise shall sound among
    The beauteous and the brave.

    And thou shalt slumber deep
  Beneath our chapel's cypress sheen;
  And there thy lord and his Christine
  Full oft shall watch at morn and e'en
    Around their Khalif's sleep.

    There shalt thou wait for me
  Until the funeral bell shall ring.
  Until the funeral censer swing.
  For I would ride to meet my King,
    My stainless steed, with thee!

----

  The song has ceased, and not an eye
  'Mid all those mailed men is dry;
  The brave old Baron turns aside
  To crush the tear he cannot hide.

{352}

  With stately step the Bridegroom went
  To where, upon the battlement,
  Christine herself, all weeping, leant.
  Well might that crested warrior kneel
  At such a shrine, well might he feel
  As if the angel in her eyes
  Gave all that hallows Paradise.
  And when her white hands' tender spell
  Upon his trembling shoulder fell.
  Upward one reverent glance he cast,
  Then, rising, murmured, "Mine at last!"

  "Yes, thine at last!" Still stained with blood
  The Dauphin's self beside them stood.
  "Fast as mortal steed could flee,
  My own Christine, I followed thee.
  Saint George, but 'twas a gallant sight
  That miscreant hurled from yonder height:
  Brave boy, that single sword of thine,
  Methinks, might hold all Palestine.
  But see, from out the shrine of Moan
  Cometh the good Monk of Cologne,
  Bearing the relic rare that woke
  Our warrior from his bed of oak.
  See him pass with folded hands
  To where the shaded chapel stands.
  The Bridegroom well hath won the prize,
  There stands the priest, and there the altar lies."


IV.

  When the moon rose o'er lordly Miolan
    That night, she wondered at those ancient walls:
    Bright tapers flashing from a hundred halls
  Lit all the mountain--liveried vassals ran
    Trailing from bower to bower the wine-cup, wreathed
    With festal roses--viewless music breathed
  A minstrel melody, that fell as falls
    The dew, less heard than felt; and maidens laughed.
    Aiming their curls at swarthy men who quaffed
  Brimmed beakers to the newly wed: while some
    Old henchmen, lolling on the court-yard green
    Over their squandered Cyprus, vowed between
  Their cups, "there was no pair in Christendom
    To match their Savoyard and his Christine?"

----

{353}

  The Trovère ceased, none praised the lay,
  Each waited to hear what the King would say.
  But the grand blue eye was on the wave,
  Little recked he of the tuneless stave:
  He was watching a bark just anchored fast
  With England's banner at her mast,
  And quoth he to the Queen, "By my halidome,
  I wager our Bard Blondel hath come!"
  E'en as he spoke, a joyous cry
  From the beach proclaimed the Master nigh;
  But the merry cheer rose merrier yet
  When the Monarch and his Minstrel met.
  The Prince of Song and Plantagenet.
  "A song!" cried the King. "Thou art just in time
  To rid our ears of a vagrant's rhyme:
  Prove how that recreant voice of thine
  Hath thriven at Cyprus, bard of mine!"
  The Minstrel played with his golden wrest,
  And began the "_Fytte of the Bloody Vest_."
  The vanquished Trovère stole away
  Unmarked by lord or ladye gay:
  Perchance one quick, kind glance he caught,
  Perchance that glance was all he sought.
  For when Blondel would pause to tune
  His harp and supplicate the moon,
  It seemed as tho' the laughing sea
  Caught up the vagrant melody;
  And far along the listening shore.
  Till every wave the burthen bore,
  In long, low echoes might you hear--
  "Alles, Alles zu Gott und Ihr!"

------

{354}


From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.--ORIGEN.


_Origenis Opera Omnia_, Ed. De la Rue, accurante J. P. Migne.
Parisiis. _S. Gregorii Thaumaturgi_, Oratio Panegyrica in Origenem
(Opera Omnia), accurante J. P. Migne. Parisiis.

Last July we commenced a sketch of the history and labors of Origen.
We resume our notes on those twenty years (211-280) which he spent
with little interruption at Alexandria, engaged chiefly in the
instruction of the catechumens. We have already seen what he did for
the New Testament; let us now study his labors on the Old.

The authorship of that most famous Greek version of the Old Testament,
the Septuagint, seems destined to be a mystery in literature. The
gorgeous and circumstantial account of the Jew Aristeas, with all its
details of embassy and counter-embassy, of the seventy-two venerable
sages, the cells in the rock, the reverence of the Ptolemy, and the
wind-up of banquets, gifts, and all good things, seems, as Dom
Montfaucon says, to "savor of the fabulous." There is some little
difficulty about dates in the matter of Demetrius Phalerius, the
literary minister under whose auspices the event is placed. There is a
far more formidable difficulty in the elevation of Philadelphus, a
cruel, sensual despot, into a devout admirer of the law of Moses,
bowing seven times and weeping for joy in presence of the sacred
documents, and in the sudden conversion of all the cultivated Greeks
who are concerned in the story. The part of Aristeas's narration which
regards the separate cells, and the wonderful agreement of the
translations, is curtly set down by St. Jerome as a fiction. It seems
probable, moreover, that the translator of the Pentateuch was not the
same as the translate of the other parts of the Old Testament. In the
midst of uncertainties and probabilities, however, four things seem to
be tolerably clear; first, that the version called the LXX. was made
at Alexandria; secondly, that it was the work of different authors;
thirdly, that it was not inspired; fourthly, that it was a holy and
correct version, quoted by the apostles, always used in the Greek
church, and the basis of all the Latin editions before St Jerome's
Vulgate.

All the misfortunes that continual transcription, careless blundering,
and wilful corruption could combine to inflict upon a manuscript had
fallen to the lot of the Septuagint version at the time when it was
handed Origen to be used in the instruction of the faithful and the
refutation of Jew and Greek. This was only what might have been fully
expected from the fact that, since the Christian era, it had become
the court of appeal of two rival sets of controversialists--the
Christian and the Jew. Indeed, from the very beginning it had been
defective, and, if we may trust St. Jerome, designedly defective; for
the Septuagint translation of the prophetical books had purposely
omitted {355} passages of the Hebrew which its authors considered not
proper to be submitted to the sight of profane Greeks and Gentiles. Up
to the Christian era, however, we may suppose great discrepancies of
manuscript did not exist, and that those variations which did appear
were not much heeded in the comparatively rare transcription of the
text. The Hellenistic Jews and the Jews of Palestine used the LXX. in
the synagogues instead of the Hebrew. A few libraries of great cities
had copies, and a few learned Greeks had some idea of their existence.
Beyond this there was nothing to make its correctness of more
importance than that of a liturgy or psalm-book. But, soon after the
Christian era, its character and importance were completely changed.
The eunuch was reading the Septuagint version when Philip, by divine
inspiration, came up with him and showed him that the words he was
reading were verified in Jesus. This was prophetic of what was to
follow. The Christians used it to prove the divine mission of Jesus
Christ; the Jews made the most of it to confute the same. Thereupon,
somewhat suspiciously, there arose among the Jews a disposition to
underrate the LXX., and make much of the Hebrew original. Hebrew was
but little known, whereas all the intellectual commerce of the world
was carried on by means of that Hellenistic Greek which had been
diffused through the East by the conquests of Alexander. If,
therefore, the Jews could bar all appeals to the well-known Greek, and
remove the controversy to the inner courts of their own temple, the
decision, it might be expected, would not improbably turn out to be in
their own favor. Just before Origen's own time more than one Jew or
Judaizing heretic had attempted to produce Greek versions which should
supersede the Septuagint. Some ninety years before the period of which
we write, Aquila, a Jewish proselyte of Sinope, had issued what
professed to be a literal translation from the Hebrew. It was so
uncompromisingly literal that the reader sometimes found the Hebrew
word or phrase imported bodily into the Greek, with only the slight
alteration of new characters and a fresh ending. Its purpose was not
disavowed. It was to furnish the Greek-speaking Jews with a more exact
translation from the Hebrew, in order to fortify them in their
opposition to Christianity. Some five years later, Theodotion, an
Ebionite of Ephesus, made another version of the Septuagint; he did
not profess to re-translate it, but only to correct it where it
differed from the Hebrew. A little later, and yet another Ebionite
tried his hand on the Alexandrian version; this was Symmachus. His
translation was more readable than that of Aquila, as not being so
utterly barbarous in expression; but it was far from being elegant, or
even correct, Greek.

Of course Origen could never dream of substituting any of these
translations for the Septuagint, stamped as it was with the
approbation of the whole Eastern church. But still they might be made
very useful; indeed, notwithstanding the original sin of motive to
which they owed their existence, we have the authority of St. Jerome,
and of Origen himself, for saying that even the barbarous Aquila had
understood his work and executed it more fairly than might have been
expected. What Origen wanted was to get a pure Greek version. To do
this he must, of course, compare it with the Hebrew; but the Hebrew
itself might be corrupt, so he must seek help also elsewhere. Now
these Greek versions, made sixty, eighty, ninety years before, had
undoubtedly, he could see, been written with the Septuagint open
before their writers. Here, then, was a valuable means of testing how
far the present manuscripts of the Septuagint had been corrupted
during the last century at {356} least. He himself had collected some
such manuscripts, and the duties of his office made him acquainted
with many more. From the commencement of his career he had been
accustomed to compare and criticise them, and he had grown skilful, as
may be supposed, in distinguishing the valuable ones from those that
were worthless. We have said sufficient to show how the idea of the
"Hexapla" arose in his mind. The Hexapla was nothing less than a
complete transcription of the Septuagint side by side with the Hebrew
text, the agreement and divergence of the two illustrated by the
parallel transcription of the versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and
Symmachus; the remaining column containing the Hebrew text in Greek
letters. The whole of the Old Testament was thus transcribed sixfold
in parallel columns. These extra illustrations were furnished by the
partial use of three other Greek versions which Origen found or picked
up in his travels, and which he considered of sufficient importance to
be occasionally used in his great work. And Origen was not content
with the mere juxtaposition of the versions. The text of the
Septuagint given in the Hexapla was his own; that is to say, it was an
edition of the great authoritative translation completely revised and
corrected by the master himself. It was a great and a daring work. Of
its necessity there can be no doubt; but nothing except necessity
could have justified it; and it is certainly to the bold and
unprecedented character of the enterprise that we owe the shape that
he has given it in performance. To correct the Septuagint to his own
satisfaction was not enough; it must be corrected to the satisfaction
of jealous friends and, at least, reasonable enemies. Side by side,
therefore, with his amended text he gave the reasons and the proofs of
his corrections. He was scrupulously exact in pointing out where he
had altered by addition or subtraction. The Alexandrian critics had
invented a number of critical marks of varied shape and value, which
they industriously used on the works about which they exercised their
propensity to criticise. Origen, "Aristarchus sacer," as an admiring
author calls him, did not hesitate to avail himself of these profane
_notae_. There was the "asterisk," or star, which marked what he
himself had thought it proper to insert, and which, therefore, the
original authors of the Septuagint had apparently thought it proper to
leave out. Then there was the "obelus," or spit, the sign of
slaughter, as St. Jerome calls it; passages so marked were not in the
original Hebrew, and were thereby set down as doubtful and suspected
by sound criticism. Moreover, there was the "lemniscus," or pendent
ribbon, and its supplement, the "hypo-lemniscus;" what these marks
signified the learned cannot agree in stating. It seems certain,
however, that they were not of such a decided import as the first two,
but implied some minor degree of divergence from the Hebrew, as for
instance in those passages where the translators had given an elegant
periphrasis instead of the original word, or had volunteered an
explanation which a critic would have preferred to have had in the
margin. The "asterisk" and "obelus" still continue to figure in those
scraps of Origen's work that have come down to us; so, indeed, does
the lemniscus; but since the times of St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome no
MS. seems to make much distinction between it and the "asterisk." Of
the other marks, contractions, signs, and references which the MSS. of
Hexapla show, the greater part have been added by transcribers who had
various purposes in view. Some of these marks are easy to interpret,
others continue to exercise the acumen of the keenest critics.

The Hexapla, as may be easily supposed, was a gigantic work. The labor
of writing out the whole of the {357} Old Testament six times over,
not to mention those parts which were written seven, eight, or nine
times, was prodigious. First came the Hebrew text twice over, in
Hebrew characters in the first column, in Greek in the second.
Biblical scholars sigh to think of the utter loss of Origen's Hebrew
text, and of what would now be the state of textual criticism of the
Old Testament did we possess such a Hebrew version of a date anterior
to Masoretic additions. But among the scattered relics of the Hexapla
the Hebrew fragments are at once fewest in number and most disputable
in character. The two columns of Hebrew were followed by Aquila the
stiff, and be by Symmachus, so that the Jews could read their Hebrew
and their two favorite translations side by side. Next came the
Septuagint itself, pointed, marked, and noted by the master.
Theodotion closed the array, except where portions of the three extra
translations before mentioned had to be brought in. Beside these
formidable columns, which may be called the text of the Hexapla, space
had to be found for Origen's own marginal notes, consisting of
critical observations and explanations of proper names or difficult
words, with perhaps an occasional glance at the Syriac and Samaritan.
Fifty enormous _volumina_ would hardly have contained all this, when
we take into consideration that the characters were in no tiny Italian
hand, but in great broad uncial penmanship, such as befitted the text
and the occasion. The poverty and unprovidedness of Origen would never
have been able to carry such a work through had not that very poverty
brought him the command of money and means. It is always the detached
men who accomplish the really great things of the world. Origen had
converted from some form of heresy, probably from Valentinianism, a
rich Alexandrian named Ambrose. The convert was one of those zealous
and earnest men who, without possessing great powers themselves, are
always urging on and offering to assist those who have the right and
the ability to work, but perhaps not the means or the inclination. The
adamantine Origen required no one to keep him to his work; and yet the
grateful Ambrose thought he could make no better return for the gift
of the faith than to establish himself as prompter-in-chief to the man
that had converted him. He seems to have left his master very little
peace. He put all his wealth at his service, and it would appear that
he even forced him to lodge with him. He was continually urging Origen
to explain some passage of Scripture, or to rectify some doubtful
reading. During supper he had manuscripts on the table, and the two
criticised while they ate; and the same thing went on in their walks
and recreations. He sat beside him far into the night, prayed with him
when he left his books for prayer, and after prayer went back with him
to his books again. When the master looked round in his catechetical
lectures, doubtless the indefatigable Ambrose was there, note-book in
hand, and doubtless everything pertaining to the lectures was rigidly
discussed when they found themselves together again; for Ambrose was a
deacon of the church, and as such had great interest in its external
ministration. Origen calls him his [Greek text], or _work-presser_.
and in another place he says he is one of God's work-pressers. There
is little doubt that the Hexapla is in great measure owing to Ambrose.
Origen resisted long his friend's solicitations to undertake a
revision of the text; reverence for the sacred words, and for the
tradition of the ancients, held him back; but he was at length
prevailed upon. Ambrose, indeed, did a great deal more than advise and
exhort; he put at Origen's disposal seven short-hand writers, to take
down his dictations, and seven transcribers to write out fairly what
the others had taken down. And so the gigantic work was begun. When it
was finished we cannot exactly tell, but it cannot have been till near
the end of {358} his life, and it was probably completed at Tyre, just
before he suffered for the faith. After his death, the great work,
"opus Ecclesia," as it was termed, was placed in the library of
Caesarea of Palestine. Probably no copy of it was ever taken; the
labor was too great. It was seen, or at least quoted, by many; such as
Pamphylus the Martyr, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, Didymus, St. Hilary,
St. Eusebius of Vercelli, St. Epiphanius, St. Basil, St. Gregory
Nyssen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and especially St. Jerome and
Theodoret. It perished in the sack of Caesarea by the Persians or the
Arabs, before the end of the seventh century.  [Footnote 54]

  [Footnote 54: A new edition of the fragments of the Hexapla is
  announced, at we write, by Mr. Field, of Norwich. The first
  instalment of this important work, for which there are now many more
  materials than Dom Montfaucon had at command, may be expected almost
  as we go to press. The editor's new sources are chiefly the recently
  discovered Sinaitic MSS., and the Syro-Hexaplar version, part of
  which he has lately re-translated into Greek in a very able manner,
  by way of a specimen.]

We need not say much here about the Tetrapla. Its origin appears to
have been as follows: When the Hexapla was completed, or nearly
completed, it was evident that it was too bulky to be copied. Origen,
therefore, superintended the production of an abridgment of it. He
omitted the two columns of Hebrew, the great stumbling-block to
copyists, and suppressed some of his notes. He then transcribed
Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, putting his amended version of the
Septuagint, without the marks and signs, just before the last. The two
first answered the purposes of a Hebrew text, the last was a sort of
connecting link between it and the freedom of the Septuagint; and so,
for all practical purposes, he had a version that friends might put
their trust in, and that enemies could not dispute.

Such was the work that Origen did for the Bible. It was not all done
at once, in a year, or in ten years. It was begun almost without a
distinct conception of what it would one day grow to. It progressed
gradually, in the midst of many cares and much other labor, and it was
barely completed when its architect's busy life was drawing to a
close. Every one of those twenty years at Alexandria, which we are now
dwelling upon, must have seen the work going on. The seven short-hand
writers, and the seven young maidens who copied out, were Origen's
daily attendants, as he seems to say himself. But the catechetical
school was in full vigor all this time. Indeed, the critical fixing of
the Bible text, wonderful as it was, was only the material part of his
work. He had to preach the Bible, not merely to write it out. His
preaching will take us to a new scene and to new circumstances--to
Caesarea, where the greater part of his homilies were delivered. But,
before we accompany him thither, we must take a glance at his school
at Alexandria, and try to realize how he spoke and taught. We have
already described his manner of life, and the description of his
biblical labors will have given some idea of a very important part of
his daily work; what we have now to do is to supplement this by the
picture of him as the head of the great catechetical school.

One of the most striking characteristics of the career of Origen is
the way in which his work grew upon him. It is, indeed, a feature in
the lives of all the great geniuses who have served the church and
lived in her fold, that they have achieved greatness by an apparently
unconscious following of the path of duty rather than by any brilliant
excursion under the guidance of ambition. Origen was the very opposite
of a proud philosopher or self-appointed dogmatizer. He did not come
to his task with the consciousness that he was the man of his age, and
that he was born to set right the times. We have seen his birth and
bringing up, we have seen how he found himself in the important place
that he held, and we have seen how all his success {359} seemed to
come to him whilst he was merely bent on carrying through with the
utmost industry the affair that had been placed in his hands. We have
seen that, so far was he from trying to fit the gospel to the
exigencies of a cramped philosophy,--that he was brought up and passed
part of his youth without any special acquaintance with philosophy or
philosophers. He found, however, on resuming his duties as catechist,
that if he wished to do all the good that offered itself to his hand,
he must make himself more intimate with those great minds who, erring
as he knew them to be, yet influenced so much of what was good and
noble in heathenism. At that very time, a movement, perhaps a
resurrection, was taking place in Gentile philosophy. A teacher,
brilliant as Plato himself, and with secrets to develop that Plato had
only dreamt of, was in possession of the lecture-hall of the Museum.
Ammonius Saccas had landed at Alexandria as a common porter; nothing
but uncommon energy and extraordinary talents can have given him a
position in the university and a place in history, as the teacher of
the philosophic Trinity and the real founder of Neo-Platonism. Origen,
to whom the Museum had been strange ground in his early youth, saw
himself compelled to frequent it at the age of thirty. Saccas, to be
sure, was probably a Christian of some sort. At any rate, the
Christian teacher went and heard him, and made himself acquainted with
what it was that was charming the ears of his fellow-citizens, and
furnishing ground for half of the objections and difficulties that his
catechumens and would-be converts brought to him for solution. That
the influence of these studies is seen in his writings is not to be
denied. It would be impossible for any mind but the very dullest to
touch the spirit of Plato and not to be impressed and affected. The
writings of Origen at this period include three philosophical works.
There is first the "Notes on the Philosophers," which is entirely
lost. We may suppose it to have been the common-place book wherein was
entered what he learnt from his teacher, and what he thought of the
teacher and the doctrine. Then there is the "Stromata" (a work of the
same nature as the Stromata of his master, St. Clement), whose leading
idea was the great master-idea of Clement, that Plato and Aristotle
and the rest were all partially right, but had failed to see the whole
truth, which can only be known by revelation. This work, also, is
lost--all but a fragment or two. Thirdly, there is the celebrated
work, [Greek text], or, "De Principiis." Eusebius tells us expressly
that this work was written at Alexandria. Most unfortunately, we have
this treatise not in the original, but in two rival and contradictory
Latin versions, one by St. Jerome, the other by Ruffinus. Both profess
to be faithful renderings of a Greek original, and on the decision as
to which version is the genuine translation depends in great measure
the question of Origen's orthodoxy or heterodoxy. And yet this
treatise, "De Principiis," much as it has been abused, from Marcellus
of Ancyra down to the last French author who copied out Dom Ceillier,
and waiving the discussion of certain particular opinions that we may
have yet to advert to, seems to us to bear the stamp of Origen on
every page. It is such a work as a man would have written who had come
fresh from an exposition of deep heathen philosophy, and who felt,
with feelings too deep for expression, that all the beauty and depth
of the philosophy he had heard were overmatched a thousand times by
the philosophy of Jesus Christ. It is the first specimen, in Christian
literature, of a regular scientific treatise on the _principles_ of
Christianity. Every one knows that a discussion on the principles or
sources of the world, of man, of life, was one of the commonest shapes
of controversy between the {360} schools of philosophy; and at that
very time, the great Longinus, who probably sat beside Origen in the
school of Ammonius Saccas, was writing or thinking out a treatise with
the very title of that of Origen. It was a natural idea, therefore, to
show his scholars that he could give them better _principia_ than the
heathens. The treatise takes no notice, or next to none, of heathen
philosophy and its disputes; but it travels over well-known ground,
and what is more, it provokes comparison in a very significant manner.
For instance, the words wherewith it commences are words which Plato
introduces in the "Gorgias," and to those who knew that elaborate
dialogue, the sudden and unhesitating introduction of the name of
Christ, and the calm position that he and none else is the truth, and
that in him is the science of the good and happy life, must have been
quite as striking as its author probably intended it to be. The
treatise is not in the Platonic form--the dialogue; that form, which
was suitable to the days of the Sophists and the sharp-tongued
Athenians, had been superseded at Alexandria by the ornate monologue,
more suitable to an audience of novices and wonderers. Origen adopts
this form. One God made all things, himself a pure spirit; there is a
Trinity of divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; of the
rational creatures of God, some fell irremediably, others fell not at
all; others again--that is, the race of man--fell, but not
irremediably, having a mediator in Jesus Christ, being assisted by the
good angels and persecuted by the bad; the wonderful fact that the
Word was made flesh; man's free will, eternal punishment and eternal
reward; such are the heads of the subjects treated of in the "De
Principiis." The lame and disjointed condition of the present text is
evident on a very cursory examination; it is perfectly unworthy of the
"contra Celsum." But the reader who studies the text carefully, by the
light of contemporary thought, can hardly help thinking that materials
so solid and good must have been put together in a form as
satisfactory and as conclusive. A first attempt in any science is
always more admired for its genius than criticised for its faults.
This of Origen's was a first attempt toward a scientific theology. We
say a theology, not a philosophy; for, though philosophic in form, and
accepted as philosophy by his hearers, it is wholly theological in
matter, being founded on the continual word of Holy Scripture, and not
unfrequently undertaking to refute heresy. Christianity, as we have
before observed, was looked upon by strangers as a philosophy, and its
doctors rightly allowed them to think so, and even called it so
themselves. Now the "De Principiis" was Origen's philosophy of
Christianity. It did not prove so much as draw out into system. It
answered all the questions of the day. What is God? asked the
philosophers. He is the creator of all things, and a pure spirit,
answered the Christian catechist. Is not this Trinity a wonderful
idea? said the young students to each other, after hearing Saccas.
Christianity, said Origen, teaches a Trinity far more awful and
wonderful, and far more reasonable, too--a Trinity, not of ideas, but
of persons. The new school talked of the inferior gods that ruled the
lower world, and of the demons, good and bad, who executed their
behests. The Christian philosopher explained the great fact of
creation, and laid down the true doctrine of guardian angels and
tempting devils. The constitution of man was another puzzle; the
rebellion of the passions, the nature of sin, the question of
free-will. Plotinus, who listened to Saccas at the same time as
Origen, has left us the attempts at the solution of these difficulties
that were accepted in the school of his master; the answers of Origen
may be read in the "De Principiis." The earnest among the heathen
{361} philosophers were totally in the dark as to the state of soul
and of body after death. Some were ashamed of having a body at all,
and few of them could see of what use it was, or how it could subserve
the great end of arriving at union with God. Origen dwells with marked
emphasis, and with tender lingering, on the great key of mysteries,
the incarnation, and its consequences, the resurrection of the flesh;
and shows how the body is to be kept down in this life by the rational
will, that it too may have its glory in the life to come. The whole
effort and striving of Neo-Platonism was to enable the soul to be
united with the Divinity. Origen accepted this; it was the object of
the Christian philosophy as well; but he drew into prominence two
all-important facts--first, the necessity of the grace of God;
secondly, the moral and not physical nature of the purification of the
soul; together with the Christian dogma that it was only after death
that perfect union could take place. All this must have been perfectly
fitted to the time and the occasion. And yet there are evident signs
that it was not delivered or written as a manifesto to the frequenters
of the Museum; it was evidently meant as an instruction to the upper
class of the catechetical school. Its author's first idea was that he
was a Christian teacher, and he spoke to Christians who believed the
Holy Scriptures. What his words might do for others he was not
directly concerned with, but there is no doubt that the subjects
treated of in the "De Principiis" must have been discussed over and
over again with those students and philosophers from the university
who, as Eusebius tells us, flocked to hear him in such numbers, and
also with that large class of Christians who still retained their love
of scientific learning, though believing most firmly in the faith of
Jesus Christ.

Of the matter of his ordinary catechetical instructions we need say
little, because it is evident that it would be mainly the same as it
has been under the like circumstances in all ages. Those of St. Cyril
of Jerusalem, delivered a century later, may furnish us with a good
idea of them, saving where doctrinal distinctions are discussed which
had not arisen in the time of the elder teacher. It is rather
extra-ordinary that so little trace has reached us of any formal
catechetical discourse of Origen. We are inclined to think, however,
that the "De Principiis," in its _original_ form, must have been the
summary or embodiment of his periodical instructions. But we have
numerous hints at what he taught in the several works on Holy
Scripture, some lost, some still partly extant, which he composed
during these twenty years at Alexandria. It appears that he was in the
habit of writing three different kinds of commentary on the
Scriptures; first, brief comments or notices, such as he has left in
the Hexapla; secondly, scholia, or explanations of some length; and
thirdly, regular homilies. But his homilies belong to a later period.
At Alexandria he commented St. John's Gospel (a labor that occupied
him all his life), Genesis, several of the Psalms, and the "Canticle
of Canticles," a celebrated work, yet extant in a Latin version, of
which it has been said that whereas in his other commentaries he
excelled all other interpreters, in this he excelled himself. But the
whole interesting subject of his creation of Scripture-commenting must
be treated of when we follow him to Caesarea, and listen to him
preaching.

What we desire now, to complete our idea of his Alexandrian career,
and of what we may call the inner life of his teaching, is, that some
one--a contemporary and a scholar, if possible--should describe his
method and manner, and let us know how he treated his hearers and how
they liked him. Fortunately, the very witness and document that we
want is ready to our hands. One of the most famous of Origen's
scholars was St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and the most {362} interesting
of the extant works of that father is undoubtedly the discourse and
panegyric which he pronounced upon his master, on the occasion of
bidding farewell to his school. Gregory, or, as he was then called,
Theodore, and his brother Athenodorus, were of a noble and wealthy
family of Cappadocia; that is to say, probably, descendants of Greek
colonists of the times of the Alexandrian conquests, though, no doubt,
with much Syrian blood in their veins. When Gregory was fourteen they
lost their father, and the two wealthy young orphans were left to the
care of their mother. Under her guidance they were educated according
to their birth and position, and in a few years began to study for the
profession of public speakers. As they would have plenty of money, it
mattered little what they took to; but the profession of an orator was
something like what the bar is now, and gave a man an education that
would be useful if he required it, and ornamental whether he required
it or not. The best judges pronounced that the young men would soon be
finished _rhetores_; St. Gregory tells us so, but will not say whether
he thinks their opinion right, and before proof could be made the two
youths had been persuaded by a master they were very fond of to take
up the study of Roman jurisprudence. Berytus, a city of Phoenicia,
better known to the modern world as Beyrout, had just then attained
that great eminence as a school for Roman law which it preserved for
nigh three centuries. Thither the young Cappadocians were to go. Their
master had taught them what he could, and wished either to accompany
them to the law university or to send them thither to be finished and
perfected. It does not appear, however, that they ever really got
there. Most biographies of St. Gregory say that they studied there;
what St. Gregory himself says is, that they were on their way thither,
but that, having to pass through Caesarea (of Palestine), they met
with Origen, to whom they took so great an affection that he converted
them to Christianity and kept them by him there and at Alexandria for
five years. The "Oratio Panegyrica" was delivered at Caesarea, and
after the date of Origen's twenty years as catechist at Alexandria;
but it will be readily understood that the whole spirit, and, indeed,
the whole details, of the composition are as applicable to Alexandria
as to Caesarea; for his teaching work was precisely of the same nature
at the latter city as at the former, with a trifling difference in his
position. The oration of St. Gregory is a formal and solemn effort of
rhetoric, spoken at some public meeting, perhaps in the school, in the
presence of learned men and of fellow-students, and of the master
himself. It is written very elegantly and eloquently, but it is in a
style that we should call young, did we not know that to make parade
of apophthegms and weighty sayings, to moralize rather too much, to
pursue metaphors unnecessarily, and to beat about a thing with words
so as to do everything but say it, was the characteristic of most
orators, old and young, from the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus till the
days when oratory, as a profession, expired before anarchy and the
barbarians. But its literary merits, though great, are the least of
its recommendations. Its value as a theological monument is shown by
the appeals made to it in the controversy against Arius; and in more
recent times Bishop Bull, for instance, has made great use of it in
his "Defensio Fidei Nicaenae." To us, at present, its most important
service is the light it sheds upon the teaching of Origen. We need
make no apology for making St. Gregory the type of the Alexandrian or
Caesarean scholar; they may not have been all like him, but one real
living specimen will tell us more than much abstract description.

First of all, then, the scholar was not of an emphatically philosophic
cast of mind. The Greek philosophers were absolutely unknown to him.
He was a rich and clever young {363} man, bade fair to be a good
speaker, studied the law not because he liked it, but because his
friends and his master wished it; thought the Latin language very
imperial, but _very_ difficult; and had a habit of taking up what
opinions he did adopt more after the manner of clothes that he could
change as he pleased than as immutable truths. He was of a warm and
affectionate disposition, and had a keen appreciation of physical and
moral beauty. He was not without leanings to Christianity, but he
leaned to it in an easy, off-hand sort of way, as he might have leaned
to a new school in poetry or a new style of dress. He had no idea that
there is such a thing as the absolutely right and the absolutely wrong
in ethics any more than in taste. He was confirmed in this state of
mind by the philosophic schools of the day, among whom it was
considered disreputable to change one's opinions, however good the
reasons for a change might be; which was to degrade philosophy from
truth to the mere spirit of party, and to make a philosopher not a
lover of wisdom but a volunteer of opinion. So prepared and
constituted, the scholar, on his way to Berytus, fell in with Origen,
not so much by accident as by the disposition of Providence and the
guidance of his angel guardian; so at least he thought himself. The
first process which he went through at the hands of the master is
compared by the scholar to the catching of a beast, or a bird, or a
fish, in a net. Philosophizing had small charms for the accomplished
young man; to philosophize was precisely what the master had
determined he should do. We must remember the meaning of the word
[Greek text]; it meant to think, act, and live as a man who seeks true
wisdom. All the sects acknowledge this theoretically; what Clement and
Origen wanted to show, among other things, was that only a Christian
was a true philosopher in practice. Hence the net he spread for
Theodore, a net of words, strong and not to be broken. "You are a fine
and clever young man," he seemed to say; "but to what purpose are your
accomplishments and your journeys hither and thither? you cannot
answer me the simple question, Who are you? You are going to study the
laws of Rome, but should you not first have some definite notion as to
your last end, as to what is real evil and what is real good? You are
looking forward to enjoyment from your wealth and honor from your
talents; why, so does every poor, sordid, creeping mortal on the
earth; so even do the brute beasts. Surely the divine gift of reason
was given you to help you to live to some higher end than this." The
scholar hesitated, the master insisted. The view was striking in
itself, but the teacher's personal gifts made it strike far more
effectually. "He was a mixture," says the scholar, "of geniality,
persuasiveness, and compulsion. I wanted to go away, but could not;
his words held me like a cord." The young man, unsettled as his mind
had been, yet had always at heart believed in some sort of Divine
Being. Origen completed the conquest of his intellect by showing him
that without philosophy, that is, without correct views on morality,
the worship of God, or _piety_, as it used to be called, is
impossible. And yet wisdom and eloquence might have been thrown away
here as in so many other cases had not another influence, imperious
and all-powerful, been all this time rising up in his heart. The
scholar began to love the master. It was not an ordinary love, the
love with which Origen inspired his hearers. It was an intense, almost
a fierce, love (we are almost translating the words of the original),
a fitting response to the genuineness and kindly spirit of one who
seemed to think no pains or kindness too great to win the young heart
to true morality, and thereby to the worship of the only God--"to that
saving word," says St. Gregory, in his lofty style, "which alone can
teach God-service, which to whomsoever it comes home {364} it makes a
conquest of them; and this gift God seems to have given to him, beyond
all men now in the world." To that sacred and lovely word, therefore,
and to the man who was its interpreter and its friend, sprang up in
the heart of the scholar a deep, inextinguishable love. For that the
abandoned pursuits and studies which he had hitherto considered
indispensable; for that he left the "grand" laws of Rome, and forsook
the friends he had left at home, and the friends that were then at his
side. "And the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David," quotes
the scholar, noting that the text speaks emphatically of the union of
the soul, which no earthly accidents can affect, and finding a
parallel to himself in Jonathan, to his master in David, the wise, the
holy, and the strong. And though the hour for parting had come, the
moment when these bonds of the soul should be severed would never
come!

The scholar was now completely in the hands of his teacher---"as a
land," he says, "empty, unproductive, and the reverse of fertile,
saline" (like the waste lands near the Nile), "burnt up, stony,
drifted with sand; yet not absolutely barren; nay, with qualities
which might be worth cultivating, but which had hitherto been left
without tillage or care, to be overgrown with thorn and thicket." He
can hardly make enough of this metaphor of land and cultivation to
show the nature of the work that the teacher had with his mind. We
have to read on for some time before we find out that all this
vigorous grubbing, ploughing, harrowing, and sowing represents the
dialectical training which Origen gave his pupils, such pupils, at
least, as those of whom Gregory Thaumaturgus was the type. In fact,
the dialectics of the Platonists and their off-shoots is very
inadequately represented by the modern use of the word logic. It seems
to have signified, as nearly as a short definition can express it, the
rectifying the ideas of the mind about itself, and about those things
most intimately connected with it. A modern student takes up his
manual of logic, or sits down in his class-room with his most
important ideas, either correct and settled, or else incorrect, beyond
the cure of logic. At Alexandria manuals were scarce, and the ideas of
the converts from heathenism were so utterly and fundamentally
confused, that the first lessons of the Christian teacher to an
educated Greek or Syrian necessarily took the shape of a Socratic
discussion, or a disquisition on principles. And so the scholar, not
without much amazement and ruffling of the feelings, found the field
of his mind unceremoniously cleared out, broken up, and freshly
planted. But, the process once complete, the result was worth the
inconvenience.

It was about this stage, also, that the master insisted on a special
training in natural history and mathematics. In his youth Origen had
been educated, as we have seen, by his father in the whole circle of
the sciences of the day. Such an education was possible then, though
impossible now, and the spirit of Alexandrian teaching was especially
attached to the sciences that regarded numbers, the figure of the
earth, and nature. The schools of the Greek philosophers had always
tolerated these sciences in their own precincts; nay, most of the
schools themselves had arisen from attempts made in the direction of
those very sciences, and few of them had attempted to distinguish
accurately between physics and metaphysics. Moreover, geography,
astronomy, and geometry, were the peculiar property of the Museum, for
Eratosthenes, Euclid, Ilipparchus, and Ptolemy himself, had observed
and taught within its walls. Origen, therefore, would not be likely to
undervalue those interesting sciences which he had studied with his
father, and which nine out of ten of his educated catechumens were
more or less {365} acquainted, and puzzled, or delighted, with. Happy
days when mathematics was little and chemistry in its infancy, when
astronomy lived shut up in a tower, clad in mystic vesture, and when
geology was yet in the womb of its mother earth! Enviable times, when
they all (such at least as were born) could be sufficiently attended
to and provided for in a casual paragraph of a theological
instruction, or brought into a philosophical discussion to be admired
and dismissed! Origen, however, had, as usual, a deeper motive for
bringing physics and mathematics into his system. We need not remind
the reader that, if Plato can be considered to have a weak part, that
part is where he goes into Pythagorean speculations about bodies,
numbers, and regular solids. His revivers, about the time we are
speaking of, had with the usual instinct of revivers found out his
weak part, and made the most of it, as if it had been the sublimest
evolution of his genius. We may guess what was taking place from what
afterward did take place, when even Porphyry fluctuated all his life
between pretensions to philosophy and what Saint Augustine calls
"sacrilegious curiosity," and when the whimsical triads of poor old
Proclus were powerless to stop the deluge of theurgy, incantations,
and all superstitions that finally swamped Neo-Platonism for ever.
With this view present to our minds the words of the scholar in this
place are very significant "By these two studies, geometry and
astronomy, he made us _a path toward heaven_," The three words that
Saint Gregory uses in the description of this part of the master's
teaching are worth noticing. The first is Geometry, which is taken to
mean everything that relates to the earth's surface. The second is
astronomy, which treats of the face of the heavens. The third is
physiology, which is the science of nature, or of all that comes
between heaven and earth. So that Origen's scientific teaching was
truly encyclopaedic. He was, moreover, an experimental philosopher,
and did not merely retail the theories of others. He analyzed things
and resolved them into their elements (their "very first" elements,
says the scholar); he descanted on the multiform changes and
conversions of things, partly from his own discoveries, and gave his
hearers a rational admiration for the sacredness and perfection of
nature, instead of a blind and stupid bewilderment; he "carved on
their minds geometry the unquestionable, so dear to all, and astronomy
that searches the upper air." What were the precise details of his
teachings on these subjects it would be unfair to ask, even if it were
possible to answer. We know that he thought diamonds and precious
stones were formed from dew, but this is no proof he was behind his
age; and his acquaintance with the literature of the subject proves he
was, if anything, before it. With regard to naphtha, the magnet, and
the looking-glass, it will be pleasing to know he was substantially
right. He was, perhaps, the first to make a spiritual use of the
accepted notion that the serpent was powerless against the stag; the
reason is, he says, that the stag is the type of Christ warring
against Anti-Christ. That he believed in griffins is unfortunate, but
natural in an Alexandrian, who had lived in an atmosphere d stories
brought down from the upper Nile by the ingenious sailors. As to his
"denying the existence of _the Tragelaphus_" we must remain ignorant
whether it redounds to his credit or otherwise, until modern
researches have exhausted the African continent.

TO BE CONTINUED.

------

{366}


Translated from the Revue Contemporaine.

EVE DE LA TOUR-D'ADAM.

BY G. DE LA LANDELLE.


I hate those pretentious and high-sounding Christian names which
certain upstarts inflict as a label of ridicule on their children;
but, though I should be accused of having two weights and two
measures, I should be pleased to see perpetuated in the descendants of
a noble race the most fantastic of those chosen by their ancestors. My
antipathy gives way before the religion of remembrance, before heroic
or knightly traditions. I love then even their oddity. I can pardon
even their triviality. I perceive only the old glory, the reflection
of which is preserved by these consecrated names.

Among the Roqueforts, who claim to have sprung from the Merovingians,
they have, even to our days, the names of Clodimir, Chilpérie, or
Bathilde. Since the time of the Crusades, the youngest son of the Du
Maistres is always an Amaury. The Canluries of Gonneville owe their
names of Arosca and Essomerie to the discoveries of the celebrated
navigator, their ancestor, who brought from southern lands, in 1503,
the Prince Essomerie, son of the King Arosca, whom he adopted and
married later, in Normandy, to one of his relations. There is a family
in Brittany who never part with the names of Audren, Salomon, Grallow,
or Conau. The Corréas, originally from Portugal, pride themselves on
seeing on their genealogical tree those of Caramuru and of
Paraguassus, which signify the _Man of Fire_ and _Great River_.

Chivalry, the Crusades, some semi-fabulous legend, some marvellous
chronicle, the grand adventures of a Tancred or a Bohemond, the
exploits of a Tannegry, finally, the great alliances, explain and
justify in certain families the privileged use of first names too
rare, or too commonplace, fantastic, romantic, strange, or old, to be
suitable except for them.

Now, it was thus that, in virtue of an old custom, the grand-daughter
of the Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam had received that of Eve at the
baptismal fonts of St. Sulpice.

In passing the Gorge d'Enfer, not far from the famous valley of
Roncevaux, you have perhaps remarked the ruins, still majestic, of a
tower which leans above a frightful precipice. The shepherds of the
country maintain that it was built by the fathers of the human race;
were I the most profound of archaeologists I should be very careful
not to contradict them. Who can prove that the Pyrenees did not rise
on the limits of Eden? In the fourteenth century was not all Europe
convinced that the terrestrial paradise, engulfed in the Atlantic,
rises partly above the water in the form of Saint Brandan's Isle, the
promised land of the saints, where Enoch and Elias await the last day?

In the same manner that the erudite La Tour d'Auvergne, as simple as
he was brave, has demonstrated in his "Origines Gauloises" that Adam
and Eve spoke Bas-Breton, in the same manner the Basque tongue
furnishes unexceptionable proofs of the antiquity {367} of the times
of Adam which the waters of the deluge respected.

Be this as it may, antediluvian or not, Punic or Roman, Gothic,
Saracen, or Spanish, the old tower was the cradle of an illustrious
family--illustrious on both sides of the Pyrenees. From time
immemorial the first-born was given the name of Adam or of Eve.

At the beginning of this simple history we have not the leisure to
recount how a royal Moorish prisoner, who, it is said, was called
Adam, escaped from the tower, carrying with him the heiress of the
castle. Nor can we stop from the wars in Palestine one of the warlike
ancestors of our Parisian heroine, a proud Crusader, who brought to
his domains an Oriental Eve, the beloved daughter of we know not what
Saladin.

These different traditions, which were not the only ones, made the
customs of their ancestors very dear to the family of La Tour-d'Adam;
but the young and merry companions of the grand-daughter of the last
marquis did not care to inquire into the cause of her unusual name.
They kept themselves in bounds in finding it tolerably ridiculous that
she should be called just like the ancestors of the human species.

"Really, I do not know who could have served as god-mother to our
beautiful friend," said Clarisse Dufresnois, biting her lips. "In my
days I would not consent to give so dangerous a name. When one hears
it one seems to have a too decided fancy for forbidden fruit."

"Oh! Clarisse, that is mean," murmured Leonore.

This charitable and timid observation received no response. Albertine,
Valerie, Suzanne, and several other young girls, who were chattering
together while waiting the opening of the ball, seemed by their smiles
to encourage the mocking spirit of Clarisse Dufresnois. They made a
charming group. Blondes and brunettes, red and white, adorned with
flowers and ribbons with delicate taste, they presented to the view an
adorable reunion of smiles and graces, as they said in the last
century. Youth, gaiety, freshness, beautiful black eyes, large blue
eyes, lovely figures, wilful airs, piquant countenances, enjoyment,
vivacity, delicacy--what then did they lack that the gentlemen
cavaliers should make them wait? Truly, we cannot say; but their
habitual delay contradicted the olden fame of French gallantry. These
gentlemen, without doubt, were a thousand times culpable for
Clarisse's little sarcasms.

"With the fortunate name of Eve," she continued, "should one not
always be the first to show herself?"

"If you would say, at least the first to arrive," interrupted Leonore.

"But it has a grand air to appear late; it produces a sensation; one
seats by her entrance all the most elegant dancers; one would be
watched for, desired, impatiently waited for."

"For that matter, I am sure," said Leonore quickly, "Eve thinks little
about all that; she is as simple as she is good."

"You see, girls," replied Clarisse, with equal vivacity, "that I have
said something evil of our dear Eve! Goodness! I love her with all my
heart. She is languid, cool, and sentimental; she has her little
eccentricities. Who of us has not? I said simply that she is always
the last to arrive; but, however, I do not think she is so much
occupied in varying her toilette. She is inevitably crowned with
artificial jasmine."

"Nothing becomes her better," said Leonore. "Beside, Eve is
sufficiently pretty to be charming in anything."

"Doubtless," replied Clarisse, a little piqued; "only I ask, how can
you tell what becomes her best when she has never worn anything else
for at least four years."

"Four!" cried nearly all the girls. "Four years! Why, that is an age!"

"Four years of jasmine!" said Valerie; "what constancy!"

{368}

"Bouquet, garland, crown, and I don't know what else," continued
Clarisse, "Eve always has jasmine in some shape."

"For me," said Suzanne, "I would not, for anything on earth, show
myself three times in succession with a branch or wreath of jasmine."

The word jasmine, repeated four or five times, made a young girl
tremble as she entered, and, not knowing any of the young ladies, seat
herself at a distance; but, as if drawn by the word which affected her
so singularly, Louise de Mirefont took her place nearest to Clarisse.

Louise was nineteen; she did not yield in natural grace to Suzanne nor
to Valerie; her color was equal in freshness to the charming
Albertine's; Lucienne had not such brilliant black hair, Leonore an
expression of gentleness not more sympathetic. A timidity acquired,
perhaps, by a sudden trouble veiled the looks of the new rival who now
disputed with all the palm of beauty; a lively carnation spread itself
over her features, which had a faultless purity. With her blushes and
her embarrassment was mingled a vague sentiment of sadness; but what
physiognomist would have been sufficiently skilful to explain the
impression which affected her?

Of all the merry young girls collected at the ball, Louise was the
simplest attired. She was beautiful enough to carry off any costume; a
simple white dress, a light, rose-colored ribbon around her waist,
that was all. All her companions had either flowers or pearls in their
hair; she alone had no other coiffure than her waving curls, which
rolled round her white shoulders. Each young girl had some rarity in
her toilette. Clarisse, for example, had admirable bracelets and
ear-rings, Lucienne, had a valuable cameo, Suzanne was distinguished
by a spencer of an original pattern, even Leonore by knots of ribbons
of exquisite taste, Albertine by bands of coral interwoven in the
tresses of her fair hair.

No borrowed ornament could have increased the value of Louise's
charms, whom if one could not without hesitation discern as the prize
of the concourse, at least as the most faithful lover of the Greek
type the model of which she presented in her classic perfection.

At the moment she approached, Leonore had said, indulgently: "Four
years! four winters!--without doubt Clarisse exaggerates."

"No, Miss Leonore, I do not exaggerate; I repeat that for four years
Eve has worn only jasmine."

Clarisse alone could call up the memories of four years; she was the
oldest of all her friends. Some of these had been only a few months
out of the convent, others had made their entrance into society only
the winter preceding. She was not even of the same age as Eve, who had
come out much earlier than any of them.

Clarisse had just passed the age of twenty-five. Having dreamed of six
or seven superb marriages, she had the grief of aspiring to a seventh
dream, and this was why her indulgence, at all times mediocre enough,
went decreasing in hope as hope deceived, or in inverse ratio to the
square of her age, to help ourselves for once, by chance, by the
algebraic style. Clarisse could have said, but she did not, that she
had seen Eve de La Tour-d'Adam, crowned with roses, the first time she
appeared at the house of the Comtesse de Peyrolles.

Four or five springs, at most, made a second crown of roses for the
brow of that maiden, who conducted an old septuagenary whose ideas and
decorations recounted the exploits of a generation almost extinct. Eve
advanced on the arm of the Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam, who had not been
seen for several years. Man of the world as he had been in his youth,
and was no longer, the marquis reserved to himself to introduce her
into society. {369} Eve was very young, but the weight of years was
heavy on the old man. The hour was advanced because he wished it so.

Their entrance made a great sensation; Clarisse remembered that it
made too much.

Fair, delicately pale, frail and slender as a wasp, the only and last
heiress of the Lords de La Tour-d'Adam, Eve, the child yet unknown,
attracted all eyes. Give life to one of those aerial vignettes to
which the English sculptors deny nothing, unless it is a soul; render
motion to those images of the saints which the simple and pious
workmen sculpture and _animate_ in some sort with their faith, for the
front of our temples; spread an expression of angelic sweetness and
infinite tenderness over the countenance of a virgin purer than the
azure of the sky; around this creation of your least profane thought
let there reign an atmosphere of generous sympathies, that hearts may
be touched, that souls may he captive, that men and women shall be
equally attracted by this undefined sentiment, commonly called of
interest, that this interest shall extend to every harmonious gesture,
to every movement, to every word of the fair young girl; take into
account the veneration inspired by the presence of the old gentleman,
her grandfather--and you will understand at once what was Eve, and the
effect of her first appearance at Madame de Peyrolles'.

Four years had passed since then. Eve now had entered her nineteenth
year. Had she grown old in one day, had she grown young again, or some
slow suffering, unknown phenomenon, some mysterious illness, was it,
that, without wasting the young girl, abruptly arrested her
development, up to that time so precocious? But, such as she was seen
at Madame de Peyrolles' four winters before, as such Eve reappeared in
the same drawing-room; only Clarisse Dufresnois had said enough about
it--the crown of roses was replaced by a branch of jasmine entwined in
her golden hair.

And, indeed, a branch of jasmine was placed on the front of the girl's
dress, when dressed for the ball, and, accompanied by Madame du
Castellet, her governess, she presented herself to her grandfather,
who awaited her in the west parlor of the mansion of La Tour-d'Adam
and welcomed her with a tender smile.

Eve came forward raising to him her sweet blue eyes, and, in melodious
accents:

"My father," she said, "I have obeyed you; you see I am ready; but why
will you oblige me to leave you again alone for all one long evening?'

"Child, I shall not be alone; I shall think that my Eve is amusing
herself, I shall see her as if I were there! Youth should have
innocent distractions. Oh! thou hast nobly loved me with all thy
heart, but the society of an old man like me does not suffice at thy
age."

"God knows I would renounce this ball with happiness, in order to give
you your evening reading."

"I do not doubt it, my child; but you have promised me that you will
go; go then, amuse yourself with your companions; dance, frolic,
receive the homage which is your due. I am not a miser who hides his
treasure, I wish that my diamond should shine for all eyes; your
triumphs are mine, and your gaiety is the joy of my life."

"My father, I am never gay except by your side."

The old man smiled, not without a little incredulity, but the young
girl's clear eyes were fixed on him with a touching expression of
veneration and filial love. Eve repeated with affecting candor that
the watch by her grandfather's side was to her a thousand times
preferable to the noisy pleasures of the world; she grew animated,
and, drawing yet nearer, she said:

{370}

"When I have passed the evening with you, I return joyously to my
room, my heart full of noble thoughts. Often you have recounted to us
some incidents of your life, and I am proud of being your child; I
wish for power to imitate your generous example; finally, I find an
inexpressible charm in your recollections and in your narratives. If
you have spoken to me of my father and my mother, whom I have never
known, I am still happy; my melancholy is sweet; I represent to myself
as my guardian angels those whom your words make me love more every
day."

The Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam felt himself touched; the young girl's
governess had seated herself. Eve added in a less firm tone:

"On the contrary, when I return from a ball, I feel an indefinable
sentiment of void and weariness; I do not know what it is that I want,
I am sad, discontented with myself."

"Childishness!" interrupted the old gentleman. "Off with us! A little
thoughtlessness and folly, I insist upon it! One is discontented with
oneself only when one has failed in some duty; you are good,
submissive, pious, charitable."

Eve blushed slightly, and while her grandfather was continuing his
eulogy she prepared him a cup of tea, drew the stool near, arranged
the cushion on which he rested his head, then, going to the piano, she
played an old battle air of which he was very fond.

Meanwhile the marquis addressed the governess.

"My cousin," he said (Madame du Castellet was a distant relative of
the Tour-d'Adams), "combat these tendencies, I implore you; pleasures
and distractions, they are the remedy! I do not understand why this
ball should sadden our darling Eve, why meeting her friends and her
partners should make her melancholy. Eve does not know how to be
untruthful, she hides nothing from us; but she is ignorant herself why
she suffers. Discover this secret, I implore you, that she may be
happy."

"Eve's happiness is my only desire," replied the governess. "You know
that I love her as my own daughter. I never contradict her; indeed,
she never desires anything that is not praiseworthy. She plans to do
good with an admirable perseverance and delicacy."

The old marquis at this moment recognized the martial air which Eve
was playing for him; he was deeply affected:

"She forgets nothing," he murmured.

Then noticing the flowers the young girl wore:

"Always jasmine," he said to the governess.

"She forgets nothing," said Madame du Castellet, in her turn.

"It is then impossible to overcome the pride of those unfortunate
Mirefonts?" replied the marquis.

"My nephew, Gaston, cannot get anything accepted," respondent the
governess; "but we will save them in spite of themselves."

"Heaven preserve me," said the marquis immediately, "from blaming
their susceptibility; unfortunately, the secret means which Eve has so
long employed scarcely suffice; it is necessary to do more."

"Gaston will aid us, I imagine," replied the governess in a low voice;
"but hush! my pupil will not pardon me if I betray her secrets."

Eve returned from the piano; the marquis and the governess exchanged a
glance of prudent intelligence.

"Off with us, young lady, to the ball, to the ball, the carriage is
waiting!" said the old gentleman gaily, kissing the young girl's
forehead.

Madame du Castellet dragged off Eve; the marquis, left alone, thought
tenderly of his dear grandchild, the bouquet of jasmine, the
unfortunate Mirefont family, of all that Eve had said or done with her
habitual grace, while the military march she had played still
resounded in his heart.

{371}

"The noble child!"  he murmured; "they counselled me to be severe; how
could I be? I have been indulgent; I have repressed nothing, spoiled
nothing; her generous nature has freely developed itself; she has made
herself blessed even by those who do not know her. Happy, yes, happy,
will he be who shall be her husband."

The few words exchanged between the marquis and Eve's governess have
shown us that for some time, at least, the secret of one of the young
girl's good actions had been revealed to her grandfather. The old
gentleman would have thought little enough of the coiffures chosen by
Eve, or of her taste for such or such a flower; but Madame du
Castellet had been much surprised one day by her pupil's predilection
for bouquets and wreaths of jasmine. Questions followed each other;
Eve evaded them for a long time; the governess insisted. She blamed
the girl's extravagance, which did not cease to expend considerable
sums for the same flowers.

"I wish to know if this caprice has anything reasonable in it?" she
said finally, with firmness, even at the risk of displeasing the young
heiress.

Eve blushed; then in a suppliant tone--

"Be at least discreet," she said. "It is the matter of an honorable
family suddenly fallen into extreme poverty, whose only resource is
the sale of jasmine. People do not buy it, so it is that I buy so
much."

"But still," said Madame du Castellet, "without doubt you know the
name of the family."

"No, cousin. Fearing to wound worthy people, I have not asked it. Only
my artificial-flower seller told me that this jasmine was the work of
the only child of a poor knight of St. Louis, completely ruined by the
last revolution, and struck with incurable infirmities. His wife can
only take care of him and wait on him. I was much affected by the
story, and above all by the courage shown by this young girl, who
obtained a living for her father and mother by her work. I promised
often to buy jasmine on condition that my name should never be
mentioned; do not be surprised, cousin, that I keep my promise."

Madame du Castellet embraced Eve with fervor. But soon going to the
source, she knew that the family suffering from so many misfortunes
was that of the Mirefonts. The marquis was instructed. Various offers
of assistance were made, but proudly refused.

Eve continued to adorn herself with jasmine and to make liberal
presents of it to all her friends, which Clarisse Dufresnois
pleasantly laughed at.

"Do you love jasmine?" she said, smiling. "Apply to Eve. For a
lottery, a vase or a crown of jasmine; for a present, jasmine; for a
head-dress, jasmine. Madeline, who has penetrated into the delicious
boudoir of Mademoiselle de La Tour-d'Adam, saw only jasmine on every
side. Has she not given some to you also?"

"Eve has given me a charming bunch," said Leonore. "It was a
master-piece of its kind; a flower was never more perfectly imitated."
Nobody listened to Leonore.

"Jasmine is, then, Eve's adoration?" said Albertine.

"Perhaps," suggested Suzanne, "it is the emblem of a deep sentiment,
some memory."

"In any case, it is a passion, a mania."

"I do not know what to imagine," said Leonore; "but I would rather
believe it a work of charity."

"You hear Leonore, young ladies," cried Clarisse; "would it still be
wicked to find this abuse of jasmine monotonous?"

Louise de Mirefont had started several times, for she was the unknown
artist whose filial devotion created the bouquets and wreaths which
Eve had not ceased to buy.

For the second time in her life Louise penetrated into the
drawing-room of the Countess de Peyrolles, where she had been
presented the {372} preceding winter by Mlle. de Rouvray, an old
friend of her mother, and companion to the Countess. At the reiterated
requests of Mlle. de Rouvray, Louise's parents consented that their
daughter should go among the society in which her birth and education
called her to live, had not her entire want of fortune kept her away.

At the time of that single party, which occupied a large place in the
young girl's memory, she had remarked one of her masterpieces over the
brow of Eve de La Tour-d'Adam. She had blushed, not without an
innocent joy.

How different was her feeling now! Every mocking shaft of Clarisse
wounded her, the smiles of the other girls put her to torture; and
when Leonore, in her indulgent observations, which had consoled her a
little, innocently pronounced the word charity, she grew pale and felt
humbled. Pride brought to her eyes two tears, which vexation dried on
her eyelashes.

"Mlle. de La Tour-d'Adam has done me an act of charity," she thought
with a sort of wrath. "We have a disguised alms, and M. Gaston du
Castellet has failed in all his promises."

Such were, we are obliged to avow it, Louise de Mirefont's first
thoughts; pride rendered her unjust and ungrateful. Alas! as we have
been told many times, first thoughts in our weak nature are not always
the best. An angry suspicion, moreover, augmented the girl's
indignation.

The nephew of Eve's governess, Gaston du Castellet, introduced into
the family of Mirefont by Mlle. de Rouvray, had he, in an excess of
zeal, revealed the secret of a distress courageously concealed for
more than four years? Gaston was, himself, in a position of fortune
more than mediocre, he lived honorably, but in a very modest office.
He had been received with a noble simplicity; his tact, his delicacy,
rendered him worthy of such a reception, and he had also conquered the
good graces of M. and Mme, de Mirefont.

Louise, during her long is hours of work, often surprised herself
thinking of the amiable qualities, the distinction, the benevolence,
of Gaston du Castellet. While with a light hand she cut out or
adjusted the green leaves or white flowers on their stem, she could
not forbid herself to dream of the prudent attentions which Gaston
showed her. Together with her fairy fingers, her imagination, or
rather her heart, built a frail edifice of green leaves, hope, and
white flowers, like the innocence of her love. A word, a glance, a
smile of Gaston's, some mark of solicitude for her venerable parents,
a generous word pronounced with feeling, received with eagerness,
plunged her in long and sweet reveries. Her floral task was generally
finished before her dream.

"He wished to associate his efforts with mine to comfort my parents'
old age! With what eagerness he assisted my mother!" thought Louise,
trembling with emotion. "'Why can I not always replace you thus?' said
he. 'My presence will permit you to continue your pious work.' I
succeeded in finishing that evening the crown of jasmine for which my
employer waited so impatiently. And on Sunday, what could be greater
than Gaston's sincere goodness toward my father while my mother and I
had gone to pray for him? When we returned our prayers seemed to have
been heard: he suffered less, and attributed the amelioration of his
state to Gaston's cares, cordial gaiety, and conversation. Heavens!
what were they talking of in our absence?"

And Louise's mind lost itself in sweet and charming suppositions. Add
to this, that a year before Gaston had met Louise at a ball at Madame
de Peyrolles'; he had noticed her there; and a few days afterward was
presented to her parents by their old friend Mlle. de Rouvray. Gaston
was the only young man admitted to their intimacy. Six months had not
rolled away before he occupied a room in the same house with Louise.

{373}

Louise believed herself loved, and did not fear to speak without
disguise of the extreme trouble of her family. The young man had
already ventured various offers of assistance, he returned to the
charge; H. and Mme. de Mirefont constantly with a grateful dignity
refused them. Louise, whose delicious work was selling better and
better, positively forbade him to attempt any officious proceeding.
Gaston promised to make none, and very sincerely kept his word.

"But Gaston was the nephew of Eve de La Tour-d'Adam's governess. As
Clarisse Dufresnois said, Eve bought jasmine with devotion; according
to Leonore, it was without doubt from charity she did so. Well, then I
had Gaston broken his promise? his direct offers being refused, had he
employed indirect means? might he not be, finally, Eve de La
Tour-d'Adam's agent, her associate, her agent in good works?"

Louise loved Gaston. And you will pardon her injustice, her
ingratitude, her jealousy; for her second thought was a burst of
repentance; she reproached herself for her pride, she was ashamed of
herself for doubting Gaston, and, more than all, for being ungrateful
to her benefactress.

Eve entered; she entered crowned with jasmine.

A tear--but this was a tear of gratitude--bathed Louise's eyelashes,
and slowly descended down her burning cheeks. Her heart was already
refreshed. She no longer heard Clarisse's whispers, she did not see
the mocking smiles of Valerie, Albertine, and their companions; she
did not even perceive that several young men were coming toward her,
and asking her hand for a contra-dance; Eve had entered--she saw only
Eve.

"Oh! she is an angel! she murmured rapturously.

"You say truly, Miss Louise, she is an angel!" replied Gaston, taking
her hand.

Louise raised her head, dried her eyes, and permitted herself to be
carried off by her attentive cavalier, who had observed all, heard
all, and understood all, from the moment she had taken her place in
the circle of girls.

Eve, conducted by her partner, passed near them, and turning:

"Gaston," she said in a tone of affectionate familiarity, "will you be
our _vis-â-vis?_"

The young girls found themselves in each other's presence, their looks
met; Louise's ardent gratitude suddenly aroused Eva de La
Tour-d'Adam's sympathy.

"What a charming young girl! Do you know her, sir?"

"No, Miss Eve," answered Eve's partner, and his reply was not finished
without the compliment called forth by a natural term of comparison,
but the triumphant gentleman expended his eloquence for nothing.

"Does she know me?" said Louise to Gaston; "how she looks at me!"

"Eve does not know who you are; she will doubtless ask me your name;
well, in telling it, I shall not relate any of your family secrets."

"Oh! so much the better!" exclaimed Louise.

"Just now you were blushing and turning pale, I heard, I noticed--"

Louise lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

"You were wrong," continued Gaston. "The only indiscretion committed
has been by your employer, the flower-merchant. Eve is interested in
you, she loves you without knowing your name. Her sincere solicitude
goes back already for four years; it is only one, Louise, since I had
the happiness of first seeing you. It was here. The next day Mlle, de
Rouvray received a visit from me, and a few days afterward your
parents kindly admitted me to their house."

An expression of happiness lighted Louise's delicate features.

"Then, just now," she said after a moment's interruption, "you divined
my thoughts?"

{374}

"I heard Miss Clarisse Dufresnois. I suffered as you suffered. I
hastened to justify myself to you."

"Oh, Gaston, how much better is your beautiful cousin than I!"

They now passed in the contra-dance; Eve's hand was not slow in taking
Louise's; the two girls shivered at once.

Eve must have seemed singularly absent to her partner; she did not
cease to watch Louise and Gaston, she was troubled, and was conscious
of a strange uneasiness.

"Why this extreme emotion?" she asked herself; "oh! how my heart
beats! I tremble, I suffer, my eyes are growing dim! What is the
matter with me? Who is this young girl, and what is Gaston saying to
her? They pronounced my name, I believe!"

Gaston was talking enthusiastically to Louise.

"Eve is not of this earth!" he said. "She is a celestial being whom I
feel myself disposed to invoke on my knees; the respect with which she
inspires me prevents me from seeing even her beauty. I venerate her,
but you, Louise, you I love!"

Louise started.

"Oh! do not be vexed by this avowal; I am permitted to make it. During
your absence, on Sunday, M. de Mirefont yielded to my request. My
happiness, Louise, depends on you alone."

The young girl did not succeed in dissembling her joy, her smiles
crowned Gaston's wishes; he continued in a softened voice:

"Oh! it was not without trouble that I triumphed, dear Louise. For a
long time your father rejected me on account of his deplorable
position; he would not consent, he said, that I should bind my future
to the sad destinies of his family. I spoke of my love, he replied by
reciting his misfortunes. Permit, I said to him, a son to diminish by
his zeal your Louise's task. Would you repulse me if fortune favored
you? or do you find me unworthy to share your lot? Her filial virtues
even more than her charms have captivated me. If she were destined to
opulence like Mlle, de La Tour-d'Adam, for example, I should be insane
to dare to aspire to her hand. But your Louise is the companion
necessary for a poor, hard-working man like me. She is courageous and
devoted. I came to supplicate you to accept my devotion and my
courage. Finally, overcome by my insistance, he held out his hand to
me; I bathed it with my tears; then, opening his arms: 'Louise shall
pronounce,' he said. With what impatience I waited for you that
evening! Your mother by this time should be aware of my application,
and to-morrow, if you consent, it shall not be simply as a friend, but
as your _fiancé_ that I shall enter under your parent's roof."

"Gaston--my _fiancé_," murmured Louise. "O God! I am too happy."

Eve also was near succumbing under a strange emotion; but by a supreme
effort she succeeded in conquering it; but she was so pale she might
have been taken for an alabaster statue. She was faint when she seated
herself at some distance behind Mme. du Castellet and Mlle. Rouvray,
who, retired to one side apart, were talking in a low voice but with
animation.

Gaston's aunt and the countesses companion, drawn together by the
similarity of their positions, made part of that commendable variety
of aristocracy which we are permitted to call the poor of the great
world. Resigned, free from envy, devoted, body and soul, to the
families in which even their office increased the consideration and
the regard which they merited, such persons are always justly
respected. Their presence honors the houses which welcome them. They
lived in the highest sphere with an admirable abnegation; the firmness
of their principles equalled the amiability of their character: they
had espoused the interests which exclusively occupied them, and were
slaves to their duties.

{375}

Eve, still trembling, continued to watch Gaston and Louise, at the
same time that, as if her nervous excitement had given her the faculty
of hearing the feeblest sounds, she did not lose a word of the
conversation of the two old friends.

"You cannot believe how much this marriage contents me," said Madame
du Castellet, "I have always been afraid that my nephew was taken with
Eve. Eve is so beautiful, so tender, so generous: one cannot know her
without loving her. Gaston already loved her like a brother; they saw
each other continually in spite of all my skill. I did well, the old
marquis did not even suspect the danger. It would have been imprudent
to have hinted the possibility; I have lived on thorns for three or
four years. Eve and Gaston have known each other from childhood; a
formidable friendliness reigned between them; Eve was full of sisterly
attentions; I trembled for my poor nephew."

"It is certain that Mlle. de La Tour-d'Adam, with her name and her
immense fortune, can only make a grand marriage," said Mlle, de
Rouvray. "We can doubly felicitate ourselves on the success of our
effort. The old Chevalier de Mirefont was ten years younger this
evening, when he announced to me the regular request made by Gaston."

"It is scarcely any time since I said to the marquis how much I relied
on my nephew, but I did not know it was so advanced."

"It is a settled thing," said Mlle. de Rouvray, smiling, for Gaston
and Louise had been constantly observed by the two old friends.

"My nephew will soon be advanced," said Madame du Castellet, "he will
not lack a future, and moreover, he will not refuse the advantages of
which our good cousin will assure him by marriage contract. The
Mirefont family will soon find themselves in ease."

"Louise is worthy of this good fortune," said Mademoiselle de Rouvray.

"When I shall be permitted to tell Eve that her cousin is to marry her
interesting _protégé_, oh! I am sure she will be transported with
joy."

Eve, at these words, thoroughly understood. Detaching from her
headdress a little branch of flowers, she contemplated it a moment.
Then she regarded Louise and Gaston, seated by each other, wrapped in
their happiness, oblivious of the world around them.

"How happy they are!" she thought

The ball was very animated, Albertine, Valerie, and Lucienne had
abandoned themselves to the gaiety of their age, but Clarisse, who
observed with secret envy sometimes Gaston and Louise, sometimes Eve,
pensive, refusing ten invitations,--Clarisse cried out all at once:

"Mademoiselle de La Tour-d'Adam is ill."

The musicians stopped playing. Gaston rushed to his cousin. Louise was
the first to take in hers Eve's ice-cold hands; she could not refrain
from pressing them to her lips.

Eve soon opened her eyes, saw Louise on her knees, Gaston at her side,
smiled on them with angelic sweetness, and addressing herself to the
young girl:

"You do not know me," she said, "but I wish you to be my friend. You
will come to see me, will you not?"

The little branch of jasmine which Eve had taken from her own forehead
remained in Louise's hands. Madame du Castellet, aided by her nephew,
carried away Eve de la Tour-d'Adam.

A few minutes after Louise was conducted home.

Clarisse Dufresnois did not fail to attribute Eve's fainting to the
desire of appearing interesting; this was at least the version which
she gave to the young ladies Suzanne, Valerie, Lucienne, and
Albertine, but the supposition which she expressed to the Vicomte de
la Perlière, the object of her seventh matrimonial dream, was less
inoffensive.

{376}

"Mademoiselle de La Tour-d'Adam," said she, "was taken ill of jealousy
and vexation, on remarking her cousin's attention to Mlle, de
Rouvray's _protégé_."

She enlarged on this theme with so much wit, that the Vicomte de la
Perlière, a man of sense who did not lack heart, forgot at the end of
the winter to propose to her. The autumn following he asked and
obtained Leonore's hand, which did not prevent Clarisse from being
more witty than ever.



II.

Eve passed a frightful night, a prey to the delirium of fever; the
doctors, forced to reassure the old marquis and the governess, did not
conceal from Gaston that his cousin's case presented very alarming
symptoms. Gaston was uneasy, Louise shared his fears, but their
betrothal took place notwithstanding; the promise already made by M.
de Mirefont was confirmed in the family, but on account of Eve's
illness Madame du Castellet's absence was excused.

In the Castle de La Tour-d'Adam reigned a profound sadness.

Eve had recovered her ordinary calm and serenity, but her weakness and
pallor were extreme; the old marquis was conducted to her room.

"Eve, my dear child, when I think of all you said to me before going
to the ball, I reproach myself bitterly for having forced you to go."

"Do not regret it, grandfather, for I am delighted to have seen the
young girl who is going to marry my cousin Gaston. I wish her to be my
best friend."

"My child," said the marquis again, "is anything lacking that you
wish? Have confidence in me."

"What can I lack? you refuse me nothing."

"Doubtless, and for all," suggested the old man, with a real timidity,
"you fear to unveil for me the state of your heart! I hesitate to say
what I think, my dear daughter, but if you have a secret
inclination--"

Eve shuddered, and lowered her large eyes.

"Know well, at least, that I shall never be an obstacle to your
happiness; my Eve would not know how to make an unworthy choice."

The young girl bent her head and remained silent. Mme. du Castellet
observed her sadly.

"Eve," said she, "you answer nothing?"

"What can I answer?" murmured the heiress, "I ask myself," she said
with feeling. "My good father," she said again, "words are wanting to
express to you my gratitude and my tenderness."

"Then from what does she suffer?" the marquis asked himself in
despair.

As a flower scorched by the sun, Eve languished; the fever
disappeared, but her strength did not return. Her only pleasure was to
put on, one after another, the freshest of her jasmine wreaths.

The doctors understood nothing of her illness; the most skilful of all
interrogated the governess.

"I fear that this young girl is struck by a moral hurt; love, when it
is opposed, sometimes presents analogous symptoms."

"We have been beforehand with your question, doctor; Eve knows that
her choice would be approved; she made no response."

"Has she pronounced any name in her delirium?"

"None; she spoke only of the good works which constantly occupied
her."

Madame du Castellet had found that Eve knew the whole history of
Louise's filial devotion.

"Madame," replied the physician, "I persist in believing that Mlle, de
La Tour-d'Adam conceals her secret from you. A false shame, without
doubt, restrains her; send for her confessor, and have him, if
possible, oblige her to tell you the truth."

When the doctor had gone, Madame du Castellet burst into tears. Eve
was given up by science, because they {377} absolutely would have it
that her illness had a mysterious origin.

The confessor was called, although the governess hoped nothing from
his intervention. An emotion of profound piety was painted on the
features of the man of God when he came out of the invalid's chamber,
but Eve, calm and with pious recollection, was praying with her eyes
raised to heaven. The young girl made no confidence to Mme. du
Castellet, only several hours later--

"Cousin," she said, "Mlle. Louise de Mirefont and Gaston are slow in
coming to see me."

It was not the first time that Eve had expressed the same desire; the
governess ordered the carriage in order to go for Mlle. de Mirefont.

"Louise, generous Louise," murmured Eve, "I would that my soul could
be blended with yours!"

Her heart beat violently as she thought of Gaston's happiness; Eve did
not account to herself for her poignant emotion, but she prayed that
God would permit her to live for her noble grandfather.

"My loss would be too cruel for him," she murmured, weeping.

Then she interrogated herself with a simple severity:

"Would I then be culpable for not speaking of that of which I am
myself ignorant?"

Her conscience responded by a firm resolution not to carry trouble to
the hearts of all those who cherished her. "My duty, I feel, is to
rejoice at the happiness of Gaston and of Louise. Do I deceive myself?
My God! enlighten me, guide me!"

Eve was kneeling; the Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam, assisted by his
valet, entered, and in a reproachful tone--

"Why do you fatigue yourself thus?" said he; "Eve, I implore thee, be
careful of thy strength, if only out of pity for me."

Eve arose with difficulty.

"Forgive me," she said with a sweet smile, "I will not kneel again
until I am cured."

Then she sat by her grandfather's side. The marquis, frightened at her
mortal pallor, contemplated her with anguish.

"I saw her father perish in the flower of his age," he thought; "her
mother a few months after died in giving her life; she was an orphan
from her cradle. All my affections are concentrated in her; she has
never given me occasion for the least pain. Alas! I suffer to-day for
all the happiness she has given me."

"Do not distress yourself, my father," said Eve, who surprised a tear
in the old man's dry eyes; "I have asked of God to let me remain to
console the rest of your days; my prayer has been heard, it will be
granted. Oh, for pity, do not cry more."

The marquis took her hand and pressed it against his heart.

"My father," said Eve after several moments of silence, "our cousin
has gone for Gaston and his _fiancée_; my father, I have a request to
make of you."

"Tell it, tell it," said the old man ardently.

Eve bent, and said in a trembling voice:

"They are both of them generous and devoted; both of them have
suffered much: make them rich, I implore you, lest your wealth should
pass into avaricious hands."

"Oh! my God! you expect, then, to die! Eve, my darling daughter, is
this your secret?"

"No! I do not wish to die! no! I wish to live for you!"

"But I am old, very old!" the marquis replied, with hesitation,
"and--after me--"

"After you whom shall I love?" said Eve in a melodious voice. "Father,
I implore you, make Gaston and Louise's future sure, and you will have
crowned all my wishes."

Eve had scarcely finished when Mme. du Castellet entered; Louise and
Gaston followed her. The two lovers succeeded in wiping away their
tears, but their emotion was {378} redoubled when they saw themselves
between the young girl and her grandfather.

"Come to me," said Eve, "come, Louise! Do you not know that I loved
you before I knew you? See, all that surrounds me is your work. What
would I not give to have made, like you, one of these bouquets of
jasmine!

"Mademoiselle," murmured Louise, "I have known you and have loved you
only for a few days; but my gratitude and my affection for you are
boundless."

"Place them on Gaston: he is dear to me as a brother; and you, Louise,
call me henceforth your sister."

She held her one hand, with the other she drew Gaston forward; then,
addressing the marquis:

"Father," she said, "see them before you; bless them, I pray you."

The old gentleman, weeping, extended his hands, then with a voice
choked with sobs:

"Eve, my beloved child! Eve, thou wishest then to die?"

The young girl blushed slightly, a ray of sunlight which played
through the curtains crowned her with a luminous halo; she had risen,
her ethereal figure mingled with the white flowers which adorned her
room.

Gaston said in a low voice to Louise:

"You see plainly, my friend, that she is not of the earth."

They bent reverently; but Eve extended her arms: Louise found herself
pressed against her heart.

The marquis, seeing Eve so radiant, renewed his hope:

"She is saved!" he said to Madame du Castellet. "The presence of these
young lovers has done her good. Have them come often, I pray you. But
I should leave them together. Adieu, my children, adieu!"

He was carried back to the great hall. However, the governess
trembled; she saw at last the fatal truth. The heiress's great blue
eyes were fixed on hers; the old lady's trouble increased. Eve put her
finger on her lips, and drawing her to one side:

"Why are you still distressed, my good cousin," she said to her; "do
you not see how happy I am in their happiness?"

Gaston's aunt retired heart-broken, doubtful of her suppositions, not
daring to hope for the young girl's recovery.

Eve was seated between the two lovers:

"I demand a part in your joy, my friends, and I wish that my memory
may always live with you."

Then she recounted with simplicity the history of her four last years.
The praises which she gave to Louise's filial piety penetrated the
hearts of the two betrothed, who wished to prostrate themselves before
her, her words had so much purity, sweetness, and unction. Louise
reproached herself, as if it were a sacrilege, for the thought of
pride which she had felt at the ball. Gaston was under an indefinable
impression of tenderness and of gratitude. Eve addressed him with
noble and tender encouragement. Eve, with a pious ardor, made wishes
for the felicity of their union; finally, when they were retiring she
divided between them a branch of jasmine.

"Preserve this," she said, "in memory of me."

The sacrifice was accomplished. When they had gone, Eve sighed,
prayed, and felt herself weaker. She had expended in this interview
the little strength which remained to her.

A despairing cry soon resounded through the house where the young
girl's inexhaustible goodness had won all hearts.

"Mademoiselle is dying! Mademoiselle is going to die!"

The Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam, fulfilling his promise, went to add a
disposition to his will, in case the heiress should not attain her
majority. The pen fell from his hand, the chill of death ran through
his veins:

{379}

"Eve! Eve! who will take me to her?"

But Eve entered the room, for she, on her side, had prayed the
governess to have her conducted there.

The old man saw on her features the certain mark of death, and death
struck him. He murmured for the last time the name of Eve, then fell
back, cold, in his arm-chair.

However, Eve lived an entire day after her grandfather.

Her agony was slow and gentle. She asked for jasmine, her couch was
covered with white flowers, bathed in her tears whose filial love had
made them.

"May Louise be your daughter," said Eve to Madame du Castellet "Louise
will replace me with you."

Then, addressing Louise:

"My sister, make your husband happy. Love the poor and pray with them
for my parents, my grandfather, and myself. God be praised," she
murmured finally, "my father's father has preceded me, I go to join
him. Adieu, Gaston! my brother, adieu!"

Her voice failed, her heart ceased to beat, heaven counted one angel
more.

Madame du Castellet, Gaston, and Louise passed the night in prayers by
the two beds of death. Finally, the same hearse conducted to the same
tomb Adam, Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam, last of the name, and his
grandchild Eve, the last branch of an illustrious stock.

A sword which had never been drawn except in a just and holy cause
decorated the aged man's coffin, but that of the child cut down at the
threshold of life was covered with the white flowers which she had so
piously loved.

To-day the mansion of the Tour-d'Adams is inhabited by M. and Mme. de
Mirefont, Mme. du Castellet, her nephew Gaston, and her niece, Louise.

A room hung with crowns and wreaths of artificial jasmine serves as
the family oratory.

No one ever penetrates there except with recollection.

The servants call it the saints' chamber.

It is that whence rose toward heaven, as an agreeable perfume to God,
the soul of a maiden dying in all the purity of first innocence; dead
without knowing there existed a forbidden fruit; dead because she
loved with that celestial love which belongs only to the angels in
paradise.

------

From The Month.

BURY THE DEAD


"Give me a grave, that I made bury my dead
out of my sight."--Genesis xxiii.


          Enwrapt in fair white shroud.
  With fragrant flowers strewn.
  With loving tears and holy prayers,
                    And wailing loud,
                    Shut out the light!
  Bury the Dead, bury the Dead,
                    Out of my sight!
                                                            {380}
          Corruption's touch will wrong
          The sacred Dead too soon;
  Then wreath the brow, the eyelids kiss;
                    Delay not long,
                    Behold the blight!
  Bury the Dead, bury the Dead,
                    Out of our sight!

          But there are other Dead
          That will not buried be,
  That walk about in glaring day
                    With noiseless tread.
                    And stalk at night;
  Unburied Dead, unburied Dead,
                    Ever in sight.

          Dear friendships snapt in twain.
          Sweet confidence betrayed,
  Old hopes forsworn, old loves worn out,
                    Vows pledged in vain.
                    There is no flight,
  Ye living, unrelenting Dead,
                    Out of your sight.

          Oh! for a grave where I
          Might hide my Dead away!
  That sacred bond, that holy trust,
                    How could it die?
                    Out of my sight!
  O mocking Dead, unburied Dead,
                    Out of my sight!

          O ever-living Dead,
          Who cannot buried be;
  In our heart's core your name is writ.
                    What though it bled?
                    The wound was slight
  To eyes that loved no more, in death's
                    Remorseless night

          O still belovèd Dead,
          No grave is found for you;
  No friends weep with us o'er your bier.
                    No prayers are said;
                    For out of sight
  We wail our Dead, our secret Dead,
                    Alone at night.

          Give me a grave so deep
          That they may rest with me;
  For they shall lie with my dead heart
                    In healing sleep;
                    Till out of night
  We shall all pass, O risen Dead,
                    Into God's sight!

------

{381}



[ORIGINAL.]

RELIGION IN NEW YORK.


The city of New York is supposed to contain about one million of
inhabitants. Of these, from 300,000 to 400,000 are Catholics, probably
60,000 Jews, and from 550,000 to 650,000 Protestants, or
Nothingarians.

We will first speak of the provision made for the religions
instruction of the non-Catholic majority of our population.

There are 280 churches of all descriptions, excluding the Catholic
churches. Of these, there are:

  Episcopalian  61
  Presbyterian  56
  Methodist   48
  Baptist  30
  Jewish  25
  Dutch Reformed  20
  Lutheran  9
  Congregational  4
  Universalist  4
  Unitarian   3
  Friends   3
  Miscellaneous  17
    [Footnote 55]

  [Footnote 55: These figures are taken from the last Directory. The
  "Walk about New York" gives the number at 318.]

The number of communicants in Protestant churches is estimated as
64,800. If the churches were all of ample size and equally distributed
through the city, they would suffice tolerably well for the
accommodation of the people, should they be generally disposed to
attend public worship. A large proportion of them, however, are small,
and only 80 churches are situated below First street. The lower and
more populous portion of the city is therefore very destitute of
church accommodation, while the great majority of the churches,
especially the largest and finest, are in the upper part of the town,
among the residences of the more well-to-do classes of the community.
The Protestant population as a whole is, therefore, very poorly
provided with church accommodation.

A pamphlet, entitled "Startling Facts: a Tract for the Times, by
Philopsukon: Brinkerhoff, 48 Fulton street, 1864," gives a
considerable amount of information on this point. The estimates of
this gentleman are based on a supposed population of 950,000. For the
section of the city below Canal and Grand streets, including the first
seven wards, there are, according to him, 12 churches and 8 mission
chapels, capable of accommodating about 15,000 persons. The population
of this district is 185,000. Twenty Protestant congregations have
within the last twenty-five years abandoned their churches in this
district, and removed to new ones up town. One of the old churches
(St. George's) is retained as a mission chapel, and another, a very
fine one, the Rutgers street Presbyterian church, has been converted
into a Catholic church. These removals have reduced the church
accommodation from 18,000 to 20,000 sittings, while the population has
meanwhile doubled.

For the section between Canal and Fourteenth streets, including also
seven wards, there are 88 churches for a population of 262,000.
Fourteen churches have been abandoned within ten years. Of these 34
abandoned churches, 3 have been turned into livery stables, and the
remainder into public offices or stores and factories.

The upper section, extending to Sixty-first street, includes eight
wards, with a population of 418,000, and has 82 churches.

{382}

This gentlemen has counted only what he calls "Evangelical" churches,
in which he estimates the total sittings throughout the whole city at
126,600, but the actual attendance at only 84,400. A "Condensed
Statement" which we have in our bands, estimates the total Protestant
church accommodation at 200,000, and the number of communicants at
64,800. If we allow 150,000 for the ordinary or occasional attendants
at Protestant worship, and 25,000 for the Jewish synagogues, we shall
have then from 375,000 to 475,000 of the non-Catholic population who
attend no place of religious worship or instruction at all.  [Footnote
56] The author of the "Startling Facts," who summarily hands over all
except the attendants at "Evangelical" churches to the devil, takes a
very gloomy view of the state of things, and considers that "865,600
out of the 950,000 pass to the judgment-seat of Christ WITHOUT THE
MEANS OF GRACE;" to be condemned, we are left to infer, because they
did not enjoy those means; while those who did enjoy them and failed
to provide for the wants of the remainder are to be rewarded.

  [Footnote 56: "The Great Metropolis, a Condensed Statement," gives
  the Protestant church accommodation at 200,000. "Walks about New
  York, by the Secretary of the City Mission," estimates the number of
  attendants at "Evangelical churches" at 324,000. Allowing 10,000
  more for other Protestant congregations, and 25,000 for the Jewish
  synagogues, this leaves 240,000 as the minimum number of the
  non-Catholic population who attend no place of public worship. It
  appears to us that it is a large calculation to allow 1,000
  attendants to each church, which would give the total of 280,000
  church-goers, leaving a remainder of 320,000. All the non-Catholic
  churches together are capable of accommodating less than 225,000
  persons at one time, leaving 375,000 who have not sufficient
  church-room to accommodate them, if all were disposed to attend
  regularly. Nevertheless, it does not appear that the majority of the
  Protestant churches are over-crowded. The mass of the
  non-church-goers are quite apathetic on the subject. They do not
  wish to have churches, and probably would not frequent them if they
  were built for them free of expense.]

It must be allowed, however, that he berates them handsomely for their
neglect of duty. He says:

  "Nor is it intended in these few pages to canvass the question as to
  the necessity or the expediency, etc., of what is called the
  _up-town removal_ of so many of the churches (in all 36), first from
  the lower, and now from the central section of the city. All that
  can be done is to note the following facts, and leave others to draw
  their own inference as to their practical effects.

  "1. In every instance of such church removal, it has originated in
  _the change of residence of a few of the wealthier families_ of said
  church: this, of course, was followed by a diminution of the means
  of support to the said church. Hence the plea of _necessity_ for its
  removal; and, making no provision to retain the old church for
  _missionary_ purposes, the effect has been to scatter by far the
  larger portion both of the church members and of the congregation to
  the four winds. For,

  "2. The old church property having been sold, the new location has
  been selected with a sole view to the accommodation of these
  families of wealth, who left it for an up-town palatial residence,
  and a costly church edifice has been erected (often largely beyond
  their means) compatible with their tastes. The _result_ of this has
  been,

  3. To place the privileges of the church beyond the reach of the
  _mediocre_ and _lower_ classes. And this has led to an _ignoring_ of
  that divinely appointed law of God, "_the rich and the poor meet
  together, the Lord being the maker of them all_" (Prov. xxiii. 12).
  Hence the origin of _caste_ in the churches. _Money_ has been
  erected into _the standard of personal respectability_, by which
  every man is measured; and hence a courting of the favor of the
  rich, and a despising of the poor.

  "Thus the way is prepared _to account for the paucity_ of attendance
  at many of these larger and wealthier churches. A consciousness of
  _self-respect_ operates largely to deter those who might otherwise
  repair to them. They shrink from an encounter, whether right or
  wrong, from that _invidiousness_ to which the above principle of the
  measurement of personal respectability subjects them; and taking
  human nature as it is, it cannot be otherwise. Hence, finding
  themselves thus "cut off" from the privileges of the churches, and
  that by the act of the churches themselves, {383} they relapse into
  a state of absolute "_neglect of the great salvation_."  [Footnote 57]

 [Footnote 57: How this is possible in the case of those who have
 received the gift of infallible perseverance, it is difficult to see,
 unless the "elect" are chiefly found among the _élite_ of society.]

  "And when there is taken into the account _the neglect_ of these
  wealthier churches to make provision for the populations in those
  sections of the city formerly occupied by them, there is furnished
  _an explanation of the vast disparity_ between the number of
  churches compared with the immense population as a whole, which
  remain unprovided for.

  "True, in order to escape the imputation of neglecting _'the poor of
  this world'_ altogether, some of the wealthier churches have
  established _missionary Sabbath schools outside_ of their own
  congregations. The principal denominations--the Episcopalians,
  Methodists, Baptists, Reformed Dutch Church, and Presbyterians, are
  also doing something in the way of supporting _missionary chapels
  for the poor_; but none of them are making provisions for them in a
  manner or to an extent at all commensurate either with their _duty_
  or their _means_.

  "Take, in illustration, a view of the amount of missionary work
  being done in this city by the large and wealthy presbytery of New
  York. True, the Brick church; the Fifth avenue church, corner
  Twenty-first street; the Fifth avenue church, between Eleventh and
  Twelfth streets; the Presbyterian church in University place, corner
  Tenth street, and perhaps one or two others, each support,
  independently of drawing upon the funds raised for domestic
  missions, a _mission Sabbath school and chapel_. But out of the
  moneys contributed annually by the churches connected with the
  presbytery, amounting to from $12,000 to $15,000, there are only
  _two regularly organized missionary churches_ connected with that
  body. These are the German mission church in Monroe street, comer of
  Montgomery, and the African mission church in the Seventh avenue,
  each supported at an expense of $600 per annum. Nor are the
  ecclesiastical judicatories of other churches doing much better.

  "Is this, then, the way to _'continue in God's goodness?'_ Writing
  on this subject, so long ago as 1847, the Rev. Dr. Hodge, the oldest
  professor occupying a chair in the Princeton Theological Seminary,
  and the learned and able editor of 'The Princeton Review,' had used
  his pen in refuting the statement of those in the Presbyterian
  Church who affirm that _'we have already more preachers than we know
  what to do with,'_ etc.; and having disposed of that matter, he
  passes to the subject of the _difference in the mode_ of sustaining
  and extending the gospel in and by the Presbyterian Church. In
  reference to the _policy_ adopted by said church to this end, he
  says:

  "'Our system, which requires the minister to rely for his support
  _on the people_ to whom he preaches, has had the following
  inevitable results: 1. In our cities _we have no churches to which
  the poor can freely go and feel themselves at home_. No doubt, in
  many of our city congregations there are places in the galleries in
  which the poor may find seats free of charge; but, as a general
  thing, _the churches are private property_. They belong to those who
  build them, or who purchase or rent the pews after they are built.
  They are intended and adapted for the cultivated and thriving
  classes of the community. There may be exceptions to this remark,
  but we are speaking of a general fact. _The mass of the people in
  our cities are excluded from our churches._ The Presbyterian Church
  is practically, in such places, _the church for the upper classes_
  (we do not mean the worldly and the fashionable) _of society._" And
  to this Dr. Hodge adds, as the _result_ of the working of 'our
  system,' the following:

{384}

  "'_The Presbyterian Church_ IS NOT A CHURCH FOR THE POOR. She has
  precluded herself from that high vocation by adopting the principle
  _that the support of the minister must be derived from the people to
  whom he preaches._ If therefore, the people are too few, too sparse,
  too poor, to sustain a minister, or too ignorant or wicked to
  appreciate the gospel, THEY MUST GO WITHOUT IT.'"

Thus far the author of the tract and Dr. Hodge. The statements of the
latter are indorsed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church. A Baptist clergyman, writing in the "Memorial Papers," a work
which was suppressed after publication, says: "The Church has no
conversions and no hold on the masses. The most successful church
building is that which excludes the poor by necessity."   [Footnote
58]

  [Footnote 58:  A high price will be paid at this office for a copy
  of "The Memorial Papers."]

We do not cite these statements in order to make a point against
Protestantism from the admissions of its advocates, or to exult over
these admissions. We respect our anonymous friend, and the learned and
accomplished Princeton divine, for their candor, honesty, and zeal for
the religious instruction of the poor. We have nothing in view except
an exposition of the real state of things in New York, and are anxious
to arrive at facts. Allowing for all errors and exaggerations, and
with a perfect willingness to admit everything which can be said to
extenuate the evil, we must admit the palpable, undeniable fact, that
some hundreds of thousands of our population are either unprovided
with the opportunity of attending any form of worship and religious
instruction, or are indifferent to the subject. Sunday is to them a
mere holiday from work (to many not even that), to be spent in
recreation and amusement, if not in something positively bad.

It appears especially that the lower section of the city has been
almost entirely given up by Protestants.   [Footnote 59] There is one
very notable and very honorable exception, however, in Trinity church,
which has always been the best managed ecclesiastical corporation of
all the Protestant religious institutions in our country.

  [Footnote 59: That is, except as a missionary ground.]

The educational and eleemosynary institutions of New York are on a
colossal scale. We will not go into extensive details on this subject,
as our topic is properly the religion of the city. It is estimated
that there are 144,000 children in New York, of whom 104000 are at
school,  [Footnote 60] and 40,000 growing up without instruction. The
poverty, wretchedness, and indifference of parents is more to blame
for the condition of that portion not at school, than the want of
accommodation.

Hospitals, refuges, asylums of all kinds, abound in the city; as well
as dispensaries where medical assistance and medicine can be obtained
by the poor gratuitously. There is, beside, a gigantic system of
domestic relief and outdoor charity under the direction of the
municipal authorities. The number of individuals relieved in various
ways during the year by these public charities is about 57,000; 30,000
receive gratuitous medical attendance from the dispensaries. For
education, $1,000,000 a year is expended by the city, and for public
charity, $700,000. The collections made for local purposes of
benevolence are estimated at $500,000, and the other collections made
in Protesant churches at $500,000 more. The ecclesiastical expenses of
maintaining the various churches are estimated at $1,000,000. The
great Protestant societies whose headquarters are in New York, receive
about $2,700,000 annually. $6,000,000 were distributed among the
families of soldiers during the late war. Beside these rough estimates
of the vast sums expended by great public organizations, there is no
counting the amount of individual contributions, often on a large
scale, to colleges, etc., and the sums expended in benevolent works by
private societies or individuals.

  [Footnote 60: This includes also Catholic schools and colleges. The
  estimate is too small, however, and another gives 206,000 as the
  number going to school.]

{385}

There can be no doubt that the people of New York, possessing means,
are a very liberal and philanthropic class. That there is still
remaining a great deal of "evangelical" religious zeal and activity is
also manifest. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the influence of
the old, orthodox Protestant tradition has remarkably diminished, and
that the minority of nominal Protestants have lapsed into a state of
indifference to positive Christianity. We doubt if 25,000 men can be
found in the city who sincerely profess to believe the tenets common
to what are called the "evangelical" churches; and of these but a
small fraction adhere intelligently to the distinctive doctrines of
any one sect; _e.g._, the Protestant Episcopal, or Presbyterian. The
remainder have a general belief in the truth of Protestant
Christianity, more or less vague, with a great disposition to consider
positive doctrines as matters of indifference. Outside the communion
list of the different churches, we believe the general sentiment to
be, among the educated, that Christianity is a very useful, moral
institution, containing substantially all the truth which can be known
respecting ultra-mundane things, but without any final authority over
the reason, and completely subject to the criticism of science. Among
the uneducated, we believe that negative unbelief, and a supine
indifference to everything beside material interests, prevails. We
will not attempt to assign causes or reasons for it; but the fact is
evident. A vast mass of the population is completely outside of the
influence of any religious body, or any class of religious teachers
professing to expound revealed truths concerning God and the future
life. Moreover, the traditional belief in revealed truths is much
weaker in the young and rising generation, even of those brought up
under positive religious instruction, than it is in the present adult
generation. There appears to be no tangible, palpable reason for
thinking that Protestant Christianity, under any form, is in a
condition to revive its former sway; to keep what it retains, or to
recover what it has lost. The mere lack of church accommodation will
not account for this, and if at once this lack were remedied, it would
not change it materially. For, in those places which are furnished
with a superabundance of churches, the same undermining of religious
belief is going on. The fact that the most respectable Protestant
publishers make no scruple of republishing the works of such writers
as Renan and Colenso, and that these books are read with such avidity,
indicates the way the current is setting.

What the result of all this will be, is a matter for very serious
consideration. Our political, civil, and moral order is founded on
Christianity. The old Christian tradition has been the principle of
the interior life of the nation. Take away positive Christian belief,
and the moral principles which are universally acknowledged are still
only a residuum of the old religion. The spirit of Christianity
survives partly in civilization as its vital principle. How long a
certain political and social order may continue after faith has died
out, we cannot say. We cannot but think, however, that a
disintegrating principle begins to work as soon as religious belief
begins to die out. There is nothing, therefore, more destructive to
the temporal well-being of men, than the spread of sceptical and
infidel principles. Merely from this point of view, therefore, the
decay of religious belief and earnestness ought to be deplored as the
greatest of evils, and one for which no advance in physical science or
material prosperity can compensate. What the moral fruits already
produced by this decay are, and what the prospects are for the future
in this direction, we leave our readers to gather from the perusal of
the secular papers; and it may be estimated from the cry of alarm
which is from time to time forced from them, as new and startling
developments of the progress in vice and criminality are made.

{386}

We turn our attention now to the Catholic population of the city, and
the religious institutions under the control of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic population is variously estimated at from 300,000 to
400,000. As no census has been taken, all estimates must be merely
approximate. One way in which an estimate may be made, is by taking
the returns of the census giving the total population of foreign
birth, and getting the proportion of Catholics to non-Catholics among
the various nationalities. Some probable estimate of the native-born
Catholics must then be made and added to the number of foreign-born.
In 1860 the number of inhabitants of foreign birth was 383,717, out of
a total of 813,669. If we suppose that the foreign-born population has
increased to 460,000, it seems not improbable that the Catholic
proportion of it, with the home-born Catholics added, will reach the
total of 400,000.

Another basis of calculation is the ratio of baptisms to the whole
population. A register is kept with the utmost exactness in each
parish, and the result transmitted once a year to the chancery, where
it is entered in the diocesan record. We are furnished, therefore,
with an authentic census of births from Catholic parents each year,
and if the exact multiplier could be ascertained by which to multiply
this number, we should reach a certain result. It can only be
conjectured, however, with more or less probability, and varies in
different localities remarkably according to the character of the
population. The baptisms for one year are 18,000. Multiply the number
by 33, as is usually done in making the estimates of the general
census, and you have 594,000. This number is too large, however. If we
take 20, it gives us 360,000; 25, 450,000. We do not profess to come
any nearer than this to an estimate of the actual Catholic population.
The two conjectural calculations, compared with each other, appear to
settle the point that it is, as we have already stated, between
300,000 and 400,000.

The number of churches is 32, or one to from 10,000 to 12,000 people;
and the number of priests 93, or one to about 4,000 people. In the
lower section, embracing the first seven wards, there are five
churches: St. Peter's in the Third ward, St. James's in the Fourth,
St. Andrew's and Transfiguration in the Sixth, and St. Teresa's in the
Seventh. These churches furnish nearly three times as much
accommodation as the Protestant churches in the same district. It must
be remembered that the capacity of a Catholic church includes standing
room as well as sittings, and must be multiplied by the number of
masses. A church which will hold, when crowded, 2,000 persons, and
where four masses are celebrated, will accommodate 8,000 on one
Sunday; and, considering the causes which keep many from attending
church regularly, 12,000 different individuals who attend regularly or
occasionally. One of these churches, St. Teresa's, is a very fine
building of stone, which was purchased about four years ago from the
Presbyterians, and was called in former times the Rutgers street
Presbyterian church. No Catholic church in the lower part of the city
has ever been closed, or moved up town, with the exception of St.
Vincent de Paul's.

The middle district has nine churches: St. Alphonsus' in the Eighth
ward (German and English), St. Joseph's in the Ninth, St Bridget's in
the Eleventh, St. Mary's in the Thirteenth, St. Patrick's in the
Fourteenth, St. Ann's in the Fifteenth, Holy Redeemer (German), St.
Nicholas's (German), Nativity, in the Seventeenth.

Below Fourteenth street we have, therefore, fourteen churches, most of
them very large, surrounded by a dense Catholic population, and
crowded with overflowing congregations. A very large proportion of our
Catholic population is in this part of the city.

{387}

Between Fourteenth and Eighty-sixth streets we have fifteen churches:
St. Columba's and St. Vincent de Paul's (French) in the Sixteenth
ward, St. Francis Xavier's and the Immaculate Conception in the
Eighteenth, St. Francis's (German), St. John Baptist's (German), and
St. Michael's in the Twentieth, St. Stephen's and St. Gabriel's in the
Twenty-first, Holy Cross, Assumption (German), and St. Paul's in the
Twenty-second, St. Boniface's, St. John's, and St. Lawrence's in the
Nineteenth. Above Eighty-sixth street we have St. Paul's, Harlem, and
the Annunciation and St. Joseph's (German), Manhattanville. [Footnote
61]

  [Footnote 61: Of these churches, St. Teresa's, Immaculate Conception
  St. Michael's, St. Gabriel's, St. Boniface's, Assumption, St.
  Paul's, and St. Joseph's (German), are comparatively new; and a very
  large cathedral, capable of containing 10,000 persons is building.
  St. Stephen's is also being enlarged to a capacity of 5,000, and a
  church has been purchased for the Italians.]

After the old Catholic fashion of jamming and crowding, all these
churches might allow somewhere near 200,000 persons, or two-thirds of
the adult Catholic population, to hear mass on any one Sunday, if they
should all attempt to do so on the same day. Judging by the way
churches are crowded, we would suppose that more than two-thirds
attend occasionally; and of those who do not, the majority neglect it
through poverty, discouragement, indolence, and a careless habit, or
some other reason which does not imply loss of faith. As to
confessions and communions, they flow in a ceaseless stream throughout
the year, as if the paschal time were perpetual. In cachone of our
churches there are from 100 to 500 communions every week, and a much
greater number on the principal festivals. Probably the usual number
of communions in the city, on any Sunday taken at random, is not short
of 5,000. At least 8,000 children receive first communion and
confirmation every year; and from 40,000 to 50,000 are instructed
every week in the catechism, the Sunday schools varying in their
numbers from 500 to 2,500.

The Catholic population is increasing at the rate of at least 20,000 a
year. New York is now about the fourth city in the world in Catholic
population, and bids fair, in a few years, to rank next to Paris in
this respect.

The Catholic institutions for education, strictly within the city
limits, are:

1. Two colleges, St. Francis Xavier's and Manhattan colleges, the
first conducted by Jesuits, and the second by Christian Brothers.

2. Two academies for boys and twelve for girls.

3. Twenty-one parochial schools for boys, and twenty for girls, the
whole containing about 14,000 pupils.

There are other very large and fine establishments in the vicinity of
New York, practically belonging to the city, but not within its
limits.

There are 4 orphan asylums, a protectory for the reception of vagrant
children in two departments, male and female, which is out of town,
another for servant girls out of place, a very fine industrial school
for girls, 2 hospitals, 4 religious communities of men; and 11 of
women. The most numerous of these religious congregations are the
Jesuits and the Sisters of Charity; the former having in the diocese
39 fathers, beside numerous members of inferior grade, and the latter
333 sisters and 39 different establishments.

In every sense except as regards municipal government, Brooklyn, which
is on the other side of East River, is a part of New York; and there
we have another diocese of immense proportions, with another great
congeries of Catholic institutions. On the opposite side of the town,
and on the Jersey shore of the Hudson, the churches of Jersey City,
which is remarkably advanced in Catholic institutions, are plainly
visible.

Our object in this article has been to give a general idea of the
provision made for the religious wants of the mass of the population
in the city of New York.

{388}

In spite of the uncertainty of the estimates and statistics we have
given in regard to exact numbers, it is plain that this provision is
very inadequate; that a vast mass of our population is unprovided for
or totally indifferent; that the orthodox Protestant societies have
lost to a great extent their influence over the mass of the
population, and that a great body of practically heathen people has
been gradually forming and accumulating in the very bosom of our
social system.

Where are we to look for a remedy to this state of things? It is
necessary to our political and social well-being that crime and vice
should be restrained, that the mass of the people should be instructed
and formed in virtue, taught sobriety, chastity, honesty, obedience to
law, fidelity to their obligations, and universal morality. Soldiers,
policemen, prisons, poor-laws, and all extrinsic means of this kind
are insufficient preventives or remedies for the disorders caused by a
prevalence of vice and immorality. They will burst all these bonds,
and disrupt society, if not checked in their principle. Can liberal
Christians, philanthropists, philosophers, political economists, and
our wealthy, well-informed gentlemen of property, who have thrown away
their Bibles, and who sneer at all positive revelation, indicate to us
a remedy? Can they apply it? Is it in their power, by scientific
lectures, by elegant moral discourses, by material improvements, by
societies, by laws, by any means whatever, to tame, control, civilize,
reform, make gentle, virtuous, conscientious, this lawless multitude?
Can they give us incorruptible legislators, faithful magistrates,
honest men of business, a virtuous commonalty? Can they create truth,
honor, and magnanimity, patriotism, chastity, filial obedience,
domestic happiness, integrity? If not, then give them their way, let
their doctrines prevail, throw away faith in a positive revelation,
and they will not be safe in their houses. The rogues will hang the
honest men, and might will be the only right. One of the leaders of
the party has not hesitated to avow that the prevalence of his
principles would necessarily produce a social and moral chaos of
disorder, before mankind could learn in a rational way that their true
happiness lies in intellectual and moral cultivation. What has the
sect of the philosophers ever done yet to produce virtue and morality
in the mass of mankind? What can they do now? They cannot even
reproduce what was good in heathenism, for that was due to an
imperfect and corrupted tradition of the ancient revelation, and the
influence of the sophists tended to destroy even that. Our modern
sophists act on the same principle, and are busily at work to destroy
the Christian tradition of faith, and with it the principle which
vitalizes Christian civilization.

Can orthodox Protestantism recover its ancient sway, and reproduce a
state of religions belief and moral virtue equal to that which once
prevailed? We would like to have them prove their ability to do so,
and show that they have even made a fair beginning toward recovering
their lost ground. We leave them to do what they can, and to try out
their experiment to the end on the non-Catholic majority of our
population. If their intelligence, wealth, zeal, and prestige of
position were thrown into the defence of the common cause of Christian
revelation by union with the Catholic Church, the victory would be
certain. Unbelief and indifferentism could never make any stand
against a united Christianity, in a population so full of religions
reminiscences and predilections, and so susceptible to persuasive
logic and genuine eloquence, as our own. The Christian cause is
weakened by its divisions, and by the political and social schisms
which are bred by the schisms in religion. Not only those who are
separated from the common trunk of the Catholic Church suffer from the
separation, but the trunk itself suffers and is mutilated by the loss.
{389} The Catholic Church cannot do her work completely where the
majority of those who prefer Christianity are opposed to her,
especially when this majority includes the greater part of the more
elevated classes.

It is evident, nevertheless, that the Catholic Church in New York has
done a great work in our population, and has a great work to do. We
have much more than one-third of the whole population, and the
majority of the laboring class, and of the poor people, on our hands.
The Catholic clergy alone possess a powerful and extensive religions
sway over the masses of the people. The poor are emphatically here, as
they have been always and everywhere, our inheritance. Nearly all that
has been done, and is now doing, in an efficacious manner and on a
large scale, for the religions welfare of the populace, is the work of
our priesthood and their coadjutors. It is impossible to estimate the
benefit to society in a political, social, and moral point of view,
accruing from the influence and exertions of the Catholic clergy. This
is persistently denied by a certain class of writers, who never do
justice to the Catholic Church except under compulsion. One of them,
writing in one of our principal weeklies, recently qualified the
Catholic Church in the United States, whose growth and progress he
could not ignore, as a mere empty shell without any moral life or
power. He accused the Catholic clergy of not exercising that moral
influence in the country at large which they ought to exercise, and
have exercised in other times and places.

What a change of base this is! But now, the Catholic religion was a
kind of embodied spirit of evil, and her ministers had to vindicate
their title to the rank of men and Christians. Religion, morality,
liberty, happiness, would be swept from the country if they were not
exterminated! Now, forsooth, we are gravely asked why we do not exert
a greater influence for promoting the general well-being of the
country? The truth is, that the influence of the Catholic clergy on
the people at large has until now been a cipher. They have had no
recognized position, and have been counted for nothing, except so far
as certain individuals have commanded a personal respect. There is,
moreover, a great amount of sham and trumpet-blowing about the great
moral demonstrations of the day. The Catholic clergy have not chosen
to meddle with questions which were none of their business, or to
parade and speechify on platforms or at anniversaries. They have
enough to do in looking after the immediate and pressing spiritual and
temporal wants of their own people. And in doing this they prevent and
reform more vice, produce more solid morality, and work more
effectually for the well-being of their fellow-men, than could be done
by the best devised philanthropic schemes. One mission in a city
congregation, one paschal-time with its labor in the confessional,
will do more to uproot drunkenness, dishonesty, and licentiousness, or
to hinder these upas-trees from striking root in virgin soil, than our
amateur philanthropists could _describe_ if they were all to write and
lecture on the subject for a year.

The one great, palpable fact which confronts us on every side is, that
the religious and moral education of nearly one-half our population is
in the hands of the Catholic Church, and that the well-being of our
commonwealth depends, therefore, to a great degree on the thorough
fulfilment of this task. It is evident that we have enough to do in
making provision for our vast and increasing Catholic population, to
employ all the energies and resources which can possibly be brought
into play, both by the clergy and the laity.

------

{390}


Translated from Le Correspondant

A PRETENDED DERVISH IN TURKESTAN.

BY ÉMILE JONVEAUX.


IV.

The next day the hadjis assembled in the court of the monastery in
which they had resided since arriving in Khiva. The caravan, thanks to
the generosity of the faithful, presented a very different appearance
from that which it offered at its arrival. They were no more those
ragged beggars, covered with sand and dust, whose pious sufferings the
multitude had admired; every pilgrim had the head enveloped in a thick
turban as white as snow, the haversacks were full, and even the
poorest had a little ass for the journey.

"It was Monday, toward the close of the day," relates our traveller,
"that making an end of our benedictions, and tearing ourselves with
difficulty from the passionate embraces of the crowd, we left Khiva by
the gate Urgendi. Many devotees in the excess of their seal followed
us more than a league; they shed many tears, and cried despairingly,
'When will our city have the happiness again to shelter so many
saints?' Seated upon my donkey, I was overwhelmed with their too
lively demonstrations of sympathy, when happily for me, the animal,
fatigued by so many embraces, lost patience and started off at a grand
gallop. I did not think it proper at first to moderate his ardor; only
when at a considerable distance from my inconvenient admirers I
endeavored to slacken somewhat his pace. But my long-eared hippogriff
had taken a fancy to the course; my opposition only vexed him, and he
testified his ill-humor in noisy complaints which displayed the extent
and richness of his voice, but which I could have preferred to hear at
a distance."

The travellers, after a day's march, encamped on the bank of the Oxus,
which they wished to cross at this point. The river, swollen by the
melting of the snows, becomes so wide in the spring that one can
hardly see the opposite bank. The yellow waves, hurried rapidly along,
contrast with the verdure of the trees and cultivated lands which
extend as far as eye can reach. Toward the north, a
mountain--Oveis-Karaine--is defined like an immense cloud upon the
azure sky. The passage of the Oxus, begun in the morning, lasted till
sunset. It would not have required so long a time, but the current
carried the voyagers into the midst of little arms from which it was
necessary afterward to ascend or re-descend, and this accident
occurred every few paces. The transportation of the donkeys, which it
was necessary now to put upon land, and again to gather into the
boats, was, as one may imagine, a prodigious labor. "We were reduced,"
says our traveller, "to carry them in our arms like so many babies,
and I laugh yet when I think of the singular figure of one of our
companions, named Hadji Yakaub. He had taken his _monture_ upon his
back, and while he tenderly pressed the legs to his bosom, the poor
animal, all trembling, tried to hide his head upon the shoulder of the
pilgrim."

{391}

The caravan followed the banks of the Oxus for many days, or rather
during many nights, for the heat was so great that it was impossible
to travel until sunset. The pale light of the moon gave to the
landscape something fantastic; the long file of camels and travellers
extended itself in tortuous folds upon the flinty soil, the waters of
the river flowing slowly with a mournful noise, and beyond extended
afar the formidable desert of Tartary. This district, which bears the
name of Toyeboyun (camel's back), no doubt on account of the curves
described by the Oxus, is inhabited at certain seasons of the year by
the Kirghiz, a nomad people among the nomads. A woman to whom Vambéry
made some remarks on the subject of this vagabond existence, replied
laughing, "Oh, certainly! one never sees us, like you other mollahs,
remain days and weeks sitting in the same place; man is made for
movement. See! the sun, the moon, the stars, the animals, the fish,
the birds, everything moves in this world; only death remains
motionless." As she finished these words, the cry was heard, "The
wolf! the wolf!" The shepherdess cut short her philosophical
dissertation to fly to the assistance of her flock, and made so good a
use of voice and gesture, that the ferocious beast took flight,
carrying with him only the beautiful fat tail of one of the sheep.

The Kirghiz are very numerous in central Asia; they inhabit the
immense prairies situated between Siberia, China, Turkestan, and the
Caspian sea; but it is difficult to compute their number. Ask them a
question on this subject, and they will reply emphatically, "Count
first the sands of the desert, then you will be able to number the
Kirghiz." Their wandering habits have secured them against all
authority, and Europeans are in an error when they believe them to be
subject to the government of Russia or that of the Celestial Empire.
None of these nations have ever exercised the least power over the
Kirghiz; they send, it is true, officers charged to left taxes among
them, but the nomads regard these functionaries as the chiefs of a
vast foray, and they only admire how, instead of despoiling them of
everything, they content themselves with levying upon them only a
slight tax. Revolutions have often changed the face of the world, the
inhabitants of the desert have remained the same for thousands of
years; singular types of savage virtue and vice, they offer today a
faithful image of the ancient Turani.

The pilgrims were anticipating with delight the end of their journey;
only six or eight stages remained, when one morning at break of day,
two men almost naked approached the caravan, crying in suppliant
tones: "A morsel of bread, for the love of God!" Every one hastened to
assist them, and when food had somewhat restored their strength, they
informed the dervishes that, surprised by a band of Cossacks, _ataman
Tekke_, they had lost baggage, clothes, provisions, and were only too
happy not to have lost their lives. The brigands, one hundred and
fifty in number, were planning a raid upon the troops of Kirghiz
camped upon the banks of the Oxus: "Fly, then, or hide yourselves,"
added the men, "or else you will meet them in a few hours, and in
spite of your sacred character, these bandits without faith or law
will abandon you in the Khalata, after robbing you of all you
possess." The kervanbashi, who had already been pillaged twice, no
sooner heard the words Tekke and ataman than he gave the order to beat
a retreat. Consequently after having rested the animals a short time
and filled their bottles, the hadjis, casting a look of inexpressible
regret upon the tranquil banks of the Oxus, made their way toward
those frightful solitudes which had already swallowed up so many
caravans. They advanced in perfect silence, not to arouse their
enemies; the step of the camels upon the dusty soil returned no sound,
and very soon the shades of night enveloped them.

{392}

Toward midnight all the pilgrims were obliged to dismount and walk,
because the animals buried themselves to the knees in the sand. It was
a severe trial for Vambéry; his infirmity doubled the fatigue of a
tramp over a moving ground, in the midst of a continuous chain of
little hills, therefore he hailed with joy the point designated for
the morning station. The place, however, bore a name little calculated
to inspire confidence. _Adamkyrylgan_ (the place where men perish)
justified in appearance its sinister appellation. As far as the eye
could reach, extended only a sea of sand, which, on one side raising
itself in hills like furious waves, still bore the visible imprint of
the tempest, and on the other resembled a tranquil lake hardly ruffled
by a light breeze. Not a bird traversed the air, not an animal, not an
insect gave an appearance of life to this desolate spot. Far and near
were seen only the blanched bones of men and camels, frightful
witnesses of the disasters caused by the _Tebbad_ or fever-wind, which
from time to time poured upon the desert its burning breath.

The travellers were not pursued; the Tekkes themselves, bold
cavaliers, hesitated to penetrate the Khalata. According to the
calculation of the kervanbashi, six days' journey at most separated
the caravan from Bokhara; the bottles being well filled, the pilgrims
hoped they should not suffer from thirst; they had not counted upon
the burning sun of the dog-days, which evaporated the precious liquid.
In vain, to escape from this cursed region, they endeavored to double
the hours of march; many camel died of fatigue, and the water
diminished all the more rapidly. At last two hadjis, exhausted by
privations, became so ill that it was necessary to bind them upon
their donkeys with cords, for they were unable to hold themselves up.
"Water! Water!" they murmured in dying accents. Alas, their best
friends refused to sacrifice for them the least swallow of this
liquid, each drop of which represented an hour of life; so, on the
fourth day, when the pilgrims reached Medemin Bulag, one of these
unhappy men was released by death from the cruel tortures of thirst.
His palate had assumed a grayish tint, his tongue had become black,
the lips like parchment and the open mouth displaying the naked teeth.
Horrible to relate, the father hides from the son, brother from
brother, the provision of water which would relieve his torture! Under
any other proof, these men would, perhaps, have shown themselves
generous and devoted, but thirst drives from the heart every sentiment
of compassion.

Vambéry soon experienced himself its terrible effects. He managed with
the parsimony of a miser the contents of his bottle, until he
perceived with fright a black point formed upon the middle of his
tongue. Then, blinking to save his life, he swallowed at once half the
water which he had left. The fire which devoured him became more
violent toward the morning of the fifth day, the pains in the head
increased, and he felt his strength failing him. Meanwhile, they
approached the mountains of Khalata, the sand became less deep, all
eyes eagerly sought the tracks of a flock, or the hut of a shepherd;
in this instant the kervanbashi called the attention of the pilgrims
to a cloud of dust which rose at the horizon, warning them to lose not
a moment in dismounting from their camels.

"The poor animals," relates Vambéry, "felt the approach of the Tebbad.
Uttering a doleful cry, they threw themselves upon their knees,
extended their long necks upon the ground, and endeavored to hide
their heads in the sand. We sheltered ourselves near them as behind a
wall; hardly were we upon the ground when the tempest broke over us
with a sullen roar, leaving us the moment after, covered with a thick
coat of dust. When this rain of sand enveloped me, it seemed to me
burning like fire. If we had been attacked by this tempest two days
before in the midst of the desert, we must all have perished.

{393}

"The air had become of an overwhelming weight; I could not have
remounted my camel without the aid of my companions; I suffered
intolerable pains, of which no words can give the least idea. In face
of other perils, courage had now left me, but in this moment I felt
broken down, my head ached so that I could not think, and a heavy
sleep overcame me. On awaking, I found myself lying in a hut of clay,
surrounded by long-bearded men whom I recognized as Iranians."

They were, in fact, Persian slaves sent into the desert to watch the
flocks of their master; these brave fellows made Vambéry swallow a
warm drink, and, soon after, a beverage composed of sour milk, water,
and salt, which soon restored his strength. Before quitting the
Sunnite pilgrims, in whom they must have recognized the bitterest
enemies of their race, the poor prisoners shared with them their
slender provision of water, an act of meritorious charity which
without doubt was regarded with complacency by the God of mercy who is
the Father of all.

The caravan at last reached Bokhara, the most important city of
central Asia, but which preserves to-day few traces of its ancient
grandeur. Still, it possesses fine monasteries and colleges which
rival those of Samarcand. These schools, founded at a great expense
and sustained by great sacrifices, have given Europeans a high idea of
Asiatic learning; but it must be remembered, they are controlled by a
blind fanaticism. The exclusive spirit of the Bokhariots restricts
singularly the circle of studies, all instruction turning upon the
precepts of the Koran and religious casuistry. We do not find to-day a
single disciple who occupies himself with history or poetry; if any
one were tempted to do it, he would be obliged to conceal it, for
attention given to subjects so frivolous would be considered a proof
of weakness of mind.

Vambéry and his companions found asylum in a _Tekki_ or convent, a
vast square building, of which the forty cells opened upon a court
planted with fine trees. The _Khalfa_, or "reverend abbot," as our
Hungarian traveller calls him, was a man of agreeable exterior and
gentle and published manners. He received Vambéry most graciously, and
the two interlocutors opened a pompous, subtle conversation, full of
reticence and mental reserves, which charmed the good Khalfa and gave
him also the highest opinion of his new guest; so from his arrival in
Bokhara, our traveller acquired a great reputation for learning and
sanctity.

The next day, accompanied by Hadji Bilal, he went out to see the city.
The streets and houses of this noble city are chiefly remarkable for
their slovenly appearance and ruinous condition. After having crossed
the public squares, where they went up to the ankles in a blackish
dust, the two friends arrived at the bazaar which was filled with a
noisy and busy crowd. These establishments by no means equal those of
Persia in extent and magnificence, but the mingling of races, of
costumes and habits, forms a bizarre spectacle which captivates the
eye of a stranger. Persians, their heads wrapped in their large blue
or white turbans, according to the class to which they belong, jostle
the savage Tartar, the Kirghiz with his slouching gait, the Indian
with his yellow and repulsive face, bearing upon the forehead the red
brand, and, finally, the Jew, who preserves here, more than anywhere
else, his distinctive type, his noble features, his deep-sunk eyes,
where an astute intelligence glitters. Here and there we meet also a
Turcoman, easily recognized by his proud mien and bold glance;
motionless before the shops of the merchants, they think perhaps of
the precious booty which the riches displayed before them will furnish
for their forays.

The pilgrims received everywhere marks of enthusiastic sympathy; the
foreign appearance of Vambéry excited particular admiration. "What
{394} faith he must have," said one, "to come from Constantinople to
Bokhara, and endure the fatigue of a  journey through the great
Desert, in order to meditate at the tomb of Baveddin!"   [Footnote 62]
"Without doubt," replied another, "but we also go to Mecca, the holy
city by eminence, and in order to accomplish this pilgrimage we leave
our business, and endure, I should think, quite enough fatigue. These
people," and he pointed his finger at Vambéry, "have no business to
occupy them; their whole life is consecrated to exercises of piety and
to visiting the tombs of the saints."--"Bravo, very well imagined!"
thought our traveller, while he cast glances which he tried to render
indifferent, upon the display of Russian and other European goods
exposed for sale; he often had great difficulty in repressing an
imprudent emotion when he saw articles of merchandise bearing the
stamp of Manchester or Birmingham. Quickly turning his head for fear
of betraying himself, he fixed his attention upon the products of the
soil and of native industry, examined a fine cotton fabric called
_Aladja_, where two colors alternate in narrow stripes, silken stuffs,
rich and various, from the elegant handkerchief as thin as the
lightest gauze, to the heavy _atres_, which falls in large luxurious
folds. Leathers play an important part in Bokharist manufactures, the
shoemakers of the country make of them long boots for both sexes; but
the shops towards which the people pressed most eagerly were those of
the clothes-merchant, where ready-made garments strike the eye by
their dazzling colors, for Bokhara is the Paris of central Asia,
regarded by the Turcomen as the centre of elegance.

  [Footnote 62: An ascetic celebrated throughout Islam, founder of the
  order of the Nakishbendi, to which the Hungarian traveller pretended
  to belong.]

When he had sufficiently contemplated this curious tableau, Vambéry
asked Hadji Bilal to take him to a place where he might rest and
refresh himself; and the two friends went together to a place called
_Lebi Hanz Divanbeghi_(quay of the reservoir of Divanbeghi), where all
the  fashionables of the city collect. In the middle of the square is
a reservoir one hundred feet deep and eighty wide, bordered with cubic
stones forming a stair of eight steps to the water's edge. All around
magnificent elms shade the inevitable tea-shop, and the colossal
_samovar_, not less inevitable, invites every passer-by to take a cup
of the boiling liquid. On three sides of the square, little stalls,
sheltered by bamboo matting, display to the eye bread, fruits,
confectionery, hot and cold meats. The fourth side takes the form of a
terrace, and close by rises the mosque _Mesdjidi Divanbeghi_, Before
the doors are planted a number of trees, under which the dervishes and
_meddah_ (popular orators) recount to the wondering crowd, the
exploits of heroes, or the holy deeds of the prophets. Just as Vambéry
arrived, the Nakishbendis crossed the square, making their daily
procession. "Never shall I forget," says our traveller, "the
impression which these wild enthusiasts made upon me: their heads
covered with pointed hats, with flowing hair, and long staves in their
hands, they danced a round like the orgies of witches, yelling sacred
songs, of which their chief, an old man with a gray beard, intoned
alone the first strophe."

The secret inquisition established in Bokhara began very soon to annoy
Vambéry in spite of his reputation for sanctity. Spies sent by the
government came almost every day, upon one pretext or another, to open
with the stranger conversations which always turned upon Europeans,
their diabolical artifices, and the chastisements which had punished
the audacity of many of them. They hoped that some imprudent word
would drop to justify their suspicions, but the European was too much
on his guard to be caught; he listened at first with patience, and
then affecting an air of contemptuous indifference, "I left
Constantinople," said he, "to get away from these {395} cursed
Europeans, who, no doubt, owe their arts and sciences to the demon.
Now, Allah be praised! I am in Bokhara, and I don't want to be
troubled with thinking about them."

The emir was then absent; the minister who directed the inquest,
seeing that his emissaries were completely foiled, resolved to make
the stranger appear before a tribunal composed of onlemas, where his
orthodoxy would be scrupulously examined. He had, in fact, to sustain
a running fire of embarrassing questions which would be sure some day
to pierce his incognito. Fortunately, he perceived the snare in time,
and changing his character, took himself the part of questioner. Urged
by a pious zeal, he consulted the learned doctors on the most minute
cases of conscience, wished to know the differences, often
imperceptible, between the _Farz_ and the _Sunnet_, precepts of
obligation, and the _Tadjib_ and the _Mustahab_, simple religious
counsels. This artifice had complete success; many an obscure text
furnished material for an animated discussion, in which Vambéry never
lost an occasion of making a pompous eulogium of the Bokharist
oulemas, and loudly proclaiming their superiority. Then the judges,
gained to his cause, told the minister that he had committed a grave
mistake. Hadji Reschid was a very distinguished mollah, well prepared
to receive the divine inspiration, precious heritage of the saints.

Vambéry, free henceforth from all fear, could study at leisure the
character and aptitudes of the people of Bokhara. This city, which is,
according to him, the Home of Islam, since Mecca and Medina represent
Jerusalem, is not a little proud of its religious supremacy. Though it
recognizes the spiritual authority of the Sultan, it does not, like
Khiva, blindly submit to it, and it hardly pardons the emperor for
permitting himself to be corrupted by the detestable influence of
Europeans. Our traveller, in his supposed quality of Turk, was
frequently obliged to defend Constantinople from the reproaches
addressed to him: "Why," demanded, for example, the fervent
Bokharists,--"why does not the sultan put to death all the Europeans
who live in his states? why does he not ordain every year a holy war
against the unbelievers?" Or again: "Why do not the Turks wear the
turban and the long robe which the law prescribes? Is not this a
frightful sin? and also, why have they not the long beard and short
moustache which the Prophet wore?"

The emir Mozaffar ed Din watches carefully over the maintenance of the
sacred doctrines. Every city has its _Reïs_ or guardian of religion,
who, whip in hand, runs through the streets and public squares,
interrogating every one he meets upon the precepts of Islam. Woe to
the unhappy passenger taken in the flagrant crime of ignorance: if it
were a gray-headed old man he is also, all business ceasing, sent for
a fortnight to the benches of the school. A discipline equally
rigorous, obliges every one to go to the mosques at the hour of
prayer. Finally, the espionage of the Reïs does not stop at the
threshold of the private dwelling, and in the privacy of his family a
Bokharist takes care not to omit the least rite, or even to pronounce
the name of the emir without adding the sacramental formula, "May
Allah give him a hundred and twenty years of life!" It needs not to
say that all joy and gaiety are banished from social life, except the
momentary animation of the bazaar. Bokhara presents a sad and
monotonous aspect. During the day, every one fears perpetually to find
himself in the presence of a spy; in the evening, two hours after
sunset, the streets are deserted; no one ventures to visit a friend,
the sick may perish for want of help, for Mozaffar ed Din forbids any
one to go out under the most severe penalties.

Nevertheless, this prince is generally beloved by his subjects: he is
strictly faithful to the policy of his predecessors, but they cannot
reproach {396} him with any crime, or arbitrary or cruel act. A pious
and instructed Mussulman, he has taken for device the word "justice,"
and he conforms himself to it scrupulously. This Bokharist justice
might appear a little summary to Europeans, and the war against
Khokand, is not, as we shall see by-and-bye, just in the full
acceptation of the word, yet a prince of central Asia, educated in the
bosom of the most fiery fanaticism, must be judged with some
indulgence. It must be said in his praise, that if he is sometimes
lavish of the blood of his nobles, he spares at least that of the
poorer class, so that his people have surnamed him "the destroyer of
elephants, and the protector of, mice."

A declared enemy of all innovation, the emir applies himself
especially to maintain the austere manners of the ancient Bokhara. The
importation of articles of luxury is forbidden, very rigorous
sumptuary laws regulate not only dress, but even the structure and
furniture of the dwellings. Mozaffar ed Din gives the first example of
the contempt of all luxury; he has reduced by half the number of his
servants; and one vainly seeks in his palace the least appearance of
princely pomp. The same simplicity resigns in the harem, the oversight
of which is intrusted to the mother and grandmother of the sovereign;
the wise direction of these two princesses merits for this sanctuary a
high reputation for chastity. Its doors, carefully closed to laics,
open only to the mollahs, whose sacred breathings bring with them only
happiness and piety. The sultanas, four in number, are accustomed to
the exercise of domestic virtues; their table is frugal, their dress
modest; they make their own garments and sometimes those of the emir,
who exercises over all expenses a minute control.

Before quitting Bokhara, Vambéry wished to visit the tomb of Baveddin,
the supposed end of his long pilgrimage.

This saint, the patron of Turkestan, is the object of profound
veneration throughout all Asia. They regard him as a second Mohammed;
and even from the heart of China, the faithful come in crowds to kiss
his relics. The sepulchre is in a little garden, near which they have
built a mosque; troops of blind, lame or paralytic beggars completely
obstruct the approach. In front of the mausoleum is found the famous
_Stone of Desire_, which has been much worn by the contact of the
foreheads of pilgrims; on the tomb are placed rams' horns, a banner,
and a broom sanctified by a long service in the temple of Mecca. Many
times they have tried to cover all with a dome, but Baveddin prefers
the open air, and always after three nights the buildings are thrown
down. At least such is the legend, related by the sheiks, descendants
of the saint.



V.

The two companions of Vambéry, Hadji Salih and Hadji Bilal, were
impatient to quit Bokhara in order to reach before winter the distant
province where they lived. Our traveller proposed to accompany them to
Samarcand; he wished to see this celebrated city, and anticipating an
interview with the emir, he wished to secure for himself the support
of the pilgrims. The day of departure the caravan was already much
reduced, being contained entirely in two carts. The European,
sheltered from the sun by a hanging of mats, expected to repose
comfortably in his rustic carriage, but this illusion was soon broken.
The violent jolting of the vehicle threw the pilgrims every instant
here and there, now against each other, now against the heavy
wagon-frame; their heads were beaten about like billiard-balls. "For
the first few hours," adds Vambéry, "I was literally sea-sick; I
suffered much more than when mounted upon the camel, the swaying of
which, {397} resembling the rolling of a ship, I had dreaded very
much."

The travellers followed, at first a monotonous road; short, stinted
pastures extended everywhere to the horizon, but nothing justified the
marvellous stories of the inhabitants of the charming villages and
enchanted gardens which lie between Bokhara and Samarcand. The caravan
crossed the little desert of _Chol Melik_, and reached the next day
the district of Kermineh; there the landscape suddenly changes,
beautiful hamlets, grouped near each other, offer to the eye their
inns, before which the gigantic _samovar_ makes the traveller dream of
solace and comfort; their farms, surrounded by rich harvests, by
prairies where magnificent cattle feed, and by farm-yards sheltering
their feathered population. Everything breathed life and abundance,
and Vambéry could not contemplate without emotion this smiling
picture, which recalled his fertile Germany.

After a journey of five days the hadjis arrived within sight of
Samarcand. Thanks to the remembrances of the past, and the distance
which separates it from Europe, the ancient capital of Timour excites
a lively curiosity. We will permit the Hungarian traveller to
describe, himself, this famous city.

"Let the reader," says he, "take a seat beside me in my modest
carriage. He will perceive toward the east a high mountain, the
cupola-like summit of which is crowned by a small edifice; there
reposes Chobanata, the venerated patron of shepherds. Below extends
the city. Its circumference nearly equals that of Teheran, but it must
be much less populous, for the houses are much more scattered; on the
other hand its ruins and public monuments give it an air more grand
and imposing. The eye is first attracted by four lofty dome-like
buildings, which are the _midresses_ or colleges. Further on we
perceive a small, guttering dome, then toward the south another,
larger and more majestic; the first is the tomb, the second the mosque
of Timour. Just in front of us, at the extreme southwest of the city,
rises on a hill the citadel (_Ark_), itself surrounded by temples and
sepulchres, which define themselves against the blue sky. If now we
imagine all this intermingled with gardens of the most luxuriant
vegetation, we shall have an idea of Samarcand. A feeble and imperfect
idea, it is true, for the Persian proverb justly says 'It is one thing
to see and another to hear.'

"Alas! why must we add that in entering this city all this prestige
vanishes, and gives place to a bitter disappointment? We were obliged
to cross the cemetery before reaching the inhabited quarters, and in
spite of myself, this line of a Persian poet, which to-day seems
tinged with a cruel irony, came to my mind?

  "Samarcand is the sun of the world."

The same evening Vambéry and his companions were received in a house
very near the tomb of Timour. Our traveller was delighted to learn
that his host filled important functions near the Emir. The return of
this prince, who had just finished a victorious campaign in Khokand,
being expected very soon, Hadji Salih and Haji Bilal consented, out of
regard to their friend, to prolong their stay in Samarcand until
Vambéry had obtained an audience of Mozaffar ed Din, and found a
caravan with which he might return to Persia. While waiting the
pilgrims visited the ancient monuments of the city, which, in spite of
its miserable appearance, is the richest city in Central Asia in
historical remembrances. The plan of this sketch does not permit us to
follow the author in the details which he gives of these remarkable
buildings. We only cite.

1. The summer palace of Timour, which preserves, even to-day, some
vestiges of its ancient magnificence. The apartment, to which we
ascend by a marble staircase of forty steps, {398} contains rich mural
paintings, made with colored bricks, and the pavement, entirely of
mosaic, preserves the freshness and brilliancy of the first day.

2. The citadel, where we admire in a vast apartment called "Timour's
audience-hall," the celebrated _Köktash_ (green stone) upon which was
placed the throne of the famous conqueror.

3. The tomb of Timour, surmounted by a very beautiful stone of deep
green, two spans and a half wide, ten long, and of the thickness of
six fingers. Not far from this a black stone shades the sepulchre of
_Mir Seid Berke_, the spiritual director of the emir, near whom the
powerful monarch wished to be buried. In the vaults of this mausoleum
is preserved a copy of the Koran written upon gazelle skin, by the
hand of Osman, the secretary and successor of Mohammed.

4. The _Midusses_, of which many, entirely abandoned, are falling into
ruin; others, yet flourishing, are maintained with care. The most
remarkable is that of Tillakair, so called from its golden ornaments.

The new city is much smaller than the ancient capital of Timour; it
has six gates, and several bazaars where they sell at a very low price
manufactured articles, confessedly of European workmanship. Vambéry,
without thinking, like the Tartars, that "Samarcand resembles
Paradise," still found it quite superior to other Turcoman cities, by
the beauty of its situation, the splendor of its monuments, and the
richness of its vegetation.

Meanwhile, days passed and the emir did not arrive, the caravan which
was to take Vambéry back prepared to start, when the conqueror of
Khokand at last made his triumphant entry. Mozaffar ed Din, following
the unscrupulous policy adopted in the east, had organized a vast
conspiracy against the sovereign of the rival khanat; then hired
assassins, by his orders, delivered him from his enemies; and
profiting by the confusion thus caused, Mozaffar succeeded in making
himself master of the capital. At this news Samarcand burst into
transports of joy, the people considered Mozaffar as a new Timour, who
was about to reduce successively under his dominion, China, Persia,
Afghanistan, India, and Europe; in their warlike ardor the Turcomen
saw already the world divided between their prince and the Sultan of
Constantinople. Nor must we be so much surprised that the taking of
Khokand had so greatly excited them; this city, four times as large,
they say, as Teheran, is the capital of a powerful khanat, which has
for a long time remained in a state of perpetual hostility to the
Bokharists. But one foresees that the Russian government will soon
establish peace between these two enemies, in assuming the part of the
judge in the fable. It slowly pursues its end, sows division, and
already its bayonets have subjected Tashkend, the most western city of
Khokand, and equally important in a commercial and military point of
view.

At the period when Vambéry visited Samarcand, the intoxication of the
victory obtained by the emir dispelled all gloom; the Europeans and
their encroachments were forgotten in the noisy rejoicings. The happy
return of Mozaffar ed Din was celebrated by a national festival, in
which rice, mutton, tallow, and tea were distributed to the people
with royal prodigality; the next day, the emir having granted his
subjects a public audience, our traveller seized the occasion to be
presented. Accompanied by his friends the pilgrims, he was preparing
to enter the palace, when a Mehrem stopped him, saying that his
Majesty desired to see the hadji of Constantinople alone. "We were
extremely alarmed," relates Vambéry; "this distinction seemed to us an
ill omen. Nevertheless, I followed the officer with a firm step. He
introduced me into a spacious hall, where I perceived the emir seated
upon an ottoman, and surrounded with books and manuscripts of all
sorts. I did not suffer myself to be intimidated by the cold and
severe air of the {399} prince, and after having recited a short
_sura_, followed by the habitual prayer for the sovereign, I seated
myself without asking permission near the royal person. He did not
appear offended, for my character of dervish authorized this conduct,
but he fixed upon me his great black eyes with a suspicious and
interrogatory air, as if he would read to the bottom of my soul.
Fortunately, for a long time I have lost the habit of blushing,
therefore I sustained this scrutiny with coolness.

"Hadji," at last the emir said to me, "you have come from Turkey, I
understand, to visit the tombs of Baveddin and the saints of
Turkestan?"

"'Yes, Takhsir' (Your Majesty), but I wished also to refresh myself
with the sight of your divine beauty.'

"'It is very strange! how, have you no other motive for undertaking so
long a journey?'

"'No, Takhsir; I have always had an ardent desire to behold the noble
Bokhara, the enchanting Samarcand, the sacred soil of which, according
to the remark of the sheikh Djilal, ought to be trodden with the head
rather than with the feet. I have beside no other business in this
world, and for a long time I have wandered about like a pilgrim of the
universe.'

"A pilgrim of the universe! you, with your lame leg!'

"'Remember, Takhsir, that your glorious ancestor Timour,  [Footnote
63] peace be with him, had the same infirmity, which did not hinder
him from being the conqueror of the universe.'

  [Footnote 63: This prince, from whom the emirs of Bokhara pretend to
  descend, was lame, from whence came the surname of Timonr-leuk, or
  Timour the lame, of which we make Tamerlan (Fr.), Tamerlane (Eng.) ]

"These words charmed the emir; he addressed to me various questions
relating to my journey, asking the impression which Bokhara and
Samarcand had made upon me. My answers, all wrapped in Persian
sentences and verses of the Koran, gained the confidence of the
prince. Before dismissing me, he gave an order to remit to me a
complete suit of clothes, and to count me out thirty tenghes."

Vambéry, much elated, hastened to inform his friends of the result of
the interview; they advised him not to count too surely on the royal
protection, and not to defer his departure. It cost him much to quit
these good dervishes, generous and devoted hearts, the faithful
companions of his hours of suffering. The bold explorer, the witty and
sarcastic writer, full of pungent humor, here finds words which
indicate deep feeling "I cannot describe," says he, "the emotion with
which we parted. For six months, we had lived the same life, shared
the same perils; perils in the midst of the burning sands of the
desert, perils from the savage Turcomen, perils from the inclemency of
nature and the elements. Differences of age, of position, of
nationality, had disappeared; we were members of one family. Now we
were to separate, never to meet again; death could not have parted us
more widely, nor left in our souls a deeper grief. My heart
overflowed, and I sobbed aloud, when I thought that even in this
supreme hour, I could not confide to these men, my best, my dearest
friends, the secret of my disguise. I must deceive those to whom I
owed my life. This thought caused me a real remorse: I sought, but in
vain, an occasion for bringing out the dangerous confidence."

How, in fact, could he tell these pious pilgrims, zealous believers,
that the friend whose religious learning they had admired, whose faith
and virtue they respected, was an impostor, who, urged by the thirst
for secular learning, had surprised their confidence, profaned their
ministry, had trifled, in a word, with their dearest sentiments? Such
an avowal might not, perhaps, have broken the bonds of affection which
united him to the two dervishes, but what a bitter deception for these
fervent and sincere souls t {400} And why destroy an illusion so
sweet? Vambéry retained the secret ready to escape him; his eyes
swimming in tears, he tore himself from the embraces of his friends.
"I see them always," he adds, "motionless in the place where I had
quitted them, the hands raised toward heaven, imploring the blessing
of Allah for my journey. Many times I turned my head to see them
again; at last they disappeared in the fog, and I could distinguish
only the domes of Samarcand, feebly lighted by the rays of the moon."

The journey home was marked by fewer dramatic incidents. Vambéry had
to cross the country of Bokhara, but avoiding the capital, he arrived
after three days at Karshi, the second city of the khanat in extent
and commercial relations. It contains six caravansaries and a
well-supplied market, where are seen very remarkable articles of
native cutlery, which are largely exported into central Asia, Persia,
Arabia, and even into Turkey. These fine blades, richly damaskeened,
the handles covered with incrustations of gold and silver, are far
superior to the best products of Sheffield or Birmingham. Vambéry's
new companions advised him to use such funds as he had left, in
purchasing knives, needles, and glass-ware, the exchange of which
would secure a pilgrim the means of existence among the nomad tribes.
Our traveller thought it best to follow this prudent counsel, and add,
as he gaily remarks, "the profession of merchant to that of antiquary,
hadji and mollah, without prejudice to a crowd of not less important
functions, such as bestowing benedictions, holy breathings, amulets,
and talismans."

The caravan passed through Bokhara without disturbance; the rigor with
which the emir enforces the police regulations rendering all the roads
from across the desert perfectly secure, not only for caravans, but
even for individual travellers. Vambéry could hardly contain his joy
in crossing the frontier: at every step he approached the West; he was
about to revisit Persia, the first stage of civilization, the object
of his ardent desires. Other members of the caravan were not less
impatient, these were Iranian slaves, returning to their own country.
One of them, an old man, bent under the weight of years, had been to
Bokhara to pay the ransom of his son, the only support of his family,
the price demanded was fifty ducats, and the poor father had exhausted
his resources in the payment. "But," said he, "better to fear the
staff of the beggar than to leave my son in chains." Another of these
unhappy men greatly excited Vambéry's compassion; his wasted features,
and hair prematurely white, proved sufficiently his sufferings, eight
years previous, a Turcoman raid had carried away his wife, his sister
and his six children; the unfortunate man pursued them, vainly sought
them in the two Khanats of Khiva and Bokhara; when at last he
discovered the place of their captivity, his wife, his sister and two
children had perished under the rigors of slavery. Of the four who
remained he was able to ransom only two; the others having become men,
their master exacted so heavy a ransom that the unhappy father was
unable to raise the sum.

These instances give but a faint idea of the scourge which has for
centuries depopulated the north of Persia and neighboring countries.
The Turcomen Tekkes number to-day more than fifteen thousand mounted
plunderers, whose only occupation consists in organizing a system of
vast brigandage, to decimate families and ravage hamlets. The
travellers crossed whole districts desolated by war and exactions of
all sorts; the laws are powerless to repress disorders, a bribe
suffices to exculpate one from the most odious crime; therefore every
one speaks with admiration of Bokhara, whose emir is regarded as a
model of justice and wisdom. An inhabitant of Audkuy acknowledged that
his compatriots envied the happiness of being {401} subject to the
sceptre of Mozaffar ed Din, and added that the Europeans would be
preferable to the present Mussulman chiefs.

Meanwhile, the journey was long, and Vambéry saw with anxiety his
little package of merchandise diminish. He hoped to obtain assistance
at Herat; but unfortunately, when they arrived in this city, the key
of central Asia, it had just been put to sack by the Afghans. The
fortifications and houses were only a heap of ruins, the citadel
trembled, half demolished upon its crumbling base, some few
inhabitants here and there showed themselves, the celebrated bazaar,
which had stood so many sieges, alone offered some animation, but the
shops were opened timidly, the remembrance of the foray still
terrifying the people. Moreover, the custom-house system, established
by the rapacity of the Afghans, promises little prosperity either to
commerce or industry, an article of fur which has been purchased for 8
francs, pays 3 francs tax; they levy one franc upon a hat of the value
of two francs, and so of every thing else. When we add to that, for
articles brought from distant provinces, the rights already collected
in intermediate districts, we see how much the merchant must raise his
price in order to realize anything.

In a city so ravaged, the trade of a dervish is not lucrative; no one
asked Vambéry for his holy breathing, his cutlery and pearls were
exhausted; his travelling companions, very different from Hadji Bilal,
lent him no help. Only one young man named Ishak, remained faithful to
him. Every morning he begged the food for the day, and prepared the
frugal repasts of our traveller, whom he regarded as his master, and
served with affectionate respect.

In order to neglect nothing which might enable him to continue his
journey, Vambéry resolved to apply to the Viceroy of Herat, Serdar
Mehemmed Yakoub, the son of the King of Afghanistan. The halls of the
palace were filled with servants and soldiers; but the large turban of
the pretended dervish, and the hermit-like air which long fatigues had
given him, were letters of recommendation which opened all doors. The
prince, not more than sixteen years old, sate in a large easy chair,
surrounded by high dignitaries. Vambéry, faithful to his character,
went directly to him, and sat by his side, pushing aside the vizier to
make himself a place. This behavior excited general hilarity. Serdar
Mehemmed regarded the stranger attentively, then rose suddenly, and
cried, half-laughing, half-bewildered: "You are an Englishman, I'll
take my oath!" He approached our traveller, clapping his hands like a
child who has made a happy discovery: "Say, say," added he, "are you
not an Englishman?" In the presence of this innocent joy, Vambéry had
half a mind to discover himself, but remembering that the fanaticism
of the Afghans might yet expose him to great perils, he resolved not
to raise the mask which protected him. Taking, then, a serious air:
"That will do," said he to the prince, "have you then forgotten this
proverb--'He who even in joke treats a true believer as an infidel,
makes himself worse than an infidel?' Give me rather something for my
benediction, that I may have the means of pursuing my journey."
Vambéry's look, and the maxim which he so appropriately recalled, put
the young viceroy out of countenance. He stammered some excuses,
alleging the singular physiognomy of the stranger, which was not of
the Bokhariot type. Vambéry hastened to reply that he was a native of
Stamboul; he showed to Serdar Mehemmed and to the vizier his Turkish
passport, spoke of an Afghan prince residing in Constantinople, and
succeeded in completely effacing the impression which he had at first
made.

The 15th of November, 1868, the grand caravan which was going to
Meshed, left Herat, taking with it our traveller. It comprised not
less than two thousand persons, at least {402} half of whom were
Afghans, who, in spite of the most frightful misery, had undertaken,
with their families, a pilgrimage to the tombs of the Shiite saints.
In proportion as Vambéry approached civilization, he let fall little
by little the veil of his incognito, and let it be understood that in
Meshed he should find powerful protectors, and financial resources
which would enable him to recompense the services of his companions.
The doubtful light which surrounded him furnished inexhaustible matter
for conjecture, and gave rise to some lively discussions, which very
much amused Vambéry. At last, twelve days after leaving Herat, the
dome of the mosque, and the tomb of Iman-Riza, gilded by the first
rays of the sun, announced the approach to Meshed. The sight caused
the European deep emotion, his dangerous exploring expedition was
finished, and he had no further need of disguise. In passing the gates
of the city he forgot the Turcoman, the desert, the Tebbad, to think
of the happiness of seeing friendly faces, and of speaking at his ease
of Europe. He passed successively through Meshed, Teheran, and
Constantinople, where he bade adieu to Oriental life; then through
Pesth, where he left his Turcoman companion, the faithful Ishak, who
had followed him even to Europe, and the 9th of June, 1864, he arrived
in London.

Singular force of habit. Vambéry had so identified himself with the
character of a learned effendi, he was so impregnated with Asiatic
manners and customs, that this son of Germany found himself ill at
ease in England. "It cost me," says he, "incredible difficulty to
accustom myself to my new life, so different from that which I had led
at Bokhara some months previous. Everything in London seemed strange
and novel; one would have said that the remembrances of my youth were
a dream; only my travels had left upon my mind a deep impression. Is
it astonishing that sometimes in Regent street or in the saloons of
the English aristocracy I felt myself as embarrassed as a child, and
that often I forgot everything around me to dream of the profound
solitudes of central Asia, of the tents of the Kirghiz and the
Turcomen?"

Vambéry's book paints in vivid colors the real condition of central
Asia; it contains curious and characteristic details regarding the
three khanats of Turkestan (Khiva, Bokhara, and Khokand), on the
particular manners of each people, the commerce and industry of the
cities. We follow there the slow but continuous progress of the
Russian government, whose ambition is excited by the riches of these
fertile provinces. It advances with persevering obstinacy toward the
conquest of Turkestan, the only country which is wanting to-day to the
immense Asiatic kingdom dreamed of, four centuries ago, by Ivan
Vasilievitch. Since that period the czars have never lost an
opportunity to extend their influence in the Orient. Russia maintains
with the khanats regular and active commercial relations; her
exportations into central Asia were valued in 1850 at twenty-five
millions of francs, and her importations from thence at not less than
thirty-three millions. England, whose possessions in India approach
Turkestan, has not taken so deep root there, she understands less the
tastes, and submits less to the exigencies, of the Tartar populations.
At the same time, the protection which she gives the Afghans, the
declared enemies of the Khivites and Bokhariots, gives her a part to
play in the events which are preparing, and which the taking of
Tashkend by Russian troops will perhaps precipitate.

Central Asia is destined to be absorbed by one or other of the rival
powers which every day embrace her more closely. Will she be Russian
or English? that is the only form the question takes to-day.

{403}

Persia and Turkey, tottering themselves, cannot protect her. The grand
contest, commenced centuries ago, between the two hostile
civilizations, between the sword of Mohammed and the cross of Christ,
to-day touches its term. Of the different oriental tribes, these
endeavor to revive themselves by the contact of our arts and sciences,
those intrench themselves behind their mountains and their deserts;
but these powerless barriers cannot hinder European activity from
reaching them. They are, moreover, condemned to inevitable ruin by
barbarism, superstition, and fatalism, which form the basis of their
character and their creeds, the populations, bent under an implacable
despotism, consider even the encroachments of Europeans as a benefit,
their faith, moreover, delivers them without defence to misfortune, to
tyranny, to the joke of the stranger, for it persuades them that an
inflexible destiny, against which the will of man is powerless, rules
the lot of individuals and nations. "Who can prevail agamst the
Nasib?" said to Vambéry an unfortunate man whose wife and children had
been carried off. "It was written!" replied the Mussulmans when their
most beautiful provinces were snatched from them.

The European race, on the contrary, energetic and indefatigable, makes
all obstacles yield before it; its science and industry transform
nature into a docile instrument; difficulties stimulate its courage:
"This sea I will cross," it cries; "I will level this mountain; this
people, reputed invincible, I will subjugate." From antiquity it had
raised upon its flag this proud device, which made the grandeur of the
Roman world: "Audaces fortuna juvat." Afterward, Christianity, in
elevating minds, and pouring upon all hearts sentiments of tenderness
and charity heretofore unknown, brought new elements to this expansive
force. It showed God respecting, even in their errors, the liberty of
men; it showed the sacrifice of Jesus, this Son of the Most High come
upon earth to suffer all griefs, yet voluntarily powerless to save man
without his concurrence and his own participation. This noble morality
not only regenerated consciences, it developed individual action, made
known the value of the hidden force which we call the will, and
contributed largely to the social and political progress of the
western nations. At the same time, it is true, the Christian dogma
preached resignation in sufferings, but this pious resignation
resembles as little the oriental indolence as the calm of death
resembles that of strength and health.

Such are the causes of European supremacy. The Asiatics, not less
gifted by nature, have stifled, under the double influence of fatalism
and a sensual morality, the germs of civilization which might have
given them a durable life and glory. To-day, as we learn from the
intrepid traveller who has penetrated into the very heart of Turkestan
and returned again safe and sound, everything among them is in decay;
their cities and institutions, alike, offer nothing but ruins.

------

{404}


From The Lamp,

UNCONVICTED; OR, OLD THORNELEY'S HEIRS.



CHAPTER I.


  "Mr. Thorneley presents his compliments to Mr. John Kavanagh, and
  would feel obliged if he would call in Wimpole street this evening
  at seven o'clock. Mr. Thorneley wishes to have Mr. Kavanagh's
  professional assistance in a matter of business.

  "100 Wimpole street, Cavendish Square,
     "Oct. 23, 185--"

The above note lay amidst a heap of letters awaiting my return from a
pleasant mountaineering tour among alps and glaciers, perpetual snows,
and ice-bound passes. Yes, it had been in every sense of the word a
delightful excursion, a real holiday to me,--me, a dusty, musty,
hard-working lawyer, living in chambers, poring over parchments, and
deeds, and matters dull and dry to all, save them whom those things
concerned,--me, a middle-aged bachelor, a solitary man, with little of
kith or kin left to surround my dying bed or follow my old bones to
their grave. It was a renewal of youth and early days to climb those
mountains, to face those majestic peaks, to scale those rugged passes,
and feel the fresh clear air fanning my brow as I raised it to God's
heaven above, whilst all that was of the world worldly seemed to lie
beneath my feet. My two months' holiday and repose from labor, when I
packed my modest portmanteau, locked up my papers, left my rooms to
the care of clerk and laundress, and took my ticket at London Bridge
for Dover or Boulogne, bound for Chamouni, Unterwalden, or the
Simplon,--these eight weeks of pure enjoyment were the oasis in the
desert of my life. But now, for this year at least, it was over. I was
back to busy life again; to work and daily duty; to my calf-bound
volumes, my inky table, my yellow sheets inscribed with the promises
of one said party to another said party--how soon to be broken, God
only knew--or the blue folio pages stating how this said man is to
bully that said fellow man, and how there is to be war between two
Christian beings, not to the knife, but to the bar, the judge, jury,
prison, and future ruin of one or the other fellow heir to the great
inheritance of a hereafter. I had returned to it all--this turmoil of
strife and struggle, out of which quagmire I got my daily bread, like
hundreds of others cruising in the same barque on the sea of life; and
my table was heaped with the business correspondence that once more
was to induct me into my ordinary avocations. There were
communications from old clients about affairs of long standing, and
familiar to me as my morning shave; and letters from new clients
promising fresh labor and new grist to the mill, but I scanned them
all with the same feeling of weariness and disgust--casting many a
regretful thought to the scenes I had left behind me,--inclined to
throw business, law, and clients wholesale and pell-mell into the Red
Sea. It was in this frame of mind that I opened the above note, but as
I read it, my ennui and lassitude gave place to the keenest interest
and curiosity. That old Thorneley should send for me professionally,
when I knew for certain that all his affairs were completely in the
hands, and he entirely under the thumbs, of my highly-respected
brother lawyers Smith and Walker, was enough to rouse one from a
mesmeric sleep. Old Thorneley; who {405} lived like a hermit, never
meddling with anything nor anybody; whose last intentions were
supposed amongst us in Lincoln's Inn to be hermetically sealed up in a
certain tin box, lodging at Messrs. Smith and Walker's; whose frugal
house-keeping and simple taste could involve him in no pecuniary
trouble,--what could he want with the professional advice of one who
was almost a stranger to him, whose standing in the law was of much
later date and whose clientage much less distinguished than that of
the firm above mentioned, and who had been his legal advisers during
his whole lifetime?

Again I referred to the note--"Oct. 23;"--the interview was asked for
that very evening I looked at my watch--it was half-past six, the hour
named, seven. Tired with travel and hungry as a hunter, I was little
inclined to leave my cosy fire, my tender steak, my fragrant cup of
bohea, my delicious plate of buttered toast, and face the raw air and
mizzling rain of an autumnal evening at the beck of a man whose hand I
had never shaken, at whose table I had never sat, and whose foot had
never crossed my threshold. But curiosity and interest prevailed at
last, and these were induced by two motives. 1. Thorneley was a
millionaire--a man whose name Rothschild had not scorned on 'Change,
and whose breath had once fluttered the money-markets of Europe. 2.
And a far more powerful one,--he was the uncle of Hugh Atherton. O
Hugh, best of friends, thou man of true and noble heart, if these
pages ever meet your eyes, and you look back through the dim vista of
intervening years, bear witness how mournfully I stand by the grave of
our buried affection, opened on this night, how tenderly I touch the
fragments of our wrecked friendship! and from your heart, O lost
comrade and brother, believe that, whatever of pain lay between us
two, severing our lives, no thought disloyal to you ever crossed my
soul or shook the fealty of my honor and reverence. Hastily I
despatched the meal, made a few changes in my dress, threw myself into
the first hansom, and knocked at 100 Wimpole street, at five minutes
past seven.

I was ushered at once into Mr. Thorneley's study--a
comfortably-furnished room, lined with well-stocked bookcases, and
hung with neatly-framed engravings of first-rate excellence. He was
sitting reading beside a cheery fire when I entered, and on a table
near him stood fruit, biscuits, and wine. I had not seen him for many
months; and as he rose to receive me, the light of the shaded gas lamp
falling upon his head and face revealed to me how aged and broken his
appearance had become in that period of time. Then I remembered him as
a hale, hearty old man, strong of limb, straight and square about the
shoulders, carrying himself with the air of an old soldier, gaunt,
upright, stern, unbending and unbent. Now, before me stood a bowed
infirm figure, with trembling hands and tottering feet, with thin
pinched features and sunken eyes. Little as I knew the man, and little
as I liked what I knew or had heard of him, I was touched to see what
a wreck he looked of his former outward self. Involuntarily I
stretched out my hand to him, and expressed my regret at seeing him
look so ill. He bowed, and touched my hand with the tips of his
fingers, which were clammy and cold. Then he motioned me in silence to
a chair on the opposite side of the fire to where he sat, and resumed
his own seat.

"You are somewhat late, sir," he said querulously, glancing at me from
beneath his shaggy brows; the same keen searching glance I remembered
of old--the glance of a man who has made money.

"But five minutes, Mr. Thorneley," I replied; "and that I think you
will excuse when I tell you I have crossed the Channel to-day, and
only arrived home about an hour ago."

"Have you dined? Allow the to order you something."

{406}

"Nothing, thanks. I took my usual meal after a journey--a meat tea;
and, though despatched in haste, it sufficed for mine requirements."

"At least," he said more courteously, "you will take a glass of wine!"

"With pleasure, sir, after we have finished the business in which I
understand you require my assistance."

He saw that I wished to come to the point at once; and drawing his
chair near to mine, he fixed his piercing gray eyes upon my
countenance. I returned his gaze steadily enough; and he then shifted
uneasily, so that his countenance was turned sideways to me.

"You are aware, Mr. Kavanagh, that my family solicitors have been, and
still are, Messrs. Smith and Walker, and no doubt you are surprised
why I should now require other professional aid than theirs. Your
curiosity and speculative faculties, if you possess such, must have
been on the _qui vive_ since you got my note. Eh, sir?"

There was a covert sarcasm in the old man's voice which vexed me.
"Every movement of Mr Thorneley's must be a matter of general
interest," I said, with equal satire.

"Ha, ha, ha! Very good--given me back in my own kind,--tit for tat.
Like you all the better for it, Mr. Kavanagh,--a sharp lawyer is a
good thing in its way. Well, you've not repudiated the curiosity, so
I'll satisfy it. I sent for you to make _my Will_;" and again he
turned on me those shrewd glittering eyes, as if enjoying the
amazement I could not entirely suppress.

"But I thought--" I stammered; "surely, sir, your own lawyers are the
fittest persons; it is against etiquette. Indeed, sir, I'd rather not
have any thing to do with it."

"You will be _paid_ sir," he said rudely.

"It is not a question of _payment_, Mr. Thorneley; simply, you place
me, I foresee, in an awkward position with regard to a firm with whom
I am on the most friendly terms. But of course they are acquainted
with your desire of having my services?"

"Of course they are nothing of the sort. If you are squeamish in the
matter, I can get another man to do my business, and they'll not be a
bit more enlightened on the subject. Whomsoever I employ must be bound
to inviolable secrecy during my lifetime. Let us understand each
other, Mr. Kavanagh: I sent for you because I knew you to be a
discreet man, on whose prudence after my death I could rely. But I do
not choose that Smith and Walker should know any thing of this
transaction. You can do as you please in the matter, but you must make
your decision now."

I gave a rapid glance at my position with all the care time would
allow; and one consideration outweighed every thing else,--I take
heaven to witness it!--the thought that Hugh Atherton's interests,
which I felt to be now involved, would be safer in my hands than in
those of any other man; and I replied, "So be it, Mr. Thorneley; you
may command my services." If I had known what was coming; if in mercy
one shadowy vision of that miserable future had been vouchsafed to me;
if but a ray of light had illumined my darkened sight, I had shaken
the dust off my feet, and left that doomed house never again to cross
its threshold.

Thorneley rose and pushed a small writing-table towards me, on which
was placed the printed form of a will to be filled in.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I am."

He bent forward, with his hand shading his rugged brow, his eyes fixed
intently on the fire and spoke in low distinct tones. I listened
almost breathlessly; and as I listened, I felt the cold sweat breaking
out upon my forehead. And then I made the will. Yes, God help me! I
made the will, for I saw it was inevitable.

{407}

"We must have witnesses," I said when it was finished.

Mr. Thorneley rang the bell. "Tell Thomas I want him here, and come
back yourself." The two men returned in a few moments,--coachman and
footman; and before those two, with unshaken hand, with a face of
rigid firmness, Gilbert Thorneley wrote his name; the servants affixed
their signatures, and the deed was done.

When we were alone I rose to depart, and bade him good-night. As I
left the room I looked back at the old man. He had sunk in his chair,
and his face was buried in his hands, bowed and bent beside the fire,
with his thin gray locks straying over his forehead, as if some bitter
blast had swept over him and left him desolate;--thus I saw him for
the last time on earth.

I left that house with a heavy secret locked in my breast, with a
weight on heart and brain, and heeded not the blinding, drizzling rain
as I bent my footsteps rapidly homeward, longing only to reach my
quiet chamber, where I might commune with myself and be still. I am
not an inveterate smoker; but when I want to think out a knotty point,
when I wish to obtain a clear view of any difficult question, I can
quite appreciate the aid which a good cigar affords one. This night I
was dazed, bewildered, and mechanically I sought my old friend in my
breast-pocket. I stopped beside the window of a large chemist's shop
at the comer of Vere street and Oxford street to strike a light, when
some one hastily passed out of the shop and ran full against me.

"Kavanagh!" "Atherton!" The man of all men in the world to meet _that_
night! What fatality was it that was hedging me in and fencing me
round, without any agency of my own?

"Who would have thought of seeing you here?" he exclaimed as he
grasped my hand. "I had no idea you had returned even."

"I came back this very evening."

"Only this evening! and whither away so soon, old fellow?"

I muttered something about business.

"Business! Come, I like that. You have changed your nature, John, if
you go after business the first evening of your return from
Switzerland. Why, I didn't suppose you would have stirred if my old
uncle yonder had sent for you to make his will, leaving me his sole
heir." And he laughed his old hearty joyous laugh, which had been
music to me from the time when I fought his first battle for him at
Rugby. Now it filled me with an unaccountable dread; now it fell on my
ear as the knell of times which were never more to come back. So near
the truth too as he had been, talking in his own thoughtless,
light-hearted way. What spell was over us all that fatal evening?
Perhaps--I think it must have been so--all the dark shadows which were
gathering over my soul revealed themselves in my countenance, for I
saw him look at me with the kind solicitous look that never became a
manly face better than his.

"I'll tell you what it is, dear old John," he said, putting his arm
within mine; "you are looking terribly hipped about something or
another, and any thing but the man you ought to look, after such a
jolly outing as you've just had. Come, I'll go home with you, and
we'll have a prime Manilla, a steaming tumbler, and a cosy chat
together; and if that doesn't send the blues back to the venerable old
party from which they are generally supposed by all good Christians to
come, why, as Mr. Peggotty hath it, 'I'm gormed!' "And again that
fatal influence stepped in, making me its agent to bring upon us the
inevitable _To be_; and putting his friendly hand from off my arm, I
said, '"No, Hugh, not to-night; I have need to be alone. Indeed I am
too tired to be good company even to you."

"Well, good-night then, my friend; I'll betake me to mine uncle, and
see {408} how the old man is getting along this damp weather. Lister
said he should look in, so we can tramp home together. But I won't be
shirked by you to-morrow, Master Jack,--don't think it; and I shall
bring somebody to fetch the Swiss toy I know you have got packed away
for her somewhere in your knapsack. Good-night, good-night."

We shook hands, and he turned down Vere street. An impulse,--blind,
unreasoning,--seized me a minute afterwards to call him back and ask
him to come home with me; and I followed quickly upon his footsteps.
The evening was very dark, and the rain beat blindingly in one's face,
so that it was difficult, with my near sight, to distinguish his
figure ahead amidst the numerous other foot-passengers. After a few
moments I gave up the chase, half angry with myself for haying been
the sport of a sudden fancy. As once more I turned round to retrace my
steps, a woman passed me at a hurried pace, and as she passed she
almost stopped and gazed intently at me. A thick veil prevented my
seeing her face, and in no way was her figure familiar to me; but the
gesture with which she stared at me was remarkable, and for a moment a
matter of wonder; then I forgot the circumstance, and rapidly made my
way home, thinking of the strange revelations I had just heard;
thinking of Hugh Atherton and our chance meeting; thinking of the days
past and the days to come,--of much and many things which belong to
the story I am telling,--of the time when I was a boy again at school,
senior in my form and umpire in all pitched battles and the petty
warfare boys wage with one another, when that little curly-headed,
blue-eyed fellow, with his cheeks all aglow and his nostrils big with
indignant wrath, had come to me, a great burly clumsy lad of sixteen,
and laid his plaint before me:

"Please, Kavanagh, the fellows say I'm a coward because I won't lick
Tom Overbury. Will you tell them to leave me in peace?--because I
_won't_ lick him."

"Why not, spooney?"

"Because I don't wish to."

"That won't go down here, you know, Atherton; you must give your
reasons."

"He's got something the matter with his right arm, and he can't hit
out. He'd have no chance against me. I know all about it, but the
other fellows don't, and they think he can't fight; he bade me not
tell any one. That's why they are always at him to make him pick
quarrels. They set him on at me; but I won't fight him, not for the
whole school, masters and all."

Such was Hugh Atherton as a boy; such was he as a man,--ever generous
and noble-hearted. I thought of him as then, I thought of him as now,
remembering all our long friendship, our close intimacy, with the
weight of that dread secret upon me, and with the indescribable sense
of coming evil clinging to me. I wished I had yielded to his request,
and allowed him to accompany me home; I wished I had persevered in
going after him; in short, I wished anything but what then was. Were
those desires troubling me a taste of the vain, futile, heart-bitter
wishes which the morrow was to bring forth? So, with the cold wind
whistling round me, and scattering the dead leaves across the desolate
square, where stood the house wherein I dwelt, the rain beating
against my face, and the sky above black and lowering, I reached my
home, wet and weary.

Methodical habits to a man brought up to the law, who has any pretence
of doing well in his profession, become like second nature; and when I
had divested myself of my wet garments, I took out my journal and made
an entry as usual of the date, object, etc., of my visit to Mr.
Thorneley; and then I wrote out a brief memorandum of the same, which
I addressed to Hugh Atherton in case of my death, and carefully locked
it up with some {409} very private papers of my own, about which he
already had my instructions. This done, I smoked a cigar, drank a
tumbler of hot brandy-and-water, and went to bed, thoroughly tired
out. But I could not sleep. For hours I tossed restlessly from side to
side; now and then catching a few moments' repose, which was disturbed
by the most horrible and distressing dreams. Toward morning, I
suppose, I must at last have fallen into a deep slumber--so profound
that I never heard the old laundress's hammering at the door, nor the
arrival of my clerk, nor the postman's knock.

At last I awoke, or rather was awakened. The day had advanced some
hours; all traces of last night's rain seemed to have vanished, and
the sun shown full and bright in at the windows. Beside my bed stood
Hardy, my old clerk.

"God bless you, sir, I thought you'd never wake!"

"I wish I never had, for I am awfully tired. How are you. Hardy? and
how is all going on?"

"Quite well, sir, thank you; and I hope you're the same. We've wanted
you badly enough. There's that Williams, he's been here almost every
day, teasing and tormenting about having his mortgage called in; and
Lady Ormskirk, she called twice, and seemed in some trouble. Then
there was a queer young chap from the country with a long case about
some inheritance; in short, sir, if you had been at home we might have
been no end busy--what with the old ones and what with the new;" and
Hardy cast a sigh after the possible tips and fees of which my absence
had deprived him.

"Well, I'll see to it all as soon as I have dressed and had some
breakfast. I suppose they've brought it up, and also the hot water?"

"Some time ago, sir; you slept so late that I ventured to come in."

"All right. I shall be ready directly."

Hardy still lingered, and I knew by his face there was some news
coming.

"There's a fine to-do at Smith and Walker's, sir, this morning. I just
met their head-clerk as I was coming here."

I sprang up in bed as if I had been shot, the old fancies and dread of
the previous night returning with full force.

"Smith and Walker's!" I cried; "what is the matter there?"

"Well, sir, I couldn't quite make out the particulars, he was in such
a hurry; but old Mr. Thorneley's been found dead in his room this
morning, and they suspect there has been foul play. Mr.
Griffiths--that's the clerk--was going off to Scotland Yard. It's a
terrible thing, an't it, sir, to be hurried off so quick? and none of
the best of lives too, if one may believe what folks say. It's shocked
you, sir, I see; and so it did me, for I thought of Mr. Atherton and
what a blow like it would be to him."

Whiter and whiter I felt my face was getting, and a feeling of dead
sickness seized me. The man whom I had seen and spoken with but such
few short hours since lay dead! the secret of whose life I possessed,
knowing what I now knew of him, and what had been left untold hanging
like a black shadow of doubt around me; he was gone from whence there
was no returning,--he was standing face to face with his Creator and
his Judge!

By this time Hardy had left the room, and I proceeded hastily to dress
myself, feeling that more was coming than I wotted of then, and that
the fearful storm which was gathering would quickly burst.

Scarcely was I dressed when I heard a loud double-knock at the
office-door, and directly after Hardy's voice demanding admittance. I
opened my door.

"Sir, there is a police-officer who wishes to see you immediately."

I went out into the sitting-room. A detective in plain clothes was
there; I had known the man in another business formerly.

"What do you want with me, Jones?"

{410}

"You have heard of Mr. Thorneley being found dead, sir?"

"Yes--my clerk has just told me. What did he die of?"

"He was poisoned, Mr. Kavanagh."

I felt the man's eyes were fixed on me as if he could read in my soul
and see the fearful dread therein. I could have hurled him from the
window.

"Who is suspected?" I asked as calmly as my parched tongue would let
me speak.

The man did not answer my question.

"You were with him last evening, sir, were you not?"

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, completely thrown off my guard; "they
surely don't suspect _me!_"

"Not that I'm aware of, sir; but your evidence is necessary, since you
were _one_ of the last persons who saw him alive."

"But not the last," I said, still blind to the fact pointed at. "Mr.
Atherton, his nephew, was with him after I left. I met him going there
at the comer of Vere street."

There was a peculiar look on the man's countenance--of compassion for
me, I had almost said.

"Mr. Kavanagh, sir, I had rather have cut off my right hand than that
you should have told me that, for you've both been kind gentlemen to
me and mine. _Mr. Atherton is arrested on suspicion of having
administered the poison to his uncle._ When you remember _where_ you
met him, you can guess what your evidence will be against him.
Here--Mr. Hardy! Help!"

I remember nothing more, for I had fallen back insensible.

TO BE CONTINUED.

------

[Original.]

Peace.

  "Not as the world giveth give I unto you."--St. John 14th.


  Break not its sleep, the faithful grief, still tender;
    God gives at length his own beloved rest;
  How worn and the suffering brow! Yet these meek fingers
    Still press the cross of patience to her breast.

  Stir not the air with one sweet, lingering cadence
    From life's fair prime of love and hope and song;
  Serener airs, from martyr hosts celestial,
    To that high trance of Conquered peace belong.

  Hush mortal joy or wail, hush mortal paeans;
    Ye cannot reach that Thabor height sublime
  Where God's eternal joy, in tranquil vision,
    Seems nearer than the sights and sounds of time.

------

{411}

[Original.]

TWO PICTURES OF LIFE IN FRANCE BEFORE 1848.


Those who are familiar with the Journal of Eugénie de Guérin, know
that in Languedoc, near the towns or villages of Andillac and Gaillac,
and not far from Toulouse, there is an ancient estate called Le Cayla;
but they know little more than this of the place where Maurice and
Eugénie de Guérin passed their youth in the quaint an beautiful
simplicity that stamped their genius with so marked and individuality.

The peasantry of that region are wedded to old habits and traditions,
and the ancient families are imbedded like rocks in the land, says
Lamartine, (from whose "Entretiens" many of these local details are
taken), and are nobles by common consent, because the château is
merely the largest ruin in the village, and every one goes there as to
a home to get whatever he needs in the way of advice, agricultural
tools, medicine or food.

Let us in the imagination visit the Château of like a lot, as it was
in the year 1837, four we must make our first acquaintance with it
when it is graced by the exquisite presence of those two, whose names
are fast becoming household words on both sides of the Atlantic
--Maurice and Eugénie de Guérin.

It is not like one's dream of an ancient _castel_, this spreading,
rectangular house, built of brick and stone after a fashion of Henry
the Fourth's time, and perched on the summit of a sharp declivity.
There is little to distinguish it from the great farms of the country
round, but a half ruined portico, projecting over the flight of stone
steps, a pointed current and the grooves of a drawbridge, over which
the ruthless hand of 1793 as effaced the ancient arms of the Guérins.
The great flagstones of the courtyard were loosened and uprooted long
ago by the drainage from the stables, and in the angles of the wall
grow holly and elder bushes, not too aristocratic to take root in such
a soil. These gates stand open always, admitting wayfarers who may
wish for a cup of water from the bucket hanging behind the door, or
for a plate of soup to eat, sitting in the sunshine on the broad steps
that lead down into the courtyard from the kitchen, an important
department in this venerable homestead.

Within doors blazes a goodly fire on the hearth, a whole tree,
standing on end, sending its smoke up a great chimney through which
daylight is visible, and ready to give a comfortable greeting to Jean,
or Gilles, or Romignières, when they come to talk about corn or sheep
with the master, they sitting on the stone settles, built into the
wall, he on one of those walnut armchairs standing between the kitchen
table and the fireplace. See the great copper boilers standing around
the wall, and those immense soup-tureens, ornamented with coarse
painting, and the big dishes for the fish that they catch in the
mill-pond once in three years.

There--we have looked long enough; pass through this long smoke-dried
corridor to the dining-room, where masters and servants take their
meals together, excepting on state occasions, the menials standing or
sitting at the lower and of the unbleached cloth.

Now down this little flight of steps to the _salon_, which is all
white, with a large sofa, some straw chairs, and a table with books on
it. Yes--here {412} we pause--here are the objects of our search. In a
faded tapestry arm-chair sits Maurice reading and Eugénie is near
here. He looks but shadowy still, having just recovered from a fever,
but the outline of his face is beautiful as he bends slightly over the
book, the refined mouth, the expressive, drooping eyelids, the noble
brow declaring him the worthy descendent of a long line of knights and
gentlemen. One of these ancestors, Guérin de Montaigu, Grand Master of
the Knights of Malta, looks down upon us from the wall as we stand
behind Maurice's chair, glancing, by the way, over his shoulder at the
page he is reading, one of Barbey d'Aurevilly's brilliant articles.
And now he reads aloud a striking passage, and Eugénie lifts her eyes
and lets the work drop on her lap. What earnest, dovelike eyes they
are! See how softly the hair parts on her forehead, passing over the
pretty ear and falling in little curls at the back of her neck. The
dress looks old-fashioned to us now, with its half-high, baby waste,
and belt, and tucker, and her hair is dressed too high to be becoming;
but there is the air of a refined lady in everything about her, and
her face is like the face of a sweet, good little child.

The reading has stopped and their talk turns upon private matters,
something about Caroline, and hopes and fears for the future. We will
leave them to their conversation, and pass out through yonder door,
pausing for an instant to admire that picture of the Madonna and
child, presented to the family by the Queen, and to look through the
glass doors and arched window at the terrace, all green and blossoming
with roses and acacias.

Here we are in an M. de Guérin's room, with its table and chairs
loaded with books and with dust! That priè-Dieu was embroidered by
Mme. de Guérin and whose pensive look face looks out from the
pictures, hanging between the fireplace and the bed. There is the
cross presented by Christine Rognier, and the holy water vase, and the
picture of Calvary before which Eugénie used to kneel and pour out her
childish woes. One day she prayed that some spots might disappear from
her frock, and a disappeared--and again she begged that her doll might
have a soul, but that never came to pass. No doubt it was in this
great state bed that Madame de Guérin died at midnight on the second
of April, 1819. Eugénie had fallen asleep at her mother's feet, and as
the spirit passed away from the long suffering body, M. de Guérin
waked the little girl. "My God! I hear the priest, I see the lighted
candles and a pale face the in tears," she wrote sixteen years
afterwards. Poor little soul! She awoke to the double responsibility
of child and parent, for the little eight-year-old Maurice was her
mother's legacy to her.

Now a dark spiral staircase in the turret leads to a large hall on the
first story, and then winds on with several landing-places to the
upper part of the house where the servants sleep.

This hall is the grand reception-room for guests of distinction, and
has more and air of grandeur then the rest of the château. This
ornamented ceiling and deep wainscoting of carved wood, these
paintings set in the panels, and that huge chimney-piece supported on
stone caryatides, call up to our fancy the days when stately dames and
gentle couriers visited Le Cayla for the hunting season. But there is
a golden renown in store for this shattered, time-worn house, more
precious than that shed upon it by any Guérin of the seventeenth
century.

Suites of small rooms lead from the hall--here is the room that
Eugénie shares with her younger sister Marie, and near by is the
_chambrette_ where Maurice sleeps when he is at home. In his absence
it is her nest where she reads, writes, prays, or leans on the
window-sill to listen to the brook rippling below the terrace, two
doves, and nightingales and all the lovely {413} out-door sounds; or
to look over the corn-fields, groves, chestnut trees, and vineyards in
the valley, far away to the mountains where the friend, Louis de
Bayne, lives in a white château with a linden tree walk, in a country
of ravines and waterfalls;--but we have indulged long enough in this
summer dream of Le Cayla, and must turn to a picture full of sober
tints and shadows.

LA CHENAIE

In Brittany, within a few hours drive from Rennes, was the old family
place of the Lamennais, where about the year 1830 Hughes Filicité de
Lamennais drew about him several of the most promising intellects of
France,  [Footnote 64] with the view of establishing a new religious
order, that should meet all the demands of that most grasping of
centuries, the nineteenth. Montalembert, Gerbert, Sainte-Beuve,
Lacordaire, Rohrbacher, Combalot, and many others of more or less
distinction, were inmates or frequent visitors in the old white house
with its peaked French roof, surrounded on every side by thick woods
that were full of beauty and song in summer, but in winter pressed
about it in dusky--brown monotony, while overhead on the grey, heavy
Breton sky.

  [Footnote 64: The precise period at which La Chênaie became the
  resort of the celebrated men we have been unable to ascertain.

  The Lamennais were a commercial family in Bordeaux, ennobled during
  the reign of Louis XVI. L'Abbé de Lamennais, the second son,
  refusing to become a merchant, retired to La Chênaie, and prepared
  himself for the priesthood.]


Here Lamennais passed through many of the struggles of his giant
nature, slow in its action, but never pausing until it had reached the
extreme result of any course of thought or feeling. Here, at fifteen
years of age, he took refuge with his brother, Jean de Lamennais, to
think out the perplexities that clouded his faith so persistently as
to prevent him from receiving his first communion until he was
twenty-two years old; and hither he came to labor over the task he had
proposed to himself, of procuring the banishment of tyranny and
suffering from the earth.

At the time Maurice de Guérin [Footnote 65] joined the little circle
at La Chênaie, Lamennais had reached the turning point in his career.
After preaching in his journal, with the assurance of a prophet, the
public union of Catholicity and democracy, he had suffered the
mortification of finding himself obliged to suspend the publication of
_L'Avenir_. A visit to Rome, where he was treated with the greatest
personal consideration, convinced him that there was no prospect of
support from the Holy See, and he returned home oppressed with
disappointment, and though apparently submissive to the decisions of
his superiors, already resolving in his mind, perhaps unconsciously,
plans to crush the power that had crushed him. Those around him feared
that he would die of grief. One day he said to his favorite pupil,
Elie de Kertauguy, when they were sitting together under one of the
Scotch pines behind the chapel, in the great spreading garden: "There
is the place where I wish to rest," marking out on the grass the form
of a grave with his stick: "But no tombstone over me--only a mound of
earth. Oh! I shall be well off there."

  [Footnote 65: Vide M. Sainte-Beuve's "Notice sur Maurice de
  Guérin."]

"If," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "he had died then, or in the following
months, if his heart had snapped in it's hidden struggle, what a fair,
unblemished memory he would have left, what fame as a faithful
believer (fidèle) a hero--almost a martyr! What a mysterious subject
of meditation and revery to those who love to contemplate great
destinies thwarted!" And yet even then Lamennais' sufferings must have
proceeded more from wounded pride than from disappointed philanthropy,
for one can hardly imagine a sterner course of tyranny then that of
forcing dogmatically upon Catholic nations a theory of political
freedom that would have thrown half the civilized world into a state
of revolution.

{414}

A striking point in M. Sainte-Beuve's masterly analysis of the
character of his former friend is the strange contrast offered by the
double nature of Lamennais, who always leaned completely to one side
or the other, without any gradation, sometimes being possessed by what
Buffon calls, in speaking of beasts of prey, "a soul wrath;" and again
filled with a sweetness and tenderness that drew little children to
him, a truly fascinating mood; and from one humor to the other he
would pass in an instant.

To La Chênaie and to the influence of this wonderful being, this
compound a pathetic gentleness and combative obstinacy, of magnetism
and repulsion, Guérin came one afternoon early in the December of
1832. M. Féli, as Lamennais was called in his household, where
ceremony was laid aside, and the most charming relations existed
between old and young, received him very cordially in his little
private parlor, which was furnished with one chair and a chest of
drawers. The master had a way of letting the person he was conversing
with say everything that he had to say upon a subject without
interruption (and uncomfortable method, by the way, of convincing one
of the paucity of one's ideas), and then he would take up the matter
himself, and speak "gravely, profoundly, luminously." But on this
occasion he gave himself up freely to a chat upon all sorts of
subjects calculated to draw out the general intelligence of his new
pupil--the weather in Languedoc, Maurice's traveling companions, his
age, the high tides that Saint Malo, Calderon, oyster fishing,
Catholic poetry, Victor Hugo, the most remarkable fishes on the coast
of Brittany--all the while hurrying to and fro in the little room,
presenting a singular appearance with his small, slender figure clad
in grey from head to foot, his oblong head, pale complexion, grey
eyes, long nose, and brow furrowed with wrinkles.

The life at La Chênaie suited Guérin's taste admirably, excepting
perhaps the practice of rising at five o'clock, against which every
well-regulated mind must rebel. One of his great enjoyments was the
daily mass in the quiet little chapel below the terrace in the garden.
"At breakfast," he wrote to Eugénie, "we have butter, and bread which
we toast to make it more appetizing (toast was rather a luxury in
those days on the continent), butter plays an important part in the
meals. Dinner _très confortable_, with coffee and _liqueurs_ when we
have company, is seasoned with a rolling fire of wit, generally coming
from M. Féli--whose _mots_ are charming--vivid, piercing, sparkling,
and innumerable. His genius escapes in this way when he is not at
work, and from sublime he becomes fascinating."

In studies, Maurice was thrown into modern languages, Catholic
philosophy, and the history of philosophy. Each pupil had a room to
himself, but they all studied in a common room sitting round a good
fire. Their recreations consisted in skating on a pond close by the
house, or taking walks in the woods, staff in hand, M. Féli marching
on ahead wearing a battered old straw hat such as great men love to
shelter their illustrious heads with. They had supper at eight o'clock
and then adjourned to the pleasant, quaint old parlor, where chess and
backgammon greeted the master's longing eyes, smoothing his brow and
putting him in genial mood. Then he would throw himself on the immense
sofa that stood under his grandmother's portrait, and become absorbed
into the threadbare crimson velvet, except the little head ever
rolling restlessly from side to side with eyes gleaming like
fire-flies.

      "And then he would talk,
  Ye gods! how he would talk!"--

What treasures of wit, humor, anecdote, analysis, and broad
generalization poured from that horn of plenty, {415} his mind stored
with the prints of nearly half a century of philosophic research and
observation of men and things! His voice varied with his words from
grave to gay, and now and then came long peals of shrill laughter,
more derisive perhaps than mirthful. "That is _our man!_" said Maurice
proudly, after describing such an evening; that evening perhaps when
his own attractions eclipsed the master's brilliancy in the estimation
of one who saw him for the first time--M. de Marzan, a former pupil of
Lamennais, who revisited La Chênaie on the 18th of December, 1832.

M. Féli was in one of his most delightful moods, recounting the
experiences of his late Italian journey, and drawing out in his genial
way the keen observations of the young men about him--of all excepting
poor Maurice, who stood silent among the hopeful, eager talkers,
painfully conscious of himself and distrustful of others, we must
confess, with all affectionate sympathy for our hero. But in his
reserved mien, in his expressive southern eyes and intellectual face,
there was a magnetism that won completely M. de Marzan's attention
from the delights of conversation, and as soon as the evening ended,
he obtained an introduction through Elie de Kertauguy, a handsome,
gifted youth from Lower Brittany, passionately devoted to Lamennais,
and compassionately attentive to Guérin, regarding him, as did most of
the inmates of La Chênaie, as a refined but very inefficient member of
their circle.

Not so Marzan, who in twenty-four hours had thawed Maurice's reserve,
won his confidence, seen his journal, heard the circumstances of his
unrequited love for Mlle. de Bayne, and laid the foundation of a
friendship that lasted unbroken to the day of Guérin's death. What
days, and nights too, of rapture these two young poets used to spend
together, guided by their older and more experienced friend, Hippolyte
de La Morvonnais (a frequent visitor at La Chênaie), who had been to
Grasmere to visit Wordsworth, and come home imbued with veneration for
"Les Lakistes". (The Lake Poets). There came to be a mania among the
three friends for describing in homely language the simplest domestic
details, which they considered it a triumph in art to be able to give
in a rhythm so dubious that none but the initiated could tell whether
it was meant for prose or verse.

Even at this early period, Guérin gave evidence of the peculiar
strength and weakness of his style, the vagueness and looseness of his
verse, the faultless harmony of his prose, which is as pure as air,
free from the least touch of provincialism or mannerism; and yet, in
the simple fervor of its revelations of the secrets that nature poured
into his attentive ear, we are reminded of the sweet pipings of the
Ettrick Shepherd, as dear old Christopher North interprets them to us.
Through him we see and hear trees wave and waters flow, birds sing and
winds sigh in the woods, and without being disturbed by moral
inferences and philosophical conclusions. And surely, when beauty
comes to us so pure and fresh and untarnished, she may be left to
teach her own lessons, which come to us so softly too from her lips.

The months that Maurice spent at La Chênaie were not especially
fruitful to him, except in the sad experiences that tended to develop
his moral strength. But for Morvonnais and Marzan, he would have
remained quite unappreciated, for Lamennais, who gave the tone to the
household, was too much "absorbed in his apocalyptic social visions"
[Footnote 66] to be conscious of the jewel that glittered before his
eyes. Lamennais was a logician, a philosopher, a passionate and
fanatical worker. Guérin was a man of {416} exquisite artistic
perceptions, but dreamy, undecided, deficient in vigor. Odin and
Apollo,--sledge-hammer and chisel,--thunderbolt and sunbeam, are not
more unlike in use and significance. M. Féli offered nothing but
pitying tenderness, which Maurice accepted in dumb veneration. No
wonder that, with the life at La Chênaie, all intimate intercourse
between them ceased.

  [Footnote 66: Sainte-Beuve.]

But it is a matter for surprise that, with all his powers of
fascination, Lamennais inflicted (so far as we can learn the
circumstances of the case) no permanent injury upon the faith of any
one of his companions at La Chênaie. Lacordaire, Gerbet, Montalembert,
and Bohrbacher became renowned champions of the church. Combalot, who
had adored Lamennais, burst forth into a storm of invectives against
him (as is the wont of disappointed idolaters), and then exclaimed,
"Alas! I have wounded that heart into which I could have poured
torrents of love!" Morvonnais and Marzan were ardent believers; Elie
de Kertauguy and Guérin died Catholics. In short, Lamennais had
devoted the prime of life to the church, and in those years had
uttered words of wisdom never to be unsaid or forgotten. In spite of
himself he must always be an eloquent advocate of the faith he
deserted, a powerful enemy of the cause he espoused.

The time was already drawing near when the asylum should be closed to
Maurice where he had found, in spite of disappointment and frequent
depression, a happy, congenial home. On Easter Sunday, Lamennais
celebrated his last mass and gave communion to all the little circle.
"Who would have said" (we quote from Sainte-Beuve) "to those who
clustered round the master, that he who had just given them communion,
would never administer it again to anyone; that he would refuse it
forevermore; and that he would soon adopt for his too true device an
_oak shattered_ by the storm, with the proud motto: _I break but bend
not!_ A Titan's device, _à la Capanée!_"

Early in the autumn of 1833, the Bishop of Rennes ordered the
dissolution of Lamennais' religious community, and the pupils were
removed to Ploërmel, where they continued their studies under the
supervision of M. Jean de Lamennais. M. Féli disbanded his little army
with the dignity of a defeated general, and then threw himself
single-handed again into the fight. He changed his patrician name to
F. Lamennais, and demanded of democracy (says one of his biographers),
as he had demanded of the church, a wand-stroke that should free the
world at once from suffering and oppression. His success may be judged
by the political history of France in the last sixteen years. In
religion he adopted "_Christianisme législate,_"   [Footnote 67]
whatever that may be. "If," said he, "men feel so irresistibly
impelled to unite themselves to God that they return to Christianity,
let no one suppose that it can be to that Christianity which presents
itself under the name of Catholicism."

  [Footnote 67: Lamartine.]

In the revolution of '48 he thought he saw the birth of liberty; in
the "Coup d'Etat" he received its death-blow in his own person.
Baffled on every side, he betook himself to literature, and translated
the "Divina Commedia;" then "feeling within him no life-sustaining
thought," he died in his seventy-third year, after an illness of a few
weeks, leaving these words in his will: "I will be buried among the
poor, and like the poor. I will have nothing over my grave, not even a
stone; nor will I have my body carried into any church." They laid him
in Père la Chaise, and no word of blessing was uttered over his grave.
Poor Lamennais! What magnificent possibilities were shattered in his
fall!

And Maurice, what were his emotions when the door of La Chênaie dosed
behind him?--the "little paradise" he called it, but then, poor soul,
{417} anything that had escaped him for ever seemed to have been
paradise. He suffered all that must be endured by those who have
mistaken personal influence for a divine attraction. The novitate on
which he had entered at La Chênaie with a certain reluctance, galled
him beyond endurance at Ploërmel. "I would rather run the chance of a
life of adventure than be garrotted by a rule," he said, and so he
went out into the world again, feeling like a thing let loose in the
universe, and by the blessing of Providence was received into the home
of his unfailing friend, Hippolyte de la Morvonnais, who lived most
delightfully on the coast of Brittany, at a place called Le Val de
l'Arquenon.

Two months of simple country life, and of intercourse with Morvonnais,
and with his wife, who exercised over Maurice the noblest and sweetest
influence, gave him renewed strength to battle with life again. In the
following extract from his journal, describing the last walk at Le
Val, we see with what tenacity he clung to the past, and with what
sadness he encountered the future: "Ten o'clock in the evening. Last
walk, last visit to the sea, to the cliffs, to the whole grand scenery
that has enchanted me for two months. Winter is smiling upon us with
all the grace of spring, and giving us days that make birds sing and
leaves burst forth on the rose-bushes in the garden, on the eglantine
in the woods, on the honeysuckle climbing over rock and wall. About
two o'clock we took the path that winds so gracefully through
flowering broom and coarse cliff grass, skirting along wheat-fields,
bending toward ravines, twisting in and out between hedge-rows, and at
last boldly ascending the loftiest rocks. The object of our walk was a
promontory that commands the Bay of Quatre-Vaux. A hundred feet below
us shone the sea, breaking against the rocks with sounds that passed
through our souls as they mounted to heaven. Toward the horizon the
fishing-boats unfurled against the azure sky their dazzling sails, and
as our eyes turned from this little fleet to the more numerous one
that sailed singing nearer to us, an innumerable crowd of sea-birds
fishing gaily, and gladdening our eyes with the sight of their bright
plumage and graceful movements over the water--the birds, the sails,
the lovely day and universal peace gave to the sea a festal beauty
that filled my soul with glad enthusiasm in spite of the sad thoughts
I had brought with me to our promontory; and then I looked with all my
soul at headlands, rocks, and islands, trying to imprint them on my
memory and carry them away with me. Coming home I trod religiously,
and with regret at every step, the path that had so often led me to
such beautiful thoughts, in such sweet company. The path is so
charming when it reaches the coppice, and passes on among high hazel
trees, and a thick, bushy hedge of boxwood! Then the joy that nature
had bestowed upon me died away, and the melancholy of parting took
possession of me. Tomorrow will make of sea, and woods, and coast, and
all the charms I have enjoyed, a dream, a floating thought to me; and
so, that I might carry away from these dear places as much as
possible, and as if they could give themselves to me, I besought them
to engrave their images upon my soul, to give me something of
themselves that could never pass away; and I broke off branches of
boxwood, bushes, and luxurious thickets, plunging my head into their
depths to breathe in the wild perfumes they exhale, to penetrate into
their very essence, and speak as it were heart to heart.

"The evening passed as usual in talking and reading. We recalled the
happiness of past days; I traced a faint picture of them in this book,
and we looked at it sadly, as at some dear, beautiful, dead face."

One more passage from his journal and we will leave Maurice de Guérin
in Paris. Two years from the following date he was a fashionable man
of the world, capable of vieing in {418} conversation with those
marvels of wit and brilliancy, the talkers of Paris; but we have to do
with him only as the banished recluse, the exile from La Chênaie.

  "Paris, Feb., 1834.
  "O God! close my eyes, keep me from seeing all this multitude, whose
  presence rouses in me thoughts so bitter and discouraging. As I pass
  through it, let me be deaf to the sounds, inaccessible to the
  impressions that overwhelm me when I am in the crowd; set before my
  eyes some image, some vision of the things I love, a field, a
  valley, a moor, Le Cayla, Le Val, something in nature; I will walk
  with eyes fastened upon these dear forms, and pass on without a
  sense of suffering."

------

From the Month.

OF DREAMERS AND WORKERS.

Nearly all men are born either dreamers or workers; not perhaps only
the one or only the other, but one of these two points is the centre
of their oscillation. Like a pendulum, they can move only so far
toward their opposite, some more, some less; but, like the pendulum,
they invariably return to their centre. Do we not all know some man
with abstracted eye, high, retreating forehead, rather refined and
often slightly attenuated frame and features, and placidly resolute in
demeanor, who has held the same position in the opinion of his
fellow-men, or, it may be, has occupied the same bench on the Sunday
quietly for twenty years or more? He is a specimen of the extreme type
of dreamers--venerative, mystical, and benevolent; but to all
appearance practically useless, helpless, and inert. Viewed
physiologically, these men are chiefly fair-haired and of the nervous
lymphatic temperament; sometimes this is combined with the bilious
temperament, and in such cases (to some of which we shall have more
particularly to allude) they become remarkable characters. It has been
said that the religion natural to dreamers is a mild form of Buddhism;
but this is probably because most Buddhists are dreamers and mystics
in the highest degree. One thing is certain, dreamers are in politics
either conservative or utopian, and in religion are little disposed
either to reject what they have been taught or to influence others to
do so. If they have been educated as Catholics, mild and devout
Catholics they live and die; if as Protestants, they are unusually
gentle and tolerant, and oppose alike reforms that would be
innovations, and innovations that would be reforms. A man who lives by
faith, thus resting on the invisible, has at times an apparent
resemblance to a dreamer. It is not our object in this paper to point
out the distinction, wide as it indeed is. Dreamers are the subject of
wonderful anecdotes about their absence of mind: it is related of them
that they forget their meals, start on a journey without their hats,
walk with their eyes wide open over precipices, ride on their
walking-sticks, and are surprised when toll is not demanded of them
for their charger. There is no occasion to believe all these
preposterous tales, but no doubt there are many very curious and
perfectly well-authenticated cases of abstraction of mind so entire as
to cause catastrophes both painful and ludicrous. To these men their
real life is their dream, their working-day is only their interruption
and annoyance. They are in heart mystics, and only need a certain
activity of brain and speech to proclaim themselves as such. They
possess great store of happiness within themselves, owing to their
peculiarity of caring less than others for those {419} substantial and
golden rewards which cause the unrest of the world. They love the
unseen and mysterious better than the visible and sensuous, and would
in general barter any amount of distinct and limited reality for
indefinite prospects; so that the single streak of wan and dying
light, which sleeps on the edge of the dark horizon, is more precious
to them, as suggesting Infinity, than any view which could be offered
of noble cities or fertile plains. Almost all things are to them
symbolical. No action is in their thought simply what it seems to be;
but there is about every deed performed, circumstance encountered, or
season passed, a secret sense of omen or prescience, of brightness or
of shadow. Light becomes a sentiment calling up images of
corresponding radiance and beauty, but especially perhaps that early
morning light which seems, while yet sleeping, to float in on the
world, as opposed to the fading colors of departing day. Darkness,
again, sometimes lends a sense of peril; but more often is peopled by
spirits--a realm of shadows and shadowy delights, all called into
being, moved, governed, and colored by the dreamer in his dream. The
many gradations between brightness and gloom have each their especial
fascination for dreamers, who are in this respect as discriminative
and fanciful as the Jews, who, in olden times, distinguished two kinds
of twilight: the doves' twilight, or crepusculum of the day, and
ravens' twilight, or the crepusculum of the night. In truth, their
tendency is to behold all actual things as illusions, and to consider
the spiritual and unseen world as the only true one: thus, in the
cloudy mantle of constant reverie they hide all the ills and
infirmities of humanity, and slumber in the "golden sleep of halcyon
quiet apart from the everlasting storms of life." For when a man can
sit calmly on an uncomfortable pole, like the Indian mystic, and say
"I am the Universe, and the Universe is me," he has attained to the
greatest conceivable height and perfection of dream-life. From the age
of Plato to our own times dreamers have been born perpetually among
the sons of men. St. John is claimed by them as being the most
profound and loving mystic ever given to the world. There have been
countless others; we need not add a list of names; those of
Swedenborg, Boehmen, and Irving, will occur to the memory as
representing one class of dreamers. These leaders are, as one might
predict, regarded with the extreme veneration characteristic of the
order. Indeed, of some it may be chronicled, as it was of the ancient
deities, Buddha, etc., "Once a man, now a God!" In general, dreamers
have tenanted our madhouses rather than filled our prisons; if,
however, they do commit crimes, they are serious ones. Religious and
political assassinations have been commonly the fruits of mad
dreamers. In the ranks have been numbered many holy men, and as a rule
they have influenced mankind rather by the example of their life and
the teaching of their pen than by busy practical action. Only certain
professions and occupations are suitable for dreamers. In the olden
times they were poets, shepherds, prophets, soothsayers, diviners,
alchemists, rhabdomantists.  [Footnote 68] In these days they are by
rights clergymen, authors, poets, philanthropists, and, philosophers.
If they enter trade they commonly end in the _Gazette_; and placed in
positions of authority, where severity of discipline has to be
exercised, they are uniformly unsuccessful; in situations of trust,
they are invariably single-hearted and faithful, but in every place
and at all times they are the most frequent victims of fraudulent
representations and impudent imposture. A certain number of the
priesthood among all nations, gentle, speculative, and saintly men,
{420} have been of this order; weaving their work and their dreams
together into a fair fabric of many colors, which if it seems to
ordinary eyes shadowy and unsubstantial as the mist, is yet, like the
air, elastic, solid, and capable of resisting a very heavy pressure.
Idealists are, however, rarely formidable in action unless the bilious
is largely transfused in their temperament. They then become
missionaries and martyrs; patriots, revolutionists, fanatics; they
head revolutions, plan massacres, overthrow monarchies, and shatter
creeds. Peter the Hermit, John of Leyden, are examples of this order.

  [Footnote 68: [Greek text], _a rod_; men who undertook, and in
  certain unenlightened regions do still undertake, to discover wells
  of water, veins of minerals, or hidden treasures of money and
  jewels, by means of divining-rods. ]

The workers born into the world are widely different in temperament
and disposition, and antagonistic in principles, sentiment, and
action. They consist both of those who work with their hands alone,
and of those who work up into a practical form the reveries and
speculative schemes of the dreamers. Physiologically viewed, the
extreme type of the worker exhibits most frequently the bullet-shaped
head, square jaw, muscular, thick neck, large chest development, and
elemental hand, commonly also the sanguine, sanguine-nervous, or
sanguine-bilious temperament, They have an irresistible propensity to
do, to acquire, to conquer or invade; they are fertile in resource,
opulent in stratagem, full of quarrel, and essentially aggressive. A
contest is to them an occasion of inexplicable delight; and naturally
dedicated to action, they are as unable to conceive of disappointment
as the other class are to resist that which is or seems to be their
destiny. They become engineers, manufacturers, merchants, inventors,
mighty hunters, soldiers, sailors, pioneers, emigrants, rough-riders,
pugilists, smugglers, aeronauts, acrobats, and celebrated performers
in travelling circuses and menageries, lion-tamers, snake-charmers,
rat-catchers, burglars, thieves, and highwaymen. They are gamekeepers,
and devote their lives to circumvent and strive in mortal strife with
poachers; or they are poachers, and spend their days and nights in
plotting against and harassing and threatening the gamekeepers. As
clergymen they are most hard-working, zealous and excellent, but also
the most quarrelsome and intolerant. When they come on to the earth as
younger members of the aristocracy, who may neither dig, trade, nor
fight in the ring, and have not the wherewithal to keep racehorses and
hunters, they enter the army or navy, and there in times of peace,
when no legitimate outlet presents itself for the expenditure of these
energies, they form a very insubordinate and turbulent item of the
population. The lower classes of the workers who cannot get work, then
crusade against the upper classes, who are in the same predicament;
and we see the result in the perpetual placarding in some journals and
newspapers of "deplorable blackguardism in high life." Three parts out
of five, or even a larger proportion, of the Anglo-Saxon population
are composed of workers as opposed to dreamers; and the seething
unquiet mass of humanity known and described by some writers as our
"dangerous classes" is almost entirely recruited from their ranks.
Many centuries ago they were Vikings, pirates, and border robbers;
they scoured the seas, made raids, reived the cattle, and levied
black-mail; anon they were crusaders, for though Peter the Hermit was
a dreamer, his followers were workers; subsequently they destroyed
monasteries; and in these days they have made railroads and abolished
the corn-laws. But, nevertheless, the men who first built churches,
and dwelt in monasteries, and discovered the mysterious agency by
which the engine was to do its work, were not workers, but dreamers,
and were reviled in their day as visionaries and enthusiasts. Where a
dreamer would have been an alchemist, a modern worker finds his
mission to be a gold-digger; where one is a shepherd, the other will
be a hunter or trapper:--the first works that he may retire to dream.
{421} the second dreams how he shall arise and work.

The dreamers among men select as mates the workers among women, or are
(perhaps more often) selected by them, and _vice versa_. It is the old
eternal law of nature--the duality pervading all things, types, and
classes, man and woman, positive and negative, matter and spirit,
reason and faith; and, in spite of the gentle scorn which dreamers
cherish for workers, and the undisguised contempt with which workers
regard dreamers, so they will continue to exist side by side until the
day comes when the worker can work no more, and the dreamer shall have
dreamed for the last time.

--------

MISCELLANY.


_The Old Church at Chelsea, England_,--Mr. H. H. Burnell read a paper
before the British Archaeological Society lately, on the Old Church of
Chelsea. The chancel, with the chauntries north and south of it, are
the only portions of ancient work left. The north chauntry, called the
Manor Chauntry, once contained the monuments of the Brays, now in very
imperfect condition, having been destroyed or removed to make space
for those of the Gervoise family. There remains, however, an ancient
brass in the floor. Of the south, or More Chauntry, he stated that the
monument of Sir Thomas More was removed from it to the chancel; and
the chauntry had been occupied by the monuments of the Georges family,
now also removed, displaced, and destroyed. Mr. Blunt showed that,
notwithstanding the current contrary opinion, founded on Aubrey's
assertion, the More monument is the original one for which Sir Thomas
More himself dictated the epitaph. Mr. Burnell, the architect of the
improvements effected subsequently to 1857, spoke positively as to the
non-existence of a crypt which conjecture had placed under the More
Chauntry. The foundation of the west end of the church before it was
enlarged in 1666, he found west of Lord Dacre's tomb. On the north
side of the chancel an aumbrey, and on the south a piscina was found,
coeval with the chancel (early fourteenth century). The arch between
the More Chauntry and the chancel is a specimen of Italian
workmanship--dated 1528--a date confirmed by the objects represented
in the carved ornaments, those objects being connected with the Roman
Catholic ritual. It is a remarkably early instance of the use of
Italian architecture in this country. In a window of this chapel, then
partly bricked up, was found in the brickwork in 1858 remains of the
stained glass which once filled it. The body of Sir Thomas More was,
according to Aubrey, interred in this chapel, and his head, after an
exposure of fourteen days, testifying to the passers-by on London
Bridge the remorseless cruelty of Henry VIII. and his barbarous
insensibility, was consigned to a vault in St. Dunstan's Church,
Canterbury. It was seen and drawn in that vault in 1715.--_Reader_.


_New Artesian Well in Paris_,--A third artesian well is now being
added to the two which Paris' has already. Already the perforation has
reached the depth of eighty-two metres, being twenty metres below the
sea-level. Before reaching this point, considerable difficulties had
to be overcome in the shape of intermediate sheets of water, which
form a series of subterranean lakes. The first of these was kept in
its bed by means of a strong iron tube driven perpendicularly through
it; that which followed received wooden palings, and the subsequent
stratum being clay, the masonry was continued without difficulty to
about five metres above sea-level. But at this point a layer of
agglomerations was reached, which let a great deal of water escape. It
thus became necessary to have again recourse to pumps: those employed
were in the aggregate of 20 horse-power. Owing to the bad nature of
this stratum, it was resolved to protect the perforation by a
revetment of extraordinary thickness; and in order that the well might
preserve its diameter of two metres notwithstanding, the upper part
has had to be widened in proportion, so as to {422} give it the
enormous width of four metres at the top. After this labor the work of
perforation was continued through a stratum of pyrolithic limestone.
At the depth corresponding to the level of the sea, they reached a
layer of tubular chalk, all pierced with large holes, forming so many
spouts, as thick as a man's thigh, through which water poured into the
well with incredible velocity. While the pumps were at work to get rid
of this water, a cylindrical revetment of bricks was built on a sort
of wheel made of oak, and laid down flat at the bottom of the
perforation by way of a foundation, and the intermediate space between
this cylinder and the chalk stratum was filled with concrete, 47,000
kilos, of which were expended in this operation. As soon as the
concrete might be considered to have set, or attained sufficient
consistency, the brick cylinder was taken to pieces again, and the
perforation continued to the pressure point, where a new sheet of
water has been reached, requiring ingenious contrivances._--Artisan_.



_New Irish Coal Fossils_.--Through the labors of Professor Huxley, Dr.
E. P. Wright, and Mr. Brownrig, some very interesting fossils from the
Castlecomer coal-measures of Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, have been brought
under the notice of geologists. The specimens consist of fish,
insects, and amphibian reptiles. Three out of the five forms of these
amphibians are _undoubtedly new_ to science, and, in all probability,
the remaining two also. The first, and most remarkable genus,
Professor Huxley has named "_Ophiderpeton_," having reference to its
elongated, snake-like form, rudimentary limbs, peculiar head, and
compressed tail. In outward form _Ophiderpeton_ somewhat resembles
_Siren lacertina_ and _Amphiuma_, but the ventral surface appears
covered with an armature of minute, spindle-shaped plates, obliquely
adjusted together, as in _Archaegosaurus_ and _Pholidogaster_. The
second new form, which he names _Lepterpeton_, possesses an eel-like
body, with slender and pointed head, and singularly constructed
hourglass-shaped centra, as in _Thecodontosaurus_. The third genus,
which Professor Huxley names _Ichthyerpeton_, has also ventral armor,
composed of delicate rod-like ossicles; the hind limbs have three
short toes, and the tail was covered with small quadrate scutes, or
apparently horny scales. The fourth new amphibian Labyrinthodont he
appropriately names _Keraterpeton_, a singular salamandroid-looking
form, but minute as compared with the other associated genera. Its
highly ossified vertebral column, prolonged epiotic bones, and armor
of overlapping scutes, determine its character in a remarkable manner.
A paper has been read before the Royal Irish Academy upon the subject,
and, in the course of the discussion which followed, Professor
Haughton said he had Professor Huxley's authority for stating that the
coal-pit at Castlecomer had within a few months afforded more
important discoveries than all the other coal-pits of
Europe.--_Geological Magazine_.



_The Accommodation-Power of the Eye._--The manner in which the human
eye alters its focus for the perception of objects at various
distances has always been a difficult problem for physiologists and
physicists. The literature of medical science is full of dissertations
on this subject, yet very little, if anything, is positively known of
the exact means by which the alteration is achieved. There appears to
be now a tendency among ophthalmologists to believe that the effect
required is produced by an alteration of the form of the crystalline
lens of the eye, which becomes less or more convex as occasion
demands. This view has just received a rather strong condemnation by
the Rev. Professor Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin, in some
remarks published in the "Dublin Quarterly Journal of Science."
Speaking of the alteration of form in the lens, he says:--"Even this
must take place on a far greater and more important scale than
anatomists have as yet suspected. The change amounts to the addition
of a double convex lens of crown glass having a radius of a third of
an inch. Anatomists have not as yet discovered a mechanism for
changing the shape of the lens sufficient to produce these results.
The lens should almost be turned into a sphere, and I know of no
ciliary muscles capable of effecting so great a change."--_Popular
Science Review_.



{423}

_Petroleum as a Substitute for Coal_.--Some recent experiments with
petroleum oil used for heating water, gave results from which it was
estimated that petroleum had more than three times the heating effect
of an equal weight of coal. Mr. Richardson's experiments at Woolwich,
however, gave an evaporation of 13.96 to 18.66 lb. of water, by one
pound of American petroleum; 9.7 lb. of petroleum being burnt per
square foot of grate per hour. With shale oil the evaporation was 10
to 10.5 lb. of water per pound of fuel. The evaporative power of good
coal may be taken, for comparison, at 8 to 8.5 lb. per pound of fuel.
Taking into account the saving of freight due to the better quality of
the fuel, and the saving of labor in stoking, it is possible that at
some future time mineral oil may supersede coal in some of our ocean
steamers.--



_Frith of Forth Bridge_.--Parliamentary sanction has been obtained for
a bridge over the Frith of Forth, of a magnitude which gives it great
scientific interest. It is to form part of a connecting-link between
the North British and Edinburgh and Glasgow Railways. Its total length
will be 11,755 feet, and it will be made up of the following spans,
commencing from the south shore:--First, fourteen openings of 100 feet
span, increasing in height from 63 to 77 ft. above high-water mark;
then six openings of 150 ft. span, varying from 71 ft. to 79 ft. above
high water level; and then six openings of 175 ft. span, of which the
height above high-water level varies from 76 to 83 ft. These are
succeeded by fifteen openings of 200 ft. span, and height increasing
from 80 ft. to 105 ft. Then come the four great openings of 500 ft.
span, which are placed at a clear height of 135 ft. above high-water
spring tides. The height of the bridge then decreases, the large spans
being followed by two openings of 200 ft., varying in height from 105
to 100 ft. above high-water; then four spans of 175 ft., decreasing
from 102 to 96 ft. in height; then four openings of 150 ft. span,
varying in height from 95 to 91 feet; and lastly seven openings of 100
ft. span, 97 to 93 feet in height. The piers occupy 1,005 feet in
aggregate width. The main girders are to be on the lattice principle,
built on shore, floated to their position, and raised by hydraulic
power. The total cost is estimated at £476,543.--_Engineering_, Jan.
5.



_Origin of the Diamond_.--Contrary to the usual opinion that the
diamond has been produced by the action of intense heat on carbon,
Herr Goeppert asserts that it owes its origin to aqueous agency. His
argument is based upon the fact that the diamond becomes black when
exposed to a very high temperature. He considers that its Neptunian
origin is proved by the fact that it has often on the surface
impressions of grains of sand, and sometimes of crystals, showing that
it has once been soft.



_The Purification of Coal-Gas_.--An important essay on this subject
has been written by Professor A. Anderson, of Queen's College,
Birmingham. It relates chiefly to the methods discovered by the author
for the successful removal of bisulphide of carbon and the
sulphuretted hydro-carbons by means of the sulphides of ammonium. By
washing the gas with this compound, a very large proportion (nearly 35
per cent.) of the sulphur impurities are removed, and the illuminating
power of the gas, so far from being diminished, becomes actually
increased. Professor Anderson records several carefully conducted
experiments, all of which prove the truth of the conclusions at which
he has arrived. His method is now in operation at the Taunton and
other local gas-works, and is highly spoken of by those who have given
it careful consideration.


_Paraffine in the Preservation of Frescoes_.--In _Dingler's Journal et
Bulletin de la Société Chimique_ it is stated that paraffine may be
used with advantage for the above purpose. Vohl coats the picture with
a saturated solution of paraffine in benzole, and, when the solvent
has evaporated, washes the surface with a very soft brush. Paraffine
has this advantage over other greasy matters--it does not become
colored by time.



_Welsh Gold_.--During the year 1864, we learn from statistics only
recently published, there were five gold-mines working in
Merionethshire. In these 2,836 tons were crushed, from which 2,887
ozs. of gold, valued at £9,991, were obtained. This is in excess of
the quantity obtained in 1868, which was only 552 ozs.; but it is
considerably less than the production of 1862, when 5,299 ozs., having
a value of £20,390, were extracted.

{424}

_A New Train-Signaling Apparatus._--Sundry mechanical contrivances
and improvements in philosophical apparatus have been exhibited at the
scientific gatherings of the present season in London, attracting more
or less of attention, according to their merits and utility. Mr.
Preece's train-signalling apparatus for promoting the safety of
railway-travelling, can hardly fail of being interesting to everybody.
It is in use on the South-western Railway, and if properly used,
accidents from collision ought never to happen; it has the advantage
of being applicable to any number of stations, which is of importance,
considering how stations are multiplying in and around the metropolis.
Mr. Preece has a very simple and complete method of communication
between the signalman and switchman. The latter, on being informed
that trains are waiting to come in, operates on the lever-handles
before him, there being as many handles as lines of converging
railway; and these handles are so contrived, that on moving any one to
admit a train, it locks the others; so that if the switchman should
pull at any one of them by mistake, he cannot move it. He is thus
prevented from admitting two trains at the same time upon one line of
rails, and thus one of the most frequent occasions of railway accident
is avoided. And besides this, safety is further promoted by a series
of small signal-discs, which start up before the switchman's eyes at
the right moment, and give him demonstration that he has given the
right pull at the right handle.



_Action of Liquid Manure on certain Soils_.--Some recent researches on
this point, conducted by Professor Voelcker, were alluded to by Dr. G.
Calvert in his Canton lecture before the Society of Arts. In some
respects Dr. Voelcker's conclusions differ from those of Mr. Way. They
are briefly as follows: (1.) That calcareous, dry soils absorb about
six times as much ammonia from the liquid manure as the sterile, sandy
soil. (2.) That the liquid manure in contact with the calcareous soil
becomes much richer in lime, whilst during its passage through the
sandy soil it becomes much poorer in this substance. (3.) That the
calcareous soil absorbs much more potash than the sandy soil. (4) That
chloride of sodium is not absorbed to any considerable extent by
either soil, (5.) That both soils remove most of the phosphoric acid
from the liquid. (6.) That the liquid manure, in passing through the
calcareous soil, becomes poorer, and in passing through the sandy soil
becomes richer in silica.



_The Value of Sewage_.--This important question, which has been so
ably discussed by Baron Liebig in his various works upon Agricultural
Chemistry, had a paper devoted to it by Dr. Gilbert at a late meeting
(February 1st) of the Chemical Society. After entering into the
details of his subject, the author draws the following general
conclusions: 1st. It is only by the liberal use of water that the
refuse matters of large populations can be removed from their
dwellings without nuisance and injury to health. 2d. That the
discharge of town sewage into rivers renders them unfit as water
supplies to other towns, is destructive to fish, causes deposits which
injure the channel, and emanations which are injurious to health, is a
great waste of manurial matter, and should not be permitted. 3d. That
the proper mode of both purifying and utilizing sewage-water is to
apply it to land. 4th. That, considering the great dilution of town
sewage, its constant daily supply at all seasons, its greater amount
in wet weather, when the land can least bear, or least requires more
water, and the cost of distribution, it is best fitted for application
to grass, which alone can receive it the year round, though it may be
occasionally applied with advantage to other crops within easy reach
of the line or area laid down for the continuous application to grass.
6th. That the direct result of the general application of town sewage
to grass land would be an enormous increase in the production of milk
(butter and cheese) and meat, whilst by the consumption of the grass a
large amount of solid manure, applicable to arable land and crops
generally, would be produced. 6th. That the cost or profit to a town
of arrangements for the removal and utilization of its sewage must
vary greatly, according to its position and to the character of the
land to be irrigated; where the sewage can be conveyed by gravitation
and a sufficient tract of suitable land is available, the town may
realize a profit; but, under contrary conditions, it may have to
submit to a pecuniary loss to secure the necessary sanitary
advantages.

------

{425}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.


THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY.
By Herbert Spencer. New York:
Appleton & Co. 1866, Vol. I. 12mo. Pp. 475.

We have omitted the long list of works of which Herbert Spencer is the
author, works of rare ability in their way, but essentially false in
the philosophical principles on which they are based. Mr. Herbert
Spencer is naturally one of the ablest men in Great Britain, far
superior to the much praised Buckle, and equalled, if not surpassed by
John Stuart Mill, now member of Parliament. We have heretofore
considered him as belonging to the positivist school of philosophy,
founded by Auguste Comte, and the ablest man of that school; able, and
less absurd than even M. Littré. But in a note in the work before us
he disclaims all affiliation with Positivism, declares that he does
not accept M. Comte's system, and says that the general principles in
which he agrees with that singular man, he has drawn not from him, but
from sources common to them both. This we can easily believe, for in
the little we have had the patience to read of M. Comte's unreadable
works we have found nothing original with him but his dryness,
dulness, and wearisomeness, in which if he is not original, he is at
least superior to most men. Yet we have not been able to detect any
essential difference of doctrine or principle between the Frenchman
and the Englishman, and to us who are not positivists, M. Comte, M.
Littré, George H. Lewes, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Miss
Evans, and Harriet Martineau belong to one and the same school.

It is but simple justice to Herbert Spencer to say that he writes in
strong, manly, and for the most part classical English, and has made
himself master of the best philosophical style that we have met with
in any English or American writer. He understands, as far as a man can
with his principles, the philosophy of the English tongue, and writes
it with the freedom and ease of a master, though not always with
perfect purity. He must have been a hard student, and evidently is a
most laborious thinker and industrious writer. But here ends, we are
sorry to say, our commendation. It is the misfortune, perversity, or
folly of Herbert Spencer to spend his life in attempting to obtain or
at least to explain effects without causes, properties without
substance, and phenomena without noumena or being. In his _Principles
of Philosophy_, he divides the real and unreal into the knowable and
the unknowable, without explaining, however, how the human mind knows
there is an unknowable; and to the unknowable he relegates the
principles, origin, and causes of things; that is, in plain English,
the principles, origin, and causes of things, are unreal at least to
us, and are not only unknown, but absolutely unknowable, and should be
banished as subjects of investigation, inquiry, or thought. Hence the
knowable, that to which all science is restricted, includes only
phenomena, that is to say, the sensible or material world.

Biology, which is the subject of the volume before us, is the science
of life, but on the author's principles, is necessarily confined to
the statement, description, and classification of facts, or phenomena
of organic as distinguished from inorganic matter. He can admit on his
philosophy no vital principle, but must explain the vital phenomena
without it, by a combination, brought about nobody knows how, of
chemical, mechanical and electric changes, forces, action, and
reaction--as if there can be changes, forces, action, or reaction
where there is no relation of cause and effect! But after all his
labor, and it is immense, to show what chemical, mechanical, and
electric changes and combinations, binary, tertiary, etc., are
observed in a living subject, he explains nothing; for life, while it
lasts, is neither mechanical, chemical, nor electrical, but to a
certain extent resists and counteracts all these forces, and the human
body falls completely under their dominion only when it has ceased to
be a living body, when by chemical action it is decomposed, and
returns to the several elements from which it was formed. Mr. Spencer
describes very scientifically the entire {426} process of
assimilation; but what is that living power within that assimilates
the food we eat and converts it into chyle, blood, and flesh and bone?
You see here a principle operating of which no element is found in
mechanics, chemistry or electricity, or any possible combination of
them. The muscles of my arms and shoulder may operate on mechanical
principles in raising my arm when I will to raise it; but on what
mechanical, chemical, or electric principles do I will to raise it?
That I will to raise it, and in willing to do so perform an immaterial
act, I know better than you know that "percussion produces detonation
in sulphide of nitrogen," or that "explosion is a property of
nitro-mannite," or "of nitroglycerine."

The simple fact is that the physical sciences are all good and useful
in their place, and for purposes to which they are fitted; but they
are all secondary sciences, and without principles higher than
themselves to give dialectic validity to their inductions, they are no
sciences at all. There is no approach to the science of life in
Herbert Spencer's Biology; there is only a painfully elaborate
statement of the principal external facts which usually accompany it
and depend on it. Indeed, we had the impression that our most advanced
physiologists, while admitting in their place chemical and electric
forces as necessary to the phenomena of organic life, had abandoned
the attempt to expound the science of physiology on chemical, electric
or mechanical principles, or any possible combination of them. Even
Dr. Draper, if he makes no great use of it in his physiology,
recognizes a vital principle, even an immaterial soul, in man. We had
also the impression that the medical profession were abandoning the
chemical theory of medicine, so fashionable a few years ago. We may be
wrong, but as far as we have been able to keep pace with modern
science, Mr. Spencer is a quarter of a century behind his age.

The chapter on genesis, generation, multiplication, or reproduction,
is as unscientific as it is unchristian. We merely note that the
author insists on metagenesis as well as parthenogenesis, that is,
that the offspring may differ in kind from the parents, and that there
are virgin, or rather, sexless mothers. Some years ago, in conversing
with a scientific friend, I ventured to deny this alleged fact, on the
strength of the theological and scriptural doctrine that every kind
produces its like. He laughed in my face, and brought forward certain
well-known facts in the reproduction of the aphid or cabbage-louse. I
assured him that if he would take the pains to observe more closely he
would find that his metagenesis and parthenogenesis are only different
stages in the entire process of the reproduction of the aphid. Of
course he did not believe a word of it; but a few days afterwards he
came and informed me that he had seen his friend. Dr. Burnham of
Boston, a naturalist of rare sagacity, who told him that naturalists
were wrong in asserting metagenesis in the case of aphides. "I have,"
said he, "been making my observations for some years on these little
organisms, and I find that what we have taken for metagenesis is only
the different stages in the process of reproduction, for I have
discovered the young aphid properly formed and enveloped in the
so-called virgin or sexless mother." The naturalist is dead, but his
friend, my informant, is living.

We have no space to enter into any detailed review of this very
elaborate volume. It contains many curious materials of science, but
the author rejects creation, generation, formation, and emanation, and
adopts that of evolution. Life is evolved from various elements which
are reducible to gases, and, upon the whole, he gives us a gaseous
sort of life. His theory seems to be that of Topsy, who declared she
didn't come, but _growed_. We cannot perceive that Mr. Herbert Spencer
has made any serious advance on Topsy. The universe is evolution, and
evolution is growth, and he must say of himself with Topsy, "I didn't
come, I growed." At any rate, he must be classed with those old
philosophers who evolved all things from matter, some from fire, some
from air, and some from water, and made all things born from change or
corruption; or rather, with Epicurus, who evolved all from the
fortuitous motion, changes, and combination of atoms. Those old
philosophers were unjustly ridiculed by Hermias, or our recent
philosophers have less science than they imagine. Verily, there is
nothing new under the sun, and false science only traverses a narrow
{427} circle, constantly coming round to the absurdities of its
starting point. Yet Herbert Spencer's book has profited us. It has
made us feel more deeply than ever the utter impotence of the greatest
man to explain anything in nature, without recognizing God and
creation.


THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. May, 1866.

The first volume of the new series of this periodical is completed in
the present number, and, we suppose, is a fair specimen of the way in
which we may expect to see its programme carried out. On the whole,
our expectations are quite well satisfied, particularly with the
present number. The first article, "The Unitarian Movement," is an
_exposé_ of the view taken by the conductors of the influence which
the Unitarian movement is expected to exert upon the future destiny of
Christendom and the civilized world. The Unitarian movement is
supposed to represent the generally diffused and accepted theology of
the mass of thinking persons in the Protestant world, especially of
those who give tone to literature, and are most active in promoting
science, art, culture, civilization, and process in general. The
Catholic Church is a sect, because separated from the scientific and
progressive movement. The Unitarian denomination is a useful little
institution in a small way, but is not expected to absorb other bodies
into itself. Rather it and they are expected to coalesce into a more
universal form of organization, which will be the New Christendom or
Church of the Future.

The principal difficulty we find in the ingenious theories of our
Unitarian friends is, that they assume a great deal, and prove but
little. They assume to be in advance of all the world in intelligence,
science, liberality, etc., and quietly ignore the whole massive,
colossal fabric of Catholic theology. The truth is, the Unitarian
idea, so far as it is an idea, and in the way in which any
considerable class of Unitarians represent it, is not, and cannot
become, the dominant idea of that portion of the scientific or
civilized world which has disowned allegiance to the supreme authority
of divine revelation. Nor can it be shown that the Catholic idea will
not win again the control partially lost over the intellectual realm.
Either the human race has a purely natural destiny, or a supernatural
one. If the former, a Trinitarian or Unitarian Church, a Past,
Present, or Future Church, is not necessary. The State and Society are
the highest and all-sufficient organization of the race. If the
latter, there must be a divinely instituted organization, possessing
continuity of life and fixedness of laws, from the origin of the race.
Our friends must admit more or give up more. They are on a road now
which will infallibly bring them face to face with the Catholic
Church. We look with hope to see some of the boldest and most
consistent thinkers of the Unitarians come through into the Catholic
Church by this road, and interpret the genuine rationalism of
Christian doctrine to their own people much better than we can do it.
Dr. Brownson has really demonstrated the whole problem from their own
axioms and definitions, if they would but attend to him. But the good
Doctor, unfortunately for them, has travelled over the road in
seven-league boots, so fast and so far, that it will take at least
twenty-five years for his ancient compeers to come up with him.

In the review of "Tischendorff's Plea for the Genuineness of the
Gospels," Dr. Hedge has given us an essay marked with his sound and
solid scholarship. It is a valuable contribution to sacred literature,
and we would gladly see volumes of the same sort from his pen.

The sketch of that singular and gifted person, Francis Newman, the
brother of Dr. Newman, has great interest. It tells us something we
are very glad to know, and could not easily have found out without the
help of the writer. These are always the most interesting and valuable
articles in reviews. The author cannot help giving a few passing cuts
at Dr. Newman. Dr. Newman seems to annoy a great number of people very
much. They seem vexed that he should be a Catholic, and yet extort
from even the unwilling so much homage to his genius. The
"Independent" calls him renegade and apostate, and Bishop Coxe's very
inharmonious organ, misnamed the "Gospel Messenger," calls him
"detected thief," with similar epithets. The "Church Journal" tries to
make believe that his letter to Dr. Pusey is a "wail of despair." Our
Unitarian friend is too much of a gentleman to indulge in such boorish
{428} demeanor, but still he cannot suppress a well-bred sneer. "What
has Dr. Newman ever done for God's humanity? Has the oppression of the
English masses ever weighed upon his heart? Has he ever lifted up his
voice in behalf of our down-trodden little ones? Has he ever thought
of saving men from the great hell of ignorance and superstition, or
are these the safeguards of his precious faith? We have a right to
judge of that faith by its fairest fruit. _Ex pede Herculem_."

Dr. Newman's conversion seems, in the eyes of Protestants, to have
such a tremendous moral weight, and to carry such a force of argument
in it for the truth of the Catholic Church, that they are obliged to
deny in some plausible way either his intellectual or moral greatness,
in order to escape from it. Does not the author of these sentences
know well, that if the Catholic Church and her clergy were taken away
from the masses and the poor, they would perish in ignorance and vice
while he and his companions were discussing their plans and estimates
for the church of the paulo-post future? Does he not know that Dr.
Newman and a multitude of other gifted men like him are preaching and
working every day among the poorest of the people, while Unitarian
clergymen are ministering to select and intelligent congregations?
Does he know what St. Peter Claver did for the negroes, and can he
point to any Protestant who has done the like? A little more of Dr.
Newman's own conscientiousness in speech would do no harm to some of
his critics.

The article on "Bushnell on Vicarious Sacrifice" is ably and fairly
written, and all the writer's positive views are compatible with
Catholic doctrine. He commits the great _faux pas_, however, of
ignoring all the post-reformation theology of the Catholic Church, and
speaking as if theological science were confined to Protestants. He
appears also to be unaware that Catholic theologians commonly teach,
after St. Augustine, that God was not bound by his justice to exact
condign satisfaction as the condition of pardoning sin, but was free
to pardon absolutely. It was more glorious both for God and man that
this pardon should be accorded as the fruit of the noblest and most
perfect act of merit possible, rather than given gratuitously.

"An American in the Cathedrals of Europe" is an article full of the
genuine and pure sentiment with which Mr. Alger's writings abound, and
without a word to mar the pleasure a Catholic would take in reading
it.

The notices of Dr. Hall and of the University of Michigan have each
their interest and value, and the literary criticisms are, as usual,
in good taste.


THE APOSTLESHIP OF PRAYER.
By the Rev. H. Ramière, of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the
latest French edition and revised by a Father of the Society. 12mo,
pp. 393. John Murphy & Co., Baltimore. 1866.

A most excellent and thorough treatise on prayer. The spirit and
intention of the rev. author are best gained from a perusal of the
introduction, which warms one's heart and gives a new and stronger
impulse to every hope and desire which the Christian reader may have
for the greater glory of God. We cannot, however, entirely agree with
the gloomy and discouraging view which is taken of the success of
Christianity in the world. Christianity is not, nor has it ever been,
a failure; and it is something to which we cannot subscribe when the
author attributes "apparent barrenness" to the incarnation, and
"comparative uselessness" to the precious blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Neither do we think it suffices to answer the infidel, "Who
hath aided the Spirit of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor and
taught him?" when he points us to the great portion of the world yet
unchristianized. And if prayer be good, both individual and
associated; if it be absolutely necessary, as it is in the Christian
economy; if it be, as it were, the soul which gives life to every work
of the Christian; still we do not imagine that of all the means of
grace this alone deserves our earnest thought or demands our undivided
attention.

We are not called upon, in any sense, to apologize for Christianity.
It is not worthy of us as men of strong faith to treat of religion as
though it were a subject that needed to be excused in the face of the
unbeliever, or which humbly supplicates the notice of the philosopher
and the statesman. The truly great minds which have not professed
Christianity have sought rather {429} to excuse the world for not
submitting to the force of its arguments and to the charms of its
beauty. Christianity is no failure, if there be anything which
deserves the name of success. What other institutions can compare with
it for actual and permanent success? The propagation of the faith, its
preservation, and its enormous diffusion, may well put all past,
present, and future works of man to the blush. What else is it now,
but _the_ great FACT of the world's history and of the world's present
advanced and civilized state? We are not a petty, insignificant sect
of thinkers, nor a despicable school of philosophers, seeking a
momentary acknowledgment from the great unchristian world. On the
contrary, Christianity rules the world; and all that is great and
noble in humanity, all that has sanctified the past, sustains the
present, and inspires hope for the future; all that is free,
civilized, and enlightened in society, depends now for its life, as it
has received its seed, from the divine power and light of the
Christian faith. Truly, we must pray, and that "without ceasing," for
those who are not of the fold of Christ, and for the coming of the
kingdom of God upon earth; and any one who peruses the work before us
will feel the depth of this obligation; and if he has any real,
practical desire for the salvation and sanctification of man, will not
fail to be stimulated to constant and earnest prayer. But have we
reflected, as well as we might, that before men will pray to God they
must first believe in him? The man of enlightened faith prays
naturally; the ignorant and the superstitious are noted for their want
of confidence in prayer. Prayer is the union of the soul with God, and
the better God is known, the better is the heart of man prepared for
the influences of the Holy Spirit. "Whosoever shall call upon the name
of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on him in whom
they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they
have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?" We may
urge our faithful Christians to pray for the conversion of the world,
and we may mourn that they do not pray for this end more than they do;
but whatsoever arms God has placed at our disposal for conquering the
world unto himself, we, like good soldiers of Jesus Christ, must use
them with alacrity, with zeal, and, above all, with that spirit of
sacrifice which our holy faith alone has the power to inspire. Whilst
we need not neglect the apostolic manner of preaching the word of God,
we should also lay to heart the oft-repeated and wise admonition of
the Holy Father to make diligent use of the providential means of the
press, to diffuse the knowledge of the Christian faith, and promulgate
the saving principles of strict Christian morality, and thus prevent
defection from the congregation of the just, and enlighten them that
sit in the darkness and in the shadow of death. The people need more
light, more instruction. The masses among non-Catholics are very
ignorant of religion. They are living upon only the poor remnants of
Catholic faith and tradition which have been left to them by the
ruthless hand of the despoiler. None have felt this more than the
clergy and enlightened laity of our own country, where religion is
thrown upon its own merits for support and progress, and where the
hold upon the ancient Christian tradition is so slight; and it is a
happy augury for the conversion of the American people that these
sentiments are beginning to have a practical and encouraging result.
We must make the truth known, for it is that which enlightens man. And
Christianity is truth. There is no form of truth so broad, so
exalting, so truly progressive, so noble and so tree. Men will accept
it when you make it known to them--accept it with joy, and a reverent
enthusiasm. The tone of our remarks must not be misunderstood as
attributing to the spirit of the work before us any want of
appreciation of the great needs of which we have spoken, or that we
think the rev. author displays a want of confidence in the power of
Christian truth. On the contrary, we have seldom met with a book so
urgent in earnestness and so fall of faith. We can only say, in
conclusion, God send the church many more such zealous souls as the
Père Ramière, now that the harvest is so full and the laborers are so
few.

{430}


REPORT OF THE TRIAL OF DR. W. H. STOKES, PHYSICIAN, AND MARY
BLENKINSOP, SISTER SUPERIOR, OF MOUNT HOPE INSTITUTION, BEFORE THE
CIRCUIT COURT FOR BALTIMORE COUNTY.
Reported by Eugene L. Didier. 8vo pamphlet, pp. 202. Baltimore: Kelly
& Piet. 1866.

The famous Mount Hope case, which was brought to trial in February
last, ended in a verdict for the defendants, and we have here a full
report of it. We trust the projectors of this magnificent _fiasco_ are
abundantly pleased with the fruits of their endeavors, although they
seem to have forgotten that, failing to sustain their indictment, the
odium they sought to fix upon others would be sure to recoil upon
themselves. Hence we think that popular judgment will incline to the
belief that the only conspiracy in the case (if there be any) was upon
the part of the prosecution. The fact that an attempt was made to
deprive the defendants of a plea secured to them by positive law would
rather favor this opinion. We should be happy to believe that
sectarian prejudice had nothing to do in founding this accusation; but
the animus which prompted it will soon be apparent to any one who will
take the trouble to read the charge. The estimable and pious ladies,
whose life of sacrifice in the interests of religion and humanity has
compelled the admiration of the world, are deemed unfit to undertake
their office of charity because they are women! because they are
religious and governed by a foreign priest! This tells the whole
story, and simply means that ladies of the Catholic religion, who
choose to unite in a religious order for the purpose of relieving
human suffering, are unworthy of public sympathy or confidence. We
strongly doubt if all the testimony sought to be introduced on the
trial, could it have been admitted, would have materially changed the
result. To say nothing of the equivocal character of that evidence, as
coming from persons but recently inmates of the institution, and whose
perfect competency to testify is far from certain, we know the
proneness of those living under the government and direction of others
to deem themselves the objects of harsh treatment and neglect. There
is not an establishment of such persons in the country, not even a
common boarding-school, against which similar charges are not
constantly made. The well-known character of these admirable sisters
and their unwearied efforts to do good--for the most part far removed
from human recognition or applause--afford a strong presumption that
the management of their asylum will stand the test of rigorous
scrutiny.

A case not wholly unlike the present, got up in a similar spirit, in
Boston, some years since, under the Know-Nothing regime, is doubtless
still fresh in public recollection. Affairs directed to the same end
as this of Mount Hope are got up from time to time, but they serve
only to arouse feelings which had much better lie dormant where they
cannot be eradicated, and invoke a spirit entirely opposed to the
plainest dictates of Christian charity.

The report of the trial appears to be very complete, and we commend it
to those who are at all acquainted with the circumstances of the case,
or have felt any interest in its result.


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS:
Their Agents and Their Results. By T. W. M. Marshall. 2 volumes. New
York: Sadliers, No. 31 Barclay street. Reprint from an English
edition.

It is somewhat late to notice this valuable work; but, as the
publishers have recently sent us a copy, we take the occasion to
recommend it to all who are desirous of knowing what has been
accomplished both by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

Mr. Marshall's work has attained a high reputation abroad, and has
been translated into several European languages. It is very thorough,
and its statements are backed up by a vast array of citations, chiefly
from Protestant writers. Catholic missions form a beautiful and
attractive page of ecclesiastical history. Their great success and
abundant fruits are demonstrated beyond a cavil by the author, as they
have been many times before. The majority of Catholics are too
indifferent to the great work of missions, and ought to take a deeper
interest in them than they do.

The very signal failure of Protestant missions as a whole is also
proved, by Mr. Marshall, in such a way that their advocates cannot
rebut his evidence. Nevertheless, we think there is an unnecessary
amount of satire levelled at the missionaries themselves, and too dark
a shade given to the picture of their labors. Many of them are {431}
certainly men who, if they were Catholic missionaries, would honor
their calling, and who undertook their hopeless task from high and
worthy motives. They have accomplished but little, yet their labors
have not been altogether without results. The same may be said of the
Russian missions. The particular facts stated by Mr. Marshall
concerning the low state of a large part of the Russian clergy, the
violent means used for enforcing conformity to the Russian Church, and
the imperfect instruction given to the ostensible converts, are
indubitable. Yet we believe there are other facts also to be taken
into the account, which tell on the other side, and are necessary to a
perfectly correct view of the true state of the case. A perfectly just
balancing of all the accounts would prove most conclusively that the
Catholic Church alone is adequate to the task of successfully
propagating Christianity. Mr. Marshall has gone very far toward
success in his effort to make this balance, and has written with the
most perfect honesty of purpose. Some of his deductions may be open to
criticism, and his array of facts and testimonies may admit of further
completion; but the general result which he has reached cannot be
substantially set aside or altered. One particular portion of his work
is just now especially valuable, to wit, the estimate he has furnished
from Protestant writers of the vast superiority of Oriental
_Catholics_ over Oriental _Schismatics_ in the Levant.

We recommend this learned and excellent work to all intelligent
readers as the best and most complete of its kind which has yet
appeared.


THE STORY OF KENNETT.
By Bayard Taylor. 12mo., pp. 418. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1866.

This is an American story as truly as the Waverley novels are Scotch.
It has done for Pennsylvania and the Quaker traditions what Hawthorne
has for Massachusetts and Puritan life and tradition, and Cooper for
Western New York and the fading reminiscences of Indian and frontier
life. The book is redolent with the sweet aroma of pastoral life, and
that healthy temper and character which are the certain fruit of
honest, independent, and successful frugality and toil.

We are grateful to the masters of poetry and romance who will seize
and perpetuate the fleeting memories of our beautiful and noble past,
and save for our children those traditions of danger, daring, labor,
love, and self-sacrifice which colored with mystery and beauty the
dreams and aspirations of our childhood. Mr. Taylor is a man of whom
we are proud. His experience as a traveller renders his writings more
distinctively American, while they are entirely free from any
narrowness or provincialism. He deserves the success which follows his
literary labors. The book is handsomely got up, as such a book ought
to be.



AGNES. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This is an artistic, highly-finished story, intensely truthful to
nature, yet sufficiently idealized to give the mind the enjoyment of
appreciating a work of art. The authoress makes some very fine points.
The contemplation of the "Visitation" in the Pitti gallery by the
lonely young wife is a beautiful touch of nature, such as only a woman
could have made.


INSTRUCTION AND  CATECHISM FOR CONFESSION.
To be used by children preparing to receive the Sacrament of Penance.
32mo., pp. 24. New York. D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1866.

We are sure that this little book will prove as useful in every
respect as the rev. author could desire. There has been an undoubted
want of some such aid to the ordinary catechism, and every pastor
under whose notice it may come will not fail to welcome it and avail
himself of it. We like it because it is short, to the point, and
written in good plain English.


GOOD THOUGHTS FOR PRIEST AND PEOPLE. Translated from the German. By
Rev. Theodore Noethen. 12mo. Albany. Nos. 1 and 2.

These are the kind of books which we earnestly desire to see among the
good Catholic books which every family ought to have and read. The
clergy will also find these "Good Thoughts" admirably adapted to their
wants, as furnishing suggestive matter for {432} sermons and parochial
instructions. Its price, however, will, we fear, defeat its usefulness
in part by confining it to a comparatively limited circulation.


MAY CAROLS AND HYMNS AND POEMS.
By Aubrey de Vere. 1 vol., 32mo., pp. 232. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.
1866.

Of the two parts comprised in this welcome little volume, the longest,
and, to our taste, by all odds the best, is that originally published
in London under the title of "May Carols." It is a serial poem,
devoted partly to the praises of the Blessed Virgin, and in a
subordinate degree to the thoughts of natural beauty suggested by the
most joyous and poetical month of the young year. If it reminds us
frequently of "In Memoriam," the resemblance cannot be charged as a
plagiarism, and at most is only superficial. There is a Tennysonian
curtness of phrase, a pregnant significance and neatness of expression
in many of the lines, which are equally rare and refreshing in
devotional poetry. Charmingly delicate in execution, and profoundly
religious in sentiment, Mr. De Vere's "Carols" are a valuable addition
to Catholic literature, and will add no little renown to the author's
reputation as a poet. The "Hymns and Sacred Poems" have a value of
their own for the thoughts which they contain, though we cannot accord
them the same praise which we cheerfully render to the first and
larger portion of Mr. Kehoe's tastefully printed little volume.


IN MEMORIAM OF RT. REV. JOHN B. FITZPATRICK.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1866.

A neatly executed pamphlet, containing an account of the funeral
obsequies of the late distinguished and beloved bishop of Boston, and
three funeral discourses: one by Archbishop McCloskey at the
interment, another by Bishop De Goesbriand at the Month's Mind, and a
third by the well-known and eloquent Father Haskins of Boston,
delivered in one of the parish churches. The friends of the deceased
prelate will find in it a valuable and pleasing memento of the
departed.


THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD
TO THE ENGLISH INVASION.
By the Rev. Geoffrey Keating, D.D. Translated from the original
Gaelic, and copiously annotated by John O'Mahony, with a map showing
the location of the ancient clans, and a Topographical Appendix. 8vo.,
pp. 746. New York: James B. Kirker. 1866.

This is a new edition of a translation of Dr. Keating's History of
Ireland, published in this city a few years ago. The original work as
it came from the pen of Dr. Keating has met with both praise and
censure from Irish scholars. Some critics have thought the learned
author placed too much faith in the legends of the ancient Irish. The
work, even if a portion of it must be classified as "doubtful," is a
valuable record of the deeds of Ireland's chiefs when she was a
nation. The notes of the translator are voluminous and critical, and
help to throw much light upon passages which, to the ordinary reader,
are obscure.

We regret that the publisher has seen fit to leave out the "map
showing the location of the ancient clans" of Ireland, which appeared
in the first edition published by Mr. Haverty. From the wording of the
title-page, one would expect to find it in its proper place. But it is
not there.


MAXWELL DREWITT.
A Novel. By F. G. Trafford. Harper & Brothers.

This is an Irish tale, exceedingly well written, and just and manly in
its tone and sentiment.


L. Kehoe announces the early publication of "CHRISTINE, AND OTHER
POEMS," by George H. Miles, Esq. The volume will be brought out in a
superior style of binding and typography, worthy of the high merit of
the poetry.



BOOKS RECEIVED.

From JAMES O'KANE, New York. Betsey Jane Ward, (better half to
Artemus) her Book of Goaks with a hull Akkownt of the Coartship and
Maridge to A 4 Said Artemus, and Mister Ward's Cutting-up with the
Mormon fare Secks with Pikturs drawed by Mrs. B. Jane Ward. 12mo,
pp. 312.
  [Verbatim;--Transcriber.]


FROM THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY.
Doctor Kemp. The Story of a life with a Blemish. 8vo, pamphlet.


From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York. Nos. 13,
14, 15, 16, and 17 of D'Artaud's Lives of the Popes.


From the office of the AVE MARIA, Notre Dame, Ind. Specimen sheet of
the Golden Wreath for the month of May, composed of daily
considerations on the Triple Crown of our Blessed Lady's joys,
sorrows, and glories. With Hymns set to Music for May devotions.

--------

{433}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.


VOL. III, NO. 16-JULY, 1866.



[ORIGINAL.]

THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN.


There are some places in this world nearer to heaven than others. I
know of a place which I think is the nearest. Whether you may think so
I do not know, but I would like you to see it and judge for yourself.
Please to go to France, then to Paris; then take a walk a little
distance outside of the Barrière de Vaugirard, and you will come to a
small village called Issy. When you have walked about five minutes
along its narrow and straggling street, which is the continuation of
the Rue de Vaurigard, you win see on your left a high, ugly stone
wall, and if I did not ask you to pull the jangling bell at the
porter's lodge and enter, you might pass by and think there was
nothing worthy of your notice about the place. You say you have not
time to stop now, that you have an appointment to dine at the Hôtel
des Princes, in Paris, but that some other time you will be most
happy, etc. Wait a moment, perhaps I may be able show you something
quite as good as a dinner, even at the Hôtel des Princes. Ring the
bell. The sturdy oaken door seems to open itself with a click. That is
the way with French doors; but it is the porter's doing. When he hears
the bell, he pulls at a rope hanging in his lodge, which communicates
with the lock of the door. You are free to enter. Go in. But you
cannot pass beyond the porter's lodge without giving an account of
your self. You cannot get into this heavenly place without passing
through the porter's review, anymore than you can get into the real
heaven without passing the scrutiny of St. Peter. I hope you are able
to satisfy the "Eh; b'en, M'sieu'?" of good old père Hanicq, who is
porter here. He is a _père_, you understand, by the title of affection
and respect, and not by virtue of ordination. You may not think it
worth your while to be over humble and deferential in your deportment
towards porters as a general rule; but I think you may be so now; for,
if I do not mistake, you are speaking to a venerable old man who will
die in the odor of sanctity. Père Hanicq is not paid for his services,
{434} troublesome and arduous as you would very soon find his to be if
you were porter even here. He is porter for the love of God. You see
he does not stop making the rosary, which is yet unfinished in his
hand, while he talks to you. He does not recompense himself by that
business either, as shoemaker porters, tailor porters, and the like
eke out their scanty salaries; but it enables him to find some
well-earned sous to give away to others poorer than himself. You say
this lodge is not a very comfortable place, with its cold brick floor.
It is not. Neither is that narrow roost up the step-ladder a very
luxurious bed. Right again, it is not. But the Père Hanicq is not over
particular about these things. Besides, he is not worse off in this
respect than the hundred other people who live in this place nearest
to heaven. Indeed, most of them have a much narrower and drearier
apartment than his. Now that you have said a pleasant word to the good
old soul, (for he dearly loves a kindly salutation, and it is the only
imperfection I think he has,) you may pass the inner door, and you
observe that you are in a square courtyard, a three-story irregularly
shaped building occupying two sides of it; stables and outhouses a
third, and the street wall the fourth. Before you go further, I would
advise you to look into one of those tumble-down looking outhouses. It
looks something like a rag and bottle shop. It is a shop, and the
Almoner of the poor keeps it. Here the residents of these buildings
may find bargains in old odds and ends of second-hand, and it may be
seventy times seventh-hand furniture, either left or cast off by
former occupants. Here the Almoner,--that voluble and sweet tempered
young man in a long black cassock,--disposes of these articles of
trade, enhancing their value by all the superlatives he can remember,
for the benefit of certain old crones and hobbling cripples, whom
perhaps you saw on the right of the courtyard receiving soup and other
food from another young man in a long black cassock, who is the
Almoner's assistant. You don't know it, perhaps, but I can tell you
that the Almoner's assistant, as he ladles out the soup and divides
the bread and meat, is mentally going down on his knees and kissing
the ragged and worn-out clothes of these old bodies whom he helps, for
the sake of Him whom they represent, and who will one day say to him:
"Because you did it unto the least of these my brethren, you did it
unto me."

Now you may go into the house, after you have been struck with the
fact how completely that high stone wall shuts out the noise of the
street. You say, however, that you hear a band playing. Yes; that
comes from an "Angel Guardian" house over the way, like Father
Haskins's house in Roxbury, Massachusetts (there ought to be angels,
you know, not far off from the nearest place to heaven), where the
"gamins," as the Parisians call them,--the "mudlarks" or "dock rats,"
as we call them,--are taken care of, fed, clothed, instructed, and
taught an honest trade, also for the love of Him who will one day say
to the Père Bervanger and to Father Haskins what I have before said
about the Almoner's assistant.

Well, here is the house. This is the first story, half underground on
one side, and consequently a little damp and dingy. Here to the right
is the Prayer Hall. This has a wooden floor, (a rare exception,)
wooden seats fixed to the wainscoting, and here and there a few
benches made of plain oak slabs, which look as if they had lately come
out of one of our backwoods saw-mills. A large crucifix hangs on the
wall, and a table is near the door, at which the one who reads prayers
kneels. The ninety-nine others kneel down anywhere on the bare floor,
without choosing the softest spot, if there be any such. Those
portraits hanging around the walls represent the superiors of a
community of men who are entrusted {435} with the guardianship of this
place nearest to heaven. The most of those faces, as you see, are not
very handsome, as the world reckons handsome, but I assure you they
make up for that by the beauty of their souls. The morning prayers are
said here at half-past five the year round, followed by a half hour's
meditation, and the evening prayers at half-past eight. The hundred
residents come here too just before dinner, to read a chapter of the
New Testament on their knees, devoutly kissing the Word of God before
and after reading it; and then each one silently reviews the last
twenty-four hours, and enters into account with himself to see how
much he has advanced in that particular Christian virtue of which his
soul stands the most in need. It is a good preparation for dinner, and
I would advise you to try it, even if you cannot do it on your knees.
It is a perfect toilette for the soul. Here also you will find the
afore-mentioned hundred people at half-past six o'clock, just before
supper, listening to a short reading on some spiritual subject,
followed by a sort of conference given by the Superior, or head of the
house, so full of unction and sweet counsel that it fairly lifts the
heart above all earthly things, and seems to hallow the very place
where it is spoken.

Turn now to the left. That door in the corner opens into a chapel
dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi. Here the Père Hanicq and the few
servants of the house hear mass every morning, and begin the day with
the best thought I know of, the thought of God. Keeping still to the
left you pass into the Recreation Hall; and if this be recreation day,
you will see congregated here the liveliest and happiest set of faces
that it has ever been your good fortune to meet in this world.
Billiards, backgammon, chess, chequers, and other games more simple
and amusing in their character, are here; and I can tell you that they
are like a group of merry children playing and amusing themselves
before their heavenly Father. You might pass the recreation days here
for many a year before you would hear an angry word, or a cutting
retort, or witness a jealous frown or a sad countenance. Notice that
smiling old gentleman with a bald head capped by the black calotte.
That is the Père T----. He is very fond of a game of billiards, and I
know he loves to be on the winning side; the principal reason of
which, however, you may not divine, but I know: it gives him a chance
to pass his cue to some one who has been beaten, and obliged to
retire. And many learn by that good old father's example to do the
same kind and charitable act; and, take it all in all, I am inclined
to think this room is not much further off from heaven than many other
places about this dear old house.

Of course everybody is talking here, except the chess-players, and at
such a rate, that it is quite a din; but hark! a bell rings: all is
instantly silent, the games are stopped, the very half-finished
sentence is clipped in two, and each one departs to some assigned
duty. They are taught that the bell which regulates their daily
exercises is the voice of God, and that when he calls there is nothing
else worthy of attention. I have no doubt they are right: have you?

There is one other place to visit on this ground floor, the Refectory.
A long stone-floored hall with two rows of tables on either side, and
one at the upper end where sits the head of the house, a high
old-fashioned pulpit on one side, the large crucifix on the wall, and
that is the Refectory. It looks dark and cold, and so it is; dark,
because the windows are small and high; and cold, because there is no
stove or other heating apparatus--a want which may also be felt in
the other rooms you have visited; and as the windows are left open for
air some time before these rooms are occupied, it must be confessed
there is a rarity and keenness about the {436} atmosphere, and a
degree of temperature about the cold stones in mid-winter, which are
not pleasant to delicately nourished constitutions. No conversation
ever takes place in the refectory except on recreation days, or on the
occasion of a visit from the Archbishop of Paris. At all other times
there is reading going on from the pulpit, either from the Holy
Scripture or some religions book, which enables the listeners to free
their minds from too engrossing an attention to the more sensual
business of eating and drinking: not that their plain and frugal table
ever presents very strong temptations to gourmandize!

As you are American, and accustomed to your hot coffee or strong
English black tea, with toast, eggs, and beefsteak for breakfast, I
fear the meal which these hundred young men are making off a little
cold _vin ordinaire_, well tempered with colder water, and dry bread,
during the short space of twelve minutes, (except during Lent and on
other fast days, when they do not go to the refectory at all before
twelve o'clock,) will appear exceedingly frugal, not to say hasty. You
observe, doubtless, that short as is the time allotted to breakfast,
nearly every one is reading in a book while he is eating. Do you wish
to know the reason? I will tell you. It is not to pass away time, but
to make use of every moment of time that passes. None in the world are
more alive to the shortness and the value of time than the hundred
young men before you. Every moment of the day has its own allotted
duty; and when there is an extra moment, like this one at breakfast,
when two things can be done at once, they do not fail to make use of
it. They take turns with each other in the duty of waiting on the
tables, except on Good Friday, when the venerable Superior, and no
less venerable fathers, who are the teachers of these young men, don
the apron, and serve out the food proper in quantity and quality for
that day.

Now that you have seen the first story, you may "mount," as the French
say, to the second. If you have not been here before, I warn you to
obtain a guide, or amidst the odd stairways and rambling corridors you
may lose your way. This is the chapel for the daily Mass. It is both
plain and clean, and you will possibly notice nothing particular in it
save the painted beams of the ceiling, the only specimen of such
ornament, I think, in the whole house. It is there a long time, for
this is a very ancient building, having once been the country-seat of
Queen Margaret of Anjou; and this little chapel may have been one of
her royal reception-rooms for all you or I know.

Hither, as I have said, come the young Levites to assist at the daily
sacrifice. I believe I have not told you before that this is a house
of retreat from the world of prayer and of study for youthful
aspirants to the priesthood of the Holy Church. I do not know what
impression it makes upon you, but the sight of that kneeling crowd of
young men in their cassocks and winged surplices, absorbed in prayer
before the altar at the early dawn of day, when the ray of the rising
sun is just tinging the tops of the trees with a golden light, and the
open windows of the little chapel admit the sound of warbled music of
birds, and the sweet perfumes from the garden just below, enamelled
with flowers, is to me a scene higher than earth often reveals to us
of heaven's peace and rapt devotion in God. Mass is over now, and you
may go, leaving only those to pray another half hour who have this
morning received the Holy Communion.

All these rooms which you see here and there, to the right and to the
left, are the cells of the Seminarians, about eight by fifteen feet in
size, and large enough for their purposes, though certainly not equal
to your cosy study at home in America, or to the grand _salon_ you
have engaged at the Hôtel des Princes. As you are a visitor, perhaps
you may go in and look at one. There is {437} no visiting each other's
rooms among the young men themselves at any time, save for charity's
sake when one is ill. An iron bedstead, with a straw bed, a table, a
chair, a crucifix, a vexing old clothes-press, whose drawers won't
open except by herculean efforts, and when open have an equally
stubborn fashion of refusing to be closed; a broom, a few books,
paper, pen and ink, a pious picture or statue, and you have the full
inventory of any of these rooms. As they need no more, they have no
more: a rule of life that might make many a one of us far happier than
we are, tortured by the care of a thousand and one things which
consume our time, worry the mind, and are not of the slightest
possible utility to ourselves, and the cause, it may be, of others'
envy and discomfort. I am aware that, as you pass along the corridors,
you think it is vacation time, or that every one is absent just now
from their rooms, all is so silent. But wait a moment. Ah! the bell
again. Presto! Every door flies open, and the corridor is alive with
numbers of the young men going off to a class or to prayers. Now that
they are gone, suppose you peep into one of the rooms again; that is,
if some newcomer, not yet having learned the rule to the contrary, has
left the key in his door. Ah! he was just writing as the bell rang;
the pen is yet wet with ink. Pardon! I do not intend that you shall
read what he has written, but you may see that he has actually left
his paper not only with an unfinished sentence, but even at a half
formed letter. That is obedience, my friend, to the voice of God,
which I have already told you is recognized in the first stroke of
that bell. I suppose you may read the inscription he has placed at the
foot of his crucifix, since it is in plain sight. "I sat down under
the shadow of my Well-Beloved, whom I desired, and his fruit was sweet
to my palate." (Cant, ii. 3.) Yes, you are right. It is a good motto
for one who has sacrificed every worldly enjoyment for the sake of
that higher and purer joy, the love of Jesus crucified. You are
noticing, I perceive, that everything looks very neat and clean, that
the bed is nicely made, and what there is, is in order. They have tidy
housekeepers, you say, here. So they have, and a large number of them,
too,--one to each room--the Seminarian himself.

I think you may "mount" another stairway now--when you find it--to the
third story. I just wish you to step into that door on the right. It
is the Chapel of St. Joseph; and if you happen to enter here after
night prayers you will see a few of the young men kneeling before the
altar, over which is a charming little painting representing the
Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus by the hand.
They come to pay a short visit in spirit to the Holy Family before
retiring to rest. "Beautiful thought!" I believe you. I see your eyes
are a little dimmed by tears. What is the matter? "Oh! nothing; only I
was thinking that by coming up a few more steps in this house, one has
mounted a good many steps nearer heaven." Not ready to go  Oh! I
understand, you wish to pay a little visit yourself to the Holy
Family. Good. Now, along this corridor, around this corner, down that
stairway which seems to lead nowhere,--take care of your
head!--through those doors, and you are in a much larger chapel. All
finished in polished oak, as you see, with a bright waxed floor. The
seminarians sit in those stalls which run along the whole length of
either side of the chapel. Here, on Sundays and festivals, they come
to celebrate the divine offices of the Church. I wish you could hear
them responding to each other in the solemn Gregorian chant. Listen;
they are singing, and only to and for the praise of God, for no
strangers are admitted, so there is no chance for the applause of men.
Possibly you may be sharp-eyed enough to note those mantling cheeks
and detect the thrill of emotion in their voices as the swelling
chorus fills the whole building with melody. Truly, {438} I wonder not
that you are moved, for the song of praise rises amid the clouds of
grateful incense from chaste lips, and from pure hearts given in the
flower and spring-time of life to God alone. I can tell you, that
whether their voices are singing the mournful cadence of the Kyrie,
the exultant sentences of the Gloria, the imposing chant of the Credo,
the awe-struck exclamations of the Sanctus, or the plaintive refrain
of the Agnus Dei; or whether they respond in cheerful notes to the
salutations of the sacrificing priest at the Altar, one other song
their hearts are always singing here: "Laetatus sum in his quae dicta
sunt mihi, in domum Domini ibimus"--I was glad when they said unto me,
we will go into the house of the Lord. A heavenly joy is filling their
ardent souls, moved by the grace of the Holy Ghost, and is reflected
from their countenances as the sunlight sparkles on the ripples of a
quiet, shaded lake, when its waters are gently stirred by a passing
zephyr wafted from the wings of God's unseen angel of the winds.

Now you may go out into the garden. A charming esplanade directly
behind the house you have visited. Well-kept gravelled walks stretch
here and there through a glittering parterre of flowers of every hue
and perfume. A pretty fountain sends its sparkling drops into the air
in the centre of a basin stocked with gold-fish, which are very fond
of being fed with bread-crumbs from the hand of saintly old Father
C----. You do not know the Père C---- you say. Then you may envy me. I
know him. Shall I tell you what he said to me one day?

"Tenez, mon cher, on doit prier le, Bon Dieu toujours selon le premier
mot de l'office de None, 'Mirabilia,' et non pas selon le premier mot
de Tierce, 'Legem pone.'" God bless his dear old white head! it makes
my heart leap in my bosom to think of him. Where were you? Oh! yes,
beside the fountain. On each side of the garden is an avenue of trees
and in one corner a little maze, hiding a pretty statue of the Blessed
Virgin at whose feet that Almoner of the poor has placed a little
charity-box, thinking doubtless, and not without reason, that here,
hidden by the trees and close shrubbery, some one, you for instance,
might like to do something with a holy secrecy which shall one day
find its reward from the Heavenly Father of the poor, openly. So I
will just turn my head while you put in a donation fitting for an
American who has a suite of rooms at the Hôtel des Princes. I know you
are loth to leave this pretty spot. I have had equal difficulty in
dragging you away from the other places to which I directed your
steps; but you have not seen all. Come along. Cross the garden. Here,
behind the large chapel is a curious grotto all inlaid with shells,
floor, walls and roof. This is the place where Bossuet, Fénelon and
Mr. Tronson held some conferences about a theological subject which
need not take up your time now. Turn up that winding walk to the left,
and you see a little shrine dedicated to Our Lady, to which the young
men go to celebrate the month of May; and it is a quiet little nook
where one may drop in a moment and forget the world. The world is not
worth remembering all the tune, you know. As you pass to the middle of
the garden again you notice a long archway, built under a high wall.
Before you enter it please first notice that fine terra-cotta statue
of the Virgin and Child near it, and take off your hat in passing, as
all do here. This archway passes under a road, which is screened from
view by high walls on either side, which also prevent the grounds you
are in from being seen from the road. I have often thought about that
high-walled road running through the middle of this place nearest to
heaven. How many of us pass along our way of life, stony, toilsome,
dry and dusty, like this road, and are often nearer heaven and
heavenly company than we think; and how many others there are we know
and love, whose road runs close beside, {439} if not at times directly
through the Paradise of the Church of God on earth, and know it not.
Oh! if they did but once suspect it, how quickly would they leap over
the wall!

Now you are through the archway. Directly before you is a magnificent
avenue of trees, all trimmed and clipped as it pleases this methodical
people, and here is a fine place for a walk in recreation. The
seminarians recreate themselves, as they do all other acts, as a duty
and by rule. One hour and a quarter after dinner, ten minutes at
half-past four, and an hour and a half after supper appears to
suffice, although I am afraid it is rather a short allowance. Silence
is the rule during the other twenty-one hours out of the twenty-four,
and broken only by duty or necessity. How do you like it? Be assured
it is profitable to those who are desirous of living near to God.
Recollect what Thomas à Kempis says in his "Imitation of Christ:" "In
silentio et quiete proficit anima devota"--In silence and quiet the
devout soul makes great progress. You observe also that the reverend
teachers of these young men are taking recreation with them. Yes; and
in this as in every other duty of this life of prayer and of study
they subject themselves to the same rule that they impose on others.
Example, example, my friend, is the master teacher, and succeeds where
words cannot. They have learned beforehand in their own school the
lessons of chastity, obedience, poverty, patience, meekness, humility
and charity, of silence, and every other Christian mortification of
our wayward senses which they are called upon to teach here. They have
a novitiate adjoining this house, called the "Solitude," and their
motto is inscribed over the little portal in the stone wall which
separates the two enclosures. This is it, "O beata Solitude! O sola
Beatitudo!" There is a short sentence, my friend, which will serve as a
subject of meditation for you, for a longer time than you imagine.
Look at the Père M----, the reverend superior. What gentleness of soul
beams from that kindly countenance! It makes one think of St. Philip
Neri. Ah! and there is the Père P----, with a face like St. Vincent of
Paul, and a body like nobody's but his own, all deformed as it is by
rheumatism. I don't ask you to kiss the hem of his cassock for
reverence sake, for that might wound his humility, and he might
moreover knock you down with his crooked elbow, but if you could see
what place the angels are getting ready for him up in heaven, I think
you would wish to do so. And all the others, old or young--bowed with
age or strong of arm and firm in step--you will find but little
difference in them. They are all cast in about the same mould, of a
shape which only a life, and a purpose of life such as theirs could
form. You would like to know what that young man is about, would you,
running from one knot of talkers and walkers to another, saluting
them, and saying something to each? Listen; he is repeating the
password of the house. The password? Even so. And is it secret? Yes,
and a secret too. It is the secret of a holy life, the holy life to be
led here, and not to be forgotten, where it is the most likely to be,
in the dissipation of recreation. Lay it up to heart, for it will do
you good. "Messieurs, Sursum corda!"

This building on your right as you come out of the archway is a
ball-court. If you will step into the "cuisine," as a sort of wire
cage is called, in which you can see without being in the way, and the
irregular roof of which serves admirably to cause the ball to come
down crooked, and "hard to take," you may see some good ball-playing;
and if you know anything about the game, I am sure all will offer at
once to vacate their places and give up the pleasure of playing to
please you. Somehow, these seminarians are always seeking to please
some one else. Fraternal charity, which prefers the happiness of
others to its own, is cultivated here to such a degree, that I tell
you again you will not find a place {440} nearer heaven; where charity
is made perfect and consummated in God.

Turn down now to the left for a few steps, and look to the right.
Another beautiful avenue. The trees branching from the ground rise up
and mingle together on all sides so as to form a complete arch. A
building at the end. Yes; that is the place of all places in this
lovely enclosure the most venerated by all who come to pass a part of
their lives in dear old Issy. It is the chapel of Lorette. Walk up the
avenue and examine it. It has a façade, as you see, of strict
architectural taste. I know that you, being an American, would very
soon scrape the weather-beaten stones, paint up the wood-work, and put
a new and more elegant window in front, if you were in charge. Perhaps
it might improve it, perhaps not. Standing as it does alone, out there
in the midst of extensive grounds, it makes you think of the Holy
House of Loretto in Italy, of which you know something, I suppose, and
of which, indeed, the little chapel inside is an exact copy, and hence
has obtained its name. Let me say a word about it before you go in,
for no one is expected to break the religious silence which the young
levites here are taught should reign about the tabernacle where
reposes the sacred and hidden presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy
Eucharist. It is this chapel, especially dedicated to his own dear and
blessed mother, that they have chosen for his dwelling-place among
them, as her home at Nazareth was also his. It is what you might
expect. The Mother and the Son go together. A childlike and tender
devotion to her whom he chose for the human source of his incarnate
life, through which we are elevated and born anew unto God, cannot be
separated from the profound act of adoration which humanity, nay, all
creation, must pay to him who is her Son, the first-born of all
creatures. His mysterious incarnate presence is with us always in the
Holy Eucharist, and will be, as he promised, unto the consummation of
the world; and the priest, by the power of his own divine word, is its
human source. You remember the saying of St. Augustine: "O venerable
dignity of the priest, in whose hands, as in the womb of the Virgin,
the Son of God is incarnate every day!"

Enter. On the wall to your left, just inside the outer door you see
this inscription:

  "Ilic Verbum caro factam est, et habitavit in nobis."   [Footnote 69]

  [Footnote 69: "Here the Word was made flesh,
  and dwelt amongst us."]

On the wall directly opposite, this:

  Sta venerabundus,
  Qui allunde ut stares veneris,
  Lauretanam Deiparae domum admiraturus.
  Angusta tota est,
  Toto tamen Christiano orbe angusto,
  FACTUS EST HOMO.
  Abbreviatum igitur aeterni patris verbum
  Hocce in angulo cum angelis adora;
  Silet hic et loquaci silentio:
  Beatae quippe virginis matris sinus.
  Cathedra docentis est.
  Audi verbum absconditum, et quid sibi velit attende.
  Venerare domum filii hominis,
  Scholam Christi,
  Cunabula Verbi.   [Footnote 70]

  [Footnote 70: "Stand in awe, ye who have come hither from afar to
  admire the Lorettan house of the Mother of God. The whole is but
  narrow and strait: however, the whole Christian world is but narrow
  in which the God made man suffered straitness. Wherefore, adore with
  the angels the straitened word of the Eternal Father. He is silent
  here, but with an eloquent silence. For the bosom of the Blessed
  Virgin Mother is the seat of Wisdom. Hear the Hidden Word, and
  listen attentively to what he wills of thee. Venerate the house of
  the Son of Man, the school of Christ, the cradle of the Word."]

The door on the right leads into the sacristy, where the priest puts
on his vestments. On the panel of this door you read:

  "Sanctificamini omnes ministri altaris.
  Munda sint omnia."   [Footnote 71]

  [Footnote 71: "Be ye holy, all ye ministers of the altar. Let all
  things be pure and clean."]

On the wall over the door is this inscription around a heart:

  "Quid volo nisi ut ardeat?--S. Luc. xii 49."   [Footnote 72]

  [Footnote 72: "What will I but that it burn?"]

Opposite the sacristy door is the door of the chapel, but I wish you
to read the other inscriptions on these walls before you enter there.
There are two more in this entry-way:

  "Ilic Maria, Patris Sponsa, de Spiritu Sancto
  concepit."    [Footnote 73]

  [Footnote 73: "Here Mary, the spouse of the Father, conceived of the
  Holy Ghost." ]

{441}

  "Sile;
  Huc enim, dum omnia
  silerent,
  Omnipotens sermo
  de regalibus
  sedibus advenit;
  Vel aeternum aeterni
  Patris Verbum
  Siluit;
  Vel otioso Deum adorat silentio."   [Footnote 74]

  [Footnote 74: "Keep silence: for hither, while all things were in
  silence, the Almighty Word leapt down from heaven from his royal
  throne. Here the Eternal Word of the Eternal Father became silent,
  and adores God in tranquil silence."]

In an adjoining room are several others, among which I think the
following are worthy of your notice:

  "Signum magnum apparuit in terra.
  Amabile commercium, admirabile mysterium,
  JESUS VIVENS IN MARIA.
  VENITE, VIDETE, ADORATE.
  VENITE
  Ad templum Domini, ad incarnationis verbi
  cubiculum,
  Ad sanctuarium ad quo habitat Dominus.
  Et de quo, ut sponsus, procedit de thalamo suo.
  VIDETE
  Ancillam, Patris sponsam, Virginem Dei matrem,
  Adae fillam, Spiritus Sancti sacellum,
  Mariam totius Trinitatis domiciliam,
  Angelo nuntiante effectam.
  ADORATE
  Jesum habitantem in Matre,
  Ut imperatorem in regno, ut pontificem in templo,
  Ut sponsum in thalamo.
  Ilic requies, hic gloria, hic summa laus conditoris:
  Hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam."   [Footnote 75]

  [Footnote 75: "A great sign appeared on the earth, a lovely union, a
  wondrous mystery, Jesus living in Mary. Come, see, adore. Come to
  the temple of the Lord, to the cradle of the incarnate Word, to the
  sanctuary in which the Lord dwelleth. From which he goeth forth as a
  spouse from his bridal chamber. See, by the annunciation of the
  angel, a handmaiden made spouse of the Father, a virgin the Mother
  of God, a daughter of Adam the shrine of the Holy Ghost, Mary, the
  resting-place of the whole Trinity. Adore Jesus dwelling in his
  mother, as an emperor on his throne, as a priest in the temple, as a
  spouse in his chamber. Here is the rest, here the glory, here the
  supreme praise of the Creator. Here will I dwell, because I have
  chosen her."]

  "Omnes
  Famelici, accedite
  ad escas:
  Domus haec abundat
  Punibus."    [Footnote 76]

  [Footnote 76: "O all ye of the family of God, draw near to the
  banquet. This house is full of bread."]


  "Hic
  Sapientia
  Miscuit Vinum,
  Posuit mensam,
  Paravit omnia.
  Qui bibunt,
  Non sitlent amplius;
  Qui edunt,
  Nunquam esurient;
  Qui epulantur,
  Vivent in aeternum.
  Bibite ergo et inebriamini,
  Comedite et saturabimini;
  Effundite cum gaudio animas vestras
  In voce confessionis et epulationis
  Sonus est epulantis."     [Footnote 77]

  [Footnote 77: "Here the divine wisdom mingleth her wine, spreadeth
  her table, and maketh all things ready. They who drink shall not
  thirst any more. They who eat shall never hunger. They who feast
  shall live for ever. Drink, therefore, and be inebriated. Eat and be
  filled. Pour forth your souls with joy in the songs of thanksgiving
  and rejoicing. There is a sound as of one feasting."]


  "Omnes
  Sitentes, venite
  ad aquas;
  Locus iste scaturit
  Fontibus."   [Footnote 78]

  [Footnote 78: "All ye who thirst, come ye to the waters. This place
  gushes with fountains."]


  "Hic
  Fons fontium,
  Et acervus tritici,
  CHRISTUS,
  Unde sumunt angeli,
  Replentur sancti.
  Satiantur universi.
  Ilic
  Ager fertilis
  Et congregatio aquarum,
  MARIA,
  Unde, velut de quodam
  Divinitatis oceano.
  Omnium emanant
  Flumina gratiarum."   [Footnote 79]

  [Footnote 79: "Here is the fount of fountains, and heap of wheat,
  Christ; of which the angels partake, the saints are replenished, and
  the whole universe is satiated. Here is the fruitful field and
  meeting of the waters, Mary; whence, as from a kind of ocean of
  divinity, flow out the streams of all graces." ]


  "Si
  Tu es Christri bonus odor,
  Accede;
  Caminus Mariae
  Altare thymiamatum est,
  Caminus charitatis,
  Cujus ostium
  Hostes non excipit,
  Sed hostias amoris.
  Huc vota, huc corda, viatores.
  Huc pectora."   [Footnote 80]

  [Footnote 80: "If thou art the good odor of Christ, draw near. This
  chamber of Mary is the altar of incense, the home of charity, whose
  door receiveth not enemies, but the victims of love. Hither, ye
  wayfarers, bring your vows, your hearts, and your affections."]

Before you look at the real chapel for which this building was
erected, just step out of that door opposite to the one by which you
entered. A little cemetery. Here repose, in simple, humble graves, the
bodies of the deceased superiors and directors of the congregation of
St. Sulpice, in whom and whose seminary you have shown so much
interest during this visit under the guidance of your humble servant.
Here, in this little cemetery, beneath the shadow of the sacred chapel
they have loved so well, in the very home, as it were, where so many
holy souls have lived, and learned the lessons of perfection, and
where, God grant, many more such may yet live and learn the same, they
have laid themselves down to rest from their {442} labors, peacefully
resigning themselves to the common fate; yet privileged in this, that
their dust mingles with earth hallowed by the footsteps of saints. I
should like to write an inscription for the door of that cemetery. It
is this, "Et mors, et vita vestra absconditae sunt cum Christo in
Deo," for never in the history of Christianity, do I think, have men
realized like them, in their lives and in their death, so fully those
words of St. Paul.

Return now to the entry and pass within those gilded doors. This is
the chapel. The walls are frescoed, as you see, and in imitation of
the walls, now defaced, of the original chapel at Loretto. There is a
pretty marble altar and tabernacle where reposes the Holy of Holies;
and above the altar is a grating filling up the entire width of the
chapel, on which are attached a large number of silver and gilt
hearts, little remembrances left by the departing seminarians at their
beloved shrine of Jesus and Mary. Behind the grate you can discern the
statue made many hundred years ago, and sent to this chapel as a gift
from the Holy House at Loretto in 1855. I know that your American
taste will not be gratified by the appearance of either the statue or
its decorations; but--America is not all the world. Keep that in mind,
and it may save you a good deal of interior discomfort, whether you
journey in other lands, or never stir from home.

Now I leave you, for I know you are tired of sight-seeing and want a
moment of' repose--and, may I not also add, a little time to pray
here? The seminarians are coming in to make their daily visit, for it
is a quarter to five o'clock. Oh! sweetest moments of the Issian's
day! Here he comes and kneels at the feet of Jesus and Mary, and
drinks in those silent lessons which reveal truths to the heart that
no man can teach. Here the soul is ravished away for a while from
earth and all its carking cares, anxieties, temptations, and
afflictions, and reposes peacefully in the loving embrace of its God.
"Here," indeed, "is the home of charity, whose door receiveth not
enemies, but the victims of love. Hither you may bring your vows, your
hearts, and your affections." Remain you, then, and pray awhile with
them; for of a truth you are with the congregation of the just, and
not far off from heaven.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

A MAY BREEZE.


  As fragrant blooms by blushing orchard shed,
    When spring's advancing season ripens fast,
  Oh! such the blossoms which the heart has fed
    With all the dewy sweetness of the past.

  But like those winds whose stormy passage sweeps
    The wailing trees, yet leaves fair fruit behind,
  Life's changing scenes, which man still hourly weeps.
    Pledge fruit, than blooms more constant and more kind.

------

{443}


From the Lamp.


UNCONVICTED; OR, OLD THORNELEY'S HEIRS.


CHAPTER II.

WHICH IS ELUCIDATORY AND RETROSPECTIVE.

Before resuming the thread of my narrative I must needs go back a
little, and see in what relation the different people who are to play
the principal parts in this true history stand to one another.

I have said that Hugh Atherton and I had been friends from the time we
were boys at school, he being some five years my junior. He and Lister
Wilmot were nephews, on their mother's side, of old Gilbert Thorneley,
and, as every one supposed, his nearest relatives. They were both
orphans; both brought up and educated by their uncle, and both were
given to understand that they would equally inherit his immense
fortune at his death. But Thorneley had made his money by the sweat of
his brow,--beginning by sweeping his master's office, and ending by
being the possessor of some million of money,--and he did not choose,
as he said, to leave it to two idle dogs. He had worked, and so should
they: they might choose their own profession or business, and he would
do all that was requisite to forward them in life; but work in one way
or another they should. Hugh, guided very much by my advice, went to
college, and then read for the bar. His career at Oxford had not been
a brilliant one, but he had passed his "great go" very creditably, and
taken his bachelor's degree with fair honor to himself. Then he came
to London, took chambers in the Temple, and set himself down to read
with steady earnestness of purpose; after a while he was called to the
bar and his first brief was held for a client of mine. It was a
righteous cause, and he gained it by his straightforward grappling
with the evidence, his simple yet manly eloquence. At the time when
the events happened which are now recorded, and cast one great lasting
shadow over his life and mine, he was in very fair practice. But one
thing I ever noticed about him, and it was that he was almost
invariably retained for the defense. I don't think he could have
conducted a case for prosecution; I don't think he could have stood up
and pleaded for the conviction of any poor wretched miserable criminal
shivering at the bar, brought thither by what crushing amount of
degradation, want, or luring temptation to sin God only knew,--God
only, in His infinite mercy, would remember. Do you recollect that
portrait in one of Mr. Dickens's works of the barrister, who was
always retained at the Old Bailey by great criminals, and who never
refused to defend them, guilty or not guilty--that man, with the
unpoetical name of Jaggers, who used to wash his hands after coming
from the court or dismissing a client? Well, that man always reminded
me of Hugh Atherton; and when I read the book, I did homage to my
friend in his person. You don't see at first what Mr. Dickens is
driving at, nor the whole of his conception in the character of
Jaggers; but after a while it bursts upon you what a raft he must have
been for the poor drowning wretches going to their trial to catch at.

With a fund of good common-sense, a dear head, and sound judgment,
Atherton possessed what gave such a charm to him and won so many
hearts,--the boyish lightheartedness which clung to him; with his
genial manner, his kindly words and deeds. He had his faults--he was
passionate and hot-headed, obstinate in his likes and dislikes; but he
{444} had what few young men of his age could boast, a freedom from
vice, a guilelessness of soul, which in the midst of all the
corruption, the temptations, and snares of London life, carried him
through unscathed. I never knew but one other who was like him in that
respect,--though indeed I have heard that such have been, but are now
gone to their grave,--who, with the brave undaunted heart of a
thoroughly English youth, carried within him the mark of innocence,
and wore it stamped upon his open brow. He is thousands of miles away
now, and these lines may never reach him; but those who love him and
long for his return will recognize the son and brother whose worth,
perchance, we never fully knew until the parting came.

Of Lister Wilmot I had seen comparatively but very little. He was a
weak puny lad, unfit for roughing it in a public school, and had
therefore received his education from private tutors and governors.
Through his uncle's interest he obtained a civil appointment in one of
the government-offices, and though fond of dress and amusements, I
never heard much harm of him, beyond an inclination to extravagance,
which I imagined old Thorneley knew well how to keep in check. Yet, I
don't know how it was, I never liked Wilmot. Hugh was fond of him, and
very anxious that he and I should be friends; certainly it was not
Wilmot's fault that a greater amount of cordiality did not exist
between us. He was very agreeable, very civil, very amiable, very
attentive to me; but I could not bear him. I often took myself
severely to task for this unreasonable antipathy; and I decided it
could only be because he was such a contrast to Hugh in everything
that I did not take to him. Not that I pitched their relative
goodness, and drew conclusions against him; as I said before, I knew
no harm of him, but simply I did not like him. A story went about that
his mother (Thorneley's sister) had made a very unhappy marriage, and
died soon after her son's birth. What had become of his father no one
ever seemed to know; and if Wilmot did, he never named him.

About a year before the story opens Hugh Atherton was engaged to be
married. Let me relate all this very clearly, very calmly; it is
needful I should; and while I write, let me think only, as before
heaven I have ever tried to think, of the interests of two beings who
always were and always will be dearest to me on earth.

A client of mine left me at his death the joint guardianship with his
wife of an only daughter. She was heiress to a considerable fortune;
blest with a mother who was none of the wisest of guides for a young
girl who was beautiful, high-spirited, and gifted with no ordinary
intellect. I fulfilled my dead friend's trust with all the care,
vigilance, and tenderness in my power. I watched Ada Leslie grow up
into girlhood, and from girlhood into womanhood,--for I was a young
man in years when that charge was committed to me, though old in
character, and old and grim in looks,--I saw her beauty of face and
form unfold, her winning gracefulness become more graceful and more
winsome; I marked the powers of her mind and intellect develop, and
all the noble qualities of her heart reveal themselves in a thousand
ways. I watched her with the solicitude of a father, with the
affection of a brother; I never thought of myself in any other light
with regard to her; but her confidence in me became very precious, her
companionship very sweet.

One day I took Hugh Atherton with me to Mrs. Leslie's, and in that
first visit I foresaw how all would end; it was but the precursor of
many more visits, and after a while they both told me how things stood
between them. There was no difficulty. Money, in the mother's eye, was
all that was needed to make a good match, and Hugh was well enough off
now, and likely to be a rich man in the future; money was all that
Gilbert Thorneley required for his nephew's future bride, and Ada
Leslie's fortune was ample, even to his sordid mind. I knew _she_
could have {445} no worthier man for husband than Hugh Atherton. I
knew--ah, who should know better?--that _he_ could find no woman
worthier of his tenderest love and honor than my ward; and so I bade
God to bless them and sanctify their union. If for a while my life was
somewhat more lonely than it had seemed before; if a few years were
added to thought and feeling, and I began then more solemnly to
realize what a gray old bachelor I should appear to Hugh's little
children when they climbed about my knee,--well, it was but a
foolishness that was quickly buried down deep in my heart and would
never more rise to the surface. And Hugh's full tide of happiness and
_her_ deep but tender joy soon kindled bright again in the chambers of
my soul a light that for a time had been very dim; and I learnt the
best lesson life can teach us, and which in more ways than one is
intimated to us by the words, "It is more blessed to give than to
receive." They would have been married before this, but Ada's father
bad specified his wish that she should not marry until she was
twenty-one, unless her guardians judged it otherwise expedient, and
she was desirous of abiding by that decision. She would be of age the
third of this coming December, and after Christmas the wedding was to
take place.

I noticed there was something peculiar in their manner of mentioning
to me the day they had fixed on for their marriage. It was the day
before I started on this last trip to my favorite Swiss mountains; we
had all gone down to Kew by water, and we were strolling about the
gardens enjoying the cool of the evening air after a day of unusual
sultriness. Mrs. Leslie, Wilmot, and I, were walking together, whilst
the other two went away by themselves. We had not spoken very much--at
least I had not, for many thoughts were busy within me. Presently Ada
came back alone, and putting her arm in mine she drew me aside into a
little shady walk where the trees met overhead and the air was laden
with the perfume of the lime-blossom. In the last summer of my life,
at eventide I shall see that narrow pathway with its leafy covering,
and smell those fragrant trees; I shall hear the nightingale's note as
it sang to me (so I thought) the refrain of a simple ballad I had
often heard my mother sing in early childhood.

  "Loyal je serai durant la vie."

"Dear friend," said Ada, looking up into my face with her soft, kind,
brown eyes, so truthful and sincere, "Hugh and I have been speaking of
the future;" and the bright warm color came into her cheek, and the
long golden lashes fell as she spoke.

"Yes, Ada, that is right. What says Hugh?"

"He says we had better settle when it is to be. You know I am of age
in December, and he thinks of after Christmas; and do you know he
wants it to be on the day but one after the Epiphany? because he
says--that funny old Hugh!--that it is _your_ birthday; or if it
isn't, that it ought to be; and insists on it. However, he has set his
mind on it. He wanted to come and ask you, for I said I would not have
it fixed until you had been asked. And then I thought I would rather
come myself."

The kind eyes were looking at me again, just a little anxiously, I
thought. For a moment there seemed to be a choking sensation in my
throat. I turned my head away, and the evening bird sang out once
more, clear and silvery in the calm still air,

  "Loyal je serai durant la vie."

"Listen, Ada; do you hear what the nightingale is singing? She is
bidding me say 'God bless you both!' Let it be when Hugh thinks best.
Go and tell him so."

She took my hand and pressed it to her lips; there was a warm tear on
it when she let it go. I turned aside and walked away for a little
while by myself. Then I went back to them, and we left the gardens.

{446}

Hugh and I walked home together that night; and as we parted at his
door he told me all was settled between him and Ada, very gently, very
softly, as if he were breaking some news to me. There was no need. I
bade him God speed with my cheeriest voice, and told him the heartfelt
truth--that to no other man would I have trusted her with such
perfect trust.

I had happy letters from them both whilst I was abroad. Hugh had taken
a very pretty house some ten miles from town; workmen were busily
engaged in alterations, fittings-up, and decorations, whilst he and
Ada were full of the furniture and all those numerous etceteras which
help to make the home such a one as should be prepared to receive a
fair young bride. Mr. Thorneley had behaved very liberally to his
nephew, and given him _carte blanche_ in the matter of the
expenditure; if his nature were capable of loving any human being, I
think he was fond of Hugh Atherton, and I am quite sure that Hugh, in
his generous oversight of all that must have jarred upon and shocked
his mind, was sincerely and gratefully attached to his uncle, who, he
often said to me, had acted a father's part by him. Thus, amidst much
sunshine and little shade, all was hastening on toward the
consummation of their union, and as the new year tided round it was to
find them man and wife.

And now I must relate a circumstance which happened about a fortnight
before I started for the Continent. I had been dining at the house of
my married sister, who lived at Highgate. She was one of those ladies
who are very fond of collecting about them the heterogeneous society
of all the nondescripts, hangers-on, and adventurers who are only too
willing to frequent the houses of those gifted with a taste for such
companionship. With good-nature verging, I often told her, on absolute
idiotcy, she could not be made to see how eccentricity of manner,
person, or conversation was often but the veil thrown over a character
too stained or doubtful to be revealed in its proper light. It is true
that in many cases her hospitality was rewarded; equally true that in
the majority it was abused; and my brother-in-law, good man, suffered
severely for it in the matter of his pocket.

To return: amongst the various guests I met at dinner that evening was
one man who strangely riveted my attention, aided by the feeling so
well known to most people, that I had somewhere or other seen him
before, but in other guise, and when a much younger man. His manner
was quiet and reserved, but scarcely gentlemanlike; and I noticed that
in many of the little _convenances_ of society he was quite at a loss.
I judged him to be about fifty or fifty-five years of age, his hair
was grey, and he wore a thick beard and moustache; at first I took him
for a foreigner until I heard him speak, and then I perceived the
broad Irish accent betraying his nationality in a most unmistakable
manner.

"Who's your Irish friend, Elinor?" I asked of my sister when I got her
quietly in the drawing-room after dinner.

"Which one do you mean, John? There's the O'Callaghan of Callaghan,
who sat by me at dinner; and there's Mr. Burke, who writes those
spirited patriotic articles in the _Emerald-Green Gazette;_ and
there's Phelim O'Mara, the author of _Gems_---"

"I know them all, my dear."

"Then who can you mean, for there isn't another Irishman here? These
three wouldn't have been asked together--for they are all of different
politics, and I have been on thorns all the evening lest they should
get into a discussion--but I couldn't well avoid it; for you know--"

Again I was obliged to use a brother's delightful privilege and be
rude, for Elinor, though an excellent woman and a pattern wife, was
discursive in conversation, and I saw her husband trying to catch her
eye for some purpose; so I said:

{447}

"Yes, I know all about it--there's Henry looking for you. The man I
mean sat opposite to me; grey beard--there he is, standing by
Montague."

"Oh! _he?_ he is my last treasure-trove: he's not Irish, my dear; he's
half French and half English. An author, but very rich; has travelled
all over the world. Here," beckoning to him, "Mr. de Vos, allow me to
introduce you to my brother, Mr. Kavanagh."

O Elinor, you good blind soul, your Frenchman was no more French and
no more English than the man in the moon, though certainly I am not
acquainted with the nationality of that gentleman. I saw it in two
minutes. We talked commonplaces for a little, till some one came up
and asked me if it were true that Atherton was engaged to my ward,
Miss Leslie. I answered in the affirmative.

"You know Mr. Atherton very well then, I conclude," said De Vos.

"I have known him from a boy; no one knows him better than I."

"How very interesting!" he said; and I could not make out whether his
tone was earnest or satirical, for his face betrayed nothing. "I have
heard of Mr. Atherton from a friend of mine in Paris."

"Ah! that little enthusiastic Gireaud, I dare say," replied I; for I
knew all Hugh's friends, and he was the only one I could think of as
being in Paris.

"Yes, from Gireaud;" and he was turning away.

"How is he?" I asked, meaning Gireaud; "have you seen him lately?"

"No, not lately--that is, three or four months back."

This was strange; it was only a month since the Frenchman had left
England, only three months since we had first made his acquaintance,
and he had been in England all the time. I felt suspicious; I often
did towards my sister's friends, by reason of divers small sums
borrowed in past times by them from me, and kept _in memoriam_ I
suppose. I thought I would pursue the inquiry.

"Did you know M. Gireaud when he was in England?"

"No abroad--in Paris;" and he changed color and shifted uneasily on
his feet.

"Did he succeed in tracing out the evidence in that celebrated cause
he was conducting?" I continued pertinaciously.

"I really don't know; excuse me--how very warm this room is! I will
go into the balcony and see if it is possible to get a little air;"
and he turned on his heel and left me.

"So so," thought I, "you wanted to fasten yourself upon me with the
dodge of knowing my friends, did you? It won't do, my fine fellow;"
and I determined to give my brother-in-law a hint that his wife's
"last treasure-trove" would need watching. But I found no opportunity;
and when I inquired for Mr. de Vos later in the evening, I heard he
had gone away, feeling very unwell. Said I to myself, "He'll be worse
when he meets me again." I little recked the words then, or what they
might import.

It was a beautiful August night when our party broke up; and resisting
my sister's wish that I should sleep there, I determined to enjoy a
moonlight walk home, smoke a cigar, and think over a difficult case I
had just then in hand. My nearest way into town from Elinor's house
was down Swain's Lane and round by the cemetery; it was a lonely,
ghostly kind of walk, not tempting on a dark winter's night; but with
a brilliant harvest-moon overhead, a stout stick, and myself standing
six feet without shoes, I feared neither man nor ghost. The tombstones
looked white and ghastly enough in the bright moonlight, and the trees
cast their heavy shadows across my path, whilst their tops were
stirred by a gentle soughing breeze. I had passed the cemetery, and
was rapidly nearing the end of the lane, which turns into the
high-road by the Duke of St. Alban's public-house, of omnibus
notoriety, when I fancied I heard the sound of voices pitched high, as
if {448} in some angry dispute. I took out my watch; it was just upon
twelve o'clock. Drunken revellers, I thought, turned out of the inn.
Swain's Lane winds about until you are close upon the road, and then
there is a straight piece with fields upon either side. I looked ahead
as I came to this latter bit, but there was no one to be seen,
although the voices sounded closer and closer. I was walking on the
turf beside the road, so that my footsteps falling upon the soft grass
were inaudible. I passed a gate leading into a field, and then I
became aware that the voices were close to me on the other side of the
hedge. Not caring to be seen lest I should get drawn into some drunken
row, I stooped my head and shoulders, inconveniently high just then,
and was in the act of passing swiftly on when a name arrested me. "I
tell you Hugh Atherton never _shall_ marry that girl!"

"And I tell you he _will_! You let every chance slip by you, you poor
spiritless fool. He'll marry her, and come in for the best share, if
not the whole of Gil Thorneley's money."

There was no mistaking the brogue of my Irish Anglo-French
acquaintance of this evening--my sister's "last treasure-trove, the
talented author, the rich man." But the other voice, whose was it? It
sounded strange at first; then light began to dawn upon me. I knew
it--yes, surely I knew it. Ha, by Jove! Lister Wilmot!--it must be
Lister Wilmot's.

They were speaking again, quite unconscious of their auditor on the
other side of the hedge.

"You are the biggest fool, and a scoundrel too, coming here, dogging
my footsteps, and following me about just to bring ruin upon me with
your confounded interference; going _there_ too, and meeting the very
man you ought to avoid, that lawyer fellow, Kavanagh; why, he'll scent
you out in less than no time." (Much obliged to you, Mr. Wilmot,
thought I, for your involuntary tribute to my shrewdness: it has been
deserved this time at any rate.) "You must leave London at
once--to-morrow, do you hear?--or I'll whisper a certain affair
about, which may make this quarter of the world unpleasant to you."

"I'll not stir without that fifty pounds. You blow upon me, and I'll
blow upon you in a quarter you wouldn't care to have those small bits
of paper shown that I've got in my pocket-book here."

The remark seemed to have been untimely.

"Scoundrel!" shouted the other voice I believed to be Wilmot's, and I
heard them close together and struggle.

At the same moment I leaped the gate, determined to make sure of their
identity; but with singular ill-luck I caught my foot against the
topmost bar, and fell with no small force my whole length on the other
side. The noise and sight of me disturbed the combatants, and before I
could rise or recover myself, they had separated, and fled in opposite
directions across the field. Pursuit was a vain thought. I had twisted
my ankle in the fall, and for a few moments the pain was unbearable;
when I could put my foot to the ground both fugitives were out of
sight. There was nothing left for me but to hobble back, gain the
road, and seize upon the first empty cab returning to London to convey
me to my chambers.

I mentioned the adventure to Atherton on the following morning, and my
conviction that Lister Wilmot was one of the two men.

"It is impossible," replied Hugh; "Lister was with me last evening
till eleven o'clock, and then he went home to bed."

"Did you see him home?" I asked.

"Yes, and went in with him; saw him undressed, and ready to get into
bed. He was not well, poor fellow. One of his bad colds seemed to be
threatening him, and he was very out of spirits. I am afraid he's
exceeding his allowance, and getting into debt. He asked me to lend,
him twenty pounds for a month."

{449}

"Which of course you didn't do?"

"Which of course I did, and told him he was heartily welcome to it;
but I wished he'd draw in his expenses, for I was certain if Uncle
Gilbert heard of his being in difficulty, there would be no end to
pay. I'll get him to make a clean breast of it some day soon to me,
and see what I can do to help him and set him right."

So like Hugh, with his generous impulses ever ready to do a kindness.

"Well, but it is very odd. I could have sworn it was Lister in the
field; as for the other fellow, why there is not the smallest shadow
of a doubt about him. If I hadn't recognized his brogue, why, the
words of his companion pointed him out as the De Vos of the
dinner-party. Do you know such a man, Hugh?" and I gave a graphic
description of him.

Hugh shook his head.

"Don't know such a bird as that, Jack. Can't think who it can be, nor
what they both meant. The 'girl,' indeed! Did they mean Ada, forsooth?
I'd like to punch their skulls for daring to name her. I say, let's go
to Lister's at once and ask him if he knows a man answering to the
name De Vos."

We drove to Wilmot's lodgings in the Albany--he affected
aristocratic-bachelor neighborhoods--and found him over a late
breakfast, looking very pale and haggard. Hugh attacked him in his
straightforward blunt manner.

"What did you go up to Highgate for, last night. Lister, when I
thought you were going to bed?"

Wilmot's fork fell on the floor and he stooped to pick it up before
answering. Then he looked up with an air of the greatest astonishment.

"Go up to Highgate last night! I! Are you mad, Hugh?"

"I heard your voice last night in a field close by the Highgate Road,
or I never was more mistaken in my life," I said.

He turned his face to me: there was the most unaffected surprise and
bewilderment written on it as he stared at me.

"Are you out of your senses too?" he asked at last with a loud laugh.
"Why, Hugh saw me into bed almost. You must have been wandering, or
Mr. Craven's" (my brother-in-law) "wines were too potent for your
sober brain."

I was completely at a nonplus. "Do you know that Mr. de Vos is in
England?" I said, resolved to try another "dodge."

"Who is Mr. de Vos?" was the answer, given in the most unconcerned
tone.

Hugh broke in: "Tell him all about it, John."

I did so, relating word for word what I had heard, with my eye fixed
upon his face. He never flinched once, and there was not the smallest
embarrassment in his look or manner.

"You were of course entirely mistaken," he said; "I never left my room
last night after Hugh went away. Of this Mr. de Vos I know
nothing--not even by name."

There was nothing for it but to be satisfied, and yet somehow I was
not. I suppose my old dislike of Wilmot got the better of me and made
me distrustful. Then such dear--such precious interests had been
called in question--were perhaps in danger; and I could not rid myself
of the great anxiety which oppressed me.

The next move was after De Vos. He had utterly and totally disappeared
by the time I had obtained his address from my sister and hunted out
the wretched doubtful sort of lodgings he had inhabited near Leicester
Square. So the affair died a natural death, and I left England for the
Continent. Could I but have foreseen what my return would bring forth!


{450}

CHAPTER III.

THE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING.

It was all true--dreadfully, awfully true--and no hideous dream.
Gilbert Thorneley was dead--poisoned, murdered; and Hugh Atherton was
in the hands of justice, suspected, if not actually accused, of the
murder. When I came back, sick and giddy, to consciousness, there was
old Hardy bending over me with a face blanched almost as white as my
own must have been, and Jones the detective standing by, the deepest
concern written on his countenance. Do you know what it is, that
"coming to," as women express it, after a sudden mental blow has
prostrated you and hurled you into the dark oblivion of insensibility?
I daresay you do. You know what the return to life is; what the
realization of the stunning evil which has befallen you. But God help
you if you remember that your last words when conscious criminated the
friend you would willingly die to save. God help you if you know you
must be forced into admitting what you had rather cut out your tongue
than utter, and which in your inadvertence or brainless stupidity you
let pass your lips. I say again, heaven help you, for it is one of the
bitterest moments of your life.

As the physical indisposition wore off, and the whole situation of
affairs became clearer to my scattered senses, the remembrance of what
I had done was maddening.

"Oh, blind fool," I cried, "not to see, not to know what I was doing!
Jones and Hardy, I call you both to witness most solemnly that I
believe as firmly, as entirely in Mr. Atherton's innocence as I do in
an eternal life to come. I charge you both, that, whatever testimony
you may be forced to give, whatever miserable words have been wrung
from me--I charge you both, by all you hold most sacred, to give
evidence likewise that I believe him innocent."

"We will, sir," said the two men gravely.

Then a desperate idea seized me, and I motioned Hardy to leave the
room.

"Jones," I said, when the clerk was gone, "you are a poor man, I know,
and have many children to provide for. Get me off attending the
inquest, and I will write you a cheque on the spot for any sum in
reason you like to name."

"Bless your heart, sir, it an't in my power. Inspector Jackson has
been in Wimpole street investigating it all; and I know your name's
booked as one of the principal witnesses. You'll have your summons
this evening for to-morrow, as safe as I'm here."

"Where is Mr. Atherton?" I asked.

"Inspector Jackson took him to Marylebone street, sir. He'll go before
the magistrate at two o'clock. They won't get his committal, though, I
expect until after the inquest; there is not sufficient evidence; but
we're getting it as fast as we can."

"Yes," I said in the bitterness of my heart; "and if I had known your
errand _here_, I'd have flung you down the stairs before you should
have had access to my rooms."

"You can't be sorrier than I am, Mr. Kavanagh. I believe, like you,
that he's an innocent man: but everything looks against him at
present. The housekeeper's evidence is enough to hang him."

"The housekeeper! What, Mrs. Haag?"

"Yes, sir, that's her name, I believe. She's only half English, or
married a foreigner, or something of the sort. But I think she must be
foreign, for she has a mighty broad accent. Yes, indeed, sir; and if I
may make bold to say it,--I don't know what your friendship for Mr.
Atherton may lead you to do,--but it's of no use your not saying where
you saw him last night, for _she_ saw him go in and come out of _that
shop_, and she heard him address you, sir, by name."

A light flashed across me. That was _the woman_ I had met in Vere
Street. I didn't know the housekeeper by sight, but I had often heard
both Atherton and Wilmot speak of her. Wilmot!--another light.

{451}

"Did you know that Mr. Thorneley's other nephew was with him last
night? He met Mr. Atherton in Wimpole Street."

"Yes, sir, and left nearly an hour before Mr. Atherton went away."

"Still, why is he not suspected as much as the other?"

"_He_ had not been traced in and out of a chemist's shop; _he_ had no
dispute with his uncle; _he_ was not heard to make use of _threatening
words_. I can't tell you more, sir; and I must be going. I have done
what need be done here. Mr. Kavanagh, believe me I am acting only in
my official capacity; and I'd rather, sir, have been at the bottom of
the sea than engaged in this affair. But I mustn't forget the message,
sir."

"What message?"

"From Mr. Atherton. He wanted to write or to send for you to come; but
they wouldn't let him. You see, sir, we know you are an important
witness against him, and Jackson--he's a sharp one--wouldn't have him
communicating with you. Poor gentleman! he was stunned-like at first
when he was told. Then when he saw me, 'Jones,' said he, 'you go to
Mr. Kavanagh; tell him what has happened. Tell him I'm an innocent
man, so help me God! I wouldn't have hurt a gray hair of the old man's
head. But I was angry with him, I confess.' Then we warned him not to
say anything which might criminate himself, so he only bent his head
reverently, and said again, 'My God, Thou knowest I am innocent.' Then
he turned to me suddenly and caught my arm. 'Tell Mr. Kavanagh to go
at once to Mrs. Leslie's, and see that the news doesn't come upon them
too suddenly. Tell him I _trust to him_.' Those were his words, sir,
two or three times,--'Tell him I trust to him.'"

O Hugh! my poor Hugh; you might trust me then; you might have trusted
me always. But you didn't. A world of damning doubt and evidence rose
up between us, and it seemed to point at me as your worst enemy, and
never more again would you place confidence in me; never more would
the perfect trust of friendship draw us together, and make our
interests one.

Ay, and that too had been one of the despairing thoughts which rushed
across my mind as the truth of what had happened forced itself upon
me. Ada! What if such news were carried suddenly, inconsiderately to
her ears? What if such an awful, unlooked-for blow fell, crushing the
bright hopes and darkening the radiant happiness of her young life? I
tell all this in a bewildered way now; I was far more bewildered then.
I was mad. There was the remembrance of the last evening,--my
interview with Thorneley, the strange secret still ringing in my ears,
the chance meeting with Hugh, and what was to come of it; and the
present tidings,--the old man dead, Hugh arrested and accused of
murdering him; and I in my blindness had helped to corroborate the
worst testimony against him. All this was rushing through my brain;
and then, above all, the thought of Ada Leslie--and the last thought
roused me to action.

"Go back, Jones, to Mr. Atherton; tell him I am going off immediately
to Mrs. Leslie's, and that he may trust to me in _that_. And stay, has
he got legal assistance?"

"No, sir; I fancy he thought you'd see to all that. He didn't seem to
think how it might be with your having to give evidence."

"You'd better go to Smith and Walker's, and see one of the partners.
They must watch proceedings for him to-day."

"They can't, sir; they are to watch on the part of the Crown."

"On the part of the Crown!--whose management is that?"

"I believe they offered and wished it. They feel bound to discover the
murderer of their late client; they couldn't act _for_ the man accused
of murdering him."

"True--too true. I'll send Hardy to Mr. Merrivale; he is a great
friend {452} of his--I can trust him. Tell Mr. Atherton what I say,
and what has been done."

"Very good, sir;" and Jones withdrew.

It took me less than an hour to reach Hyde-Park Gardens, where Mrs.
Leslie and my ward dwelt; and on the road I resolved as well as I
could how to break the news. Pray Heaven only to give her strength to
bear it! I was shown into the dining-room, for I had asked to see Miss
Leslie alone. There were the sounds of music up-stairs, and I heard
Ada's clear thrilling voice singing one of the beautiful German songs
I knew, and that _he_ loved so well. Presently her light step was on
the threshold, and she burst gaily into the room.

"Oh, Hugh, how late you are!" and then she stopped suddenly, seeing it
was I--only I. But she came forward in a moment with a kind eager
welcome, a welcome back to England, laughing and blushing at her
mistake. "I heard the street-door open, and ran down at once; for Hugh
said he would come early to take me out this morning, and I thought it
was he. Oh, but I am so glad to see you, dear Mr. Kavanagh. But how
dreadfully ill you are looking--what is the matter?"

Perhaps she saw my own misery, and the unutterable pity and tenderness
for her which filled my heart, written in my face; but a change passed
over her countenance.

"What is the matter?" she repeated in a breathless sort of manner.

"Hugh sends his love," I said; hardly knowing, indeed, what words were
passing my lips, or that I was really "breaking it" to her;--"his dear
love; he is quite well, but something prevents him from coming to you
to-day."

"To-day!" She repeated the same word after me, still in a breathless
way; and her large eyes were fixed on me as in mute agonized appeal
against what was coming.

"Something very important--very painful--has happened to detain him.
Mr. Thorneley died very suddenly last night."

I stopped, and turned away. Heaven help me! I could not go on, with
those eyes upon me. There was one deep-drawn sigh of relief.

"Is that _all!_"

Was it not better to tell the truth to her at once? After all, he was
innocent. I acknowledged that with all the loyalty of my soul--so
would she; and that thought would bear her up. Yes, it would be best
to tell her. I took her hand, and led her to a chair.

"Ada, it is not all; can you bear the rest?" Her white trembling lips
moved as if assenting, but I could not hear the words. "Thorneley died
very suddenly--was found dead. It is thought he has been poisoned. I
don't know the particulars--I have only just heard of it. Hugh was
with him late last night; it is necessary he should be examined to-day
by a magistrate."

Again I paused, praying that the truth might dawn upon her--that I
might not have to stab her with the terrible revelation.
But--dreading, fearing, as I could see she was--no shadow of the
reality seemed to cross her mind.

"Where is Hugh now?" at last she asked with startling suddenness.

"O Ada, my poor child! try to bear it. Hugh is as innocent as you are
of this fearful crime; but he has been arrested."

The words were said--she knew all now. To my dying day I shall never
forget the awful change which passed over her face. She did not faint
or scream, but she sat there motionless, rigid, white as a marble
statue. I took her hand; it was icy cold, and lay passive in mine.

"Ada, for God's sake speak to me! Shall I call your mother to you?"

Her stillness was frightful. There was some water on the sideboard,
and I poured out some and brought it to her, almost forcing the glass
between her set teeth. At last she swallowed {453} some, and then
heavy sighs seemed to relieve both heart and brain.

"I must go to him," she said at last in a hoarse whisper.

"You cannot, Ada,--at least not today; they would not suffer it.
Besides, my dearest child, he has need of all his firmness and
presence of mind, and the sight of you would only unnerve him. Let him
hear how bravely you are bearing it; let him think of you as believing
that our Father who is in heaven will defend the innocent."

"I do, I do," she said, the hot tears slowly welling from her eyes,
and falling in burning drops upon my hand--and upon my heart. They
were blessed tears of relief. "But you too will do your utmost for
him. You are his dearest friend, and he would have full confidence in
whatever you did. Go to him at once!--why do you stay here?" she
continued more vehemently; "why are _you_ not with him, helping and
defending him?"

Could I tell her the truth now? Could I undeceive her and say I have
done as much and perhaps more to condemn him than any one--that I
should have to bear witness against him? Could I tell her this, with
her eyes looking into mine in such unutterable anguish, with her
little hand placed in mine so confidingly, and with the thought of him
before me? I could not. I said all should be done for him that was in
the power of mortal man to do, and I promised to send messengers
constantly to keep her fully informed during the day of all that
passed; Before going I asked her if I should tell her mother; but she
refused--she would rather do it herself.

"Tell him," were her last words, "that my heart is with him, and my
love--oh I my dearest love!"

"Write it, Ada," I said, "it is better he should have that message
direct from you."

So I left her, bearing her little note to him, poor fellow. How
precious it would be, that tiny missive, coming from her loving hand
and faithful heart.

It was just upon one o'clock when I arrived at my chambers, and at two
Atherton was to be taken before the magistrate. There was no fresh
news; so I decided upon going at once to Merrivale's office, and
seeing him if possible before he went to the police-court. I met him
on the stairs returning to his office.

"I have just been with poor Atherton," he said; and he looked very
grave. "Come in here; I was going to send for you. By the bye, have
you been to the Leslies? he is most anxious about that. I don't think
he'll be calm enough to think for himself until he knows all is right
in that quarter."

"I have a note from Miss Leslie for him,"

"All right. Give it to me; I'll enclose it, and send it at once."

Merrivale despatched the messenger, and then locked his room door.
"The case is dead against him," he said as he sat down, "and he knows
it now, poor fellow,--he knows it."

"He is innocent," I said; "I could swear he is innocent!"

"Yes, so I think, and so do others; but the evidence against him is
frightfully strong. That woman, Mrs. Haag, will make a most
criminating statement of what occurred last night."

"I don't know the particulars,--tell me what they are?"

"_You_ ought to be able to throw considerable light upon it," said
Merrivale, unheeding my question. "You were with poor old Thorneley
last night, it seems. Just tell me all that passed. In fact, I ought
to know _every thing_. I hear too that you are to be summoned as
witness against Atherton. How is that?"

I then related to him how I had gone to Wimpole street at Mr.
Thorneley's request about a matter of business; the hour I had left
him; my meeting with Hugh; his wish to come home with me, and my
refusal; the meeting also with the woman, and the conclusions which I
had drawn from it.

{454}

"What was the nature of the business with Mr. Thorneley?"

I replied that my word of honor was passed to keep it secret.

"Had it any bearing upon the unhappy catastrophe, either directly or
indirectly?"

"No; none that I could see."

"Would it affect Atherton or his prospects?"

I could not answer further, I replied; but in no way could it touch
him either for good or evil in the present unfortunate affair.
Merrivale was fairly at a nonplus.

"Now," said Mr. Merrivale, "I will tell you what passed after you went
away, as I learnt it from Atherton; and whatever further light you can
throw upon the mystery, which is my business now to sift to the
bottom, well, I think, Kavanagh, you are bound, by all the ties of
your long friendship with that poor fellow now under arrest, to speak
out openly to me."

I felt Merrivale's sharp searching eyes upon me; but the time to speak
had not come, and I could in no way serve Hugh by breaking silence--at
least I did not see that I could. After a short pause, Merrivale
continued:

"Atherton tells me that when he reached his uncle's house, he found
his cousin, Lister Wilmot, had just arrived; and they both went to
Thorneley's room together, Wilmot said to him on the way, 'I must get
some money to-night out of the governor, if possible, for I'm
dreadfully hard-up. I've had to dodge three duns to-day; and there'll
be a writ out against me to-morrow as sure as I'm alive, if he doesn't
fork out handsomely.' Atherton asked him what he called handsomely,
with a view, I imagine, to helping him himself if he could; but Wilmot
mentioned a sum so large that there could be no further thought of his
doing so. They found the old man unusually preoccupied and taciturn.
Nevertheless, in spite of unfavorable circumstances, Wilmot broached
the subject of his difficulties to him, and abruptly asked for 500_l_.
Thorneley was furious; and it seems, curiously enough, that he turned
his fury upon Atherton; accused him of leading Wilmot astray, of
teaching him to be extravagant; of making a tool of him for purposes
of his own; in short, making the most unheard-of accusations against
poor Atherton, and throwing the entire blame on him. Atherton says he
felt convinced that some one must have been carrying false stories to
his uncle, or in some way poisoning his mind against himself; but
knowing how broken in health he was, he tried at first to soothe him,
and quietly contradict his assertions, and Wilmot _indorsed all he
said_, distinctly stating that his cousin was entirely free from all
blame in the matter, and that it was his own extravagance which had
brought him into difficulties; and much more to the same effect. And
now comes the terrible part. Thorneley only waxed wrother and more
wroth; swore at Atherton, and told him he might pay his cousin's debts
for him; and if he couldn't out of his own money, he might get his
future wife's guardian to advance him some of hers; and that if Wilmot
had looked half-sharp he might have married the girl himself. As it
was, he dared say she would marry Kavanagh in the end. You may suppose
this vexed Atherton not a little; his blood was up, and he spoke out
hot and angrily to his uncle, telling him amongst other things that he
would _bitterly repent on the morrow what he had said last night_. He
tells me he distinctly remembers the words he used. In the heat of the
dispute--he thinks it must have been just at the moment he said
this--the housekeeper came in with the tray. It seems that Thorneley
always took bitter-ale the last thing at night, with hard biscuits.
Almost directly after he had spoken Atherton repented having got angry
with the old man, remembering what his temperament was; and as a sort
of propitiatory action, went and fetched him his glass of ale from the
table. Gilbert Thorneley took it from Atherton's hand, and--drank it.
_There was poison in that glass of ale!_"

{455}

I sat confronting Merrivale, dazed, sickened, dumbfounded. _Now_ I
knew the full weight of the evidence I should be forced to give. Now I
knew, when everything was revealed, the cry that would go up from
Hugh's heart against me. But I never swerved from my allegiance to
him; I never thought him guilty--no, not for the brief shadow of an
instant.

After a while Merrivale continued, "Whoever put in that fatal drug,
and whatever it was, the effects must have taken place subsequent to
Atherton's leaving Wimpole Street. He says that Wilmot went away very
shortly after his uncle drank the ale, receiving a very cold
good-night from the latter; and that after in vain trying to reason
with Mr. Thorneley, and bring him into good-humor again, he also left
him,--the old man utterly refusing to shake hands or to part friends.
The poor fellow seems to feel that bitterly; he is terribly cut up at
remembering that the last intercourse with his uncle should have been
unfriendly. No; I could venture my oath he is innocent; his sorrow at
Thorneley's death _cannot_ by put on. However, the end of it all is,
that Mr. Thorneley went to bed last night directly after Atherton went
away; and this morning when the servant went into his room as usual at
half-past six, to call him, and see whether he wanted anything before
getting up--he kept to his old early hours as much as possible, I
fancy--the man found him dead in his bed. The housekeeper was roused,
and they sent off directly for a doctor. When he came, he declared his
suspicion that he had died from the effects of poison, and demanded
what he had taken last. He had touched nothing since the bitter-ale;
the glass had not been washed, and traces of strychnine were found in
the few drops left in the tumbler. Smith and Walker have called in Dr.
Robinson since then; and he with this doctor who first saw the corpse
are making a _post-mortem_ examination now. The contents of the
stomach, to make sure of everything, are to be sent to Professor T----
for analysis. When the inspectors arrived from Scotland Yard, the
housekeeper immediately volunteered her evidence of what I have
related to you. Putting all these facts together," continued
Merrivale, looking over his notes, "coupled with the evidence you will
be forced to give of where you met him, I apprehend the whole case to
be dead against poor Atherton. Yes, the entire thing will turn upon
that visit to the chemist in Vere street; if we can dispose of that
satisfactorily, I shan't despair. At present it is the most
criminating to my mind, and will just damn him with the jury at the
inquest."

"What account does he give himself of going to the chemist's?"

"Simple enough, to any one who knows him as you and I do, and who
would believe a man who never yet lied,--who is, I think, incapable of
a lie to save his own life. He says he went in to purchase some
camphor; he has been taking it lately for headaches; the bottle was
found in his coat-pocket; but there was also found a small empty paper
labelled 'Strychnine,' _with the Vere-street chemist's name upon it_.
Of that paper he most solemnly denies all knowledge, and I believe
him; but how will the jury dispose of such circumstantial evidence?"

"No expense must be spared in defending him, Merrivale," I said; "draw
on me to the last farthing for whatever is wanted."

"None shall be spared. I have written to Sir Richard Mayne, whom I
know very well, asking for a certain detective officer whoso
experience I can rely on from past dealings; and if the dastardly
wretch lives who has done this deed, and thrown the brunt of it on
Atherton, he or she shall be hunted down and brought to justice. I
must be off now. The proceedings to-day will be but nominal. I will
come round by your office on my way back. What we have to do at
present is to gain time. For this we must {456} prepare all the
contrary evidence in our power against to-morrow. By the way, see
Wilmot as soon as you can, and bring him back with you."

I returned home; wrote a few words, as comforting and encouraging as I
could, to Ada, and despatched a messenger with the note; then I went
to the Albany and asked for Lister Wilmot. He was out; had been
summoned to the police-court to be present at the inquiry. I left my
card, with a pencilled injunction to come on to me the moment he
returned; and then, impelled by a horrible fascination, I took my way
toward Marylebone street, longing, yet dreading, to see and hear--my
heart aching for a sight of the manly form and noble face of him to
whom my soul had cleaved as to a brother.

There was a dense crowd outside the gates of the courtyard and round
the private door through which the magistrates enter, when I arrived
there. With my hat slouched over my brows, I made my way through with
difficulty to the door of the court where the proceedings were going
on,--the noise and din of the crowd buzzing about me, and scraps of
talk which goes on in such places and among such people as collect
there, reaching me in broken snatches.

"Who'd ha' thought he'd a done it? such a nice-looking chap as er is."

"Yer see, it's the money as he wanted. The old man was mortal rich;
they say the Bank of England couldn't 'old 'is money. Yes, the gowld
did it."

"Pisen! Ah, he'd be glad of pisen hisself now. What's that feller
sayin'? Oh, that's the lawyer wot's defending him. He'll have tough
work, he will."

"Remanded!--that's the way; why can't they commit him at once? Givin'
folks all the trouble to come twice afore they knows what to do with
un."

"'Ere he comes. Now, six-footer, who pisened the old man?"

And then came groans and hisses as the mob were made to open and
divide themselves, whilst policemen cleared the way for the
prisoner--yes, it had come to that--the prisoner!--to pass to the van
waiting for him. I looked up as he advanced,--we were almost of the
same height, he and I; taller perhaps by some inches than the majority
around, who were mostly women,--and our eyes met. O God! shall I ever
forget the look he gave me? Pale and calm and firm, he passed on--his
noble brow erect, his clear eyes shining with the light of conscious
innocence; with the whole expression of his countenance
subdued--hallowed, I might say--with the sorrow and trouble which had
befallen him. On he came, heedless of the hisses and jeers of the
fallen degraded herd who pressed round; heedless of the jibes and
groans uttered by the companions of those for whom, more then likely,
his genial voice had been raised in defence, in pleading against the
justice they deserved, but which he had never merited. On he came,
unmindful of everything that was going on about him, as if his spirit
were faraway, communing with that unseen Presence that was never
absent from his mind. I lifted my hat and stood bareheaded as he
passed into that dark dismal van that was polluted with the breath,
contaminated by the touch, of men whose hands were dyed by the
blackest crimes.

When it had driven off I turned away and hailed a passing cab. Just as
I was stepping into it I was arrested by the sound of a voice near me.

"He's safe to be condemned, as shure as yer name's Mike."

It was an Irish voice. I bounded back. Disappearing rapidly, threading
in and out of the now-dispersing crowd, were the high square
shoulders, the gray locks and beard, the swaggering air of Mr. de Vos,
the "treasure-trove," the hero of Swain's Lane. He was gone before I
was fully aware of his identity.

{457}

CHAPTER IV.


A GLIMMER OF LIGHT.


A popular writer of the day says there is this to be observed in the
physiology of every murder, "that before the coroner's inquest the
sole object of public curiosity is the murdered man; while immediately
after that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns; the dead
man is hurried and forgotten, and the suspected murderer becomes the
hero of men's morbid imaginations." If this be true--as it is--in the
generality of cases, there are also exceptions in which just the
contrary takes place. So was it now. Amidst the hue and cry which
arose against Hugh Atherton, the suspected murderer of his uncle,
Gilbert Thorneley, the murdered man, was almost forgotten. The
announcement in the morning papers of the inquest to be held that same
day following the discovery of the murder was hailed but as an
acceleration of the justice which was to hunt him down to a felon's
death. Three executions had taken place during that summer in London,
and they had but whetted the public appetite. Like a wild beast that
had tasted blood, it ravened and hungered for more; it _could not_
sicken at the sight of a human creature, a fellow-man, strung up like
a dog, strangled like an animal; it _could not_ shudder to behold the
quivering limbs, the covered face, the convulsed form, as it swung
from the gibbet. They had become used to the sight, familiar with the
whole scene in its awful solemnity; but they were far from satiated;
and eagerly did the public voice clamor for another victim on whom to
gloat their inhuman eyes. Ah! that is a fearful responsibility which
England has taken upon herself in these public executions--in baring
to such a gaze as that which is fastened upon the small black-draped
platform outside the walls of Newgate the solemn, awful spectacle of a
creature going to meet his Creator, of an immortal soul passing into
the dread presence of its God! Much has been said for, much against,
those exhibitions of public justice; I doubt if a true view will ever
be arrived at until the question has been considered as one vitally
affecting England as a _Christian_ nation.

Hugh Atherton was a suspected man, and the press did its work well
that morning in trying to criminate him. Already in those brief
four-and-twenty hours his name--the name of one incapable of hurting
the tiniest insect that lay across his path--had become a byword and a
reproach in the mouths, not of many, but of multitudes, throughout the
length and breadth of the land.

Gilbert Thorneley had been a rich man--a notedly rich man--a
millionaire; and we may not touch the rich with impunity. He had not
been a good man nor a useful man, nor philanthropic; none had loved
him, not a few had hated him, many had disliked and dreaded him; but
he was rich--he had wealth untold, and it did wonders for him in the
eyes of the world after his death. Yet withal he was forgotten,
comparatively speaking, whilst the interest of the public was riveted
upon his supposed-to-be-criminal nephew. The scanty evidence elicited
at the police-court was twisted and turned against him by ingenious
compilers of leading-articles, and only one journal ventured to raise
a dissenting voice in his favor. It was a paper that had vindicated
many a man before; that had done for accused persons what perhaps
their poverty would not permit them to do for themselves,--in
ventilating facts and clearing up evidence with the care and eloquence
of a paid counsel. It was a paper hated by many in authority, by big
wigs and potentates, and was to many country magistrates a perfect
nightmare; nevertheless its influence told largely upon the public
mind and led to the rooting out of many an evil.

{458}

The inquest on Gilbert Thorneley was appointed for two o'clock, and I
was cited to appear as one of the witnesses. I had gone late the
evening before to Hyde-Park Gardens with all the tidings that could be
gathered, and left poor Ada more calm and composed than could almost
have been hoped for. Still, what her fearful grief and anxiety was,
heaven only knew; for her only thought seemed to be that Hugh should
hear she was keeping up bravely for his sake. After the inquest, I
promised to try and obtain that she should see him: But I went away,
haunted by her poor pale face, her heavy sleepless eyes, her look of
suppressed anguish; haunted by an overwhelming dread of the morrow;
haunted by the vision of a future laden with sorrow and suffering for
us all. And at last the morning dawned of the day which would bring
forth such important results, and affect the fate of Hugh Atherton so
very gravely. I went early to Merrivale's office, and found him full
of business and very anxious. Lister Wilmot had never appeared; and
repeated messengers sent to the Albany only brought back word that he
had not been home since he went to the police-court the preceding day.
He had neither dined nor slept at home.

Smith and Walker were savage and taciturn, refusing all information,
although their clerk let out that Wilmot had been there several times;
and Merrivale's hopes were all centred in the detective he was
employing, but who had not been seen since he had received his
instructions.

The hours wore round, and at twelve o'clock I was to be at the
Leslies'. As I left Mr. Merrivale's office in Lincoln's-Inn Square, a
man bowed to me in passing. It was Jones the detective. A sudden
thought struck me, and I turned back after him.

"Jones," I said, "do you happen to know a Mr. de Vos, who lodged some
two months ago at No. 13 Charles street, Leicester Square?"

"No, sir; not by that name. What is he like?"

I described him; but he shook his head.

"I don't recognize him, sir; but, if you'll allow me, I'll make a note
of it. Have you any particular reason for wishing to hear about him?"

"Yes; and I should be glad to know _anything_ you can gather
concerning the man."

"I'll be on the look-out, sir." And Jones touched his hat and went
off.

The old butler came to the door in Hyde-Park Gardens, and in answer to
my inquiries informed me that Miss Leslie was "very middling indeed,
and that Mr. Wilmot had just been there."

"Mr. Wilmot!"

"Yes, sir; he wished partiklar to see Miss Ada--which he did, sir, and
her ma too: very nice gentleman he seems, and terrible cut up about
his poor uncle and his cousin. A shocking thing, sir, for you to have
to witness _against_ Mr. Atherton."

Against Mr. Atherton! Then it had reached here--this news, these
tidings--that I was to help to condemn the man I loved best on earth!
What was known in the servants'-hall had no doubt been discussed in
the drawing-room, and Ada must now fully be aware of what I had found
no courage to tell her yesterday. How had she received the
intelligence? what was she thinking of it--of me? Reflecting thus, I
followed Kings into the library, and found Mrs. Leslie alone. Now that
lady and I never got on as amicably as we might have done; joint
guardians seldom do, especially when they are of opposite genders; and
this I say with no sort of reflection upon the fairer sex, simply
mentioning it as a fact which, during a long legal course of
experience, has come before me. _I_ considered Mrs. Leslie frivolous,
weak, and extravagant, very unlike her child, very far from fit to be
instrusted with the sole guidance of a mind such as Ada's. But I kept
my own counsel {459} on the subject, and tried by action rather than
words to counteract and shield Ada from evils arising from her
mother's foolish conduct. She thought _me_ very uncompromising, very
particular and rigid in my notions, often perhaps very crusty and
disagreeable, nor spared she any pains to conceal her thought. That I
did not mind; for Ada trusted me implicitly in all things, and it was
all I cared for. This morning there was a stiffness and less of
cordiality than ever in Mrs. Leslie's manner of receiving me.

"How is Ada?" I asked.

"She passed a very restless night, poor dear, very restless; and is
fit for nothing this morning. Indeed, I am almost in the same state
myself, I have been so terribly upset by this affair, and my nerves
are very delicate. Most trying too! I have had to put off our _réunion
musicale_ for next Thursday, and the Denison's dinner-party for
to-morrow. I can't think how Hugh came to do it--for of course he
_must_ have done it, though Ada won't hear a word against him."

"He did _not_ do it, Mrs. Leslie! Ada is right, as she always is."

"Ah! well, so Lister Wilmot tried to make me believe; but then he says
everything is against poor Hugh, and that even you feel obliged to
give evidence against him. I must say, John Kavanagh, that I think it
very strange of you to have volunteered to give evidence. Wilmot was
explaining it all to us, and said you couldn't help yourself; for the
first words you had said to the policeman when he came to you
criminated your friend."

A glimmer of light was beginning to dawn in my mind; but its ray was
very faint and dim as yet; and after all it might only prove a
will-o'-the-wisp. Still I would not lose it if possible.

"Wilmot told you that, did he? Does Ada know?"

"Yes; she was here when he came. He told us everything that had passed
all that had been said by his uncle the last evening he saw him alive.
He mentioned a great deal which had been kept back--purposely I
suppose, and for some motive we don't understand now, but which will
come out by and by, no doubt," said Mrs. Leslie with a burst of spite
in her voice.

"Would you have the goodness to send word to Ada that I am here?" I
said very stiffly.

"Oh! I forgot. She desired her kindest regards when you called, but
she could not see you this morning. She will write."

I looked at her, and something convinced me she was telling a lie. I
got up very quietly and rang the bell.

"Let Miss Leslie know I am here, Kings."

"Yes, sir."

Then Mrs. Leslie's anger broke forth. How dared I presume so far--
take such a liberty in her house! I forgot myself; I was no gentleman,
but a meddling, interfering man, disappointed and soured because I had
not secured Ada and her fortune for myself. _She had seen it all
along_. So she raved on--so I let her rave; and when she ceased I
answered her:

"If I have taken a liberty in giving an order under your roof and to
your servant, I beg your pardon. But this is no time to stop at
trifles or considerations of mere etiquette involving no real breach
of good breeding. So long as your daughter is a minor I shall hold
myself responsible for the trust her dead father confided to me
conjointly with yourself; and, so help me God, I will perform the
sacred duty to its utmost limits and regardless of human respect!
There is foul play going on around us, and some influence--I know not
yet whose--is at work to undermine the happiness of us all. There is
bitter need that no fatal misunderstanding should arise between my
ward and myself; that no subtle representations of interested persons
should shake the reliance upon my integrity and honor, which hitherto
Ada has placed in her father's friend. A life more precious to her
than her own, and {460} dear to me as a brother's, is at stake; and I
foresee, though dimly and darkly, that it imports far more than
perhaps we dream of now to keep everything clear between us in our
several relations with each other. At any rate I will allow no foolish
fancies, no weak pride, to stand between your daughter and myself, her
legal guardian and _sole trustee_."

I spoke very sternly, and purposely laid a stress upon my last words,
knowing the woman with whom I was dealing, and the full weight they
would have with her. Nor was I mistaken. She burst into a feeble
querulous fit of crying; and the servant returning at that moment with
a message from Ada asking me to go up-stairs, I left Mrs. Leslie to
her reflections.

My ward was in her little morning-room. She was writing at the table,
and the room was partially darkened, as if she could not bear the full
sunlight of that bright autumn day. There were birds and flowers and
music around her; but the birds had hushed their song, the flowers
drooped their heads, as if missing the careful hand that tended them;
and the music that generally greeted one there was silent. Oh! when
would she sing again? I felt something about my feet as I advanced
towards her, and heard a piteous whine I looked down; it was a little
rough shaggy terrier,--Hugh's dog. Poor Dandie! He recognized me, and
looked for one with whom he was so accustomed to see me.

"I sent for him," said Ada, lifting her weary wan face as I stood
beside her. "I fancied he would be happier here--less lonely; but he
is not--he wants _him_."

The dog seemed to understand her; for he came and, putting his
forepaws upon her knee, laid his head upon them, and looking toward me
whined again. She laid her cheek down upon his rough head and caressed
him.

"Not yet, Dandie,--not yet. We must be patient, doggie, and he will
come to us again."

It was a few moments before I could speak; but time was hastening on
apace. Whilst I stood by the fire thinking how best to begin the
subject I had at heart, Ada came and laid her hand on my arm.

"I have been wishing for you; I thought you would never come."

Then her mother had told a lie; but I said nothing.

"Lister Wilmot has been here this morning, talking a good deal." She
stopped and hesitated.

To help her, I said, "Yes; so your mother tells me."

She looked at me inquiringly. "Has she told all that passed--all that
he said?"

"She told me a great deal; but I would rather hear everything from
_you_. My child, don't hesitate to confide in me. You don't know how
it may help to clear matters up, which seem to be so fearfully
complicated now."

I think she understood me, for she sighed wearily, and I heard her
murmur to herself, "Poor mamma!"

"Lister was very kind this morning, and was in dreadful trouble about
--_him_. He said he had thought of me more than any one, and would
have come yesterday, but had so much to arrange and see to."

And then Ada went on to relate what passed, a great deal of which I
had gathered from Mrs. Leslie.

"There is one thing," she concluded, "which I did not and would not
believe. He says you have volunteered to give evidence against _him_,"
(it seemed as if she could not bring herself to mention Hugh by name;)
"but I said it could not be,--that there must have been a mistake.
What is the worst of all is, that since Lister was here, mamma
persists in saying _he_ is guilty; somehow, though his words defended,
his tone and manner implied he thought his cousin guilty."

"Ada, it is true I shall have to give evidence which may help to
criminate Hugh; but it is more than equally false that I ever
volunteered to bear {461} witness against him. You were right; _never
believe it_."

Then I told her how it was, and how I had shrunk from letting her know
it before.

"And now, my child, I must go. You know the inquest is to take place
this afternoon, and I have to be there; but first I must return to
Merrivale's, and settle many things with him."

"You will come back to me afterward."

"Surely; as soon as it is over."

"Do you think _he_ will be present?"

"I trust not, oh! I trust not! But perhaps he will wish to watch the
proceedings himself, as well as Merrivale. God be with you, Ada, and
good-bye!"

I was on the threshold of the door when she called me back.

"I am very foolish, guardian, not to have said it before; but I could
not--and yet I ought and must."

Her hand was resting on a well-worn morocco case. I knew it well--it
was Hugh's likeness, and a faint color tinged her white cheeks; but
she mastered the shy feeling, whatever it was, and looked clearly and
earnestly at me.

"Something was said by Lister Wilmot of what had dropped from poor Mr.
Thorneley the last night of his life about you and me. I don't know
why he should have repeated it; but as it is, I wanted to ask you not
to mind it; at least, not to notice what may be said by others--by my
mother. I only fear lest anything of the kind being said should come
between us, and destroy our confidence in one another, because we
understand each other so well--you and I and Hugh,"--how lingeringly
she spoke his name!--"and we have no secrets between us that all
three may not share. And I have feared lest this worse than
foolishness, dragged out publicly, should change anything in our
intercourse, or prevent you from acting, as hitherto, a parent's part
toward a fatherless girl."

"_Nothing_, Ada, can change me toward you; and when people think of
you and then of me, they will not heed the childish babble that may go
about."

"Thanks, guardian."

"Worse than foolishness!"--I said the words over to myself many times
as I drove back to Lincoln's Inn; and in the hazy distant future I saw
a weary wayworn pilgrim slowly toiling along life's lonely road, who,
looking back to this past year come and gone, would still repeat,
"Worse than foolishness!"

I found Merrivale in deep conference with a mean-looking little man
with a short stubbly head of hair that bristled up like a
scrubbing-brush, and of a melancholy cast of countenance, as if
accustomed to view life darkly, through the medium of duns and
such-like evils to which man is heir. His eyes were the only redeeming
point about him, and they really were two of the sharpest, most
intelligent orbs I ever saw in my life. They lighted upon me the
moment I entered the room, and seemed to take in my whole exterior and
interior person with a knowingness that was perfectly alarming.

"This is the gentleman, I suppose, sir, who was with the defunct party
the night of the murder," said a wonderfully soft voice.

"Yes; Mr. Kavanagh.--This is Inspector Keene, the very clever officer
I mentioned to you, Kavanagh."

I acknowledged Mr. Keene's salute with becoming deference.

"Have you any news?" I asked.

"Well, sir," with a quick cautious glance at Merrivale, "I have and I
have not. Before I say anything further, I should be glad to ask the
gentleman a few questions, Mr. Merrivale, if agreeable."

"By all means," I answered.

He put me through a sharp cross-questioning on every point with which
the reader is acquainted, making rapid notes of all my answers and
remarks. Then he sat silently scraping his chin and gnawing his nails
for some minutes. At last he looked up suddenly.

"The funeral, I understand, is fixed {462} for next Tuesday, and after
that is over _the Will is to be read_. Perhaps that may throw some
light on the subject."

I could not for the life of me repress a start, and Inspector Keene
made a mental note of it, I knew.

"Good-day, gentlemen. I will call on you, Mr. Merrivale, to-morrow. _I
think I am on the scent_."

"Come," said Merrivale, "we must be off, or we shall be late."


TO BE CONTINUED.

------

[ ORIGINAL. ]


OUR MOTHER'S CALL.


  Come home, O weary wanderers, from error's tangled maze,
  My mother-heart yearns sore for you in all your troubled ways.
  I've rest, and food, and shelter, for all the earth can hold--
  Then hasten, weary wanderers, home to the single fold.

  I am the Master's gamer, which ever yieldeth more,
  The more the needy millions receiving from my store;
  No number's can exhaust me; no beggar at my gate
  For rest and food and shelter, shall ever have to wait.

  If in mine inner chamber the Master seems to sleep,
  While fearful storm and peril are out upon the deep.
  My lightest tone will call him to rescue of his own
  For his dear children's haven I am, _and I alone_.

  Almighty wisdom made me the home upon the rock--
  The Saviour's fold of safety to all his ransomed flock.
  My door is ever open, and they who enter in.
  Find rest from all their wanderings, and cleansing from their sin.

  One thing, and but one only, the Master doth demand.
  That they who seek shall find him as he himself hath planned;
  Beneath my lowly portal shall bow each haughty head,
  And to my narrow pathway return each wandering tread.

 _I cannot lift the lintel, nor widen out the posts,
   For every stone was fashioned by him, the Lord of hosts_.
  _My Master_, and thy Master if thou wilt hear his voice
  And in his pleasant pastures for evermore rejoice.

  Can human handcraft ever compete in skill with him,
  Whose throne is in the heavens amid the cherubim?
  Then cease your idle toiling another home to raise;
  He on my fair proportions toiled all his mortal days.

{463}

  When out of depths of darkness he called the glorious sun
  In all its dazzling splendor, _he spoke_ and it was done;
  His sweat and blood were both poured out that he might fashion me
  His sun to souls in darkness till time no more shall be.

  Hold it no light offending that you can turn aside,
  And scorn in wilful blindness the Saviour's spotless bride.
  He who hath full dominion unchecked o'er all the earth,
  Made me the mighty mother of the blest second-birth.

  Come, weigh ye well the value of his three and thirty years,
  And number o'er the treasure of all his prayers and tears.
  And count ye out the life-drops that flowed from his cleft side.
  And learn the wondrous bounty with which he dowered his bride.

  Rich-dowered for your salvation, ye dearly bought of earth!
  By his dying, and my living, oh! weigh salvation's worth,
  And in the single shelter his mighty love hath given.
  Learn the dear will that maketh the blessedness of heaven.

GENEVIEVE SALES.

EASTERTIDE, 1866.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

USE AND ABUSE OF READING.  [Footnote 81]

  [Footnote 81: "Appel aux Consciences Chrétiennes contre les abus et
  les dangers de la lecture."' P. Toulemont. Etudes Religieuses,
  Historiques et Literaires. Tome 8, N. S.]

We have been much interested in the grave and earnest essay on the
abuses and dangers of reading, by P. Toulemont, in that excellent
periodical, the "Etudes," so ably conducted by fathers of the Society
of Jesus, and we would translate and present it to the readers of the
Catholic World in its integrity, if some portions of it were not
better adapted to France than to the United States; yet much which we
shall advance in this article is inspired by it, and we shall make
free use of its ideas, facts, authorities, and arguments.

This is a reading age, and ours is to a great extent a reading
country. The public mind, taste, and morals are with us chiefly formed
by books, pamphlets, periodicals, and journals. The American people
sustain more journals or newspaper than all the world beside, and
probably devour more light literature, or fiction, or trashy novels
than any other nation. Reading of some sort is all but universal, and
the press is by far the most efficient government of the country. The
government itself practically is little else with us than public
sentiment, and public sentiment is both formed and echoed by the
press. Indeed, the press is not merely "a fourth estate," as it has
been called, but an estate which has well-nigh usurped the functions
of all the others, and taken the sole direction of the intellectual
and moral destinies of the civilized world.

The press, taken in its largest sense, is, after speech--which it
repeats, extends and perpetuates--the most powerful influence, whether
for good or for evil, that man wields or can wield; and however great
the evils which flow from its perversion, it could not be annihilated
or its freedom suppressed without the loss of a still greater good,
{464} that is, restrained by the public authorities. In this country
we have established the _régime_ of liberty, and that _régime_, with
its attendant good and evil, must be accepted in its principle, and in
all its logical consequences. If a free press becomes a fearful
instrument for evil in the hands of the heedless or ill-disposed, it
is no less an instrument for good in the hands of the enlightened,
honest, and capable. The free press in the modern world is needed to
defend the right, to advance the true, to maintain order, morality,
intelligence, civilization, and cannot be given up for the sake of
escaping the evils which flow from its abuse.

Yet these evils are neither few nor light, and are such as tend to
enlarge and perpetuate themselves. Not the least of the evils of
journalism, for instance, is the necessity it is under in order to
live, to get readers, and to get readers it must echo public opinion
or party feeling, defend causes that need no defence, and flatter
passions already too strong. Instead of correcting public sentiment
and laboring to form a sound public opinion or a correct moral
judgment, its conductors are constantly tempted to feel the public
pulse to discover what is for the moment popular, and then to echo it,
and to denounce all who dissent from it or fall not down and worship
it; forgetting if what is popular is erroneous or unjust, it is wrong
to echo it, and if true and just, it needs no special defence, for it
is already in the ascendant; and forgetting, also, that it is the
unpopular truth, the unpopular cause, the cause of the wronged and
oppressed, the poor and friendless, too feeble to make its own voice
heard, and which has no one to speak for it, that needs the support of
the journal. When John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to our
Lord to ask him, "Art thou he that is to come, or are we to look for
another?" our Lord said: "Go and tell John . . . that the blind see,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise
again, the poor have the gospel preached to them." Here was the
evidence of his messiahship. "They that are whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick."

This is not all: needing to be always on the popular side, the press
not only plants itself on the lowest general average of intelligence
and virtue, but it tends constantly to lower that general average, and
hence becomes low and debasing in its influence. It grows ever more
and more corrupt and corrupting, till the public mind becomes so
vitiated and weakened that it will neither relish nor profit by the
sounder works needed as remedies.

In the moral and intellectual sciences we write introductions where we
once wrote treatises, because the publisher knows that the
introductions will sell, while the elaborate treatise will only
encumber his shelves, or go to the pastry-cook or the paper-maker. Not
only do the journals flatter popular passions, appeal to vitiated
tastes, or a low standard of morals, but books do the same, and often
in a far greater degree. The great mass of books written and published
in the more enlightened and advanced modern nations are immoral and
hostile not only to the soul hereafter, but to all the serious
interests of this life. A few years since the French government
appointed a commission to investigate the subject of colportage in
France and the commission reported after a conscientious examination
that of nine millions of works colported eight millions were more or
less immoral. Of the novels which circulate in the English-speaking
world, original or translated, one not immoral and possible to be read
without tainting the imagination or the heart is the rare exception.
Under pretence of _realism_ nature is oftener exhibited in her
unseemly than in her seemly moods, and the imagination of the young is
compelled to dwell on the grossest vices and corruptions of a moribund
society. Chastity of {465} thought, innocence of heart, purity of
imagination, cannot be preserved by a diligent reader even of the
better class of the light literature of the day. This literature so
vitiates the taste, so corrupts the imagination, and so sullies the
heart, that its readers can see no merit and find no relish in works
not highly spiced with vice, crime, or disorderly passion. The
literary stomach has been so weakened by vile stimulants that it
cannot bear a sound or a wholesome literature, and such works as a
Christian would write, and a Christian read, would find scarcely a
market, or readers sufficiently numerous to pay for its publication.

It is boasted that popular literature describes nature as it is, or
society as it is, and is therefore true, and truth is never immoral.
Truth truthfully told, and truthfully received, is indeed never
immoral, but even truth may be so told as to have the effect of a lie.
But these highly spiced novels--which one can hardly read without
feeling when he has finished them as if he had been spending a night
in dissipation or debauchery, and with which our English-speaking
world is inundated--are neither true to nature nor to society. They
give certain features of society, but really paint neither high life
nor low life, nor yet middle life as it is. They rarely give a real
touch of nature, and seldom come near enough to truth to caricature
it. They give us sometimes the sentiment, sometimes the affection of
love with a touch of truth--but, after all, only truth's surface or a
distant and distorted view of it. They paint better the vices of
nature, man's abuse or perversion of nature, than the virtues. Their
virtuous characters are usually insipid or unnatural; nature has
depths their plummets sound not, and heights to which they rise not.
There they forget that in the actual providence of God nature never
exists and operates alone, but either through demoniacal influence
descends below, or through divine grace rises above itself. They
either make nature viler than she is or nobler than she is. They never
hit the just medium, and the views of nature, society, and life the
young reader gets from them, are exaggerated, distorted, or totally
false. The constant reading of them renders the heart and soul morbid,
the mind weak and sickly, the affections capricious and fickle, the
whole man ill at ease, sighing for what he has not, and incapable of
being contented with any possible lot or state of life, or with any
real person or thing.

Beside books which the conscience of a pagan would pronounce immoral,
and which cannot be touched without defilement, there are others that
by their false and heretical doctrines tend to undermine faith and to
sap those moral convictions without which society cannot subsist, and
religion is an empty name or idle form. The country is flooded with a
literature which not only denies this or that Christian mystery, this
or that Catholic dogma, that not only rejects supernatural revelation,
but even natural reason itself. The tendency of what is regarded as
the advanced thought of the age is not only to eliminate Christian
faith from the intellect, Christian morality from the heart, Christian
love from the soul, but Christian civilization from society. The most
popular literature of the day recognizes no God, no Satan, no heaven,
no hell, and either preaches the worship of the soul, or of humanity.
Christian charity is resolved into the watery sentiment of
philanthropy, and the Catholic veneration of the Blessed Virgin
lapses, outside of the church, into an idolatrous worship of
femininity. The idea of duty is discarded, and we are gravely told
there is no merit in doing a thing because it is our duty; the merit
is only in doing it from love, and love, which, in the Christian
sense, is the fulfilling of the law, is defined to be a sentiment
without any relation to the understanding or the conscience. Not only
the authority of the church is rejected in the name of humanity {466}
by the graver part of popular literature, but the authority of the
state, the sacredness of law, the inviolability of marriage, and the
duty of obedience of children to their parents, are discarded as
remnants of social despotism now passing away. The tendency is in the
name of humanity to eliminate the church, the state, and the family,
and to make man a bigger word than God. In view of the anti-religious,
anti-moral, and anti-social doctrines which in some form or in some
guise or other permeate the greater part of what is looked upon as the
living literature of the age, and which seem to fetch an echo from the
heart of humanity, well might Pope Gregory XVI., of immortal memory,
in the grief of his paternal heart exclaim, "We are struck with horror
in seeing with what monstrous doctrines, or rather with what prodigies
of error we are inundated by this deluge of books, pamphlets, and
writings of every sort whose lamentable irruption has covered the
earth with maledictions!"

"There doubtless are men," as Père Toulemont says, "who have very
little to fear from the most perfidious artifices of impiety, as,
prepared by a strong and masculine intellectual discipline, they are
able to easily detect the most subtle sophisms. No subtlety, no _tour
de metier_, if I may so speak, can escape them. At the first glance of
the eye they seize the false shade, the confusion of ideas or of
words; they redress at once the illusive perspective created by the
mirage of a lying style. The fascinations of error excite in them only
a smile of pity or of contempt.

"Yes, there are such men, but they are rare. Take even men of solid
character, with more than ordinary instruction, and deeply attached to
their faith, think you, that even they will be able always to rise
from the reading of this literature perfectly unaffected? I appeal to
the experience of more than one reader, if it is not true after having
run over certain pages written with perfidious art, that we find
ourselves troubled with an indescribable uneasiness, an incipient
vertigo or bewilderment? We need then, as it were, to give a shake to
the soul, to force it to throw off the impression it has received, and
if we neglect to assist it more or less vigorously, it soon deepens
and assumes alarming proportions. No doubt, unless in exceptional
circumstances, strong convictions are not sapped to their foundation
by a single blow, but one needs no long experience to be aware that
this sad result is likely to follow in the long run, and much more
rapidly than is commonly believed, even with persons who belong to the
aristocracy of intelligence.

"This will be still more the case if we descend to a lower social
stratum, to the middle classes who embody the great majority of
Christian readers. With these mental culture is very defective, and
sometimes we find in them an ignorance of the most elementary Catholic
instruction that is really astounding. What, at any rate, is
undeniable, is that their faith is not truly enlightened either in
relation to its object or its grounds. It ordinarily rests on
sentiment far more than on reason. They have not taken the trouble to
render to themselves an account of the arguments which sustain it;
much less still are they able to solve the difficulties which
unbelievers suggest against it. Add to this general absence of serious
intellectual instruction, the absence not less general of force and
independence of character, and the position becomes frightful. In our
days it must be confessed the energy of the moral temperament is
singularly enfeebled, and never perhaps was the assertion of the
prophet, _omne caput languidum_, the whole head is sick, more true
than now. Robust and masculine habits seem to have given place to a
sort of sybaritism of soul, which renders the soul adverse to all
personal effort, or individual labor. See, for example, that multitude
which devours so greedily the first books that come to hand. Takes it
any care to control the things which pass before its eyes, or to {467}
render to itself any account of them by serious reflection? Not at
all. The attention it gives to what it reads is very nearly null, or,
at best, it is engrossed far more with the form, the style, or the
term of the phrase, than with the substance, or ground of the ideas
expressed. The mind is rendered, so to say, wholly passive, ready to
receive without reflection any impression or submit to any influence."

The great body of the faithful in no country can read the immoral,
heretical, infidel, humanitarian, and socialistic literature of the
age without more or less injury to their moral and spiritual life, or
without some lesion even to their faith itself; although it be not
wholly subverted. Can a man touch pitch and not be defiled? It is
precisely the devouring of this literature as its daily intellectual
food, or as its literary pabulum, that produces that sybaritism of
soul, that feebleness of character, that aversion to all manly effort
or individual exertion without which robust and masculine virtue is
impossible.

There is certainly much strong faith in the Catholic population of the
United States, perhaps more in proportion to their numbers than in any
of the old Catholic nations of Europe; but this strong faith is found
chiefly amongst those who have read very little of the enervating
literature of the day. In the younger class in whom a taste for
reading has been cultivated, and who are great consumers of "yellow
covered literature," and the men who read only the secula and partisan
journals, we witness the same weakness of moral and religious
character, and the same feeble grasp of the great truths of the gospel
complained of by Père Toulemont. To a great extent the reading of
non-Catholic literature, non-Catholic books, periodicals, novels and
journals, neutralizes in our sons and daughters the influence of
Catholic schools, academies, and colleges, and often effaces the good
impression received in them.

The prevalence of such a literature, so erroneous in doctrine, so
false in principle, and so debasing in tendency, must be deplored by
Catholics, not only as injurious to morals, and too often fatal to the
life of the soul, but as ruinous to modern civilization, which is
founded on the great principles of the Catholic religion, and has been
in great part created by the Catholic Church, chiefly by her supreme
pontiffs, and her bishops and clergy, regular and secular. The
tendency of modern literature, especially of journalism, a very modern
creation, is to reduce our civilization far below that of ancient
gentilism, and it seems hard that we who under God have civilized the
barbarians once should have to begin our work anew, and go through the
labor of civilizing them again. Our non-Catholic countrymen cannot
lose Christian civilization without our being compelled to suffer with
them. They drag us, as they sink down, after them. This country is our
home and is to be the home of our children and our children's
children, and we more than any other class of American citizens are
interested in its future. It is not, then, solely the injury we as
Catholics may receive from an irreligious and immoral literature that
moves us;  but also the injury it does to those who are not as yet
within the pale of the church, but between whom and us there is a real
solidarity as men and citizens, and who cannot suffer without our
suffering, and civilization itself suffering, with them.

As men, as citizens, as Christians, and as Catholics, it becomes to us
a most grave question--What can be done to guard against the dangers
which threaten religion and civilization from an irreligious and
immoral literature? This question is, no doubt, primarily a question
for the pastors of the church, but it is, in submission to them, also
a question for the Catholic laity, for they have their part, and an
important part, in the work necessary to be done. There can be no
doubt that bad books and irreligious journals are dangerous
companions, and the {468} most dangerous of all companions, for their
evil influence is more genial and more lasting. Plato and most of the
pagan philosophers and legislators required the magistrates to
intervene and suppress all books judged to be immoral and dangerous
either to the individual or to society, and in all modern civilized
states the law professes either to prevent or to punish their
publication. Even John Milton, in his "Areopagitica," or plea for
unlicensed printing, says he denies not to magistrates the right to
take note how books demean themselves, and if they offend to punish
them as any other class of offenders. English and American law leaves
every one free to publish what he pleases, but holds the author and
publisher responsible for the abuse they may make of the liberty of
the press. In all European states there was formerly, and in some
continental states there is still, a preventive censorship, more or
less rigid, and more or less effective. Formerly the civil law
enforced the censures pronounced by the church, but there is hardly a
state in which this is the case now.

Whatever our views of the civil freedom of the press may be,
ecclesiastical censorship, or censorship addressed to the conscience
by the spiritual authority, is still possible, and both proper and
necessary. The act of writing and publishing a book or pamphlet, or
editing and publishing a periodical or journal, is an act of which the
law of God takes account as much as any other act a man can perform,
and is therefore as fully within the jurisdiction of the spiritual
authority. So also is the act of reading, and the spiritual director
has the same right to look after what books his penitent reads, as
after what company he keeps. The whole subject of writing, editing,
publishing, and reading books, pamphlets, tractates, periodicals, and
journals, comes within the scope of the spiritual authority, and is
rightly subjected to ecclesiastical discipline. In point of fact, it
is so treated in principle by heterodox communions, as well as by the
church. The Presbyterians are even more rigid in their discipline as
to writing and reading than Catholics are, though they may not always
avow it. The Methodists claim the right for their conferences to
prescribe to Methodist communicants what books they ought not to read,
and seldom will you find a strict Methodist or Presbyterian reading a
Catholic book. It is much the same with all Protestants who belong to
what they call the church as distinguished from the congregation--a
distinction which does not obtain among Catholics, for with us all
baptized persons, not excommunicated, belong to the church. There is
no reason why the church should not direct me in my reading as well as
in my associations, or discipline me for writing or publishing a lie
in a book or a newspaper as well as for telling a lie orally to my
neighbor or swearing to a falsehood in a court of justice.

But when the church, as with us, is not backed in her censures by the
civil law, when her canons and decrees have no civil effect, the
ecclesiastical authority becomes practically only an appeal to the
Catholic conscience, and while her censures indicate the law of
conscience in regard to the matters censured, they depend on our
conscience alone for their effectiveness. Hence our remedy, in the
last analysis, as Père Toulemont implies, is in the appeal to
Christian consciences against the dangerous literature of the day; and
happily Catholics have a Christian conscience,--though sometimes in
now and then one it may be a little drowsy--that can be appealed to
with effect, for they have faith, do believe in the reality of the
invisible and the eternal, and know that it profiteth a man nothing to
gain the whole world and lose his own soil. The church declares by
divine constitution and assistance the law of God which governs
conscience, and when properly instructed by her, the Catholic has not
only a conscience, but an enlightened {469} conscience, and knows what
is right and what is wrong, what is useful and what is dangerous
reading, and can always act intelligently as well as conscientiously.

Père Toulemont shows in his essay that it is not reading or literature
that the church discourages or condemns, but the abuse of literature
and its employment for purposes contrary to the law of God, or the
reading of vile, debasing, and corrupting books, periodicals, and
journals which can only taint the imagination, sully the purity of the
heart, weaken or disturb faith, and stunt the growth of the Christian
virtues. The conscience of every Christian tells him that to read
immoral books, to familiarize himself with a low, vile, corrupt and
corrupting literature, whatever may be the beauty of its form, the
seductions of its style, or the charms of its dictation, is morally
and religiously wrong.

Père Toulemont shows by numerous references to their bulls and briefs
that the supreme pontiff have never from the earliest ages ceased to
warn the faithful against the writings of heretics and infidels, or to
prohibit the reading, writing, publishing, buying, selling, or even
keeping impure, immodest, or immoral books or publications of any sort
or form, as the civil law even with us prohibits obscene pictures and
spectacles. It was to guard the faithful against improper and
dangerous reading that St. Pius the Fifth established at Rome the
congregation of the Index; and that publications by whomsoever written
judged by the congregation to be unsafe, likely to corrupt faith or
morals, are still placed on the Index. Nothing is more evident than
that the church, while encouraging in all ages and countries
literature, science, and art, has never allowed her children the
indiscriminate reading of all manner of books, pamphlets, tractates,
and journals. There are writings the reading of which she prohibits as
the careful mother would prevent her innocent, thoughtless child from
swallowing poison. Her discipline in this respect is accepted and felt
to be wise and just by every man and woman in whom conscience is not
extinct or fast asleep. Even the pagan world felt its necessity as
does the modern Protestant world. The natural reason of every man
accepts the principle of this discipline, and asserts that there are
sorts of reading which no man, learned or unlearned, should permit
himself. The Christian conscience once awakened recoils with
instinctive horror from immoral books and publications, and no one who
really loves our Lord Jesus Christ can take pleasure in reading books,
periodicals, or journals that tend to weaken Christian faith and
corrupt Christian morals, any more than the pious son can take
pleasure in hearing his own father or mother traduced or calumniated;
and what such publications are, the Catholic, if his own instincts
fail to inform him, can always learn from the pastors of his church.

The first steps toward remedying the evils of the prevailing immoral
literature must be in an earnest appeal to all sincere Christians to
set their faces resolutely against all reading, whatever its form,
that tends to sap the great principles of revealed truths, to destroy
faith in the great mysteries of the Gospel, to subvert morality, to
substitute sentiment for reason, or feeling for rational conviction,
to ruin the family and the state, and thus undermine the foundations
of civilized society. This, if done, would erect the Christian
conscience into a real censorship of the press, and operate as a
corrective of its licentiousness, without in the least infringing on
its freedom. It would diminish the supply of bad literature by
lessening the demand. This would be much, and would create a Christian
literary public opinion, if I may so speak, which would become each
day stronger, more general, more effective, and which writers,
editors, publishers, and booksellers, would find themselves obliged to
respect, as politicians find themselves obliged to treat {470} the
Catholic religion with respect, whenever they wish to secure the votes
of Catholic citizens. Fidelity to conscience in those who have not yet
lost the faith, and in whom the spiritual life is not yet wholly
extinct, will go far toward remedying the evil, for the movement begun
will gather volume and momentum as it goes on.

The next step is for Catholics to regard it as a matter of conscience
to demand and sustain a pure and high-toned literature, or ample,
savory, and wholesome literary diet, for the public. Reading, in
modern civilized communities, has become in some sort a necessary of
life, a necessity, not a luxury, and when we take into consideration
the number of youth of both sexes which we send forth yearly from our
colleges, academies, private, parochial, conventual, and public
schools, we cannot fail to perceive that it is, and must be a growing
necessity in our Catholic community; and we may set this down as
certain, that when wholesome food is not to be had, people will feed
on unwholesome food, and die of that which they have taken to sustain
life. But if people, through indifference or negligence take no heed
whether the food be wholesome or unwholesome, or through a depraved
appetite prefer the unwholesome because more highly spiced, very
little wholesome food will be offered in the market. Many complaints
are heard from time to time of our Catholic press, because it does not
give us journals of a higher order, more really Catholic in principle,
of higher moral tone, and greater intellectual and literary merit.
Even supposing the facts to be as these complaints assume, the
complaints themselves are unjust. The editors and publishers of
Catholic journals edit and publish them as a lawful business, and very
naturally seek the widest circulation possible. To secure that, they
necessarily appeal to the broadest, and therefore the lowest average
of intelligence and virtue of the public they address. They who depend
on public sentiment or public opinion must study to conform to it, not
to redress or reform it. The journals of every country represent the
lowest average intelligence and virtue of the public for which they
are designed. The first condition of their existence is that they be
popular with their own public, party, sect, or denomination.
Complaints are also frequently heard of our Catholic publishers and
booksellers, for not supplying a general literature, scientific and
philosophical works, such as general readers, who though good
Catholics, are not particularly ascetic, and wish to have now and then
other than purely spiritual reading, and also such as scholars and
scientific men seek, in which the erudition and science proper are not
marred by theories and hypotheses, speculations and conjectures which
serve only to disturb faith and stunt the growth of the spiritual
life. But these complaints are also unjust. The publishers issue the
best books that the market will take up. There is no demand for other
or better books than they publish; and such books as are really
needed, aside from bibles, prayer-books, and books for spiritual
reading, they can publish only at their own expense. They are governed
by the same law that governs editors and publishers of newspapers or
journals, and naturally seek the broadest, and therefore in most
respects the lowest average, and issue works which tend constantly to
lower the standard instead of elevating it. The evil tendency, like
rumor, _crescit eundo_.

There is no redress but in the appeal to Christian consciences, since
the public now fills the place of patrons which was formerly filled by
princes and nobles, bishops and monastic or religious houses. The
matter cannot be left to regulate itself, for the public taste has not
been cultivated and formed to support the sort of reading demanded,
and will not do it from taste and inclination, or at all except from a
sense of duty. The great majority of the people of France are
Catholics, yet a few years ago there {471} were Parisian journals
hostile to Catholics, that circulated each from 40,000 to 60,000
copies daily, while the daily circulation of all the Catholic journals
and periodicals in all France did not exceed 25,000. It should be as
much a matter of conscience with Catholics to open a market for a
sound and healthy literature as to refrain from encouraging and
reading immoral and dangerous publications. We gain heaven not merely
by refraining from evil, but by doing good. The servant that wrapped
his talent in a clean napkin and hid it in the earth was condemned not
because he had lost or abused his talent, but because he had not used
it and put it out to usury. The church attaches indulgences to doing
good works, not to abstaining from bad works.

The taste of the age runs less to books than to reviews, magazines,
and especially to newspapers or the daily journals. People are too
busy, in too great a hurry, for works of long breath. Folios and
octavos frighten them, and they can hardly abide a duodecimo. Their
staple reading is the telegraphic despatches in the daily press. Long
elaborate articles in reviews are commended or censured by many more
persons than read them, and many more read than understand them, for
people nowadays think very little except about their business, their
pleasures, or the management of their party. Still the review or
magazine is the best compromise that can be made between the elaborate
treatise and the clever leader of the journal. It is the best literary
medium now within reach of the Catholic public, and can meet better
than any other form of publication our present literary wants, and
more effectively stimulate thought, cultivate the understanding and
the taste, and enable us to take our proper place in the literature
and science of the country. But here again conscience must be appealed
to, the principle of duty must come in. Few men can write and publish
at their own expense a magazine of high character, of pure literary
taste, sound morals, and sound theology, able in literary and
scientific merit, in genius, instruction, and amusement, to compete
successfully with the best magazines going, and there is at this
moment no public formed to hand large enough to sustain such
periodical, and even the men to write it have in some sort to be
created, or at least to be drawn out. It must be for a time supported
by men who do not want it as a luxury or to meet their own literary
tastes, but who appreciate its merits, are aware of the service it may
render in creating a taste for wholesome instead of unwholesome
reading. That is, it most be sustained by persons who, in purchasing
it, act not so much from inclination as from a sense of duty, which is
always a nobler, and in the long run, a stronger motive of action,
than devotion to interest or pleasure; for it is in harmony with all
that is true and good, and has on it the blessing of heaven. It is
precisely because Catholics can act from a sense of duty that we can
overcome the evil that is ruining society.

No doubt we are here pleading, to a certain extent, our own cause, but
we only ask others to act on the principle on which we ourselves are
acting. THE CATHOLIC WORLD is not published as a private speculation,
nor with the expectation of personal gain. Our cause is what we hold
to be here and now the Catholic cause, and it is from a sense of duty
that we devote ourselves to it. We are deeply conscious of the need
for us Catholics in the United States of a purer and more wholesome
literature than any which is accessible to the great majority, and
than any which can be produced outside of the Catholic community, or
by other than Catholics. We need it for ourselves as Catholics, we
need it for our country as a means of arresting the downward tendency
of popular literature, and of influencing for good those who are our
countrymen, though unhappily not within our communion. There is
nothing personal to us in the cause {472} we serve, and it is no more
_ours_ than it is that of every Catholic who has the ability to serve
it. If we plead for our magazine, it is only as it is identified with
the Catholic cause in our country, and we can be as disinterested in
so soliciting support for it as if it was in other hands, and we
solicit support for it no farther than it appeals to the Catholic
conscience. We have seen the danger to the country, and the
destruction to souls threatened by the popular literature of the day,
and we are doing what we can in our unpretending way to commence a
reaction against it, and give to our American public a taste for
something better than they now feed on. We cannot prevent our
Catholic youth who have a taste for reading from reading the vile and
debasing popular literature of the day, unless we give them something
as attractive and more wholesome in its place, and this cannot be done
without the hearty and conscientious cooperation of the Catholic
community with us.

Catholics are not a feeble and helpless colony in the United States.
We are a numerous body, the largest religious denomination in the
country. There are but two cities in the world that have a larger
Catholic population than this very city of New York, and there are
several Catholic nations holding a very respectable rank in the
Catholic world, that have not so large, and upon the whole so wealthy
a Catholic population as the United States. We are numerous enough,
and have means enough to found and sustain all the institutions,
religious, charitable, educational, literary, scientific, and artistic
needed by a Catholic nation, and there is no Catholic nation where
Catholic activity finds fewer "lets and hindrances" from the civil
government. We are free, and we have in proportion to our numbers our
full share of influence in public affairs, municipal, state, and
national; no part of the population partakes more largely of the
general prosperity of the country, and no part has suffered less from
the late lamentable civil war. We have our Church organized under a
regular hierarchy, with priests rapidly increasing in numbers,
churches springing up all over the land, and Catholic emigrants from
the old world pouring in by thousands and hundreds of thousands. We
are numerous enough and strong enough in all religious, literary, and
scientific matters, to suffice for ourselves. There is no reason in
the world, but our own spiritual indolence and the torpidity of our
consciences, why we should continue to feed on the unwholesome
literary garbage provided for us by the humanitarianism and pruriency
of the age. We are able to have a general literature of our own, the
production of genuine Catholic taste and genius, if we will it, and at
present are better able than the Catholics of any other nation; for
our means are ample, and the government and civil institutions place
no obstacles in our way, which can be said of Catholics nowhere else.

Our Catholic community is large enough, and contains readers enough,
to sustain as many periodicals as are needed, and to absorb large
editions enough of literary and scientific works of the highest
character to make it an object with the trade to publish them, as well
as with authors to write them. Works of imagination, what is called
light literature, if conceived in a true spirit, if they tend to give
nature a normal development, and to amuse without corrupting the
reader, ought to find with us a large public to welcome and profit by
them. What the people of any Catholic nation can do to provide for the
intellectual and aesthetic wants of a Catholic people, we Catholics in
the United States can do. If we are disposed to set ourselves
earnestly about it with the feeling that it is a matter of conscience.

And we must do it, if we mean to preserve our youth to the church, and
have them grow up with a robust faith, and strong and masculine
virtues, to keep them clear from the humanitarian sentimentality which
marks the {473} age and the country. Universal education, whether a
good or an evil, is the passion of modern society, and must be
accepted. Indeed, we are doing our best to educate all our children,
and the great mass of them are destined to grow up readers, and will
have reading of some sort. Education will prove no blessing to them,
however carefully or religiously trained while at school, if as soon
as they leave the school, they seek their mental nutriment in the
poisonous literature now so rife. No base companions or vicious
company could do so much to corrupt as the sensation novels, the
humanitarian, rationalistic, and immoral books, magazines, and
journals, which, as thick as the frogs of Egypt, now infest the
country. Our children and youth leave school at the most critical age,
and a single popular novel, or a single sophistical essay, may undo
the work of years of pious training in our colleges and conventual
schools. Parents have more to apprehend for their children when they
have finished their school terms than ever before, and it is precisely
when they have left school, when they come home and go out into
society, that the greatest dangers and temptations assail them. From
their leaving school to their settlement in life is the period for
which they most need ample intellectual and moral provision in
literature, and it is precisely for this period that little or no such
provision is made.

Hence the urgency of the appeal to Catholic consciences first to avoid
as much as possible the pernicious literature of the age, and second
to create and provide to the utmost of our ability, good and wholesome
literature for the mass of our people, such a literature as only they
who live in the communion with the saints, drink in the lessons of
divine wisdom, and feast their souls on celestial beauty, can
produce--a secular literature indeed, but a literature that embodies
all that is pure, free, beautiful and charming in nature, and is
informed with the spirit of Catholic love and truth--a robust and
manly literature, that cherishes all God's works, loves all things,
gentle and pure, noble and elevated, strong and enduring, and is not
ashamed to draw inspiration from the cross of Christ. It will require
much labor, many painful sacrifices to work our way up from the depths
to which we have descended, and our progress will be slow and for a
long time hardly perceptible, but Catholic faith, Catholic love,
Catholic conscience, has once succeeded when things were more
desperate, transformed the world, and can do so again. Nothing is
impossible to it. It is your faith that overcomes the world. Leo X.
said when the press was first made known, "The art of printing was
invented for the glory of God, for the propagation of our holy faith,
and the advancement of knowledge."  [Footnote 82]

  [Footnote 82: Decree of Leo X.  Session 10 of the Council of
  Latern.]

------

{474}


Translated from the French.

EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN'S LETTERS FROM PARIS.


In the following paper we propose to fill as far as possible the
hiatus which occurs between the seventh and eighth books of Mlle. de
Guérin's journal, giving such details from her letters as will satisfy
the curiosity that many of her readers must have felt concerning the
visit she made to Paris at the time of her brother's wedding.

In a letter to M. Paul Juemper, dated March 15, 1838, Guérin describes
his fiancée, with more accuracy perhaps than ardor, and yet there can
be no doubt that the marriage was one of love and congeniality. In the
latter part of his life Maurice appears to have concealed his deepest
emotions as successfully as he had revealed them in earlier years.

"I find myself on my return better in health, and full of hope for the
future. What does that mean? What novelty is this? Nothing but the
most common event in the world, one which takes place every day in
every country--namely marriage, here, in Paris, to a child who was
born for me, eighteen years ago, six thousand leagues from Paris, in
Batavia! She is named Caroline de Gervain, has great blue eyes that
light up her delicate face, a very slender figure, a foot of oriental
minuteness--in short (without any lover-like vanity), an exquisite and
refined _ensemble_, that will suit you very well. Her fortune is in
Indian trade: not large now, but with every prospect of development.
The contracts are drawn up and everything is in order; we are only
awaiting the arrival of some documents from Calcutta, indispensable to
the celebration of a marriage, to tie the last knot. If you leave in
May, you will be here in time to stand by the death-bed of my
bachelorhood, and to see me cross the Rubicon."

Mlle. de Gervain lived with her aunt, Mlle. Martin-Laforêt, in a
_pavillion_ in the Rue Cherche-Midi, and it is from this charming
Indian house that Eugénie's first Parisian letter is dated.



  TO M. DE GUÉRIN.

  Paris, Oct. 8, 1838.

  Oh! how I slept in the little pink bed beside Caroline! I wished to
  write to you, dear papa, before going to bed, but they would not let
  me, and they said too that the mail would not go out before this
  morning, so that you would get the letter no sooner. I should have
  written to you at each relay if it had been possible, for I said to
  myself: "Now papa and Euphrasie, Mimi and Eran, are thinking of the
  traveller." How I thought of you all! you followed me the whole way.
  At last I am here, out of the way of dust, diligences and the
  annoyances of travelling, and welcomed and cosseted enough to
  compensate a thousand times over for the four long days of fatigue.
  I should like to tell you everything, but there are so many, many
  things;--how I left you, and bowled away towards Paris, and met them
  all and fell into a dozen arms. Why weren't you on the Place Notre
  Dame des Victoires when, just as I was driving off in a carriage
  with Charles, I saw Maurice and Caro and Aunt running and calling
  me, and kissing me, one through one window and another through the
  other? Oh! it was so nice!

  No one ever entered Paris more pleasantly. We went as fast as we
  could to Rue du Cherche-Midi, talking, laughing and questioning.
  "How is papa? and his leg? is he as well as he was last year?"
  Maurice, poor fellow, cried as he looked at me, and talked of you
  all, Mimi, Eran, everybody, they all love you and ask after you.
  When I came down stairs, I distributed your letters, and then came
  breakfast, which was very welcome to me. Half through breakfast,
  Auguste entered, a little surprised that I had arrived so early, and
  full of kind inquiries for you all . . .

{475}

  I thought I should reach Paris ground to powder, and here I am as
  fresh as if I had just stepped out of a bandbox. The dust was
  suffocating during the thirty leagues of that tiresome Sologne, and
  the rumbling was like thunder on the paved road from Orleans to
  Paris. It was impossible to sleep that night, but during the others
  I took naps, and even slept several hours--but oh! the difference of
  sleeping in a rose-colored bed, and in a diligence, tossed and
  jerked about! It was dreadful in the Sologne, where we went at a
  snail's pace, but fortunately it did not rain--then the passengers
  have to get out sometimes and push the wheels.

  After breakfast I went to mass at St. Sulpice, and then to the
  Tuileries when the king was absent. It was very grand and regal; the
  throne is superb, and with "my mind's eye" I saw Louis XIV. and
  Napoleon. There were a great many visitors, English people, and some
  brothers from the Christian schools. A friend of Maurice's had got
  us entrance tickets for yesterday, and as I don't often have a
  chance to see palaces, I was glad to get the opportunity.

  Good-by, dear papa; to-day I say only two words of greeting. Maurice
  embraces you all as he embraced me yesterday. This is for Mimi and
  Eran. I send much love to Euphrasie from myself and from Maurice,
  who is delighted to know she is at Le Cayla. All sorts of kind
  messages to the parsonage and above all to the gimblette
  maker,--they were very welcome and every one liked them. They asked
  me if Augustine had grown tall and if she was mischievous, and I
  said yes and no;--yes for the height, you understand,--she is all
  virtue since her first communion.

  M. Angler came to bid me welcome, and we are already acquainted; he
  looks good and is good. M. d'A. is coming this evening. I must leave
  you, dear papa. Keep well,--take care of yourself; and don't be
  uneasy you your traveller, who has but one trial, that she cannot
  see you, and knows you are two hundred leagues away. Two hundred
  leagues! but my thoughts ran every instant to Le Cayla. We are in
  such a quiet place that I think myself in the country, and I slept
  without waking once until six o'clock. Tell Jeanne-Marie and Miou
  that everyone asks after them. My compliments to the whole household
  and to all who are interested in me.

But this charming picture had its _wrong side_, only revealed by
Eugénie to Mlle. Louise de Bayne, and to the cousin with whom she
lived during part of her stay at Paris, Professor Auguste Raynaud.
There was a worm at the heart of the bud, and she knew too well that
it must wither without blooming. At the very meeting in the Place
Notre Dame des Victoires, which she described so gaily in the letter
to Le Cayla, the sight of Maurice's pallor aroused her anxiety, an
anxiety that increased daily and marred the pleasure to which she had
looked forward for months with ardent longing. "At the time of his
marriage," says M. Barbey d'Aurevilly, an intimate friend of both
brother and sister, "Maurice was already attacked with the disease of
which he died a short time after. He already felt its first
sufferings, its first illusions and early symptoms, which made his
style of beauty more than ever touching; for among imaginary heads he
had that beauty which we may attribute to the last of the
Abencerrages. Now what others did not see in the joy and excitement of
that day, she saw, with those sad, prophetic eyes that see everything
when they love!"

  "I want for nothing, my friend," she wrote to Louise de Bayne; "they
  love me and treat me most cordially at my future sister-in-law's,
  and here my kind cousin and his wife vie with each other in friendly
  attention. My sister-in-law gets my dresses, gives me a pink bed,
  and a jewel of an oratory next my room, where one would pray for
  mere pleasure. Oh! there is enough to make me happy, and yet I am
  beginning to weary of it, and to say that happiness is nowhere.
  Write to me; tell me what you are doing in the mountains. I am
  waiting impatiently for news from Le Cayla. I long to hear about
  them all, and to see them in thought. Write to Marie sometime, it
  will please her, and papa too, who loves you, you know, but do not
  speak of Maurice's health, for I say nothing to them on the subject,
  thinking it useless to alarm them when the trouble may pass off."

{476}

This was the one uneasiness that disturbed her enjoyment in Paris,
"the drop of wormwood with which God wets the lips of his elect, that
they be robust in virtue and suffering," as d'Aurevilly said.


  TO MME. DE MAISTRE.
  Oct. 23.

  I have seen many churches, new and old, and I prefer the old. Notre
  Dame, Saint Eustache, Saint Roch, and others whose names I forget,
  please me more than the Madeline with its pagan form, without belfry
  or confessionals, expressive of an unbelieving age; and Notre Dame
  de Lorette, pretty as a boudoir. I like churches that make one think
  of God, with _vaulted roofs leading to contemplation_, where one
  neither sees nor hears people. I am perfectly contented in
  l'Abbaye-aux-Bois, a simple little church that reminds me of the one
  at Andillac. I go there because it is in our parish, and then, too,
  I've found an excellent priest there, gentle, devout, and
  enlightened, a disciple of M. Dupanloup. I should have liked to go
  to him, but they told me that he lived at a distance, and I must
  have everything within my reach, for I am still like a bird just let
  out of a cage, hardly daring to stir; I should have lost myself a
  hundred times in one quarter if I had not always had a companion.
  However, I have scoured Paris thoroughly in every direction; first
  mounting the towers of Notre Dame, whence the eye reaches over the
  immense city and takes in its general plan, after which they took me
  to the Invalides, the Louvre, and the Bois de Boulogne. The dome of
  the Invalides, Notre Dame, and the picture galleries, struck me
  most. You ask for my impressions of Paris--it is all admirable, but
  nothing astonishes me. At every step the eye and mind are arrested,
  but in the country, too, I paused over flowers, grass, and wonderful
  little creatures. Every place has its wonders--here those of man,
  there those of God, which are very beautiful, and will not pass
  away. Kings may see their palaces decay, but the ants will always
  have their dwelling places. Having made these reflections I will
  leave you, and work on a dress. . . .


  TO MLLE. LOUISE DE BAYNE.
  All Saints' Day, 1838.

  . . . . I do not send you news. I ought to write to you of what goes
  on within and around me, that you might know my life, and it would be
  charming to write so, but time flies like a bird and carries me off
  on its wings. In the morning: church, breakfast, a little work; in
  the afternoon: a walk or drive, dinner at five o'clock,
  conversation, music--the day is gone, and nine and ten o'clock come
  to make us wonder where it went. We go to bed at ten, just like good
  country folk. In that and many other things I follow my usual
  habits, and live in Paris as if I were not there. Good by, the bell
  is ringing.

  Seven o'clock. Here I am, pen in hand, sitting by the fire, with the
  piano sounding, people reading, Pitt (our Criquet) asleep, and
  memories of you mingling with all these things in this Paris
  _salon_. .  .  . It is not apropos, but I take my recollections of
  things as they come, and I must not fail to tell you what pleasure
  you gave me at the Spanish museum of painting where I met you. It
  was you, Louise: a head full of life, oval face, arch expression,
  and your eyes looking at me, your cheeks that I longed to kiss. I
  was so charmed with the likeness that I passed by again to see my
  dear Spanish maiden. Certainly there must be something Spanish about
  you, for I see you in St. Theresa, and in this noble and beautiful
  unknown.

  The museum amused, or rather interested me extremely, for one does
  not get amusement from beautiful things, or among wonderful works
  with ascetic faces such as compose this museum of painting. And what
  shall I tell you of the mummies, the thousand fantastic and
  grotesque Egyptian gods--cats and crocodiles--a paradise of idolatry
  that no one would care to enter? I looked long at some cloth four or
  five thousand years old, and at a piece of muslin and a little skein
  of thread, all framed under glass--how many ages have they been in
  existence? I should never end if I were learned and could describe
  these curiosities and antiquities by the thousand--Etruscan vases,
  exquisite in form and color, that look as if they were made
  yesterday. The ancients certainly possessed the secret of eternal
  works.

  This is my life, seeing and admiring, and then entering into myself,
  or going in search of those I love to tell them all that I see and
  feel. If I could I would write to you forever, which means very
  often, and what should I not scribble? what do I not scribble? Know
  that I am writing in the midst of musicians, under Maurice's eye as
  he sits laughing over my journal, and adds for its embellishment the
  expression of his homage to the ladies of Rayssac. It was he who
  noticed that picture first and pointed it out to me. He knows what
  gives me pleasure and leads me to it.

{477}

  We always go out together when the weather is good, sometimes to the
  Tuileries, sometimes to the Luxembourg; but I like the Tuileries
  best with its pretty things-sculpture, flowers, children playing
  about, swans in a basin, and looking down on it all the royal
  château illuminated by the setting sun. I begin to know my way about
  a little in the streets and gardens, and I look upon it as a great
  triumph to be able to go to l'Abbaye-aux-Bois alone, which is a
  great convenience, for I can go to week-day mass without troubling
  any one, which was a restraint upon me. One can go about here as
  safely as in Albi or Gaillac. They had frightened me about the
  dangers of Paris, when there are really none except for imprudent or
  crazy people. No one speaks to any person going about his own
  business. In the evening it is different. I would not go out alone
  then for the world, especially on the boulevards, where they say the
  devil leads the dance. We pass through sometimes returning from Mme.
  Raynaud's, and nothing has ever struck me except the illumination of
  gas in the cafés, running along the streets like a thread of fire. I
  annoyed a Parisian by saying that the glow-worms in our hedges were
  quite as effective. "Mademoiselle, what an insult to Paris!" It made
  us laugh, as one does laugh sometimes at nothing. Now I am going to
  the concert; I want to know what music is, and tell you my
  impressions.

------

  TO M. DE GUÉRIN.
  PARIS, NOV. 6, 1838.

  Never was a day more charming, for it began with Grembert's arrival,
  and it ends with a letter to you, my dear papa. . . The wedding day
  is fixed for the 15th. Last Sunday the bans were published for the
  last time at l'Abbaye-aux-Bois. . .

  You ask if I have everything I need, and if I am satisfied in every
  respect with my Parisian life. Yes, dear papa, in every sense, and
  especially for this reason, that I admire the care and assistance
  that Providence bestows upon us in all places. I have never been
  struck so forcibly with the abundant aids to piety anywhere as in
  Paris; every day there are sermons in one place or another,
  associations and benedictions. If the devil reigns in Paris, perhaps
  God is served there better than in other places. Good and evil find
  here their utmost expression; it is Babylon and Jerusalem in one. In
  the midst of all this, I lead my customary life, and find in my
  Abbey everything I need. M. Legrand is a friend of l'Abbé de
  Rivières, holy and zealous like him, and full of kindness. He
  provides me with books and with kind and gentle advice; it will not
  be his fault if I don't improve very much. One can save one's soul
  anywhere. . .

  Our quarter of Cherche Midi is charming. M. d'Aurevilly calls it
  _Trouve Bonheur_, an appropriate name so far Maurice is concerned.
  He will be happy, as happy as he can be--at least everything looks
  hopeful. He could not be allied to better souls. Caroline is an
  angel; her pure, tender soul is full of piety. You will be pleased
  with her, and with Maurice too, who only does things slowly, as his
  fashion is; but there is much to thank God for in such conduct,
  which is very rare among young Parisians. M. Buquet speaks very
  highly of him; he will bless the marriage, much to our
  gratification. The great day, which is to open a new life to our
  Maurice, engrosses us in a thousand ways. He is the most peaceful
  person concerned, and regards his future and all these affairs with
  admirable _sang-froid_. M. Buquet says the fellowship is worth
  nothing to him, and that he will find something else for him; so you
  see he is established in the good nest Providence has provided for
  him, without troubling yon.

  Have I told you everything, and made you see thoughts, words, and
  actions, just as you like? Eran is reading the paper and warming
  himself. Everybody sends you kisses, and Caro her filial affection.
  Yon would do well not to go to Rayseac when it is cold or rainy.
  Advice given, and bulletin finished, I throw my arms around your
  neck, and pass on to Mimi.

----

  You dear Mimi, I thank you more than I can express for your night
  letter, written in defiance of sleep. Poor Mimi, plagued and busy,
  while I play the princess in Paris! This thought comes to me often
  in the day, disturbing my repose a little, my _gentle quietude_. I
  say to myself that our time is differently employed, but I help you
  in my heart. We are as well as possible here and at Auguste's. Don't
  let Euphrasie leave you, I beg and beseech; you would be too lonely
  without her gaiety and kindness. I put both my arms around her to
  keep her. M. le Curé is very good to come and amuse papa: it is an
  act of friendly charity that I shall not forget Remember me to him
  and to Mariette. Also to Augustine, Jeanne-Marie, the shepherd,
  Paul, and Gilles, and thank them all for their compliments. Good-by,
  with a kiss from Maurice, Caro and myself.

----

  TO THE SAME.
  Nov. 7, 1838

  I shall write to you every day until I receive letters from home,
  that you may see that I do not forget you, dear inhabitants of Le
  Cayla. The whirlwind of Paris will not blow me away yet awhile. That
  remark of papa's made me laugh, and showed me that he does not know
  me yet. I am very sure that you, Mimi, had no such idea. I have told
  you that I lead the same life here as at Le Cayla, and with this
  {478} advantage, that there is nothing to worry me, for I have a
  church within reach, and entire liberty. We are all busy with
  spiritual matters now--our ladies with theirs and I with mine.
  Maurice is consigned to Sunday, M. Buquet's only free day. All is
  going on well in this respect, and Caroline is so edifying that she
  seems to be following in Mimi's footsteps. In this too I admire the
  workings of Providence in using this marriage as an occasion of
  salvation.

  It is beautiful to-day, one of those fine days so rare in Paris,
  where the sky is almost always pale and cloudless. This struck me at
  first, but now I am used to it as to other things that I see. I am
  used to carriages, and am no more afraid of there running over me
  than of Gilles' cart. We shall go in the sunshine to see Mme.
  Lamarlière Auguste, and I don't know whom besides, for there is no
  end to visits when one is once in train. In going to see our cousin
  at M. Laville's, Erembert and Maurice met M. Lastic, who is living
  in Paris. It is astonishing how many acquaintances one meets in the
  great world where one thinks one's self unknown.

  Indians visit here, Indians without end. A friend of Maurice's, H.
  Le Fèvre came to spend the evening; a nice little young man, who
  looks very gentle and refined. He asked me when I was going to see
  my good friend De Maistre; he is a friend of M. Adrien's, who is at
  present wandering amid the snows of Norway, so that he can not come
  to the wedding. We shall muster pretty strong, though only the
  _indispensable_ will be there.

  . . . 13th. We have just come from the Pantheon, a church passed
  over from God to the Devil, from St. Genevieve to the heroes of
  July, and to Voltaire and Rousseau. It is an admirable work of art,
  however; the interior, the dome, and the crypts, gloomy, secluded,
  buried beneath vaults and only lighted here and there with lamps,
  are quite effective. The imagination would easily take fright in
  this darkness of death, or of glory if you choose, for all the dead
  are illustrious there, as in the Elysium of which Voltaire and
  Rousseau are the gods. In the depths of the crypt stands the statue
  of Voltaire, smiling apparently at the glory of his tomb, which is
  decorated with magnificent emblems. That of Rousseau is more
  severe--a sarcophagus, from which a hand is thrust forth, bearing a
  torch, "that illumines and ever shall illumine the world," according
  to our guide, who was a cicerone as brilliant as the lantern he
  carried. The summit of the dome is at a prodigious elevation, twice
  the height of the steeple of Ste. Cécile. Paris is seen beautifully
  from there, but the picture needed sunlight and there was none.
  Good-by; to-morrow at this time Maurice will be married at the
  Mayoralty, and day after tomorrow in church.

  16th. Yesterday was the grand and solemn day, the beautiful day for
  Maurice, Caro and all of us. We only needed you, papa, and Mimi, to
  complete our happiness, as we all said with sincere regret. You
  would have been delighted to see this family festival, the most
  beautiful I ever witnessed. Everything went smoothly, the weather
  was soft and pleasant, and God seemed to smile on the marriage, so
  suitably it was conducted, and in such a Christian manner. How
  pretty Caro was in her bridal dress, and wreath of orange flowers
  under her veil à la Bengali! and Maurice looked well too. H. Angler
  was so charmed that he wanted to paint them in church, kneeling on
  their crimson Prie-Dieu. The church displayed all its grandeur, and
  the organ playing during mass was very good. M. Buquet blessed the
  marriage, and said mass, assisted by M. Legrand. Many of the _beau
  monde_ were present, and a dozen carriages stood before the church
  doors. Soeur d'Yversen was to be there. M. Laurichais, confessor to
  our ladies, in short all the friends and relations united their
  prayers and good wishes during the ceremony. I send M. Buquet's
  discourse, which every one thought perfect. Why can't I add to it
  his kindly voice, and the look of joy and emotion with which he
  spoke to Maurice, whom he loves sincerely.

  You will like to know, papa, how everything passed off on the
  memorable day, and I like very much to describe it, for it seems as
  if you would be able to share our pleasure, and see your children in
  church, at dinner and at the evening party. The dinner was charming,
  like every thing else, each course served elegantly; fish, meats,
  dessert and wines. The turkey, dressed with our truffles was king of
  the feast. We drank freely and merrily of Madeira and Constance, and
  it all seemed like the marriage of Cana. I sat between Auguste and
  M. d'Aurevilly, very charming neighbors, and we talked and laughed
  very pleasantly, though Auguste scolded me for having no poetry,
  which he felt disposed to read, and we had never thought of writing;
  there's something bettor for Caro, which comes from the heart and
  will be unfailingly hers every day. How modest she was in church,
  and how pretty she looked in the evening! She was quite the queen of
  the occasion. A dozen ladies came, all very elegant, and I don't
  know how many men, friends of Maurice's. They were very gracious,
  and asked me to dance; yes--_dance!_ _M. le Curé_ had better take
  holy water and exorcise me. I danced with my groomsman, Charles; it
  was _de rigueur_, and I could not decline without being conspicuous,
  and playing {479} the not very amusing part of wall-flower. Auguste
  performed his paternal duties admirably. He begs me to say a word of
  commendation for him, and I might well say a hundred in praise of
  his friendship and devotion to us.

The friend referred to in the following letter, and with whom Mlle. de
Guérin left Paris early in the December of 1838, was the _Marie_ to
whom she wrote the two delightful letters, introduced into the sixth
and seventh books of her journal. Mme. la Baronne Henriette Marie de
Maistre was the sister of M. Adrien de Sainte Marie, a friend of
Guérin's, and her intimacy with Eugénie had its first foundation in
ceremonious notes written about Maurice when he was ill with a fever
at Le Cayla in 1837. Mme. de Maistre soon became endeared to Eugénie
by her fascinating powers of attraction, and also by her mental and
physical sufferings, for sufferers belonged to the "dove of Le Cayla"
by natural right.


  TO MLLE. LOUISE DE BAYNE.
  Paris, Dec. 1, 1838.

  M. de Frigeville is the most gracious, amiable, and obliging of men.
  At length I found out his address, and sent my parcel with a little
  note, which he answered at once, and followed in person the next
  day. The good man had taken infinite pains to find me and ended by
  applying to the police--a last resource that amused us a good deal.
  We cannot profit by the acquaintance even now, or by his offers of
  politeness "for anything in his power," as he expressed himself to
  our ladies, for I was out when he came,--the fates are against me.
  Mlle. Laforêt thought him very agreeable and exquisitely courteous.
  I send this little notice of him for you, dear friend, and make use
  of the chance to write to you up to the last moment.

  I am going to the country, to another Rayssac, for Les Coynes is
  among the mountains;--shall I find another Louise there? She is a
  little like you, I think; but, my friend, you will always be my
  friend. I will write to you from there if you like. Whom and what
  shall I see? Everything looks very attractive, and yet I go forward
  with timidity to meet these unknown and known. Pity my wandering
  life, dragged from place to place;--no, do not pity me, for it is
  the will of heaven, and all we have to do is to follow the hand that
  leads us without reasoning: that alone sustains and consoles us,
  teaching us to turn all things to account for heaven. I am less
  attracted to the world than ever; there is more calmness and
  happiness within Sister Clementine's door than in any place in the
  world. I went to see her yesterday, but she was to be in retreat
  until Monday, much to my regret, for I love to see and listen to
  these good religious, these souls set apart from the world. . . I
  should like to send you something charming and worthy of Paris, but
  charming things are rare everywhere; so rare that I have none to
  spare today. However, I did see the outside of Versailles;--the king
  was expected, so they shut the gates on us. Did I tell you of this,
  and of our _royal_ wrath? perhaps I did in my last letter.

  I should have described the concert to you this morning, if Maurice,
  who was to have been my escort, had not been taken ill just as we
  were going;--pain instead of pleasure, no uncommon change in life.
  His little wife, quite crimson with emotion, began to nurse him and
  make much of him, and all grew calm under her gentle influence. I
  hope Maurice will be happy with her,--I do not know any woman like
  her in disposition, heart, or face. She is a foreigner, and I study
  her, that I may adapt myself to her, and enter into her feelings if
  she cannot into mine. There must be mutual concessions of taste and
  ideas among us all, to ensure affection and family peace:--that you
  see everywhere, but we shall have no difficulty with one so amiable
  and generous. There is not a day when I do not receive proofs of
  affection from my charming foreign sister. They always speak of her
  to us as the Indian. Mme. Lamarlière thought her very
  charming;--pretty and well dressed. Today a bulletin of the visit
  and her _toilette_ is at Gaillac, and I am sure that it is all over
  town by this time that the Indian wore a dress of _soie antique_, a
  black satin shawl, trimmed with blond and lined with blue, a lace
  collar, and a black velvet hat with ostrich plume, "overwhelming
  heaven and earth," as Mme. Lamarlière says

  Good-by, my dear. I kiss you and say love me, think of me, believe
  me, write to me, talk of me. Love to you all.

  One word more; I like to talk to you best because we seem to
  understand each other. I will say good-by soon, for two o'clock is
  striking and I have an appointment in my chapel at
  l'Abbaye-aux-Bois, for I wish to put my conscience in order before
  going away. I do not know to whom I shall have recourse in the
  country, so far from any church. Fortunately, we {480} are to spend
  Christmas at Nevers, and I shall try to grow calm, for I am not so
  today. I tell you this because you are alone with Pulchérié, whom
  nothing surprises. Pray in the chapel at Rayssac for your poor
  friend, the Parisian, who will repay you as well as she can.
  Good-by, good-by; till when? . . .

  TO MLLE. DE BAYNE.
  CHRISTMAS EVE, NEVERS, 1888.

  I have only time to date my letter, dear friend, for the bells are
  calling me to midnight mass. I listen to their clashing peals, and
  think of the pretty little tinkle of the Andillac bell. Who would
  have said last year that I should be so far away? but so God leads
  us to things unforeseen. I'm going to the cathedral to pray for all
  whom I love, and so for you.


  Two days since those lines--two days of festival, prayer, offices,
  and letters written and received, without preventing me from being
  with you, my dearest. Our hearts can always be together before God,
  and we cannot meet in a better way or in any other way for a long
  time. I shall not be at Le Cayla before the fine weather comes, and
  we can have flowers and sunshine to show our Indian; far enough we
  are from that season, as I see by the white earth and pallid sky,
  all snowy and cold.

  How you would love my friend, dear Louise! She is so good, so
  charming and attractive, and of such a high order of mind, that I
  keep congratulating myself upon possessing her friendship and
  affection. . .

  Her father takes the best of care of me, and even comes to my room
  to see if I have a good fire when I say my prayers. He is afraid
  this cold climate may hurt me, and said laughing one very cold day,
  "The southern flower will be frozen." Good, holy man! I love him
  very much, and he makes me think of your father in his mode of
  thought and culture. He has read everything, and he writes too; some
  selections from his works, that he was kind enough to read to me,
  might have been written by a Benedictine. He knows Carmelites,
  Trappists, charitable orders, every one in short who is learned or
  religious. Charles the Tenth loved him and saw him often; if he had
  only listened to him!

  Travellers from Goritz come here, among others a M. de Ch----, who
  comes and goes for the exiles, from St. Petersburg to Vienna and
  sometimes to Spain, from one court to another. He charms us with
  stories of his adventures, and I never saw a man more agreeable,
  handsome, witty or cultivated. He is a learned geologist, and
  collects specimens, goes down into volcanoes and domesticates
  himself among ruins.

  He lived a week in Sallust's room at Pompeii, drove about the
  streets in his carriage, entered the theatre, made excavations under
  the very eyes of the Duchess of Berry, and saw a thief whom the lava
  had caught while he was stealing a purse, at which we laughed, and
  remarked that iniquity is sooner or later discovered. I have seen
  his cabinets of natural history, mineralogy, and antiques, and also
  the borders of Cicero's dining-hall exquisitely painted with a
  delicacy inimitable or unimitated. To all these gifts, M. Ch----
  unites those of a good Christian; he turns all his studies and
  discoveries to advantage for the faith, and proves that science and
  faith, geology and Genesis, are of one accord. If you think me very
  learned, remember that I've seen Paris, and that Paris sharpens
  one's wits; however, most of this I have acquired in the
  neighborhood of Les Coques.


  TO MLLE. MARIE DE GUÉRIN.
  NEVERS JANUARY 12.

  We return to Paris early in January, and shall be introduced to the
  grandeurs of the world. Hitherto I have known only amiable, pretty
  simplicity; now come baronesses, duchesses, princesses, and as many
  clever people as I choose. It will amuse me like a picture-gallery,
  for the heart finds no place among such scenes, far less the soul.
  God and the world do not agree. Ah me! how little they think of
  heaven amid all this rush and sparkle! So says my friend, who knows
  the world and is detached from it.

  M. d'Aurevilly, in his unpublished reminiscences of Mlle. de Guérin,
  gives a graphic description of her as she appeared in the Parisian
  world, where no doubt she was subjected to a close scrutiny as the
  sister of the elegant and gifted Maurice de Guérin.

  "We can affirm," he says, "that never did creature of worldly
  attractions appear to us so sweet and lovely as this charming fawn,
  reared like St. Genevieve among _pastours_. . . .

  "Drawn from her country home, brought in state like a princess into
  the intimidating light of lustres, she came without embarrassment or
  awkwardness, with a chaste, patrician self-possession, that showed
  in spite of fortune's wrongs for what class in society she was born.
  Without ever having been there, she was _Faubourg Saint Germain_,
  Byron tells us in his {481} memoir that he witnessed the
  introduction of Miss Edgeworth into London society, and that she
  made him think of Jeanie Deans. But the country girl of La Cayla was
  the descendant of the fairest falcon-bearers who appear in the
  mediaeval chronicles, gloved with buckskin, corseleted with ermine,
  and wearing a train. . . . This was what we admired, this was what
  impressed the world, astonished at her who did not wonder at them.
  If, in speaking of such a woman, I dared to use an expression
  debased to theatrical uses in our times, I should say that she had a
  great success wherever she went. Women whispered together about her
  genius for expression and the feeling revealed in her letters; but
  no one offered her the prying importunities so coarsely mistaken
  sometimes for homage. They did not call her interesting or amusing,
  as the world says, patting a proud cheek with its awkward, familiar
  hand. They respected her. The world treated her as a woman of the
  world, for that is what it holds in highest esteem; but she knew
  that she was not so. She knew that there was a second meaning in the
  world's language that escaped her, as she said once _with her
  accent_ in a letter, but what observer would have guessed it in
  seeing her? Excepting now and then a charming swallow-glance,
  piercing the tapestry and seeking the wall at Le Cayla covered with
  honeysuckle and wall-wort, who would have doubted that this tranquil
  maiden was a woman of the world, capable of pleasing it, and of
  ruling it too, had she thought it worth her while?

Mlle. de Guérin had one of those imaginations that are easy to live
with. She did not offend common people, those sensitive, coarse souls
to whom the least distinction causes terrible pain, and who push their
way everywhere, even in the country. They handled with their rough
touch this divine opal with its vaporous shades, as indifferently as
the mock ivory counters on their card-tables. Though she did not
resemble a sphinx, this lovely maiden with her lingering smile, there
was perhaps in her placid regularity the immovability of the sphinx,
and immobility suits all things. It lends a mystery to nature, and
takes from human beings the puppet-like gesticulation that ever mars
the lofty _Sidera Vultum_.



And now we will return to Eugénie's letters, dated once more from
Paris, where she was staying with the Baroness de Maistre, and seeing
the world in a more brilliant light than in her visits to the Rue
Cherche-Midi, and at the house of "Auguste and Félicité;" but it never
dazzled her eyes, no matter how brightly it shone and glittered.


  TO M. DE GUÉRIN.
  Paris, Jan. 20, 1839.

  You have had a line from me almost every day, dear papa, but I will
  write more at length to-day.

  The good General called here as soon as he heard of my return from
  Nevers; but to tell the truth his visits are not entirely for me,
  for he finds Caroline so pleasing, that I think our Indian has her
  full share of the kind old gentleman's friendship. One day he came
  when she was dressing a doll in Indian fashion, for the little De
  Maistres, and he was so delighted that he insisted on working
  himself, and wished to stay till the end of the toilette, which was
  unluckily interrupted by visitors. The Marquis left us, but Caro
  wrote to him the next day that the Indian lady was ready, and would
  be charmed to be presented to him, so the good man came, passed the
  afternoon with us, and offered to take us today to M. Aquado's
  museum of painting. We shall go, for it is said to be very
  beautiful, and afterward we are to see the interior of the Palais
  Royal. There is nothing we may not expect of the good Marquis, and
  we owe a great deal of pleasure to Palchérie, who has already
  received my acknowledgments. I send a package to Rayssac with this
  one.

  We have no want of friends in Paris, dear papa. How can I say enough
  of the perfect family I have just left, who are untiring in their
  friendships and kindness! I am engaged, to go to-morrow, Saturday,
  to a large and elegant party at M. de Neuville's, [Footnote 83] but
  I shall give up my place to Eran, who will go with Mme. de Maistre.
  There will be a sort of reunion of beauties of every
  country--English, German, {482} Spanish, and the lovely ambassadress
  from the United States.

    [Footnote 83: Ex-Minister to Charles X.]

  'Twill be a pretty sight for anyone who likes society, but I refuse
  as often as possible. However, I cannot help going to M. de
  Neuville's, for he has been so gracious to Erembert. I have seen the
  Baroness de Vaux, Henry Vth's Joan of Arc, who, in 1830, asked an
  officer of the Royal Guard to rout Philip, herself and her sword at
  their head. She is a man-woman in figure and energy. Now she is
  devoted to God, visiting prisons and exhorting those who are
  condemned to death. With all this she has a charming simplicity. I
  am to make other acquaintances, whom I shall describe to you. All
  this does not prevent my thinking of Le Cayla very, very often, and
  longing impatiently for the month of May,--I shall go with Erembert
  at the beginning of Lent if I can. Mmes. de Maistre and de St. Marie
  beg to be remembered to you. "They think Caro charming, as
  fascinating as possible," said Henriette, and indeed she was radiant
  the evening they saw her. She is prettier than before her marriage,
  and she is an excellent little wife, as devoted to Maurice as he is
  to her. They are happy, and Maurice is most exemplary; a hundred
  times better than last year, as he says himself. His confidence in
  me is unchanged and we talk very intimately;--he longs to see you,
  and thinks very often of Mimi;--we shall all be glad to meet at Le
  Cayla. Saturday I shall think of you, Mimi, at St. Thomas Aquinas',
  where we are to hear l'Abbé Dupanloup,   [Footnote 84] who is also
  to give the Lenten instructions. There is no lack of teaching in
  Paris, but the well taught are very rare;--the more one sees of the
  world, the more glaring appears the ignorance of essential things.
  Soeur d'Yversen comes now and then to see us; she has mentioned to
  me Mme. L----, who would like to know us, but we know, so many
  people already, that I've lost all desire for new acquaintances. Our
  whole time slips away in dressing and receiving or making visits, so
  that one can hardly read or work at all. The Lastics have been here,
  Mme. Resaudière, the Barrys, an English family who like Maurice very
  much, and an infinity of other people whom I do not know even by
  name. Then the De Maistres and the acquaintances they make for
  me;--you see I have more than I need.

  [Footnote 84: Now Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans.]

  Oh! how I shall rest at Le Cayla. I shall feel the contrast so much,
  passing from the whirlwind of Paris to the calm of the fields, from
  the rolling of carriages to the little rumble of carts, from Paris
  noises to the cackling of our hens;--it all seems to me very
  charming without thinking of you and Mimi;--how I long to kiss you!
  They treat me very well here, and I am spoiled by everybody. My
  health is good, so don't be anxious about me. How does Winter treat
  you in the new parlor? Better no doubt than it did in the hall. "Is
  Wolff banished from the parquet?" Maurice asks. Passing from parlor
  to kitchen, tell me how all our people are. I'm sorry about the
  partridge.

  May 9th.--We heard M. de Ravignan Sunday at Notre Dame. It is
  curious to see this assemblage of men, a sea of people overflowing
  the immense cathedral to listen to one voice--but such a voice! From
  time to time some stricken soul, some young man in doubt or
  conviction, seeks the orator as a confessor. Then too they rush to
  see plays, and Mlle. Rachel draws at least as great a crowd to the
  theatre as M. de R. does to the cathedral. I'm not surprised at the
  enthusiasm of the Castrais about this young marvel. She is ugly,
  though, at least so I am told by those who have seen her off the
  stage. Alas! the profanity of my words in Lent!

  TO H. DE GUÉRIN.

  Paris; March and April, 1839.
  This bit of a letter, will tell you, dear papa, that I am with my
  poor invalid friend, waiting for M. Dupanloup, and that catching
  sight of an ink-stand, I am going on with my writing at the expense
  of the sacristy. But I will put a sous in the box for my ink, and my
  paper too, as I mean to steal a sheet to go with these; if we are
  left alone long enough. Now and then a peaceable abbé or sacristan
  passes through, glancing at us, and looking rather astonished at my
  office improvised in the sacristy. But M. D.'s name protects us, and
  we need only mention him to get a safe-conduct. . . .

  Never was there such a holy week--continual agitation and running
  about. Andillac is better than Paris for recollection; but God is
  everywhere and in all things, if we know how to find Him. Poor dear
  papa, I have prayed well for you in these beautiful monuments of
  Notre Dame, St. Roch, and others that we have visited. I thought of
  yon in the simple little chapel of Andillac. I suppose they used the
  new chapel for the tomb, or Paradise, as they call it here.

  Was there ever such a piece of scribbling as this letter--begun,
  left, begun again, in so many places? Now I am at Maurice's, after
  sitting five hours for my portrait, which M. Angier kindly insists
  on painting for you, and for your sake, I have submitted. Dear papa,
  my painted self will go with Eran, who has had his likeness taken
  too, and, happier than I am. {483} is to see you and kiss you, and
  talk to you of Paris, and many, many other things.

  My absence is to be prolonged more than I supposed, but how could I
  refuse these good friends a request they had such a right to ask?
  They will be grateful to you, I assure you.

  I shall bring you the little book of poetry that you care for so
  much;--it is now in the hands of Count Xavier, which will be its
  greatest glory, I have been presented to this celebrated and
  charming man, who was very kind and gracious; he loves his cousin,
  and under her patronage I could not but be well received. We found
  him alone in his room, reading the office of Holy Week;--he must be
  religious, being a worthy brother of his Brother Joseph. Thus he is
  consoled for his great griefs, for the death of his three children
  at eighteen or twenty years of age.

  The same evening, they took me to the great Valentino concert of
  eighty musicians. I had been there once before. There is much more
  to be seen here, but one might spend a thousand years in Paris, and
  leave many things unseen. I value more the knowledge of persons than
  of things.

  I am uneasy about your health, however well Mimi may take care of
  you; be very careful of yourself.

  Good-by, dear papa, good-by, dear Mimi.
  I have no time to write to you. Maurice sends to papa M. de Luzerne's
  _reflections_ upon the Gospels. Good-by to all.

  I send a waistcoat to Pierril and an apron to Jeanie; to you and all
  everything that can reach your hearts. Thank M. Angler for his
  kindness, when you write to Maurice. My portrait must be finished at
  Le Cayla, for I found it impossible to have a sitting to-day. I do
  not want to leave you, and yet good-by. I will write to you from
  Nevers. Erembert will be much pleased to see you again; I see
  already the happy day of arrival.

  April 2d, in the evening.

And here we must leave Eugénie. Eight days later she resumed the
journal at Nevers and wrote that wonderful eighth book, so
pathetically expressive of the pain of waiting--fit prelude of the
coming tragedy.

------

From Once a Week.


DAY-DREAMS


  Call them not vain and false day-dreams we see
  With spirit-vision of our quicker youth;
  Thoughts wiser in the world's esteem may be
            Less near the truth.

  When against some hard creed of life we raise
  Our single cry for what more pure we deem,
  'Tis oft the working out in later days
            Of some old dream!

  Dream of a world more pure than that we find
  Sad is the wak'ning, but not dull despair,
  While we can feel that we may leave behind
            One bright ray there.

  Let us work up then to our young ideal,
  Nor weep the present nor regret the past,
  Till the soul, struggling 'twixt earth's false and real,
            Reach heaven at last.

------

{484}


From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA--ORIGEN.


The scholar next comes to the more strictly ethical part of Origen's
teaching. The preliminary dialectics had cleared the ground, and to a
certain extent replanted it; physics made the process more easy,
pleasant, and complete; but the great end of a philosophic life was
ethics, that is, the making a man good. The making of a man good and
virtuous seems now-a-days a simple matter, as far as theory is
concerned, and so perhaps it is, if only theory and principles be
considered; though morality is an extensive science, and one that is
not mastered in an hour or a day. But in Origen's day a science of
Christian ethics did not exist. The teaching of the Scripture and the
voice of the pastors was sufficient, doubtless, for the guidance of
the faithful; but science is a different thing. Such a science is
shadowed out to us by the scholar in the record we are noticing. St.
Thomas, the great finisher of scientific Christian ethics, embraces
all virtues under two great classes, viz., the theological and the
cardinal. The whole science of morality treats only of the seven
virtues included under these two divisions. The master's teaching
comprehended, of course, faith, and hope, and charity; indeed, it
would be more correct to say that these three virtues were his whole
ultimate object; but the scholar says little of them in particular
just because of this very reason, and also because they were bound up
in that _piety_ which he mentions so often. But it is a most
interesting fact that the virtues, and the only virtues, mentioned in
the summary of Origen's moral teaching given by St. Gregory, are
precisely the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and
temperance. The classification dates, of course, from the Stoics, but
the circumstance that the framework laid down by a father in the
beginning of the third century was used and completed by another
father in the thirteenth, gives the early father an undoubted claim to
be considered the founder of Christian ethics. And here we lay our
hands on one of the earliest instances of heathen philosophy being
made to hew wood and carry water for Christian theology. The division
of virtues was a good one; all the schools pretended to teach it; but
the distinctive boast and triumph of the Christian teacher was that he
taught _true_ prudence, true justice, fortitude, and temperance, "not
such," says the scholar, "as the other philosophers teach, and
especially the moderns, who are strong and great in words; he not only
talked about the virtues, but exhorted us to practise them; and he
exhorted us by what he did far more than by what he said." And here
the scholar takes the opportunity of recording his opinion about "the
other" philosophers, now that he has had a course of Origen's
training. He first apologizes to them for hurting their feelings. He
says that, personally, he has no ill-will against them, but he plainly
tells them that things have come to such a pass, through their
conduct, that the very name of philosophy is laughed at. And he goes
on to develop what appeared to him the very essence of their faults,
viz., too much talk, and nothing but talk. Their teaching is like a
widely-extended morass; once set foot in it, and you can neither get
out nor go on, but stick fast till you perish. Or it is like a thick
forest; the traveller who once finds himself {485} in it has no chance
of ever getting back to the open fields and the light of day, but
gropes about backward and forward, first trying one path, then
another, and finding they all lead farther in, until at last, wearied
and desperate, he sits down and dwells in the forest, resolving that
the forest shall be his world, since all the world seems to be a
forest. This is, perhaps, one of the most graphic pictures ever given
of the state of mind, so artificial, so unsatisfied, and yet so
self-sufficient, brought about by a specious heathen philosophy, and
the effect of enlightened reason destitute of revelation. The scholar
cannot heighten the strength of his description by going on to compare
it, in the third place, to a labyrinth, but the comparison brings out
two striking features well worthy of notice. The first is, the
innocent and guileless look of the whole concern from the outside;
"the traveller sees the open door, and in he goes, suspecting
nothing." Once in, he sees a great deal to admire, (and this is the
second point in the labyrinth-simile;) he sees the very perfection of
art and arrangement, doors after doors, rooms within rooms, passages
leading most ingeniously and conveniently into other passages; he sees
all this art, admires the architect, and--thinks of going out. But
there is no going out for him; he is fast. All the artifice and
ingenuity he has been admiring have been expended for the express
purpose of keeping in for ever those foolish people who have been so
unwary as to come in at the open door. "For there is no labyrinth so
hard to thread," sums up the scholar, "no wood so deep and thick, no
bog so false and hopeless, as the language of some of these
philosophers." In this language we recognize another of of the
characteristic feelings of the day--the feeling of profound disgust
for the highest teachings of heathenism from the moment the soul
catches a ray of the light of the Gospel In Origen's school the
confines of the receding darkness skirted the advancing kingdom of
light, and those that sat in the darkness to-day saw it leaving them
to-morrow, and far behind them the morrow after that; and all the time
the great master had to be peering anxiously into the darkness to see
what souls were nearest the light, and to hold out his hand to win
them too into the company of those that were already sitting at his
feet. In such days as those, sharp comparisons between heathen wisdom
and the light of Christ must have been part of the atmosphere in which
the catechumens of the great school lived and breathed; there was a
reality and interest in them such as can never be again. And yet the
master was no bigot in his dealings with the Greek philosophies. "He
was the first and the only one," says his scholar, "that made me study
the philosophy of Greece." The scholar was to reject nothing, to
despise nothing, but make himself thoroughly acquainted with the whole
range of Greek philosophy and poetry; there was only one class of
writers he was to have nothing to do with, and those were the atheists
who denied God and God's providence; their books could only sully a
mind that was striving after piety. But his pupils were to attach
themselves to no school or party, as did the mob of those who
pretended to study philosophy. Under his guidance they were to take
what was true and good, and leave what was false and bad. He walked
beside them and in front of them through the labyrinth; he had studied
its windings and knew its turns; in his company, and with their eyes
on his "lofty and safe" teaching, his scholars need fear no danger.

This brief analysis of part of St. Gregory's remarkable oration will
serve to give us some idea of Origen's method of treating his more
learned and cultivated converts, of whom we know he had a very great
many. It will also have admitted us, in some sort, into the interior
of his school, {486} and let as hear the question in debate and the
matters that were of greatest interest in that most influential centre
of Christian teaching. It does not, of course, deal directly with
theology, or with those great controversies which Origen, in a manner,
rendered possible for his pupils and successors of the next century.
The scholar, indeed, does go on now to speak of his theological
teachings; but he describes rather his manner than his matter, and
rather the salient points of characteristic gifts than the details of
his dogmatic system. As this is precisely our own object in these
notes, we need only say that St. Gregory, in the concluding pages of
his farewell discourse, sufficiently proves that the great end and
object of all philosophic teaching and intellectual discipline in the
school of his master was faith and practical piety. To teach his
hearers the great first cause was his most careful and earnest task.
His instructions about God were so full of knowledge and so carefully
prepared that the scholar is at a loss how to describe them. His
explanations of the prophets, and of Holy Scripture generally, were so
wonderful that he seemed to be the friend and interpreter of the Word.
The soul that thirsted for knowledge went away from him refreshed, and
the hard of heart and the unbelieving could not listen to him without
both understanding, and believing, and making submission to God. "It
was no otherwise than by the communication of the Holy Ghost that he
spoke thus," says his disciple, "for the prophets and the interpreters
of the prophets have necessarily the same help from above, and none
can understand a prophet unless by the same spirit wherein the prophet
spoke. This greatest of gifts and this splendid destiny he seemed to
have received from God, that he should be the interpreter of God's
words to men, that he should understand the things of God, as though
he heard them from God's own mouth, and that through him men should be
brought to listen and obey." Two little indications of what we may
call the spirit of Origen are to be found in this address of his
pupil. The first is the great value he sets upon purity as the only
means of arriving at the knowledge and communion of God. We know what
a watchword this "union with God" was among the popular philosophers
of the day. To attain to it was the end of all the Neo-Platonic
asceticism. It was Origen's great end as well; but he taught that
purity alone and the subjugation of the passions by the grace of God
will avail to lead the soul thither, and that no amount of external
refinement or abstinence from gross sin will suffice to make the soul
pure in the sight of God. The second is, his devotion to the person of
the Son, the ever-blessed Word of God. The whole oration of the
scholar takes the form of a thanksgiving to "the Master and Saviour of
our souls, the firstborn Word, the maker and ruler of all things." He
never misses an opportunity all through it of bursting into eloquent
love to that "Prince of the universe;" he cannot praise his master
without first praising him, or ascribe anything to the powers of the
earthly teacher without referring it first of all to the heavenly
Giver. He had learned this from Origen, the predecessor, unconsciously
certainly, but in will and in spirit, of another Alexandrian, the
great Athanasius. And here again error was bringing out the truth, for
unless the Gnostics and the Neo-Platonists had been at that very time
theorizing about their demiurge and their emanations, we should
probably have missed the tender devotion and repeated homage to the
eternal Word which we find in the words of Origen and his disciple.

Theodore, or Gregory, as he had been named in baptism, had to thank
his master and to praise him, and he had, Moreover, to say how sorry
he was to leave him. He concludes his speech with the expression of
his regrets. He is afraid that all the grand teaching he has received
has been to {487} a great extent thrown away upon him. He is not yet
prudent, he is not just, he is not temperate, he has no fortitude,
alas, for his own native imbecility! But one gift the master has given
him he has made him love all these virtues with a love that knows no
bounds; and he has made him love, over and above them all, that virtue
which is alike their beginning and their consummation--the blessed
virtue of piety, the service and love of God. And now, in leaving him,
he seems to be leaving a garden full of useful trees and pleasant
fruits, full of green grass and cheering sunshine. And he thereupon
compares himself, at considerable length, to our first parents
banished from Paradise. "I am leaving the face of God and going back
to the earth from whence I came; and I shall eat earth all my days,
and till earth--an earth that will produce me nothing but thorn and
briers now that it is deprived of its good and excellent tending." He
goes on to liken himself to the prodigal son; and yet he finds himself
worse than he, for he is going away without receiving the "due portion
of substance," and leaving behind everything he loves and cares for.
Again, he seems to be one of that band of Jewish captives that hang up
their harps on the willows and wept beside the rivers of Babylon. "I
am going out from my Jerusalem," he says, "my holy city, where day and
night the holy law is being announced, where are hymns and canticles
and mystic speech; where a light brighter than the sun shines upon us
as we discuss the mysteries of God, and where our fancy brings back in
the night visions of what has occupied us in the day; I am leaving
this holy city, wherein God seems to breathe everywhere, and going
into a land of exile: there will be no singing for me; even the
mournful flute will not be my solace when my harp is hung on the
willows; but I shall be working by river-sides and making bricks; the
hymns I remember I shall not be allowed to sing; nay, it may be that
my very memory will play me false, and my hard work will make me
forget them." The youthful heart, that has left a cloistered retreat
of learning and piety, where masters have been loved, studies enjoyed,
and God tenderly served, will test these words by itself, and read in
their eloquent painting another proof that nature is the same to-day
as yesterday. Gregory the wonder-worker was truly a scholar to be
proud of, but the master's pride must have been obliterated in his
emotion when he listened to such a description of his school as this.

But the scholar, after all, will leave with a good heart. "There is
the Word, the sleepless guardian of all men." He puts his trust in
him, and in the good seed that his master has sown; perhaps he may
come back again and see him yet once more, when the seed shall have
sprung up and produced such fruits as can be expected from a nature
which is barren and evil, but which he prays God may never become
worse by his own fault. "And do thou, O my beloved master ([Greek
text]), arise and send us forth with thy prayer; thou hast been our
saviour by thy holy teachings whilst we were with thee; save us still
by thy prayers when we depart. Give us back, master, give us up into
the hands of him that sent us to thee, God; thank him for what has
befallen us; pray him that in the future he may ever be with us to
direct us, that he may keep his laws before our eyes and set in our
heart that best of teachers his divine fear. Away from thee, we shall
not obey him as freely as we obeyed him here. Keep praying that we may
find consolation in him for our loss of thee, that he may send us his
angel to go with us; and ask him to bring us back to thee once more;
no other consolation could be half so great." And so they depart, the
two brothers, never again to see their master more. They both became
great bishops, Gregory the greatest; we find Origen writing to him,
soon after his departure, a letter full of affection and good counsel;
and who can tell how much the teaching of the catechist of Alexandria
had to do with that wonderful life and never-dying reputation that
distinguish Gregory Thaumaturgus among all the saints of the church?

{488}

Origen presided at Alexandria for twenty years--that is to say, from
211 to 231. In the latter year he left it for ever. During this period
he had been temporarily absent more than once. The governor of the
Roman Arabia, or Arabia Petraea, had sent a special messenger to the
prefect of Alexandria and the patriarch, to beg that the catechist
might pay him a visit. What he wanted him for is not recorded; but
Petra, the capital of the Roman province, was not so far from the
great road between Alexandria and Palestine as to be out of the way of
Greek thought and civilization, and its interesting remains of art,
belonging to this very period, which startled modern travellers only a
short time past, prove that it was itself no inconsiderable centre of
intellectual cultivation. We may, therefore, conjecture that his
errand was philosophical, or, in other words, religious.

The second time that Origen was absent from Alexandria was for a
somewhat longer space. The emperor Caracalla, after murdering his
brother and indulging in indiscriminate slaughter, in all parts of the
world from Rome to Syria, had at last arrived, with his troubled
conscience and his well-bribed legions, at Alexandria. The
Alexandrians, it is well known, had an irresistible tendency to give
nicknames. Caracalla's career was open to a few epithets, and the
unfortunate "men of Macedon" made merry on some salient points in the
character of the emperor and his mother. They had better have held
their tongues, or plucked them out; for in a fury of vengeance he let
loose his bloodthirsty bands on the city. How many were slain in that
awful visitation no one ever knew; the dead were thrown into trenches,
and hastily covered up, uncounted and unrecorded. The spectre-haunted
emperor took special vengeance on the institutions and professors of
learning. It would seem that he destroyed a great part of the
buildings of the Museum, and put to death or banished the teachers. As
for the students, he had the whole youth of the city driven together
into the gymnasium, and ordered them to be formed into a "Macedonian
phalanx" for his army--a grim retort, in kind, for their pleasantries
at his expense. Origen fled before this storm. Had he remained, he was
far too well known now to have been safe for an hour. Doubtless
obedience made him conceal himself and escape. He took refuge in
Caesarea of Palestine, where the bishop, St. Theoctistus, received him
with the utmost honor; and, though he was yet only a layman, made him
preach in the church, which he had never done at Alexandria. When the
tempest in Egypt had gone by, Demetrius wrote for him to come back. He
returned, and resumed the duties of his post.

After this he took either one or two other journeys. He was sent into
Greece, and visited Athens, with letters from his bishop, to refute
heresy and confirm the Christian religion. He also stayed awhile at
the great central see of Antioch.

On his journey to Greece, he had been ordained priest at Caesarea, by
his friend St. Theoctistus. When he returned to Alexandria, about the
year 231, Demetrius, the patriarch, was pleased to be exceedingly
indignant at his ordination. We cannot go into the controversy here;
we need only say that a synod of bishops, summoned by the patriarch,
decreed that he must leave Alexandria, but retain his priesthood;
which seems to show that they thought he had better leave for the sake
of peace, though they could not recognize any canonical fault; for if
they had, they would have suspended or degraded him. Demetrius,
indeed, assembled another synod some time later, and did degrade and
excommunicate him. But by this time Origen had left Alexandria, never
to return {489} and was quietly living at Caesarea. We dare not
pronounce sentence in a cause that has occupied so many learned pens;
but we dare confidently say this, that it is impossible to prove
Origen to have been knowingly in the wrong. We must now follow him to
Caesarea.

If some Levantine merchantman, manned by swarthy Greeks or Syrians, in
trying to make Beyrout, should be driven by a north wind some fifty
miles further along the coast to the southwest, she might possibly
find herself, at break of day, in sight of a strange-looking harbor.
There would be a wide semi-circular sweep of buildings, or what had
once been buildings; there would be a southern promontory, crowned
with a tower in ruins; there would be the vestiges of a splendid pier;
and there would be rows of granite pillars lying as if a hurricane had
come off the land, and blown them bodily into the sea. An Arab or two,
in their white cotton clothes, would be grimly looking about them, on
some prostrate columns; and a stray jackal, caught by the rising sun,
would be scampering into some hole in the ruins. Our merchantman would
have come upon all that is left of Caesarea of Palestine. If she did
not immediately make all sail to Jaffa, or back to Beyrout, it would
not be because the place does not look ghostly and dismal enough. And
yet it was once the greatest port on that Mediterranean coast, and far
more important than either Jaffa, Acre, Sidon, or even Beyrout now. It
owed its celebrity to Herod the Great. Twelve years of labor, and the
expenditure of vast sums of money, made the ancient Turris Stratonis
worthy to be rechristened Caesarea, in honor of Caesar Augustus. Its
great pier, constructed of granite blocks of incredible size, afforded
at once dwelling-places and hostelries for the sailors and a splendid
columned promenade for the wealthy citizens. The half-circle of
buildings, all of polished granite, that embraced the sea and the
harbor, and terminated in a rocky promontory on either side, shone far
out to sea, and showed conspicuous in the midst the great temple of
Caesar, crowned with statues of Augustus and of the Roman city. An
agora, a praetorium, a circus looking out to sea, and a rock-hewn
theatre, were included in Herod's magnificent plans, and fittingly
adorned a city that was to become in a few years the capital of
Palestine. We see its importance even as early as the days immediately
after Pentecost. It was here that the Gentiles were called to the
faith, in the person of Cornelius the centurion, a commander of the
legionaries stationed at Caesarea. His house, three hundred years
later, was turned into a chapel by St. Paulo, and must therefore have
been recognizable at the time of which we write. It was here that
Herod Agrippa I. planned the apprehension of St. Peter and the
execution of St. James the Greater; and it was in the theatre here
that the beams of the sun shone upon his glittering apparel, and the
people saluted him as a god, only to see him smitten by the hand of
the true God, and carried to his palace in the agonies of mortal pain.
St. Paul was here several times, and last of all when he was brought
from Jerusalem by the fifty horsemen and the two hundred spearmen.
Here he was examined before Felix, and before Festus, in the presence
of King Agrippa, when he made his celebrated speech; and it was from
the harbor of Caesarea that he sailed for Rome to be heard before
Caesar. For many centuries, even into the times of the crusaders, it
continued to be a capital and haven of great importance. Between 195
and 198, it was the scene of one of the earliest councils of the
Eastern Church, and, as the see of Eusebius, the founder of church
history, and the site of a celebrated library, it must always be
interesting in ecclesiastical annals. But perhaps it would require
nothing more to make {490} it a place of note in our eyes than the
fact that when Origen was driven from Alexandria, in 231, he
transferred to Caesarea not the Alexandrian school, it is true, but
the teacher whose presence and spirit had contributed so much to make
it immortal.

Caesarea, indeed, was at that time a literary centre only second to
Alexandria or Antioch. It was in direct communication with Jerusalem
by an excellent military road, and with Alexandria by a road that was
longer, indeed, but in no way inferior. It was not far from Berytus
both by land and sea. Like Capharnaum and Ptolemais, but in a yet
higher degree, it was one of Herod the Great's model cities, in which
he had embodied his scheme of _Grecianizing_ his country by the
influence of splendid Greek art and overpowering Greek intellect. It
was also the metropolis of Palestine. St. Alexander, bishop of
Jerusalem, Origen's fellow-student, was the intimate friend of
Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea; and it is clear that bishops, or
their messengers, from the cities all along the coast, as for as
Antioch, and even the distant Cappadocia and Pontus, were not
unfrequent visitors to this great rallying-point of the church and the
empire.

When Origen, therefore, left Alexandria and took up his abode in a
city that was in a manner the diminished counterpart of one he had
abandoned, he did not find himself in a strange land. St. Theoctistus
received him with delight. It was not long before he journeyed the
short distance to Jerusalem, to renew his acquaintance with St.
Alexander; and these two bishops were only too glad to put on his
shoulders all the charges that he would accept. "They referred to
him," says Eusebius, "on every occasion as their master; they
committed to him alone the charge of interpreting and teaching Holy
Scripture and everything connected with preaching the Word of God in
the church." From the way in which the historian joins the two bishops
together, it would appear that Caesarea was a common school for the
two dioceses, and a sort of ecclesiastical seminary whither the
clerics from Jerusalem came, as to a centre where learning and learned
men would abound more than in ruined and fallen AElia. It is certain,
however, that Origen, in a short time, was teaching and writing as
fast as at Alexandria. His name soon began to draw scholars.
Firmilian, bishop of so distant a see as Caesarea of Cappadocia, one
of the most stirring minds of his age, who had controversies on his
hands all round the sea-coast to Carthage in one direction, and Rome
in the other, was a friend of Theoctistus. It is possible that he knew
Origen also, perhaps from having seen him at Alexandria, but more
probably from having met him when Origen travelled into Greece. At any
rate, he conceived an enthusiastic liking for him. Nothing would serve
him but to make Origen travel to his own far-off province to teach and
stimulate pastors and people; and, not long afterward, we find himself
in Judaea, that is, at Caesarea, on a visit to Origen, with whom he is
stated to have remained "some time," for the sake of "bettering
himself" in divinity. And, as Eusebius sums up, "not only those who
lived in the same part of the world, but very many others from distant
lands, left their country and came flocking to listen to him." We need
not mention here again the names Gregory and Athenodorus.

The position now occupied by Origen at Caesarea was, therefore, one of
the highest importance. He was no longer a private teacher, or even an
authorized master teaching in private; he was no less than the
substitute for the bishop himself. In the Eastern Church, indeed, the
custom by which no one but the Bishop ever preached in the church was
not so strictly observed as it was in the West; but if a {491}
presbyter did received the commission of preaching, it was always with
the understanding that what he said was said on behalf of the pontiff,
whose presence in his chair was a guarantee for its orthodoxy. When
Origen, therefore, on the Lord's day, after the reading of the holy
Gospel, stood forward from his place in the presbytery, and began to
explain either the Gospel text itself or some passage in the Old
Testament which also had formed part of the liturgical service, it was
well understood that he was speaking with authority. And this is the
first light in which we should view his homilies.

It would be saying little to say that Origen's homilies and
commentaries (for we need not distinguish them here) marked an era in
the exposition of Scripture. They not only were the first of their
kind, but they may be said to have created the art, and not only to
have created it, but, in certain aspects, to have finished it and to
have become like Aristotle in some of his treatises, at once the model
and the quarry for future generations. It may be true, as of course it
is, that he was not absolutely the first to write expositions of
Scripture. The splendid eloquence of Theophilus of Antioch had already
been heard on the four Gospels, and his spirit of interpretation seems
to have had much more affinity for Origen's own spirit than for that
of the school of his own Antioch two centuries later. Melito had
written on the Apocalypse, but his direct labors on Scripture were
only an insignificant part of his voluminous works, if, indeed, they
were not all rather apologetic and hortatory than explanatory. The
Mosaic account of the creation had occupied a few fathers with its
defence against Gnostic and infidel. But we know from Origen's own
words that he had read and used "his predecessors," as he calls them.
And yet we may truly say that he is the first of commentators, not
only because no one before him had dared to undertake the whole
Scripture, but on account of his novel and regular method. He is
turned by one great authority, Sixtus Senensis, "almost self-taught,"
so little of what he says can he have gleaned from others. But in
estimating how much Origen owed to those before him, we should lose a
valuable hint towards understanding him if we forgot Clement of
Alexandria and the great body of tradition, oral and written, of which
the Alexandrian school was the headquarters. We know that the
Alexandrian Jew, Philo, two hundred years before Clement's time, had
written wonderful lucubrations on the mystical sense of Holy
Scripture. The Alexandrian catechetical teachers, catching and using
the spirit of the place, had always been Alexandrian in their
Scriptural teachings. Clement himself had commented on the whole of
the Scriptures in his book called the "Hypotyposes." Origen entered
into inheritance. We see the spirit of the time and place in those
questionings with which, in his early years, he used to puzzle his
father. The unrivalled industry that made him collect versions of the
sacred text from Syria, Asia, and even the shores of Greece, must have
scrupulously sought out and exhausted every source of information and
every extant document relating to Scripture exposition that was at
hand for him in his own city. So that Origen, though in one sense the
founder of a school, was really the culmination of a series of learned
men, and, by the influence of his name, made common to the universal
church that knowledge and method which before had been confined to the
pupils that had listened to the Catechisms.

Although, however, we may guess, we cannot be certain how
progressively or gradually a methodical and scientific exegesis had
been growing up at Alexandria; and we come upon the commentaries of
Origen with all the freshness of a discovery. Before him we have been
accustomed to writings like those of the apostolic fathers: we have
been reading apologies of the most wonderful eloquence, whose Greek
shames the rhetoricians, {492} or whose Latin has all the spirit,
earnestness, and tenderness of new language, but in which Holy
Scripture is at the most only summarized and held up to view. Or,
again, we have been listening to a venerable priest crushing the
heretics with the word of God, or to a philosopher confuting the Jews
out of their own mouth. Or, once more, we have heard the pagan
intellect of the world convinced that truth was nowhere to be found
but in Jesus, that the writings of the prophets were better than those
of the philosophers, and that the morality of the New Testament cast
far into the shade the sayings of Socrates. Splendid ideas, striking
applications, telling proofs, grand views, all these the early fathers
found in holy Scripture, and all these they used in the exhortations,
apologies, or refutations that were called for by the several
necessities of their times. But sustained, regular commentary, as
such, they have none, or, what is the same to us now, none has come
down. The explanation of words, the classification of meanings, the
distinction of senses, the answering of difficulties and the solution
of objections--all this, done, not for an odd portion of the text here
and there, but regularly through the whole Bible, is what
distinguishes the labors of Origen from those of all who have gone
before him, and makes them so important for all who shall come after
him. In making acquaintance with him we feel that we have come across
a master, with breadth of view enough to handle masses of materials in
a scientific way, and with learning enough never to be in want of
materials for his science. We see in his Scripture commentaries the
pressure of three forces of unequal strength, but each of them of
marked presence, the tradition of the church, the teachings of the
great school, and the needs of his own times. To understand him we
must understand this pressure under which he wrote. The first two
forces may be passed over as requiring no explanation. We must dwell a
little on the latter, for unless we vividly realize the necessities
under which the Christian teacher in his time lay, of meeting certain
enemies and withstanding certain views, we shall be led to join in the
cry of those who exclaim against Origen's Scripture exposition as
partly useless and partly dangerous.

These necessities arose from two phenomena that appeared almost with
the birth of Christianity, and which, with a somewhat wide
generalization, we may call the Ebionite and the Gnostic. No one can
have looked into early church history without being struck by the
difficulty the church seems to have had to free herself from the
trammels of Judaism. We need not allude to St. Paul, and his Epistles
to the Galatians and to the Romans, and his various contentions with
friend and foe for the freedom of the Gospel. The Epistle to the
Hebrews, with its thoroughness of dogmatic exposition and its grand
style, was also addressed to the Judaizants. Nay, if Ebion himself
ever had an existence, it is more than probable that he was teaching
at Jerusalem about the very time at which the Epistle seems to have
been written and sent, if sent, to the Christian Jews of that city. It
is certain, however, that Alexandria was one of the very earliest of
the churches which shook itself free, in a marked manner, from the
traditions of the law. The cosmopolitan spirit of the great city was a
powerful natural auxiliary in a development which was substantially
brought about by the Holy Ghost and the pastors of the patriarchal
see. The Hebrew element hardly ever had such a footing at Alexandria
as it had at Antioch. We can see in the writing of Justin Martyr,
(_circa_ 160,) whose wide experience of all the churches makes his
testimony especially valuable, a. picture of Christianity, young and
exuberant, with its face joyously set to its destined career, and with
the swathing-bands of the synagogue lying neglected behind it. Justin
had an {493} Alexandrian training, and among his many-sided gifts
shone pre-eminent that intellectual culture which was the most
effectual of the human weapons that beat off the spirit of Judaism.
And in Clement himself there is no trace of any narrow formalism, but,
on the contrary, a grand, world-embracing charity, that can recognize
the work of the Divine Logos in all the manifold varieties of human
wisdom and human beauty. So that long before the time that Origen
succeeded his master, the Alexandrian church was free from all
suspicion of clinging to what St. Paul calls the "yoke of bondage;"
and knew no distinction of Jew or Greek. But the party that had
troubled the Apostle, and spread itself through the churches almost as
soon as the churches were founded, was by no means extinct, even at
Alexandria. Since the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews had become
scattered all over the empire. The great towns, such as Antioch,
Caesarea, and Alexandria, each contained a strong Jewish community. At
Alexandria they were numerous enough to have a quarter to themselves.
Now, it is not too much to say that many so-called Jews and Christians
in such a city were neither Jews nor Christians, but Ebionites; that
is, they acknowledged the divine mission of Christ, which destroyed
their genuine Judaism, but denied his divinity, which was still more
fatal to their Christianity. The consequences of such a state of
things to the interpretation of Scripture are manifest. The law was
still good and binding. Jerusalem was still the holy city, the chosen
of God, and the spiritual and temporal capital of the world. St. Paul
was denounced as one who admitted heathen innovations and destroyed
the word of God. Everything in holy Scripture, that is, in the Old
Testament and in the scanty excerpts from the New, which they
admitted, was to be understood in a rigorously literal sense; and the
"Clementines," once falsely attributed to St. Clement of Rome, but now
considered to belong to the second century, and to be the work of an
Ebionite, are the only writings of the period in which the allegorical
sense is totally and peremptorily denied. Ebionism was not very
consistent with itself, and the Ebionites of St. Jerome's time would
hardly have saluted their sterner brethren of the apostolic age; but
the name may always be truly taken to typify those whose views led
them to hold to the "carnal letter" of the Old Testament. They carried
the old Jewish exclusiveness into Christianity. They considered the
historical parts of the Scripture to have been written merely because
their own history was so important in God's sight that he thought it
right to preserve its minutest record. The prophecies were only meant
to glorify, to warn, or to terrify themselves, and had no message for
the Gentiles. Even the parables and figures that occurred in the
imagery of the inspired writer were dragged down to the most absurd
and literal significations. The adherents of Ebionism were neither few
nor silent in the time of Origen.

But if the Ebionite party in Alexandria, and in the Church generally,
was strong and stirring, there was a party not less important,
perhaps, who, in their zeal for the freedom of Christianity against
the bonds of Judaism, were in danger of going quite as far wrong in a
different direction. It is always the case in a reaction, that the
returning force finds it difficult to stop at its due mark. So it had
been with the reaction against the Ebionites, and especially at
Alexandria. There was a body of advanced Christians who did not
content themselves with not observing the law, but went on to
depreciate it. It was not enough for them to see the Old Testament
fulfilled by Jesus Christ, but they must needs show that it never had
much claim to be even a preparation and a type. It was full of
frivolous details, useless records, and absurd narrations. {494} Who
cared for the _minutiae_ about Pharaoh's butler, Joseph's coat, or
Tobias's dog? Of what importance to the world were the marchings and
counter-marchings, the stupid obstinacy and the unsavory morality of a
few thousand Hebrews? Who was interested to hear how their prophets
scolded them, or their enemies destroyed them, or their kings
tyrannized over them? How could it edify Christians to know the number
and color of the skins of the tabernacles or the names of the masons
and blacksmiths that built the Temple, or the fact that the Jewish
people considerably varied their carnal piety by intervals of still
more carnal crime and idolatry? The state of things represented by the
Old Testament had passed away, and they were of no interest save as
ancient history; and therefore, it was absurd to treasure up the
Pentateuch and the Prophets as if they were anything more, and not
rather much less, than the rhapsodies of Homer and the travels of
Herodotus. In fact--and to this conclusion a considerable party came
before long--the Old Testament was certainly not divine at all; at any
rate, it was not the work of the Father of the Lord Jesus, but of some
other principle. And here the Gnostic interest was at hand with an
opportune idea. Who _could_ have written the Old Testament but the
Demiurge? That primary offshoot of the Divinity, just, but not good,
(this was their distinction,) can never have been more worthily
employed than in concocting a series of writings in which there was
some skill, some justice, and very little goodness. The Demiurge was
certainly a handy suggestion, and the consigning of the Old Testament
to his workmanship made all commentary thereon compressive into a very
brief space. Away with it all, for a farrago of nonsense, lies, and
nuisances!

Of course, neither of these parties, when extremely developed, could
lay any claim to Christianity. But the world of that day had in it
Ebionites and Gnostics of every degree and every changing hue of
error. They were not unrepresented in the very bosom of the Church.
Pious Christians might be found who, strong in filial feeling to their
Jewish great-grandfathers, would see in the records of the old
covenant nothing but a most interesting family history, with
delightfully long pedigrees and a great deal of strong language about
the glory and dignity of the descendants of Israel. On the other hand,
equally pious Christians, and among them a great majority, perhaps, of
the Gentile converts, would consider it an extravagant compliment to
read in the house of God the sayings and doings of such a very
unworthy set of people as the Hebrews. And the remarkable fact would
be, that both these sets of worthy Christians would begin with the
same fundamental error, though arriving at precisely opposite
conclusions. That the Old Testament had a literal meaning, _and no
other_ was the starting-point of both Ebionite and Gnostic The former
concluded, "therefore let us honor it, for we are a divine race;" the
latter, "therefore let us reject it, for what are the Jews to us?"

It would not require many sentences to prove, if our object in these
notes were proof of any sort, that Origen's leading idea in his
Scripture exposition is to look for the mystical sense. His very name
is a synonym for allegory, and he is perhaps as often blamed for it as
praised. But even blame, when outspoken and honest, is better than
feeble excuse; and and unfortunately not a few of the great
Alexandrian's critics have undertaken to excuse him for having such a
leaning to allegory. The Neo-Platonists, they say, dealt largely in
myths, and allegorized everything; somebody allegorized Homer just
about that time. Now Origen was a Platonist. We might answer, that
Origen was above all a Christian, and knew but very little of Plato
till he was thirty years old; and that the Greek allegories {495} were
invented by a more decorous generation for the purpose of veiling the
grossness of the popular mythology; whereas the Christian allegory, as
introduced by St Paul, or indeed by our Blessed Saviour, was a
spiritual and mysterious application of real facts. Others, again,
offer the excuse that Philo had allegorized very much, and Origen
admired Philo. This is saying that allegory was very usual at
Alexandria, as we have said ourselves when speaking of St. Clement.
But it is not saying why allegory was kept up so warmly in the school
of the Catechisms, or what was the radical cause that made its being
kept up there a necessity for the well-being of the Church. This we
have endeavored to state in the foregoing remarks.

When Origen, then, announces his grand principle of Scripture
commentary, in the fourth book of the De Principiis, we may be excused
if we see in it the statement of an important canon, whereby to
understand much that he has written. He says, "Wherefore, to those who
are convinced that the sacred books are not the utterances of man, but
were written and made over to us by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
by the will of God the Father of all through Jesus Christ, we will
endeavor to point out how they are to read them, keeping the rules of
the divine and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ." This is the key-note
of all his exposition, and derives its significance from the state of
opinions among those for whom he wrote; and a dispassionate
application of it to such passages as seem questionable or gratuitous
in his writings, will explain many a difficulty, and show how clearly
he apprehended the work he had to do. If the Old Testament be really
the word of the Holy Ghost, as, he says, all true Christians believe,
then nothing in it can be trivial, nothing useless, nothing false.
This he insists upon over and over again. And, descending more to
particulars, he states these three celebrated rules of interpretation,
which may be called, with their development, his contribution to
Scripture exposition. They are so plainly aimed at Ebionites and
Gnostics, that we need merely to state them to show the connection.

His first rule regards the old Law. The Law, he says, being abrogated
by Jesus Christ, the precepts and ordinances that are purely legal are
no longer to be taken and acted up to literally, but only in their
mystical sense. This seems rudimentary and evident nowadays; but at
that period it greatly needed to be clearly stated and enforced.

His second rule is about the history and prophecy relating to Jew or
Gentile that is found in the Old Testament. The Ebionite who kissed
the Pentateuch, and the Gnostic who tore it up, were both foolish
because both ignorant. These historic and prophetic details were
undoubtedly true in their letter; but their chief use to the Christian
Church, and the main object the Holy Spirit had in giving them to us,
was the mystical meaning that lies hidden under the letter. Thus the
earthly Pharaoh, the earthly Jerusalem, Babylon, or Egypt, are chiefly
of importance to the Church from the fact that they are the allegories
of heavenly truths.

Origen's third canon of scriptural exposition is this: "Whatever in
holy Scripture seems trivial, useless, or false," (the Gnostics could
not or would not see that parabolic narratives are most unjustly
called false,) "is by no means to be rejected, but its presence in the
divine record is to be explained by the fact that the divine Author
had a deeper and more important meaning in it than appears from the
letter. Such portions, therefore, must be taken and applied in a
spiritual and mystical sense, in which sense chiefly they were
dictated by Almighty God."

These three rules look simple now; they were all-important and not so
simple then. It was by means of them, {496} and in the spirit which
they indicate, that the great catechist led his hearers by the hand
through the flowery paths of God's word, and in his own easy, simple,
earnest style, so different from that of the rhetoricians, showed them
the true use of the Old Testament. We hope it is not a fanciful idea,
but it has struck us that, the difference of circumstances considered,
there are few writers so like each other in their handling of holy
Scripture as Origen and St. John of the Cross. Both treat of deep
truths, and in a phraseology that sounds uncommon--the one because his
hearers were intellectual Greeks, the other because he is professedly
treating of the very highest points of the spiritual life. Both use
holy Scripture in a fashion that is absolutely startling to those who
are accustomed to rationalistic Protestantism, or to what may be
called the domestic wife-and-children interpretation of the
Evangelicals. Both bring forward, in the most unhesitating manner, the
mystic sense of the inspired words to prove or illustrate their point,
and both mix up with their more abstruse disquisitions a large amount
of practical matter in the very plainest words. From communion with
both of them we rise full of a new sense of the presence and nearness
of the Spirit of God, and of reverence for the minutest details of his
Word. Finally, both the Greek father and the Spanish mystic interpret
the ceremonial prescriptions, the history, the allusions to physical
nature, and the incidents of domestic life that occur in the Old
Testament, as if all these, however important in their letter, had a
far deeper and more interesting signification addressed to the
spiritual sense of the spiritual Christian.

To illustrate Origen's principles of Scripture interpretation by
extracts from his works would exceed our present limits, however
interesting and satisfactory the task might be. Neither have we space
to notice his celebrated division of the meaning of the text into
literal, mystical, and moral, a division he was the first to insist
upon formally. To answer the objections of critics against both his
principles and his alleged practice would also be a distinct task of
great length. We must content ourselves with having briefly sketched
and indicated his spirit. There are grave theological controversies
too, as is well known, connected with his name; and on these we have
had no thought of entering. The purpose of this and the preceding
articles has not been dogmatical, but rather biographical. We have
attempted to set forth on the one hand the personal character of this
great man; on the other, the external circumstances by which that
character was influenced, and through which it exercised influence on
others.

------

{497}


Translated from the Spanish.

PERICO THE SAD; OR, THE FAMILY OF ALVAREDA.


CHAPTER I.

Following the curve formed by the ancient walls of Seville, encircling
it as with a girdle of stone, leaving on the right the river and Las
Delicias, we reach the gate of San Fernando. From this gate, in a
direct line across the plain, as far as the ridge of Buena Vista,
extends a road which passes the rill upon a bridge of stone, and
ascends the steep side of the hill. To the right of the road are seen
the ruins of a chapel. At a bird's-eye view this road looks like an
arm which Seville extends toward the ruins as if to call attention to
them; for though small, and without a vestige of artistic merit, they
form a religious and historic souvenir. They are an inheritance from
the great king, Fernando III., whose memory is so popular that he is
admired as a hero, venerated as a saint, and beloved as a king: thus
realizing, in one grand historic figure the ideal of the Spanish
people.

Having gained the summit, the road descends upon the opposite side
into a a little valley, through which runs a narrow stream, which has
washed its channel so clean that you will see in it only shining
pebbles and golden sand.

Fording this stream, the road touches on its right at a cheerful and
hospitable little inn, and salutes on its left a Moorish castle seated
so haughtily upon the height that it seems as though the ground had
risen solely to form a pedestal for it. This castle was given by Don
Pedro de Castilla to Doña Maria de Padilla, whose name it retains. The
estate and castle of Doña Maria passed in time, as a pious donation,
to the Cathedral of Seville, the chapter of which has, in our days,
sold it to a private gentleman. The associations passed for nothing,
since a little while afterward, the withered, old, and furrowed Doña
Maria appeared clothed in the whitest of lime, and adorned with
brilliants of crystal.

Let us follow the road which advances, opening its way through the
palmettos and evergreens of some pasture-lands, until it enters the
village of Dos-Hermanas,  [Footnote 85] situated in the midst of a
sandy plain, two leagues from Seville.

  [Footnote 85: Dos-Hermanas, two sisters. ]

One sees here neither river, nor lake, nor umbrageous trees, nor rural
houses with green blinds, nor arbors covered with twining plants, nor
peacocks and Guinea fowls picking the green turf, nor grand avenues of
trees in straight lines, like slaves holding parasols, to provide a
constant shade for those who walk beneath. All these are wanting here.
Sad it is to confess it! All is common, rude, and inelegant, but
instead, one meets good and contented faces, which prove how little
those things are needed to make happiness. One sees, beside, flowers
in the yards of the houses, and at their doors gay and healthy
children, even more numerous than the flowers, and finds that sweet
peace of the country, made up of silence and solitude, an atmosphere
of Eden and the sky of paradise.

The village consists of houses of a single story, arranged in long,
straight, though not parallel streets, which open upon the large,
sandy market-place, spread out like a yellow carpet before a fine
church, which lifts its lofty tower, surmounted by a cross, like a
soldier elevating his standard.

{498}

Behind the church we shall find the oasis of this desert. Supported by
the rear wall of the edifice is a gate, opening into a wide and vast
court, which leads to the chapel of Saint Anna, the patroness of the
place. Built against the side of the chapel is the small and humble
dwelling of the custodian, who is both singer and sacristan of the
church. In this enclosure we shall see century-old cypresses, thick
foliaged and sombre; the lilac, of stem so slight and rapid growth,
lavishing leaves, flowers, and perfumes upon the wind, as if conscious
that its life is short; the orange, that grand seigneur, that favorite
son of the soil of Andalusia, to whom it yields a life so sweet and
long. We shall see the vine, which, like a child, needs the help of
man to thrive and rise, and which spreads its broad leaves as if to
caress the trellis that supports it. For it is certain that even
plants have their individual characters from which we receive
different impressions. We can hardly see a cypress without sadness, a
lilac without tenderness, an orange-tree without admiration. Does not
the lavender suggest the thought of a neat and peaceful interior; and
the rosemary, perfume of holy night, does it not awaken the wholesome
and sacred thoughts of that season?

To the right and left of the place extend those interminable olive
plantations, which form the principal branch of the agriculture of
Andalusia. The trees being planted well apart from each other give a
cheerful air to these groves, but the ground underneath, kept so level
and free from other vegetation by the plough, renders them wearisomely
monotonous. At certain distances we encounter the groups of buildings
which belong to the estates. These are constructed without taste or
symmetry, and we may go all round them without finding the front.
There is nothing imposing about these great masses, or structures,
except the towers of their windmills, which rise above the olives as
if to count them. The most of these estates belong to the aristocracy
of Seville, but they are generally deserted because the ladies do not
like to live in the country, and are therefore as desolate and as
empty as barns, so that in these out-of-the-way places, the silence is
only broken by the crowing of the cock, while he vigilantly guards his
seraglio, or by the braying of some superannuated ass, that, turned
out by the overseer to take his ease, tires of his solitude.

At the close of a beautiful day in January, in the year 1810, might
have been heard the fresh voice of a youth of some twenty years, who,
with his musket upon his shoulder, was walking with a firm but light
step along one of the footpaths which are traced through the olive
groves. His figure was straight, tall, and slight. His person, his
air, his walk, had the ease, the grace, and the elegance which art
endeavors to create, and which nature herself lavishes upon the
Andalusians with generous hand. His head, covered with black curls, a
model of the beautiful Spanish type, he carried erect and proudly. His
large eyes were black and vivid; his look frank and full of
intelligence. His well-formed upper lip, shortened with an expression
of cheerful humor, showed his white and brilliant teeth. His whole
person breathed a superabundance of life, health, and strength. A
silver button fastened the snowy shirt at his brown throat. He wore a
short jacket of gray cloth, short trowsers, tied at the knee with
cords and tassels of silk, and a yellow silk girdle passed several
times around his waist. Leather shoes and gaiters of the same, finely
stitched, encased his well-formed feet and legs. A wide-brimmed
Portuguese hat, adorned with a velvet band and silk tassels, and
jauntily inclined toward the left side, completed the elegant
Andalusian dress.

This youth, noted for his active disposition, and for his impulsive
and daring character, was employed by the superintendent of one of the
estates to act as guard during the olive gathering. He sang as he went
along:

{499}

  "The way is short, my step is light,
    I loiter not, nor do I weary;
  The path seems downward--easy trod,
    When up the hill I climb to Mary.

  "But long the road, and oh! how steep!
    My lingering footsteps slow and weary;
  The mountains seem before me piled
    When down the hill I come from Mary."

Arriving at the paling which enclosed the plantation the guard sprang
over it without stopping to look for the gate, and found himself in a
road face to face with another youth a little older than himself, who
was also going toward the village. He was dressed in the same manner,
but he was neither so tall nor so erect as the former.

His eyes were gray, and not so vivid, and his glance was more
tranquil, his mouth was graver and his smile sweeter. Instead of a gun
he carried a spade upon his shoulder. An ass preceded him without
being driven, and he was followed by an enormous dog, with short thick
hair of a whitish yellow color, of the fine race of shepherd-dogs of
Estremadura.

"Halloo! Is this you, Perico? God bless you!" exclaimed the elegant
guard.

"And you, too, Ventura, are you coming to take a rest?"

"No," answered Ventura, "I come for supplies, and besides, it is eight
days--"

"Since you saw my sister, Elvira," interrupted Perico with his sweet
smile. "Very good, my friend, you are killing two birds with one
stone."

"You keep still, Perico, and I will. He whose house has a glass roof
shouldn't throw stones at his neighbor's," answered the guard.

"You are happy, Ventura," proceeded Perico with a sigh, "for you can
marry when you like, without opposition from any one."

"And what!" exclaimed Ventura, "who or what can oppose your getting
married?"

"The will of my mother," replied Perico.

"What are you saying?" asked Ventura, "and why? What fault can she
find with Rita, who is young, good-looking, and comes of a good stock,
since she is own cousin to you?"

"That is precisely the reason my mother alleges for not being in favor
of it."

"An old woman's scruples! Does she wish to change the custom of the
church, which permits it?"

"My mother's scruples," replied Perico, "are not religious ones. She
says that the union of such near relations is against nature, that the
same blood in both repels itself, and distaste is the result; that
sooner or later evils, misfortunes and weariness follow and overtake
them, and she gives a hundred examples to prove it."

"Don't mind her," said Ventura; "let her prophesy and sing evil like
an owl. Mothers have always something against their sons' marrying."

"No," answered Perico gravely, "no; without my mother's consent I will
never marry."

They walked along some instants in silence when Ventura said:

"The truth is, I am like the captain who embarked the passengers and
remained on shore himself, or like the preacher who used to say, 'Do
as I tell you and not as I do;' for, in fact, does not the will of my
father hold me, tied down like a lion with a woollen rope? Do you
think, Perico, that if it were not for my father, I would not now be
in Utrera, where the regiment of volunteers is enlisting to go and
fight the infamous traitors who steal across our frontier in the guise
of friends, to make themselves masters of the country and put a
foreign yoke upon our necks?"

"I am of the same mind," said Perico, "but how can I leave my mother
and sister who have only me to look to? But remember, if my mother
sets herself against my marrying, I'm not going to live so, and I
shall go with the other young men."

"And you will do right," said Ventura with energy. "As for me, the day
they least expect it, though they call me, I shall not answer, and you
may be sure, Perico, that on that day there will be a few less
Frenchmen on the soil of Spain."

{500}

"And Elvira?" questioned Perico.

"She will do like others, wait for me--or weep for me."


CHAPTER II.

The house of the family of Perico was spacious and neatly whitewashed,
both without and within. On each side of the door, built against the
wall, was a bench of mason work. In the entry hung a lantern before an
image of our Lord which was fixed upon the inner door, according to
the Catholic custom, which requires that a religious thought shall
precede everything, and puts all things under some holy patronage. In
the midst of the spacious court-yard an enormous orange-tree rose
luxuriantly upon its smooth and robust trunk. Its base was shielded by
a wooden frame. For numberless generations this beautiful tree had
been a source of enjoyment to this family. The deceased Juan Alvareda,
the father of Perico, claimed upon tradition, that its existence dated
as far back as the expulsion of the Moors, when, according to his
assertion, an Alvareda, a soldier of the royal saint, Fernando, had
planted it, and when the parish priest, who was his wife's brother,
would jest him upon the antiquity, and uninterrupted succession of his
lineage, or make light of it, he always answered, without being
disturbed or vacillating for an instant in his conviction, that all
the lineages of the world were ancient, and that, though the direct
line or succession of the rich might often be extinguished, such a
thing never happened with the poor.

The women of the family made of the leaves of the orange-tree tonics
for the stomach and soothing preparations for the nerves. The young
girls adorned themselves with its flowers and made confections of
them. The children regaled their palate and refreshed their blood with
its fruit. The birds had their quarters-general among its leaves, and
sung to it a thousand cheerful songs, while its possessors, who had
grown up under its shelter, watered it unweariedly in summer-time and
in winter cut away its withered twigs, as one pulls the gray hairs
from the head of the father he would never see grow old.

On opposite sides of the entry were two suites of rooms, or, according
to the expression of the province, _partidos_, both alike; consisting,
each, of a parlor having two small windows with gratings looking
toward the street, and two bedrooms forming an angle with the parlor,
and receiving light from the yard. At the end of the yard was a door
which opened into a large enclosure in which were the kitchen,
wash-house, and stables, and which paraded in its centre a large
fig-tree of so little pretension and self-esteem that it yielded
itself without complaint to the nightly roost of the hens, never
having bent its boughs under the inconvenient weight, even to play
them a trick by way of carnival.

The master of the house had been dead three years. When he felt his
end approaching, he called his son to him and said: "In your care I
leave your mother and sister; be guided by the one and watch over the
other. Live always in the holy fear of God, and think often of death,
so that you may see his approach without either surprise or fear.
Remember my end, that you may not dread your own. All the Alvaredas
have been honest men; in your veins flows the same Spanish blood and
in your heart exist the same Catholic principles that made them such.
Be like them, and you will live happily and die in peace!"

Anna, his widow, was a woman distinguished among her class, and she
would have been so in a more elevated one. Carefully brought up by her
brother the priest, her understanding was cultivated, her character
grave, her manners dignified, and her virtue instinctive. These
merits, united with {501} her easy circumstances, gave her a real
superiority over those who surrounded her, which she accepted without
misusing. Her son Perico, submissive, modest, and industrious, had
been her consolation, his love for his cousin Rita being the only
disquietude he had ever caused her.

Her daughter Elvira, who was three years younger than Perico, was a
malva in gentleness, a violet in modesty and a lily in purity.
Ill-health in childhood had given to her features, which closely
resembled those of her brother, a delicacy, and an expression of calm
resignation, which lent to her a singular attraction. From her infancy
she had clung to Ventura, the proud and handsome son of Uncle Pedro,
who had been the friend and gossip of the late Alvareda.

The wife of Pedro died in giving birth to a daughter, who from her
infancy had been confided to the care of her mother's sister, a
religious of Alcala. Separated thus from his daughter, Pedro had
concentrated all his affection upon his son, and with pride and
satisfaction had seen him become the handsomest, the bravest, and the
most gallant, of all the youths of the place.

Directly in front of the house of the Alvaredas stood the small
cottage of Maria, the mother of Rita. Maria was the widow of Anna's
brother, who had been superintendent of the neighboring _hacienda_ of
Quintos.

This woman was so good, so without gall, so candid and simple, that
she had never possessed enough force and energy to subdue the decided,
haughty, and imperious character which her daughter had manifested
from her childhood, and these evil dispositions had therefore
developed themselves without restraint. She was violent-tempered,
fickle, and cold-hearted. Her face, extraordinarily beautiful,
seductively expressive, piquant, lively, smiling, and mischievous,
formed a perfect contrast to that of her cousin Elvira.

The one might have been compared to a fresh rose armed with its
thorns; the other to one of those roses of passion, which lift above
their pale leaves a crown of thorns in token of endurance, while they
hide in the depths of their calix the sweetest honey.

In the delineation and classification of the members which composed
this family and those connected with them, we must not omit Melampo,
the dog we have already seen, lazily following Perico on his return
home. We must give him his place, for not all dogs are equal, even in
the eye of the law. Melampo was a grave and honorable dog, without
pretension, even to being a Hercules or an Alcides among his race,
notwithstanding his enormous strength. He seldom barked, and never
without good cause. He was sober and in nothing gluttonous. He never
caressed his masters, but never, upon any pretext, separated himself
from them. He had never, in all his life, bitten any person, and he
despised above all things the attacks of those curs that with stupid
hostility barked at his heels. But Melampo had killed six foxes and
three wolves; and one day had thrown himself upon a bull which was
pursuing his master, and obliged him to stop by seizing him by the
ear, as one might treat a bad child. With such certificates of
service, Melampo slept in the sun upon his laurels.



CHAPTER III.

When the two youths arrived, they found Elvira and Rita leaning each
against a side of the doorway, wrapped in their mantles of yellow
cloth, bordered with black velvet ribbon, such as were worn then by
the women of the country in place of the large shawls which they use
nowadays. They covered the lower part of the face, allowing only the
forehead and eyes to be seen. Having wished them good evening, Perico
said to his sister:

{502}

"Elvira, I warn you that this bird wants to fly; fasten the cage well
. . . He is beside himself to go and fight these _gabachos_  [Footnote
86] who are trying to pass through here like Pedro through his house."

  [Footnote 86: _Gabachos_, a term of contempt for Frenchmen.]

"For they say," added Ventura, "that they are approaching Seville; and
must we stand looking on with our arms crossed, without so much as
saying this mouth is my own?"

"Ah goodness!" exclaimed Elvira, "I hope in God that this may not
happen! Do not even speak of it! O my protectress Saint Anna! I offer
thee what I prize so much, my hair, which I will tie up in a tress
with an azure ribbon and hang upon thy altar, if thou wilt save us
from this."

"And I," said Rita, "will offer the Saint two pots of pinks to adorn
her chapel, if it falls out so that you take yourselves off in haste
and do not come back soon."

"Don't say that, even in jest," exclaimed Elvira, distressed.

"Never mind, let her say it; the Saint is sure to prefer the beautiful
tress of your hair to her pinks," observed Ventura.

At this moment the good widow, Maria, approached. She was older than
her sister-in-law, and although hardly sixty years old, was so small
and thin that she appeared much older.

"Children," she cried, "the night is falling, what are you doing out
here, freezing yourselves?"

"How freezing ourselves?" answered Ventura, unbuttoning his collar,
"I'm too warm, the cold is in your bones, Aunt Maria."

"Do not play with your health, my son, nor trust in your youth, for
Death does not look at the record of baptism. This north wind cuts
like a knife, and you are more likely to get a consumption by waiting
here than an inheritance from the Indies."

So saying she passed into the house, all following her, except
Ventura, who went to discharge his commissions.

They found Anna seated before the brasier, the point of reunion round
which families gather m winter. The great copper frying-pan shone like
gold upon its low wooden bench. The floor of the spacious room was
covered with mattings of straw and hemp, around it were arranged rude
wooden chairs, high-backed and low-seated, a low pine table upon which
burned a large metal lamp, and a leathern arm-chair, like those seen
in the barbers' shops of the region, completed the simple furniture of
the room. In the alcove were seen a very high bed, over which was
spread a white counterpane with well starched ruffles; a very large
cedar chest, with supports underneath to preserve it from the dampness
of the floor; a small table of the same wood, upon which, in its case
of mahogany and glass, was a beautiful image of "Our Lady of Sorrows,"
some pious offerings, and the "Mystic Garland; or, Lives of the
Saints," by Father Baltasar Bosch Centellas.

As soon as they were all reunited, including Pedro, the neighbor and
friend of Anna, the latter began to recite the rosary. When the
prayers were finished Anna took up her distaff to spin, Elvira applied
herself to her knitting, and Pedro, who occupied the great chair,
employed himself in the preparation of a cigarette; Perico in roasting
chestnuts and acorns, which, when they were done, he gave to Rita, who
ate them.

"Did you ever!" said Perico, "how the rain holds off! The earth has
turned to stone and the sky to brass. Last year at this time it had
rained so much that the ground could not be seen for the grass that
covered it."

"It is true," said Uncle Pedro, "and now the flocks are perishing with
hunger, notwithstanding that last year their table was so well
spread."

"It appears to me," added Elvira, in her sweet voice, "that it is
going to rain soon. The river wore its black frown to-day, and the old
people say that these frowns are sleeping tempests, which, when the
winds awaken them, drench the world.'"

{503}

"Of course it is going to rain," said Rita; "I saw to-night the star
of the waters which the storm brings for a lantern."

"It is a-going to rain," confirmed Maria, aroused from her dose by the
abrupt and clear voice of her daughter; "my rheumatic pains announce
it to me. Indeed, wind and rain are the fruits of the season, and they
are needed. But I am sorry for the poor herdsmen who pass such nights
in the inn of the stars."

"Don't trouble yourself about them, Maria," said the jovial Uncle
Pedro, who had always a saying, a proverb, a story, or a something, to
bring in support of whatever he asserted. "In this world habit is
everything, and that which seems disagreeable to one, another finds
quite to his liking; custom makes all level as the sea, and gilds all
like the sun. There was once a shepherd that got married to a girl as
lovely as a rose, and as chance would have it, on the very night of
the wedding there arose such a tempest as if all the imps from beneath
had been abroad with thunder and lightning, hurricane and flood. It
was too much for the shepherd; he abandoned his bride and rushed to
the window exclaiming as he dashed it open, 'O blessed night I why am
I not out to enjoy thee!'"

"The bride might well be jealous of such a rival," said Rita, bursting
into a loud laugh.

The clock struck nine, they recited the "animas," and soon afterward
separated.

When the mother and her children were left alone Elvira spread a clean
cloth upon the table and placed upon it a dish of salad. Anna and her
daughter began to sup, but Perico remained seated with his head
inclined over the brasier, absently stirring with the shovel the few
coals which still glowed among the ashes.

"Are you not going to eat your supper, Perico?" said his sister,
extending toward him the fine white bread which she herself had
kneaded.

"I am not hungry," he answered, without lifting his head.

"Are you sick, my son?" asked Anna.

"No, mother," he replied.

The supper was finished in silence, and when Elvira had gone out,
carrying the plates, Perico abruptly said to his mother:

"Mother, I am going to Utrera tomorrow to enlist with the loyal
Spanish who are preparing to defend the country."

Anna was thunderstruck. Accustomed to the docile obedience of her son,
who had never failed to keep his word, she said to him:

"To the war? That is to say that you are going to abandon us. But it
cannot be! You must not do it! You ought not to leave your mother and
sister, and I will not give my consent."

"Mother," said the young man, exasperated, "it is seen that you always
have something to oppose to my desires; you have subjected my will,
and now you wish to fetter my arm; but mother," he proceeded, growing
excited, and impelled by the two greatest motives which can rule a
man--patriotism in all its purity, and love in all its ardor, "mother,
I am twenty-two years old, and I have besides strength enough and will
enough, to break away if you force me to it."

Anna, as much astonished as terrified, clapped her cold and trembling
hands in agony, exclaiming:

"What! is there no alternative between a marriage which will make you
wretched and the war which will cost you your life?"

"None, mother," said Perico, drawn out of his natural character, and
hardened by the dread that he should yield in the contest now fairly
entered upon. "Either I remain to marry, or I go to fulfil the duty of
every young Spaniard."

"Marry, then," said the mother in a grave voice. "Between two
misfortunes I choose the least bitter; but remember, Perico, what your
mother tells you to-day; Rita is vain and light {504} an indifferent
Christian, and an ungrateful daughter. A bad daughter makes a bad
wife--your blood and hers will repel each other. You will remember
what your mother now says, but it will be too late."

Saying these words, the noble woman rose and went into her room to
hide from her son the tears that choked her voice.

Perico, who regarded his mother with as much tenderness as veneration,
made a movement as if to retain her. He would have spoken, but his
timidity and the excitement of his mind confused his faculties. He
found no words, and after a moment of indecision rose suddenly, passed
his hand across his damp forehead, and went out.

During this time Rita, who waited in vain at the grating of her window
for Perico, was impatient and uneasy.

"I won't put up with this!" she said at last, spitefully, closing the
wooden shutter. "You may come now, but upon my life, you shall wait
longer than I have." At this instant a stone rolled against the foot
of the wall, This was the signal agreed upon between her and Perico to
announce his arrival.

"Now you may roll all the stones of Dos-Hermanas and I shall not open
the shutter," said Rita to herself. "Perhaps you think you have me at
your will and pleasure, like your old donkey, but this will never do,
my son."

Another stone came rolling, and bounded back from the wall with more
violence than Perico was accustomed to use.

"Ho!" said Rita, "he appears to be in a hurry; it is well to let him
know that waiting has not the flavor of caramels; I'm only sorry it
doesn't rain pitchforks." But, after a moment of reflection, she
added, "If we quarrel, the one to bathe in rose water will be my
hypocrite of an aunt; afterward Uncle Pedro's daughter, Saint Marcela,
that the old fox keeps shut up in the convent, like a sardine in
pickle, will be brought out to dance, so that she may trap his godson
Perico on the first opportunity. But they shall not see themselves in
that glass, for to frustrate their plans--"

And suddenly opening the window, she finished the sentence:

"I am here." Addressing herself to Perico, she continued with
asperity, "Look here, are you determined to throw down the wall? Why
did you wake me? When I am kept waiting I fall asleep, and when I am
asleep I do not thank anyone for disturbing me; so go back by the way
you came, or by another, it's all the same to me." And she made a
motion as if to shut the blind.

"Rita, Rita!" exclaimed Perico, "I have spoken to my mother."

"You!" said Rita, opening again the half-shut blind. "You don't say
it! Why, this is another miracle like that of Balaam's ass! and what
answer did this '_mater_' not '_amabilis_' give you?"

"She says, yes, that I may marry," answered Perico delightedly.

"Says yes!" mocked Rita. "Saint Quilindon help me! How often a key can
turn! But it belongs to the wise to change their minds. Go along with
you! To-morrow I will come over and condole with her. Perico, what if,
following the good example of your mother, as mine exhorts me to, I
also should change my mind and now say no?"

"Rita, Rita!" cried Perico, beside himself with joy, "you are going to
be my wife."

"That remains to be seen," she responded; "the idea is not like a
silver dollar, which, the oftener you turn it, the prettier it looks."

With these and other absurdities Rita blotted entirely from the mind
of Perico, the solemn impression his mother's words had left there.



{505}

CHAPTER IV.

On the following morning Anna was sitting alone, sad and depressed,
when Uncle Pedro entered. "Neighbor," he said, "here I am, because I
have come."

"May it be for good, neighbor?"

"But I have come because I have something to talk to you about."

"Talk on, neighbor, and the more the better."

"You must know, then, that my wind-mill of a Ventura has taken it into
his head to go and get his hide pierced by those French savages,
confound them!"

"Gently, gently, neighbor; kill an enemy in fair fight, but do not
curse him. Perico also was thinking of the same thing. It is bitter,
old friend, it is cruel for us, but it is natural."

"I do not say the contrary, my friend. _Bad luck to the traitors!_
but, in short, he is my only son, and I would not lose him; no, not
for all Spain. I have found but one means to keep him at home and am
come to tell you what that is."

As he spoke, Pedro was seating himself comfortably in the great
leathern arm-chair, gathering up the ends of his cloak, approaching
his feet to the fire, and settling himself at his ease generally.

"Neighbor," he said, at last, with that profusion of synonymous
phrases in which great talkers indulge, "I abhor preambles, which only
serve to waste the breath. Things ought to be arranged with few words,
and those to the point. One side or the other, and this is mine, that
which can be said in five minutes, why waste an hour talking about it?
that which can be done to-day, why leave it until tomorrow? Of all
roads the shortest is the best, but to come to the point, for I
neither like circumlocution nor--"

"Really," said Anna, interrupting him, "you give occasion to suppose
the contrary. _Do_ come to the point, for you have kept me in suspense
ever since you entered."

"Patience, patience! I can't fire myself off like a musket; by talking
folks come to an understanding. What is there to hurry us? Good
gracious! neighbor, if you are not all fire and tow, and as sudden as
a flash. I was saying, Mrs. Gunpowder, that I had found only one
method of keeping this skyrocket of mine from going off; and that is
to take a step which sooner or later I should have taken; in a word,
and to end the matter, I have come to ask of you your Elvira for my
Ventura, hoping the son I offer you may be as much to your liking as
the daughter I ask you for is to mine."

Anna did not attempt to hide the satisfaction she felt at the prospect
of a union so suitable and equal in every respect, a union that had
been foreseen by the parents, and was as much desired by them as by
their children. Therefore, like the sensible people they were, they
began at once to discuss the conditions of the contract.

"Neighbor," said Anna, "you know what we have as well as I do. The
only question is how to divide it. This house has always gone to the
oldest son; the vineyard belongs to Perico by right, because he has
improved it, and has newly planted the greater part of it; my cows I
give to him, because he has me to support while I live. The ass he
needs."

"Would you tell me, companion of my sins," interrupted Pedro, "what
remains to Elvira? for according to these dispositions, it appears to
me she is coming from your hands as our mother Eve, may she rest in
peace, came from those of the Creator."

"Elvira will have the olive-yard," answered Anna.

"That _is_ the patrimony of a princess," exclaimed Uncle Pedro. "Go
along! an olive-yard the size of a pocket handkerchief, which hardly
yields oil enough for the lamp of the blessed sacrament."

"Twenty years ago it yielded _more than_ a hundred _arrobos_,"
[Footnote 87] observed Anna.

  [Footnote 87: _Arroba_ of liquids, 32 pints; of solids, 29 pounds of
  16 ounces to the pound.]

"Neighbor," said Pedro, "that which was and is not, is the same as if
it had never been; twenty years ago the girls were dying for me."

{506}

"Forty years ago, you mean," Anna remarked.

"How very exact you are, neighbor," pursued Pedro. "Let us come to the
point. Trees are as scarce in that yard as hairs on the head of Saint
Peter, and those which remain are so dry that they look like church
candlesticks."

"It is plain, my friend, that you have not seen them in a long time.
Since Perico has known that the oliveyard was to be his sister's, the
trees have been taken care of like rose-bushes in pots; each tree
would shade a parade ground. Elvira will have, besides, the fields
that skirt and that are watered by the brook which runs through them."

"And that are so parched and thirsty, you will take notice, because
the brook is one half the year dry and the other half without water,"
added Pedro. "Let us understand each other. I like bread, bread, and
wine, wine; neither bran in the one nor water in the other. Those
fields, neighbor, are poor and unproductive; of no use, except for the
asses to wallow in. But, since no one overhears us, did you not sell
last year two fat hogs, each weighing fifteen _arrobas_, at a shilling
a pound--calculate it, a hundred bushels of barley at fifteen
shillings a bushel, a hundred skins of wine, and fifty of vinegar? Now
this cat which you must have, shut up in a chest, without room to
breathe, what better occasion could there be to give it the air? When
his majesty, Charles V., came to Jerez (so the story goes) they
offered him a rich wine. But such a wine! rather better than that of
your grace's vineyard, and his majesty appears to have been a judge,
for he praised the wine greatly. 'Sir,' said the Alcalde, so puffed up
that his skin could scarce contain him, for you must know that the
people of Jerez are more vain of their wine than I am of my son,
'permit me to inform your majesty that we have a wine even better than
that.' 'Yes?' said the king; 'keep it then for a better occasion;' and
this, neighbor, is the letter I write to you; it is for you to make
the application."

"Which is," said Anna, "that all this money, and somewhat more, I have
saved and put together for the daughter of my heart."

"That's what I call talking," exclaimed Pedro. "Upon my word,
neighbor, you are worth a Peru. As for my Ventura, all I have is his,
since Marcela wishes to take the veil, and you may be sure that he is
not shirtless. He will have my house."

"A mere crib," said Anna.

"My asses."

"They are old"

"My goats."

"That do not make up to you in milk, cheeses, and kids, what they cost
you in fines, they are so vicious."

"And my orchard," continued Pedro, without replying to the raillery
with which Anna revenged herself for his jests.

In such discussion they arranged the preliminaries of the contract,
remaining afterward, as they were before, the best friends in the
world.

When Pedro had gone, Anna put on her woollen mantle, and repressing
her grief, and hiding the extreme repugnance she felt, went to the
house of her sister-in-law.

Maria, who professed for Anna, who was very kind to her, as much love
as gratitude, and as much respect as veneration, received her with
loquacious pleasure.

"It does one's eyes good to see you in this house," she exclaimed, as
Anna entered. "What good thought has brought you, sister?"

And she hastened to place a chair for her guest.

Anna sat down, and made known the object of her visit.

The proposition so filled the poor woman with joy, that she could not
find words to express herself.

"O my sister!" she exclaimed in broken sentences, "what good fortune!
Perico! son of my heart! It is to Saint Antonio that I owe this good
{507} fortune! And you, Anna, are you satisfied? Look here, sister:
Rita, although forward, is really a good-hearted girl. She is wilful,
but that is my fault. If I had brought her up as well as you have
Elvira, she would be different. She is giddy, but you will see (with
years and married life) how steady she will become. All these things
are the effects of my spoiling and of her youth. Rita! Rita!" she
cried, "come, make haste: here is your aunt--what do I say? your
mother, she wishes to become, by marrying you to Perico."

Rita entered with the self-possession of a banker, and the composure
of a diplomatist.

"What do you say, daughter?" cried the delighted mother.

"That I knew it," replied Rita.

"Go along," said the mother in an undertone, "if you are not as calm
as if you were used to it, and cooler than a fresh lettuce."

"And what would you have me do--dance a fandango, because I am going
to be married?" answered Rita, raising her voice.

Anna rose and went out. Maria, extremely mortified by her daughter's
rudeness, went with her sister-in-law as far as the street, lavishing
upon her a thousand expressions of endearment and gratitude.


CHAPTER V.

Preparations were being made for the weddings. That of Elvira and
Ventura was to take place before that of Rita and Perico, as the
former had not to wait for a dispensation from Rome.

Pedro wished his daughter Marcela to assist at her brother's marriage,
before commencing her novitiate, and determined to go to Alcalá to
bring her. Maria had a debt to collect there, and needing all her
funds for the expected event, took advantage of her old friend's going
to make the trip in company.

The ancient pair, mounted upon their respective asses, set out on
their journey, crossing themselves, and Maria, the Christian soul,
making a prayer to the holy archangel, Saint Raphael, patron of all
travellers, from Tobias down to herself.

Maria, comfortably seated upon the the cushions of her saddle, dressed
in a wide chintz skirt, which was plaited at the waist, a jacket of
black woollen cloth, of which the closely fitting sleeves were
fastened at the wrist by a row of silver buttons, and round her neck,
a white muslin kerchief, pinned down at the back to keep it from
touching her hair, looked like a burlesque, anticipated, upon the mode
which was to rule among the fashionables thirty years later. A little
shawl covered her head, the ends being tied under her chin.

Pedro wore, with some slight difference, the dress we have already
described in speaking of his son. The cloth was coarser, the bolt
black, as became a widower, his clothes all fitted more loosely, and
his hat had a broader brim, and was without ornament.

"It is a day of flowers!" said Maria, "the fields are smiling, and the
sun seems as if he were telling them to be gay."

"Yes," said Pedro, "the yellow-haired appears to have washed his face,
and sharpened his rays, for they prick like pins."

He took out a little rabbit-skin bag, in which was tobacco, and began
to make a cigarette.

"Maria," said he, when he had finished it, "my opinion is, that, you
will come back from Alcalá with your hands as empty as they go. But,
Christian woman, who the deuce tempted you to lend money to that
vagabond? You knew that he had not so much as a place whereon to fall
dead, and nothing in expectation but alternate rations of hunger and
necessity."

"But," said Maria, "to whom shall we lend if not to the poor? the rich
have no need to borrow."

{508}

"And don't you know, big innocent, that 'he who lends to a friend,
loses both the money and the friend!' But you, Maria, are always so
credulous, and I tell you now that this man will pay you in three
instalments: 'badly, late, and never.'"

"You always think the worst, Pedro."

"That is the reason why I always hit the mark; think ill, and you will
think the truth," said the crafty Pedro.

Presently he commenced droning a ballad, of which the interminable
text is as follows:

  In my house I heard at night,
  Sounds that roused me in affright;
  Quick unsheathed my rapier bright,
  Stole upstairs with footsteps light.

  Searched the dwelling all around,
  From the rooftree to the ground,
  Listening for the faintest sound--
  Nothing heard I, nothing found.

  And my story, being new,
  I'll repeat it o'er to you.
  In my house, etc., etc.

Maria said nothing, nor did she think much more. Rocked by the quiet
pace of her animal, she yielded herself to the indolence which the
balmy spring day induced, and went along sleeping.

Half the road being passed, they came to a small inn. When they
arrived some soldiers were lounging upon the brick seats which were
fixed on each side of the door under the projecting roof. As soon as
they perceived the approach of our venerable couple, they began to
attack them with facetious sayings, burlesque provocations, and
railleries, such as are usual among the country folk, and especially
among the soldiers.

"Uncle," said one, "where are you going with that ancient relic?"

"Aunty," cried another "is the church where you were christened still
standing?"

"Aunt," said another, "does your grace retain any recollection of the
day you were married?"

"Uncle," asked the fourth, "are you going with this maiden to Alcalá
to have the bans published?"

"No," answered Pedro, lazily dismounting, "I shall wait for that until
I am of age, and the girl has her growth."

"Aunt," continued the soldiers, "shall we help you down from that gay
colt?"

"It is the best thing you can do, my sons," responded the good woman.

The soldiers approached, and with kindly attention assisted her to
alight.

Pedro found some acquaintances in the tavern who immediately asked him
to drink with them. He did not wait to be urged, and having drank said
to them:

"It is my turn now, and since I have accepted your treat, you, my
friends, and these gentlemen, whom I know only to serve, will do me
the favor to drink a small glass of _anisete_ to my health."

"Uncle Pedro," said a young muleteer of Dos-Hermanas, "tell us a
story; and I in the mean while will take care to keep your glass
filled so that your throat don't get dry."

"Ah me!" exclaimed Aunt Maria, who after having drank her little glass
of _anisette_  [Footnote 88] had seated herself upon some bags of
wheat, "have mercy on us, for if Pedro lets loose his boneless member,
we shall not get back to our place to-night, at least, not without the
miracle of Joshua."

  [Footnote 88: Liquor distilled from anise-seed.]

"There is no danger, Maria," answered Pedro, "but you will sit on
those sacks till the corn sprouts."

"Is it true, Uncle Pedro, what my mother says," asked the muleteer,
"that in old times, when you were young, you were a lover of Maria's?"

"It is indeed, and I feel honored in saying it," answered Uncle Pedro.

"What a story!" exclaimed Aunt Maria, "it is a lie as big as a house.
Go along with you, Pedro, for a boaster. I never had a lover in my
life except my husband, 'may he rest in peace.'"

"O Mrs. Maria, Mrs. Maria!" said Pedro, "how very poor is your grace's
memory! for you know the song--

{509}

  "Though you take from him the sceptre,
    Robes of state, and signet rings,
    Still remains unto the monarch
    This--that he was once a king."

"It is true," Maria answered, "that he made love to me one day at my
cousin's wedding, and that he came one night to my window; but he got
such a fright there that he left me planted, and ran away as if fear
had lent wings to his feet; and I believe he never stopped until he
ran his nose against the end of the world."

"How is that?" exclaimed the audience, laughing heartily; "is that the
way you show your heels when you are frightened, Uncle Pedro?"

"I neither boast of my courage," replied the latter composedly, "nor
do I wish to gain the palm from _Francisco Esteban_."

"That is being more afraid than ashamed," said Aunt Maria, who was
becoming impatient.

"You see, sirs," said Uncle Pedro, slyly winking, "that she has not
yet forgiven me, which proves, does it not, that she was fond of me?
But I should like to know," he proceeded, "which of you is the _Cid
Campeador_ that would like to have to do with beings of the other
world; with supernatural things?"

"There was nothing more supernatural than your fears," interrupted
Maria, "and they had no more cause than the rolling of a stone from
the roof, by some cat that was keeping vigil."

"Tell us about it. Uncle Pedro, tell us how it happened," cried the
audience.

"You must know then, sirs," began Uncle Pedro, "that the window Maria
indicated to me, was at the back of the house. The house was in a
lonesome place on the outskirts of the town; near by was a picture of
purgatory, with a lamp burning before it. As I looked at the light,
something which happened there a short time before came into mind. A
milkman used to pass by the picture every night as he went out of
town, carrying the empty skins which he brought in at sunrise every
morning, filled with milk. When he came to this place, he did not
scruple to lower the consecrated lamp to light his cigarette. One
night, it was the eve of All Souls, when he had taken the lamp down,
as was his custom, it went out, and he could not light his cigarette.
He found it strange, for the wind slept, and the night was clear. But,
what was his astonishment when a moment after, turning to look back,
he saw the lamp lighted, and burning more brightly than ever.
Recognizing in this a solemn warning from God--touched, and repenting
of the profanation he had done--he made a vow to punish himself by
never smoking another cigarette in his life; and, sirs," added Pedro,
in a grave voice, "he has kept it."

Pedro paused, and for a moment all remained silent.

"This is an occasion," presently said Maria, "to apply the saying,
that when a whole company is silent at once, an angel has passed by,
and the breath of his wings has touched them with awe."

"Come, Uncle Pedro," said the muleteers, "let us hear the rest of the
story."

"Well, sirs," proceeded Pedro, in his former jocose tone, "you must
know that the lamp inspired me with great respect, mingled with not a
little fear. Is it well, I said to myself, to come here and trifle
under the very beards of the blessed souls that in suffering are
expiating their sins? And I assure you, that light which was an
offering to the Lord--which appeared to watch and to record--and
seemed to be looking at me and rebuking me, was an object to impose
respect. Sometimes it was sad and weeping like the _De Profundis_, at
others immovable like the eye of the dead fixed upon me, and then the
flame rose, and bent, and flickered, like a threatening finger of fire
admonishing me.

{510}

"One night, when its regards appeared more threatening than ever
before, a stone, thrown by an invisible hand, struck me on the head
with such force that it left me stupefied; and when I started to run,
though I was, as you might say, in open field, it happened with me as
with that 'negro of evil fortune' who, where there were three doors to
go out at, could not find one; and so, running as fast as I could,
instead of coming to my house, I came to a quarry and fell in."

"I have always heard of that negro of evil fortune," said one of the
listeners, "but could never find out how he came to be called so. Can
you tell me?"

"I should think so!" answered Uncle Pedro.

"There was once a very rich negro who lived in front of the house of a
fine young woman, with whom he fell in love. The young woman, vexed by
the soft attentions and endearments of the fellow, laid the matter
before her husband, who told her to make an appointment with the negro
for that evening. She did so, and he came, bringing a world of
presents. She received him in a drawing-room that had three doors.
There she had a grand supper prepared for him. But they were hardly
seated at the table when the light was put out, and the husband came
in with a cowhide, with which he began to lash the negro's shoulders.
The latter was so confounded that he could not find a door to escape
through, and kept exclaiming as he danced under the blows:

  "Poor little negro, what evil fortune!
  Where there are three doors, he cannot find one.'

"At last, he chanced upon one, and rushed out like the wind. But the
husband was after him, and gave him a push that sent him from the top
of the stairs to the bottom. A servant hearing the noise he made, ran
to ask the cause. 'What would it be,' answered the black, 'but that I
went up on my tiptoes and came down on my ribs?'

  "Que he subido de puntillas.
  The bajado de costillas."

"Uncle Pedro," asked the muleteer, laughing, "was that the cause of
your remaining estranged?"

"No," said Pedro, "eight days afterwards, I armed myself with courage
and returned to the grating, but Maria would not open the window."

"Aunt Maria did not want you to be stoned to death like Saint
Stephen," said the muleteer.

"It was not that, boy; the truth is, that Miguel Ortiz, who had just
completed his term, returned to the place, and it suited Maria to
forsake one and take up with another who----"

"Was not afraid," interrupted Maria, "to talk, with good intentions,
to a girl in the neighborhood of a _consecrated object_; for, do you
suppose that all those souls were spinsters?"

"I think so, Maria, because the married pass their purgatory in this
world--the men, because their wives torment them, and the women,
through what their children cause them to suffer. Well, sirs, I took
the matter so to heart that I could not stay in Dos-Hermanas when the
wedding was celebrated, and I went to Alcalá."

"Where he remembered me so well, that he came back married to
another."

"It is true, for I have always thought it best 'when one king is dead,
to set up another.'"

"Ah Pedro! everlasting talker," said Maria getting up, "let us go."

"Yes, let us go; for the sun is as hot as if he were flying away from
the clouds, and I think it will rain."

"God forbid!" exclaimed Maria, "give us the sun and wasps though they
sting!"

"Why should it rain, since we are in March?" put in the muleteer.

"And don't you know, Jose" replied Uncle Pedro, "that January promised
a lamb to March, but when March arrived the lambs were so fat and fine
that January would not fulfil the promise? Then March was vexed and
said to him,

  'With three days left me of my own.
  And three friend April will me loan,
  I'll pat your sheep in such a state,
  You'll wish you'd paid me when too late.'

{511}

"And so let us be off. Good-by, gentlemen."

"What a hurry you are in, Aunt Maria!" said the muleteer. "Are you
afraid you shall take root?"

"No, but these asses of ours do not go like yours, Jose."

"That is so," said Pedro as he assisted Maria to mount; "with us, all
is old--the horsewoman, her squire, and the steeds. My ass is so
judicious that she cannot make up her mind upon which foot to limp,
and therefore limps on all four; and that of Maria so old, that, if
she could speak, she would say 'thee and thou' to us all. Well,
gentlemen, your commands."

"Health and dimes to you, Uncle Pedro."

Our travellers took the road again, and when they reached Alcalá,
separated to attend to their respective affairs.

An hour afterward they rejoined each other. Pedro came accompanied by
his daughter, who threw herself upon Maria's neck with that tender
sentimentality of young girls whose hearts have not been bruised,
wounded, or chilled, by contact with the world.

"You have collected your money?" questioned Pedro, as though he
doubted it.

"They offered me half now," answered Maria, "or the whole after
harvest; and, as I am in want of my dimes, I preferred the former."

"Not Solomon, Maria! not even Solomon! could have acted more wisely;
for, 'blessed is he that possesses,' and 'one bird in the hand is
worth a hundred on the wing.'"

Pedro took his daughter up behind him, and they set out--Maria taking
care of her money; Marcela of the flowers, spices, cakes, and
sweetmeats she had bought as gifts; and Pedro looking after them both.



CHAPTER VI.

The arrival of Marcela caused great joy to all except Rita, who
neither wished nor tried to hide the ill-humor she felt in the
presence of one who had been destined by both families to be the wife
of Perico.

This hostile disposition, and the cold reserve which Rita imposed upon
Perico in his intercourse with Marcela, were the first frosts which
had ever fallen upon the springtime of that pure spirit.

Marcela was far from suspecting the base and bitter sentiments of
Rita, and besides, she would not have understood them; for, though a
young woman, she had the soul of a child. Having lived in the convent
from her birth, she had created for herself a sweet existence, which
could not be enlarged by the interests and passions of life, except at
the cost of innocence and happiness. She loved her good religious, her
garden, her gentle and peaceful duties. She was attached to her
devotions, to her church, and to her blessed images. She wished to be
a nun, not from spiritual exaltation, but because she liked the life;
not from misanthropy, but with joy of heart; not because she was
without convenient place or position in the world, which many believe
to be a motive for taking the veil, but because her position, her
place, she found--and preferred it--in the convent.

This is what many do not, or pretend not to comprehend. Everything can
be understood in this world; all vices; all irregularities; all the
most atrocious inclinations; even the propensity of the Anthropophagi;
but that the desire for a tranquil and retired life, without care for
the present, or thought for the future, can exist, is denied, is
incomprehensible.

In the world everything is believed in--the masculine woman, the
morality of stealing, the philanthropy of the guillotine, in the
inhabitants of the moon, and other humbugs, as the English say; or
_canards_, as our neighbors have it; or _bubbles_ and _fables_, as we
call them. The satirical sceptic, called the world, has a throat {512}
down which all these can pass, for there is nothing so credulous as
incredulity, nor so superstitious as irreligion. But it does not
believe in the instincts of purity, in modest desires, in humble
hearts, and in religious sentiments. No indeed; the existence of these
is all humbug, a _bubble_ which it cannot receive. This monster has
not a throat wide enough for these.

Marcela, accompanied by Anna and Elvira, made her first visit to the
church, and to the chapel of Saint Anna, into which the good wife of
the sacristan hastened to lead them.

The chapel is deep and narrow; at the extremity is an altar and the
effigy of the saint. In a crystal urn, inserted into the altar, is
seen a wooden cross and a small bell. The effigy of Saint Anna is very
ancient; its lower part widens in the form of a bell, upon its breast
it bears an image of the Blessed Virgin, which in the same manner
bears that of the child Jesus. The remote origin stamped upon this
effigy, uniting antiquity of idea with age of material, gives, as it
were, wings to the devotion it inspires with which to rise and free
itself from all present surroundings. On the wall, at the right hand,
hang two large pictures. In one is seen an angel, appearing to two
girls, and in the other the same girls, in a wild and solitary place,
with a man who is digging a hole in the earth.

On the left hand an iron railing surrounds the entrance to a cave, the
descent into which is by a narrow stairway.

Marcela and her companions having performed their devotions, seated
themselves in some low chairs which the sacristan's wife placed for
them under the arbor in the court-yard, and Marcela asked the obliging
and kindly woman to explain to them the two pictures which they had
seen in the chapel. The good creature, who loved to tell the story,
began it very far back, and related it in the following words.


POPULAR TRADITION OF DOS-HERMANAS.

"In times the memory of which is almost lost, a wicked king, Don
Rodrigo, ruled in Spain. It was then customary for the nobles of the
realm to send their daughters to court, and therefore the noble count,
Don Julian, sent his fair daughter Florinda, known as _La Cava_. When
the king saw her he was inflamed with passion, but she being virtuous,
the king obtained by violence that which he could not by consent. When
the beautiful Florinda saw herself dishonored, she wrote to the
Count--with blood and tears she wrote it, in these words:

"'Father, your honor and mine are blemished; more to your renown would
it have been, and better for me, if you had killed me, instead of
bringing me here. Come and avenge me.'

"When the Count, Don Julian, read the letter, he fell down in a swoon,
and when he came to himself he swore, upon the cross of his sword, to
take a vengeance the like of which had never been heard of, and one
proportioned to the offence.

"With this intention, he treated with the Moors and gave up to them
Tarifa and Algeciras, and like a swollen river which breaks its
embankments they inundated Andalusia. They reached Seville, known in
those times as _Hispalis_, and this place, then called _Oripo_. The
Christians, before they fled, buried deep in the earth the venerated
image of their patroness Saint Anna. And there it remained five
hundred years, until the good king Fernando, having made himself
master of the surrounding country, invested Seville. Here, however,
the Moors made such a stubborn resistance that the spirit of the
monarch began to fail him. Then, in the tower of _Herveras_, now
fallen to ruin, Our Blessed Mother appeared to him in a dream,
animating his valor, and promising him victory. The good king returned
to his camp at Alcalá with renewed courage. He summoned all the
artificers that could {513} be found, and commanded them to make an
image, as nearly as possible in the likeness of his vision, but to his
great chagrin no one succeeded.

"There then presented themselves, two beautiful youths, dressed like
pilgrims, offering to make an image in every particular like the form
the good king had seen in his vision. They were conducted to a
workshop in which they found prepared for them everything necessary
for their work. The following day, when the king, stimulated by his
impatience, went in to see how the work was progressing, the pilgrims
had disappeared. The materials were lying on the floor untouched, and
upon an altar was an image of our Lady, just as she had appeared to
him in his sleep. The king, recognizing the intervention of the
angels, knelt weeping before the image he had wished for so much, and
which, by the hands of angels, their Queen herself had sent him.

"Afterward, when the pious chief had reduced Seville, he caused this
image to be placed in a triumphal car drawn by six white horses, his
majesty walking behind with naked feet, and deposited in the cathedral
of Seville, where it is still venerated, and where it will continue to
be venerated until the end of time, under the invocation of our Lady
of Kings. In her chapel, at her feet, lies the body of the sainted
monarch--relics, of the possessions of which all Spain may well envy
Seville.

"Soon after the appearance of the vision, the king with great
confidence in the help of God prepared to make another attack. He
posted himself upon the neighboring heights of Buena Vista: the two
wings of his brave army extending on both sides, like two arms ready
to do his will. But the troops were so weary, and so faint from heat
and thirst, that they had neither strength nor spirit left. In this
strait, the good king built up an altar of arms, upon which he placed
an image of the Blessed Virgin which he always carried with him,
calling upon her in these words, 'Aid me! aid me! Holy Mother, for if
by thy help I set up the cross to-day in Seville, I promise to build
thee a chapel in this very spot, in which thou shalt be venerated, and
I will deposit in it the standards under which the city shall be
gained.' As he prayed, a beautiful spring began to flow at the foot of
the ridge, sending forth in different directions seven streams. It
flows still, and bears the name of The King's Fountain.

"Men and horses refreshed themselves, and recovered strength and
courage. Seville was won, and the Moorish King Aixa came bearing the
keys of the city upon a golden salver, and presented them to the pious
conqueror. They are kept with other precious relics in the treasury of
the cathedral.

"In those times," proceeded the narrator, "there lived in the province
of Leon two devout sisters, named Elvia and Estefania, to whom an
angel appeared and told them to set out for the purpose of finding an
image of Our Lady which the Christians had hidden under the earth. The
father of the devout maidens, Gomez Mazereno, who was as pious as they
were, wished to go with them. But on setting out they were in great
trouble, not knowing what direction to take. Then they heard the sound
of a bell in the air. They saw no bell, but followed the ringing until
they came to this place, where it seemed to go down into the ground at
their feet. This was then an uncultivated waste of matted thorns and
briers, and was called 'The Invincible Thicket,' because the Moors,
who had all these lands under cultivation could never cut it down;
for, unseen by them, an angel guarded it with a drawn sword in his
hand. They began zealously to dig, and digging came to a large flat
stone, which being lifted, they discovered the entrance to a cave--the
same that you saw in the chapel. In it they found the image of the
saint, a cross, the {514} small bell, which, like the star of the
eastern kings had led them here, and a lamp still burning--the very
lamp that lights the saint now, for it hangs in the chapel before her
altar! For more than a thousand years it has burned in veneration of
our patroness. They took up her image and raised this chapel in her
name. Houses were built and clustered together round it, until this
village, which takes the name of Dos-Hermanas from its founders, was
formed under its shelter. See," continued the good woman, rising and
reentering the chapel, "see here the image which nothing has been able
to injure; neither the dampness of the earth, nor dust of the air, nor
the canker of time. In these two pictures are the portraits of the
devout sisters." A great quantity of offerings were seen hanging on
both sides of altar. Of these seven little silver legs, tied together
and suspended by a rose-colored ribbon, attracted Marcela's attention.

"What is the meaning of that offering?" she asked of the sacristan's
wife.

"Marcos, the blacksmith, brought them here. It happened, one day, that
the poor fellow was seized with such violent pains in his legs, that
it seemed as though he could neither live nor die.

"His wife having administered to him without effect all the remedies
that were ordered, took him, stretched upon a cart, to Seville. But
neither could the doctors there do anything to relieve him. One day,
after the unfortunate man had spent all he possessed in remedies, made
desperate by his suffering, and by the cries of his children for the
bread which he had not to give them, he lifted his broken heart to
God, claiming as his intercessor our blessed patroness Saint Anna,
praying with fervor to be made well until such time as his children
should no longer need him; adding: When my children are grown up I
will die without murmuring. And if, until then, I regain my health, I
promise, Blessed Saint, to hang, every year, a little silver leg upon
thy altar, in attestation of the miracle.' The next day Marcos came on
foot to give thanks to God. Years passed. The sons of Marcos had grown
up and were earning their living. There remained with him only a young
daughter. She had a lover who asked her of her father. The wedding was
gay, only Marcos seemed to be in deep thought On the following day he
took his bed, from which he never rose. What he asked had been
granted. His task was done."

"And these ears of grain?" said Marcela, seeing a bunch of wheat tied
with a blue ribbon.

"They were brought by Petrola, the wife of Gomez. These poor people
had only the daily wages of the father for the support of eight
children. They had begged the use of a small field to sow with wheat,
and in it were sown also their hopes. With what pleasure they watched
it, and with what satisfaction! for it repaid their care, growing so
luxuriantly that it looked as if they sprinkled it every morning with
blessed water. One day a neighbor came from the field and told the
poor woman that the locust was in her wheat. The locust! One of the
plagues of Egypt! It was as if a bolt from heaven had struck her.
Leaving her house and her little ones, she rushed out wildly, with her
arms extended and not knowing what she did. 'Saint Anna,' she cried,
'my children's bread! my children's bread!' She reached the field and
saw in one corner the track of the locust. This insect destroys the
blades from the foot without leaving a sign. But between its track and
the rest of the field an invisible wall had been raised to protect the
wheat of the pious mother who invoked the saint, and the locust had
disappeared. You can imagine the delight and gratitude of the good
woman, who was so poor that she testified it by the gift of these few
blades of the precious grain."

{515}

Anna, Elvira, and Marcela listened with softened and fervent hearts,
and eyes moistened with tears. With the same emotions the relation has
been transmitted to paper. God grant that it may be read in like
spirit!



CHAPTER VII.

May smiled. Golden with sunlight, noisy with the song of its birds and
the murmur of its insects; odorous with its flowers, laughing, and
happy to be the month, of all others, dedicated to Mary.

The wedding day of Ventura and Elvira had arrived, and the sun, like a
friend that hastened to be the first to give them joy, rose radiant.
They were ready to set out for the church. Anna pressed to her heart
the child of her love, the gentle Elvira, so humble and thoughtful in
her gladness that she stood with drooping head and eyes cast down, as
if oppressed and dazzled by so much joy. Uncle Pedro, who had never
been so glad in all his life, exceeded even himself in jokes, hints,
and facetious sayings. Maria, transported with her own delight, and
that of others, shed tears continually--tears, like the rain drops,
which sometimes fall from a clear sky when the sun is bright.

As his rays shine through those drops, so shone Maria's smile through
her tears.

"Dear sister," said Marcela to Elvira, "next to mine, my sweet Jesus,
your bridegroom is the best and most perfect. See my Ventura, how well
he appears; if he had only a spray of lilies in his hand, he would
look like Saint Joseph in 'The Espousals.'"

And she had reason to praise her brother, for Ventura, neatly and
richly dressed, more animated and gallant than ever, hurrying the
others to set out, was the type a sculptor would have chosen for a
statue of Achilles.

Perico forgot even Rita. His large, soft brown eyes were fixed upon
his sister with a look of deep and inexplicable tenderness. Rita only
was indifferent and petulant.

They were leaving the house when a strange sound reached their ears. A
sound which seemed to be made up of the bellowing of the enraged bull,
the lamentations of the wounded bird, and the growl of the lion
surprised in his sleep.

It was the cry of alarm and rage of the flocks of fugitives that were
arriving, and the exclamations of astonishment and indignation of the
people of the village that were preparing to imitate them.

The French had entered Seville with giant strides, and were hurrying
on in their devastating march toward Cadiz.

Perico having foreseen this event, had prepared a place of refuge for
his family, in a solitary farm-house, far apart from any public way,
and had horses standing in the stables ready against surprise.

While the men rushed into the yard to prepare the animals, the women,
wild with fear, gathered and tied together the clothes and whatever
else they could carry with them in the panniers.

"What a sad omen!" said Elvira to Ventura; "the day which should join
us together separates us."

"Nothing can separate us, Elvira," answered Ventura; "I defy the whole
world to do it. Go without fear. We are going to prepare ourselves,
and shall overtake you on the road."

Ventura saw them depart under the protection of Perico, and watched
them until they were out of sight.

But now was heard at the entrance of the village the fatal sound of
drums, which announced the arrival of the terrible phalanx that threw
itself upon that poor unarmed people, taken by surprise, and treated
without mercy.

{516}

It came in the name of an iniquitous usurpation of which the
precedents belong to barbarous times, as the resistance it met with
belongs to the days of heroism--a resistance against which it dashed
and was broken, fighting without glory and yielding without shame.

"Follow me, father," said Ventura. "Sister, come; we must fly!"

"It is too late," replied Pedro, "they are already here. Ventura, hide
your sister; when night comes we will escape, but now hide
yourselves."

"And you, father?" said Ventura, hesitating between necessity and the
repugnance he felt to being obliged to hide himself.

"I," answered Pedro, "remain here. What can they do to a poor old man
like me? Go, I tell you! Hide yourselves! Marcela, what are you doing
there, poor child, as cold and fixed as a statue? Ventura, what are
you thinking of that you do not move? Do you wish to be lost? Do you
wish to lose your sister? Ventura! dear son, do you wish to kill me?"

His father's cry of anguish roused Ventura from the stupor into which
he had been thrown by fear, uncertainty, and rage.

"It is necessary," he murmured, with clenched hands, and set teeth.
"Father, father! to hide myself like a woman! while I live I shall
never get over the shame of it!" and taking a ladder, he lifted it to
an opening in the ceiling, which formed the entrance to a sort of loft
or garret, where they kept seeds, and worn-out and useless household
articles, helped his sister to mount, went up himself, and drew the
ladder after him.

It was time, for there was a knocking at the door. Pedro opened it,
and a French soldier entered.

"Prepare me," he said in his jargon, "food and drink: give me your
money, unless you want me to take it, and call your daughters, if you
do not wish me to look them up."

The blood of the honorable and haughty Spaniard rose to his face, but
he answered with moderation,

"I have nothing that you ask me for."

"Which means that you have nothing, you thief? Do you know whom you
are talking to, and that I am hungry and thirsty?"

Pedro, who had expected to pass the whole of this long wished-for day
of his son's marriage in Anna's house, and had therefore nothing
prepared, approached the door which communicated with the interior of
the house, and pointing to the extinguished hearth, repeated, "As I
have already told you, there is nothing to eat in the house, except
bread."

"You lie!" shouted the Frenchman in a rage; "it is because you do not
mean to give it to me."

Pedro fixed his eyes upon the grenadier, and in them burned, for an
instant all the indignation, all the rage, all the resentment he
harbored in his soul; but a second thought, at which he shuddered,
caused him to lower them, and say in a conciliating tone:

"Satisfy yourself that I have told you the truth."

On hearing this continued refusal, the soldier, already exasperated by
the glance Pedro had cast at him, approached the old man and said;
"You dare to face me; you refuse to comply with your obligation to
supply me. Ha! and worse than all, you insult me with your tranquil
contempt. Upon my life, I will make you as pliant as a glove!" and
raising his hand, there resounded through the house, dry and distinct,
a blow on the face.

Like an eagle darting upon its prey, Ventura dropped down, threw
himself upon the Frenchman, forced the sword from his hand, and ran it
through his body. The soldier fell heavily, a lifeless bulk.

"Boy, boy, what have you done?" exclaimed the old man, forgetting the
affront in the peril of his son.

"My duty, father."

"You are lost!"

"And you are avenged."

"Go, save yourself! do not lose an instant."

{517}

"First, let me take away this debtor, whose account is settled. If
they find him here, you will have to suffer, father."

"Never mind, never mind," exclaimed the father, "save yourself, that
is the first thing to be thought of."

Without listening to his father. Ventura took the corpse upon his
shoulder, threw it into the well, turned to the old man, who followed
him in an agony of distress, asked for his blessing, sprang with one
bound, upon the wall which surrounded the yard, and to the ground on
the other side. The poor father, mounted upon the trunk of a fig-tree,
holding on by its branches, with bursting heart, and straining eyes,
and breath suspended, saw his son, the idol of his soul, pass with the
lightness of a deer, the space which separated the village from an
olive plantation, and disappear among the trees.


TO BE CONTINUED.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

SAPPHICS.

SUGGESTED BY "THE QUIP" OF GEORGE HERBERT


  Stratus in terram meditans jacebam;
  Saeculum molle et petulans procaxqae,
  Asseclas tristem stimulabat acri
            Laedere lusu.

  Pulchra, quam tinxit Cytherea, rosa,
  "Cujus, quaeso," inquit, "manus, infaceta
  Carpere inaudax?" Tibi linquo causam,
            Victor Iesu!

  Tinnitans argentum: "Melos istud audi:
  Musicae nostine modes suaves?"
  Inquit et fugit. Tibi linquo causam,
            Victor Iesu!

  Gloria tunc tollens caput et coruscans,
  Sericis filis crepitans, me figit
  Oculis limis. Tibi linquo causam,
            Victor Iesu!

  Gestiit scomma sceleratis aptum,
  Callida lingua acuisse Ira;
  Conticescat jam. Tibi linquo causam,
            Victor Iesu!

  Attamen cum Tu, die constituto,
  Eligisti quos Tibi vindicassis,
  Audiam o, dextro lateri statatus,
            "Euge fidelis"


Sti. Lodoiel, in Ascensione Domini, 1866.

R. A. B.

------

{518}

[ ORIGINAL.]

PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.


IV.

THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE CREED
DEMONSTRATED IN THE CONSTITUTIVE
IDEA OF REASON.


As soon as we open the eye of reason we become spectators of the
creation. The word creation in this proposition is to be understood
not in a loose and popular sense, but in a strict and scientific one.
We intend to say, not merely that we behold certain existing objects,
but that we behold them in their relation to their first and supreme
cause. We are witnesses of the creative act by which the Creator and
his work are simultaneously disclosed to the mind. This is the
original constitutive principle of reason, its primal light preceding
all knowledge and thought, and being their condition. It is the idea
which contains in itself, radically and in principle, all possible
development of thought and knowledge, according to the law of growth
connatural to the human intelligence. It includes--God with all his
attributes: the work of God or the created universe; and the relation
between the two, that is, the relation of God to the universe as first
cause in the order of creation, and final cause in the order of the
ultimate end and destination of things. The different portions of this
idea are inseparable from each other. That is, our reason cannot
affirm God separately from the affirmation of the creative act, or
affirm the creative act separately from the affirmation of God. The
being of God is disclosed to us only by the creation, and the creation
is intelligible to us only in the light given by the idea of God.
[Footnote 89] God reveals himself to our reason as creator, and by
means of the creative act. This is the limit of our natural light, and
beyond it we cannot see anything by a natural mode, either in God, or
in the universe.

  [Footnote 89: A careful attention to the succeeding argument will
  show that by the idea of God given to intuition, is not meant the
  evolved idea, but the idea capable of evolution, or the idea of
  infinite, necessary being, which is shown to be the Idea of God by
  demonstration.]

The idea of God must not be confounded with that distinct and explicit
conception which a philosopher or well-instructed Christian possesses.
If the human mind possessed this knowledge by an original intuition,
every human being would have it, without instruction, from the very
first moment of the complete use of reason, and could never lose it.
The idea of God is the affirmation of himself as pure, eternal,
necessary being, the original and first principle of all existence,
which he makes to the reason in creating it, and which constitutes the
rational light and life of the soul. This constitutive, ideal
principle of the soul's intelligence exists at first in a kind of
embryonic state. The soul is more in a state of potentiality to
intelligence, than intelligence in act. The idea of God is obscurely
enwrapped and enfolded in the substance of the soul, imperfectly
evolved in its most primitive acts of rational consciousness, and
implicitly contained but not actually explicated in every thought that
it thinks, even the most simple and rudimental. The intelligence must
be educated, in order to bring out this obscure and implicit idea of
God into a distinct conception in the reflective consciousness. This
education begins with the action of the material, sensible world on
the soul through the body, and specifically through the brain. The
human soul was not created to exist and act under the simple
conditions of pure spirit; but as is incorporated in a material body.
The body is not a temporary habitation, like the envelope of a larva,
but an integral part of man. The {519} intelligence is awakened to
activity through the senses, and all its perceptions of the
intelligible are through the medium of the sensible. The sensible
world is a grand system of outward and visible signs representing the
spiritual and intelligible world. Language is the science and art of
subsidiary signs, the equivalents of the phenomena of the sensible
world and of all that we apprehend through them; and forming the
medium for communicating thought among men. For this reason, all
language so far as it represents the conceptions of men concerning the
spiritual word is metaphorical; and even the word _spirit_ is a figure
taken from the sensible world.

When the obscure idea is completely evolved, and the soul educated,
through these outward and sensible media, the reflective consciousness
attains to the distinct conception of God. This education may be
imperfect, and the reflective consciousness may have but an incomplete
conception expressed in language by an inadequate formula; but the
idea is indestructible, and the mental conception of it can never be
totally corrupted. This would be equivalent to the cessation of all
thought, the annihilation of all conception of being and truth, and
the extinction of all rational life in the soul. It is a mere negation
of thought, which cannot be thought at all, and a mere non-entity.
There is no such thing as absolute scepticism. Partial scepticism is
possible. Revelation may be denied as to its complete conception, but
the idea expressed in revelation cannot be utterly denied. The being
of God may be denied, as to its complete conception, but not
completely as to the idea itself. No sceptic or atheist can make any
statement of his doubt or disbelief, which does not contain an
affirmation of that ultimate idea under the conception of real and
necessary being and truth. Much less can he enunciate any scientific
formulas respecting philosophy, history, or any positive object,
without doing so. Vast numbers of men are ignorant of the true and
formed conception of God, but every one of them affirms the idea in
every distinct thought which he thinks; and every human language,
however rude, embodies and perpetuates it under forms and conceptions
which are remotely derived from the original and infallible speech of
the primitive revelation. Although the mass of mankind cannot evolve
the idea of God into a distinct conception, and even gentile
philosophy failed to enunciate this conception in an adequate form,
yet when this conception is clearly and perfectly enunciated by pure
theistic and Christian philosophy, reason is able to recognize it as
the expression of its own primitive and ultimate idea. It perceives
that the object which it has always beheld by an obscure intuition, is
God, as proposed in the first article of the Christian formula. The
Christian church, in instructing the uninstructed or partially
instructed mind in pure theism, interprets to it, and explicates for
it, its own obscure intuition. Thus it is able to see the truth of the
being of God; not as a new, hitherto unknown idea, received on pure
authority, or by a long deduction from more ultimate truths, or as the
result of a number of probabilities; but as a truth which constitutes
the ultimate ground of its own rational existence, and is only
unfolded and disclosed to it in its own consciousness by the word and
teaching of the instructor, who gives distinct voice to its own
inarticulate or defectively uttered affirmation of God. So it is, that
God affirms himself to the reason originally by the creative act which
is first apprehended by the reason through the medium of the sensible,
and interpreted by the sensible signs of language to the uninstructed.
Thus we know God by creation, and the creation comes into the most
immediate contact with us on its sensible side.

It has been said above, that we cannot separate the creative act from
God in the primitive idea of reason. It is not meant by this that
reason has {520} an intuition of God as necessarily a creator. What is
meant is, that the idea of God present to an intelligent mind distinct
from God, presupposes the creative act affirming to it an object
distinct from itself, and itself as distinct from the object. When the
subject is conscious of this truth, "God affirms himself to me," there
are two terms in the formula, "God," and "Me;" involving the third
uniting term of the creative act. The perception of other existences
is simultaneous with the perception of himself, but logically prior to
it; and his first rational act apprehends the existence of contingent,
created substances, as well as the being of the absolute, uncreated
essence. The elements of God and creation are in the most ultimate and
primitive act of reason, and therefore in its constitutive idea. The
creation is the idea of finite essences in God externized by the Word
who speaks them into existence. By the same Word, the intelligent,
rational portion of creation is enlightened with the knowledge of this
idea. It beholds God, as he expresses this idea in the creative act,
and in no otherwise. It cannot see immediately, the necessity of his
being, or, so to speak, the cause why God is and must be, but only the
affirmation of this necessity in the creative act. But this
affirmation is necessarily in conformity with the truth. It presents
being as absolute, and creation as contingent, and therefore not
necessary. False conceptions may not discriminate accurately between
the two terms, being and existence; but when these false conceptions
are corrected, and the idea brought fully into light, the very terms
in which it is expressed clearly indicate God as alone necessary,
creation as contingent, and the creative act as proceeding from the
free will of the Creator.

God, and creation, are thus simultaneously affirmed in the creative
act constituting the soul; although God is affirmed as first and
creation second, in the logical order: God as cause and creation as
effect; and although creation may be first distinctly perceived and
reflected on, as being more connatural to the reflecting subject
himself, and more directly in contact with his senses and reflecting
faculties. The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses
by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation. Our positive
conceptions of God in the reflective order are therefore derived from
the imitations, or representations of the divine attributes in the
world of created existences. An infinite, and, to natural powers,
impassable abyss, separates us from the immediate intuition of the
Divine Essence. The highest contemplative cannot cross this chasm; and
the ultimatum of mystic theology is no more than the confession that
the essence of God is unseen and invisible to any merely human
intuition, unknown and unknowable by the natural power of any finite
intelligence. We know _ut Deus sit, sed non quid sit Deus--that _God
is, but not _what_ he is. We know that God is, by the affirmation of
his being to reason.   [Footnote 90] We form conceptions that enable
our reflective faculties to grasp this affirmation, by means of the
created objects in which he manifests his attributes, and through
which, as through signs and symbols, images and pictures, he
represents his perfections.

  [Footnote 90: That is, after we have demonstrated that which is
  involved in the idea of being.]

This is the doctrine of St. Paul, the great father of Christian
theology.

  "Quis enim hominum, scit quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis
  qui in ipso est? Ita, et quae Dei sunt, nemo cognovit, nisi Spiritus
  Dei."

"For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of man which
is in him? So the things also that are of God, no one knoweth but the
Spirit of God."

We understand this to mean, that God alone has naturally the immediate
intuition of his own essence and of the interior life and activity of
his own being within himself.

{521}

"Quod notum est Dei manifestum est in illis, Deus enim illis
manifestavit. Invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae
facta sunt intellecta, conspiciuntar; sempiterna quoqne ejus virtus et
divinitas." "That which is known of God is manifest in them. For God
hath manifested it to them. For the invisible things of him, from the
creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity."

That is, God affirms himself distinctly to the reason by the creative
act, and simultaneously with the showing which he makes of his works.

"Videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate."

"We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, or more literally,
in a riddle, parable, or allegory."  [Footnote 91]

  [Footnote 91: 1 Cor. ii. 11; Rom. i. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xiii. 12.]

That is, we understand the attributes and interior relations of God as
these are made intelligible to our minds by analogies derived from
created things, in which, as in a mirror, the image of God is
reflected. The original and obscure idea of God given to reason in its
constitution--but given only on that side of it which faces creation,
including therefore in itself creation and its relation to the
creator--may be represented in various forms. It must be distinctly
borne in mind that our natural intuition is not an intuition of the
substance or essence of the divine being, or an intuition of God by
that uncreated light in which he sees himself and his works. God
presents himself to the natural reason as Idea, or the first principle
of intelligence and the intelligible, by the intelligibility which he
gives to the creation. He does not disclose himself in his personality
to the intellectual vision, but affirms himself to reason by a divine
judgment. Our natural knowledge of God is therefore exclusively in the
ideal order. The intuition from which this knowledge is derived may be
called the intuition of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute the
necessary, the true, the beautiful, the good, the first cause, the
ultimate reason of things, etc. Real and necessary being, considered
as the ground of the contingent and as facing the created intellect,
adequately embraces and represents all. This intuition enters into all
thought and is inseparable from the activity of the intelligent mind.
The intellect always does and must apprehend, the real, which is
identical with the ideal, in its thought; and when this reality or
verity which it apprehends is reflected on, it always yields up two
elements, the necessary and the contingent, the infinite and the
finite, the absolute and the conditioned. In apprehending God, we
necessarily apprehend that the soul which apprehends and the creation
by which it apprehends him, must exists. In apprehending creation, we
apprehend that God must be in order that the creation may have
existence. If we could suppose reason to begin with the idea of God,
pure and simple, we could not show how it could arrive at any idea of
the creature. Neither could we, beginning with the exclusive idea of
the conditioned, deduce the idea of the absolute and necessary. We can
never arrive by discursive reasoning, by reflection, by logic, by
deduction or induction, at any truth, not included in the principles
or intuitions with which we start. Demonstration discovers no new
truth, but only discloses what is contained in the intuitions of
reason. It explicates, but does not create. All that we know therefore
about being and existences is contained implicitly in our original
intuition.

Real being is the immediate object apprehended by reason, as St.
Thomas teaches, after Aristotle. "Ens namque est objectum intellectus
primum, cum nihil sciri possit, nisi ipsum quod est ens in actu, ut
dicitur in 9 Met. Unde nec oppositum ejus intelligere potest
intellectus, non ens." "For being is the primary object of the
intellect, since nothing can be known but that which is being in act,
as it is said in the 9 Met. Wherefore the intellect cannot {522}
apprehend its opposite or not being."   [Footnote 92] This appears to
be plain. Either the intelligible which the intelligence apprehends is
real or unreal, actual being or not being, entity or nonentity,
something or nothing. If the intelligence apprehends the unreal, not
being, not entity, no thing; it is not intelligence, it does not
apprehend. These very terms are unstatable except as negations of a
positive idea. I must have the idea of the real, or of being in act,
before I can deny it. I must have the idea of my own existence before
I can deny I existed a century ago. If I deny or question my present
existence, I must affirm it first, before I deny it, by making myself
the subject of a certain predicate, non-existence, or dubious
existence.

  [Footnote 92: Opus. cxiii. c. 1.]

There is only one door of escape open, which is the affirmation of an
intuition of possible being. But what is the intuition of the possible
without the intuition of the actual? How can I affirm that being is
possible, unless I have an intuition of a cause or reason situated in
the very idea of being which makes it possible, and if possible
necessary and actual? The very notion of absolute being which is
possible only, that is, reducible to act but not reduced to act, is
absurd. For it is not reducible to act except by a prior cause which
is then itself actual, necessary being, and ultimate cause.
Potentiality or possibility belongs only to the contingent, and is
mere creability [sic] or reducibility to act through an efficient
cause. Wherefore we cannot apprehend possible existence except in the
apprehension of an ultimate, creative cause. All that is intelligible
is either necessary being, or contingent existence having its cause in
necessary being. The abstract or logical world is only a shadow or
reflection of the real in our own minds, and instead of preceding and
conditioning intuition, it is its product.

The real object apprehended by reason has various aspects, but they
are aspects of the same object. The intuition of one aspect of being
is called the intuition of truth or of the true, including truth both
in the absolute and the contingent order. Truth, in regard to finite
things, is the correspondence of a conception to an objective reality.
This finite reality cannot be apprehended as true without a
simultaneous apprehension of necessary and eternal truth as its ground
and reason. The mathematical truths, for instance, in their
application to existing things, express the relations of finite
numbers and quantities. They are, however, apprehended as necessarily
and eternally true in an order of being independent of time, space,
and all contingent existences; which order of being is absolute: the
type of all existing things, the ultimate ground of truth, the
intelligible _in se_.

The intuition of the beautiful, which is "the splendor of the true,"
is the intuition of a certain type and the conformity of existing
things to it, causing a peculiar complacency in the intellect. This
complacency is grounded on a judgment of the eternal fitness and
harmony of things, that is, of an absolute and necessary reason of
their order in eternal truth, that is, in absolute being.

The intuition of the good is an intuition of being considered as the
necessary object of volition, and of existences as having in their
essence a ground of desirableness or an aptitude to terminate an act
of the will. Hence good and being are convertible terms. The absolute
good is absolute being, and created good is a created existence
conformed to the type of the good which is necessary and eternal.

The intuition of the infinite reduces itself in like manner to the
intuition of absolute being accompanied by the intuition of the finite
or relative with which it is compared. The absolute is being in its
plenitude, the intelligible as comprehended by intelligence in its
ultimate act, neither admitting of any increase. The finite is that
which can be thought as capable of increase, but, increased
indefinitely, never reaches {523} the infinite. The term infinite, as
Fénélon well observes, though negative in form--expressing the denial
of limitation--is the expression of a positive idea. Herbert Spencer
proves the same in a luminous and cogent manner, even from the
admissions of philosophers of the sceptical school of Kant.  [Footnote
93] The intuition of the infinite gives us that which is not referable
to an idea of a higher order, but is itself that idea to which all
others are referred as the ultimate of thought and being. This
intuition of the infinite always presents itself behind every
conception, and makes itself the first element of every thought.

  [Footnote 93: First Principles of a New System of Philosophy.]

This is clearly seen in the conceptions, commonly called the ideas, of
space and time. The intuition of the infinite will never permit us to
fix any definite, unpassable limits to these conceptions, but forces
us to endeavor perpetually to grasp infinity and eternity under an
adequate mental representation, which we cannot do. We must, however,
if we are faithful to reason, recognize behind these conceptions of
space that cannot be bounded and time that cannot be terminated either
by beginning or end, the idea of being infinite as regards both, the
reason of the possibility of finite things bearing to each other the
relations of co-existence and successive duration.

The same intuition is at the root of the conception of the
impossibility of limiting the divisibility of mathematical quantity.
Whichever way we turn, the idea of the infinite presents itself. We
can never reach the boundary of multiplicability, nor can we reach the
boundary of divisibility, which is only another form of
multiplicability. The conception of ideal space and number is rooted
in the idea of the infinite power of God to create existences which
have mathematical relations to each other. The positive multiplication
or division of lines and numbers must always have a limit, but the
radical possibility must always remain infinite, because it is
included in the idea of God, which transcends all categories of
space, time or limitation.

The intuition of cause is in the same order of thought. Necessary
being and contingent existence cannot be apprehended in the same idea,
without the connecting link of the principle of causation. It has been
fully proved by Hume and Kant, that we cannot certainly conclude the
principle of causation from any induction of particular facts. We
always assume it, before we begin to make the induction. It is an _a
priori_ judgment that everything which exists must have a cause, and
that all finite causes, receive their causality from a first cause or
_causa causarum_. For every finite cause has a beginning, which comes
from a prior cause, and an infinite series of finite causes being
absurd, the idea of causation necessarily includes first cause, and is
incapable of being thought or stated without it. Existence is not
intelligible in itself, but in its cause, absolute being. Absolute
being, though intelligible in itself, is not intelligible to human
reason, except by the causative act terminated in existences, and
making them intelligible. That is, being and existence, in the
relation of cause and effect, are presented, and affirmed to reason,
as the one complex object of its original intuition, and its
constitutive idea.

This is the point of co-incidence of the _a priori_ and _a posteriori_
arguments, demonstrating the Christian theistic conception. They
analyze the synthetic judgment of reason, and show its contents. The
argument, _a priori_ analyzes it on the side of being, showing what is
contained in being, or _ens_. The argument _a posteriori_ analyzes it
on the side of existence, _existentia_. But either argument implicitly
contains the other. It is impossible to reason on either the first or
last term of the synthetic judgment, without taking in the middle term
of causation, which implies the third term, existence, if you begin
{524} with being, and the first term, being, if you begin with
existence. The theistic conception is God Creator. The theologian who
begins to prove the proposition, God creates the world, cannot deduce
creation by showing what is contained in the pure and simple idea of
necessary, self-existing being. The idea of God includes the creative
power, but not the creative act, which is free, and cannot be deduced
from the primitive intuition, unless God affirms it to the reason in
that intuition; and even the creative power, or the possibility of
creation, cannot be deduced by human reason from the idea of necessary
being. Thus, the argument _a priori_ really does not conclude the
effect, that is, creation, by demonstrating it from the nature of the
cause alone, but assumes it as known from the beginning.

In like manner, the theologian, who argues from the creation up to the
creator, or from effect to cause, assumes that the creation is really
created, and the effect of a cause exterior to itself; otherwise, the
term existence could never conduct him to the term being.

We cannot demonstrate beyond what is given us in intuition, for all
demonstration is a simple unfolding of the intuitive idea. The idea
presents to us the creative act. If we reflect the causative or
creative principle, whatever we logically explicate from it is
indubitably true, because in conformity with the idea of first cause.
If we reflect the terminus of the causative act, or creation, whatever
we logically explicate from it respecting the nature of eminent cause
is indubitably true, for the same reason. In both cases we reason
validly, and demonstrate all that is demonstrable in the case. In the
first instance, we demonstrate what is really contained in the idea of
necessary being, and bring this idea--under the form of a distinct
conception--face to face with the reflective reason. In the second
instance, we demonstrate the order of the universe, and the
manifestation in it of divine power, wisdom and goodness. We
demonstrate that the theistic conception, or the conception of God and
his attributes, contained in Christian Theology, is that which we know
intuitively in the light of the primitive idea, logically explicated
and represented by analogy in language. What we do not demonstrate, is
the objective reality of the idea; for this is indemonstrable, as
being the first principle of all demonstration. The idea is
intelligible in itself, and illuminates the reason with intelligence.
The office of logic and reasoning is to inspect and scrutinize the
idea, to represent in reflection that which is intelligible. By this
process the idea of necessary being evolves itself, necessarily, into
the complete theistic conception of God, as is shown most amply in the
treatises of theologians and religious writers.  [Footnote 94] We will
endeavor to sum up their results in as brief and universal a synopsis
as possible.

  [Footnote 94: It will be seen, therefore, that the arguments _a
  priori_ and _a posteriori_ demonstrating the Christian doctrine of
  God, as stated by the great Catholic Theologians, have not been
  impugned, but, on the contrary, vindicated from the
  misrepresentation of a more modern and less profound school of
  philosophers.]

Beginning at this point, real necessary being is in itself the
intelligible; we lay down first that which is most radical and
ultimate in the conception of the living, personal God and Creator;
namely, absolute, infinite _intelligence_.

The absolute intelligible being must be absolute intelligent being.
The intelligible is only intelligible to intelligence. What is the
idea, or ideal truth or being, without an intelligent subject? What is
infinite idea, or infinite object of thought, without infinite
intelligent subject? That which is intelligible in itself necessarily,
absolutely, and infinitely, must necessarily be the terminating object
of intelligence equal to itself, that is infinite. This intelligence
cannot be created, for then it would be finite. It must be included in
absolute being. {525} Being includes in itself all that is. It
therefore includes intelligence. It contains in itself all that is
necessary to its own perfection. Its perfection as intelligible
requires its perfection as intelligent. Absolute being is therefore
infinitely intelligible and intelligent in its own nature and idea. It
is the intelligible being which is intelligent being, and only
intelligent spirit, which is in its very essence intelligence, can be
necessarily and infinitely intelligible; for only self-existent
infinite spirit has the absolute infinite activity necessary to
irradiate the light of the intelligible. The light of the intelligible
irradiates our created intelligence by an act which constitutes it
rational spirit. This act must be the act of supreme, absolute,
infinite intelligence. Whatever is in the creature, must be infinite
in the creator. The world of finite, intelligent spirits can only
proceed from an infinite, intelligent spirit, as first and eminent
cause. The sensible and physical world also is apprehended by our
reason as intelligible, and is intelligible, only in intelligent
cause; which throws open the vast and magnificent field of
demonstration from the order and harmony of nature. The intelligible
in the order of the finite, is a reflection of the intelligible in the
order of the infinite. The intelligible in the order of the infinite,
is the adequate object of infinite intelligence. The intelligible _in
se_ is identical with being in its plenitude; and being in plenitude
is necessarily infinite, intelligent spirit.  [Footnote 95]

  [Footnote 95: Because, if we conceive of any essence that it is not
  spiritual, we can conceive of one that is more perfect, namely, that
  which has these two attributes; and if we conceive of one that is
  finite in intelligence, we can conceive of one that is superior, or
  has greater plenitude of being, until we reach the infinite. The
  very conception of being in plenitude is being that excludes the
  conception of the possibility of that which is greater than itself.]

From this point the way is clear and easy to verify all that
theologians teach respecting the essential attributes of God. We have
merely to explicate the idea of intelligent spirit possessing being in
its plenitude. All that has being--that is, every kind of good and
perfection that the mind can apprehend in the divine essence by means
of creatures--must be attributed to God in the absolute and infinite
sense. We cannot grasp plenitude of being fully under one aspect or
form. We are obliged to discriminate and distinguish qualities or
attributes of being in God. But this is not by the way of addition or
composition of these attributes with the idea of the simple essence of
God. It is by the way of identification. Thus, being is identified
with the intelligible and with intelligence. All the attributes of God
are identified with each other and with his being.

This is what is meant by saying that God is most simple being, _ens
simplicissimum_. The pure and simple idea of being contains in itself
every possible predicate: hence we can predicate nothing of it that
can add to it, or combine with it, to make a composite idea greater
than the idea of being in its simplicity. It comes to the same, when
we say that God is most pure act, _actus purissimus_, which merely
ascribes to him actual being in eternity to the utmost limit of
possibility, or to the ultimate comprehensibility of the idea of being
by the infinite intelligence of God.

In the first place, then, we demonstrate the unity of God. There can
be but one infinite being. For the intelligible being of God is the
adequate object of his intelligence. Therefore there is no other
infinite, intelligible object of infinite intelligence.

God is absolutely good. For his own being is the adequate object of
his volition, and the definition of good is adequate object of
volition, so that being is identical with good.

God is all-powerful. For there is no intelligible idea of power, which
transcends the knowledge God has of his own being as including the
ability to create.

God is infinitely holy. For the intellect and the will of God
terminate upon the same object, that is, upon his {526} own being, and
consequently agree with each other; and the very notion of the
sanctity of God is the perfect harmony of his intellect and will in
infinite good.

God is immutable. For any change or progression implies a movement
toward the absolute plenitude of being, and is inconsistent with the
necessary and eternal possession of this plenitude.

God is infinite and eternal; above all categories of limitation,
succession, time or space; for this is only to say that he is most
simple being, and most pure act.

God is absolute truth and beauty, for these are identical with being.

He is infinite love, for he is the infinite object of his own
intelligence comprehended as the term of his own volition.

For the same reason, he is infinite beatitude, since beatitude simply
expresses the repose and complacency of intelligence and will in their
adequate object and is identical with love.

God is an ocean of boundless, unfathomable good and perfection, to
whom everything must be attributed that can increase our mental
conception of his infinite being. We can go on indefinitely,
explicating this conception, and every proposition we can make which
contains the statement of anything positive and intelligible, is
self-evident; requiring no separate proof, but merely verification as
truly identifying something with the idea of being. "We shall say much
and yet shall want words; but the sum of our words is, HE IS ALL."
[Footnote 96] Nevertheless, our reason is not brought face to face
with God by any direct intuition or vision of his intimate, personal
essence. Every word, every conception, every thought expressing the
most complete and vivid act of the reflective consciousness on the
idea of God is derived from the creation, and gives only a speculative
and enigmatical representation of the being of God itself, as mirrored
in the perfections of created, contingent existences. Though we see
all things by its light, the sun itself, the original source of
intelligible light, is not within our rational horizon. The creation
is illuminated by it with the light of intelligibility, and by this
light we become spectators of the creative act of God.

 [Footnote 96: Ecclus. xiiii. 99.]

The creative act is not a transient effort of power, but a durable,
continuous, ever-present act, by which God is always creating the
universe. The creation has its being not in itself but in God. All
that we witness therefore and come in contact with, is but the
radiation of light, life, truth, beauty, happiness; physical, mental,
and spiritual existence; from God, the source of being. We see the
architecture which proceeds from his mighty designs; we behold the
infinitely varied and ever shifting pictures and sculptures in which
he embodies his infinite idea of his own beauty. We hear the harmonies
that echo his eternal blessedness; the colossal machinery of worlds
plays regularly and resistlessly by the force which he communicates
around us; his signs, emblems, and hieroglyphics are impressed on our
senses; the perpetual affirmation of his being is always making itself
heard in the depth of our reason. The perpetual influx of creative
force from him is every instant giving life and existence to our body.
We breathe in it, and see by it, and move through its energy. It is
every instant creating our soul. When our soul first came out of
nothing into existence, it was created by a whisper of the divine
word, which simultaneously gave it existence and the faculty of
apprehending that whisper, by which it was made. God whispered in the
soul the affirmation of his own being as the author of all existence.
This whisper is perpetual, like the creative act. It constitutes our
rational life and activity. By its virtue we think and are conscious.
It concurs with every intellectual act. When the soul is stillest and
its contemplation of truth the most profound, then it is most
distinctly heard; but it cannot be drowned by any {527} tumult or
clamor. "In God we live, and move, and have our being." We float in
the divine idea as in an ocean. It meets us everywhere we turn. We
cannot soar above it, dive beneath it, or sail in sight of its coasts.
It is our rational element, in which our rational existence was
created, in which it was made to live, and we recognize it in the same
act in which we recognize our own existence. It is necessary to the
original act of self-consciousness, and enters into the indestructible
essence of the soul, as immortal spirit.

The Creed, therefore, when it proposes its first article to a child
who is capable of a complete rational act, only brings him face to
face with himself, or with the idea of his own reason. It gives him a
distinct image or reflection of that idea, a sign of it, a verbal
expression for it, a formula by which his reflective faculty can work
it out into a distinct conception. As soon as it is fairly
apprehended, he perceives its truth with a rational certitude which
reposes in the intimate depths of his own consciousness. It is true
that he cannot arrange and express his conceptions, or distinctly
analyze for himself the operations of his own mind, in the manner
given above. This can only be done by one who is instructed in
theology. But although he is no theologian or philosopher, he has
nevertheless the substance of philosophy or _sapientia_, and of
theology, in his intellect; deeper, broader and more sublime than all
the measurements and signs of metaphysicians can express. We have
taken the child as creditive subject in this exposition, in order to
exhibit the ultimate rational basis of faith in its simplest act, and,
so to speak, to show its _genesis_. But we do not profess to stop with
this simple act which initiates the reason in its childhood into the
order of rational intelligence and faith; rather we take it as only
the terminus of starting in the prosecution of a thorough
investigation of the complete development which the intelligent faith
unfolds in the adult and instructed reason of a Christian fully
educated in theological science. Hence we have given the conception
God in its scientific form, but as the scientific form of that which
is certainly and indubitably apprehended in its essential substance by
every mind capable of making an explicit and complete act of rational
faith in God as the creator of the world. In the language of
Wordsworth, "The child is father of the man." A complete rational act
in a child has in it the germ of all science. He is as certain that
two and two make four, as is the consummate mathematician. A complete
act of faith in a child is as infallible as the faith of a theologian,
and has in it the germ of all theology. He is able to say "Credo in
Deum" with a perfect rational certitude; and this conclusion is the
goal toward which the whole preceding argument has been tending.

But here we are met with a difficulty. The principle of faith cannot
itself fall under the dominion of faith, or be classed with the
_credenda_, which we believed on the veracity of God. How then can
_Credo_ govern _Deum_. The necessity for an intelligible basis for
faith has been established, and this basis located in the idea of God
evolved into a conception demonstrable to reason from its own
constitutive principles. It would therefore seem that instead of
saying "I believe in God," we ought to say "I know that God is, and is
the infinite truth in himself, therefore I believe," etc. only on you.

This formula does really express a process of thought contained in the
act of faith, and implied in the signification of _Credo_. _Credo_
includes in itself _intelligo_. Divine faith presupposes, and
incorporates into itself, human intelligence and human faith, on that
side of them which is an inchoate capacity for receiving its divine,
elevating influence. Hence the propriety of using the word _Credo_,
leaving _intelligo_ understood but not expressed. The symbol of faith
is not intended to express any object of our knowledge, {528} except
as united to the object of faith. For this reason it does not
discriminate in the proposition of the verity of the being of God,
that which is the direct object of intelligence, but presents it under
one term with those propositions concerning God which are only the
indirect object of intelligence through the medium of divine
revelation. When we say _Credo in Deum_, if we consider in _Deum_ only
that which is demonstrable by reason concerning God, the full sense of
_Credo_ is suspended, until the revelation of the superintellible
[sic] s introduced in the succeeding articles. The term _Deum_
terminates _Credo_, only inasmuch as it is qualified by the succeeding
terms; that is, inasmuch as we profess our belief in God as the
revealer of the truths contained in the subsequent articles.

The foregoing statement applies to the use of the word _Credo_ in
relation with _Deum_ in the first article of the Creed, taking _Credo_
in its strictest and most exclusive sense of belief in revealed truths
which are above the sphere of natural reason. In addition to this, it
can be shown that there is a secondary and subordinate reason on
account of which the mental apprehension of that which is naturally
intelligible in God is included under the term faith, taken in a wider
and more extensive sense.

This intelligible order of truth, or natural theology, was actually
communicated to mankind in the beginning, together with the primitive
revelation. We are, therefore, instructed in it, by the way of faith.
The conception of God, and the words which communicate to us that
conception, and enable us to grasp it, come to us through tradition,
and are received by the mind before its faculties are fully developed.
We believe first, and understand afterward; and the greater part of
men never actually attain to the full understanding of that which is
in itself intelligible, but hold it confusedly, accepting with
implicit trust in authority, many truths which the wise possess as
science. Moreover, the term faith is often used to denote belief in
any reality which lies in an order superior to nature and removed from
the sphere of the sensible, although that reality may be demonstrable
from rational principles. In a certain sense we may say that this
region of truth is a common domain of faith and reason. But we have
now approached that boundary line where the proper and peculiar empire
of faith begins, and like Dante, left by his human guide on the coasts
of the celestial world, we must endeavor under heavenly protection to
ascend to this higher sphere of thought.

------

From Once a Week.

THE KING AND THE BISHOP.

  Before Roskilde's sacred fane,
    (The first the land has known.)
  Attended by his courtier train,
    And decked, as on his throne,
  In costly raiment, glittering gay
    Beneath the noon-day sun;
  All fresh and fair, as though the day
    Had seen no slaughter done--

{529}

  As though the all-beholding eye
    Of that Omniscient Deity,
  Whom, turning from the downward way
    His heathen fathers trod,
  He guided by a purer ray,
   Hath chosen for his God--
  Had seen no darker, dreader sight,
    Twixt yester morn and yester night,

  Beheld by his approving eye,
    Who, now, would draw his altar nigh;
  Ay, fresh and fair as to his soul
    No taint of blood did cling,
  As though in heart and conscience whole,
    Stands Swend, the warrior-king.

  On his, as on a maiden's cheek,
    (Though bearded and a knight,)
  The royal hues of Denmark speak  [Footnote 97]--
    The crimson and the white;
  But mark ye how the angry hue
    Keeps deepening, as he stands,
  And mark ye, too, the courtly crew,
    With lifted eyes and hands!

    [Footnote 97: The Danish king, Swend, soon after his entrance into
    the Christian church, slew some of his "jaris" without a trial,
    and, on presenting himself, after the commission of this crime, at
    the portal of the newly-built cathedral of Roskilde, in Zealand,
    found it barred by the pastoral staff of the English missionary
    and bishop who had converted him. After receiving the rebuke given
    in the poem, and forbidding his attendants to molest the bishop,
    he returned whence he came, and shortly after, made his
    reappearance in the garb of a penitent, when he was received by
    the prelate, and, after a certain time of penance, absolved; after
    which they became fast friends.]

  Across the portal, low and wide,
    A slender bar from side to side.
  The bishop's staff is seen;
    And holding it, with reverent hands
  And head erect, the prelate stands,
    A man of stately mien.

  "Go back!" he cries, and fronts the king.
    Whilst clear and bold his accents ring
  Throughout the sacred fane--
    And Echo seems their sound to bring
  Triumphant back again--
  "Go back, nor dare, with impious tread,
  Into the presence pure and dread.
    Thy guilty soul to bring,
  Impenitent--O thou, who art
    A murderer, though a king!"
  A murmur, deepening to a roar,
    'Mid those who were clust'ring round the door:
  A few disjointed but eager words--
    A sudden glimmer of naked swords;
  And the bishop raised his longing eyes,
    In speechless praise, to the distant skies;

{530}

  For he thought his labor would soon be o'er.
  And his bark at rest, on the peaceful shore;
  And he pictured the crown, the martyrs wear,
  Floating slowly down, on the voiceless air;
  Till he almost fancied he felt its weight
  On his brows--as he stood, and blessed his fate.

  With a calm, sweet smile on his face, he bowed
  His reverend head to the raging crowd--
    (Oh! the sight was fair to see!)
  And "Strike!" he cried, whilst they held their breath.
  To hear his words; "For I fear not death
    For him who has died for me!"

  King Swend looked up, with an angry glare,
  At the dauntless prelate, who braved him there,
    Though he deemed his hour near;
  And he saw, with one glance of his eagle eye.
  That that beaming smile and that bearing high
    Were never the mask of fear!

  Right against might had won the day;--
    And he bade them sheathe their swords; then turned,
    Whilst an angry spot on his cheek still burned,
  From the house of God away.

  Ere the hour had winged its flight, once more,
  Behold! there stood, at the temple door,
  A suppliant form, with its head bowed down.
  And ashes were there, for the kingly crown;
  And the costly robes, which had made erewhile
  So gallant a show in the sunbeams' smile.
  Had been cast aside, ere its glow was spent,
  For the sackcloth worn by the penitent!

  The bishop came down the crowded nave;
  His smile was bright, though his face was grave,
  He paused at the portal, and raised his eyes.
  Yet another time to those sapphire skies,
  But he thought not now, that the look he cast
  To that radiant heaven would be his last;
  And he thanked his Master again--but not
  For the martyrdom that should bless his lot;
  For the close to the day of life, whose sun
  Was to set in blood, on his rest was won:
  Far other than this was his theme of praise,
  As he murmured: "O thou, in thy works and ways
  As wonderful now as when Israel went
  Through the sea, which is Pharaoh's monument:
  Though I pictured death in the flashing steel,
  And I looked for the glory it should reveal,
  Yet oh! if it be, as it seems to be,
  Thy will, that I stay to glorify thee,
  To add to thy jewels, one by one;
  Then, Father in heaven, that will be done!"

{531}

  Then on the monarch's humbled brow
    The kiss of peace he pressed.
  And led him, as a brother, now,
    A little from the rest--
  "Here, as is meet, thy penance do,
  And as thy penitence is true,
    So God will make it light!
  Then mayst thou work with me, that thus
  The light that he hath given us
    May rise on Denmark's night!"

M. T. F.

------

Translated from Le Correspondant

THE YOUTH OF SAINT PAUL.


By L'ABBE LOUIS BAUNARD.


At the time when Jesus Christ came into this world, the Jews were
scattered over the whole surface of the earth. From the narrow valley
in which their religious law had confined them for the designs of God,
these people of little territory had overflowed into all the provinces
of the Roman empire. Captivity had been the beginning of their
dispersion. Numerous Israelitish colonists, who had formerly settled
in the land of their exile, were still existing in Babylon, in Media,
even in Persia; others had pushed their way further on to the extreme
east, even as far as China. Finally, under the reign of Augustus, they
are found everywhere.   [Footnote 98]

  [Footnote 98: V. Remond "Histoire de la Propagation du Judaisme,"
  Leipzig, 1789 Grost, "De Migrationibus Hebr. extra patriam," 1817.
  Jost, "Histoire des Israélites depuis les Machabées," etc.]

It was the solemn hour in which, according to the parable of the
gospel, the Father had gone forth to sow the seed. The field, "that is
the world," was filled with it already, and the time was not far
distant when the Lord, "seeing the countries ripe for the harvest,"
would send out his journeymen to reap, and gather the wheat into his
barns.

One of these families "_of the dispersion_," as they were styled,
inhabited the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. Of this once famous city
nothing now remains but a few ruins, and the modern Tarsous falls
vastly short of that high rank which the ancient Tarsus held among the
cities of the East. Even at present, however, it is called the capital
city of Caramania. Situated on a small eminence covered over with
laurels and myrtles, at a distance of about ten miles from the
Mediterranean sea, it is washed by the rapid and cold waters of the
Kara-sou, and its population during winter amounts to more than thirty
thousand souls. In summer it is almost a desert. Chased away by the
burning heats which prevail at this season from the sea-coast, men,
women and children abandon their homes and emigrate to the surrounding
heights, where they fix their camp under lofty cedars, which afford
them shelter, shade, and coolness.  [Footnote 99]

  [Footnote 99: P. Belon, "Voyages"--cité dans Malte-Brun.]

{532}

It were difficult to draw, from what it is at present, an exact
picture of the ancient Tarsus. Instead of the sad, disconsolate look
of a Turkish city, there was then in it the movement, the ardor, the
splendor of the Greek city, proud of her politeness and her
recollections. According to Strabo, Tarsus was a colony of Argos. As a
proof of the high state of its culture, the Greeks related that the
companions of Triptolemus, perambulating the earth in search of Io,
stopped at that place, charmed by its richness and beauty. Others
traced its origin further back, to the old kings of Assyria. At one of
the gates of Tarsus there had been seen for a long time the tomb of
Sardanapalus with the following inscription under his statue: "I,
Sardanapalus, have built Tarsus in one day. Passenger, eat, drink, and
give thyself a good time; the rest is nothing."  [Footnote 100]
History, however, has written there other remembrances. It was not far
from Tarsus that the intrepid Alexander had nearly perished in the icy
waters of the Cydnus. It was there upon the sea, at the entrance of
the river, that the memorable interview and the fatal alliance of
Antony and Cleopatra had just taken place in the midst of voluptuous
feasts. The wise providence that provides reparations for all our
pollutions, had chosen the city of a Sardanapalus and of an Antony to
be the cradle of St. Paul.

  [Footnote 100: Strabo, liv, xvi.]

For the rest, Tarsus was a city perfectly well built and of remarkable
beauty. From the fertile hill on which she rested, she could
contemplate the direction toward the north and west of an undulating
line, which traced rather than hid the horizon. This was the outline
of the first ascending grades, of the mountains of Cilicia. At a short
distance from the city the waters of numerous living springs met
together and formed a rapid river, deeply enchased, which soon reached
and refreshed that portion of her which the historians call the
Gymnasium, and we would name the "Quarter of the schools." Further on
there was a harbor of peculiar and distinctly marked outline.
Philostratus has described in a striking and picturesque manner the
different habitudes of the men of traffic and of the literary class,
representing "the former as slaves to avarice, the latter to
voluptuousness. All their talk," says he, "consisted in reviling,
taunting, and railing at each other with sharp-biting words: whence
one might have easily seen that it was only in their dress they
pretended to imitate the Athenians, but not in prudence and
praiseworthy habits. They did nothing else all day but walk up and
down on the banks of the river Cydnus, which runs across this city, as
if they were so many aquatic birds, passing their time in frolicsome
levities, inebriated, so to speak, with the pleasing delectation of
those sweet-flowing waters."   [Footnote 101]

  [Footnote 101: Philostrate, "De la Vie d'Apollonius Thyanéan
  traduction de Blaise de Vigenère," liv. iv. ch. ix. p. 103,104.
  Paris, 1611.]

Such, then, was the city in which a vast multitude of young men,
elegant, voluptuous and witty, crowded and pressed each other like a
swarm of bees, for Tarsus was the most brilliant intellectual focus of
that time and country. The following is the description of it, given
by Strabo: "She carries to such a height the culture of arts and
sciences, that she surpasses even Athens and Alexandria. The
difference between Tarsus and these two cities is, that in the former
the learned are almost all indigenous. Few strangers come hither; and
even those who belong to the country do not sojourn here long. As soon
as they have completed the course of their studies in the liberal
arts, they emigrate to some other place, and very few of them return
to Tarsus afterward."

The best masters regarded it as an honor to teach in the schools of
this city of arts. There were in it such grammarians as Artemidorus
and Diodorus; such brilliant poets and professors {533} of eloquence
as Plutiades and Diogenes; such philosophers of the sect of the stoics
as the two Athenodori; of whom the first had been Cato's friend in
life, and his companion in death, and the second had been the
instructor of Augustus, who, in token of gratitude, appointed him
governor of Tarsus. For, it was the fate of this learned city to be
under the administration of men of letters, and of philosophers. She
had been ruled by the poet Boethus, the favorite of Antony. Nestor,
the Platonic philosopher, had also governed her. It is easily seen,
however, that such men are better prepared for speculations in
science, than for the administration of public affairs, so that, in
their hands, Tarsus felt more than once those intestine commotions, of
which cities of schools have never ceased to be the theatre.

It was in this city, and under these circumstances, almost upon the
frontiers of Europe and Asia, in the very heart of a great
civilization, that St. Paul was born, about the twenty-eighth year of
Augustus' reign, two years before the birth of Christ.  [Footnote 102]
He himself informs us that he was a _Jew_ of the tribe of Juda,
[Footnote 103] born in the _Greek_ city of Tarsus, and a _Roman_
citizen: so that by parentage, by education, and by privilege, he
belonged to the three great nations who bore rule over the realm of
thought and of action. The grave historian  [Footnote 104] who
exhausts the catalogue of the illustrious men of Tarsus, never
suspected what man--very differently illustrious--had just appeared
there, and of what a revolution he was to become the zealous defender
as well as the martyr.

  [Footnote 102: This would be so, if St. Paul lived to the age of
  sixty-eight years, as is stated in a Homily of St. John Chrysostom,
  vol. vi. of his complete works.]

  [Footnote 103: Benjamin. See Rom. xi 1.--Ep. C. W.]

  [Footnote 104: Strabo, liv. xiv]

The Jewish origin of the Doctor of Nations was, as is easily
understood, of vast importance for fulfilment of the designs of God.
The religion of Jesus Christ proceeds from Judaism, continues and
perfects it. It was, therefore, well worthy of the wisdom of God that
his apostles should belong to the one as well as to the other
covenant, and that he should thus extend his hand to all ages, as he
was to extend it to all men.

This purity of origin was so considerable a privilege, that it is by
it one may account to one's self for the rage and fury with which the
Ebionite Jews in the first age of our era labored to deprive him of
it. Adhering to the last rubbish of the law of Moses, and, for this
reason, irreconcilable enemies to the great apostle of the Gentiles,
these sectarians maliciously invented the following fable, according
to the relation of St. Epiphanius. [Footnote 105] "They say that he
was a Greek, that his father was a Greek as well as his mother. Having
come to Jerusalem in his youth, he had sojourned there for a certain
time. Having there known the daughter of the high priest, he had
desired to have her for his wife; and to this end he had become a
Jewish proselyte. As he could not, however, obtain the young maiden
even at that price, he had conceived a burning resentment, and
commenced to write against the circumcision, the sabbath, and the
law." It seems to me that St. Epiphanius confers too great an honor
upon this romance, by merely exposing and refuting it.

  [Footnote 105: "Adv. Haeret" liv. ii. t. i. p. 140, No. xvi.]

I know on what foundation St. Jerome affirms, on the contrary, that
St. Paul was a Jew not only by descent, but also by the place of his
birth. According to him, St. Paul's parents dwelt in the small town of
Girchala in Juda, when the Roman invasion compelled them to seek for
themselves a home somewhere else. Therefore they took their son, yet
an infant, with them, and fled to Tarsus, where they remained, waiting
for better days.  [Footnote 106]

  [Footnote 106: "De Viris Illustrib. Catalog. Script. Eccles." t. i.
  p.849]

The declaration of St. Paul himself, however, allows no doubt to be
{534} entertained as to his origin. Born in Tarsus, he was circumcised
there on the eighth day after his birth, and received the name of
Saul, which he exchanged afterward for that of Paul, probably at the
time when Sergius Paulus had been converted by him to the Christian
faith.

His parents failed not to instruct him in the law; for, how distant
soever from their mother country might have been the place in which
they lived, the Jews did not cease to render to the God of their
fathers worship, more or less pure, but faithful. Like all other great
cities of the Roman empire, Tarsus had her synagogue where the Law was
read, and where the religious interests of the Israelitic people were
discussed. It was there that prayers were solemnly made with the face
turned toward the holy city: for there was no temple anywhere but in
Jerusalem, whither numerous and pious caravans from all the countries
of Asia went every year to celebrate in Sion the great festivals of
the Passover and Pentecost, to pay there the double devotion, and
present their victims. The bond of union was thus fastened more firmly
than ever between the colonies and the metropolis, in which great
things were soon expected to take place. Jerusalem was not only the
country of memorials, but to Jewish hearts she was also the land of
hope, and every eye was turned toward the mountain whence salvation
was to come.

Saul grew up in Tarsus. We must not seek in the youth of Saul for
those signs which reveal in advance a great man. In individuals of
this sort, devoted to the work of God, all greatness is from him, the
instrument disappearing in the hand of the divine artificer. Whatever
illusion iconography may have impressed us with upon the point, Saul
did not carry, either in stature of body or in beauty of features, the
reflection of his great soul, and at first sight the world saw in him
only an insignificant person, as he himself testifies, "_aspectus
corporis infirmus_," Beside, he was a man of low condition, exercising
a trade, and earning his daily bread by the sweat of his face. The
rabbinical maxims said that, "not to teach one's son to work, was the
same thing as to teach him to steal." Saul was, therefore, a workman,
and everything leads us to believe that he, who was to carry light to
nations, passed, like his master, the whole of his obscure youth in
hard work. He made tents for the military camps and for travellers.
This was an extensive industry in the East; and a great trade in these
textures was carried on in Tarsus with the caravans starting from the
ports of Cilicia and journeying though Armenia, Persia, the whole of
Asia Major, and beyond.  [Footnote 107]

  [Footnote 107: These conjectures and regard to St. Paul's birth and
  parentage are not founded on any solid basis, but on the contrary
  appear to be quite improbable. The author's citation from the
  Rabbinical maxims overturns the argument which he derives from the
  fact that St. Paul practised a handicraft. All Jews, whatever their
  birth or wealth, learned a trade. St. Paul's knowledge of the
  tent-maker's trade, therefore, does not prove that he was of low
  birth, or belonged to the class of artisans. On the contrary, his
  possession of the privileges of Roman citizenship, which he must
  have inherited, and which could only have been conferred on account
  of some great service rendered to the state by one of his ancestors,
  together with his thorough education, go to show that he belonged to
  one of the most eminent Jewish families of Tarsus.--Ed. C.W.]

Manual occupation, however, did not absorb the whole time, nor the
whole soul of the young Israelite; since the tradition of the fathers
points to him as frequenting the schools of Tarsus, and joining that
studious swarm of young civilians who crowded there to attend the
lectures delivered by the professors of science and literature.
[Footnote 108] His Epistles retain some traces of these his first
studies. In these he quotes now and then words of the ancient poets,
Menander, Aratus, Epimenides. He expressed himself with equal facility
in the three great languages of the civilized world, the Hebrew, the
Greek, and the Latin; and it is manifest that he knew the secrets of
the art of eloquence, for which he {535} retained in later times only
a magnanimous contempt. He was also initiated in philosophy, under the
teachers whom I have named already. Besides Stoicism, whose patrons
and success in Tarsus I have mentioned, Platonism flourished there
under the protection of Nestor, a man of great distinction, who had
been the preceptor of that illustrious youth Marullus, who was sung by
Virgil, and bewailed by Augustus. Is it not, at this period, that a
young man of Tyana, himself destined to acquire a strange celebrity,
came to Tarsus in his fourteenth year, and passionately embraced there
the precepts of Pythagorean doctrine? The uncertainties of the
history, which was written by Philostratus afterward, do not permit us
to say anything definite upon this point; but one cannot help thinking
that it is from the same place, and at the same time, that those two
extremes of the power of good and of the power of evil have set
out--Apollonius of Tyana, and Saint Paul.

  [Footnote 108: Sancte Hieronymi, t. vi. 322.--"Comm. Epist. ad
  Galat."]

Finally, not far from there the oriental doctrines drove to their
several beliefs respectively the multitudes of Asia, and invaded also
the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Islands. Thus Parsism on the
one hand, and Hellenism on the other, met in Tarsus with Judaism. By
its position, as well as by its commerce, the birthplace of St. Paul
was the point of confluence of the two currents of ideas, which shared
the world between themselves. From this centre the future apostle was
able to embrace in one view all those different sorts of minds which
he was to embrace in his zeal afterwards.

Such were his beginnings. In them Saul plays an insignificant part;
but God a great one; God does not act openly as yet; he prepares. But
what preparation! What a concurrence of circumstances manifestly
providential! What greatness even in this obscurity! The seal of
predestination is visibly impressed upon that soul appointed to
regenerate the world by the faith. The place, the time, the means,
everything seems disposed, consecrated in advance, as it were, for a
great scene. God incarnate was to fill it, but he had chosen Saul of
Tarsus to be in it the actor most worthy of him.

II.

The second education of Saul took place in Jerusalem. He was yet young
when his parents, yielding to that instinct which recalled the Jews to
their native country, sent him, or, perhaps, went and took him with
themselves, to the holy city, in order to fix their residence there.

There occur in history some solemn epochs; but that in which Saul
arrived at Jerusalem possesses a consecration which cannot belong to
any but to itself alone: it was what St. Paul called, afterward, "the
fulness of the times." The seventy weeks determined by Daniel, entered
then into the last phasis of their accomplishment. The sceptre had
been taken away from Judah, and, at a few steps from the temple, a
centurion, with the vine-stock in his hand, quietly walked around the
residence of a Roman proconsul. People were waiting to see from what
point the star of Jacob was to appear. It had risen already, and the
young workman of Tarsus, while going to Jerusalem, might have met on
his way with a workman like himself, who, sitting at the foot of some
unknown hill, preached in parables to the people of his own country
and of his condition. This was in fact taking place under the second
Herod. Saul was then twenty-nine years old, and the Word made flesh
dwelt among us full of grace and truth.

Did Saul have the happiness to see his divine Master during his mortal
life? Grave historians formally affirm it,  [Footnote 109] and some
passages in the Epistles allow us to believe it. Others think {536}
that what they refer to is only the vision on the road to Damascus.

 [Footnote 109: Alzog, "Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise," t. i. p. 157.]

But, whatever may be the difference of opinions upon this point, it
appears impossible that the fame of Jesus' teaching and miracles did
not reach the ears of Saul, while living in Judea: it is even probable
that Saul might have endeavored to see him. "We have known the Christ
according to the flesh," he himself wrote to the Corinthians.
[Footnote 110] This last testimony leaves yet some doubt as to the
interpretation; but, when one reflects on the repeated utterance of
these expressions, as well as upon the coincidence of dates and names,
one cannot help starting at the thought, that on some unknown hour the
God and the apostle must have met, and that Jesus, piercing into the
future, bestowed on the youth that deep and tender look which he gave
the young man spoken of in the Gospel; and that the Pharisee, who was
to become a vessel of election, then condemned himself to the regret
of having that day neglected and mistaken the blessed God, of whom he
was afterward to say in that language invented by love, "_Mihi vivere
Christus est_," "For me to live, is Christ."

  [Footnote 110: 1 Cor. ix. 1 and 2 Cor. v. 16]

When Saul entered Jerusalem for the first time, the pious Israelite
must doubtless have been astonished and saddened at the same time.
Herod the Ascalonite had rendered her, according to Pliny's testimony,
the most magnificent city of the East; but by the profane character of
her embellishments, she had lost much of her holy originality. The
prince courtier had erected near by a circus and a theatre, where
festivals in honor of Augustus were celebrated every fifth year. He
had repaired and transformed the temple, but also profaned it; and
over the principal gate of the holy place one saw the glitter of the
golden eagle of Rome and of Jupiter, a double insult to religion and
liberty. Jerusalem was likely to become a Roman city; her part was on
the point of being played out; her priesthood was expiring, she began
to cast off its insignia, and one saw the line gradually disappear
which separated her from the cities of paganism.

Beside, Saul found her torn in pieces by religious sects which had in
these latter times fastened to the body of Judaism, as parasitical
plants stick to the trunk of an old tree. Religious opinion was
divided between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. I speak not of the
Herodians, for in the order of ideas flatteries are not taken into
account, for this reason--because to flatter is not to dogmatize.
Sadduceeism, a sort of Jewish Protestantism, rejected all tradition;
would admit of nothing but the text of the Pentateuch; denied an
after-life because it was not found formally enough inculcated by
Moses, and consequently endeavored to make this present one as
comfortable as possible. It was Epicureanism under the mask of
religion. Pharisaism, on the contrary, was the double reaction both in
religion and nationality. In order to enhance the law, it multiplied
practices and rites; in order to save the dogma, it burdened it with
an oral tradition, to serve as a commentary, an interpreter, and a
supplement to the law. Under the name of Mishna, this tradition
proceeded, according to her account, from secret instructions of Moses
himself, and composed a kind of sacred science, of which the doctors
only possessed the key.

The sect of the Pharisees was, on the other hand, the great political
as well as doctrinal power of the nation. The people venerated them,
the inces [sic] treated them with regard, and Josephus informs us that
Alexander Jannacus, being at the point of death, spoke of them to his
wife in the following manner: "Allow the Pharisees a greater liberty
than usual; for they," he told her, "would, for the favor conferred on
them, reconcile the nation to her interest; that they had a powerful
influence over the Jews, and were in {537} a capacity to prejudice
those they hated and serve those they loved."   [Footnote 111]

  [Footnote 111: "Antiq.," liv. xili. eh, xv. p. 565.]

The Young Saul enrolled himself with the Pharisees: among them,
however, he chose his school. Being sensible of the fact that foreign
ideas were insinuating themselves into the bosom of Judaism, some
choice minds were at this epoch in search of I know not what
compromise between Moses's doctrine and philosophy, in which
compromise the two elements might be fused together, and thus form a
religion at the same time rational and mystic. This fusion is one of
the signs by which this period is distinguished. Uneasy and attentive,
every mind was laboring under the want of a universality and unity of
belief, whose painful child-birth, twenty times miscarried, was yet
submitted to without relaxation. One hundred and fifty years before
the epoch we are now in, Aristobulus had attempted this eclecticism,
and Philo was soon after to reduce it to system in Alexandria and give
it a widely spread popularity in Egypt. Another man, however, took
upon himself the business of planting it in the very heart of
Palestine.

This man was the famous rabbi Gamaliel, the beloved teacher of Saint
Paul. It must be admitted that no man could be better qualified to
render it acceptable than he was, on account of his position and
character. He was the grandson of Doctor Hillel, whose science as well
as his consideration and holiness he had inherited. He was the oracle
of his time, and "on his death," the Talmud says, "the light of the
law was extinguished in Israel." The Talmudists add that he had been
vested with the title of _Nasi_, or chief of the council, and the
Gospel agrees with the Jewish authors, recognizing in him a just man,
wise, moderate, impartial, an enemy to violence, and ruling the
different parties by a moral greatness, which secured to him the
confidence of all and the unanimity of their regards. He was the first
who caused the text of the Bible to be read in Greek at Jerusalem.
This innovation was of itself an immense progress, as it removed that
barrier which Pharisaism had raised between the _Hellenist_ and the
_Judaizing_ Jews. He dreamed not, however, of transforming Moses into
a Socrates. He gave up nothing of pure Judaism. But, having a thorough
knowledge of the Greek, Oriental and Egyptian philosophies, he held
them all in check; he took out of each of them what could be
reconciled with the law of God, enriched with it the inheritance of
tradition, and boldly applying to ideas that generous and
accommodating toleration which he made use of in social life, he
allowed them entrance into the Synagogue.  [Footnote 112]

  [Footnote 112: Niemeyer, "Characteristik der Bibel," p. 638.]

Gamaliel, it seems, kept in Jerusalem what certain authors call an
academy. It was frequented, for men of such a character possess a
great power of attraction. Young Israelites brought to his feet, and
placed at his disposal, for the service of his and their ideas, the
intemperate zeal and warm convictions of their age--Christian
tradition acquaints us with the names of some of them; among others,
of Stephen and Barnabas, whom we shall soon see disciples of a greater
master.   [Footnote 113] But the most ardent of them all was, without
contradiction, the young Saul of Tarsus. Proud, fiery, enthusiastic,
he seems to have been passionately fond of the Pharisaism of Gamaliel,
but mixing with the zeal a violent asperity which, certainly, he had
not from his master. No man could be more attached, than he was, to
the ancient traditions; it is himself who says so, adding that his
proficiency in the interpretation of the law placed him at the head of
the men of his time.  [Footnote 114]

  [Footnote 113: Cornel. a Lapide, in Act. v. 34.]

  [Footnote 140: See Epist. to the Galatians, i. 14.]

These Jewish as well as these Greek studies were not lost time in the
education of the apostle. They {538} made Saul sensible of the
pressing need of a revealer which the world was then laboring under;
and they caused those groanings to reach his ears from all parts,
which he himself called the groaning of creation in childbed of her
redeemer. They did also reveal to him, seeing the inability of sects
for it, that redemption could not be the work of man, and they left in
his mind that haughty contempt of human wisdom, which would be
despair, if God had not come to reveal a better one possessing the
promises both of this world and of the next.

Now, whilst young Saul and the Jewish rabbins were agitating these
questions in the dust of schools and synagogue, our Lord Jesus Christ
was giving the solution of them in his own life and by his death. His
death was even more fruitful than his life, and when the Pharisees
believed they had put an end to his doctrine, as they had to his life,
it was a great surprise to them to see twelve fishermen, wholly
unknown the day before, suddenly appear, preaching that the Son of God
had risen from the dead, that they had seen him gloriously ascending
into heaven, and that, in order to give testimony of it to the world,
they were ready and would be happy to die. Their miracles, their
doctrine, the conversions which they wrought by multitudes, their
baptism conferred on thousands of disciples, the enthusiasm of some,
the perplexity of others, the hatred of many, stirred up the
politicians and the magistrates. The great council met under these
circumstances. It seems that there was held in it a decisive
deliberation, in which the destinies of Christianity were solemnly
discussed. The question was to know, whether the new religion should
be drowned in blood, or whether it should be allowed the liberty and
time of dying by a natural death. It did not occur to any one's
thought that it could live; and much less that it could be true: and
it is remarkable that not a word was said on the doctrinal question,
the most important of all! Thus some of them advised to put those men
to death, others feared lest violence should excite a sedition, and
there was division of counsel in the assembly, when Gamaliel rose up
in it. Silence followed, the Scripture relates, because he was the
sage of the nation. He made no speech. He cited only the names of some
seditious men very well known in the city, the false prophet Theodas,
and Judas of Galilee, who, after a little noise, had left no trace
behind them. Hence he concluded that the new religion would have the
same fortune if it was from man, and that if it was, on the contrary,
the work of God, it would prove invincible against all human efforts.
His advice appeared for a moment to prevail, on account of its wisdom;
and the apostles, confiding in the future, readily accepted the
challenge.

God had other designs in regard to his church, and it was not peace
but war that he had come to bring with him. Wisdom had decided;
passion executed. After reciting the advice of Gamaliel, the Scripture
adds that, before being dismissed, the Apostles were scourged, and
that "they went from the presence of the council rejoicing that they
were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus." The
signal had thus been given, and a pure victim was about to open the
era of the martyrs.

We have thus far related only the human history of St. Paul. We now
begin to enter into his supernatural and divine history.

Saul had put himself at the head of those who persecuted the
Christians. Hence it is that the Scripture represents him to us as
laying everything waste, like a rapacious wolf, spreading
consternation amidst the flock. His very name was terror to the newly
born church; above all the others, however, one Christian roused his
jealous rancor.

It was a young man whose name I have already mentioned, and who is
believed to have been of the same {539} country with Saul, and his
relative.  [Footnote 115] He was called Stephanos, which we have
modified into Stephen.

  [Footnote 115: Corn. a Lapide, in Act. Apost. vi. 18.]

Stephen, as everything indicates, was a Greek, and of the number of
those who were then called Hellenistic Jews. In all probability, he
belonged to that synagogue of Cilicians of which Saul, his friend and
countryman, must likewise have been a member. Some of the ancients
have even believed that he also belonged to the school of Gamaliel;
and this is confirmed by the old tradition, which makes the remains of
the great rabbin and those of the first martyr rest in the same grave.
[Footnote 116] All these relations between Stephen and Saul, who
persecuted him, are worthy of being taken into account. They throw a
great light over those events, and define with precision the
circumstances of which they give the key.

  [Footnote 116: "Inventio Corporis S. Stephani, Visio S. Luciani,"
  viii. te ix.]

The same tradition has taken a pleasure in surrounding the young
neophyte with every gift and accomplishment that could make him a most
precious victim. The memory which the fathers have preserved of
Stephen is that of a youth of rare beauty, in the flower of his age,
endowed with wonderful eloquence, and with a candor of soul yet more
charming.

"He was a virgin," St. Augustine says of him, "and this purity of
heart reflecting upon his features imparted to his face an angelic
expression." St. John Damascene speaks in the same strain of that
excellent nature which "made the light of grace shine with more
brilliant lustre." Such souls are very near to Christianity. Stephen
had become a Christian. St. Epiphanius affirms that he was such during
the life of Jesus Christ, and that he was one of the seventy-two
disciples.  [Footnote 117] St. Augustine doubts of it. [Footnote 118]

  [Footnote 117: "Haer." 21.]

  [Footnote 118: Sermo xciv. "De Diversis."]

What we are informed of in the Book of the Acts concerning this point
is, that moved by "a murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews for
that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration," the
apostles caused seven men of that nation to be chosen, whom they
"appointed over that business." The first named (and perhaps the most
preëminent) among them was Stephen, characterized by the inspired
historian as "a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost."

This conversion raised storms in the bosom of the synagogue; and as
St. Paul, according to his own account, occupied a preëminent rank
among the young men of that time, it was easy for him no doubt to
breathe his own burning flame into them.

Besides, everything announced a violent crisis, and the whole city
experienced that agitation and anxiety which, in troubled times,
precede and portend a near commotion and a desperate struggle. As the
disciples had not yet been outlawed, as they did not even have any
peculiar name which distinguished them from the rest of the people,
and their religious belief enjoyed as yet its freedom, they joined
everywhere the Jewish assemblies, instilled there their doctrine,
taught even in the temple, where they went to pray like the rest. But
a deep-rooted dissension, pregnant with tempests, was growing in the
heart of every synagogue. These were most numerous at Jerusalem, as it
is said that well-nigh five hundred different ones were there in
existence, each people possessing their own, about in the same manner
as now in the city of Rome every Catholic nation possesses her proper
church, for her own use, and in her own name. The synagogue of the
Cilicians, is expressly mentioned in the holy Scripture and signalized
as one of the most disturbed, and most opposed to the new sect.
[Footnote 119] Interpreters are of opinion that it was there Saul and
the deacon Stephen met together in the midst of other Asiatic Jews,
their countrymen, {540} hot-headed and subtle, as are all of that
country.  [Footnote 120] They were of the same age, according to
computations made for the purpose, and of equal learning; but
Stephen's eloquence had no rival! It was, the Acts say, something at
once sweet and powerful, that attracted by its grace, and bore away
the soul by its force. One felt in it a higher spirit, it is said, and
it was in vain that disputants from all the synagogues arose against
Christ and his faith; none could resist that word, "full of wisdom and
of the Holy Ghost." Some Greek copies add that he "reprehended the
Jews with such an assurance that it was impossible not to see the
truths which he announced."

  [Footnote 119: Act. vi. 9]

  [Footnote 120: Dom Calmet, "Comm. sur les Actes," vi. 9.]

His words gave displeasure on account of this freedom; as they could
not refute him they soon resolved to calumniate him, waiting for a
pretext to get rid of him. Witnesses were found; they are found
everywhere. Stephen had preached that a more perfect worship was about
to take the place of the worship of Moses, that the glory and the
reign of the temple were soon to have an end, and that a better
Jerusalem of larger destinies, was on the point of being built. It was
but too easy to turn these words from their spiritual meaning, and
convert them into threats against the city and the people. A purely
moral and peaceful revolution was a thing, on the other hand, so
entirely novel in the history of the world, that one would have
naturally persisted in confounding it with a political and civil
revolution. It was this gross and voluntary mistake that had furnished
the text to the pretended lawsuit against our Lord Jesus Christ; it
was equally the foundation of that which his disciples have been
subjected to. To these accusations they took care to add that Stephen
intended to change the ancient traditions, which thing in the eyes of
the Pharisees was decisive.

The young deacon was therefore brought before the high-priest, that
same Caiaphas by whom Jesus had suffered. When the accusers had been
heard, the pontiff requested Stephen to answer them: "Are these things
so?"

He rose up, and as soon as he could be seen, the book of the Acts
observes, all the eyes in the assembly were fixed on him. Did he have
already a glimpse of the martyr's crown, and did this vision
transfigure him in advance? I know not, but it is said that his face
appeared to their eyes as the face of on angel. "It was," says St.
Hilary of Aries, "the flame of his heart overspreading itself upon his
forehead; the candor of his soul was reflected on his features in a
perfect beauty; and the Holy Ghost residing in Stephen's heart threw
upon his face a jet of supernatural light."

The speech of Stephen was simple, but peremptory. To those who charged
him with breaking off from the religion of his fathers, he opposed at
the very beginning a long profession of faith from the books of Moses.
But the question relating to the temple, whose fall he had foretold,
was more serious. He viewed it firmly. He did not retract himself; but
presently rising from the region of facts to that of superior
principles which facts obey, he began to demonstrate that a material
temple is nowise necessary to the honor of God. As a proof of this he
pointed back to the times in which the patriarchs made their prayers
on the top of the high places; when the Lord manifested his presence
in a flame of fire in a bush; and when the Hebrew people carried
through the desert the tabernacle, which was the sanctuary and the
altar at the same time. When he had come to the time of the first
temple he concluded, and his discourse suddenly assumed the character
of a vivid and eloquent exaltation. Elevating himself from the
imperfection of a national worship to the ideal of a universal and
spiritual one, which would {541} have its sanctuary chiefly within
man's soul, he said: "Yet the Most High dwelleth not in houses made by
hands, as the prophet saith: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth my
footstool; what house will you build me, saith the Lord, or what is
the place of my resting? Hath not my hand made all these things?"

Such a harangue was a manifesto. He did not abolish every temple, nor
every worship, as some people are pleased to insinuate; but he erased
at a single stroke the exclusive privilege of the temple of Jerusalem,
he extended it's boundaries, and for the old Jewish monopoly
substituted the catholicity of a new church, as large as the world.

The Jews understood him too well. They were already  trembling with
rage against him, when, from the accused becoming the accuser, Stephen
charged them with the murder of the prophets, and principally with
that of the God, our Saviour, whom they had crucified. "You have
received the law by the disposition of angels," he said to them, "and
have not kept it." On hearing these words, their rage, incapable of
longer restraint, burst out; "they were cut to the heart, and they
gnashed with their teeth at him," as the Acts relate. Stephen felt
that his last hour was at hand.

The Holy Ghost filled him as it were with a holy rapture. He looked
steadfastly to heaven, where the glory of God began to shine on him,
and there, in the midst of that glory, recognizing and saluting Jesus
Christ, who extended his hand to him, "Behold," he exclaimed, "I see
the heavens opened, the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God."
These words sealed his doom. On hearing him, the Jews, shaking with
horror, "cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and with one
accord ran violently upon him," as wild beasts do on their prey.

No judgment was passed on him. A text in the book of Deuteronomy
allowed any one to be put to death, who enticed the people into
idolatry. This summary justice sometimes tolerated by the Roman
pro-consul, was termed the _judgment of zeal_. To apply this
_judgment_ to the young deacon, was found more convenient than to go
through the formalities of a regular sentence; and they seized him to
put him to death. By a last relic of Pharisaism, however, they took
care to observe the practices of the law, even in such an arbitrary
and cruel deed. To the end, therefore, that the holy city should not
be stained with blood, the innocent victim was "cast forth without"
the walls of Jerusalem.

They went out by the northern gate along that side which leads to
country of Kedar. At the west of the valley crossed by the Kedron, on
a desolate places and at the right of the distant mountains of Galaad,
the crowd stopped. The witnesses began by raising their hands over the
head of Stephen, which was the rite of devoting a victim to death;
then stones innumerable, as thick as hail, fell upon him. The
atrocious deed went on with unrelenting fury, and the body of the
heroic martyr was now noting but a wound; but he held his eyes
immovably fixed on that celestial vision, and as life was gradually
receding from his breast, he was ever "invoking and saying, Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit!"

The Acts of the Apostles conclude this narrative, with giving us the
name of the person who was the most noted accomplice in this murder:
"_Saulus autem erat consentiens neci ejus_."

St. Luke, the disciple of St. Paul, says nothing further concerning
his master in this business. But St. Paul came afterward, who, humbly
giving a public testimony of his cruel error, denounced himself as the
instigator of that iniquity. "When the blood of Stephen was shed," he
said one day to the Jews, "I was the first, and over the others,"
_Super ad stabam_. [Footnote 121] It is the sense of the Greek text.
Had {542} he for such a thing a mandate of the Sanhedrim, as we shall
soon see him vested with full powers against the brethren of Damascus?
Everything would make one believe so. The fathers and commentators
say, it was for this reason that he kept the garments of those men of
blood: and they, in fact, show us those murderers as going the one
after the other, deferentially to lay their garments at the feet of
Saul, as an homage, so to speak, paid to him, from whom they had the
power and the command to strike.

  [Footnote 121: Act. xxii. 20.]

Stephen saw him, and revenged himself in his way--the divine way. At
the point of death, covered with blood, he lowered his eyes to the
earth for the last time, and sadly resting them on his persecutors,
perhaps he saw through their impious crowd one of them apart, more
furious than the rest. He was moved to compassion for his soul; and
then it was that "falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice,"
not of anger, but of grace, and said: "Lord, lay not this sin to their
charge." He rose no more, and so saying, Stephen "fell asleep in the
Lord."

He could sleep in peace, indeed, for he had just made a magnificent
conquest. "If Stephen had not prayed," St. Augustine says, "the church
had not won St Paul; the martyr fell, the Apostle rose."  [Footnote
122] These substitutions are the most mysterious secrets of
Providence. By an admirable law of a bond _in solido_, of fraternity
and of love, God has willed that we, like himself, can, at the price
of a little blood, or even of some tears, pay the ransom of souls, and
secure to them a future for which they are indebted to us. He has
permitted that the life and the death of Christians, like those of
their Master, should be a redemption, completing the great redemption
of Calvary, according to the saying of St. Paul himself. Coloss. i. 24

  [Footnote 122: St. Aug. Sermo 1. "De Sanctis."]

It was meant that this should be the first apostleship of all, and the
most fruitful. In the midst of scaffolds, ever full of victims, and
the catacombs which incessantly recruited new children of God,
Tertullian proclaimed that "the blood of the martyrs was a seed of
Christians." He gave thus form to a beautiful law, which the blood of
Stephen, after the blood of God himself, had before inaugurated. The
soul of Saul, therefore, was that day a conquered soul. It is in vain
that on the road to Damascus he struggles and "kicks against the
goad:" he is under the yoke of God; he carries a mark of blood on him
which points him out, and which saves him; and Jesus, whenever he
will, has only to show himself to throw him down and make him obey.
This is admirable. Moses had written in the book of Leviticus, "The
priest shall command him that is to be purified to offer for himself
two living sparrows which it is lawful to eat, . . . . and he shall
command one of the sparrows to be immolated, . . . . but the other
that is alive he shall dip . . . . in the blood of the sparrow that is
immolated; . . . . and he shall let go the living sparrow, that it may
fly into the field." (Levit xiv. 4-7.) It was according to this rite
that the transaction was accomplished. Stephen had been the chosen
victim; and when Saul had covered himself with his redeeming blood,
that blood set him free: he had no more to do but to spread his wings,
and to start on his flight.

------

{543}


From Chambers's Journal

THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE.


Our oldest poet, and almost our best, unites in one sweet song the
cuckoo and the nightingale--the former to be chidden, and spoken of
despitefully; the latter to be made the theme of fervent praise, as
the singer and harbinger of love. Taken altogether, the cuckoo, in
fact, is far from being an attractive bird. Somehow, it has in all
countries been regarded as a symbol of matrimonial infidelity,
probably because it introduces itself into and defiles the nests of
other, birds. Shakespeare, who loved to make eternal the fancies and
prejudices of mankind, exclaims:

  "Cuckoo! cuckoo! O word of fear!
  Unpleasing to a married ear!"

Loved or hated, however, it is a creature about which we know less
than any other winged animal. It comes and goes in mystery, no one
being able to decide what is its original country, how far it extends
its travels, to what peculiarity in its structure or constitution it
owes its restless propensity, or why, almost as soon as born, it
becomes a sort of feathered Cain, murdering its foster-brethren, and,
according to some, devouring the very dam that fed it. Wide, indeed,
are its wanderings. It is heard on the banks of the Niger and the
Senegal in the heart of Africa; it is familiar to the dwellers on the
Obi and the Irtish; it flies screaming forth its harsh dissyllables
over the Baltic surge; it repeats them untiringly in the perfumed air
of Andalusia and Granada, among the ruins of the Alhambra and the
Generaliffe; it startles the woodman in the forests of France; it
amuses the school-boy in the green vales of Kent, of Gloucestershire,
and of Devonshire.

Our associations with the cuckoo are, in some cases, pleasant; it
comes to us with the first of those peregrinating birds that usher in
the summer; its cry is redolent of sunshine, of the scent of
primroses, of lindens, of oaks, and elms, of solitary pathways, of the
lilied banks of streams. Occasionally, we know not why, it flies early
in the morning over the skirts of great cities, as if to invite their
inmates to shake off drowsiness, and look forth upon the loveliness of
the young day. Not many weeks ago, we heard it in London, just as the
clouds were parting in the east to make way for the first beams of
dawn. Many summers back, we heard the self-same notes echoing among
the pinnacles of the Alps, before the morning-star had faded from
behind the Jungfrau. The cuckoo is a sort of familiar chronicler, that
gathers up the events of our lives, and brings them to our memory by
his well-known voice. As he shouts over our heads, we call to mind the
many summers the sweet scents of which we have inhaled, the rambles we
have taken in the woods, our idolatry of nature, our innocent
pleasures.

The cuckoo and the nightingale constitute the opposite poles of the
ornithological world; one the representative of eternal monotony, the
other of infinite variety. Among men, there are cuckoos and
nightingales--individuals whose ideas are few, who think invariably
after the same pattern, who repeat day after day the formulas of the
nursery and the school-room, who, from their swaddling-bands to their
shrouds, never break away from the social catechism dinned into them
at the outset; while there are others who seem, at least in their
range of thought, to know no limit but that of creation, to generate
fresh swarms of ideas every moment, now to hover among the nebulas on
the extreme verge of the {544} universe, and now to nestle in the
chalice of the violet, where even Ariel could scarcely find room for
the tip of his pinion. Naturalists may be fanciful, like poets; and if
this liberty be ever allowable, it is surely so when they speak of the
nightingale. The organization of this winged miracle, whose whole
weight does not exceed an ounce, may in truth be looked upon as one of
the most remarkable in the whole scale of animal life. The roar of the
gorilla can, it is said, be heard a full mile. But the gorilla is a
colossus, equalling in stature one of the sons of Anak; while
Philomela, not exceeding in bulk the forejoint of the monster's thumb,
is able at night, when all the woods are still, to cause the liquid
melody of her notes to be heard at an equal distance. Consider the
organ, measure the length of country, and the ecstacy of the listening
ear, and you will perhaps acknowledge that there are few phenomena
familiar to our experience more astonishing than this. We have stood
at midnight on a mountain in the south of France, and at a distance
quite as great, we think, as that mentioned above, have heard the
notes of the songstress of darkness borne up to us, on the breeze from
the depths of an unwooded valley. Faintly and gently they came through
the hushed air, but there could be no mistake about their identity; no
other mortal mixture of earth's mould than her throat could have given
forth such sounds, crisp, clear, long-drawn, melancholy, as if she
were still lamenting the sad hap that overtook her amid die solitudes
of Hellas. The French, down even to the peasants, love the
nightingale; and wild country girls, who in their whole lives never
read a page of poetry, will sit out half the night on a hillside to
listen to their favorite bird. A priest once invited us to pass a week
with him in his village _presbytère_, and in enumerating the
inducements, mentioned first that there were nightingales in the
neighborhood. His home was in the valley of Mortagne, in the Bocages
of Normandy, where these birds are in fact as plentiful as sparrows.

In Italy, especially in Tuscany and the Venetian states, the
nightingale trills her notes with more than ordinary beauty. The great
Roman naturalist who perished amid the lava-floods of Vesuvius, often,
we may be sure, enjoyed her song from his nephew's garden in this part
of the peninsula. No description of the wonders she achieves can
approach the one he has left us for truth or eloquence, and it was
written in all likelihood by the light of some antique lamp between
the prolonged gushes of her music. Unhappily, it is true, as he says,
that the nightingale's song can only be heard in perfection during
fifteen out of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. The
female bird is then sitting in her nest, imparting vital heat to the
musicians of future years; and her lover, fully impressed with the
importance of her duty, intoxicates her with his voice, to dispel the
tedium of confinement. In spite of natural history, however, poetry
transfers to the mute female the singing powers of her lord:

  "Nightly she sings from yon, pomegranate-tree."

Pliny, too, after stating the fact, that it is the male that sings,
immediately avails himself of the aid supplied by metonymy, and
changes the sex of the musician. Let us take his description, as
honest Philemon Holland supplies it in the language of Elizabeth's
time: "Is it not a wonder," he says, "that so loud and clear a voice
should come from so little a body? Is it not as strange that she
should hold her breath so long, and continue with it as she doth?
Moreover, she alone in her song keepeth time and measure truly; she
riseth and falleth in her note just with the rules of music and
perfect harmonic: for one while in one entire breath she draweth out
her tune at length treatable; another while she quavereth, and goeth
away as fast in her running points; sometimes she maketh stops and
short cuts in her notes, another time she gathereth in {545} her
breath and singeth descant between the plain song; she fetcheth her
breath again, and then you shall have her in her catches and
divisions; anon, all on a sudden, before a man would think it, she
drowneth her voice, that one can scarce hear her; now and then she
seemeth to record to herself; and then she breaketh out to sing
voluntarie. In some she varieth and altereth her voice to all keys;
one while full of her larges, longs, briefs, semibriefs, and minims;
another while in her crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, and double
semiquavers, for at one time you shall hear her voice full and loud,
another time as low; and anon shrill and on high: thick and short when
she list; drawn out at leisure again when she is disposed; and then
(if she be so pleased) she riseth and mounteth up aloft, as it were
with a wind-organ. Thus she altereth from one to another, and singeth
all parts, the treble, the meane, and the base. To conclude; there is
not a pipe or instrument again in the world (devised with all the art
and cunning of man so exquisitely as possibly might be) that can
afford more music than this pretty bird doth out of that little throat
of hers."

We have persons here in England who earn their livelihood by catching
nightingales. It is the same in most other countries. Near Cairo,
there is, or used to be, a pretty grove of mingled mimosas, palms, and
sycamores, where the netters of nightingales station themselves at
night, in the proper season, to take the bird when in full song.
According to their report, which there is no reason to discredit, the
male bird becomes so intoxicated by the scented air, by love, and by
his own music, that the cap-net, fixed at at the summit of a long
reed, may be raised and closed about him before he is sensible of his
danger. From the free woods he is then transferred to a cage, where in
nine cases out of ten, he dies of nostalgia. Nor is this all. The
female bird, accustomed not only to be cheered by his song, but
likewise fed by his industry, pines and perishes with all her brood.
The wren, the swallow, the titlark intermit the business of
incubation, and leave their nests for a minute or a minute and a half
to help themselves while they are sitting, or to assist the male in
feeding the young after the eggs are hatched: but the female
nightingale used, like an eastern sultana, to be provided for entirely
by her lord, feels her utter helplessness when she is deserted, and
leaning her little head and neck over the edge of the nest, with her
eyes fixed in the direction in which he used to come, dies in that
attitude of expectancy. The reason is, that the instinct of pairing,
which is strong in many other birds, reaches its culminating point in
the nightingale--the same males and females keeping together for years
without ever seeking other mates.

The cuckoo, as we have said, offers the most striking contrast in the
development of its instincts. It does not pair at all, and as there
are more males than females, we may often see two or three of the
former sex following one of the latter, and fighting for her favors.
As the parents care not for one another, neither do they care for
their young. It was long supposed that the cuckoo laid only one egg in
the season; but this has been found to be an error, for though they
leave no more than one egg in one nest--we mean generally--they have
been observed to make deposits in various nests, and then fly away to
a distant part of the country, or even to other lands. In the female
cuckoo, therefore, the maternal instinct is entirely wanting, which,
though it acts in obedience to an imperious law of nature, makes it a
hateful bird. As soon as it quits the shell, it begins to exhibit its
odious qualities. When the cuckoo's egg is placed in the nest of the
hedge-sparrow, for example, the deluded mother perceives no difference
between the alien production and her own. She sits, therefore, on what
she finds, and having no idea of numbers, of course never thinks of
counting the eggs. {546} When hatching-time arrives, however, she is
made the witness of an extraordinary scene. The villainous young
cuckoo, which often escapes from the shell a whole day before the
others, immediately begins to clear the nest by pitching out the
unhatched eggs; or if the young ones have made their appearance, forth
they are thrown in like manner. Nature has fabricated the little
monster with a view to this ungrateful proceeding, for in its back
there is a hollow depression, in which egg or chick may be placed
while he is rising to shunt it over the battlements. The process is
extremely curious: the young assassin, putting shoulder and elbow to
the work, keeps continually thrusting against his victim till he gets
it on his back; he then rises, and placing his back aslant, tumbles it
out into empty space. This done, and finding that he has all the
dwelling to himself, he subsides quietly into his place, and waits
with ever-open bill for the dole which the foolish sparrow wears
itself almost to death in providing for the faithless wretch. When the
nest happens to be situated in a high hedge, you may often see the
young sparrows spiked alive on the thorns, or the eggs still
palpitating with living birds lying unbroken on the soft grass below.
This inspires naturalists with no pity; they observe that neither the
eggs nor the young birds are thrown away, since various reptiles that
feed on such substances make a comfortable meal of what is thus placed
within their reach.

As the cuckoo does nothing in life but eat, scream, and lay eggs for
other birds to hatch, it needs no education, and receives none. On the
other hand, the nightingale, having to perform the highest functions
allotted to the class _aves_, requires much training and discipline,
study and preparation. The young nightingale does not sing by mere
instinct. If taken from the nest soon after it is hatched, and brought
up among inferior creatures, it is incapable of performing its lofty
mission, and deals in vulgar twittering like them; just as a baby, if
removed from the society of speech-gifted mortals, and entrusted to
the care of dumb persons, will lack that divine quality of expressing
ideas which distinguishes man from the brute. The nightingale needs
and receives a classical education. When the grass is dewy--when the
leaves are green and fresh--when the soft breath of the morning steals
over the woods like incense, the old bird takes forth the young ones,
before it is quite light, and placing them on some bough, with strict
injunctions to listen, goes a little way off, and begins his song. In
this he commences with the easier notes, and is careful to keep the
whole in a comparatively narrow compass. He then pauses to watch the
result of his first instructions. After a brief delay, during which
they are turning over the notes in their minds, the young ones take up
the lay one by one, and go through it, as our neighbors say, _tant
bien que mal_. The teacher watches their efforts with attention;
applauds them when right; chides them when they have done amiss; and
goes on day by day reïterating his lessons till he considers his
pupils quite equal to the high duties they have to perform. Mankind,
of course, imagine that those duties consist in soothing their ears,
and driving away melancholy. But _apropos_ of the performances of
another bird, our philosophic poet inquires:

  "Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?"

And replies:

  "Joy tunes his voice, joy animates his wings."

So with the nightingale--

  "Loves of his own and raptures swell the note."

Some one speaking of our own species, says:

  "We think, we toil, we war, we rove.
  And all we ask is--woman's love."

It is to win the love of Philomela that the male nightingale studies,
watches, and pours forth his soul in song. He had much rather that men
did not listen; he is a shy, solitary, and timid bird, and takes his
love away into {547} the forests, where, undisturbed by the sounds of
vulgar life, he ravishes her ears with music. It is a question much
discussed by poets and naturalists, whether the nightingale's song be
joyous or melancholy. It probably derives its character from the frame
of mind in which the listener happens to be--to the joyous it is
mirthful, to the sorrowful it is sad--but in its real nature it is
what Milton suggests--

  "She all night long her amorous descant sung."

Still it must be owned that they who discover melancholy in her long,
low, meltingly sweet notes, seem to approach nearer the truth than
they who describe her as a merry bird. It is superstition, perhaps,
that attributes to her the strange philosophy which makes anguish the
well-spring of pleasure. When desirous, it is said, of reaching the
sublimest heights of song, she leans her breast against a thorn, in
order that the sense of pain may tone down her impetuous rapture into
sympathy with human sorrow.

Another strange notion is, that the nightingale fixes her eyes--

  "Her bright, bright eyes; her eyes both bright and full"--

on some particular star, from which she never withdraws them till her
song is concluded, unless she be alarmed by the approach of some
footstep, or other sound indicative of danger. We remember once, in
Kent, going forth to spend a night in the fields to enjoy the strange
delight imparted by the nightingale's notes. We placed ourselves on a
little eminence overlooking a valley, covered at intervals by
scattered woods. It was the dead watch and middle of the night;
silence the most absolute brooded over the earth. We stood still in
high expectation. Presently, one lordly nightingale flung forth at no
great distance from the summit of a lofty tree his music on the night.
The lay was not protracted, but a rich, short, defiant burst of
melody; he then, like the Roman orator, paused for a reply. The reply
came, not close at hand, but, as it seemed, from some copse or thicket
far down in the valley. If one might presume to judge on the spur of
the moment, the second songster did really outdo the first. The notes
came forth bubbling, gushing, quivering, palpitating, as it were, with
soul, for nothing material ever resembled it. He went over a broad
area of song, with a sort of wilderness of melody; his notes followed
each other so rapidly, high, low, linked, broken--now sweeping away
like a torrent, now sinking till it sounded like the scarcely audible
murmur of a distant bee. He then stopped abruptly, confident that he
had given his rival something to reflect upon. We now waited to hear
that rival's answer, but he appeared to consider himself defeated, and
remained silent. Another champion now stepped forward, and took up the
challenge. He must surely have been the prince of his race. From a
tree on the slope of a height, not far to the right of our position,
he gave us a new specimen of the poetry of his race. The former two,
evidently younger and more inexperienced, had been in a hurry. He took
up his parable at leisure, beginning with a few light flourishes by
way of preface, after which he plunged into his epic, seeming to carry
on the subject from the epoch of Deucalion and Pyrrha, down to that
moment, displaying all the resources of art, and presenting us with
every form into which music could be moulded. What he might have
achieved at last, or to what pitch he might have raised our ecstasy,
must remain a mystery, for before he had concluded his song, a
thundering railway train, belching forth fire and smoke as it
advanced, seemed to be on the very point of annihilating the
songsters; so they all took to flight, or at least remained
obstinately silent. We waited hour after hour, now pacing in one
direction, now in another; stopping short, pausing in our talk,
listening till the streaky dawn, climbing slowly up the eastern hills,
revealed to us the inutility of further hope.

{548}

The first time we heard the nightingale was from the deck of a vessel
in the Avon, near Lee Woods. It was a starlight night; we were leaning
on the bulwarks, speculating on the reception we were to meet with in
England--in which we had that day arrived for the first time. As we
were chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, from an indenture in
the woods, called, as we have since learned, Nightingale Valley, there
burst forth at once a flood of sound, the strangest, the sweetest, the
most intoxicating we had ever heard--it must be, it was the voice of
the nightingale---

  To the land of my fathers that welcomed me back.

Years not a few have rolled by since then, but we remember as
distinctly as if it were yesternight the pleasure of that exquisite
surprise. We heard the nightingale in England before the cuckoo--a
circumstance which, according to Chaucer, should portend good-luck;
and so it did--good-luck and happy days.

Perhaps much of the pleasure tasted in such cases is derived from the
time of year--for both the cuckoo and the nightingale belong to the
spring--when the air is full of balm, when the foliage is thick, when
the grass is green and young--and when, especially in the morning,
delicate odors ascend from the earth, which produce a wonderful effect
upon the animal spirits. Through these scents, the cry of one bird and
the song of the other invariably come to us: the one flitting at early
dawn over the summits of woods, the other in loneliest covert hid,
making night lovely, and smoothing the raven down of darkness till it
smiles.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

HYMN.

  Spirit of God, thyself the Lord,
    Out of the depths I call on thee.
  Above, I view thy gleaming sword.
    Around, thy works of love I see.

  Spirit of God, that hovering high
    Didst watch the primal waters roll,
  Brood o'er my heart, and verify
    The turbid chaos of my soul!

  Spirit of God, oh! bid me fear,
    That blessed fear thy love can calm;
  Transfix me with thy shining spear
    And heal me with thy holy balm!

  Spirit of God, oh! fill my breast,
    And sear me with the sign of heaven.
  The glorious brand of sin confessed,
    The glorious seal of sin forgiven.

F.A.R.

------

{549}


From the Irish Industrial Magazine

THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS OF OUR ANCESTORS.

BY M. HAVERTY, ESQ.


That the early inhabitants of Ireland possessed sundry kinds of
manufacture is a point that can scarcely be disputed; for, besides
frequent passages in ancient and authentic historical documents
referring to the matter, we have satisfactory evidence in those
specimens of the manufactured articles themselves which have been
preserved to the present day, and which bear testimony to the skill
and industry that produced them.

A visit to the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy must convince us of
the excellent workmanship of the ancient Irish bronze swords, and
other weapons, and of certain ancient gold ornaments--both bronze and
gold articles belonging to a date anterior to the introduction of
Christianity into Ireland. From the early Christian ages we have
received many of the old ecclesiastical ornaments that have been
preserved; and some of them exhibit that peculiar and exquisite kind
of interlaced ornamentation which began at a remote period to be known
as _opus Hibernicum_, or the Irish style.

We know that the ancient Irish were skilled in the manufacture of
their musical instruments, as well as in the use of them; and in the
preparation of parchment, as well as in the almost unrivalled beauty
of penmanship of which that parchment has preserved so many specimens.
Then we must return to much more ancient times for the manufacture of
gold and silver goblets, and, above all, for those beautiful fibulae,
or brooches, which have afforded models for some of the most graceful
and costly articles of female decoration at the present day. We may
very naturally conclude that these charming fibular were not employed
to hold together mantles of the coarsest possible manufacture, or,
rather, that there was some proportion between the texture of the
cloth and the beautiful workmanship of the brooch which clasped it
round the person of the wearer; and, in a word, we are justified in
presuming that some manufactures, besides those of which specimens
were durable enough to have been preserved to the present day, existed
in the country.

The incessant warfare of the Danish period, and of the centuries
following the Anglo-Norman invasion, must have been destructive to the
industrial arts; yet we meet occasionally with some external evidence
of their existence even then. Some eighty years ago, the Earl of
Charlemont lighted on a curious passage relating to the subject in an
Italian poem of the fourteenth century. From this and other
authorities he was able to show, in a paper published in the first
volume of the "Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy," that Ireland
produced a fine woollen fabric called serge, which enjoyed an European
reputation at the very time the Flemish weavers were brought over by
Edward III. to establish the woollen manufacture in England, and
consequently before it could have been introduced here from the latter
country. The investigation of such scattered facts as these would be
interesting, and no doubt would flatter national vanity. It may,
perhaps, occupy us on some future occasion; but for the present we
shall confine our inquiry to a somewhat more modern epoch, and more
tangible evidences.

Strangely enough, the first writer we have had on the natural history
and industrial resources of Ireland happens {550} to have been a
Dutchman. Dr. Gerard Boate--a resident of London, though by birth, it
appears, a Hollander--obtained the post of state physician in Ireland
from the Commonwealth, in 1649 and having purchased, as an adventurer,
a few years earlier, some of the forfeited lands in Leinster and
Ulster, applied himself to the subject of his book, with a view
originally to the improvement of his own property. His information,
however, was obtained, not from personal experience, but from Irish
gentlemen whom he had met in London, such as Sir William and Sir
Richard Parsons; and from his brother, Dr. Arnold Boate, who had
practiced as a physician in Dublin for many years; but he himself,
unfortunately, died a few months after his arrival in Ireland to enter
on the duties of his office, before he was able to carry out more than
half the original design of his work, which, though written in 1645,
was not published until some years after his death. He collected his
information and wrote while the great civil war was still raging, and
when all his feelings and interests must have been strongly enlisted
against the native race, so that we are not to be surprised at the
acerbity of some of his expressions about them. Our concern is, not
with his feelings or opinions, but with the facts which he relates,
and the descriptions and statistics which he supplies.

On the state of metallurgy in Ireland in his time, Dr. Boate gives us
some very curious information. He denies any knowledge of the subject
on the part of the native Irish, and asserts that all the mines in
Ireland were discovered by the "New English." "The Old English in
Ireland," he says, "that is, those who are come in from the time of
the first conquest until the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
have been so plagued with wars from time to time--one while intestine
among themselves, and another while with the Irish--that they could
scarce ever find the opportunity of seeking for mines. . . . . . And
the Irish themselves, as being one of the most barbarous nations of
the whole earth, have at all times been so far from seeking out any,
that even in these last years, and since the English have begun to
discover some, none of them all, great or small, at any time hath
applied himself to that business, or in the least manner furthered it;
so that all the mines which to this day are found out in Ireland, have
been discovered (at least, as far to make any use of them) by the New
English, that is, such as are come in during and since the reign of
Queen Elizabeth." (_Thom's Collection of Tracts and Treatises_, vol.
i. 102.)

He adds, that several iron mines had been discovered in various parts
of the kingdom, and also some of lead and silver, during the forty
years' peace, from the death of Elizabeth to the outbreak of the great
rebellion--the longest peace, he remarks, that Ireland ever enjoyed,
either before or after the coming of the English. The great extent to
which smelting was carried on during a portion of that time may be
concluded from the almost incredible destruction of the Irish woods,
to make charcoal for the purpose. This Dr. Boate describes in a
preceding chapter; "As long as the land was in the full possession of
the Irish themselves," he says, and we know the fact from many other
sources, "all Ireland was very full of woods on every side;" but the
English cleared away a great deal of these, both to destroy the
lurking places of their foes, and to convert the land into tillage and
pasture. Besides the woods cleared for these purposes, a vast amount
of timber was felled, as Boate tells us, for merchandise, and to make
charcoal for the iron works. The timber comprised under the former
head does not appear to have been for building, but simply for pipe
staves and the like, of which, he says, great quantities were exported
even in former times; "and," he adds, "during the last peace a mighty
trade was driven in them, and whole shiploads sent into foreign
countries yearly;" while, "as for the charcoal," he {551} continues,
"it is incredible what quantity thereof is consumed by one iron work
in a year . . . so that it was necessary from time to time to fell an
infinite number of trees, all the loppings and windfalls being not
sufficient for it in the least manner." The result of all this was,
that even in Boate's time, that is, over 200 years ago, the greater
part of Ireland was left totally bare of woods; the inhabitants could
obtain no wood for building, or even for firing; and in some parts one
might travel whole days without seeing any trees, except a few about
gentlemen's houses. For a distance of over three score miles from
north to south, in the counties of Louth and Dublin, "one doth not
come near any woods worth speaking of; and in some parts thereof you
shall not see so much as one tree in many miles. For the great woods
which the maps do represent unto us upon the mountains, between
Dundalk and Nurie, are quite vanished, there being nothing left of
them these many years since but one only tree, standing close by the
highway, at the very top of one of the mountains, so far as it may be
seen a great way off, and therefore serveth travellers for a mark."

At that period iron mines were worked extensively near Tallow, on the
borders of Cork and Waterford, by the famous Earl of Cork; in the
county of Clare, some six miles from Limerick; at a place called
Desert, in the King's County, by Sergeant-Major Pigott; at Mountrath
and Mountmellick, in the Queen's County; on the shores of Lough Allen,
both on the Roscommon and Leitrim sides--the mountains of
Slieve-an-ieran, or the Iron Mountain, in the latter county, having
obtained its name, in the remotest ages, from the presence of that
metal; on the shores of Lough Erne, in Fermanagh; in Cavan; at Lissan,
on the borders of Tyrone and Londonderry, where the works were carried
on by Sir Thomas Staples, the owner of the soil; at the foot of Slieve
Gallen, in the county of Derry; and in several other places. Iron
smelting works and foundries were erected, not only in the vicinity of
the mines, but in other places on the coast, and elsewhere, where the
convenience of water carriage and the supplies of charcoal afforded
inducements. To some of these works on the sea-coast, the ore was
brought even from England; but the principal iron works appear to have
been those belonging to the Earl of Cork, in Munster; to Sir Charles
Coote, at Mountrath, and in Roscommon and Leitrim; to the Earl of
Londonderry, in his own county; to Lord Chancellor Loftus, ancestor of
the Marquis of Ely, at Mountmellick; to Sir John Dunbar, in Fermanagh;
Sir Leonard Blennerhassett, on Lough Erne; and a company of London
merchants in Clare. We are not told whether these last were the
representatives of the London Mining Company, to which Queen Elizabeth
granted the royalties of the precious metals that might be discovered
within the English Pale. Mr. Christopher Wandsworth, who had been
Master of the Rolls for Ireland, and acted as Lord Deputy under the
Earl of Strafford, erected a foundry in the county of Carlow, where
ordnance were cast, and also a kind of small round furnaces, pots, and
other articles made.

It was estimated that the owners of the iron works--we do not here
refer to the mines--made a profit of forty per cent in the year; and
Boate was assured, by persons who were particularly well informed on
the subject, that the Earl of Cork cleared £100,000 by his iron works.
Sir Charles Coote--"that zealous and famous warriour in this present
warre against the Irish rebells," in the first year of which war he
fell--appears to have been quite as famous as an iron-master as he was
as a warrior, and his iron-works at Mountrath were a model at that
time. A ton of the ore called rock mine cost him, at the furnace head,
5s. 6d.; and a ton of white mine, or ore dug from a mountain, 7s. The
two ores were mixed in the {552} proportion of one of rock mine to two
of white mine, and three tons of the mixed ore yielded one ton of good
bar iron, which was conveyed in rude, small boats called cots, on the
River Nore to Waterford, and thence shipped to London, where it was
sold for £16, and sometimes for £17, or even £17 10s.; the whole cost
of the iron to Sir Charles Coote, including that of digging it out of
the mine and every expense until it reached the London market, Custom
House duty included, being between £10 and £11 per ton. In most places
the cost of the ore at the furnace varied from 5s. to 6s. per ton; and
when the ore was particularly rich, 2-1/2 tons produced one ton of
good iron; but Boate tells us that few of the iron smelters carried on
their work as profitably as Sir Charles Coote.

In Boate's time, only three lead and silver mines appear to have been
known in Ireland. One of these was in the county of Antrim, and was
very rich, yielding 1 lb. of silver to 30 lbs. of lead; another was
situated in Cony Island, at Sligo; and the third, the only one which
was worked, was the famous silver mines of the barony of Upper Ormond,
in Tipperary, about twelve miles from Limerick. This mine had been
discovered about forty years before, and was at first supposed to be
merely a lead mine; some of the first lead it produced being used by
the Earl of Thomond to roof his house at Bunratty. It was worked in
the shape of open pits, several fathoms deep, but still sloping so
gradually, that the ore was carried to the surface in wheelbarrows.
Each ton of ore at this mine yielded 3 lbs. of pure silver; but our
authority does not inform us how much lead. The silver was sold in
Dublin for 5s. 2d. per oz., and the lead for £11 per ton, though it is
stated to have brought £12 in Limerick; and the royalty, or king's
share, was a sixth part of the silver, and a tenth of the lead. The
rest was the property of those who farmed the mine, and who cleared an
estimated profit of £2000 per annum. The works at this mine, and in
general all the smelting works which we have mentioned throughout the
country, were of course destroyed in the civil war.

So much for the practical metallurgy of Ireland, as it existed two
hundred years ago. Of the knowledge of the original inhabitants on the
subject, Sir William Wilde ("Catalogue of Antiquities," etc., vol. i.
p. 351) says--and his opinion is the result of all the investigation
that is practicable in the matter--"When, and how, the Irish people
discovered metals and their uses, together with the art of smelting
and casting, has not been determined by archaeologists;" but a few
remarkable and suggestive facts on the subject may be mentioned.
Manuscripts, themselves five or six hundred years old, and purporting
to give information handed down from the most remote antiquity, make
frequent mention of the knowledge and use of metals among the ancient
Irish. Thus the old annalists say, that "gold was first smelted in
Ireland in Fotharta-Airthir-Liffe," a woody district in Wicklow, east
of the River Liffey, supposed to coincide with the present well-known
auriferous tract in that county. Indeed, it is most probable that gold
was the first metal known to the Irish, as well as to all people in
early stages of civilization, as, besides its glittering quality, it
is almost the only metal found in a native state upon the surface, and
consequently obtainable without the art of smelting. Dr. Boate writes:
"I believe many will think it very unlikely that there should be any
gold mines in Ireland; but a credible person hath given me to
understand, that one of his acquaintances had several times assured
him that out of a certain rivulet, in the county of Nether-Tirone,
called Miola, he had gathered about one dram of pure gold." We also
know from the celts, and other articles in these metals which have
been preserved, that the ancient Irish possessed {553} copper, which
they were able to convert into brass and bronze; and also that they
had silver, tin, lead, and iron. The Irish version of Nennius
mentions, as the first wonder of Ireland, that Lough Lein--the Lake of
Killarney--is surrounded by four circles, viz., "a circle of tin, and
a circle of lead, and a circle of iron, and a circle of copper"--an
indication not only that these metals were known to the people, but
that some rude idea had been formed of the mineralogy of the district.



THEIR AGRICULTURE.

Grain, in one shape or other, formed a main ingredient in the food of
the Irish from the earliest historic period; and we may, consequently,
include Agriculture among the earliest of their industrial arts. We
are not aware of any time at which they were exclusively a
flesh-eating people; and we find it clearly stated, with reference to
periods not altogether very remote, that the native Irish subsisted to
a great extent on the milk and butter of their large herds of cattle,
seldom killing the animals for their flesh. On the other hand, we know
that vast numbers of cattle were slain and consumed in the constant
petty wars of the country; and that the lawless dwellers in the
_cranogues_, or lake habitations--whatever period they belong to--were
decidedly carnivorous, as the immense accumulations of the bones and
horns of cattle found in their insulated haunts testify. But the fact
we contend for is, that the ancient Irish were a granivorous quite as
much as a carnivorous race, if not more so; and some ethnologists have
concluded, from an examination of very ancient Irish crania, that the
teeth were chiefly employed in masticating grain in a hard state.

It is a curious and well-known fact that in many parts of Ireland
traces of tillage are visible on the now barren sides or summits of
hills, in places which have been long since abandoned to savage
nature, and in a soil which would appear never to have been
susceptible of cultivation. Some such elevated spots, now covered with
grass, are known to have been cultivated some years since, when the
rural population was much denser than at present; but we are referring
to other places where we find well-marked ridges and furrows on
hillsides, four or five hundred feet above the sea level, or even
more; and which are now covered with heath, and so denuded, by ages of
atmospheric action on the steep slopes, as to retain only the least
quantity of vegetable surface, wholly inadequate at present to nourish
any kind of grain.

When, and by whom, were these wild spots cultivated? The country
people have lost all tradition on the subject, and substitute their
own conjectures.

It is not probable that the population of Ireland was ever so dense as
to have necessitated such extreme efforts to eke out the arable land;
or that the people were ever so crowded as to have been compelled, as
it were, like the Chinese, to Terrace the hill-sides to grow food. Mr.
Thom has collected, in his admirable "Statistics of Ireland," all the
authentic accounts of Irish census returns. Taking these in their
inverse order, we find that the 8,175,124 of 1841 was only 6,801,827
in 1821; 5,937,856 in 1814; 4,088,226 in 1792; 2,544,276 in 1767;
2,309,106 in 1726; 1,034,102 in 1695; and 1,300,000 in 1672. These
latter early returns were merely the estimates of the hearth-money
collectors, and are generally deemed to be unreliable. Newenham, in
his Enquiry, expresses his disbelief in them, and shows from the
statements of Arthur Young, and from official returns, that they were
clearly under the truth. Yet the returns recently found by Mr.
Hardinge, of the Landed Estates Record Office, among the papers of Sir
William Petty, in the library of the Marquis of Lansdowne, would
reduce the population to a {554} much lower figure still at an epoch
only a little earlier than the date last enumerated above. Mr.
Hardinge shows that the Petty returns must have been made in 1658 or
1659; and, supplying a proportional computation for some omitted
counties and baronies, he finds that the total population of Ireland
at that date was only _half a million!_ It is true that this was
immediately after the close of the long and desolating civil war which
commenced in 1641; and at a time when, as Mr. Hardinge observes, one
province had been so utterly depopulated as to leave its lands vacant
for the transplanted remnants of the people of two other provinces;
yet, even under all the circumstances, the number is incredibly small.

Going further back, we may conclude that the population could not have
been considerable during the constant civil wars which wasted the
entire country throughout the long reign of Elizabeth; nor was there
any time from the Anglo-Norman invasion to that period in which the
circumstances of the country were favorable to the social or numerical
development of the population; while in earlier times matters can
hardly be said to have been a whit better. There is no period of
ancient Irish history in which the native annalists do not record
almost an annual recurrence of internecine wars in all the
provinces--wars equally inveterate and sanguinary, whether the country
was infested by foreign foes, or not (_vide_ the Four Masters
_passim_)--while, on the other hand, we know that the population of a
country never multiplies excessively except in long intervals of
peace. It may be urged that the remains of the innumerable _raths_ and
_cahirs_, or _caishels_, which cover the land, and of the abbeys and
small churches which dot the country, indicate periods of very dense
population: but this is a mistaken notion; for at the time when the
raths were inhabited, it can scarcely be said there were any towns in
Ireland; and even when the monasteries were built, the population was
almost wholly rural, and scattered; while a great many of the very
small religious edifices through the country were only the isolated
oratories of hermits.

The poet, Spenser, writing about A.D. 1596, would seem to give us the
best clue to the time in which those mountain wildernesses we have
been referring to were subjected to a kind of cultivation. In his
"View of the State of Ireland," he makes _Irenaeus_ relate how the
most part of the Irish fled from the power of Henry II. "into deserts
and mountains, leaving the wyde countrey to the conquerour, who in
their stead eftsoones placed English men, who possessed all their
lands, and did quite shut out the Irish, or the most part of them:"
and how "they [the Irish] continued in that lowlinesse untill the time
that the division betweene the two houses of Lancaster and York arose
for the crowne of England; at which time all the great English lords
and gentlemen, which had great possessions in Ireland, repaired over
hither into England. . . . . . Then the Irish whom before they had
banished into the mountains, where they only lived on white meates, as
it is recorded, seeing now their lands so dispeopled and weakened,
came downe into all the plaines adjoyning, and thence expelling those
few English that remained, repossessed them againe, since which they
have remained in them," etc.

It is most probable, then, that it was during that early period of
refuge in the mountains that the wild tracts we have alluded to were
cultivated by the Irish; and it is worth remarking that when, in
Spenser's own time, the English recovered a portion of the plain at
the foot of Slieve Bloom, in the O'Moore's country, of which the Irish
had been for several years in quiet possession, they were surprised at
the high state of cultivation in which they found it.

{555}

The ancient Irish ploughed with oxen, as appears from many
unquestionable authorities--among others, from a reference to the
subject in the volume of "Brehon Laws" recently published by
Government, page 123; but in subsequent times they were brought so
low, that in some places, and among the poorest sort, the barbarous
practice prevailed of yoking the plough to a horse's tail! It is a
mistake to suppose, on the one hand, that this was a mere groundless
calumny on the people; or, on the other, that it was anything like a
general national custom. The preamble to the Act of the Irish
Parliament (10 and 11 Charles I., chap. 15) passed in 1635, to
prohibit the practice, says: "Whereas in many places of this kingdome
there hath been a long time used a barbarous custome of ploughing. . . .
and working horses, mares, etc, by the taile, whereby (besides the
cruelty used to the beasts) the breed of horses is much impaired in
this kingdome, to the great prejudice thereof; and whereas also divers
have and yet do use the like barbarous custom of pulling off the wool
yearly from living sheep, instead of clipping or shearing of them, be
it therefore enacted," etc., etc.

That this Act, as well as the subsequent Act, chap. 15, "to prevent
the unprofitable custom of burning of corne in the straw," instead of
threshing out the grain, was regarded as a popular grievance, appears
from the fact, that the repeal of these Acts was made one of the
points of negotiation with the Marquis of Ormond during the Civil War;
but they remained on the Statute Book until repealed, as obsolete, in
1828, by 9 Geo. IV. c. 53.

Boate, writing about Ireland, more than two hundred years ago, labors
to show that the soil and climate are better suited for grazing than
for tillage. "Although Ireland," he quaintly observes, "almost in
every part bringeth good corn plentifully, nevertheless hath it a more
naturall aptness for grass, the which in most places it produceth very
good and plentiful! of itself, or with little help; the which also
hath been well observed by Giraldus, who of this matter writeth--'This
iland is fruitfuller in grass and pastures than in corn and graines."
And farther on he continues: "The abundance and greatness of pastures
in Ireland doth appear by the numberless number of all sorts of
cattell, especially kine and sheep, wherewith this country in time of
peace doth swarm on all sides." He remarks, that, although the Irish
kine, sheep, and horses were of a small size, that did not arise from
the nature of the grass, as was fully demonstrated by the fact that
the breed of large cattle brought out of England did not deteriorate
in point of size or excellence.

Sir William Petty states that the cattle and other grazing stock of
Ireland were worth above £4,000,000 in 1641, at the outbreak of the
civil war; and that in 1652 the whole was not worth £500,000.

John Lord Sheffield, in "Observations on the Manufactures, etc., of
Ireland," Dublin, 1785, writes that Ireland, "which had so abounded in
cattle and provisions, was, after Cromwell's settlement of it, obliged
to import provisions from Wales. However, it was sufficiently
recovered soon after the Restoration to alarm the grazing counties of
England; and in the year 1666 the importation of live cattle, sheep,
swine, etc, from Ireland was prohibited. . . . . Ireland turned to
sheep, to the dairy, and fattening of cattle, and to tillage; and she
shortly exported much beef and butter, and has since supplanted
England in those beneficial branches of trade. She was forced to seek
a foreign market; and England had no more than one fourth of her
trade, although before that time she had almost the whole of it."

{556}

Arthur Young, whose "Agricultural Tours in Ireland in 1775, etc.," did
so much for the improvement of this country, always advocated tillage
in preference to grazing. Referring to the former, he says: "The
products upon the whole [of Ireland] are much inferior to those of
England though not more so than I should have expected; not from
inferiority of soil, but from the extreme inferiority of management. . . .
Tillage in Ireland is very little understood. In the greatest corn
counties, such as Louth, Kildare, Carlow, and Kilkenny, where are to
be seen many very fine crops of wheat, all is under the old system,
exploded by good farmers in England, of sowing wheat upon a fallow and
succeeding it with as many crops of spring corn as the soil will bear.
. . . But keeping cattle of every sort is a business so much more
adapted to the laziness of the farmer, that it is no wonder the
tillage is so bad. It is everywhere left to the cotters, or to the
very poorest of the farmers, who are all utterly unable to make those
exertions upon which alone a vigorous culture of the earth can be
founded; and were it not for potatoes, which necessarily prepare for
corn, there would not be half of what we see at present. While it is
in such hands, no wonder tillage is reckoned be unprofitable. Profit
in all undertakings depends on capital; and is it any wonder that the
profit should be small when the capital is nothing at all! Every man
that has one gets into cattle, which will give him an idle lazy
superintendence instead of an active attentive one."

How much of this is just as applicable to the state of things in our
own times, as it was eighty or ninety years ago! Young would appear to
be describing accurately the state of agriculture in Ireland just
before the last destructive famine; but happily he would find at the
present moment a considerable improvement. One change, however, which
he would find would not be much to his taste. He would see even the
humblest tenant farmer, as well as the large land occupier, placing
almost his whole confidence in pasturage, and compelled to abandon
tillage by the uncertainty of the seasons, the low price of grain, and
the increasing price of labor.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

CLAIMS.


  Nay,--claim it not, the lightest joy that throws
            Its transient blushes o'er the beaming earth
  Or the sweet hope in any living thing
                    As thine by birth.

  No precious sympathy, no thoughtful care,
          No touch of tenderness, however near;
  But watch the blossoming of life's delight
                    With sacred fear.

  Have joy in life, and gladden to the sense
          Of dear companionship, in thought, in sight;
  But oh! as gifts of heaven's abounding love,
                    Not thine by right.

----

{557}

From The Month.

SEALSKINS AND COPPERSKINS.

Captain Hall, unconvinced by the evidence published by Captain
M'Clintock in 1859, undertook his expedition in search of the
surviving members of Sir John Franklin's crew, (if such there were;)
or in the hope of clearing up all doubt about the history of their
end, in the event of their having perished. He was baffled in his
attempt to reach the region in which he hoped to find traces of the
objects of his search, by the wreck of the boat which he had
constructed for the enterprise; and his ship being beset with ice in a
winter which set in earlier than usual, he spent more than two
years--the interval between May, 1860, and September, 1862--among the
Esquimaux on the western coast of Davis's Strait, in order to acquire
their language and familiarize himself with their habits and mode of
life. He is at present once more in the arctic regions, having
returned thither in order to prosecute his enterprise. He is now
accompanied by two intelligent Esquimaux, whom he took back with him
to America; and who, having now learnt English, will serve him as
interpreters as well as a means of introduction to the various
settlements of Esquimaux whom he may have occasion to visit in his
travels. The results of his present expedition will probably be more
interesting than those of his first. If we test the success of his
first voyage by the discoveries to which it led, these were confined
to correcting the charts of a portion of the western coast of Davis's
Strait, and to proving that the waters hitherto laid down as
"Frobisher's _Strait_" are in fact not a strait, but a bay. As a
voyage of discovery, its importance falls far short of that undertaken
for the same object in 1857 by Captain M'Clintock. Captain Hall,
however, was enabled, by comparing the various traditions among the
Esquimaux, to arrive at the spot where Frobisher, in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, attempted to found a settlement on "Kodlunarn" [that
is, "White man's"] Island, (the Countess Warwick's Island, of English
maps,) where he found coal, brick, iron implements, timber, and
buildings still remaining. This success in tracing out, by means of
information supplied by the natives, the relics of an expedition
undertaken more than three centuries ago, makes him confident of
obtaining a like success in unravelling the mystery in which the fate
of Sir John Franklin and his companions is still wrapped, by a similar
residence among the Esquimaux of Boothia and King William's Island,
which were the last known points in their wanderings. This is the
region he is now attempting to reach for the second time. But the real
value of his present volume is the accurate and faithful record it
gives of the author's impressions, received from day to day during a
residence within the arctic zone, and the details it gives of the
habits and character of the Esquimaux.

The origin of this people is, we believe, unknown. Another arctic
traveller has suggested that they are "the missing link between a
Saxon and a seal." They are rapidly decreasing in numbers; yet, if
measured by the territory which they inhabit, they form one of the
most widely-spread races on the face of the earth. Mr. Max Müller
might help us to arrive at the ethnological family to which they
belong, were he to study the specimens of their language with which
Captain Hall supplies us. Judging from the physiognomy of two of them,
whom the author has photographed for his frontispiece, we should say
that {558} they certainly do not belong, as M. Bérard and, we believe,
Baron Humboldt have supposed, to those Mongol races, which, under the
names of "Laps" and "Finns," inhabit the same latitudes of the
European continent. They seem rather to approach the type of some of
the tribes of the North American Indians; and the resemblance of their
habits of life and traditions points to the same conclusion. They are
small of stature, five feet two inches being rather a high standard
for the men, but of great strength and activity, and they have a
marvellous power of enduring fatigue, cold, and hunger.

The name "Esquimaux," by which we designate them, is a French form of
on Indian word, _Aish-ke-um-oog_ (pronounced Es-ke-moag)--meaning in
the Cree language, "He eats raw flesh;" and in fact they are the only
race of North-American savages who live habitually and entirely on raw
flesh. In their own language they are called _Innuit_ that is, _the_
people par _excellence_. Formerly they had chiefs, and a sort of
feudal system among them; but this has disappeared, and they have now
no political organization whatever, and no authority among them,
except that of the husband over his wives and children.

Their theology--so far as we can arrive at it--teaches that there is
one Supreme Being, whom they call "Anguta," who created the material
universe; and a secondary divinity, (the daughter of Anguta,) called
"Sidne," through whose agency he created all living things, animal and
vegetable. The Innuits believe in a heaven and a hell, and the
eternity of future rewards and punishments. Success and happiness, and
benevolence shown to others, they consider the surest marks of
predestination to eternal happiness in the next world; and they hold
it to be as certain that whoever is killed by accident or commits
suicide goes straight to heaven, as that the crime of murder will in
all cases be punished eternally in hell. They seem hardly to secure
the attribute of omnipotence to their "Supreme Being;" for, in their
account of the creation of the world, they affirm that his first
attempt to create a man was a decided failure--that is to say, he
produced a _white_ man. A second attempt, however, was crowned with
entire success, in the production of an Esquimaux on Innuit--the
faultless prototype of the human race. A tradition of a deluge, or
"extraordinary high tide," which covered the whole earth, exists among
the Esquimaux; and they have certain customs which they observe with
religious reverence, although they can give no other reason or
explanation of them except immemorial tradition. "The first Innuits
did so," is always their answer when questioned on the subject. Thus,
when a reindeer, or any other animal, is killed on land, a portion of
the flesh is always buried on the exact spot where it fell--possibly
the idea of sacrifice was connected with this practice; and when a
polar bear is killed, its bladder must be inflated and exposed in a
conspicuous place for three days. And many such practices, equally
unintelligible, are scrupulously adhered to; and any departure from
them is supposed to bring misfortune upon the offending party.

Though the Esquimaux own neither government nor control of any kind,
they yet yield a superstitious obedience to a character called the
"Angeko," whose influence they rarely venture to contravene. The
Angeko is at once physician and magician. In cases of sickness the
Esquimaux never take medicine; but the Angeko is called, and if his
enchantments fail to cure, the sick person is carried away from the
tents, and left to die. The Angeko is also called upon to avert evils
of all kinds; to secure success for hunting or fishing expeditions, or
any such undertaking; to obtain the disappearance of ice, and the
public good on various occasions; and in all cases the efficacy of his
ministrations is believed to be proportioned to the guerdon which he
receives. Captain Hall {559} mentions only two instances, as having
occurred in his experience, of resistance being made by Esquimaux to
the wishes of the Angeko; and in both cases the parties demurred to a
demand that they should give up their wives to him. Though more
commonly they have but one wife, owing to the difficulty of supporting
a number of women, polygamy is allowed and practised by the Esquimaux.
Their marriage is without ceremony of any kind, nor is the bond
indissoluble. Exchange of wives is of frequent occurrence; and if a
man becomes, from sickness or other cause, unable to support them, his
wives will leave him, and attach themselves to some more vigorous
husband. For the rest, the Esquimaux are intelligent, honest, and
extremely generous to one another. When provisions are scarce, if a
seal or walrus is killed by one of the camp, he invites the whole
settlement to feast upon it, though he may be in want of food for
himself and his family on the morrow in consequence of doing so. They
are very improvident, and rarely store their food, but trust to the
fortunes of the chase to supply their wants, and are generally during
the winter in a constant state of oscillation between famine and
abundance. The Esquimaux inhabit the extreme limits of the globe
habitable by man, and they have certain peculiarities in their life
consequent on the circumstances of their climate and country; but in
other respects they resemble the rest of the nomad and savage races
which people the extreme north of America. In summer the Esquimaux
live in tents called _tupics_, made of skins like those used by the
Indian tribes, and these are easily moved from place to place. As
winter sets in, they choose a spot where provisions are likely to be
plentiful, and there they erect _igloogs_, or huts constructed of
blocks of ice, and vaulted in the roof. If they are obliged to change
their quarters during the winter, either permanently or temporarily,
they build fresh _igloos_ of snow cut into blocks, which soon freeze,
and in the space of an hour or two they are thus able to provide
themselves with new premises. The only animals domesticated by the
Esquimaux are their fine and very intelligent dogs. They serve them as
guards, as guides, as beasts of burden and draught, as companions, and
assist them in the pursuit of every kind of wild animal. The women
have the care of all household affairs, and do the tailor's and
shoemaker's work, and prepare the skins for all articles of clothing
and bedding--no unimportant department in such a climate as theirs:
the men have nothing to think of but to supply provisions by hunting
and fishing. Sporting, which in civilized society is a mere recreation
and amusement, is the profession and serious employment, as well as
the delight, of the savage. And we find in the rational as well as in
the irrational animal, when in its wild state, the highest development
of those instincts and sensible powers with which God has endowed it
for its maintenance and self-preservation, and which it loses, in
proportion as it ceases to need them, in civilized society or in the
domesticated state.

The arctic regions, though ill-adapted for the abode of man, teem with
animal life. The seal, the walrus, and the whale supply the ordinary
needs of the Esquimaux. In the mouth of their rivers they find an
abundance of salmon; various kinds of ducks and other aquatic birds
inhabit their coasts in multitudes; reindeer and partridges are
plentiful on the hills; while the most highly prized as well as the
most formidable game is the great polar bear, whose flesh affords the
most dainty feast, and whose skin the warmest clothing, to these
children of the North.

Captain Hall lived, for months at a time, alone with the Esquimaux. He
acquired some proficiency in their language and shared their life in
all respects. He became popular with them, and even gained some
influence over them. He experienced some {560} difficulty in his first
attempt to eat raw flesh, (some whale's blubber, which was served up
for dinner;) but on a second trial, when urged by hunger, he made a
hearty meal on the blood of a seal which had just been killed, which
he found to be delicious. After this, cooking was entirely dispensed
with. Those who have visited new and "unsettled" countries will be
able to testify how easily man passes into a savage state, and how
pleasant the transition is to his inferior nature. There is a charm in
the freedom, in the total emancipation from the artificial restraints,
the feverish collisions, and daily anxieties of civilized society
which is one of the most secret, but also one of the most powerful
agents in advancing the colonization of the world. Captain Hall's
enthusiasm, which begins to mount at the sight of icebergs, whales,
and the novelty and grandeur of arctic scenery, reaches its climax
when he finds himself in an unexplored region, the solitary guest of
this wild and eccentric people, and depending, like them, for his
daily sustenance on the resources of nature alone.

The Esquimaux are sociable and cheerful, and, in Greenland and the
neighboring islands, hospitable to strangers; but those of their race
who inhabit the continent of America have a character for ferocity,
and are the most unapproachable to Europeans of all the savage tribes
of America. Even Captain Hall himself expresses uneasiness from time
to time lest he should become an object of suspicion to them, or give
them a motive for revenge. They are one of the few peoples of the
extreme north with whom the Hudson's Bay Company have hitherto failed
to establish relations of commerce. Many travellers and traders have
been murdered by them on entering their territory, and the missioners
of North-America regard them as likely to be the last in the order of
their conversion to Christianity. Skilful boatmen and pilots,
perfectly familiar with their coasts, with great intelligence in
observing natural phenomena, and knowing by experience every probable
variation of their inhospitable climate, as well as the mode of
providing against it, they formed invaluable assistants to an
expedition for the scientific survey of a region as yet imperfectly
known to the geographer. Their sporting propensities were the chief
hindrance to their services in the cause of science. No sooner were
ducks, or seals, or reindeer in view, than all the objects of the
expedition were entirely forgotten till the hunt was over. No motive
is strong enough to restrain an Esquimaux from the chase so long as
game is afoot:

  "Canis a corio nunquam absterrebitur uncto."

Seals are captured by the Esquimaux in various ways. Some are taken in
nets. At other times they are seen in great numbers on the ice, lying
at the brink of open water, into which they plunge on the first alarm,
and much skill is then required in approaching them. In doing this,
the Esquimaux imitate the tactics of the polar bear. The bear or the
savage, as the case may be, throws himself flat upon the ice and
imitates the slow jerking action of a seal in crawling toward his
game. The seal sees his enemy approaching, but supposes him to be
another seal; but if he shows any signs of uneasiness, the hunter
stops perfectly still and "talks" to him--that is, he imitates the
plaintive grunts in which seals converse with one another. Reassured
by such persuasive language, the seal goes to sleep. Presently he
starts up again, when the same process is repeated. Finally, when
within range, the man fires, or the bear springs upon his victim. But
the Esquimaux confess that the bear far surpasses them in this art,
and that if they could only "talk" as well as "Ninoo," (that is,
"Bruin,)" they should never be in want of seal's flesh. When the
winter sets in, and the ice becomes thick, the seal cuts a passage
{561} through the ice with his sharp claws with which its flippers are
armed, and makes an aperture in the surface large enough to admit its
nose to the outer air for the purpose of respiration. This aperture is
soon covered with snow. When the snow becomes deep enough, and the
seal is about to give birth to its young, it widens the aperture,
passes through the ice, and constructs a dome-shaped chamber under the
snow, which becomes the nursery of the young seals. This is called a
seal's _igloo_, from its resemblance to the huts built by the
Esquimaux. It requires a dog with a very fine nose to mark the
bathing-place or igloo of a seal by the taint of the animal beneath
the snow; but when once it has been discovered, the Esquimaux is
pretty sure of his prey. If an igloo has been formed, and the seal has
young ones, the hunter leaps "with a run" upon the top of the dome,
crushes it in, and, before the seals can recover from their
astonishment, he plunges his seal-hooks into them, from which there is
no escape. If there be no igloo, but a mere breathing-hole, he clears
away the snow with his spear and marks the exact spot where the seal's
nose will protrude at his next visit, an aperture only a few inches in
diameter; then with a seal-spear strongly barbed in his hand, and
attached to his belt by twenty yards of the thongs of deer's hide, he
seats himself over the hole and awaits the seal's "blow." The seal may
blow in a few minutes, or in a few hours, or not for two or three
days; but there the Esquimaux remains, without food, and whatever the
weather may be, till he hears a low snorting sound; then, quick as
lightning, and with unerring aim, he plunges the spear into the seal,
opens the aperture in the ice with his axe till it will allow the body
of the seal to pass, and draws it forth upon the ice. The mode of
spearing the walrus is more perilous. The walrus are generally found
among broken ice, or ice so thin that they can break it. If the ice is
thin, they will often attack the hunter by breaking the ice under his
feet. In order to do this, the walrus looks steadily at the man taking
aim at him, and then dives; the Esquimaux, aware of his intention,
runs to a short distance to shift his position, and when the walrus
rises, crashing through the ice on which he was standing only a moment
before, he comes forward again and darts his harpoon into it.
Ordinarily the Esquimaux selects a hole in the ice where he expects
the walrus to "vent," and places himself so as to command it, with his
harpoon in one hand, a few coils of a long rope of hide, attached to
the harpoon, in the other, the remainder of the rope being wound round
his neck, with a sharp spike fastened at the extreme end of it. As
soon as the walrus rises to the surface, he darts the harpoon into its
body, throws the coils of rope from his neck, and fixes the spike into
the ice. A moment's hesitation, or a blunder, may involve serious
consequences. If he does not instantly detach the rope from his neck,
he is dragged under the ice. If he fails to drive the spike firmly
into the ice before the walrus has run out the length of the line, he
loses his harpoon and his rope.

But the sport which rouses the whole spirit of an Esquimaux community
begins when a polar bear comes in view. "Ninoo" is the monarch of
these arctic deserts, as the lion is of those of the South. The person
who first shouts on seeing "Ninoo," whether man, woman, or child, is
awarded with the skin, whoever may succeed in killing him. Dogs are
immediately put upon his track, and, on coming up with him, are taught
not to close with him, but to hang upon his haunches and bring him to
bay. The men follow as best they can, and with the best arms that the
occasion supplies. The sagacity and ferocity of this beast make an
attack upon him perilous, even with fire-arms; but great nerve,
strength, and skill are required, when armed {562} only with a harpoon
or a spear, to meet him hand to hand in his battle for life,

  "Or to his den, by snow-tracks, mark the way,
  And drag the struggling savage into day."

The polar bear it amphibious, and often takes to the sea. Then if
boats can be procured, it becomes a trial of speed between rowing and
swimming, and an exciting race of many miles often takes place. In the
open sea "Ninoo" has a poor chance of escape, unless he gets a great
start of his pursuers; but the arctic coasts are generally studded
with islands, and, when he can do so, he makes first for one island,
then for another, crossing them, and taking to the water again on the
opposite side, while the votes have to make the entire circuit of
each. The sagacity of these animals is marvellous, and proverbial
among the Esquimaux, who study their habits in order to get hints for
their own guidance. When seals are in the water, the bear will swim
quietly among them, his great white head assuming the appearance of a
block of floating ice or snow, and when close to them he will dive and
seize the seals under the water. When the walrus are basking on the
rocks, "Ninoo" will climb the cliffs above them and loosen large
masses of rock, and then, calculating the curve to a nicety, launch
them upon his prey beneath. When a she-bear is attended by her cubs,
the Esquimaux will never attack the cubs until the mother has been
despatched; such is their fear of the vengeance with which, in the
event of her escaping, she follows up the slaughter of her offspring
by day and night with terrible pertinacity and fury.

The Esquimaux stalk the reindeer much as we do the red deer in the
Highlands of Scotland; but the snow which lies in arctic regions
during the greater part of the year enables them to follow the same
herd of deer by their tracks for several days together.

Such, then, are the life, the habits, the pursuits of the Esquimaux.
Pagan in religion, the stand in need of that phase which alone is able
to save their race, now perishing from the face of the earth. Their
life is a constant struggle with the climate in which they live and
the famine with which they are perpetually threatened. A hardy race of
hunters, they exhibit many natural virtues, considerable intelligence,
and a strong nationality. The true faith, if they embraced it, while
it secured their eternal interests, would at the same time be to them,
as it has been to so many savage races, the principal of a great
social regeneration. At present they are wasting away as a race, and
will soon become extinct. Polygamy has always been found to cause the
decrease and decay of a population; and any human society, however
simple, will fall to pieces when it is not animated by ideas of order
and justice.

The Esquimaux occupy the extremities of human habitation in North
America; and if we pass from their territory to the south, we enter
upon that vast realm called "British America"--a region sufficient in
extent and resources, if developed by civilization, to constitute an
empire in itself. Of this vast territory the two Canadas alone, on the
north bank of the St. Lawrence River and the chain of mighty lakes
from which it flows, have been colonized by European settlers. The
remainder is inhabited by the nomad tribes of Indians and the wild
animals upon which they subsist, the British government being there
unrepresented except by the occasional forts and stations established
by the Hudson's Bay Company as centres for the traffic in furs, which
the Indians supply in the greatest abundance and variety.

The French, who were among the first to profit by the discovery of
Columbus and to settle as colonists in the new hemisphere, have in
their conquests always planted the cross of Christ side by side with
the banner of France. Though they have failed to retain the dominion
of those colonies {563} which they founded, yet, to their glory be it
said, their missioners have not only kept alive that sacred flame of
faith which they kindled in their former possessions, but have spread
it from one end of the American continent to the other, beyond the
limits within which lucre leads the trader, and even among the remote
tribes who as yet reject all ordinary intercourse with the white man.
Monseigneur Faraud, now Bishop of Anemour and Vicar-Apostolic of
Mackenzie, has published his experiences during eighteen years of
missionary labor as a priest among the savages of the extreme north of
America,  [Footnote 123] with the view of giving information to future
missioners in the same regions, and inspiring others to undertake the
conversion of this portion of the heathen world. The proceeds of the
sale of his book will be devoted to founding establishments for works
of corporal and spiritual mercy among the tribes of Indians in his
diocese. The narrative of his apostolic life is highly interesting.
Born of an old legitimist family in the south of France, some of whose
members had fallen victims to the Reign of Terror in 1793, and
carefully educated under the eye of a pious mother, he offered himself
to the service of God in the priesthood. Being of a vigorous
constitution and of an enterprising spirit, he was drawn to the work
of the foreign missions, and at the age of twenty-six he started for
North America. Landing at New York, he passed through Montreal to St.
Boniface, a settlement on the Red River, a few miles above the point
where it discharges its waters into the great Lake Winnipeg. Here he
fixed his abode for seven months, studying the language, and acquiring
the habits and mode of life of the natives. At the end of this time
the Indians of the settlement started on their annual expedition at
the end of the summer to the prairies of the west to hunt the
buffalo--an important affair, on which depends their supply of
buffalo-hides and beef for the winter.

  [Footnote 123: "Dix-huit Ans chez les Sauvages. Voyages et Missions
  de Mgr. Faraud dans le Nord de l'Amérique Britannique. Regis Ruffet
  et Cie. Paris, 1866."]

For this expedition, which was organized with military precision and
most picturesque effect, one hundred and twenty skilful hunters were
selected, armed with guns and long _couteaux de chasse_, and mounted
on their best horses. A long train of bullock-carts followed in the
rear, with boys and women as drivers, carrying the tents and
provisions for encampment, and destined to bring home the game. The
priest accompanied them, saying mass for them every morning in a tent
set apart as the chapel, and night-prayers before retiring to rest in
the evening.

In this way they journeyed for a week, making about thirty miles in
the day, and camping for the night in their tents. Let the reader, in
order to conceive an American "prairie," imagine a level and boundless
plain, reaching in every direction to the horizon, fertile and covered
with luxuriant herbage, and unbroken except by swelling undulations
and here and there occasional clumps of trees sprinkled like islets on
the ocean, or oases on the desert. After marching for a week across
the prairie, they came upon the tracks of a herd of buffaloes. The
Indians are taught from childhood, when they encounter a track, to
discern at once to what animal it belongs, how long it is since it
passed that way, and to follow it by the eye, as a hound does by
scent. For two days they marched in the track of the buffaloes, and
the second night the hunters brought a supply of fresh beef into
camp--they had killed some old bulls. These old bulls are found
single, or in parties of two or three, and always indicate the
proximity of a herd. Accordingly, on the following morning the herd
was discovered in the distance on the prairie, like a swarm of flies
on a green carpet. The hunters now galloped to the front, and called a
council of war behind some undulating ground about a mile and a half
{564} from the buffaloes, who, in number about three thousand, were
grazing lazily on the plain. All was now animation. It would be
difficult to say whether the keener interest was shown by the men or
the horses, who now, with dilated eyes and nostrils, ears pricked, and
nervous action, pawed the ground, impatient as greyhounds in the slips
and eager for the fray. The plan of action was soon agreed upon--a few
words were spoken in a low tone by the chief, and the horsemen
vanished with the rapidity of the wind. In about a quarter of an hour
they reappeared, having formed a circle round the buffaloes, whom they
now approached at a hand-gallop, concentrating their descent upon the
herd from every point of the compass. The effect of this strategy was
that, though they were soon discovered, time was gained. Whichever way
the herd pointed, they were encountered by an approaching horseman,
and they were thus thrown into confusion, until, massing themselves
into a disordered mob, they charged, breaking away through the line of
cavalry. Then began the race and the slaughter. A good horse, even
with a man on his back, has always the speed of a buffalo; but the
skill of a hunter is shown (besides minding his horse lest he gets
entangled in the herd and trampled to death, and keeping his presence
of mind during the delirium of the chase,) in selecting the youngest
and fattest beasts of the herd, in loading his piece with the greatest
rapidity--the Indians have no breech-loaders--and taking accurate aim
while riding at the top of his speed. In the space of a mile a skilful
buffalo-hunter will fire seven, eight, nine shots in this manner, and
at each discharge a buffalo will bite the dust. On the present
occasion the pursuit continued for about a mile and a half, and above
eight hundred buffaloes were safely bagged. When the chase was over,
there was a plentiful supply of fresh beef, the hides were carefully
stowed on the carts, the carcasses cut up, the meat dried and highly
spiced and made into pies, in which form it will keep for many months,
and forms a provision for the winter. The buffalo (which in natural
history would be called a bison) is the principal source of food and
clothing to the Indians who live within reach of the great western
prairies. But the forests also abound with elk, moose, and reindeer,
as well as the smaller species of deer, and smaller game of other
kinds, and the multitudes of animals of prey of all sizes which supply
the markets of Europe with furs. The abundance of fish in the lakes
and rivers is prodigious. The largest fish in these waters is the
sturgeon. This fish lies generally near the surface of the water: the
Indian paddles his canoe over the likely spots, and when he sees a
fish darts his harpoon into it, which is made fast by a cord to the
head of the canoe; the fish tows the canoe rapidly through the water
till he is exhausted, and is then despatched. Besides many other
inferior kinds of fish, they have the pike, which runs to a great size
in the lakes, and two kinds of trout--the smaller of these is the same
as that found in the rivers of England; the larger is often taken of
more than eighty pounds in weight. The Indians take these with spears,
nets, and baskets; but a trout weighing eighty pounds would afford
considerable sport to one of our trout-fishers of Stockbridge or
Driffield, if taken with an orthodox rod and line.

A fortnight was devoted to the chase; and between two and three
thousand buffaloes having been killed, and the carts fully laden, the
party returned to St. Bonifice. The settlement of St. Bonifice was
founded by Lord Selkirk, who sent out a number of his Scotch
dependents as colonists, and induced some Canadian families to join
them. It was originally intended as a model Protestant colony; but the
demoralization and vice which broke out in the new settlement brought
it to the verge of temporal ruin. Lord Selkirk then called Catholics
to his aid, {565} and three priests were sent there. Religion took the
place of fanaticism, and ever since this epoch the colony has never
ceased to flourish and increase, and has become the centre of numerous
settlements in the neighborhood of friendly Indians converted to the
faith. This is one of many instances which might be quoted in which
the noxious weed of heresy has failed to transplant itself beyond the
soil which gave it birth. St. Boniface has been the residence of a
bishop since 1818, and is now the resting-place and point of departure
for all missioners bound for the northern deserts of America. It was
here that Mgr. Faraud spent eighteen months studying the languages of
the northern tribes of Indians. Lord Bacon says that "he that goeth
into a strange laud without knowledge of the language goeth to learn
and not to travel." This, which is true of the traveller, is much more
true of the missioner, as Mgr. Faraud soon found by experience. He
made several essays at intercourse with neighboring tribes, like a
young soldier burning with zeal and the desire to flesh his sword in
missionary work. But the reception he met with was most mortifying,
being generally told "not to think of teaching men as long as he spoke
like a child." He applied himself with renewed energy to acquire the
native language.

The dialects of most of the tribes of the extreme north of America
(with the exception of the Esquimaux) are modifications of two parent
languages, the Montaignais and the Cree. By acquiring these Mgr.
Faraud was able to make himself understood by almost any of these
tribes after a short residence among them. Eighteen months spent at
St. Boniface served as a novitiate for his missionary work, at the end
of which time he received orders to start, early in the following
month, for Isle de la Crosse, a fort on the Beaver river, about 350
leagues to the N.W. of St. Boniface. On his way thither he was the
guest of the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, at Norway House,
where he was most hospitably entertained. Mgr. Faraud bears witness to
the liberal and enlightened spirit in which the authorities of the
Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the government officials in Canada,
render every aid and encouragement in their power to the Catholic
missioners; and he quotes a speech made to him by Sir Edmund Head
(then Governor of Canada) showing the high estimation, and even favor,
in which the Catholic missioners are held by them. Whatever permanence
and stability our missions possess in these vast deserts is owing to
the protection and kind assistance rendered to them by the British
authorities; while, on the other hand, it would be hardly possible for
this powerful company of traders to maintain their present friendly
relations with Indian tribes, upon which their trade depends, without
the aid of the Catholic missioners.

After five months spent at Isle de la Crosse, and three years after
his departure from Europe, Mgr. Faraud left for Atthabaska, one of the
most northerly establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company, whither the
various tribes of Indians, spread over an immense circuit 400 leagues
in diameter, come twice in the year, early in spring and late in the
autumn, to barter their furs, the produce of their winter and summer
hunting. This was his final destinatibn and field of apostolical
labor, it is often said that it is the happiness of the Red Indian to
be totally ignorant of money; and this, in a certain sense is true.
But money has no necessary connection with the precious metals or
bank-notes; and any medium of circulation which by common agreement
can be made to represent a determined value becomes money, in fact, if
not in name. Thus the market value of a beaver's skin in British
America varies little, and is nearly equivalent to an American dollar.
The Hudson's Bay Company have adopted this as the unit of their
currency, and the value of other furs {566} is reckoned in relation to
this standard. The following are some of the prices given to the
Indians for the furs ordinarily offered by them for sale:

  The skin of a black bear values from six to ten beavers; the skin of
  a black fox, about six beavers; the skin of a silver fox, about five
  beavers; the skin of an otter, from two to three beavers; the skin of
  a pecari, from one to four beavers; the skin of a martin, from one
  to four beavers; the skin of a red or white fox, about one beaver,
  and so forth.

Twice in the year the steamers and canoes of the company, laden with
merchandise, work their way up the lakes and rivers to these stations,
where the Indians assemble to meet them, and receive an equivalent for
their furs in arms, ammunition, articles for clothing, hardware, and
trinkets.

Two of our countrymen, Viscount Milton, and Dr. Cheadle, have lately
published an account of their travels in British America, of which we
give a notice in another part of this number.  [Footnote 124] The
description they give of the privations they endured and the
difficulties they had to overcome in merely traversing the country as
travellers, furnished as they were with all the resources which wealth
could command, while it reflects credit on their British pluck and
perseverance in attaining the object they had in view, gives us some
idea of the obstacles which present themselves to a missioner in these
regions, who has to take up his abode wherever his duty may call him,
and without any means of maintaining life beyond those which these
districts supply. The object of these gentlemen was to explore a line
of communication between Canada and British Columbia, with a view to
suggesting an overland route through British territory connecting the
Pacific with the Atlantic--a most important project in a political
point of view, upon which the success of the rising colony of Columbia
appears eventually to depend. The territory administered by the
Hudson's Bay Company, reaching as it does from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, from the coasts of Labrador on the N.E., to Vancouver's
Island on the S.W., contains an area nearly equal to that of the whole
of Europe.

  [Footnote 124: "The North-West Passage by Land." By Viscount Milton,
  M.P., and W. B. Cheadle, M.D. London. 1865.]

Mgr. Faraud remained fifteen years at Atthabaska. He found it a
solitary station-house, in the midst of deserts inhabited by
idolatrous savages; it is now a flourishing mission, with a vast
Christian population advancing in civilization, the capital of the
district to which it gives its name, and a centre of operation from
which missioners may act upon the whole north of British America, over
which he now has episcopal jurisdiction. Such results, as may be
supposed, have not been attained without labor and suffering. In the
commencement the mission was beset with difficulties and
discouragements. His first step was to build himself a house with logs
of wood, an act which was accepted by the savages as a pledge that he
intended to remain with them. A savage whom he converted and baptized
soon after his arrival, acted as his servant and hunted for him; while
with nets and lines he procured a supply of fish for himself when his
servant was unsuccessful in the chase. In this manner he for some time
maintained a life alternately resembling that of Robinson Crusoe and
St. Paul. He soon made a few conversions in his neighborhood, and in
the second year, with the aid of his catechumens, built a wooden
chapel, ninety feet long by thirty broad. He was now able, when the
tribes assembled in the spring and autumn, to converse with them, and
preach to them. They invited him to visit them in their own countries,
often many hundreds of miles distant; and these visits involved long
and perilous journeys, in which he several times nearly perished. In
the fourth year he began building a large church, surmounted by a
steeple, from which he swung a {567} large bell, which he procured
from Europe through the agents of the company. It was regarded as a
supernatural phenomenon by the savages when "the sound of the
church-going bell" was heard for the first time to boom over their
primeval forests. As soon as a savage became his catechumen, he taught
him to read, at the same time that he instructed him in religion. The
soil was gradually cultivated, crops were reared, and cows and sheep
introduced. In the tenth year a second priest was sent to his aid, who
was able to carry on his work for him at home while he was absent on
distant missions.

There are thirteen distinct tribes inhabiting British America, and
Mgr. Faraud devotes a chapter to the distinctive characteristics of
each. But a general idea of these savages may be easily arrived at.
Most of us are familiar with the lively descriptions of the red man in
the attractive novels of Mr. Fenimore Cooper; and, though the stories
are fiction, these portraits of the Indians are drawn to the life. We
have most of us been struck by their taciturnity, their profound
dissimulation, the perseverance with which they follow up their plans
of revenge, the pride which prevents them from betraying the least
curiosity, the stoical courage with which they brave their enemies in
the midst of the most horrible sufferings, their caution, their
cruelty, the extraordinary keenness and subtlety of their senses. The
Indian savage is profoundly selfish; gratitude and sympathy for others
do not seem to enter into the composition of his nature. The same
stubborn fortitude with which he endures suffering seems to render him
indifferent to it in others. Intellectually he is slow in his power of
conception and process of reasoning, but is endowed with a marvellous
power of memory and reflection. He has a great fluency of speech,
which often rises to real eloquence; and there is a gravity and
maturity in his actions which is the fruit of meditation and thought.
Cases of apostasy in religion are very rare among the Indians. A
savage visited Mgr. Faraud soon after his arrival at Atthabaska. He
had come from the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where his tribe dwelt, a
distance of above six hundred miles, and asked some questions on
religious subjects. After listening to the priest's instruction on a
few fundamental truths, "I shall come to you again," he said, "when
you can talk like a man; at present you talk like a child." Three
years afterward he kept his promise; and immediately on arriving he
presented himself to the priest, and placed himself under instruction.
On leaving after the first instruction, he assembled a number of
heathen savages, at a short distance in the forest, and preached to
them for several hours. This continued for many weeks. In the morning
he came for instruction; in the afternoon he preached the truths he
had learned in the morning to his countrymen. Mgr. Faraud had the
curiosity to assist unseen at one of these sermons, and was surprised
to hear his own instruction repeated with wonderful accuracy and in
most eloquent language. In this way a great number of conversions were
made; and the instructions given to one were faithfully communicated
to the rest by this zealous savage. The name of this savage was
Dénégonusyè. When the time arrived for his tribe to return to their
own country, the priest proposed that he should receive baptism. "No,"
he said; "I have done nothing as yet for Almighty God. In a year you
shall see me here again, and prepared for baptism." Punctual to his
promise, he returned the following spring. In the mean time he had
converted the greater portion of his tribe; he had taught them to
recite the prayers the priest had taught him; and he brought the
confessions of all the people who had died in the mean time among his
own people, which he had received on their death-beds, and which his
wonderful memory enabled him now to repeat word for word to the {568}
priest, baking him to give them absolution. Dénégonusyè was now told
to prepare for baptism; but he again insisted on preliminaries. First,
that he was to take the name of Peter, and wait to receive his baptism
on St. Peter's day--"Because," he said, "St. Peter holds the keys of
heaven, and is more likely to open to one who bears his name and is
baptized on his feast;" secondly, that he was to be allowed to fast
before his baptism forty days and nights, as our Blessed Lord did. On
the vigil of St. Peter's day he was so weak that he walked with
difficulty to the church; but on the feast, before daybreak, he
knocked loudly at the priests door and demanded baptism. He was told
to wait till the mass was finished. When mass was over, the priest was
about to preach to the people; but Dénégonusyè stood up and cried out,
"It is St. Peter's day; baptize me." The priest calmed the murmurs
which arose from the congregation at this interruption, and the eyes
of all were suddenly drawn to the figure of this wild neophyte of the
woods standing before the altar to receive the waters of regeneration.
A ray of light seemed to play round his head and rest upon him, as
though the Holy Ghost were impatient to take up his abode in this new
temple.

Cases are not unfrequent of "half-caste" Indians reared in the woods
as savages claiming baptism from the priest as their "birthright."
They have never met a priest before, nor ever seen their Catholic
parent. They are not Christians, and do not know even the most
elementary doctrines of the church. Yet they have this strange faith
(as they say "by inheritance") through some mysterious transmission of
which God alone knows the secret. One of these "half-castes" met Mgr.
Faraud one day as he was travelling through the forest, and asked him
to baptize him. "I have the faith of my father," he said, "and demand
my birthright." Then, inviting him to his house, he added: "My wife
also desires baptism." The priest accompanied him to his
hunting-lodge, and was presented to his wife, a young savage lady of
some twenty years. She was a veritable Amazon, a perfect model of
symmetry of form and feminine grace; there was a savage majesty in her
gestures and gait; she was a mighty huntress, tamed the wildest
steeds, and was famed far and near for her prowess with the bow and
spear. She welcomed the stranger with courtesy, and immediately
presented him with a basket full of the tongues of elks which had been
the spoil of her bow in the chase of the previous day. But as soon as
she learned the errand on which he had come, her manner changed to
profound reverence, and, throwing herself on her knees with hands
clasped in the attitude of prayer, she asked him for a crucifix, "to
help me in my prayers," she said. The Indians do not pray. Her husband
did not know one article of the creed. Who taught her to pray?--to
venerate a priest?--to adore the mystery of the cross?--to desire
baptism, and yearn for admission to the unity of God's church?

The three principal difficulties in the missioner's work among the
Indians are to "stamp out" (to use a recently-invented phrase) the
influence of their native magicians, and the practices of polygamy and
cannibalism--though several of the tribes are free from the last-named
vice. The magician, as we might expect, is always plotting to
counteract his advances and to revenge them when successful. When a
man has been possessed of half-a-dozen wives, and perhaps as yet
barely realized to himself the Christian idea of marriage, it is a
considerable sacrifice to part with all but one, and sometimes
perplexing to decide which he will retain and which he will part with.
Then the ladies themselves have generally a good deal to say upon this
question, and combinations arise in consequence, which are often very
serious and oftener still very ludicrous.

At Fort Resolution, on the great Slave Lake, the missioner met with a
{569} warm reception from the neighboring tribes of Indians; and as
the greater part of them embraced Christianity, he set himself to work
in instructing them. He explained to them that Christian marriage was
a free act, and could never be valid where it was compulsory, and that
in this respect the wife was as independent as the husband. This was
quite a new doctrine to the savages, with whom it was an inveterate
custom to obtain their wives either by force or by purchasing them
from their parents. The doctrine, however, was eagerly received by the
women, who felt themselves raised by it to equal rights with their
husbands. The men were then instructed that the Christian religion did
not permit polygamy, and that as many of them as had more than one
wife must make up their minds which of them they would retain, and
then part with the rest. It would be difficult to explain the reason
why marriage, which is a serious and solemn contract, and which in
mystical signification ranks first among the sacraments, is the
subject of jests, and provokes laughter in all parts of the world. The
savages were no exception to this rule; and while they set themselves
to obey the commands of the church, they made their doing so the
occasion of much merriment. The following morning a crowd of them
waited upon the priest, each of whom brought the wife with whom he
intended to be indissolubly united. After an exhortation, which dwelt
upon the divine institution, sacramental nature, and mutual
obligations of matrimony, each couple was called up to the priest
after their names had been written down in the register. The first
couple who presented themselves were "Toqueiyazi" and "Ethikkan."
"Toqueiyaza," said the priest, "will you take Ethikkan to be your
lawful wife?" "Yes," was the answer. "Ethikkan, will you take
Toqueiyazi to be your lawful husband?" "No," said the bride, "on no
account." Then turning to the bridegroom, who shared the general
astonishment of all present, she continued, "You took me away by
force; you came to our tent and tore me away from my aged father; you
dragged me into the forests, and there I became your slave as well as
your wife, because I believed that you had a right to make yourself my
master: but now the priest himself has declared that God has given the
same liberty to the woman as to the man. I choose to enjoy that
liberty, and I will not marry you." Great was the sensation produced
by this startling announcement. A revolution had taken place. The men
beheld the social order which had hitherto obtained in their tribe
suddenly overthrown. The women trembled for the consequences which
this daring act might bring upon them. For a moment the issue was
doubtful; but the women, who always get the last word in a discussion,
in this case got the first also; they cried out that Ethikkan was a
courageous woman, who had boldly carried out the principles of the
Christian religion regardless of human respect; and what she had done
was in fact so clearly in accordance with what the priest had taught,
that the men at length acquiesced, and the "rights of woman" were
thenceforward recognized and established on the banks of the great
Slave Lake.

In one of his winter journeys through the snow, attended by a party of
Indians and sledge drawn by dogs, Mgr. Faraud was arrested by a low
moaning sound which proceeded from a little girl lying under a hollow
tree covered with icicles. Her hands and feet were already
frostbitten, but she was still sufficiently conscious to tell him that
her parents had left her there to die. It is a common practice with
the savages to make away with any member of the family who is likely
to become a burden to them. The priest put the child on the sledge,
carried her home, and, with proper treatment, care, and food, she
recovered. She was instructed and baptized, receiving the name of
Mary. This child became the priest's consolation and joy, {570} a
visible angel in his house, gay and happy, and a source of happiness
and edification to others. She was one of those chosen souls on whom
God showers his choicest favors, and whom he calls to a close
familiarity with himself. But after a time the priest was obliged to
leave on a distant mission, having been called to spend the winter
with a tribe who wished to embrace Christianity, and whose territory
lay at a distance of several hundreds of miles. What was to be done
with Mary? To accompany him was impossible--to remain behind was to
starve. There was at that time, among his savage catechnmens, an old
man and his wife whose baptism he had deferred till the following
spring. This seemed to be the only solution of the difficulty. They
had no children of their own; they would take charge of Mary, and
bring her safe back to "the man of prayer" in the spring. Bitter was
the parting between little Mary and the priest; but there was the hope
of an early meeting in the following spring. The spring came, and the
priest returned; but the old savages and Mary came not. For weeks the
priest expected them, and then started to seek their dwelling, about
fifty miles distant from his own. He found their house empty, and the
man could nowhere be discovered. But in searching for him through the
forest, he descried an old woman gathering fuel. It was his wife.
Where was Mary? The old woman made evasive replies until the sternness
of the priest's manner terrified her into confession. "The winter had
been severe"--"they had run short of provisions"--"and--and--" in
short, _they had eaten her_.

But if the difficulties, disappointments, and sufferings of the
missioner in these American deserts are great, requiring in him great
virtue and an apostolic spirit, his consolations are great also. The
grace of God is always given in proportion to his servants' need; and
in this virgin soil, where spurious forms of Christianity are as yet
unknown, the effects it produces are at time astounding. The missioner
is alternately tempted to elation and despair. He must know, to use
the words of the Apostle, "how to be brought low, and how to abound."
Monseigneur Faraud has now returned to his diocese to reap the harvest
of the good seed which he has sown, and to carry a Christian
civilization to the savages of the extreme north of America. He has
left his volume behind him to invite our prayers for his success, and
to remind those generous souls who are inspired to undertake the work
of evangelizing the heathen, that in his portion of the Lord's field
"the harvest is great and the laborers few."

------

MISCELLANY.


_The Zoological Position of the Dodo_.--At a meeting of the
Zoological Society on the 9th of January last, Professor Owen read a
paper on the osteology of the Dodo, the great extinct bird of the
Mauritius. Our readers will remember that this bird has given rise to
a good deal of discussion from time to time as to its true affinities.
When Professor Owen was Curator of the Royal College of Surgeons'
Museum, he classed the Dodo along with the Raptorial birds. This
arrangement led to the production of the huge volume of Messrs.
Strickland and Melville, in which it was very ably demonstrated that
the bird belongs to the _Columbae_ or pigeon group. It is highly
creditable therefore to Professor Owen that upon a careful examination
of the specimens of the dodo's bones which have lately come under his
observation, he has consented to the view long ago expressed by Dr.
Melville. {571} The materials upon which Professor Owen's paper was
based consisted of about one hundred different bones belonging to
various parts of the skeleton, which had been recently discovered by
Mr. George Clark, of Mahéberg, Mauritius, in an alluvial deposit in
that island. After an exhaustive examination of these remains, which
embraced nearly every part of the skeleton, Professor Owen came to the
conclusion that previous authorities had been correct in referring the
dodo to the Columbine order, the variations presented, though
considerable, being mainly such as might be referable to the
adaptation of the dodo to a terrestrial life, and different food and
habits.--_Popular Science Review_.



_Native Borax_.--A lake about two miles in circumference, from which
borax is obtained in extremely pure condition and in very large
quantity, has recently been discovered in California. The borax
hitherto in use has been procured by combining boracic acid, procured
from Tuscany, with soda. It is used in large quantities in England,
the potteries of Staffordshire alone consuming more than 1100 tons
annually.



_Fall of the Temperature of Metals_.--At the last meeting of the
Chemical Society of Paris, Dr. Phipson called attention to the sudden
fall of temperature which occurs when certain metals are mixed
together at the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere. The most
extraordinary descent of temperature occurs when 207 parts of lead,
118 of tin, 284 of bismuth, and l,617 of mercury are alloyed together.
The external temperature being at +170° centigrade at the time of the
mixture, the thermometer instantly falls to--10° below zero. Even when
these proportions are not taken with absolute rigor, the cold produced
is such that the moisture of the atmosphere is immediately condensed
on the sides of the vessel in which the metallic mixture is made. The
presence of lead in the alloy does not appear to be so indispensable
as that of bismuth. Dr. Phipson explains this fact by assuming that
the cold is produced by the liquefaction at the ordinary temperature
of the air of such dense metals as bismuth, etc., in their contact
with the mercury.



_Greek and Egyptian Inscriptions_.--The discovery of a stone bearing a
Greek inscription with equivalent Egyptian hieroglyphics, by Messrs.
Lepsius, Reinisch, Rösler, and Weidenbach, four German explorers, at
Sane, the former Tanis, the chief scene of the grand architectural
undertakings of Rameses the Second, is an important event for students
of Egyptology. The Greek inscription consists of seventy-six lines, in
the most perfect preservation, dating from the time of Ptolemy
Energetes I. (238 B.C.) The stone is twenty-two centimetres high, and
seventy-eight centimetres wide, and is completely covered by the
inscriptions. The finders devoted two days to copying the
inscriptions, taking three photographs of the stone, and securing
impressions of the hieroglyphics. Egyptologists are therefore
anxiously looking forward to the production of these facsimiles and
photographs.

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.



MISCELLANEA: comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays, on Historical,
Theological, and Miscellaneous Subjects, By M. J. Spalding, D.D.,
Archbishop of Baltimore. Fourth edition. 2 vols. 8vo. Pp. 807.
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1866.

This work has attained a well deserved popularity in the Catholic
community; and we hail with pleasure this new and enlarged edition of
it. Dr. Spalding has obtained the first place amongst the few of our
popular writers; and by his contributions to Catholic literature will
leave after him evidences of a "good fight" for the truth and faith of
Christ. The Miscellanea is a book for the times, such as the Church
always needs, and of which in later years we have sadly felt the want.
The prolific Anti-catholic press has deluged the country with {572}
publications of all sizes and of every character, unfair in their
statements of our doctrine and practice, and but too often marked by
bitter invective and wilful misrepresentation. The prejudices thus
engendered and deepened must be quickly and pointedly met before the
poison has had time to spread. We must not be content with a passive
confidence in the inherent strength of truth. In the long run truth
will prevail, we know; but there is no reason why truth should not
also prevail in the short run. Our American style of making a mental
meal is not very far different from that of our physical meal. We read
as fast as we eat, and are not over dainty. It is perfectly marvellous
what hashes of literary refuse your anti-church, anti-papal, and
liberal (sic) caterer has the impudence to set before a people
hungering after righteousness and truth: and it is equally marvellous
that these same people so hastily gulp down the newly spiced dish,
without evincing any suspicion of their having once or twice before
seen and rejected the same well-picked bones and unsavory morsels.

Experience proves the necessity of providing for the American mind
good solid food, cooked _a la hâte_, and served with few
accompaniments. They are not partial to long introductory soups, and
totally disregard all side-dish references and quotations. Comparisons
aside, we need quick and popular answers to these popular and hasty
accusations. The difficulty we experience is in the fact that the
books, pamphlets, and tracts which disseminate error, contain such a
mass of illogical reasoning, and are based upon so many contradictory
principles, that to answer them all fully and logically would require
as many octavos as they possess pages. To give a fair, unsophistical,
and popular response to the questions of the day, as presented to us
in the forms we have mentioned, requires no little critical skill, and
real literary genius. In the perusal of the work before us we have had
frequent occasion to admire these characteristics of the distinguished
author. His trenchant blows decapitate at once a host of hydra-headed
errors, and he displays a happy faculty of marking and dealing with
those particular points which would be noticeable ones for the reader
of the productions which come under the judgment of his pen. We have
cause to congratulate ourselves that we have in him a popular writer
for the American people. An American himself, he understands his
countrymen, appreciates their merits, and is not blind to their
failings. It is true we find in these pages many qualifications of the
motives of Protestant antagonists and of Protestant movements
generally which we wish might be read only by those to whom they
apply; still the intelligent reader will not fail to observe that they
were called forth by the temper of the times in which these different
essays were written. The author himself observes in his preface to
this edition: "As some of them were written as far back as twenty
years, it is but natural to suppose that they occasionally exhibit
more spirit and heat in argument, than the cooler temper and riper
taste of advancing years would fully approve." And he very justly
adds: "While I am free to make this acknowledgment, justice to my own
convictions and feelings requires me to state, that in regard to the
facts alleged, I have nothing to retract, or even, materially to
modify, and that in the tone and temper I do not even now believe that
I set down aught in malice, or with any other than the good intent of
correcting error and establishing truth, without assuming the
aggressive except for the sake of what I believed to be the legitimate
defence of the Church of God."

What the learned writer here hints at, we feel to be his own profound
convictions at the present day, and the wisdom of which the aspect of
controversy as it is now successfully being carried on here and in
Europe, also proves, that it is better to convince and to teach, than
to silence. We are not, however, altogether averse to sharp reproof or
good-natured ridicule where it is well deserved. Fools are to be
answered, says the Holy Scripture, according to their folly; and fools
not unfrequently attack the truth and do a deal of mischief. When a
writer or public orator presumes to talk nonsense, or appeals to the
vulgar prejudices or the fears of the ignorant, it becomes necessary
to exhibit both his character and motives. Calm and unimpassioned
argument is thrown away upon him, and is looked upon by the unthinking
masses as a confession of weakness. Few instances, if any, can be
shown where a Catholic polemic writer has treated an honorable {573}
antagonist with discourtesy: and we venture to say that the scathing
criticisms which are to be found in the work before us were richly
merited, and on the whole will be so judged by the dispassionate
reader.

This edition contains upward of one hundred and sixty pages of new
matter, of equal interest with that of the fore-going editions.

We give it our humble and earnest commendation, heartily wishing that
it may be widely circulated and read; confidently assured as we are
that it will do good, and advance the cause of truth.



CHRISTIANITY, Its Influence on Civilization, and its Relation to
Nature's Religion: the "Harmonial" or Universal Philosophy. A Lecture.
By Caleb S. Weeks. New York: W. White & Co. 1866.

What a pity Mr. Caleb S. Weeks was not born earlier! The whole world
has been running for nineteen centuries after the "Nazarene," and his
"religious system," when it might have been running after Mister
Weeks, and his shallow spiritualistic humanitarian philosophy! Who
knows? Reading effusions of this kind, we are reminded of Beppolo's
Fanfarone:

       "What is't that boils within me?
  Is't the throes of nascent genius; or the strength
  Of high immortal thoughts to find vent;
  Or, is it wind?"

------

REPORT OF THE HOLY CHILDHOOD IN
U. S.  ANNALS OF THE HOLY CHILDHOOD, etc. 1866.

We are in receipt of the above in French and in English, together with
various circulars and pictures illustrating and recommending the
extensive and admirable work of charity, called "The Holy Childhood"
It was founded by the Bishop of Nancy in France, the Rt. Rev.
Forbin-Janson: and its object is principally to rescue the abandoned
children of the Chinese, baptize them, and educate them as Christians.
Chinese parents have irresponsible control over the life and death of
their children, and hence the crime of infanticide is very common
amongst them, and that in its most revolting forms, the heartless
parents drowning them, leaving them to die by exposure, and even to be
eaten alive by dogs and swine. The poor will sell their young children
for a paltry sum, apparently without much regret. It was impossible
that Catholic charity should forever pass by unnoticed such a
plague-spot upon humanity. Wherever humanity suffers, she knows how to
inspire devoted souls with an ardent desire for the alleviation of its
misery. Founded only since 1843, the association of the Holy Childhood
has rescued and baptized three millions of these children. The report
for this year gives the number of those under education at
twenty-three thousand four hundred and sixteen. Such a noble work, so
truly Catholic in its spirit, needs no commendation of ours. We are
sure that all Catholic children, who are the ones particularly invited
to be members of it, and to contribute to its support, will vie with
each other in their prayers and offerings for its success. Catholic
charity effects great things with little means. The entire annual
expenditures of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, with
which we hope our readers are well acquainted, did not amount, a few
years since, to more than eight thousand dollars. The Society of the
Holy Childhood asks for a contribution of only one cent a month from
each of its members, and requires each one to say daily a Hail Mary
and an invocation to the child Jesus, to have pity upon all poor pagan
children.

We have been much interested in looking over the number of the annals
sent us, but we are sorry to see certain Religious Orders singled out
by name as not yet having made this enterprise a part of their work.
Those holy and devoted men need no stimulation of this kind to do all
that comes within their sphere for God's greater glory, and the
salvation of mankind: and one does not like one's name called out as a
delinquent by him who solicits, but has not yet obtained our name for
his subscription-list It is, to say the least, injudicious; but we
hope that the well-known zeal and ardent charity of the Directors of
this pious work will be sufficient apology for the incautious remark.

{574}

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.
Compiled and arranged by the Rev. Charles Hole, B.A., Trinity College,
Cambridge; with additions and corrections by William A. Wheeler, M.A.,
assistant editor of Webster's Dictionary, author of "A Dictionary of
Noted Names of Fiction," etc. 12mo, pp. 453. New-York: Hurd &
Houghton. 1866.

We have here a most convenient little volume for reference, and one
that is also pretty accurate and complete. It merely gives the name of
the person, his country, profession, date of birth and death. The
American editor has done his work well, as well as it is possible,
humanly speaking, to compile such a work; but he certainly should have
added the name of Dr. J.V. Huntington to the Appendix, which contains
the names of those omitted by Mr. Hole, He has placed names there that
are not half so well known to men of letters as that of the late
lamented Dr. Huntington. We make special mention of his name, as the
American editor of this useful little book is the author of "A
Dictionary of Noted Names of Fiction," and must have read of the
author of "Alban," "The Forest," "Rosemary," "Pretty Plate," "Blonde
and Brunette," etc., etc. There may be other omissions, but this
author being one of the most prominent of our deceased American
Catholic writers, there can be no good excuse for the exclusion of his
name.



DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY IN NORTH AMERICA.
By the Rev. Xavier Donald Macleod. With a Memoir of the author by the
Most Rev. John B. Purcell, D.D., Archbishop of Cincinnati. 8vo, pp.
467. Virtue & Yorston, New-York.

Few Americans are well acquainted with the religious history of their
own country. It is to be regretted, for in the religious history of
any nation we find a revelation of life no less interesting, and far
more important than the detail of its political fortunes. Indeed, we
believe that history written so as to exclude the mention of religion
and its influence upon the social character, civilization, and the
national peculiarities of a people, would be as incomplete as it would
be unintelligible. Americans are educated to believe that this
country, with the exception of Mexico, has been a Protestant country
from the start; that its religious activity has been purely
Protestant; that Catholicity has been chiefly hitherto a work confined
to the spiritual ministrations of foreign priests to a foreign
immigrant population; and he is surprised to learn that the only
missionary work done on this continent worthy of record on the page of
its history is wholly Catholic. And we venture to affirm that the only
picture of the religion of America, either of its early or its later
days, which will be looked upon by future generations with pleasure
and pride, will be that which the Catholic Church presents in the
apostolic labors of her missionaries, through which the savage Indian
becomes the docile Christian; the rude, uneducated masses, whether
white or black, are guided, instructed, and saved; the truth and grace
of the holy faith is preached in hardship, toil, privation,
persecution, and death. It is true that the book before as treats of
religion in America with only the devotion toward our Blessed Lady as
its particular theme, but it necessarily offers us a view of the
progress of the Catholic religion in every part of the continent. It
is written in a most charming style, replete with graphic
descriptions, and marked throughout by that tone of enthusiastic
loyalty to the faith so characteristic of the gifted and lamented
author. There is no portion of the work we have read with greater
interest than that which concerns the conversion and religious life of
the Indians. There has been no truer type of the Catholic missionary
than is displayed by those devoted priests, who came to this country
burning with the desire to win its savage aborigines to the faith of
Christ. Let us give a little extract:

  "For thirty years now has Father Sebastian Rasle dwelt in the
  forest, teaching to its wild, red children the love of God and Mary.
  He is burned by sun and tanned by wind until he is almost as red as
  his parishioners. The languages of the Abenaki and Huron, the
  Algonquin and Illinois, are more familiar to him than the tongue in
  which his mother taught him the Ave Maria. The huts of Norridgewock
  contain his people; the river Kennebec flows swiftly past his
  dwelling to the sea. There he has built a church--handsome, he
  thinks and says; perhaps it would not much excite our luxurious
  imagination. At any rate, the altar is handsome; and he has gathered
  a store of copes and chasubles, albs and embroidered stoles for the
  dignity of the holy service. He has trained, also, as many as forty
  Indian boys in the ceremonies, and, in their crimson cassocks and
  white surplices, they aid the sacred pomp. Besides the church, there
  are two chapels, one on the road which leads to the forest, {575}
  where the braves are wont to make a short retreat before they start
  to trap and hunt; the other on the path to the cultivated lands,
  where prayers are offered when they go to plant or gather in the
  harvest. The one is dedicated to the guardian angel of the tribe,
  the other to our most holy mother, Mary Immaculate. To adorn this
  latter is the especial emulation of the women. Whatever they have of
  jewels, of silk stuff from the settlements, or delicate embroidery
  of porcupine-quill, or richly tinted moose-hair, is found here; and
  from amidst their offerings rises, white and fair, the statue of the
  Virgin; and her sweet face looks down benignantly upon her swarthy
  children, kneeling before her to recite their rosaries. One
  beautiful inanimate ministrant to God's worship they have in
  abundance--light from wax candles. The wax is not precisely _opus
  apium_, but it is a nearer approach to it than you find in richer
  and less excusable places. It is wax from the berry of the laurels,
  which cover the hills of Maine. And to the chapel every night and
  morning come all the Indian Christians. At morning they make their
  prayer in common, and assist at mass, chanting, in their own
  dialect, hymns written for that purpose by their pastor. Then they
  go to their employment for the day; he to his continuous, orderly,
  and ceaseless labor. The morning is given up to visitors, who come
  to their good father with their sorrows and disquietudes; to ask his
  relief against some little injustice of their fellows; his advice on
  their marriage or other projects. He consoles this one, instructs
  that, reestablishes peace in disunited families, calms troubled
  consciences, administers gentle rebuke, or gives encouragement to
  the timid. The afternoon belongs to the sick, who are visited in
  their own cabins. If there be a council, the black-robe must come to
  invoke the Holy Spirit on their deliberations; if a feast, he must
  be present to bless the viands and to check all approaches to
  disorder. And always in the afternoon, old and young, warrior and
  gray-haired squaw, Christian and catechumen, assemble for the
  catechism. When the sun declines westward, and the shadows creep
  over the village, they seek the chapel for the public prayer, and to
  sing a hymn to St. Mary. Then each to his own home; but before
  bed-time, neighbors gather again, in the house of one of them, and
  in antiphonal choirs they _sing_ their beads, and with another hymn
  they separate for sleep."

The work does not need any commendation at our hands; it will
assuredly become popular wherever it is introduced, whether it be into
the libraries of colleges or literary associations, or into the family
circle.


LIFE AND CAMPAIGNS OF LIEUT.-GENERAL U. S. GRANT,
from his Boyhood to the Surrender of General Lee; including an
accurate account of Sherman's great march from Chattanooga to
Washington, and the final official Reports of Sheridan, Meade,
Sherman, and Grant; with portraits on steel of Stanton, Grant and his
Generals, and other illustrations. By Rev. P.G. Headley, author of
Life of Napoleon, Life of Josephine, etc., etc. 8vo, pp. 720. New
York: Derby & Miller Publishing Co. 1866.

The title of this work is sufficiently ambitious to justify the
expectation that it is really a valuable contribution to our national
historical literature. Such is, however, not the case. The only
valuable portions of the book are the reports of different commanding
generals, which are appended. The style is of the inflated,
mock-heroic order, of which we have had a surfeit, especially since
the commencement of the late war. The descriptions of battles remind
us of a certain class of cheap battle pictures, in which smoke,
artillery horses, and men are arranged and rearranged to suit any
desired emergency. One is left in doubt in reading the account of the
famous charge on the left at Fort Donelson, whether C. F. Smith or
Morgan L. Smith was the officer in command. Morgan L. Smith was a
brave and valuable officer, but the decisive charge in question was
led by C. F. Smith, and was one of the most remarkable and brilliant
military exploits of the war. We cannot pretend to wade through all
the crudities, platitudes, and mistakes of this bulky volume,
manufactured to order, not written. There is one glaring blunder or
intentional perversion, in the desire to please every body, which all
cannot pass over. The relief of Major-General McClernand in front of
Vicksburg is made to appear to be a reluctant act on the part of
General Grant. Mr. Headley represents General Grant as complying with
an urgent military necessity, at the cost of _his friend_. This is all
sheer nonsense. There was and could be no friendship between Grant and
McClernand. One might as well expect fellowship between light and
darkness. There was a military necessity to remove McClernand, for
every day that he commanded a corps imperilled the safety of the whole
army. Sherman and McPherson united in demanding his removal, {576} and
General Grant chose the right moment to relieve him--when he had
demonstrated his incapacity, or worse, to the mind of every soldier on
the field, and ruined forever the false popularity he had acquired as
a politician of the lowest grade. Mr. Headley makes an unsuccessful
effort to glaze over General Wallace's unaccountable delay in coming
up to the field of' Shiloh. In fact, he deals in indiscriminate praise
for an obvious reason, and like all such people is certain to get very
little himself from his critics. The book no doubt sells, and will
probably stimulate a desire to read the authentic histories which will
in due season appear, and of which Wm. Swinton's History of the Army
of the Potomac (not without its faults) is a specimen. We expect a
first-class scientific History of the War. Major-General Schofield is
the man to write it, when the proper time arrives.


POETRY, LYRICAL, NARRATIVE, AND SATIRICAL, OF THE CIVIL WAR.
Selected and edited by Richard Grant White. 12mo, pp. 384. American
News Co.

Mr. White's preface to this volume of selected poetry is the best
criticism which the book could have, and is an exhaustive and elegant
essay. It is a remarkably complete collection of the pieces which have
appeared from time to time in the progress of the war. The value of
such a work is in its completeness less than in the merits of the
compositions selected. We should be glad to see another edition,
containing some which have been overlooked or omitted. The value of
such a collection increases with time, and it will be eagerly sought
for and highly prized when the hateful, painful, and commonplace
features of the struggle have softened into the elements of pleasing
reminiscence and romance, and become the incentives to heroism and
patriotism to unborn children.


A TEXT BOOK ON PHYSIOLOGY.
For the use of Schools and Colleges, being an Abridgement of the
author's larger work on Human Physiology. By John William Draper,
M.D., LL.D., author of A Treatise on Human Physiology, and A History
of the Intellectual Development of Europe, etc. 12mo, pp. 376. Harper
& Brothers, 1866.


A TEXT BOOK ON CHEMISTRY.
For the use of Schools and Colleges. By Henry Draper, M.D., Professor
Adjunct of Chemistry and Natural History in the University of New
York. 12mo, pp. 507. Harper & Brothers. 1866.

The Drapers, father and sons, present the rare example in this
materialistic age and most materialistic city, of a whole family
devoted to literary and scientific pursuits, and working in that
harmony which the sincere and loyal pursuit of science is sure to
produce. Although we have had occasion to differ with Professor Draper
in his philosophical and some of his political deductions, we admire
his intellect and attainments, and in the purely scientific order
consider him entitled to the highest consideration and respect. He is
a close student and an original observer, and we believe him ardently
and faithfully devoted to the ascertainment of exact scientific truth.

His sons are men of great promise, and have already done more in their
short lives in the respective departments of natural science than many
of twice their age.

Catholicity courts scientific investigation and verification in every
department of inquiry, and delights to honor all men who devote their
lives to these self-denying labors. There is, so to speak, a sanctity
of science. Science inevitably tends toward religion, and is the most
powerful safeguard of society and civilization next to religion.

The two manuals whose titles are given above are excellent of their
kind, and we cordially recommend them to our schools and colleges.


BOOKS RECEIVED.

From D. Appleton & Co., New-York. The Annual Cyclopaedia and Register
of Important Events of the Year 1865. 8vo, pp. 850.


From Hurd & Houghton, New-York. Revolution and Reconstruction. Two
Lectures delivered in the Law School of Harvard College, in January,
1865, and January, 1866, by Joel Parker. 8vo, pamphlet, pp. 89.
Shakespeare's Delineations of Insanity, Imbecility, and Suicide. By A.
O. Kellogg, M.D., Assistant Physician State Lunatic Asylum, Utica,
N.Y. 12mo. pp. 204. Pictures of Country Life. By Alice Cary. 18mo, pp.
859.


From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New-York. Parts 18. 19, and 20 of
D'Artaud's Lives of the Popes; and Vol II. of Catholic Anecdotes.



From P. O'Shea, New-York. Nos. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. and 33 of
Darras's History of the Catholic Church.


From A. D. F. Randolph, New-York. The Lady of La Garaye. By the Hon.
Mrs. Norton, 12mo, pp. 115.



From J. J. O'Connor & Co., Newark, N.J. Jesus and Mary. A Catholic
hymn-book. Selected from various sources, and arranged for the use of
the children of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Newark, N.J. 12mo, pp. 76,
paper.

------

{577}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. III., NO. 17.--AUGUST, 1866.



[ORIGINAL.]

PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.


V.

THE REVELATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORDER,
AND ITS RELATION TO THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OF REASON.

Our reason in apprehending the intelligible is advertised at the same
time of the existence of the super-intelligible. It is necessary to
explain here the sense in which this latter term is used. It is
evident that it can be used only in a relative and not in an absolute
sense. That which is absolutely without the domain of the intelligible
is absolutely unintelligible and therefore a non-entity. The
super-intelligible must therefore be something which is intelligible
to God, but above the range either of all created reason, or of human
reason in its present condition. It will suffice for the present to
consider it under the latter category.

Our reason undoubtedly apprehends in its intelligible object the
existence of something which is above the range of human intelligence
in its present state. The intimate nature of material and spiritual
substances is incomprehensible. Much more, the intimate nature or
essence of the infinite divine being. All science begins from and
conducts to the incomprehensible. Any one who wishes to satisfy
himself of this may peruse the first few chapters of Mr. Herbert
Spencer's "Principles of Philosophy." That portion of the first
article of the creed which reason can demonstrate; namely, the being
of God, the Creator of the world, in which is included also the
immortality of the soul, and the principle of moral obligation;
advertises therefore, of an infinite sphere of truth which is above
our comprehension. The natural suggests the supernatural, in which it
has its first and final cause, its origin and ultimate end. The
knowledge of the natural, therefore, gives us a kind of negative
knowledge of the super-natural, by advertising us of its own
incompleteness, and of the want of any principle of self-origination
or metaphysical finality in itself. A system of pure naturalism which
represents the idea of reason under a form which satisfies completely
the intelligence without introducing the supernatural, is impossible.
What is nature, and what do we mean by the natural? Nature is simply
the aggregate of finite entities, and the natural is {578} what may be
predicated of these entities. A system of pure naturalism would
therefore give a complete account of this aggregate of finite
entities, without going beyond the entities themselves, that is,
without transcending the limits of space, time, the finite and the
contingent. Such a system is not only incapable of rational
demonstration, but utterly unthinkable. For, when the mind has gone to
its utmost length in denying or excluding every positive affirmation
of anything except nature, there remains always the abyss of the
unknown from which nature came and to which it tends, even though the
unknown may be declared to be unknowable. Those who deny the
super-intelligible and the supernatural, therefore, are mere sceptics,
and cannot construct a philosophy. Those who affirm a First Cause, in
which second causes and their effects are intelligible, affirm the
supernatural. For the first and absolute Cause cannot be included
under the same generic term with the second causes and finite forces
of nature. The more perfectly and clearly they evolve the full
theistic conception of pure reason, the more distinctly do they affirm
the supernatural, because the idea of God as the infinite,
intelligible object of his own infinite intelligence is
proportionately explicated and apprehended. It is explicated and
apprehended by means of analogies derived from finite objects, but
these analogies suggest that there is an infinite something behind
them which they represent. By these analogies we learn in a measure
the meaning of the affirmation _Ut Deus sit_. We do not learn _Quid
sit Deus_, but still we cannot help asking the question, What is God,
what is his essence? We know that he is the adequate object of his own
intelligence and will, and therefore we cannot help asking the
question what is that object, what does God see and love in himself,
in what does his most pure and infinite act consist, what is his
beatitude? Our reason is advertised of an infinite truth, reality, or
being, which it cannot comprehend, that is, of the super-intelligible.
Those who base their philosophy on pure theism, or a modified
rationalistic Christianity, are therefore entirely mistaken when they
profess to be anti-supernaturalists, and to draw a distinctly marked
line between themselves and the supernaturalists. The distinction is
only between more or less consistent supernaturalists. Those who are
at the remotest point from the Catholic idea, see that those who are a
little nearer have no tenable standing-point, and these see it of
those who are nearer than they are, and so on, until we come to the
Anglicans and the Orientals. But the extremists themselves have no
better standing-point than the intermediaries, and in their theistic
conception have admitted a principle from which they can be driven by
irresistible and invincible logic to the Catholic Church. For the
present, we merely aim to show that they are compelled to admit the
supernatural when they affirm God as the first and final cause of the
world. In affirming this, they affirm that nature has its origin and
final reason in the supernatural, or in an infinite object above
itself, which human reason cannot comprehend. That is, they affirm
super-intelligible and super-natural relations, of man and the
universe. These relations must be regulated and adjusted by some law.
This law is either the simple continuity of the original creative act
which explicates itself through con-creative second causes in time and
space, or it is this, and in addition to this, an immediate act of the
Creator completing his original, creative act by subsequent acts of an
equal or superior order, which concur with the first towards the final
cause of the creation. Whoever takes the first horn of this dilemma is
a pure naturalist in the only sense of the word which is intelligible.
That is, while he is a supernaturalist, in maintaining that nature has
its first and final cause in the supernatural, or in {579} God; he is
a naturalist in maintaining that man has no other tendency to his
final cause except that given in the creative act that is essential to
nature, and no other mode prescribed for returning to his final cause
than the explication of this natural tendency, according to natural
law. Consequently, reason is sufficient, without revelation; the will,
without grace; humanity, without the incarnation; society, or the race
organized under law, without the church. It is precisely in the method
of treating this thesis of naturalism that the divarication takes
place between the great schools of Catholic theology and between the
various systems of philosophy, whether orthodox or heterodox, which
profess to base themselves on the Christian idea, or to ally
themselves with it. It is not easy to find the clue which will lead us
safely through this labyrinth and preserve us from deviating either to
the right hand or to the left, by denying too much on the one hand to
the naturalists, or conceding too much to them on the other.
Nevertheless it is necessary to search for it, or to give up all
effort to discuss the question before us, and to prove from principles
furnished by nature and reason the necessity of accepting a
supernatural revelation.

The true thesis of pure naturalism or rationalism is, that God in
educating the human race for the destiny in view of which he created
it, merely explicates that which is contained in nature by virtue of
the original creative act, without any subsequent interference of the
divine, creative power. He develops nature by natural laws alone, in
one invariable mode. The physical universe evolves by a rigid sequence
the force of all the second causes which it contains. The rational
world is governed by the same law, and so also is the moral and
spiritual world. The intellectual and spiritual education of the human
race develops nothing except natural reason, and the natural,
spiritual capacity of the soul. Reason extends its conquests by a
continual progress in the super-intelligible realm, reducing it to the
intelligible, and eternally approaching to the comprehension of the
infinite and absolute truth. The spiritual capacity advances
constantly in the supernatural realm, reducing it to the natural, and
eternally approaching the infinite and absolute good or being. All
nature, all creation, is on the march, and its momentum is the
impulsive force given it by the creative impact that launched it into
existence and activity.

Planting themselves on this thesis, its advocates profess to have _à
priori_ principle by which they prove the all-sufficiency of nature
for the fulfilment of its own destiny, and reject as an unnecessary or
even inconceivable intrusion, the affirmation of another divine
creative act, giving a new impact to nature, superadding a new force
to natural law, subordinating the physical universe to a higher end,
implanting a superior principle of intelligence and will in the human
soul, and giving to the race a destination above that to which it
tends by its own proper momentum. They refuse to entertain the
question of a supernatural order, or an order which educates the race
according to a law superior to that of the evolution of the mere
forces of nature; and in consequence of this refusal, they logically
refuse to entertain the question of a supernatural revelation
disclosing this order, and of a supernatural religion in which the
doctrines, laws, institutions, forces and instruments of this order
are organized, for the purpose of drawing the human race into itself.
This is the last fortress into which heterodox philosophy has fled.
The open plains are no longer tenable. The only conflict of magnitude
now raging in Christendom is between the champions of the Catholic
faith and the tenants of this stronghold. It is a great advantage for
the cause of truth that it is so. The controversy is simplified, the
issues are clearly marked, the opportunity is favorable for an {580}
unimpeded and decisive collision between the forces of faith and
unbelief, and the triumph of faith will open the way for Christianity
to gain a new and mighty sway over the mind, the heart, and the life
of the civilized world. This stronghold is no more tenable than any of
the others which have been successively occupied and abandoned. Its
tenants have gained only a momentary advantage by retreating to it.
They escape certain of the inconsistencies of other parties and evade
the Catholic arguments levelled against these inconsistencies. But
they can be driven by the irresistible force of reason from their
position, and made to draw the Catholic conclusion from their own
premises.

We do not say this in a boastful spirit, or as vaunting our own
ability to effect a logical demolition of rationalism. Rather, we
desire to express our confidence that the reason of its advocates
themselves will drive them out of it, and that the common judgment of
an age more enlightened than the present will demolish it. It is our
opinion, formed after hearing the language used by a great number of
men of all parties, and reading a still greater number of their
published utterances, that the most enlightened intelligence of this
age in Protestant Christendom has reached two conclusions; the first
is, that the Catholic Church is the true and genuine church of
Christianity; and the second, that it is necessary to have a positive
religion which will embody the same idea that produced Christianity.
The combination and evolution of these two intellectual convictions
promise to result in a return to Catholicism. And there are to be seen
even already in the writings of those who have given up the positive
Christianity of orthodox Protestantism, indications of the workings of
a philosophy which tends to bring them round to the positive
supernatural faith of the Catholic church. It is by these grand,
intellectual currents moving the general mind of an age, that
individual minds are chiefly influenced, more than by the thoughts of
other individual minds. Individual thinkers can scarcely do more than
to detect the subtle element which the common intellectual atmosphere
holds in solution, to interpret to other thinkers their own thoughts,
or give them a direction which will help them to discover for
themselves some truth more integral and universal than they now
possess. Therefore, while confiding in the power of the integral and
universal truth embodied in the Catholic creed to bear down all
opposition and vanquish every philosophy which rises up agamst it, we
do not arrogate the ability to grasp and wield this power, and to
exhibit the Catholic idea in its full evidence as the integrating,
all-embracing form of universal truth. It is proposed in an honorable
and conciliatory spirit to those who love truth and are able to
investigate it for themselves. Many things must necessarily be
affirmed or suggested in a brief, unpretending series of essays, which
admit of and require minute and elaborate proof, such as can only be
given in an extensive work, but merely sketched here after the manner
of an outline engraving which leaves out the filling up belonging to a
finished picture.

To return from this digression. We have begun the task of indicating
how that naturalism or pure rationalism which affirms the theistic
conception logically demonstrable by pure reason, can only integrate
itself and expand itself to a universal Theodicy or doctrine of God,
in a supernatural revelation.

If the opposite theory of pure naturalism were true, it ought to
verify itself in the actual history of the human race, and in the
actual process of its education. The idea of the supernatural ought to
be entirely absent from the consciousness of the race. For, on the
supposition of that theory, it has no place in the human mind--and no
business in the world. If unassisted nature and reason suffice for
{581} themselves they ought to do their work alone, and do it so
thoroughly that there would be no room for any pretended supernatural
revelation to creep in. The history of mankind ought to be a
continuous, regular evolution of reason and nature, like the movements
of the planets; the human race ought to have been conscious of this
law from the beginning, and never to have dreamed of the supernatural,
never to have desired it.

Philosophy ought to have been, from the first, master of the
situation, and to have domineered over the whole domain of thought.

The reverse of this is the fact. The history of the human race, and
the whole world of human thought, is filled with the idea of the
supernatural. The philosophy of naturalism is either a modification
and re-combination of principles learned from revelation, or a protest
against revelation and an attempt to dethrone it from its sway. It has
no pretence of being original and universal, but always pre-supposes
revelation as having prior possession, and dating from time
immemorial. Now human nature and human reason are certainly competent
to fulfil whatever task God has assigned them. They act according to
fixed laws, and tend infallibly to the end for which they were
created. The judgments of human reason and of the human race are valid
in their proper sphere. And therefore the judgment of mankind that its
law of evolution is in the line of the supernatural is a valid
judgment. Revelation has the claim of prescription and of universal
tradition. Naturalism must set aside this claim and establish a
positive claim for itself based on demonstration, before it has any
right even to a hearing. It can do neither. It cannot bring any
conclusive argument against revelation, nor can it establish itself on
any basis of demonstration which does not pre-suppose the instruction
of reason by revelation.

It cannot conclusively object to revelation. The very principle of
law, that is, of the invariable nexus between cause and effect, which
is the ultimate axiom of naturalism, is based on the perpetual
concurrence of the first cause with all secondary causes, that is, the
perpetuity of the creative act by which God perpetually creates the
creature. There is no reason why this creative act should explicate
all its effects at once or merely conserve the existences it has
produced, and not explicate successively in space and time the effects
of its creative energy. The hypothesis that the creative power can
never act directly in nature except at its origin, and must afterwards
merely act through the medium of previously created causes in a direct
line, is the sheerest assumption. Some of the most eminent men in
modern physical science maintain the theory of successive creations.
There may be the same direct intervention of creative power in the
moral and spiritual world. Miracles, revelations, supernatural
interventions for the regeneration and elevation of the human race,
are not improbable on any _à priori_ principle. The artifice by which
the entire tradition of the human race is set aside, and a demand made
to prove the supernatural _de novo_, is unwarrantable and unfair. The
supernatural has the title of prescription, and the burden of proof
lies only upon the particular systems, to show that they are genuine
manifestations of it, and not its counterfeits. The existence of a
reality which may be counterfeited is a fair postulate of reason,
until the contrary is demonstrated, and something positive of a prior
and more universal order is logically established from the first
principles of reason. We are not to be put off with assurances like a
fraudulent debtor's promises of payment, that our doubts and
uncertainties, will be satisfied after two thousand or two hundred
thousand years. Exclude the supernatural, and natural reason will
have, and can have nothing in the future, beyond the universal data
and principles which we have now and have had from the beginning, with
which to solve its problems. The {582} connection between mind and
matter, the origin and destination of the soul, the future life, the
state of other orders of intelligent beings, the condition of other
worlds, will be as abstruse and incapable of satisfactory settlement
then as now. If we are to gain any certain knowledge concerning them,
it must be in a supernatural way. And what conclusive reason is there
for deciding that we may not? Who can prove that some of that infinite
truth which surrounds us may not break through the veil, that some of
the intelligent spirits of other spheres may not be sent to enlighten
and instruct us?  [Footnote 125]

  [Footnote 125: That is, who can prove it from reason alone, without
  the evidence of Revelation itself that it is already completed?]

One of the ablest advocates of naturalism, Mr. William R. Alger, has
admitted that it is possible, and oven maintains that it has already
taken place. In his erudite work on the "History of the Doctrine of a
Future Life," he maintains the opinion that Jesus Christ is a most
perfect and exalted being, who was sent into this world by God to
teach mankind, who wrought miracles and really raised his body to life
in attestation of his doctrine, although he supposes that he laid it
aside again when he left the earth. He distinctly asserts the
infallibility of Christ as a teacher, and of the doctrine which he
actually taught with his own lips. Here is a most distinct and
explicit concession of the principle of supernatural revelation. To
those who heard him he was a supernatural and infallible teacher. In
so far as his doctrine is really apprehended it is for all generations
a supernatural and infallible truth. It has regenerated mankind, and
Mr. Alger believes it is destined, when better understood, to carry
the work of regeneration to a higher point in the future. It is true,
he does not acknowledge that the apostles were infallible in
apprehending and teaching the doctrine of Christ. But he must admit,
that in so far as they have apprehended and perpetuated it, and in so
far as he himself and others of his school now apprehend it more
perfectly than they did, they apprehend supernatural truth and
appropriate a supernatural power. Besides, once admitting that Christ
was an infallible teacher, it is impossible to show why he could not
do what so many philosophers have done, communicate his doctrine in
clear and intelligible terms, so that the substance of it would be
correctly understood and perpetuated. Miss Frances Cobbe, admitted to
be the best expositor of the doctrine of the celebrated Theodore
Parker, in her "Broken Lights," and other similar writers, give to the
doctrine and institutions of Christ a power that is superhuman and
that denotes the action of a superhuman intelligence. Those who
prognosticate a new church, a new religion, a realization of ideal
humanity on earth, cannot integrate their hypothesis in anything
except the supernatural, and must suppose either a new outburst of
supernatural life from the germ which Christ planted on the earth, or
the advent of another superhuman Redeemer.

Dr. Brownson while yet only a transcendental philosopher on his road
to the Church, exhibited this thought with great power and beauty, in
a little book entitled "New Views." The dream of a new redemption of
mankind in the order of temporal perfection and felicity was never
presented with greater argumentative ability or portrayed in more
charming colors, at least in the English language; and never was any
thing made more clear than the necessity of superhuman powers for the
actual fulfilment of this bewitching dream.  [Footnote 126]

  [Footnote 126: That is, bewitching to those who do not believe in
  something for more sublime, the restoration of all things in Christ,
  foretold in the Scriptures.]

Whether we look backward or forward, we confront the idea of the
supernatural. This is enough to prove its reality. There are no
universal pseudo-ideas, deceits, or illusions. That which is universal
is true. We have {583} therefore only to inspect the idea of the
supernatural, to examine and explicate its contents, to interrogate
the universal belief and tradition of mankind, to study the history of
the race, and unfold the wisdom of the ancients, and the result will
be truth. We shall obtain true and just conceptions of the original,
universal, eternal idea, in which all particular forms of science,
belief, law, and human evolution in all directions, coalesce and
integrate themselves as in a complete whole including all the
relations of the universe to God, as First and Final Cause.

We must now go back to the point where we left off, after establishing
as the first principle of all science and faith the pure theistic
doctrine respecting the first and final cause, or the origin and end
of all things in necessary being, that is, God. We have to show the
position of this doctrine in the conception of supernatural
revelation, and its connection with the other doctrines which express
the supernatural relation of the human race and the universe to God.

The conception of the supernatural in its most simple and universal
form, is the conception of somewhat distinct from and superior to the
complete aggregate of created forces or second causes. In this sense,
it is identical with the conception of first and final cause. It may
be proper here to explain the term Final Cause, which is not in common
use among English writers. It expresses the ultimate motive or reason
for which the universe was created, the end to which all things are
tending. When we say that God is necessarily the final cause, as well
as the first cause, of all existing things, we mean that he could have
had no motive or end in creating, extrinsic to his own being. All that
proceeds from him as first cause must return to him as final cause.
From this it appears that the conception of nature in any theistic
system implies the supernatural; because it implies a cause and end
for nature above itself. The supernatural can only be denied by the
atheist, who maintains that there is nothing superior to what the
Theist calls second causes, or by the Pantheist, who either identifies
God with nature, or nature with God. A Theist cannot form any
conception of pure nature or a purely natural order, except as
included in a supernatural plan; because his natural order originates
in a cause and tends toward an end above and beyond itself, and is not
therefore its own adequate reason. As we have already seen, reason, by
virtue of its original intuition of the infinite, is advertised of
something infinitely beyond all finite comprehension. By apprehending
its own limitation, and the finite, relative, contingent existence of
all things which are, it is advertised of an infinite unknown, and
thus has a negative knowledge of the supernatural. By the light of the
creative act in itself and in the universe, it apprehends the being of
God as reflected in his works and made intelligible by the similitude
of created existences to the Creator. It apprehends that there is an
infinite being, whose created similitude is in itself and all things;
a primal uncreated light, the cause of the reflected light in which
nature is intelligible. Therefore it apprehends the supernatural. But
it does not directly and immediately perceive what this infinite being
or uncreated light is, and cannot do so. That is, by explicating its
own primitive idea, and bringing it more and clearly into the
reflective consciousness, and by learning more and more of the
universe of created existences, it may go on indefinitely,
apprehending God by the reflected light of similitudes, "_per
speculum, in aenigmate;_" but it must progress always in the same
line: it has no tendency toward an immediate vision of God as he is
intelligible in his own essence and by uncreated light. Therefore, it
has only a negative and not a positive apprehension of the
supernatural. God dwells in a light inaccessible to created {584}
intelligence, as such. There is an infinite abyss between him and all
finite reason, which cannot be crossed by any movement of reason,
however accelerated or prolonged. Therefore, although there is no
science or philosophy possible which does not proceed from the
affirmation of the supernatural, that is, of the infinite first and
final cause of nature, yet it is not properly called supernatural
science so long as it is confined to the limits of that knowledge of
causes above nature which is gained only through nature. Its domain is
restricted to that intelligibility which God has given to second
causes and created existences, and which only reflects himself
indirectly. Therefore, theologians usually call it natural knowledge,
and in its highest form natural theology, as being limited within the
bounds above described. They call that the natural order in which the
mind is limited to the explication of that capacity of apprehending
God, or of that intuitive idea of God, which constitutes it rational,
and is therefore limited to a relation to God corresponding to the
mode of apprehending him. The term supernatural is restricted to an
order in which God reveals to the human mind the possibility of
apprehending him by the uncreated light in which he is intelligible to
himself, and coming into a relation to him corresponding therewith;
giving at the same time an elevation to the power of intelligence and
volition which enables it to realize that possibility. This elevation
includes the disclosure of truths not discoverable otherwise, as well
as the faculty of apprehending them in such a vivid manner that they
can have an efficacious action on the will, and give it a supernatural
direction.

In this sense, rationalists have no conception of the supernatural.
None have it, except Catholics, or those who have retained it from
Catholic tradition. When we ascribe to rationalists a recognition of
the supernatural, we merely intend to say that they recognize in part
that immediate interference of God to instruct mankind and lead it to
its destiny which is really and ultimately, although not in their
apprehension, directed to the elevation of man to a sphere above that
which is naturally possible. Therefore they cannot object to
revelation on the ground of its being an interference with the course
of nature or not in harmony with it, and cannot make an _à priori_
principle by virtue of which they can prejudge and condemn the
contents of revelation. But we do not mean to say that they possess
the conception of that which constitutes the supernaturalness of the
revelation, in the scientific sense of the term as used by Catholic
theologians. Even orthodox Protestants possess it very confusedly. And
here lies the source of most of the misconceptions of several abstruse
Catholic dogmas.

It is in the restricted sense that we shall use the term supernatural
hereafter, unless we make it plain that we use it in the general
signification.

We are now prepared to state in a few words the relation of the
conception of God which is intelligible to reason, to the revealed
truths concerning his interior relations which are received by faith
on the authority of his divine veracity. How does the mind pass
through the knowledge of God to belief in God; through "_Cognosco
Deum_" to "_Credo in Deum_"?  [Footnote 127]

  [Footnote 127: "I know God." "I believe in God."]

We have already said that "_Cognosco_" is included in "_Credo_." The
creed begins by setting before the mind that which is self-evident and
demonstrable concerning God, in which is included his veracity. It
then discloses certain truths concerning God which are not
self-evident or demonstrable from their own intrinsic reason, but
which are proposed as credible, on the authority of God. The word
"_Credo_" expresses this. "I believe in God," means not merely, "I
affirm the being of God," but also, "I believe certain truths
regarding God (whose being is made known to me by the light of reason)
on the authority of his Word." {585} These truths must have in them a
certain obscurity impervious to the intellectual vision; otherwise,
they would take their place among evident and known truths, and would
no longer be believed on the simple motive of the veracity of God
revealing them. That is, they are mysteries, intelligible so far as to
enable the mind to apprehend what are the propositions to which it is
required to assent, but super-intelligible as to their intrinsic
reason and ground in the necessary and eternal truth, or the being of
God.

In the Creed these mysteries, foreshadowed by the word "Credo," and by
the word "Deum," considered in its relation to "Credo," which
indicates a revelation of mysterious truths concerning the Divine
Being to follow in order after the affirmation of the being and unity
of God; begin to be formally expressed by the word "Patrem." In this
word there is implicitly contained the interior, personal relation of
the Father to the Son and Holy Ghost in the blessed Trinity, and his
exterior relation to man as the author of the supernatural order of
grace, or the order in which man is affiliated to him in the Son,
through the operation of the Holy Spirit. These relations of the three
persons of the blessed Trinity to each other, and to man, include the
entire substance of that which is strictly and properly the
supernatural revelation of the Creed, and the direct object of faith.
Before proceeding, however, to the consideration of the mysteries of
faith in their order, it is necessary to inquire more closely into the
process by which the intellect is brought to face its supernatural
object, and made capable of eliciting an act of faith.

The chief difficulty in the case is to find the connection between the
last act of reason and the first act of faith, the medium of transit
from the natural to the supernatural. The Catholic doctrine teaches
that the act of faith is above the natural power of the human mind. It
is strictly supernatural, and possible only by the aid of supernatural
grace. Yet it is a rational act, for the virtue of faith is seated in
the intellect as its subject, according to the teaching of St. Thomas.
It is justifiable and explicable on rational grounds, and even
required by right reason. The truths of revelation are not only
objectively certain, but the intellect has a subjective certitude of
them which is absolute, and excludes all suspicion or fear of the
contrary. Now, then, unless we adopt the hypothesis that we have lost
our natural capacity for discerning divine truth, by the fall, and are
merely restored by divine grace to the natural use of reason, there
are several very perplexing questions on this point which press for an
answer. Rejecting this hypothesis of the total corruption of reason,
which will hereafter be proved to be false and absurd, how can faith
give the mind absolute certitude of the truth of its object, when that
truth is neither self-evident nor demonstrable to reason from its own
self-evident principles? Given, that the intellect has this certitude,
how is it that we cannot attain to it by the natural operation of
reason? Once more, what is the evidence of the fact of revelation to
ordinary minds? Is it a demonstration founded on the arguments for
credibility? If so, how are they capable of comprehending them, and
what are they to do before they have gone through with the process of
examination? If not, how have they a rational and certain ground for
the judgment that God has really revealed the truths of Christianity?
Suppose now the fact of revelation established, and that the mind
apprehends that God requires its assent to certain truths on the
virtue of his own veracity. The veracity of God being apprehended as
one logical premiss, and the revelation of certain truths as another,
can reason draw the certain conclusion that the truth of these
propositions is necessarily contained in the veracity of God or not?
If it can, why is not the mind capable of giving them the firm,
unwavering {586} assent of faith by its own  natural power, without
the aid of grace? If not, how is it that the assent of the intellect
to the truth of revealed propositions does not always necessarily
contain in it a metaphysical doubt or a judgment that the contrary is
more or less probable, or at least possible? If it is said that the
will, inclined by the grace of God, determines to adhere positively to
the proposed revelation as true, what is meant by this? Does the will
merely determine to act practically as if these proposed truths were
evident, in spite of the lesser probability of the contrary? Then the
assent of the intellect is merely a judgment that revelation is
probably true, and that it is safest to follow it, which does not
satisfy the demand of faith. For faith excludes all fear or suspicion
that the articles of faith may possibly be false. Does the will force
the intellect to judge that those propositions are certain which it
apprehends only as probable? How is this possible? The will is a blind
faculty, which is directed by the intellect, "Nil volitum nisi prius
cognitum."   [Footnote 128] There is no act of will without a previous
act of knowledge. The will can not lawfully determine the intellect to
give any stronger assent to a proposition than the evidence warrants.
[Footnote 129] In a word, it is difficult to show how the intellect
has an absolute certitude of the object of faith, without representing
the object of faith as coincident with the object of knowledge, or the
intuitive idea of reason, and thus naturally apprehensible. It is also
difficult to show that faith is not coincident with knowledge, and
thus to bring out the conception of its supernaturalness, without
destroying the connection between faith and reason, subverting its
rational basis, and representing the grace of faith as either
restoring a destroyed faculty or adding a new one to the soul, whose
object is completely invisible and unintelligible to the human
understanding before it is elevated to the supernatural state. The
difficulty lies, however, merely in a defective statement, or a
defective apprehension of the statement of the Catholic doctrine, and
not in the doctrine itself. In order to make this plain, it will be
necessary to make one or two preliminary remarks concerning certitude
and probability.

  [Footnote 128: Nothing is willed unless previously known.]

  [Footnote 129: This is the statement of an objection, not a
  proposition affirmed by the author.]

There is first, a metaphysical certitude excluding all possibility to
the contrary. Such is the certitude of mathematical truths. Such also
is the certitude of self-evident and demonstrable truths of every
kind. The sphere of this kind of certitude is diminished or extended
accordingly as the mind has before it a greater or lesser number of
truths of this order. Some of these truths present themselves to every
mind so immediately and irresistibly that it cannot help regarding
them just as they are, and thus seeing their truth. For instance, that
two and two make four. Others require the mind to be in a certain
state of aptitude for seeing them as they are, and to make an effort
to bring them before it. There are some truths self-evident or
demonstrably certain to some minds which are not so to others; yet
these truths have all an intrinsic, metaphysical certitude which
reason as such is capable of apprehending, and the failure of reason
to apprehend them is due in individual cases merely to the defective
operation of reason in the particular subject. The operation of reason
can never be altogether deficient while it acts at all, for it acts
only while contemplating its object or primitive idea. But its
operation can be partially defective, inasmuch as the primitive idea
or objective truth may be imperfectly brought into the reflective
consciousness. And thus the intellect in individuals may fail to
apprehend truths which can be demonstrated with metaphysical
certitude, and which the intellect infallibly judges to be absolutely
certain in {587} those individuals who are capable of making a right
judgment. In this operation of apprehending metaphysical truths there
is no criterion taken from experience, or from the concurrent assent
of all men, but the truth shines with its own intrinsic light, and
reason judges by its inherent infallibility.

Next to metaphysical certitude comes moral demonstration, resulting
from an accumulation of probabilities so great that no probability
which can prudently be allowed any weight is left to the other side,
but merely a metaphysical possibility. For instance, the Copernican
theory.

Then comes moral certainty in a wider sense; where there is probable
evidence on one side without any prudent reason to the contrary, but
not such a complete knowledge of all the facts as to warrant the
positive judgment that there is really no probability on the other
side. This kind of certainty warrants a prudent, positive judgment,
and furnishes a safe practical motive for action; but it varies
indefinitely according as the data on which the judgment is based are
more or less complete, and the importance of the case is greater or
less.

Then come the grades of probability, where there are reasons balancing
each other on both sides, which the mind must weigh and estimate.

To apply these principles to the question in hand.

First, we affirm that the being and attributes of God are apprehended
with a metaphysical certitude. Second, that the motives of credibility
proving the Christian revelation are apprehended, when that Revelation
is sufficiently proposed, with a varying degree of probability,
according to varying circumstances in which the mind may be placed,
but capable of being increased to the highest kind of moral
demonstration. Third, that the logical conclusion which reason can
draw from these two premises, although hypothetically necessary and a
perfect demonstration--that is, a necessary deduction from the
veracity of God, on the supposition that he has really made the
revelation--is really not above the order of probability, on account
of the second premiss. It is not above the order of probability,
although, as we have already argued, it is capable of being brought to
a moral demonstration by such an accumulation of proofs within that
order, that reason is bound to judge that the opposite is altogether
destitute of probability.

From this it appears, both how far reason with its own principles can
go in denying, and how far it can go in assenting to revealed truth.
We see, first, how it is, that the truth of revelation does not compel
the assent of all minds by an overwhelming and irresistible evidence.
The first premiss, which affirms the being of God, although undeniable
and indubitable in its ultimate idea, may be in its distinct
conception, so far denied or doubted by those whose reason is
perverted by their own fault, or their misfortune, as to destroy all
basis for a revelation. The second premiss, much more, may be
partially or completely swept away, by plausible explanations of its
component probabilities in detail. And thus, revelation may be denied.
The influence of the will on the judgment which is made by the mind on
the revealed truth is explicable in this relation, and must be taken
into the account. It is certain that the moral dispositions by which
voluntary acts are biased, bias also the judgment. The
self-determining power of the will which decides positively which of
its different inclinations to follow, controls the judgment as well as
the volition. This is an indirect control, which is exerted, not by
imperiously commanding the judgment in a capricious manner to make a
blind, irrational decision, but by turning it toward the consideration
of that side toward which the volition or choice is inclined. This
influence and control of volition over judgment increases as we
descend in the order of truth from primary and self-evident
principles, and diminishes as we {588} approach to them. In the case
of truth which is morally or metaphysically demonstrable, its control
is exerted by turning the intellect partially away from the
consideration of the truth and hindering it from giving it that
attention which is necessary, in order to its apprehension. In the
case of divine revelation, various passions, prejudices, interests, or
at least intellectual impediments to a right operation of reason, act
powerfully upon a multitude of minds in such a way, that the mirror of
the soul is too much obscured to receive the image of truth.

But, supposing that reason and will both operate with all the
rectitude possible to them, without supernatural grace; how far can
the mind proceed in assenting to divine revelation? As far as a moral
demonstration can take it. It can assent to divine truth, and act upon
it, so far as this truth is adapted to the perfecting of the intellect
and will in the natural order. But it lacks capacity to apprehend the
supernatural verities proposed to it, as these are related to its
supernatural destiny.

The revelation contains an unknown quantity. The will cannot be moved
toward an object which the intellect does not apprehend. Therefore, a
supernatural grace must enlighten the intellect and elevate the will,
in order that the revealed truth may come in contact with the soul.
This supernatural grace gives a certain con-naturality to the soul
with the revealed object of faith, by virtue of which it apprehends
that God speaks to it in a whisper, distinct from his whisper to
reason, and catches the meaning of what he says in this whisper. It is
this supernatural light, illuminating the probable evidence
apprehended by the natural understanding, which makes the assent in
the act of faith absolute, and gives the mind absolute certitude. It
is, however, the certitude of God revealing, and not the certitude of
science concerning the intrinsic reason of that which he reveals. This
remains always inevident and obscure in itself, and the decisive
motive of assent is always the veracity of God. It is not, however,
altogether inevident and obscure, for if it were, the terms in which
it is conveyed would be unintelligible. It is so far inevident, that
the intellect cannot apprehend its certainty, aside from the
declaration of God. But it is partially and obscurely evident, by its
analogy with the known truth of the rational order. It is so far
evident that it can be demonstrated from rational principles that it
does not contradict the truths of reason. Further, that no other
hypothesis can explain and account for that which is known concerning
the universe. And, finally, that so far as the analogy between the
natural and the supernatural is apprehensible, there is a positive
harmony and agreement between them. This is all that we intend to
affirm, when we speak of demonstrating Christianity from the same
principles from which scientific truths are demonstrated.

Let us now revert once more to Jesus Christ and the pagan philosopher.
The pagan first perceives strong, probable reasons, which increase by
degrees to a moral demonstration, for believing that Christ is the Son
of God, and his doctrine the revelation of God. The supernatural grace
which Christ imparts to him, enables him to apprehend this with a
permanent and infallible certitude as a fixed principle both of
judgment and volition. He accepts as absolutely true all the mysteries
which Christ teaches him, on the faith of his divine mission and the
divine veracity. We may now suppose that Christ goes on to instruct
him in the harmony of these divine verities with all scientific
truths, so far, that he apprehends all the analogies which human
reason is capable of discerning between the two. He will then have
attained the _ultimatum_ possible for human reason elevated and
enlightened by faith, in this present state. Science and faith will be
coincident in his mind, as far as they can be. That is, faith will be
coincident {589} with science until it rises above its sphere of
vision, and will then lose itself in an indirect and obscure
apprehension of the mysteries, in the veracity of God.

In the case of the child brought up in the Catholic Church, the
Church, which is the medium of Christ, instructs the child through its
various agents. The child's reason apprehends, through the same
probable evidence by which it learns other facts and truths, that the
truth presented to him comes through the church, and through Christ,
from God, who is immediately apprehended in his primitive idea. The
light of faith which precedes in him the development of reason,
illuminates his mind from the beginning to apprehend with infallible
certitude that divine truth which is proposed to him through the
medium of probable evidence. This faith is a fixed principle of
conscience, proceeding from an illuminated intellect, inclining him to
submit his mind unreservedly to the instruction of the Catholic Church
on the faith of the divine veracity. It rests there unwaveringly,
without ever admitting a doubt to the contrary or postponing a certain
judgment until the evidence of revelation and the proofs of the divine
commission of the church have been critically examined. It may rest
there during life, and does so, with the greater number, to a greater
or lesser degree; or, it may afterward proceed to investigate to the
utmost limits the _rationale_ of the divine revelation, not in order
to establish faith on a surer basis, but in order to apprehend more
distinctly what it believes, and to advance in theological science.

Some one may say: "You admit that it is impossible to attain to a
perfect certitude of supernatural truth without supernatural light;
why, then, do you attempt to convince unbelievers that the Catholic
doctrine is the absolute truth by rational arguments?" To this we
reply, that we do not endeavor to lead them to faith, by mere
argument; but to the "preamble of faith." We aim at removing
difficulties and impediments which hinder those from attending to the
rational evidence of the faith; at removing its apparent
incredibility. We rely on the grace of the Holy Spirit alone to make
the effort successful, and to lead those who are worthy of grace
beyond the preamble of faith to faith itself. This grace is in every
human mind to which faith is proposed, in its initial stage; it is
increased in proportion to the sincerity with which truth is sought
for; and is given in fulness to all who do not voluntarily turn their
minds away from it. If we did not believe this, we would lay down our
pen at once.  [Footnote 130]

  [Footnote 130: The doctrine taught by Cardinal de Lugo and Dr.
  Newman, in regard to which some dissent was expressed in a former
  number, seems to the author, on mature reflection, to be, after all,
  identical with the one here maintained.]

------

{590}


From Once A Week.

A DAY AT ABBEVILLE.

BY BESSIE RAYNOR PARKES.


Twenty years ago, we posted into Abbeville by night, and were
deposited in an old-fashioned inn, with a large walled garden. In the
morning we posted further on across country to Rouen. Since then, many
a lime has the Chemin de Fer du Nord borne us flying past the ancient
city oft visited by English kings and English men-at-arms; not,
perhaps, deigning to stop to take in water; for Abbeville, once upon
the highway of nations, now lies just, as it were, a shade to one
side; just a shade--the distance between the station and the ramparts.
Yet this is enough to cause the _maître d'hôtel_ to shake his head and
say in a melancholy accent, "_Abbeville est presque détruite._"

On asking for the Hôtel de l'Europe, I was told that the Hôtel Tête de
Boeuf was "all the same." Which, however, was far from being the case,
as neither the building nor the master was what we had known twenty
years ago. _Query_ as to the degree of affinity required by the French
intellect to produce the degree of identity? In fact, the Hôtel de
l'Europe no longer existed. The house was possessed by a body of
religious, the sisters of St. Joseph, and their large school for young
ladies. The Tête de Boeuf had been a small château; two still
picturesque brick turrets bearing witness of its ancient state.

In the morning I walked over almost the length and breadth of
Abbeville, surprised to find it so large and, apparently, flourishing;
and yet, in spite of tall chimneys upon the circumference, full of the
quaintest old houses in the centre. Some of them have richly carved
beams running along the edge of the overhanging stories. Such may
still be seen in a few English towns; I remember them at Booking, in
Essex. The glory of the place is its great church, or rather the nave,
for this is all that ever got completed of the original design of the
time of Louis XII., the king who married our Princess Mary, sister of
Henry VIII. The choir has been patched on, and is about half the
height of the nave. The latter is a glorious upshoot of traceried
stone, with two towers; perhaps all the more impressive from having
been thus arrested in the very act of creation. It is like a forest
tree which has only attained half its development; and one feels as if
it ought to go on growing, pushing out fresh buttresses and arches,
till its fair proportions stood complete. There is an excellent stone
staircase up one of the towers, and from the top a wide view of the
town and the fields of Picardy, even to the sharp cliff marking where
the sea-line must be. The windings of the Somme may be traced for many
miles. I was told that the tide used to swell almost up to the town,
and that several little streams, once falling into the river, were
dried up. Even now, as there are several branches, one is here and
there reminded of Bruges, by the little old-fashioned bridges,
crossing a canal in the middle of a street. A broad girdle of water
seemed to me to surround great part of the town; but I could obtain no
map and no guide-book, though I anxiously inquired at the best shop.
Only a history of Abbeville was dug out of the museum at the Hôtel de
Ville, which building had a strong but plain tower reported of the
eleventh century. {591} The Abbevillois care little apparently for
their antiquities, though they are many and curious.

This ground, though somewhat bare and barren in appearance, has been
thickly occupied by humanity from the earliest ages of history. Keltic
barrows have been found here in abundance, and though many of them
have been destroyed in the interests of agriculture, enough remain to
delight the antiquary by their flint hatchets and arrows, their urns,
and their burnt bones. One such barrow, near Noyelles-sur-Mer, when
opened, was found to contain a large number of human heads, disposed
in a sort of cone. In 1787, one was opened at Crécy, and in it were
found two sarcophagi of burnt clay, in each of which was an entire
skeleton. Each had been buried in its clothes, and one bore on its
finger a copper ring; its dress being fastened likewise by a brooch or
hook of the same metal. Endless indeed is the list of primitive
instruments in flint, in copper, in iron, in bronze, found hereabouts;
likewise vases full of burnt bones, not only of our own race, but of
various animals--mice, water-rats, and "such small deer;" and in the
near neighborhood, of boars, oxen, and sheep. Succeeding to these wild
people and wild animals came the Romans. Before they pounced down upon
us, before they crossed over to Porta Lymanis, and drew those straight
lines of causeway over England which make the Roman Itinerary look
something like Bradshaw's railway map, (only straighter,) they settled
themselves firmly in the north of France; notably, they staid so long
near St. Valery, (at the mouth of the river which runs through
Abbeville,) that they buried there their dead in great numbers,
whereof the place of sepulchre is at this day yet to be seen. Their
own nice neat road also had they, cutting clean through the Graulic
forests. It came from Lyons to Boulogne, passing through Amiens and
Abbeville, and was in continuation of one which led from Rome into
Gaul! And wherever this people of conquerors travelled, thither they
carried their religious ceremonies and their domestic arts, so that we
find still all sorts of medals, vases of red, grey, or black clay,
little statuettes, _ex votos_, and sometimes larger groups of
sculpture, such as one in bronze representing the combat of Hercules
and Antaeus. Carthaginian medals have also been turned up here,
brought from the far shores of the Mediterranean; and those of
Claudius, Trajan, Caracalla, and Constantine. This long catalogue is
useless, save to mark the rich floods of human life which have
successively visited the banks of the Somme.

In the first year of the fifth century the barbarians made their way
up to the Somme, fighting the Romans inch by inch. Attila burst upon
this neighborhood, and fixed his claws therein; the tide of Rome rolls
back upon the south, and new dynasties begin, and with them comes in
Christianity; not, however, without much difficulty. The faith appears
to have gradually spread from Amiens, where St. Finius preached as
early as 301; but even 179 years later, St. Germain, the Scotchman,
was martyred, and St. Honoré, the eighth bishop of Amiens, labored
daily, for thirty-six years, in conjunction with Irish missionaries,
to infuse Christianity into the minds of people equally indisposed,
whether by Frankish paganism or Roman culture, to accept the doctrines
of the Cross. Indeed, the learned historian of this part of the
country, M. Louandre, believes that even Rome itself had never been
able to destroy the old Keltic religion. He says that, as late as the
seventh century, the antique trees, woods, and fountains were still
honored by public adoration in this part of France; and St. Rignier
hung up relics to the trees to purify them, just as in Rome itself the
old pagan temples were exorcised. And after a time the old gods of all
sorts were known either as idols or demons; no particular distinctions
being drawn among them; they lie as _débris_ beneath the religious
soil of this part of Picardy, just as the bones of those who adored
them are confounded in one common dust.

{592}

Late in the seventh century appears St. Rignier, a great saint in
these parts. He was converted and baptized by the Irish missionaries,
and thereupon became a most austere Christian indeed; only, says his
legend, eating twice a week--Sundays and Thursdays. King Dagobert
invited the saint to a repast, which the holy man accepted, and
preached the Gospel the whole time they sat at table--a day and a
night!

We must now take a great leap to the days of Charlemagne, because in
his days the Abbey of St. Rignier, near to Abbeville, was very famous
indeed, both as monastery and school, and contained a noble library of
256 volumes; the greater part whereof were Christian, but certain
others were pagan classics; let us, for instance, be grateful for the
Eclogues of Virgil and the Rhetoric of Cicero. Of this library but one
volume remains; I have seen it, and with astonishment. It is a copy of
the Gospels, written in letters of gold upon purple parchment. It was
given by Charlemagne to the Count-Abbot, Saint Augilbert. This one
precious fragment of the great library is in the museum of Abbeville.
The school was, indeed, an ecclesiastical Eton and Oxford. The sons of
kings, dukes, and counts came here to learn the "letters," of which
Charlemagne made such great account.

Now the town of Abbeville first gets historic mention in the century
succeeding Charlemagne. It is called Abbatis Villa, and belonged to
this great monastery of St. Rignier; wherefore I have introduced both
the good saint and his foundation. It grew, as almost all the towns of
the middle ages did grow, from a religious root--a tap-root, striking
deep in the soil. Of course, having thus begun to grow, its history
has made interesting chapters a great deal too long to be copied or
even noted here; it will not be amiss, however, to look for its points
of occasional contact with England. Firstly, then, it was from St.
Valery, the seaport of the Somme, that William the Conqueror set out
for England. Then, in 1259, our Henry III. met St. Louis at Abbeville,
and Henry did homage for his French possessions. Then, in 1272, our
great King Edward I. married Eleanor, heiress of Ponthieu--she who
sucked the poison from her husband's wound; and the burgesses of
Abbeville, misliking the transfer, quarreled violently with the king's
bailiff, and killed some of the underlings. Eleanor's son, Edward II.,
married Isabel, the

  "She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs.
  That tearest the bowels of thy mangled mate."

This unamiable specimen of her sex lived at Abbeville in 1312; but
during her reign and residence, and that of her son Edward III., the
inhabitants of Abbeville ceased not to kick indignantly. The King of
France, her brother, struck into the contest "_pour comforter la main
de Madame d'Angleterre_." The legal documents arising from these
quarrels partially remain to us. So they go on, quarreling and
sometimes fighting, until the great day of Crécy, when Edward III.,
the late king's nephew, tried to get the throne. The oft-told tale we
need not tell again. In 1393, France being in worse extremities, we
find Charles VI. at Abbeville, and Froissart there at the same time.
Perhaps, in respect of battles and quarrels, those few notices are
sufficient; I only wished to indicate that Abbeville was on the
borderland between the English and the French, and came in for an
ample share of fighting. Two royal ceremonials enlivened it in the
course of centuries, whereof particular mention is made in the
history. Louis XII. here met and married Mary of England, in 1514:
"_La Reine Blanche_," as she was afterward called, from her white
widow's weeds. In the Hôtel de Cluny at Paris is still shown the
apartments she occupied. Louis was old, and Mary young, when they
married; but the French historian recounts her exceeding complaisance
and politeness to the king, and his great delight therein.

{593}

In 1657, young Louis XIV. came here with his mother, and lodged at the
Hôtel d'Oignon. Monsieur D'Oignon, the noble owner, had everything in
such beautiful and ceremonious order for their reception, that he
became a proverb at Abbeville--"As complete and well arranged as M.
d'Oignon." A sort of _rich_ Richard.

The antiquarian who goes to Abbeville and dips into the history (by M.
Louandre) at the Museum, will find plenty of interesting matter about
the manners and customs of the Abbevillois, rendered all the more
striking by so many of the old houses being yet just where they were,
and as they were. But few impressions of the book seem to have been
printed off, for it is no longer sold, though the obliging librarian
did say he knew where a few copies remained at a high price. This for
the benefit of any long-pursed antiquary, curious in local histories.
It is such a book as can only be written by a devoted son of the soil
digging away on the spot.

In the Revolution, Abbeville fortunately escaped any great horrors;
but the trials of the middle ages afford plenty; especially one of a
certain student, condemned for sacrilege. Now, it is a peaceful,
well-governed town, busy in making iron pots and cans, and other
wrought articles from raw materials brought by the railway. It proves
to be only in respect of the hotel interest that _Abbeville est
presque détruite_.


------


Translated from the French

"GOD BLESS YOU!"

BY JEROME DUMOULIN.


"Thank you, master Jerome!" my reader replies; "yes, to be sure, may
God bless me! But I have not sneezed, that I know of, for a quarter of
an hour, at least; and _apropos de quoi_ do you say that? or rather,
why and wherefore do they always say so to people who sneeze? I
suspect that you want to talk about it, and, in fact, I should not be
displeased to hear you discuss for a little while this odd custom; so
begin, master Jerome."

Very well, dear reader, such is my idea, and I think you will not find
uninteresting the little history of it which I intend to give; and I
assure you beforehand, that if I fail to convince you, you must be
very difficult.

Settle it first in your mind, that in whatever you may have heard
heretofore upon this subject, there was not one word of truth. Among
the most probable histories of this kind is that of a pestilence,
which in the time of Pope Saint Gregory, ravaged Italy, the peculiar
characteristic of which was to cause the sick person to die suddenly
by sneezing. When the patient sneezed, which was for him, the passage
from life to death, the assistants gave him this fraternal
benediction, saying to him, "God bless you!" which was the equivalent
or translation of _Requiescat in pace_. This account, I repeat, would
be much more acceptable, if it were not contradicted by a positive
fact, namely, that the use of the expression is many centuries
anterior to Pope Saint Gregory; anterior even to the Christian era,
and borrowed, of course, from the pagans, as I am about to prove from
authentic testimony.

{594}

But in the first place, let us remark that in the highest antiquity
sneezing was a circumstance in regard to which they drew auguries,
especially if a person sneezed many times consecutively. Xenophon
relates that one of his corporals having sneezed, he drew from it a
good augury by a process of reasoning which I did not quite
understand, but which his troops, apparently, found sufficiently
conclusive. Going back again some eight centuries, we find in the
"Odyssey" an adventure of the same kind, but more droll. In the
eighteenth book of this poem, the divine Homer relates that one day
Telemachus began to sneeze in such a manner as to shake the whole
house. That put madam Penelope in good humor, who calling her faithful
Eumacus the swineherd: "Do you hear, old fellow," she said; "he is
well cared for! and what an augury of happiness the gods have given
us. Jupiter has spoken by the nose of my dear Telemachus, and he
announces to us that we are about to be freed from these scamps of
gallants who bore me with their pursuits, and who beside put to sack
our poor civil list; for every hour our cattle, goats, and little
pigs, which you love like so many children, are sacrificed to the
voracity of these rascals. Now, my good fellow, I have an idea: go you
to the door of the palace, where for some days I have seen that beggar
that you know. Take him from me these pantaloons and this shirt, which
I am sure he needs very much; and promise him beside a magnificent
frock-coat, which he will have only if he shall answer in a
satisfactory manner the questions which I shall propose." In fact the
good queen suspected that the ragged peasant might be the wise Ulysses
in disguise. But let us proceed with our subject.

In the second chapter of his twenty-eighth book, the elder Pliny
expresses himself thus: _Cur sternumentis salutamus? Quod etiam
Tiberium Caesarem in vehiculo exegisse tradunt, et aliqui nomine
quoque consalutare religiosius putant._ Thus the custom was already
established among the Romans of wishing health and good fortune to
persons who sneezed, and the last word but one of the phrase indicates
that this wish had a religious character. In many authors health is
wished to persons who sneeze; _salvere jubentur_, is the consecrated
expression, which corresponds to "God guard you;" and according to the
passage cited above, it appears that when Tiberius, driving in his
chariot, sneezed, then, and only then, the populace were obliged to
cry. _Long live the emperor!_ a formula which included the impetration
of life and health by the protection of the gods. This custom existed
then at the time of Pliny, and going back still further among the
Romans, let us see what we find. Here then is a story extracted from
the "Veterum Auctorum Fragmenta,"' and inserted by Father Strada in
his "Prolusiones Academicae." I give a free translation, it is true,
but I will guarantee the perfect exactitude of the substance, and of
the formulas.

One day when Cicero was present at a performance at the Roman opera,
the illustrious orator began to sneeze loudly. Immediately all rose,
senators and plebeians, and each one taking off his hat, they cried to
him from all parts of the house: "God bless you! _Omnes
assurrexere--salvere jubentes_." Upon which three young men, named
severally Fannius, Fabalus, and Lemniscus, leaning upon their elbows
in one of the boxes, began the interchange of a succession of absurd
remarks, and finally started the question of the origin of this
custom. Each gave his own opinion, and the three agreed at once that
the usage dated back as far as Prometheus. It was then, at Rome, a
common tradition of very ancient date, as we see, according to some,
even as ancient as the epoch of the tower of Babel. {595} But if they
were agreed as to the groundwork, they embellished their canvas in
very different fashions. The stories related by Fannius, and by
Fabalus I will spare you for the sake of brevity and for other
reasons; contenting myself only with the version of Lemniscus, which
will suffice for our object.

Following then, this respectable authority: The son of Japetus
moulded, as every one knows, with pipe-clay, a statue which he
proposed to animate with celestial fire, and his work finished, he put
it into a stove in order that it should dry sufficiently; but the heat
was very great, and acted so well, or so ill, that independently of
other damages, the nose of the work became cracked and shrunken in a
manner very unfortunate for a nose which had the slightest
self-consciousness. When the artist returned to the stove and saw this
stunted nose, he began to swear like a pagan as he was; but perceiving
that the flat-nose gained nothing thereby, he took the wiser part of
re-manipulating the organ, adding thereto fresh clay, and in order to
facilitate the work of restoration, he conceived the idea of inserting
a match in one of the nostrils of his manikin. But the mucous
membrane, already provided with sensibility and life, was irritated at
the contact of the sulphuric acid, and the consequence was such a
tremendous sneezing that all the teeth, not yet quite solid in the
jaw, sprang out into the face of the operator. Dismayed by this deluge
of meteors, and expecting to see his little man get out of order from
top to bottom "Ah!" cried Prometheus, "may Jupiter protect
you!"--_Tibi Jupiter adsit!_ "And from this you see two things,"
continued Lemniscus: "First, why they always say to people who sneeze,
'May Jupiter assist you!' and also, why this morning, in a similar
case, I said nothing at all to this old mummy Crispinus, since from
time immemorial his last tooth has taken flight. He might sneeze like
an old cat without the slightest danger to his jaw."

Here terminates the colloquy of our young men. I am far from intending
to guarantee the contents, either as to the conduct and exploits of
Prometheus, or the misfortunes of his little man, since I have not
under my eye the authentic records; but what follows incontestably
from this recital, is, that at the time of Cicero, the usage of which
we speak was already very ancient, since they traced it back to one of
the most ancient heroes of fable. But moreover, and this it is which
renders this passage particularly precious, we find in it the precise
form of salutation which other passages contain in the generic
phrase--_salvere jubent_. This formula consists in these three words:
_Tibi Jupiter adsit!_ I do not intend to say that this wish and this
deprecatory formula were only used in the special case of which we
speak. Undoubtedly, in a thousand other circumstances, persons
addressed each other as a mark of good will. _Deus tibi faveat! Dii
adsint! Tibi adsit Jupiter!_ etc, etc.; but in the special case of
sneezing, the phrase was obligatory among persons of gentle breeding.

Now, reader, attention! and will you enter into a Roman school, in the
time of Camillus or Coriolanus? There we shall find in the midst of
about fifty pupils, an honest preceptor bearing the name of Stolo, or
Volumnus, or Pomponius, perhaps. Very well, let it be Pomponius. Now
on a certain day the good man began to sneeze, but magisterially, and
in double time, following the form still used among the moderns, that
is to say, he emitted this nasal interjection----_ad----sit_! which
you have observed and practised a thousand times. Upon which one of
the young rogues, remarking the homophony of the thing with one of the
three words of the deprecatory formula which he had heard in
numberless cases, added, in a mocking tone--_tibi Jupiter!_and
instantly all the crowd repeated in chorus after him, _ad--sit--tibi
Jupiter_.

Here you have, dear reader, the solution of the enigma. But let us
observe the sequel. What did master {596} Pomponius under the fire of
this gay frolic? Somewhat astonished at first, he immediately
recovered himself, and took the thing in good part; and being
something of a wag himself, that style of benediction suited his
humor. I see him now running his glance along the restless troops,
raising the right hand, then the fore-finger, which he carries to his
nose, then calming their terrors by these soothing words:

  Fear not, my little friends:
  You often have committed
  Offenses much more grave.
  Ah well! how often and whenever
  I shall happen to make--_ad---sit!_
  Cry you all: _Jupiter adsit!_

You will not suppose that the little boys failed in this duty. From
the school of Pomponius it passed through all the line of the
university establishments, and improving upon it, the children saluted
with--_Jupiter ad----sit_!----first the heads of their classes, then
fathers, mothers, and all respectable persons. The elders failed not
to imitate the little ones: it permeated the whole of society. Then
came Christianity, which changed _Jupiter_ into _God_; and the
formula, _Jupiter protect you!_ was naturally transformed into _God
bless you!_

Thus it is verified that this formula is of Roman origin; and if
anything is simple, natural, and manifest, it is its derivation from
the physiological phenomena with which it is connected, and of which
it represents phonetically the energetic expression. If any of my
readers can find a better explanation of it, I beg him to address me
his memorandum by telegraph.

I owe you now the quotation from the "Anthology," which I promised
above. Among the Greek epigrams of all epochs, of which this
collection is composed, there is one which relates precisely to the
custom of which we speak. The _Zeu Soson_ of this epigram is the
translation of the _Jupiter adsit_ of the Latins. I say the
translation and not the original. For this is not one of those
fragments which may be of an epoch anterior to that in which we have
placed, and in which we have a right to place master Pomponius and his
little adventure. In extending their empire over the countries of the
Greek tongue, the Romans imported there a great number of their
customs and social habits: the _Jupiter adsit_ must have been of this
number, and therefore we find it under Greek pens. I dare not venture
here upon the Greek text of the "Anthology," which would perhaps
frighten our fair readers, and I give only the Latin translation in
two couplets:

  Dic cur Sulpicius nequeat sibi mungere nasum?
  Causa est quod naso sit minor ipsa manus.
  Cur sibi sternutans, non clamat, Jupiter adsit?
  Non nasum audit qui distat ab aure nimis.

Very well! I yet have scruples in regard to my Latin, which may not be
understood by some of the ladies and especially by the bachelors of
the bifurcation. Therefore, to put it into good French verse, I have
had recourse to the politeness of our friend Pomponius, and the
excellent man has willingly given the following translation of the
second distich, which alone relates to the circumstance:

  On demande pourquoi notre voisin Sulpice
  Eternue, et jamais ne dit: Dien _me_ bénisse!
  Serait-ce, par hasard, qu'll n'entend pas tres-blen?
  Du tout, l'oreille est bonne et fonctionne à merveille;
  Mais son grand nez s'en va--si loin de son oreille,
  Que quand il fait--_ad--sit!_ celle-ce n'entend rien.

  You demand why our neighbor Sulpice
  Sneezes and never says, God bless _me_!
  It is, perhaps, because he does not hear well:
  Not at all, his ear is good, and acts to a marvel;
  But his great nose goes away--so far from his ear,
  That when he makes--_ad--sit!_ this last hears nothing.

This epigram, undoubtedly, is not much more than two thousand years
old; and why may it not have been written by Pomponius the ancient?
For the Pomponius of our day, to him also, "how often and whenever,"
he shall sneeze--and without that even, God bless him!

------

{597}{598}


[ORIGINAL.]

THEREIN.

A SONG.


  I know a valley fair and green,
          Wherein, wherein,
  A dear and winding brook is seen,
          Therein;
  The village street stands in its pride
  With a row of elms on either side,
          Therein;
  They shade the village green.

  In the village street there is an inn.
          Wherein, wherein,
  The landlord sits in bottle-green,
          Therein.
  His face is like a glowing coal,
  And his paunch is like a swelling bowl;
          Therein
  Is a store of good ale, therein.

  The inn has a cosy fireside.
          Wherein, wherein,
  Two huge andirons stand astride,
          Therein.
  When the air is raw of a winter's night,
  The fire on the hearth shines bright
          Therein.
  'Tis sweet to be therein.

  The landlord sits in his old arm-chair
          Therein, therein;
  And the blaze shines through his yellow hair
          Therein.
  There cometh lawyer Bickerstith,
  And the village doctor, and the smith.
          Therein
  Full many a tale they spin.

  They talk of fiery Sheridan's raid
          Therein, therein;
  And hapless Baker's ambuscade
          Therein;
  The grip with which Grant throttled Lee,
  And Sherman's famous march to the sea.
          Therein
  Great fights are fought over therein.

  The landlord has a daughter fair
          Therein, therein.
  In ringlets falls her glossy hair
          Therein.
  When they speak in her ear she tosses her head;
  When they look in her eye she hangs the lid,
          Therein.
  She does not care a pin.

  I know the maiden's heart full well.
          Therein, therein,
  Pure thoughts and holy wishes dwell
          Therein.
  I see her at church on bended knee;
  And well I know she prays for me
          Therein.
  Sure, that can be no sin.

  Our parish church has a holy priest,
          Therein, therein.
  When he sings the mass, he faces the east.
          Therein.
  On Sunday next he will face the west,
  When my Nannie and I go up abreast,
          Therein,
  And carry our wedding-ring.

  And when we die, as die we must;
          Therein, therein,
  The priest will pray o'er the breathless dust,
          Therein;
  And our graves will be planted side by side.
  But the hearts that loved shall not abide
          Therein,
  But love in Heaven again.

C.W.

------

{599}


From The Lamp.

UNCONVICTED; OR, OLD THORNELEY'S HEIRS.


CHAPTER V.

THE VERDICT AT THE INQUEST

From the time that suspicions as to the manner of Gilbert Thorneley's
death had been communicated to Scotland Yard, the house in Wimpole
street was taken possession of by the police, and all egress or
ingress not subject to the knowledge and approval of the officer in
charge was prohibited. Merrivale had been allowed on the previous day
to see the body of poor old Thorneley, but with much difficulty, as
the police had strict orders not to allow any strangers access to the
chamber of death. He told me this on our way to the inquest.

"By the by," he said, "did you know that Wilmot is acting as sole
executor of his uncle, and has taken upon himself the responsibility
of ordering everything about the funeral? I asked Atherton about it
yesterday evening, and he says Wilmot came to him and asked what was
to be done, as Smith and Walker had said that he and Atherton, as only
relatives of the deceased, were the proper persons to open the will,
and see who were left his executors. Atherton, with his usual
thoughtlessness for his own interests, bade him act as he considered
right in everything, and was too much overwhelmed with his own sorrow
to think of anything else. Wilmot then went to Smith's and opened the
will, which was deposited there, and finds he is left sole executor;
and, mind you, I fancy he's sole heir likewise, for he's as coxy as
ever he can be. Mark my words, Kavanagh, there'll be a hitch about
that will as sure as I'm alive."

I felt that Merrivale spoke with a purpose; but I answered him coolly:
"I think so too; and Wilmot will find himself in the wrong box."

"If I thought it was any use," continued he, "I would ask you once
more to confide to me the nature of the business which took you to
Thorneley's on Tuesday evening."

"It will transpire in due time, Merrivale. I pass you my word it is
utterly useless knowledge now; nor does it in any way affect Hugh
Atherton's present position. God knows that nothing should keep me
silent if I thought that silence would injure in the smallest degree
one so dear to me--Will he be present to day?" I asked in a little
while.

"Yes; he seemed very anxious to watch the proceedings; and on the
whole I thought it better he should. I never saw such a man," said
Merrivale, with a burst of enthusiasm very unlike his usual dry, cold
manner; "he thinks of every one but himself. He is principally anxious
to be there that he may detect any flaw in the evidence, or find any
clue that may lead to the discovery of the real murderer of his uncle,
apparently without any thought of saving himself, as if that were a
secondary consideration. He seems to think more of the old man's death
and take it to heart than of anything which has happened to himself;
except when he speaks of Miss Leslie, and then he breaks down
entirely. I have prepared him for having to hear your evidence, and I
likewise mentioned that his uncle had sent for you the night of his
death; and that you considered yourself bound in honor not to mention
yet what transpired at the interview, but you had assured me it would
throw no light upon our present darkness."

{600}

"Darkness, indeed! O my poor Hugh!"

"He expressed great surprise, and said; 'Well, this will be the first
and only secret affecting either of us which John has ever kept from
me. Wilmot hinted that some one had been at work who was not friendly
to me; but I told him I didn't believe I had an enemy: and I don't and
won't believe it now.' Then I asked him if he wouldn't like to see
you, and I think in his heart he would; but he seemed to hesitate, and
at last said: 'No, it is best not, best for us both--at least until
after this,'--meaning the inquest--'is over.'"

The first secret! No, not the first, Hugh, not the first; but the
other could never have divided us, could never have raised one shadow
between us, I had buried it deep down in its lonely grave, and laid
its ghost by the might of my strong love for you, my friend and
brother!

The house in Wimpole street looked gloomy enough, with its close-shut
blinds and the two policemen keeping guard on either side the door,
suggestive of death--of murder! There was a small crowd collected
round; not such a crowd as had assembled before the police-station,
but something like. Street-children, errand-boys, stray costermongers
with their barrows, passing tradesmen with their carts or baskets, and
women--slatterns from neighboring alleys and back-streets, Irish
women from the Marylebone courts and slums; and each arrival caused
fresh agitation and excitement amidst that crowd of upturned eager
faces gathered there, _waiting for the verdict_.

"That's him," cried a voice as our cab drove up to the door--"that's
Corrinder Javies!"' "No, it an't, bless yer innercence! the corrinder
wears a scarlet gownd and a gold-laced 'at." "Tell ye he don't; he
wears a black un, and ers got it in his bag." "Yah!--the lawyer, the
nevy's lawyer!" followed by a yell of imprecations. The nearest
_gamin_ on the door-step had heard Merrivale give his name to the
policemen and demand admission, and had handed it down to his fellows.
So, with the sounds of the brutal mob ringing in our ears, we passed
the threshold of the murdered man's house. A cold shudder seized me as
I stood in the hall, and I seemed to feel as if the spirit of the dead
were hovering about in disquiet, and unable to rest. A superintendent
of the police received us in the hall, and we asked him if we could go
up to see the body. After some demur he went up-stairs with us, and
unlocked the chamber of death. There in his shell lay all that
remained of Gilbert Thorneley, he whose name and fame had been
world-wide. Fame, for what? For amassing wealth; for grinding down the
poor; for toiling, slaving, wearing himself out in the busy march of
life, with no thought but for that life which perishes heaping up
riches which must be relinquished on the grave's brink; which could
bring him no comfort nor solace in the valley of the shadow; which
perchance, in the inscrutable designs of providence, had been used as
an instrument of retribution against him. I looked at his worn
face--seamed with the lines of care, furrowed with the struggles that
had brought so little reward--and remembered that last evening when I
had seen and spoken with him--of the secret he had confided to me, of
what he had so darkly hinted at; and I fancied I could read in his
unplacid face that death had visited him in all its intensity of
bitterness, that the bodily suffering had been nothing compared to the
ocean of remorse which had swept over his soul. He rested from his
weary labors, and the fruits of them had not followed him. God alone
knew the complete history of his life; God only could supply what had
been wanting from the treasures of his mercy; God only could tell
whether that last flood of remorseful anguish had been the sorrow that
could be accepted for the sake of One who had died for him.

{601}

Whilst we yet stood gazing on the corpse, word was brought us that the
coroner had arrived, and was going to open proceedings. The
superintendent once more turned the key upon the dead; and we
descended to the first-floor.

"I must divide you, gentlemen, now," said he. "You, sir," to
Merrivale, "will please to come with me to the inquest-room; and you,
Mr. Kavanagh, must wait in this back drawing-room until we send for
you. I thought you'd prefer being alone, to going along with the other
witnesses."

"Yes," I said; "I should much prefer it."

I avail myself of the newspaper-reports, together with Mr. Merrivale's
notes, for an account of the inquest; and I have also used his
observations made on the personal appearance, manner, etc, of the
witnesses and others who took part in it. For myself, I remained in
that dark dingy back-room until my turn came to give evidence.

I heard the dull tramp of the jury-men as they went up-stairs and
entered the room overhead to view the body, and their hushed murmurs
as they came down. I heard the hum of voices in the front
drawing-room, where the witnesses were assembled, and the distinct
orders issued at intervals by the police. I remember standing at the
window looking into the dismal back-garden, noting mechanically the
various small sights in the back-gardens opposite. I remember staring
for a quarter of an hour at two cats fighting on the wall--a black and
a tabby; and listening to their dismal squalls. If they had been two
tigers tearing each other to pieces on that back garden-wall in the
midst of this eminently civilized city, I don't think it would have
made more impression on my brain than did those two specimens of the
feline race. And last, I remember walking, as in a dream, into the
dining-room, where sat the coroner at the head of the long table, and
ranged on either side of him the twelve jury-men. I remember seeing a
man whom I recognized as one of the deceased's solicitors, Mr. Walker,
occupying a chair at a small side-table with his clerk, and on the
opposite side of the room at another table sat Merrivale: while just
behind him, guarded--ay, _guarded_--by a policeman, sat Hugh Atherton;
and that as I came and took a chair placed for me at the other end of
the long table, he raised his eyes and looked full upon me, and that I
knew then the deadly influence which had been at work--for it was no
longer the friendly, trustful look of old; I knew--yes, I knew that
our warm friendship had died the death, that a traitor's hand had
helped to slay it. I knew, and knowing it the pain was so intense, so
like a knife entering my heart, that unconsciously I raised my hand as
though to ward off the agony that had come upon me, and a cry escaped
my lips--"Hugh, Hugh!" And then I heard the coroner addressing me in
the calm business tones of a man accustomed to do his terrible work.

The first witness called was Mr. Evans, surgeon. He said:

"I am a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and live at 138
Wimpole street. I was summoned to Mr. Thorneley's house about seven
o'clock on the morning of the 24th; and was taken up into deceased's
room. He was in bed, lying on his back, the eyes partially open, and
the forehead and mouth contracted, as though great pain had preceded
death. He had apparently been dead some hours. There was a stiffness,
however, about the body, and an unusual rigidity of the limbs, which
excited my suspicion. The feet were likewise arched. The housekeeper
and the man-servant were in the room with the deceased at the time I
arrived. I asked what he had taken last before going to bed. The
housekeeper replied he had taken his bitter {602} ale as usual about
nine o'clock. I asked to see the bottle out of which he had taken the
ale. The housekeeper bade the man go down to his master's study and
fetch up the tray. On it were a pint-bottle of Bass's bitter ale, a
tumbler, and a plate of hard biscuit. There were a few drops at the
bottom of the glass. I smelt and tasted them; there was no peculiar
smell, but the taste was unusually bitter. It suggested to me that
strychnine might have been introduced. In the bottle about half a
tumblerful of ale was left. I took possession of it for the purpose of
analysis, with the tumbler still containing a few drops. I said to the
housekeeper: 'Information must be sent at once to the police.' This
was done. I remained until the superintendent arrived, and then
proceeded to my house with the ale-bottle and glass. I immediately
subjected the contents of both to the usual process. In the few drops
contained in the glass I discovered the appearance of strychnine. The
contents of the bottle were perfectly free." (Sensation.) "I then went
back to Mr. Thorneley's house, and reported the results to the
police-officer, who communicated with Scotland Yard, the deceased's
relative Mr. Wilmot, and his lawyers. I demanded that the family
medical man should be summoned. On his arrival we made a _post-mortem_
examination, and removed the stomach with its contents, sealed and
despatched them to Professor T---- for analysis. We both refused a
death-certificate until the results of that analysis had been
ascertained. We agreed ourselves in suspecting death had originated
through poison, and that the poison had been strychnine. There was no
appearance of any disease in either heart, lungs, or brain, which
should cause sudden death. All three organs were in a perfectly
healthy state."

Dr. Robinson, physician, and the usual medical attendant of deceased,
corroborated the above evidence in every particular.

Professor T---- next deposed that he received the stomach of deceased
with its contents from Dr. Robinson and Mr. Evans. That he had
analyzed the latter, and had detected and separated strychnine in very
minute quantities; on further test, positive proof of the existence of
the poison was afforded by the colors produced. Upon introducing some
of the suspected matter into the body of a frog, death had been
produced from tetanic convulsions; thus demonstrating the existence of
strychnine. His opinion was that deceased had died from the effects of
strychnine administered in bitter ale; that the quantity administered
had been about one grain, not more--it might be less.

Mrs. Haag, the housekeeper, was then examined. She was a woman past
fifty in appearance; her face was remarkable; so perfectly immobile
and passionless in its expression. Her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes
were of a pale sandy color; and her drooping eyelids had that peculiar
motion in them which novelists call "shivering." She gave her answers
in clear low tones; but seldom raising her eyes to the interrogator;
they were of a cold bluish-gray, with a dangerous scintillating light
in them. Her manners and appearance were those of a woman above her
station in life; her language quite grammatical, though tinctured by a
slightly foreign idiom and accent; her deportment perfectly
self-possessed. She deposed that the deceased had appeared in the same
health as usual up to the evening previous to his death, when on
taking in his bitter ale and biscuits she observed that he looked very
much flushed and agitated, and his voice had sounded loud and angry as
she came up the stairs. He and Mr. Atherton seemed to be having a
dispute; and as she came into the room she distinctly heard Mr.
Atherton say to her master, "You will bitterly repent to-morrow what
you have said to-night." She could swear to the words, for they made
an {603} impression upon her. Had not heard Mr. Wilmot speak whilst in
the study. The ale had been brought up from the cellar by Barker, who
uncorked it down-stairs, as usual, in presence of the other servants.
Barker had accompanied her to the study-door, and opened it for her.
Always took in the ale when her master was alone, or when only the
young gentlemen (Wilmot and Atherton) were there; and waited to
receive his orders for the next day. Deceased always took bitter ale
at nine o'clock, with hard biscuits.

Mr. Merrivale: "Did you not pour some ale out into the tumbler before
taking it up-stairs?"

"I did not."

"Would you swear you did not?"

"Certainly I would swear it."

Evidence continued: To her knowledge he had taken nothing since the
ale. The young gentlemen never took bitter ale: Mr. Atherton didn't
like it, and Mr. Wilmot could not drink it. Only one tumbler had been
brought up. The tray had remained in the study just as Mr. Thorneley
had left it, and had not been touched until the following morning,
when the doctor asked to have the bottle and glass brought to him.
Barker, the man-servant, had fetched the tray from the study. No one
had entered the study from the time Mr. Thorneley had gone to bed,
until Barker had gone there for the tray the next morning. She had
locked the door on the outside as she went up to bed, but had not gone
into the room. On the morning of the 24th she was roused by a violent
knocking at her door, and by Barker saying, in a very agitated manner,
"For God's sake get up directly, Mrs. Haag, and come to master; for I
fear he's dead!" Had hurried on a few clothes, and gone instantly to
Mr. Thorneley's room. The deceased was in bed, the eyes partially
open, and the mouth contracted, as if in an agony of pain. She had
touched his hand and found it quite cold. Then they both had stooped
to listen if he breathed; but he did not. Barker said: "I fear it's
all up with him; he must have had a fit and died in the night. What's
to be done, Mrs. Haag?" Replied, "Send at once for a doctor." The
other servants now came crowding in, and one of them ran off
immediately for the nearest surgeon. He arrived in less than half an
hour. No one had touched the body until the arrival of the doctor;
they had all feared lest they might do harm by touching it. Had lived
in the service of deceased nearly thirty years; he had been a severe
but just master to her. Was a Belgian by birth; but had lived nearly
all her life in England. Was a widow; had no children living, nor any
relations alive that she knew of. Examined as to what had transpired
before taking the ale to the study, Mrs. Haag deposed that Mr. John
Kavanagh had called on Mr. Thorneley at seven o'clock, and been
closeted with him for an hour; that a short time before he went away
the study-bell rang, which was answered by Barker, who came down into
the servants'-hall and told Thomas the coachman to go up with him to
his master's room. When they came down, they said they had been
signing their names as witnesses to some paper, which both of them had
supposed was a will; but that neither their master nor Mr. Kavanagh
had told them so. She had put on her things whilst they were upstairs,
and just after they returned she went out--Questioned as to her
errand, said she went to buy some ribbon she wanted at a shop in
Oxford street; that returning home by Vere street she saw Mr. Atherton
coming out of the chemist's shop at the corner of Oxford street, and
heard him speak to Mr. Kavanagh. Heard the words "Kavanagh,"
"Atherton," and saw them shake hands. Could swear to their
identity.--Questioned by Mr. Merrivale, solicitor for the prisoner,
as to how it had come about that she had been witness to the meeting
between the two gentlemen at {604} the corner of Vere street and
Oxford street, and yet was met only in the middle of Vere street--a
very short street--at least five minutes afterwards by Mr. Kavanagh,
denied meeting Mr. Kavanagh at all in Vere street; had passed the two
gentlemen at the corner, and gone straight home. Had worn no veil that
evening.--Examination resumed by the coroner: Had not seen her master
since taking the ale into the study; had gone to the door after the
gentlemen had left, but found it locked, and received for answer, he
was busy, and did not require anything. Mr. Wilmot had left some time
previous to Mr. Atherton; she had seen neither to speak to them that
evening. This was the pith of the housekeeper's evidence.

John Barker was the next witness called, who corroborated everything
deposed by Mrs. Haag. Asked by a juryman if it was he who signed the
paper on the evening before Mr. Thorneley's death, replied it was. Was
he aware of the nature of the document? No; but both he and Thomas the
coachman, who had likewise signed, fancied it must be a will. Had
lived nearly twenty years with his master, and often witnessed
business papers, but never asked what they were.--Questioned by Mr.
Merrivale as to whether he had noticed any conversation which passed
between Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Atherton in the hall the night before the
deceased died, replied he had caught one or two words.--Told by the
coroner to repeat them. After seeming to recollect himself for a
moment or two, said he had heard Mr. Wilmot say he must get some money
out of the governor; to which Mr. Atherton had replied in rather a low
voice; but he had heard the words, "won't live long," and "to be
worried," and "our affairs."--Asked by the prisoner if the sentence
had not been, "He is getting very old, and won't live long; he ought
not to be worried with our affairs"? Replied he could not say; it
might have been so; but what he had repeated was the whole of what he
had distinctly heard. He wished to say that he believed Mr. Atherton
to be innocent; for he was very fond of poor master, and his uncle
always seemed more partial to him than to any one else--much more
than to Mr. Wilmot.

Thomas Spriggs the coachman, the cook, and the housemaid, were then
examined respectively, and their evidence corroborated every statement
made before; only one fresh feature presented itself. The cook
volunteered to state that she had been awoke, in the middle of the
night on which her master died, by some noise, and had fancied she
heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs.--Questioned upon this, said
that she meant the stairs leading from the third story where the
women-servants slept, to the second story..

Were they front or back-stairs?

Front-stairs; the back-stairs only reached the second floor. That the
housekeeper occupied one room to herself, she and the housemaid
another, and the third was empty. She had not dared to get out of bed,
believing it was the ghost.

What ghost?

Oh! the house was haunted; all the servants know it and believed it,
except the housekeeper, who had laughed at her shameful, and called
her a superstitious woman. But then they had never been what she might
call comfortable nor friendly together; for Mrs. 'Aag 'eld herself
'igh and 'orty with all the company in the 'all. Couldn't say at what
hour she had been awoke; had drawed the clothes over her 'ed, and said
her prayers, and supposed she had fell asleep again, being that way
inclined by natur'.

Mr. Merrivale: "Have you and the housekeeper ever fallen out, cook?"

Witness: "Well, no, sir. I can't say as we ever 'ave; and I've nothing
to bring against her except as she was 'igh and close, which isn't
agreeable, sir, when the position of parties is {605} ekally
respectable, which mine is, sir, 'aving come of a greengrocer's family
as kep' their own wehicle and drove theirselves; and whose mother
could afford to be washed out, and never sat down to tea on Sunday
without s'rimps or 'winkles or something to give a relish."

Coroner: "That is enough, cook.--Bring in the next witness."

Mr. Lister Wilmot, who appeared much agitated, next deposed: "I went
to visit my deceased uncle on the evening of Tuesday last, and whilst
taking off my outer coat in the hall, my cousin, Mr. Atherton,
arrived. We went into my uncle's study together. Very little
conversation passed between us. I mentioned my intention of asking my
uncle for some money that evening, which I needed, having some
pressing bills to pay. My cousin replied something to the effect that
he, my uncle, would probably not live long, and we ought not to worry
him with our affairs. I think he simply said it with a view to
stopping me from making the application: he thinks I am extravagant.
He asked me how much I wanted. I said, £500. He said: 'That is a large
sum, Lister; we shall never get the governor to come down as handsome
as that.'"

Mr. Merrivale: "Did Mr. Atherton say, 'we shall,' or 'you will'?"

Witness (hesitating:) "I am not quite clear, but I think he said 'we
shall.' It was simply a kindly way of speaking. We found my uncle more
than usually taciturn and abstracted; but I was so hard pressed I was
obliged to brave him, and ask him for money. To my astonishment,
instead of venting his anger on me, he turned it all upon my cousin
Hugh, and accused him of leading me into extravagance."

Coroner: "Was this so?"

"It was not. Hugh and I are the best of friends; but our pursuits and
tastes are totally opposite. I said so to my uncle, and tried to
appease him in vain. At last he worked himself into such a rage that
he seemed quite reckless of what he said; and hinted that Hugh might
pay my debts for me, and if he couldn't do so out of his own pocket,
he might get Kavanagh to advance me some out of his future wife's
dividends; that I might have got the girl for myself if I had chosen;
but as it was, he dared say Kavanagh would marry her in the long-run,
for it was easy to see how the wind lay in that quarter."

Mr. Merrivale: "Can you swear to those words?"

"I can. My cousin got very angry at this, and said: 'You have no right
to make such remarks or draw any such conclusions; they are false. You
will repent of this to-morrow.' I can swear to those words. Just then
Mrs. Haag, the housekeeper, brought in my uncle's ale and biscuits, as
usual. Barker opened the door for her: I remember that fact. There was
only one tumbler with the bottle brought up. Neither myself nor my
cousin ever touch that beverage. When Mrs. Haag had left the room,
Hugh got up and went to the table where the tray had been placed, and
brought a glass of ale to my uncle with a plate of hard biscuits."

Coroner: "Did you see the prisoner pour out the ale? Where was he
standing with regard to yourself?"

"He had his back toward us; I was sitting by the fire opposite my
uncle; the table was in the middle of the room. To get the ale Hugh
must turn his back to us."

"How long was he at the table?"

Witness, (after a moment's thought:) "A minute or more; but I could
not speak positively."

"Sufficient time to have put anything in the ale?"

Witness, (much agitated:) "Am I obliged to answer this?"

"You are not obliged; but an unfavorable interpretation might be put
upon your silence."

Witness (in a very low voice:) "There _was_ time."

{606}

Mr. Merrivale: "Did you not observe that some ale was poured out in
the tumbler when it was brought up?"

"I did not observe it; it might have been so, but I could not say for
certain either way."

Mr. Merrivale to the coroner: "My client desires me to state
distinctly that a small quantity, about a quarter of a glassful, was
already poured out when he went to the tray. He supposes it was done
to save the overflow from the bottle."

Coroner: "I will note it."

Evidence continued: "My uncle drank half the ale at a draught, shook
his bead, and said: 'It is very bitter, to-night.' We neither made any
remark upon it. He likewise took a biscuit and ate it. Soon afterward
I rose to go. He would not say good-night to me. Hugh came to the door
with me--the study-door--and whispered, 'I'll try to appease him and
make it all right for you.' I went straight down-stairs and out of the
house. I remember seeing my cousin's coat hanging in the hall; it was
a brown-tweed waterproof one; but I did not touch it. The coachman
came the following morning with the sad news to my chambers."

Mr. Merrivale: "Are you acting as sole executor, Mr. Wilmot?"

"I am; my cousin is aware of it."

Mr. Walker: "It is illegal to ask for any depositions about the
deceased's will here."

Coroner: "I am the best judge of that, Mr. Walker. Anything which
throws light upon what we have to find out must be received as
evidence."

Mr. Merrivale: "Were you aware what the contents of your late uncle's
will were before you opened it at Messrs. Smith and Walker's?"

"I was not; but both Hugh Atherton and myself were led to anticipate
what the tenor of it would be."

"Have the results fulfilled your anticipations?"

"I don't consider myself warranted in answering such a question."

Coroner: "Have you any thing else to state, Mr. Wilmot?"

"Nothing, except that I believe in my cousin's innocence."

Mr. John Kavanagh was then called, and, after the usual preliminaries,
stated that on his return from a tour in Switzerland on the afternoon
of Tuesday, the 23d, he found a note from Mr. Thorneley, which he now
produced. (Note read by the coroner and passed on to the jurymen.)
That upon receipt of it he had gone to Mr. Thorneley's at the hour
appointed, and had been shown at once into that gentleman's study. Had
found him very much altered for the worse and aged since last he had
seen him, some months since. He looked as if some heavy trouble were
upon him, weighing him down. He had transacted the business required,
which occupied, he should say, an hour, and had then left him as calm
and as well as when he (witness) first entered the room. He had chosen
to walk home, and, stopping to light a segar at the corner of Vere
street, had met Mr. Atherton _coming out of the chemist's shop_. Mr.
Atherton had offered to accompany him home, but he (Witness) had
refused, and they had parted, Mr Atherton stating his intention of
coming to see him on the morrow. That the moment after, he had
repented his refusal and hurried back to ask him to return; but being
near-sighted and the night dark, had not been able to distinguish his
figure, and had given up the pursuit. Returning down Vere street,
about half-way he had met a female walking very fast, but who in
passing had almost stopped, and stared very hard at him. She had on a
thick veil, so he could not see her face, nor did he recognize her
figure. The circumstance had passed from his mind until detective
Jones had told him that Mr. Thorneley's housekeeper had been in Vere
street that evening, and seen his meeting with Mr. Atherton, and then
it had struck him it might have been she.--(Here Mr. Merrivale was
seen to confer very earnestly with the {607} prisoner, and afterward
to pass a slip of paper to the coroner, who after reading it bowed, as
if in assent, and then beckoned to a policeman, who left the room.) He
had gone straight home to his chambers, and being tired went early to
bed, and did not wake till very late the following morning, when his
clerk had told him the news of Mr. Thorneley's death, and detective
Jones had called upon him shortly afterward.

By the coroner: "What was the nature of the business which you
transacted with deceased?"

"I am bound over very solemnly not to mention it until a certain
time."

"Was it a will you called the two servants to witness?"

"I am not at liberty to answer. I pass my word as a gentleman and a
man of honor that in no way do I consider this to affect my friend Mr.
Atherton's present position; and that when it does I shall consider
myself free to speak."

Mr Walker: "We shall compel you, Mr. Kavanagh, to speak in another
place than this. The breach of etiquette you have committed will not
be passed over by us as the family and confidential legal advisers of
the deceased gentleman."

"We shall both act as we think right, Mr. Walker."

The prisoner here in a very hollow voice said "For God's sake, and for
the sake of one who is dear to us both, I entreat you, John Kavanagh,
to reveal any thing that may help to clear an innocent man from this
frightful imputation."

"I will, Hugh, so help me God! But it would avail you nothing to speak
now."

Coroner: "Have you anything further to state?"

"Nothing, save my most solemn religious conviction that Mr. Atherton
is innocent, and that he is the victim of the foulest plot."

Mr. Walker here appealed to the coroner, and said he objected to such
insinuations being made there; that Mr. Kavanagh had done his best to
criminate the prisoner, and that he was now trying to cast the blame
upon others.

Mr. Kavanagh was about to make some violent answer, when the coroner
called to order.

Mr. Merrivale: "Will you have the goodness, Mr. Kavanagh, to look
toward the end of the room, and see if you identify any one there?"

Mr. Kavanagh: "My God! _It is she!_"

Coroner: "Who?"

"The woman I met in Vere street that night."

Standing opposite to the witness, with the light full upon her, was a
female figure, closely veiled.

"I never met you, Mr. Kavanagh!" it was the woman who spoke, loudly,
vehemently.

Coroner to witness: "I see you are using your eyeglass now; were you
using it when you say you met this person in Vere street?"

"I was."

"Could you swear that the figure standing before you now and the woman
you met are one and the same?"

"I would swear that _the appearance_ of that woman standing before me
now and that of the figure I met is one and the same--the same height,
the same carriage, the same veiled face."

"I never met you, Mr. Kavanagh!" repeated the woman, with a passionate
gesture.

Coroner: "Mrs. Haag, you can retire." (It was the housekeeper.)

Mr. Walker: "I don't see how this affects the case."

Mr. Merrivale: "Probably not, sir; but you will see by and by. I am
much obliged to you, Mr. Coroner."

Mr. Kavanagh is replaced by Inspector Jackson, detective officer, who
deposed that from information received at Scotland Yard on the morning
of the 24th instant, he had been desired by his superintendent to
proceed to 100 Wimpole street, the residence {608} of the deceased
gentleman, and examine into the case, accompanied by detective Jones.
From information received from the housekeeper and other servants, and
after a conference with the surgeon called in, his suspicions had
fallen upon Mr. Atherton. He had left a policeman in charge from the
nearest station-house, and gone with Jones direct to Mr. Atherton's
chambers in the Temple. On breaking the nature of his visit to that
gentleman, together with the news of Mr. Thorneley's death, he had
been terribly overcome, and exclaimed that he was an innocent man, God
was his witness; that he would not have hurt a hair of the old man's
head; but certainly he _had_ been angry with him the night before.
Cautioned not to say anything which might criminate himself, Mr.
Atherton had again said, in very solemn tones: "My God, thou knowest I
am innocent!" Witness had searched Mr. Atherton's room and clothes; in
the pocket of his coat had found a small empty paper labelled
STRYCHNINE--POISON; with the name of "Davis, chemist, 20 Vere street,
corner of Oxford street."--Questioned by Mr. Merrivale as to which
coat-pocket the packet was found in, replied the overcoat which Mr.
Atherton wore on the previous evening.

By a juryman: "How do you know it was the identical coat worn that
evening?"

"The man-servant, John Barker, swears to it; he took it from Mr.
Atherton when he came to Mr. Thorneley's house, and hung it up in the
hall to dry."

The prisoner: "Yes, I did wear that coat; but I know nothing of the
paper found in it."

By the coroner: "Have you been in communication with the chemist in
Vere street?"

Witness: "I have, sir; he remembers--"

Mr. Merrivale: "I object to this evidence coming from the mouth of Mr.
Inspector. The chemist is here and should be examined himself."

Mr. Walker, one of the solicitors of deceased "I think that the
evidence should be received from both the inspector and the chemist."

Mr. Merrivale: "I still object."

The coroner: "On what ground, Mr. Merrivale?"

Mr. Merrivale: "On the ground that the inspector having a preconceived
notion when he communicated with the chemist, the latter may have been
misled by his questions. I should at least wish that Davis should be
examined first, and his evidence received direct."

The coroner: "Very well. Is there anything else, Mr. Inspector?"

"Nothing else, except that Mr. Atherton denied all knowledge at once
of the paper found."

By Mr. Merrivale: "Did you not find also a bottle of camphorated
spirits?"

"I did; but on the table. It was a fresh bottle, unopened, and bore
the same label, from Mr. Davis's." (Witness dismissed.)

Mr. Merrivale here demanded to have the man Barker recalled, which was
done.

Mr. Merrivale: "Can you swear to the overcoat which Mr. Atherton wore
the last evening he came to Wimpole street?"

"Certainly, sir. It was a brown tweed waterproof, with deep pockets. I
know it well."

"Is that the coat?" (Coat produced.)

"It is, sir."

"Can you swear to it?"

"I can, sir."

"How long was it between the time Mr. Wilmot went away and the time
Mr. Atherton left the house?"

"About half an hour or three quarters, I should say."

"Did you let him out?"

"No, sir."

"Nor Mr. Atherton?'

"No, sir."

"Did you hear or know of any one being in the hall for any length of
time whilst Mr. Atherton was with his uncle?"

{609}

"No one could have been in the hall, sir, we servants were all at
supper."

"Was the housekeeper with you?"

"No, sir; she has her supper in her own sitting-room always."

"Then how are you sure that she did not go into the hall?"

"I should have heard her door open and her footsteps pass along the
passage. The servants' hall door was open that I might hear master's
bell."

"You feel certain of this?"

"I do, sir."

"I have no more to ask this witness, Mr. Coroner."

Thomas Davis, chemist, was then called. He deposed that on the evening
of the 23d he perfectly well remembered a gentleman coming into his
shop and buying a small bottle of spirits of camphor. Could not swear
to him, but thinks it may have been the prisoner. It was a tall
gentleman. (Upon being shown the bottle of camphor, immediately
identified it as the one sold. The paper found in Mr. Atherton's
pocket was now produced, and he likewise identified it as coming from
his shop.) The paper and label were the same as he used.--Questioned
as to whether he recollected selling any strychnine either on or
before the 23d, replied he could not remember selling any; but that he
had found a memorandum in his day-book of one grain sold on the 23d.
(Sensation.) Was quite sure it had been sold, or the entry would not
have been made; always made those entries himself. His assistant
reported to him of anything sold during his absence from the shop, and
he then entered it in his day-book as a ready-money transaction. His
assistant might have sold the strychnine on that day; but he had
questioned him and found he did not remember any particulars. Could
swear that he himself remembered nothing about it.--by Mr. Merrivale:
Was generally absent from the shop an hour at dinner-time--from one to
two--and from five to half-past for tea; again at night from nine to
half-past. Closed at ten.

Mr. Merrivale here asked that Mr. Wilmot and Mrs. Haag might severally
be brought in; to which Mr. Walker objected. The objection was
overruled by the coroner, and Mr. Wilmot was summoned.

Mr. Merrivale: "Do you remember having seen this gentleman before, Mr.
Davis?"

"I do not, sir."

"Nor remember his coming into your shop?"

"No, sir."

The housekeeper was then called, with the same results.

Examination of witness continued: His assistant was a remarkably
steady and able young man, intrusted with making up very important
prescriptions; his word could be relied on; had been with him for five
years. He himself was a licensed member of Apothecaries' Hall.

The last witness summoned was James Ball, assistant to Mr. Davis, the
chemist. In reply to the coroner, he never remembered having sold any
strychnine on the 23d, though he might have done so; in which case he
would report it to Mr. Davis, who would have entered it in the
day-book. Was in the habit of mentioning each item as soon after it
was sold as opportunity permitted. Could not identify either Mr.
Wilmot or Mrs. Haag as having seen them in the shop.--By Mr. Walker:
Remembered the prisoner coming into the shop on the evening of the
23d; they did not often see such a tall gentleman. His employer, Mr.
Davis, had served him with the camphor.

By Mr. Merrivale: "Do you mean to say that a customer whom you did not
serve, buying camphor, made an impression on your mind, and yet you
have no recollection of any one coming to your shop and asking for
such a remarkable and _dangerous_ thing as strychnine?"

After a moment's consideration:

{610}

"I remember that gentleman," (pointing to the prisoner,) "because I
wondered what his height might be, and what a jolly thing it must be
to be so tall, especially with such a high counter to serve over."
(Laughter. James Ball was considerably below the middle height) "I
don't recollect anything at all about the strychnine."

By the coroner: "It is a question probably of life or death, James
Ball, to that gentleman, Mr. Atherton; and I conjure you to strive to
the utmost of your power to call to mind any circumstance concerning
the sale of that poison which may throw some light upon the subject
Take your time now to consider, for I see you _can_ recollect things."

After some moments of dead silence, James Ball replied, "I remember
nothing further than what I have already stated."

This closed the evidence, and coroner, summing up, addressed the jury.
He commented upon the awfulness of the crime which had been committed;
on the fearful increase of the use of poisons of every kind for the
purpose of taking away human life. He said in this case the principal
facts they had to deal with were, that it was proved on evidence that
poison had been administered to deceased in the bitter ale, which he
had taken before going to bed. That the poison was pronounced to be
strychnine, which it was well known would probably not take effect
until an hour or so after it had been imbibed. That the glass of
bitter ale in which the strychnine had been detected was poured out
and given to deceased by his nephew, Mr. Hugh Atherton, in presence of
his other nephew, Mr. Wilmot. That it had been proved by medical
evidence that in the ale remaining in the bottle no strychnine had
been detected. All suspicions therefore were confined to the ale which
had been _poured out_. That Mr. Atherton had been heard to use angry,
if not threatening, language to the deceased, (he repeated the words,)
and had been seen by two witnesses coming out of the chemist's shop
kept by the identical man whose name was on the paper labelled
Strychnine, and found in the prisoner's pocket. The prisoner's legal
adviser had stated that a portion of the ale was already poured out in
the tumbler, when he (the prisoner) approached the table for the
purpose of helping his uncle; but no evidence had been adduced of the
fact. Mrs. Haag, the housekeeper, had stated to the contrary. Still
the prisoner was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. There had been
positive evidence that the deceased had died from the effects of
poison; it rested with the jury to decide whether the other evidence
was sufficiently conclusive to warrant their finding a verdict against
the prisoner as having administered the poison.

After a consultation of some quarter of an hour, the jury returned a
verdict of _Wilful Murder against Mr. Hugh Atherton_.

Merrivale brought me the news in that dull back-room where I waited,
heaven only knows with what crushing, heart-sick anxiety, and we left
the house--that doomed house of death, of woe and desolation to the
living.

The crowd outside had thickened and densified; but their cries and
clamors were meaningless sounds for me. As we stood on the pavement
whilst Merrivale hailed a cab, I felt something thrust into my hand--a
piece of paper. I looked round and saw a man disappearing amongst the
throng, who presently turned and held up his hand to me. He was in
plain clothes and somewhat disguised; but I recognized Jones the
detective. When in the cab I unfolded the paper, and read, hastily
scrawled in pencil:

  "Meet me, sir, please, on the Surrey end of London Bridge to-night
  at nine o'clock."
     "A. Jones."

{611}


CHAPTER VI.

IN BLUE-ANCHOR LANE.

Nine o'clock was striking, as I hurried along the footway of London
Bridge, hustled and jostled by the many passengers who seem to be
forever treading their weary road of business, care, or pleasure--for
even pleasure brings its toil; nine o'clock resounding loud and clear
in the night-air from the dome of St. Paul's, and echoed from the
neighboring church-steeples. It sounds romantic enough to please the
most enthusiastic devourers of pre-Radcliffe novels, or to capture the
imagination of the most ardent votaries of fiction. But it was far
otherwise to me on the night of that Thursday which had seen Hugh
Atherton branded with the name of murderer. It was far otherwise to
me--weighed down with the crushing knowledge that the companion of my
youth, the friend of my later years, although an innocent man, was
being gradually hurried on to a felon's death; and that I--_I_ who
loved him so well--had helped to his destruction, though Heaven could
witness how unwillingly and unconsciously. No; there was no romance
for me that night as I dragged my weary steps over the bridge, with
the sight of him before my eyes, and the sound of heart-bursting grief
from the lips of that poor stricken girl, his betrothed bride, ringing
in my ears; for I had been to tell her the results of this day's work.
Oh! why had I not yielded to his wish the evening I met Hugh Atherton
in that fatal street, and taken him home with me? Why had I not more
earnestly followed up the impulse--nay, dare I not call it
inspiration?--to return after him and bid him come back with me? Ah
me! my selfishness, my blindness--could any remorse ever atone for
them and the terrible evil they had brought about? My God, thou
knowest how my heart cried out to thee then in bitterness and sorrow:
"Smite me with thy righteous judgments; but spare him--spare her!"

And now what new scene in this drama of life was I going to see
unfolded? I could not tell; I knew nothing; I could only pray that if
Providence pointed out to me any track by which I might penetrate the
awful mystery that hung round us, I might pursue it with all fidelity,
with utter forgetfulness of self. I had gone with Merrivale after we
left Wimpole street to the House of Detention where Atherton was
lodged, and desired him to ask that I should see Hugh; but he had come
out looking puzzled and perplexed, and said: "I can't make it out;
Atherton refuses to see you, and gives no reason except that it is
'best not.'" No help was there, then, but to trust to time and
unwearied exertion to remove the cloud between us.

I found Jones waiting for me at the other end of the bridge, and
anxiously on the look-out.

"I am right glad to see you, sir; I was fearful you mightn't come,
seeing that I gave you no reason for doing so."

"I trusted you sufficiently, Jones, to belive you wouldn't have
brought me on a useless errand at such a time of awful anxiety."

"Bless you, sir, I wouldn't--not for a thousand pounds; and I've had
that offered to me in my day by parties as wished to get rid of me or
shut me up. No, indeed, sir; I'd not add to your trouble if so be I
could not lighten it. But we have no time to lose, and we have a
goodish bit before us. You asked me this morning whether I knew any
thing of a Mr. de Vos. I did not then, but I do now; and a strange
chance threw me across him. If, sir, you will trust yourself entirely
to me to-night, I think I can be of use to you. But you must confide
in me, and allow me to take the lead in everything. And first, will
you let me ask you one or two questions?"

I told him he might ask anything he pleased; if I could not answer, I
would tell him so; that I would trust him implicitly.

{612}

"Then, sir, will you condescend to honor me by coming home first for a
few minutes? My missus expects us. She's in a terrible way about Mr.
Atherton: she never forgets past kindness."

We turned off the bridge, straight down Wellington street, High street
Borough, and then into King street, where Jones stopped before a
respectable-looking private house, and knocked. The door was opened by
his wife--with whom, under other circumstances, I had been acquainted
before--and we entered their neat little front-parlor. Evidently we
were expected, for supper was laid--homely, but substantial, and
temptingly clean.

"You must excuse us, sir," said Jones; "but I fancied it was likely
you had taken little enough to-day, and I told Jane to have something
ready for us. Please to eat, Mr. Kavanagh; we have a short journey
before us, and I want you to have all your wits and energies about
you."

I was faint and sick, true enough; for I had touched nothing save a
biscuit and a glass of wine since the morning; but my stomach seemed
to loathe food; and though I drew to the table, not wishing to offend
the good people, I felt as if to swallow a morsel would choke me.
Jones cut up the cold ham and chicken in approved style, whilst his
wife busied herself with slicing off thin rounds of bread and butter;
but I toyed with my knife and fork, and could not eat. Not so Jones;
he took down incredible quantities of all that was before him with the
zest of a man who knows he is going to achieve luck's victory.
Presently he threw down his tools, and looked hard at me.

"This'll never do, sir; you _must_ eat."

I shook my head and smiled.

"Jane," said he to his wife, "bring out Black Peter; no one ever
needed him more than Mr. Kavanagh."

Mrs. Jones opened a cupboard and brought forth a tapery-necked bottle,
out of which her husband very carefully poured some liquid into a
wineglass, and then as carefully corked it up again.

"Drink this, sir; I've never known it to fail yet."

I lifted the glass to my lips. "Why, it's the primest Curaçoa!" I
cried.

"That it may be, sir, for all I know. A poor German, to whom I once
rendered a service, sent me two bottles, and I've found it the best
cordial I ever tasted. I call it Black Peter--his name was Peter, and
he was uncommonly black, to be sure--but I never heard its right name
before. Drink it off, sir, and you'll feel a world better presently."

I did, and the effects were as Jones prognosticated. The cold, sick
shivering left me, and I was able in a little while to take some food.

"Now, Jane," said the good man to his wife, when he saw I was getting
on all right, "shut up your ears; Mr. Kavanagh and I are going to talk
business."

Mrs. Jones laughed, picked up some needle-work, and sat down to a
small table by the fire.

"My wife's a true woman, sir, in every thing but her tongue; she
_don't_ talk: I'll back her against Sir Richard himself for keeping
dark on a secret case. Now, sir, will you please to tell me, if you
can, why you are anxious to find out about this Mr. de Vos?"

I related to him about my meeting De Vos at my sister's, what I had
heard and witnessed in Swain's Lane, the impressions made upon me
then, and how I had caught sight of the man outside the police-court
on the preceding day. Jones listened very attentively, and made notes
of it all.

"Exactly," said he, when I ended by saying that Mr. Wilmot had denied
all knowledge of De Vos and the rendezvous in Swain's Lane. "Just what
I expected. Of course he would."

"What! Do you think he did know, and that it was Wilmot's voice I
heard?"

{613}

"I think nothing, sir" said be, with a curious smile; "but I guess a
good deal. We have a terribly-tangled skein to unravel; but I think in
following up this man we have got the right end of it. I must now tell
you how I stumbled upon him to-day. I heard from inspector Keene that
he was engaged by Mr. Merrivale to see into this murder of old Mr.
Thorneley; and knowing how partial I was to Mr. Atherton--good reason
too--he asked me if I'd like to help him, and if so, he'd speak about
me to Sir Richard Mayne. I said I would, above all things, for I'd had
a hand in taking him, though I believed he was innocent; and now I'd
give much to help him back to his liberty again. To cut short with the
story, it was settled I should hang about the house to-day during the
inquest in disguise, to pick up any stray information that might be
let drop; for there's a deal more known, sir, about rich folks and
their households by such people as those who were crowded round the
house today than ever you'd think for; and we gather much of our most
valuable information by mixing in these crowds unknown, and listening
to the casual gossip that goes on in them. So I made myself up into a
decent old guy, and took my way to Wimpole street. Whilst waiting to
cross Oxford street two men came up behind me, and I heard a few words
drop which made me turn round to look at them. Sure enough, one
answered most perfectly your description of this Mr. De Vos. I thought
to myself, 'Here's game worth following;' and I did follow, and heard
them make an appointment for to-night on this side the water. Now,
sir, do you see why I asked you to meet me?'

"I do. We must be present at the meeting."

"Just so, sir; and we have no time to lose, for the hour mentioned was
soon after ten o'clock. If you'll take nothing else we will go. We
must go made up; and you'll trust entirely to me."

"You mean disguised?"

"I do, sir; if you'll come up-stairs, I'll give you what is
necessary."

Up-stairs we went, and Jones produced from a chest of drawers a rough
common seaman's jacket, a pair of duck trowsers, a woollen comforter,
a tarpaulin hat, and a false black beard, in which he rigged me out;
and then proceeded to make similar change in his own attire, with the
exception of a wig of shaggy red hair and a pair of whiskers to match.

"Leave your watch, sir, and any little articles of jewelry you may
have about you, in my wife's charge; keep your hat well slouched over
your face and your hands in your pockets, give a swing and swagger to
your walk, and you'll do."

"Why, where upon earth are we going, Jones?"

"To Blue-Anchor Lane, sir, if you know where that very fashionable
quarter lies."

I did not know exactly where it was, saying from police-reports, which
named it as one of the lowest parts of that low district lying between
Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. I had been somewhere near it once, having
occasion to call on one of the clergy belonging to the Catholic Church
in Parker's Row; but that was quite an aristocratic part, for a
wonder, compared with Blue-Anchor Lane. Yes, Parker's Row I had
visited; and, thanks to my having grown and "gentlefolked" to the
height of six feet odd, I had managed to pull the bell and get
admitted to the convent behind the church, where dwell the good
Sisters of Mercy, walled-in all tight and trim. But down Blue-Anchor
Lane I had never penetrated; and I asked Jones if it were not
considered a favorite haunt for characters of the worst description.

"It is so, sir; and we must be careful and cautious to-night in all we
do." I noticed that he put his staff and alarum in his pocket, and
furnished me with similar implements. "In case of necessity, sir," he
said, {614} laughing, "you must act as special constable with me. I
wouldn't take you into the smallest danger; but, you see, I don't know
but what your presence is of absolute necessity, and that you may be
able to gather a clue in this case quicker than I should. Not that I
yield in quickness at twigging most things to any man," said Detective
Jones, with a bit of professional pride quite pardonable; "but you
must identify the man for certain yourself, sir, before I can act in
the matter with anything like satisfaction."

It was just upon ten o'clock when we left King street, and proceeded
to London Bridge; whence we took the train to Spa Road. It takes, as
every one knows, but a few minutes in the transit; and leaving that
dark, dismal, break-neck hole of a station, we turned to the left up
Spa Road, down Jamaica Row, and so into Blue-Anchor Lane. It is
needless to describe what that place is at night; it is needless to
picture in words all the degrading vice that walks forth unmasked in
some of the streets of this capital, which ranks so high amidst the
great cities o the world. Is our exterior morality to be so far
behind, so infinitely below, that of tribes and nations on whom we
stoop to trample? Can such things be, and we not waken from our
lethargic sleep, remembering what our account will one day be? Can our
rulers so calmly eat and drink, take their pleasure, hunt their game,
pursue their gentlemanlike sports, knowing, as assuredly they do too
well, that thousands of their people are living lives more degraded,
more brutal, more shamelessly inhuman, more full of sin, ignorance,
and every kind of squalor and misery, than the wildest savages we have
set our soldiers to hunt out of the lands in which God placed them?

"What can the man be doing in such a place as this?" I whispered to
Jones, as he stopped before the door of a small low-looking house of
entertainment, half coffee-shop and half public-house, that rejoiced
in the name of "Noah's Ark."

"That's just what we've got to find out, sir. Somehow it strikes me
he's better acquainted with such haunts as these than you and I are
with Regent street or Piccadilly. If I haven't seen his face before,
and that not ten yards from the Old Bailey, I'm blest if I was ever
more mistaken in my life. But hush! here he is."

And swaggering along, with his hat stuck on one side, and murmuring a
verse of "Rory O'Moore," came Mr. de Vos, my sister Elinor's
"treasure-trove," evidently somewhat airy in the upper regions, and
elated by good cheer. Jones had taken out a short clay pipe, and
whilst seemingly intent on filling it I saw he was watching De Vos
with a keen observant glance. The latter gentleman was far from being
intoxicated; he was merely what is called "elevated," and quite wide
awake enough to be wary of anything going on around him. I saw him
start perceptibly as his eye fell upon me, though my slouched hat and
high collar must have gone a good way toward concealing my features.

"Fine night, mate," said Jones in a bluff, loud voice, lighting and
pulling vigorously at his pipe.

"Deed and it is so," answered De Vos, halting just opposite to us, and
once more turning his scrutiny upon me. "Are you game for a dhrop of
whiskey?" addressing himself especially to me.

I was about to answer in feigned tones, when Jones took the word out
of my mouth, and replied: "No use asking him--he's too love-sick just
now to care for drink; he's parted with his sweetheart, and is off for
the West-Indies by five in the morning from the Docks."

Something now seemed to attract De Vos's attention to Jones, for he
became suddenly very grave.

"I've not seen you here before," said he, peering into the detective's
face.

{615}

"May be you have, may be you haven't. I don't need to ask any man's
leave to drink a pint at 'Noah's Ark,' and watch a game of skittles."

This, as Jones told me afterward, was quite a random shot; however, it
took effect.

"I believe you," said De Vos with all the boastfulness of his nature.
"You'll not see a betther bowler through the country entirely than
meself. I'll back the odds against any man this side the Channel, and
bedad to it. I dare say now it's here on Monday last you were to see
me play?"

"Ay, ay, mate," sang out Jones; "right enough."

"Ah! thin it was small shiners I went in for then; but I'll lay a
couple of fivers now against a brad, and play you fair to-morrow
against any of them in there," with a back-handed wave to the house,
whence unmistakable sounds of noisy mirth were proceeding. "Is it
done?"

"I'll consider your offer--shiver my timbers but I will!" said Jones,
with a burst of Jack-tar-ism--"and let you know in the morning."

"Just as you please; you pays your money and you takes your choice;"
and nodding to Jones, who responded to the salute in approved style,
De Vos passed into the tap-room of the "Ark."

"Is it he?" hurriedly whispered Jones when he was out of hearing.

"Yes, without doubt," answered I, in the same tones.

"Then follow me, sir; and keep silent unless I speak to you;" and we
likewise entered through the swing-doors of the gayly-lighted bar.

A glance sufficed to show us that the man we sought was not there; but
Jones was far from being disconcerted; indeed he seemed most
thoroughly up to the mark in the task before him, and threw himself
into the part he had assigned himself with all the genius and facility
of a Billington or Toole. Three or four men with physiognomies that
would not have disgraced the hangman's rope were drinking, smoking,
and exchanging low _badinage_ with a flashy-looking young woman, who
stood behind the bar-counter. Woman, did I say? Angels pity her! There
was little of womanly nature left in the fierce glitter of her eyes,
in the hard lines of premature age which dissipation and sin and woe
had left carved upon her forehead and around her mouth. Little enough
of this though, no doubt, thought Detective Jones, intent upon his own
purposes, as he quickly made up to her, and asked with all the
swaggering audacity of a "jolly tar," for two stiff glasses of the
primest pine-apple rum-and-water.

Jones extracted a long clay pipe from the lot standing before us in a
broken glass, and passed it to me, and handed his pouch of tobacco,
with an expressive glance that told me I was to smoke. Whilst filling
the pipe and lighting it, the woman returned with the rum-and-water,
which she placed ungraciously before us with a bang and clatter that
caused the liquid to spill out of the glasses.

"Look here, miss," said Jones in his most insinuating tones; "I'll
forgive you for upsetting the grog, and give you five bob to buy a
blue ribbon for your pretty hair, if you'll manage to get me and my
mate a snug comer inside there," pointing to a door on the left,
whence issued voices; "for we've a bit of money business to settle
to-night, and he's off first thing in the morning for the Indies."

The woman seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then holding out her
hand for the promised tip, she beckoned us to pass inside the bar, and
led the way to the door. Before she opened it she said in a low voice:

"I am doing as much as my place is worth; but I want the money; take
the table in the corner at the top here; keep yourselves quiet, and
don't take no notice of nobody, least of all of him who'll be next
you."

{616}

She now opened the door, and I saw Jones slip some more money into her
hand, which she received with a short grunt and a nod, and then closed
the door upon us.

The room was divided like that of an ordinary coffee-shop into box
compartments; the one in the right-hand corner by the door was empty,
and we entered it, carrying our glasses and pipes with us. We seated
ourselves at the end of the two benches opposite each other, and then
glanced round. In the box _vis-à-vis_ were two rough-looking fellows,
whom I took to be real followers of our pretended calling--the sea.
They returned our gaze suspiciously enough, and we could hear one
whisper to the other, "Who's them coves?" and the answer "Dunno; none
of _us_." But the next moment my attention was diverted to the voices
in the box next to ours.

"Did you see _her_?" It was De Vos who spoke, I felt sure.

"Not I, my God! not I," answered a deep hoarse voice. "It's ten years
since she and I met, and I'd go to my grave sooner than we should meet
again. Mind you, the day when her cold cruel eyes rest on me will be a
fatal day for me. Faugh! I've passed through as much bloodshed as it's
ever given one man to encounter in his life, and never flinched; but I
tell you, Sullivan, the thought of meeting her face to face seems to
freeze the life-blood of my heart."

"Do you think she had a hand in this, O'Brian?"

"Who can tell? She did not pause once; what should stop her again?"

"The fear of you."

"She sees no reason to fear. She believes I'm still over _there_,
where she sent me."

"And the young fellow, _my_ man, does he know anything?"

"Again how can I tell? But I should say not. How could _she_ enlighten
_him_?"

"Then he is--"

"Their son."

A pause succeeded. Meanwhile Jones had engaged in a sort of dumb-show
with me to throw the men opposite off the scent, by passing papers and
money backwards and forwards, and apparently making calculations with
his pencil; in reality I saw he was taking notes. Presently De Vos
spoke again.

"Well, let's drink to the heir, old boy; and so long as I can make him
play the piper, why thin it's myself that will, and bedad to him."

His Irishisms, be it observed, were intermittent.

"Long life to the heir!" cried the two voices simultaneously; and
there was a clash of glasses.

"What's the time of day by your ticker?" asked De Vos a few moments
afterward.

"Just upon eleven. The lad was to be here by then, wasn't he?"

"Yes, by eleven. I'd like to know what he wants with me now."

Jones here took up his cap, buttoned his coat, quietly opened the
door, and went out; I following him, of course. He threw a
good-humored nod to the woman, who still stood behind the bar, and I
did the same; but he never spoke until we were some yards from "Noah's
ark."

"You may be thankful, sir," he then said in a low voice, "to have got
out safely and unmolested. That's the worst haunt of some of the worst
characters in London; and they're banded together so as to shut out
every one as don't belong to them. There's been a Providence, sir, in
it all," raising his cap, "depend upon it. Now we must see if we can
stop this lad whom they are expecting. We'll talk the matter over
afterward."

Just then a boy came up running at full speed.

"Halt!" cried Jones, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder. "What
makes you so late?"

"What's the odds to you? Let me go," replied the boy, with a mixture
of impudence and cunning in his face. "I'm not not bound for you."

"You're bound for 'Noah's Ark,' though."

{617}

"Are you Mr. Sullivan?"

"Of course I am."

"Oh! then here's the letter, and you're to see if it's all right."

"All right," said Detective Jones, opening the note and glancing at
its contents; "tell the gentleman I'll be there. Here's for you, young
Codlings," dropping a half-crown into the boy's hand.

"Five shillings, and not a stiver less, is my fare."

"Here you are then, you small imp of iniquity;" and another coin of
similar value found its way into the ragamuffin's pocket.

He cut a caper, turned head over heels, and was gone.

And now Jones tore on breathlessly till we were safe out of
Blue-Anchor Lane and had reached Paradise Row, where a policeman was
standing at the corner. Jones took him aside for a minute, and then
rejoined me.

"We'll hail the first cab, sir, in Spa Road, and drive to your home,
if you've no objection."

This we did; and as soon as we had started he took a small
candle-lantern from his pocket, lit it, and then handed me the note to
read which he had taken from the boy. It contained but few words; no
names used, no address, no signature, and simply desired the person
addressed to meet the writer the following day at the usual place and
hour. What clue was there in that to the dark mystery we were bent on
solving? Only this, and I put it into words:

"Great heavens! it is Lister Wilmot's handwriting!"



TO BE CONTINUED.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

THE MARTYR.


  Serene above the world he stands,
    Uplift to heaven on wings of prayer:
  Across his breast his folded hands
    Recall the cross he loved to bear.

  Upon his upturned brow the light
    Flows like the smile of God: he sees
  A flash of wings that daze his sight,
    He hears seraphic melodies.

  In vain the cruel crowd may roar,
    In vain the cruel flames may hiss:
  Like seas that lash a distant shore,
    They faintly pierce his sphering bliss.

  He hears them, and he does not hear--
    His fleshly bonds are loosened all--
  No earthly sound can claim the ear
    That listens for his Father's call.

  It comes--and swift the spirit spurns,
    His quivering lips and soars away;
  The blind crowd roars, the  blind fire burns,
    While God receives their fancied prey.

D. A. C.

------

{618}


From The Month.

ECCE HOMO.  [Footnote 131]

  [Footnote 131: "Ecce homo." A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus
  Christ. Macmillan. 1866.]

  [The London _Reader_ says the following article is from the pen of
  the Very Rev. Dr. Newman.--Ed. C.W.]

The word "remarkable" has been so hacked of late in theological
criticism--nearly as much so as "earnest" and "thoughtful"--that we do
not like to make use of it on the present occasion without an apology.
In truth, it presents itself as a very convenient epithet, whenever we
do not like to commit ourselves to any definite judgment on a subject
before us, and prefer to spread over it a broad neutral tint to
painting it distinctly white, red, or black. A man, or his work, or
his deed, is "remarkable" when he produces an effect; be he effective
for good or for evil, for truth or for falsehood--a point which, as
far as that expression goes, we leave it for others or for the future
to determine. Accordingly it is just the word to use in the instance
of a volume in which what is trite and what is novel, what is striking
and what is startling, what is sound and what is untrustworthy, what
is deep and what is shallow, are so mixed up together, or at least so
vaguely suggested, or so perplexingly confessed, which has so much of
occasional force, of circumambient glitter, of pretence and of
seriousness, as to make it impossible either with a good conscience to
praise it, or without harshness and unfairness to condemn. Such a book
is at least likely to be effective, whatever else it is or is not; and
if it is effective, it may be safely called remarkable, and therefore
we apply the epithet "remarkable" to this "Ecce Homo."

It is remarkable, then, on account of the sensation which it has made
in religious circles. In the course of a few months it has reached a
third edition, though it is a fair-sized octavo and not an over-cheap
one. And it has received the praise of critics and reviewers of very
distinct shades of opinion. Such a reception must be owing either to
the book itself or to the circumstances of the day in which it has
appeared, or to both of these causes together. Or, as seems to be the
case, the needs of the day have become a call for some such work; and
the work, on its appearance, has been thankfully welcomed, on account
of its professed object, by those whose needs called for it. The
author includes himself in the number of these; and, while providing
for his own wants, he has ministered to theirs. This is what we
especially mean by calling his book "remarkable."

Disputants may maintain, if they please, that religious doubt is our
natural, our normal state; that to cherish doubts is our duty that to
complain of them is impatience; that to dread them is cowardice; that
to overcome them is inveracity; that it is even a happy state, a state
of calm philosophic enjoyment, to be conscious of them--but after all,
necessary or not, such a state is not natural, and not happy, if the
voice of mankind is to decide the question. English minds, in
particular, have too much of a religious temper in them, as a natural
gift, to acquiesce for any long time in positive, active doubt. For
doubt and devotion are incompatible with each other; every doubt, be
it greater or less, stronger or weaker, involuntary as well as
voluntary, acts upon {619} devotion, so far forth, as water sprinkled,
or dashed, or poured out upon a flame, Real and proper doubt kills
faith, and devotion with it; and even involuntary or half-deliberate
doubt, though it does not actually kill faith, goes far to kill
devotion; and religion without devotion is little better than a
burden, and soon becomes a superstition. Since, then, this is a day of
objection and of doubt about the intellectual basis of revealed truth,
it follows that there is a great deal of secret discomfort and
distress in the religions portion of the community, the result of that
general curiosity in speculation and inquiry which has been the growth
among us of the last twenty or thirty years.

The people of this country, being Protestants, appeal to Scripture,
when a religious question arises, as their ultimate informant and
decisive authority in all such matters; but who is to decide for them
the previous question, that Scripture is really such an authority?
When, then, as at this time, its divine authority is the very point to
be determined, that is, the character and extent of its inspiration
and its component parts, then they find themselves at sea, without
possessing any power over the direction of their course. Doubting
about the authority of Scripture, they doubt about its substantial
truth; doubting about its truth, they have doubts concerning the
objects which it sets before their faith, about the historical
accuracy and objective reality of the picture which it presents to us
of our Lord. We are not speaking of wilful doubting but of those
painful misgivings, greater or less, to which we have already alluded.
Religious Protestants, when they think calmly on the subject, can
hardly conceal from themselves that they have a house without logical
foundations, which contrives indeed for the present to stand, but
which may go any day--and where are they then?

Of course Catholics will tell them to receive the canon of Scripture
on the authority of the church, in the spirit of St. Augustine's
well-known words: "I should not believe the gospel, were I not moved
by the authority of the Catholic Church." But who, they ask, is to be
voucher in turn for the church and St. Augustine? is it not as
difficult to prove the authority of the church and her doctors as the
authority of the Scriptures? We Catholics answer, and with reason, in
the negative; but, since they cannot be brought to agree with us here,
what argumentative ground is open to them? Thus they seem drifting,
slowly perhaps, but surely, in the direction of scepticism.

It is under these circumstances that they are invited, in the volume
before us, to betake themselves to the contemplation of our Lord's
character, as it is recorded by the evangelists, as carrying with it
its own evidence, dispensing with extrinsic proof, and claiming
authoritatively by itself the faith and devotion of all to whom it is
presented. Such an argument, of course, is as old as Christianity
itself; the young man in the Gospel calls our Lord "Good Master," and
St. Peter introduces him to the first Gentile converts as one who
"went about doing good;" and in these last times we can refer to the
testimony even of unbelievers in behalf of an argument as simple as it
is constraining. "Si la vie et la mort de Socrate sont d'un sage,"
says Rousseau, "la vie et la mort de Jésus sont d'un Dieu." And he
clenches the argument by observing, that, were the picture a mere
conception of the sacred writers, "l'inventeur en serait plus étonnant
que le héros." Its especial force lies in its directness; it comes to
the point at once, and concentrates in itself evidence, doctrine, and
devotion. In theological language, it is the _motivum credibilitatis_,
the _objectum materiale_ and the _formale_, all in one; it unites
human reason and supernatural faith in one complex act; and it comes
home to all men, educated and ignorant, young and old. And it is the
point to which, after all {620} and in fact, all religious minds tend,
and in which they ultimately rest, even if they do not start from it.
Without an intimate apprehension of the personal character of our
Saviour, what professes to be faith is little more than an act of
ratiocination. If faith is to live, it must love; it must lovingly
live in the author of faith as a true and living being, _in Deo vivo
et vero_; according to the saying of the Samaritans to their
towns-woman: "We now believe, not for thy saying, for we ourselves
have heard him." Many doctrines may be held implicitly; but to see him
as if intuitively is the very promise and gift of him who is the
object of the intuition. We are constrained to believe when it is he
that speaks to us about himself.

Such undeniably is the characteristic of divine faith viewed in
itself; but here we are concerned, not simply with faith, but with its
logical antecedents; and the question returns on which we have already
touched, as a difficulty with Protestants--how can our Lord's life, as
recorded in the Gospels, be a logical ground of faith, unless we set
out with assuming the truth of those Gospels; that is, without
assuming as proved the original matter of doubt? And Protestant
apologists, it may be urged--Paley for instance--show their sense of
this difficulty when they place the argument drawn from our Lord's
character only among the auxiliary evidences of Christianity. Now the
following answer may fairly be made to this objection; nor need we
grudge Protestants the use of it, for, as will appear in the sequel,
it proves too much for their purpose, as being an argument for the
divinity not only of Christ's mission, but of that of his church also.
However, we say this by the way.

It may be maintained then, that, making as large an allowance as the
most sceptical mind, when pressed to state its demands in full, would
desire, we are at least safe in asserting that the books of the New
Testament, taken as a whole, existed about the middle of the second
century, and were then received by Christians, or were in the way of
being received, and nothing else but them was received, as the
authoritative record of the origin and rise of their religion. In that
first age they were the only account of the mode in which Christianity
was introduced to the world. Internal as well as external evidence
sanctions us in so speaking. Four Gospels, the book of the acts of the
Apostles, various Apostolic writings, made up then, as now, our sacred
books. Whether there was a book more or less, say even an important
book, does not affect the general character of the religion as those
books set it forth. Omit one or other of the Gospels, and three or
four Epistles, and the outline and nature of its objects and its
teaching remain what they were before the omission. The moral
peculiarities, if particular, of its Founder are, on the whole,
identical, whether we learn them from St. Matthew, St. John, St.
Peter, or St. Paul. He is not in one book a Socrates, in another a
Zeno, and in a third an Epicurus. Much less is the religion changed or
obscured by the loss of particular chapters or verses, or even by
inaccuracy in fact, or by error in opinion, (supposing _per
impossible_ such a charge could be made good,) in particular portions
of a book. For argument's sake, suppose that the three first Gospels
are an accidental collection of traditions or legends, for which no
one is responsible, and in which Christians put faith because there
was nothing else to put faith in. This is the limit to which extreme
scepticism can proceed, and we are willing to commence our argument by
granting it. Still, starting at this disadvantage, we should be
prepared to argue, that if, in spite of this, and after all, there be
shadowed out in these anonymous and fortuitous documents a teacher
_sui generis_, distinct, consistent, and original, then does that
picture, thus accidentally resulting, for the very reason {621} of its
accidental composition, only become more marvellous; then he is an
historical fact and again a supernatural or divine fact--historical
from the consistency of the representation, and because the time
cannot be assigned when it was not received as a reality; and
supernatural, in proportion as the qualities, with which he is
invested in those writings, are incompatible with what it is
reasonable or possible to ascribe to human nature viewed simply in
itself. Let these writings be as open to criticism, whether as to
their origin or their text, as sceptics can maintain; nevertheless the
representation in question is there, and forces upon the mind a
conviction that it records a fact, and a superhuman fact, just as the
reflection of an object in a stream remains in its definite form,
however rapid the current, and however many the ripples, and is a sure
warrant to us of the presence of the object on the bank, though that
object be out of sight.

Such, we conceive, though stated in our own words, is the argument
drawn out in the pages before us, or rather such is the ground on
which the argument is raised; and the interest which it has excited
lies, not in its novelty, but in the particular mode in which it is
brought before the reader, in the originality and preciseness of
certain strokes by which is traced out for us the outline of the
divine teacher. These strokes are not always correct; they are
sometimes gratuitous, sometimes derogatory to their object; but they
are always determinate; and, being such, they present an old argument
before us with a certain freshness, which, because it is old, is
necessary for its being effective.

We do not wonder at all, then, at the sensation which the volume is
said to have caused at Oxford, and among the Anglicans of the Oxford
school, after the wearisome doubt and disquiet of the last ten years;
for it has opened the prospect of a successful issue of inquiries in
an all-important province of thought, where there seemed to be no
thoroughfare. Distinct as are the liberal and catholicising parties in
the Anglican Church, both in their principles and their policy, it
must not be supposed that they are as distinct in the members that
compose them. No line of demarcation can be drawn between the one
collection of men and the other, in fact; for no two minds are
altogether alike, and, individually, Anglicans have each his own shade
of opinion, and belong partly to this school, partly to that. Or,
rather, there is a large body of men who are neither the one nor the
other; they cannot be called an intermediate party, for they have no
discriminating watch-words; they range from those who are almost
Catholic to those who are almost liberals. They are not liberals,
because they do not glory in a state of doubt; they cannot profess to
be "Anglo-Catholics," because they are not prepared to give an eternal
assent to all that is put forth by the church as truth of revelation.
These are the men who, if they could, would unite old ideas with new;
who cannot give up tradition, yet are loth to shut the door to
progress; who look for a more exact adjustment of faith with reason
than has hitherto been attained; who love the conclusions of Catholic
theology better than the proofs, and the methods of modern thought
better than its results; and who, in the present wide unsettlement of
religious opinion, believe indeed, or wish to believe, scripture and
orthodox doctrine, taken as a whole, and cannot get themselves to avow
any deliberate dissent from any part of either, but still, not knowing
how to defend their belief with logical exactness, or at least feeling
that there are large unsatisfied objections lying against parts of it,
or having misgivings lest there should be such, acquiesce in what is
called a practical belief, that is, believe in revealed truths, only
because belief in them is the safest course, because they are
probable, and because belief in {622} consequence is a duty, not as if
they felt absolutely certain, though they will not allow themselves to
be actually in doubt. Such is about the description to be given of
them as a class, though, as we have said, they so materially differ
from each other, that no general account of them can be applied
strictly to any individual in their body.

Now, it is to this large class which we have been describing that such
a work as that before us, in spite of the serious errors which they
will not be slow to recognize in it, comes as a friend in need. They
do not stumble at the author's inconsistencies or shortcomings; they
are arrested by his professed purpose, and are profoundly moved by his
successful hits (as they may be called) toward fulfilling it. Remarks
on the gospel history, such as Paley's they feel to be casual and
superficial; such as Rousseau's, to be vague and declamatory: they
wish to justify with their intellect all that they believe with their
heart; they cannot separate their ideas of religion from its revealed
object; but they have an aching dissatisfaction within them, that they
apprehend him so dimly, when they would fain (as it were) see and
touch him as well as hear. When, then, they have logical grounds
presented to them for holding that the recorded picture of our Lord is
its own evidence, that it carries with it its own reality and
authority, that his "revelatio" is "revelata" in the very act of being
a "revelatio," it is as if he himself said to them, as he once said to
his disciples, "It is I, be not afraid;" and the clouds at once clear
off, and the waters subside, and the land is gained for which they are
looking out.

The author before us, then, has the merit of promising what, if he
could fulfil it, would entitle him to the gratitude of thousands. We
do not say, we are very far from thinking, that he has actually
accomplished so high an enterprise, though he seems to be ambitious
enough to hope that he has not come far short of it. He somewhere
calls his book a treatise; he would have done better to call it an
essay; nor need he have been ashamed of a word which Locke has used in
his work on the Human Understanding. Before concluding, we shall take
occasion to express our serious sense, how very much his execution
falls below his purpose; but certainly it is a great purpose which he
sets before him, and for that he is to be praised. And there is at
least this singular merit in his performance, as he has given it to
the public, that he is clear-sighted and fair enough to view our
Lord's work in its true light, as including in it the establishment of
a visible kingdom or church. In proportion, then, as we shall
presently find it our duty to pass some severe remarks upon his
volume, as it comes before us, so do we feel bound, before doing so,
to give some specimens of it in that point of view in which we
consider it really to subserve the cause of revealed truth. And in the
sketch which we are now about to give of the first steps of his
investigation, we must not be understood to make him responsible for
the language in which we shall exhibit them to our readers, and which
will unavoidably involve our own corrections of his ailment, and our
own coloring.

Among a people, then, accustomed by the most sacred traditions of
their religion to a belief in the appearance, from time to time, of
divine messengers for their instruction and reformation, and to the
expectation of one such messenger to come, the last and greatest of
all, who should also be their king and deliverer as well as their
teacher, suddenly is found, after a long break in the succession and a
period of national degradation, a prophet of the old stamp, in one of
the deserts of the country---John, the son of Zachary. He announces
the promised kingdom as close at hand, calls his countrymen to
repentance, and institutes a rite symbolical of it. The people seem
disposed to take him for the destined Saviour; but he points out to
them a {623} private person in the crowd which is flocking about him;
and henceforth the interest which his own preaching has excited
centres in that other. Thus our Lord is introduced to the notice of
his countrymen.

Thus brought before the world, he opens his mission. What is the first
impression it makes upon us? Admiration of its singular simplicity
both as to object and work. Such of course ought to be its character,
if it was to be the fulfilment of the ancient, long-expected promise;
and such it was, as our Lord proclaimed it. Other men, who do a work,
do not set about it as their object; they make several failures; they
are led on to it by circumstances; they miscalculate their powers; or
they are drifted from the first in a direction different from that
which they had chosen; they do most where they are expected to do
least. But our Lord said and did. "He formed one plan and executed
it," (p. 18). Next, what was that plan? Let us consider the force of
the words in which, as the Baptist before him, he introduced his
ministry; "The kingdom of God is at hand." What was meant by the
kingdom of God? "The conception was no new one, but familiar to every
Jew," (p. 19.) At the first formation of the nation and state of the
Israelites the Almighty had been their king; when a line of earthly
kings was introduced, then God spoke by the prophets. The existence of
the theocracy was the very constitution and boast of Israel, as
limited monarchy, liberty, and equality are the boast respectively of
certain modern nations. Moreover, the gospel proclamation ran,
"Poenitentiam agite; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" here again
was another and recognized token of a theophany; for the mission of a
prophet, as we have said above, was commonly a call to reformation and
expiation of sin. A divine mission, then, such as our Lord's, was a
falling back upon the original covenant between God and his people;
but next, while it was an event of old and familiar occurrence, it
ever had carried with it in its past instances something new, in
connection with the circumstances under which it took place. The
prophets were accustomed to give interpretations, or to introduce
modifications of the letter of the law, to add to its conditions and
to enlarge its application. It was to be expected, then, that now,
when the new prophet, to whom the Baptist pointed, opened his
commission, he too, in like manner, would be found to be engaged in a
restoration, but in a restoration which should also be a religious
advance; and that the more if he really was the special, final prophet
of the theocracy, to whom all former prophets had looked forward, and
in whom their long and august line was to be summed up and perfected.
In proportion as his work was to be more signal, so would his new
revelations be wider and more wonderful.

Did our Lord fulfil these expectations? Yes, there was this
peculiarity in his mission, that he came not only as one of the
prophets in the kingdom of God, but as the king himself of that
kingdom. Thus his mission involves the most exact return to the
original polity of Israel, which the appointment of Saul had
disarranged, while it recognizes also the line of prophets, and
infuses a new spirit into the law. Throughout his ministry our Lord
claimed and received the title of king, which no prophet ever had done
before. On his birth, the wise men came to worship "the king of the
Jews;" "thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel," cried
Nathanael after his baptism; and on his cross the charge recorded
against him was that he professed to be "king of the Jews." "During
his whole public life," says the author, "he is distinguished from the
other prominent characters of Jewish history by his unbounded personal
pretensions. He calls himself habitually king and master. He claims
expressly the character of that divine Messiah for which the ancient
prophets had directed the nation to look," (page 25.)

{624}

He is, then, a King, as well as a Prophet; but is he as one of the old
heroic kings, David or Solomon? Had such been his pretension, he had
not, in his own words, "discerned the signs of the times." It would
have been a false step in him, into which other would-be champions of
Israel, before and after him, actually fell, and in consequence
failed. But here this young Prophet is from the first distinct,
decided, and original. His contemporaries, indeed, the wisest, the
most experienced, were wedded to the notion of a revival of the
barbaric kingdom. "Their heads were full of the languid dreams of
commentators, the impracticable pedantries of men who live in the
past," (p. 27.) But he gave to the old prophetic promises an
interpretation which they could undeniably bear, but which they did
not immediately suggest; which we can maintain to be true, while we
can deny them to be imperative. He had his own prompt, definite
conception of the restored theocracy; it was his own, and not
another's; it was suited to the new age; it was triumphantly carried
out in the event.

In what, then, did he consider his royalty to consist? First, what was
it not? It did not consist in the ordinary functions of royalty; it
did not prevent his payment of tribute to Caesar; it did not make him
a judge in questions of criminal or of civil law, in a question of
adultery, or in the adjudication of an inheritance; nor did it give
him the command of armies. Then perhaps, after all, it was but a
figurative royalty, as when the Eridanus is called "fluviorum rex," or
Aristotle "the prince of philosophers." No; it was not a figurative
royalty either. To call one's self a king, without being one, is
playing with edged tools--as in the story of the innkeeper's son, who
was put to death for calling himself "heir to the crown." Christ
certainly knew what he was saying. "He had provoked the accusation of
rebellion against the Roman government: he must have known that the
language he used would be interpreted so. Was there then nothing
substantial in the royalty he claimed? Did he die for a metaphor?" (p.
28.) He meant what he said, and therefore his kingdom was literal and
real; it was visible; but what were its visible prerogatives, if they
were not those in which earthly royalty commonly consists? In truth he
passed by the lesser powers of royalty, to claim the higher. He
claimed certain divine and transcendent functions of the original
theocracy, which had been in abeyance since that theocracy had been
infringed, which even to David had not been delegated, which had never
been exercised except by the Almighty. God had created, first the
people, next the state, which he deigned to govern. "The origin of
other nations is lost in antiquity," (p. 33;) but "this people," runs
the sacred word, "have I formed for myself." And "He who first called
the nation did for it the second work of a king: he gave it a law,"
(p. 34) Now it is very striking to observe that these two
incommunicable attributes of divine royalty, as exemplified in the
history of the Israelites, are the very two which our Lord assumed. He
was the maker and the lawgiver of his subjects. He said in the
commencement of his ministry, "_Follow_ me;" and he added, "and I will
make you"--you in turn--"fishers of men." And the next we read of him
is, that his disciples came to him on the Mount, and he opened his
mouth and _taught_ them. And so again, at the end of it, "Go ye, make
_disciples_ of all nations, _teaching_ them." "Thus the very words for
which the [Jewish] nation chiefly hymned their Jehovah, he undertook
in his name to do. He undertook to be the father of an everlasting
state, and the legislator of a world-wide society," (p. 36;) that is,
showing himself, according to the prophetic announcement, to be
"_Admirabilis, consiliarius, pater futuri saeculi, princeps pacis_."

{625}

To these two claims he adds a third: first, he chooses the subjects of
his kingdom; next, he gives them a law; but thirdly, he judges
them--judges them in a far truer and fuller sense than in the old
kingdom even the Almighty judged his people. The God of Israel
ordained national rewards and punishments for national obedience or
transgression; he did not judge his subjects one by one; but our Lord
takes upon himself the supreme and final judgment of every one of his
subjects, not to speak of the whole human race (though, from the
nature of the case, this function cannot belong to his visible
kingdom.) "He considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his
hand," (p, 40.)

We shall mention one further function of the new King and his new
kingdom: its benefits are even bound up with the maintenance of this
law of political unity. "To organize a society, and to bind the
members of it together by the closest ties, were the business of his
life. For this reason it was that he called men away from their home,
imposed upon some a wandering life, upon others the sacrifice of their
property, and endeavored by all means to divorce them from their
former connections, in order that they might find a new home in the
church. For this reason he instituted a solemn initiation, and for
this reason he refused absolutely to any one a dispensation from it.
For this reason, too . . . he established a common feast, which was
through all ages to remind Christians of their indissoluble union,"
(p. 92.) But _cui bono_ is a visible kingdom, when the great end of
our Lord's ministry is moral advancement and preparation for a future
state? It is easy to understand, for instance, how a sermon may
benefit, or personal example, or religious friends, or household
piety. We can learn to imitate a saint or a martyr, we can cherish a
lesson, we can study a treatise, we can obey a rule; but what is the
definite advantage to a preacher or a moralist of an external
organization, of a visible kingdom? Yet Christ says, "Seek ye _first_
the kingdom of God," as well as "his justice." Socrates wished to
improve men, but he laid no stress on their acting in concert in order
to secure that improvement; on the contrary, the Christian law is
political, as certainly as it is moral. Why is this? It arises out of
the intimate relation between him and his subjects, which, in bringing
them all to him as their common Father, necessarily brings them to
each other. Our Lord says, "Where two or three are gathered together
in my name, I am in the midst of them." Fellowship between his
followers is made a distinct object and duty, because it is a means,
according to the provisions of his system, by which in some special
way they are brought near to him. This is declared, still more
strikingly than in the text we have just quoted, in the parable of the
vine and its branches, and in that (if it is to be called a parable)
of the Bread of Life. The Almighty King of Israel was ever, indeed,
invisibly present in the glory above the Ark, but he did not manifest
himself there or anywhere else as a present cause of spiritual
strength to his people; but the new king is not only ever present, but
to every one of his subjects individually is he a first element and
perennial source of life. He is not only the head of his kingdom, but
also its animating principle and its centre of power. The author whom
we are reviewing does not quite reach the great doctrine here
suggested, but he goes near it in the following passage: "Some men
have appeared who have been as 'levers to uplift the earth and roll it
in another course." Homer by creating literature, Socrates by creating
science, Caesar by carrying civilization inland from the shores of the
Mediterranean, Newton by starting science upon a career of steady
progress, may be said to have attained this eminence. {626} But these
men gave a single impact like that which is conceived to have first
set the planets in motion. Christ claims to be a perpetual attractive
power, like the sun, which determines their orbit. They contributed to
men some discovery, and passed away; Christ's discovery is himself. To
humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny he says, cling
to me--cling ever closer to me. If we believe St. John, he
represented himself as the light of the world, as the shepherd of the
souls of men, as the way to immortality, as the vine or life-tree of
humanity,' (p. 177.) He ends this beautiful passage, of which we have
already quoted as much as our limits allow, by saying that "He
instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding on his body and
blood."

_O si sic omnia!_ Is it not hard, that, after following with pleasure
a train of thought so calculated to warm all Christian hearts, and to
create in them both admiration and sympathy for the writer, we must
end our notice of him in a different tone, and express as much dissent
from him and as serious blame of him as we have hitherto been showing
satisfaction with his object, his intention, and the general outline
of his argument? But so it is. In what remains to be said we are
obliged to speak of his work in terms so sharp that they may seem to
be out of keeping with what has gone before. With whatever abruptness
in our composition, we must suddenly shift the scene, and manifest our
disapprobation of portions of his book as plainly as we have shown an
interest in it. We have praised it in various points of view. It has
stirred the hearts of many; it has recognized a need, and gone in the
right direction for supplying it. It serves as a token and a hopeful
token, of what is going on in the minds of numbers of men external to
the church. It is substantially a good book, and, we trust, will work
for good. Especially, as we have seen, is it interesting to the
Catholic as acknowledging the visible church as our Lord's own
creation, as the direct fruit of his teaching, and the destined
instrument of his purposes. We do not know how to speak in an
unfriendly tone of an author who has done so much as this; but at the
same time, when we come to examine his argument in its details, and
study his chapters one by one, we find, in spite of, and mixed up with
what is true and original, and even putting aside his patent
theological errors, so much bad logic, so much of rash and gratuitous
assumption, so much of half-digested thought, that we are obliged to
conclude that it would have been much wiser in him if, instead of
publishing what he seems to confess, or rather to proclaim, to be the
jottings of his first researches upon sacred territory, he had waited
till he had carefully traversed and surveyed and mapped the whole of
it. We now proceed to give a few instances of the faults of which we
complain.

His opening remarks will serve in illustration. In p. 41 he says, "We
have not rested upon _single_ passages, nor drawn from the _fourth
gospel_." This, we suppose, must be his reason for ignoring the
passage in Luke ii. 49, "Did you not know that I must be about my
father's business?" for he directly contradicts it, by gratuitously
imagining that our Lord came for St. John's baptism with the same
intention as the penitents around him; and that, in spite of his own
words, which we suppose are to be taken as another "single passage,"
"So it becometh us to fulfil all justice," (Matt. iii. 15.) It must be
on this principle of ignoring single passages such as these, even
though they admit of combination, that he goes on to say of our Lord,
that "in the agitation of mind caused by his baptism, and by the
Baptist's designation of him as the future prophet, he retired into
the wilderness," and there "he matured the plan of action which we see
him executing from the moment of his return into society," (p. 9;) and
that not till then was he "conscious of miraculous power," {627} (p.
12.) This neglect of the sacred text, we repeat must be allowed him,
we suppose, under color of his acting out his rule of abstaining from
single passages and from the fourth gospel. Let us allow it; but at
least he ought to adduce passages, single or many, for what he
actually does assert. He must not be allowed arbitrarily to add to the
history, as well as cautiously to take from it. Where, then, we ask,
did he learn that our Lord's baptism caused him "agitation of mind,"
that he "matured his plan of action in the wilderness," and that he
then first was "conscious of miraculous power"? But again: it seems he
is not to refer to "single passages or the fourth gospel;" yet,
wonderful to say, he actually does open his formal discussion of the
sacred history by referring to a passage from that very gospel--nay,
to a particular text, which is only not a "single" text, because it is
half a text, and half a text, such that, had he taken the whole of it,
he would have been obliged to admit that the part which he puts aside
just runs counter to his interpretation of the part, which he insists
on. The words are these, as they stand in the Protestant version:
"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Now,
it is impossible to deny that "which taketh away," etc., fixes and
limits the sense of "the Lamb of God;" but our author notices the
latter half of the sentence, only in order to put aside the light it
throws upon the former half; and instead of the Baptist's own
interpretation of the title which he gives to our Lord, he substitutes
another, radically different, which he selects for himself out of one
of the psalms. He explains "the lamb" by the well-known image, which
represents the Almighty as a shepherd and his earthly servants as
sheep--innocent, safe, and happy under his protection. "The Baptist's
opinion of Christ's character, then," he says, "is summed up for us in
the title he gives him--the Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the
world. There _seems_ to be, in the last part of this description, an
allusion to the usages of the Jewish sacrificial system; and, in order
to explain it fully, it would be necessary to anticipate much which
will come more conveniently later in this treatise. _But_ when we
remember that the Baptist's mind was _doubtless_ full of imagery drawn
from the Old Testament, and that the conception of a lamb of God makes
the subject of one of the most striking of the psalms, _we shall
perceive what he meant to convey, by this phrase,_" (pp. 5, 6.) This
is like saying, "Isaiah declares, 'mine eyes have seen the king, the
lord of hosts;' _but_, considering that doubtless the prophet was well
acquainted with the first and second books of Samuel, and that Saul,
David, and Solomon are the three great kings there represented, we
shall easily perceive that by 'seeing the king,' he meant to say that
he saw Uzziah, king of Judah, in the last year of whose reign he had
the vision. As to the phrase 'the lord of hosts,' which seems to refer
to the Almighty, we will consider its meaning by and by:"--but, in
truth, it is difficult to invent a paralogism, in its gratuitous
inconsecutiveness parallel to his own.

We must own, that, with every wish to be fair to this author, we never
recovered from the perplexity of mind which this passage, in the very
threshold of his book, inflicted on us. It needed not the various
passages which follow it in the work, constructed on the same
argumentative model, to prove to us that he was not only an
_incognito_, but an enigma. "Ergo" is the symbol of the logician--what
science does a writer profess, whose symbols, profusely scattered
through his pages, are "probably," "it must be," "doubtless," "on the
hypothesis," "we may suppose," and "it is natural to think," and that
at the very time that he pointedly discards the comments of school
theologians? Is it possible that he can mean us to set aside the
glosses of all who went {628} before in his own favor, and to exchange
our old lamps for his new ones? Men have been at fault, when trying to
determine whether he was an orthodox believer on his road to
liberalism, or a liberal on his road to orthodoxy: this doubtless may
be to some a perplexity; but our own difficulty is, whether he comes
to us as an investigator or a prophet, as one unequal or superior to
the art of reasoning. Undoubtedly, he is an able man; but what can he
possibly mean by startling us with such eccentricities of
argumentation as are familiar with him? Addison somewhere bids his
readers bear in mind, that if he is ever especially dull, he always
has a special reason for being so; and it is difficult to reconcile
one's imagination to the supposition that this anonymous writer, with
so much deep thought as he certainly evidences, has not some recondite
reason for seeming so inconsequent, and does not move by some deep
subterraneous processes of argument, which, if once brought to light,
would clear him of the imputation of castle-building.

There is always a danger of misconceiving an author who has no
antecedents by which we may measure him. Taking his work as it lies,
we can but wish that he had kept his imagination under control; and
that he had more of the hard head of a lawyer and the patience of a
philosopher. He writes like a man who cannot keep from telling the
world his first thoughts, especially if they are clever or graceful;
he has come for the first time upon a strange world, and his remarks
upon it are too obvious to be called original, and too crude to
deserve the name of freshness. What can be more paradoxical than to
interpret our Lord's words to Nicodemus, "Unless a man be born again,"
and of the necessity of external religion, as a lesson to him to
profess his faith openly and not to visit him in secret? (p. 86.) What
can be more pretentious, not to say gaudy and even tawdry, than his
paraphrase of St. John's passage about the woman taken in adultery?
"In his burning embarrassment and confusion," he says, "he stooped
down so as to hide his face. . . . They had a glimpse perhaps of the
glowing blush upon his face, etc." (p. 104.)

We should be very sorry to use a severe word concerning an honest
inquirer after truth, as we believe this anonymous writer to be; and
we will confess that Catholics, kindly as they may wish to feel toward
him, are scarcely even able, from their very position, to give his
work the enthusiastic reception which it has received from some other
critics. The reason is plain; those alone can speak of it from a full
heart, who feel a need, and recognize in it a supply of that need. We
are not in the number of such; for they who have found have no need to
seek. Far be it from us to use language savoring of the leaven of the
Pharisees. We are not assuming a high place, because we thus speak, or
boasting of our security. Catholics are both deeper and shallower than
Protestants; but in neither case have they any call for a treatise
such as this "Ecce Homo." If they live to the world and the flesh,
then the faith which they profess, though it is true and distinct, is
dead; and their certainty about religious truth, however firm and
unclouded, is but shallow in its character, and flippant in its
manifestations. And in proportion, as they are worldly and sensual
will they be flippant and shallow. But their faith is as indelible as
the pigment which colors the skin, even though it is skin-deep. This
class of Catholics is not likely to take interest in a pictorial "Ecce
Homo." On the other hand, where the heart is alive with divine love,
faith is as deep as it is vigorous and joyous; and, as far as
Catholics are in this condition, they will feel no drawing toward a
work which is after all but an arbitrary and unsatisfactory dissection
of the object of their devotion. That individuals in their body maybe
{629} harassed with doubts, particularly in a day like this, we are
not denying; but, viewed as a body, Catholics from their religious
condition, are either too deep or too shallow to suffer from those
elementary difficulties, or that distress of mind, in which serious
Protestants are so often involved.

We confess, then, as Catholics, to some unavoidable absence of cordial
feeling in following the remarks of this author, though not to any
want of real sympathy; and we seem to be justified in our
indisposition by his manifest want of sympathy with us. If we feel
distant toward him, his own language about Catholicity, and (what may
be called) old Christianity, seems to show that that distance is one
of fact, one of mental position, not any fault in ourselves. Is it not
undeniable, that the very life of personal religion among Catholics
lies in a knowledge of the Gospels? It is the character and conduct of
our Lord, his words, his deeds, his sufferings, his work, which are
the very food of our devotion and rule of our life. "Behold the Man,"
which this author feels to be an object novel enough to write a book
about, has been the contemplation of Catholics from that first age
when St. Paul said, "The life that I now live in the flesh, I live in
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself for
me." As the Psalms have ever been the manual of our prayer, so have
the Gospels been the subject-matter of our meditation. In these latter
times especially, since St. Ignatius, they have been divided into
portions, and arranged in a scientific order, not unlike that which
the Psalms have received in the Breviary. To contemplate our Lord in
his person and his history is with us the exercise of every retreat,
and the devotion of every morning. All this is certainly simple matter
of fact; but the writer we are reviewing lives and thinks at so great
distance from us as not to be cognizant of what is so patent and so
notorious a truth. He seems to imagine that the faith of a Catholic is
the mere profession of a formula. He deems it important to disclaim in
the outset of his work all reference to the theology of the church. He
eschews with much preciseness, as something almost profane, the
dogmatism of former ages. He wishes "to trace" our Lord's "biography
from point to point, and accept those conclusions--not which church
doctors or even Apostles have sealed with their authority--but which
the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant."
(Preface.) Now, what Catholics, what church doctors, as well as
Apostles, have ever lived on, is not any number of theological canons
or decrees, but we repeat, the Christ himself, as he is represented in
concrete existence in the Gospels. Theological determinations about
our Lord are far more of the nature of landmarks or buoys to guide a
discursive mind in its reasonings, than to assist a devotional mind in
its worship. Common-sense, for instance, tell us what is meant by the
words, "My Lord and my God;" and a religious man, upon his knees,
requires no commentator; but against irreligious speculators, Arius or
Nestorius, a denunciation has been passed in ecumenical council, when
"science falsely so-called" encroached upon devotion. Has not this
been insisted on by all dogmatic Christians over and over again? Is it
not a representation as absolutely true as it is trite? We had fancied
that Protestants generally allowed the touching beauty of Catholic
hymns and meditations; and after all is there not that in all Catholic
churches which goes beyond any written devotion, whatever its force or
its pathos? Do we not believe in a presence in the sacred tabernacle,
not as a form of words, or as a notion, but as an object as real as we
are real? And if in that presence we need neither profession of faith
nor even manual of devotion, what appetite can we have for the
teaching of a writer who not only exalts his first thoughts about our
{630} Lord into professional lectures, but implies that the Catholic
Church has never known how to point him out to her children?

It may be objected, that we are making too much of so chance a slight
as his allusion in his preface to "church doctors" involves,
especially as he mentions apostles in connection with them; but it
would be affectation not to recognize in other places of his book an
undercurrent of antagonism to us, of which the passage already quoted
is but a first indication. Of course he has quite as much right as
another to take up an anti-catholic position, if he will; but we
understand him to be putting forth an investigation, not a polemical
argument and if, instead of keeping his eyes directed to his own
proper subject, he looks to the right or left to hit at those who view
it differently from himself, he is damaging the ethical force of a
composition which claims to be, and mainly is, a serious and manly
search after religious truth. Why cannot he let us alone? Of course he
cannot avoid seeing that the lines of his own investigation diverge
from those drawn by others, but he will have enough to do in defending
himself, without making others the object of his attack. He is
virtually opposing Voltaire, Strauss, Renan, Calvin, Wesley, Chalmers,
Erskine, and a host of other writers, but he does not denounce them;
why then does he single out, misrepresent, and anathematize a main
principle of orthodoxy? It is as if he could not keep his hand off us,
when we crossed his path. We are alluding to the following magisterial
passage:

  "If he (our Lord) meant anything by his constant denunciation of
  hypocrites, there is nothing which he would have visited with
  sterner censure than that _short cut to belief_ which many persons
  take, when, overwhelmed with the difficulties which beset their
  minds, and afraid of damnation, they _suddenly_ resolve to strive no
  longer, but, giving their minds a holiday, to rest content with
  _saying_ that they believe, and acting as if they did. A melancholy
  end of Christianity indeed! Can there be such a disfranchised pauper
  class among the citizens of the New Jerusalem?" (p. 79.)

He adds shortly afterward:

  "Assuredly, those who represent Christ as presenting to man an
  abstruse theology, and saying to them peremptorily, 'believe or be
  damned,' have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world,"
  (p. 80.)

Thus he delivers himself; "Believe or be damned is so detestable a
doctrine, that if any man denies it is detestable, I pronounce him to
be a hypocrite; to be without any true knowledge of the Saviour of the
world; to be the object of his sternest censure; and to have no part
or place in the holy city, the New Jerusalem, the eternal heaven
above." Pretty well for a virtuous hater of dogmatism! We hope we
shall show less dictatorial arrogance than his, in the answer which we
intend to make to him.

Whether there are persons such as he describes, Catholic or
Protestants, converts to Catholicism or not--men who profess a faith
which they do not believe, under the notion that they shall be
eternally damned if they do not profess it without believing--we
really do not know--we never met with such; but since facts do not
concern us here so much as principles, let us, for argument's sake,
grant that there are. Our author believes they are not only "many,"
but enough to form a "class;" and he considers that they act in this
preposterous manner under the sanction, and in accordance with the
teaching, of the religious bodies to which they belong. Especially
there is a marked allusion in his words to the Athanasian creed and
the Catholic Church. Now we answer him thus:

Part of his charge against the teachers of dogma is, that they impose
on men as a duty, instead of believing, to "act as if they did"
believe; now in fact this is the very {631} kind of profession which,
if it is all that a candidate has to offer, absolutely shuts him out
from admission into Catholic communion. We suppose, that by belief of
a thing, this writer understands an inward conviction of its truth;
this being supposed, we plainly say that no priest is at liberty to
receive a man into the church, who has not a real internal belief, and
cannot say from his heart, that the things taught by the church are
true. On the other hand, as we have said above, it is the very
characteristic of the profession of faith made by numbers of educated
Protestants, and it is the utmost extent to which they are able to go
in believing, to hold, not that Christian doctrine is certainly true,
but that it has such a semblance of truth, it has such considerable
marks of probability upon it, that it is their duty to accept and to
act upon it as if it were true beyond all question or doubt: and they
justify themselves, and with much reason, by the authority of Bishop
Butler. Undoubtedly, a religious man will be led to go as far as this,
if he cannot go further; but unless he can go farther, he is no
catechumen of the Catholic Church. We wish all men to believe that her
creed is true; but till they do so believe, we do not wish, we have no
permission, to make them her members. Such a faith as this author
speaks of to condemn--(our books call it "_practical_ certainty")--
does not rise to the level of the _sine quâ non_, which is the
condition prescribed for becoming a Catholic. Unless a convert so
believes that he can sincerely say, "after all, in spite of all
difficulties, objections, obscurities, mysteries, the creed of the
Church undoubtedly comes from God, and is true, because he is the
truth," such a man, though he be outwardly received into her fold,
will receive no grace from the sacraments, no sanctification in
baptism, no pardon in penance, no life in communion. We are more
consistently dogmatic than this author imagines; we do not enforce a
principle by halves; if our doctrine is true, it must be received as
such; if a man cannot so receive it, he must wait till he can. It
would be better, indeed, if he now believed; but, since he does not as
yet, to wait is the best he can do under the circumstances. If we said
anything else than this, certainly we should be, as the author thinks
we are, encouraging hypocrisy. Nor let him turn round on us and say
that by thus proceeding we are laying a burden on souls, and blocking
up the entrance into that fold which was intended for all men, by
imposing hard conditions on candidates for admission; for we have
already implied a great principle, which is an answer to this
objection, which the gospels exhibit and sanction, but which he
absolutely ignores.

Let us avail ourselves of his quotation. The Baptist said, "Behold the
Lamb of God." Again he says, "This is the Son of God." "Two of his
disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." They believed
John to be "a man sent from God" to teach them, and therefore they
believed his word to be true. We suppose it was not hypocrisy in them
to believe in his word; rather they would have been guilty of gross
inconsistency or hypocrisy, had they professed to believe that he was
a divine messenger and yet had refused to take his word concerning the
Stranger whom he pointed out to their veneration. It would have been
"saying that they believed," and _not_ "acting as if they did;" which
at least is not better than saying and acting. Now, was not the
announcement which John made to them "a short cut to belief"? and what
the harm of it? They believed that our Lord was the promised prophet,
without making direct inquiry about him, without a new inquiry, on the
ground of a previous inquiry into the claims of John himself to be
accounted a messenger from God. They had already accepted it as truth
that John was a prophet; but again, what a prophet said must be true;
{632} else he would not be a prophet; now, John said that our Lord was
the Lamb of God; this, then, certainly was a sacred truth.

Now it might happen, that they knew exactly and for certain what the
Baptist meant in calling our Lord "a Iamb;" in that case they would
believe him to be that which they knew the figurative word meant, as
used by the Baptist. But, as our author reminds us, the word has
different senses; and, though the Baptist explained his own sense of
it on the first occasion of using it, by adding, "that taketh away the
sin of the world," yet when he spoke to the two disciples he did not
thus explain it. Now let us suppose that they went off, taking the
word each in his own sense, the one understanding by it a sacrificial
lamb, the other a lamb of the fold; and let us suppose that, as they
were on the way to our Lord's home, they discovered this difference in
their several interpretations, and disputed with each other which was
the right interpretation. It is clear that they would agree so far as
this, namely, that, in saying that the proposition was true, they
meant that it was true in that sense in which the Baptist spoke it;
moreover, if it be worth noticing, they did after all even agree, in
some vague way, about the meaning of the word, understanding that it
denoted some high character, or office, or ministry. Any how, it was
absolutely true, they would say, that our Lord was a lamb, whatever it
meant; the word conveyed a great and momentous fact, and if they did
not know what that fact was, the Baptist did, and they would accept it
in its one right sense, as soon as he or our Lord told them what it
was.

Again, as to that other title which the Baptist gave our Lord, "the
Son of God," it admitted of half a dozen senses. Wisdom was "the only
begotten;" the angels were the sons of God; Adam was a son of God; the
descendants of Seth were sons of God; Solomon was a son of God; and so
is "the just man." In which of these senses, or in what sense, was our
Lord the Son of God? St. Peter knew, but there were those who did not
know--the centurion who attended the crucifixion did not know, and
yet he confessed that our Lord was the Son of God. He knew that our
Lord had been condemned by the Jews for calling himself the Son of
God, and therefore he cried out, on seeing the miracles which attended
his death, "indeed this _was_ the Son of God." His words evidently
imply: "I do not know precisely what he meant by so calling himself;
but what he said he was, that he is; whatever he meant, I believe him;
I believe that his word about himself is true, though I cannot prove
it to be so, though I do not even understand it; I believe his word,
for I believe _him_."

Now to return to the passage which has led to these remarks. Our
author says that certain persons are hypocrites, because they "take a
short cut to belief, suddenly resolving to strive no longer, but to
rest content with saying they believe." Does he mean by "a short cut,"
believing on the word of another? As far as our experience goes of
religious changes in individuals, he can mean nothing else; yet how
_can_ he mean this with the gospels before him? He cannot mean it,
because the very staple of the sacred narrative is a call on all men
to believe what is not proved to them, merely on the warrant of divine
messengers; because the very form of our Lord's teaching is to
substitute authority for inquiry; because the very principle of his
grave earnestness, the very key to his regenerative mission, is the
intimate connection of faith with salvation. Faith is not simply trust
in his legislation, as this writer says; it is definitely trust in his
word, whether that word be about heavenly things or earthly; whether
it is spoken by his own mouth, or through his ministers. The angel who
announced the Baptist's birth said, "Thou shalt be dumb because thou
believest not my words." The {633} Baptist's mother said of Mary,
"Blessed is she that believed." The Baptist himself said, "He that
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not
the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Our
Lord, in turn, said to Nicodemus, "We speak that we do know, and ye
receive not our witness; he that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of
God." To the Jews, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that
sent me, shall not come into condemnation." To the Capharnaites, "he
that believeth on me hath everlasting life." To St Thomas, "Blessed
are they that have not seen and yet have believed." And to the
apostles, "Preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth not
shall be damned." How is it possible to deny that our Lord, both in
the text and in the context of these and other passages, made faith in
a message, on the warrant of the messenger, to be a condition of
salvation; and enforced it by the great grant of power which he
emphatically conferred on his representatives? "Whosoever shall not
receive you," he says, "nor hear your words, when ye depart, shake off
the dust of your feet." "It is not ye that speak, but the spirit of
your Father." "He that heareth you, heareth me; he that despiseth you,
despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me."
"I pray for them that shall believe on me through their word." "Whose
sins ye remit they are remitted unto them; and whose sins ye retain,
they are retained." "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound
in heaven." "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." These
characteristic and critical announcements have no place in this
author's gospel; and let it be understood, that we are not asking why
he does not determine the exact doctrines contained in them--for that
is a question which he has reserved (if we understand him) for a
future volume--but why he does not recognize the principle they
involve--for that is a matter which falls within his present subject.

It is not well to exhibit some sides of Christianity, and not others;
this we think is the main fault of the author we have been reviewing.
It does not pay to be ecclectic in so serious a matter of fact. He
does not overlook, he boldly confesses that a visible organized church
was a main part of our Lord's plan for the regeneration of mankind.
"As with Socrates," he says, "argument is every thing, and personal
authority nothing; so with Christ personal authority is all in all and
argument altogether unemployed," (p. 94.) Our Lord rested his
teaching, not on the concurrence and testimony of his hearers, but on
his own authority. He imposed upon them the declarations of a divine
voice. Why does this author stop short in the delineation of
principles which he has so admirably begun? Why does he denounce
"short cuts," as a mental disfranchisement, when no cut can be shorter
than to "believe and be saved"? Why does he denounce religious fear as
hypocritical, when it is written, "He that believeth not shall be
damned"? Why does he call it dishonest in a man to sacrifice his own
judgment to the word of God, when, unless he did so, he would be
avowing that the Creator knew less than the creature? Let him
recollect that no two thinkers, philosophers, writers, ever did, ever
will, agree in all things with each other. No system of opinions, ever
given to the world, approved itself in all its parts to the reason of
any one individual by whom it was mastered. No revelation is
conceivable, but involves, almost in its very idea, as being something
new, a collision with the human intellect, and demands, accordingly,
if it is to be accepted, a sacrifice of private judgment. {634} If a
revelation be necessary, then also in consequence is that sacrifice
necessary. One man will have to make a sacrifice in one respect,
another in another, all men in some. We say, then, to men of the day,
take Christianity, or leave it; do not practise upon it; to do so is
as unphilosophical as it is dangerous. Do not attempt to halve a
spiritual unit. You are apt to call it a dishonesty in us to refuse to
follow out our reasonings, when faith stands in the way; is there no
intellectual dishonesty in your own conduct? First, your very
accusation of us is dishonest; for you keep in the back-ground the
circumstance, of which you are well aware, that such a refusal on our
part is the necessary consequence of our accepting an authoritative
revelation; and next you profess to accept that revelation yourselves,
while you dishonestly pick and choose, and take as much or as little
of it as you please. You either accept Christianity or you do not: if
you do, do not garble and patch it; if you do not, suffer others to
submit to it as a whole.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

HOLY SATURDAY.


  Through that Jewish Sabbath day,
  Through our Holy Saturday,
          Thus he lay:
  In his linen winding-sheet,
  Wrapped in myrrh and spices sweet,
  Angels at his head and feet;
  Angels, duteous alway,
  Watched the wondrous beauteous clay
          As he lay.
  Through that Jewish Sabbath day,
  Through our Holy Saturday.

          Thus he lay
  And our mother Church this day
  Doth with solemn Office keep
  That strange day's mysterious sleep;
  Her "Exultet" breaks the sadness
  With triumphant strains of gladness;
  Paschal hope presaging morn,
  As in east just streaks the dawn;
  Darkest night ere brightest day;
  Such is Holy Saturday.

------

{635}


Translated from the Études Religieuses,
Historiques et Littéraires.

EAST-INDIAN WEDDINGS.

LETTER FROM FATHER GUCHEN OF THE MADURA  MISSION.


A very days ago I blessed a marriage in which great pomp was
displayed, and I will describe the festival to you, that you may have
an idea of what takes place on such occasions, for the same ceremonial
is always scrupulously observed. Indeed, every action of an Indian's
life from the cradle to the grave is irrevocably ordered by custom.

The solemnity I am speaking of now is called here, "a grand marriage."
My Christians are generally too poor to have to do with any but
"little marriages," which are performed very quietly, though with some
attendant circumstances that perhaps deserve a slight notice.

A remarkable peculiarity, and one that belongs to both kinds of
marriage, is that the bride and bridegroom do not know each other, do
not even see or speak to each other, until it is too late to draw
back. This is the decision of custom, and has its good and bad side,
like many other things in this world. "Why have you come here?" I
asked the other day of a little girl hardly twelve years old, who was
led into church. "My father said I was to be married, so I came," she
replied. A few hours later arrived the young man, pale, exhausted, and
writhing in the grasp of pangs unutterable. Begging me to serve him
first in the quality of physician, he told me his story: "I had just
done dinner and was going out to my palm-trees, when my father told me
to go to the church, and be married; so I took my bath of oil
immediately, which interfered with my digestion and caused my
illness."

The bath of oil is a necessary preliminary on these occasions. That
over, the bridegroom arrays himself in his finest garments. Two
cloths, about one foot three inches wide, and four or five times as
long, ornamented with a fringe, compose his costume; one covers his
loins and the other is wrapped around him; a red kerchief is rolled
about his head, and three pendants, nearly two inches long, and wide
in proportion, adorn each ear. If he is too poor to own these jewels,
he borrows them of his neighbors, and thus apparelled, goes to the
church and presents himself before the sonami, (missionary.)

The maiden also lavishes oil or butter upon her toilette, but on the
wedding day, she is so completely swathed in the ten or eleven yards
of cloth that form her raiment, that neither her jewels nor her face
can be distinguished. Not only is she invisible, but she is supposed
to see nothing herself, and when she wishes to change her place, the
person who accompanies her, often a poor old woman hardly able to
stand leads her by clasping her round the waist. I have sometimes
beheld the singular spectacle of a score of little girls from twelve
to fifteen years of age, muffled in cloth and crouched against the
wall of the church, repeating their prayers to satiety as they waited
for me to come and hear them recite.

They pass their examination; both bride and bridegroom know
faultlessly the pater, ave, credo, the commandments of God and the
church, the act of contrition, the confiteor, etc.; they {636} recite
the seven chapters, that is to say the little catechism, quite well; I
hear their confessions, and the next morning at mass I bless their
union, following in every respect the rubrics of the church, so that
there is nothing especial to notice excepting that the married pair
have no wedding-ring. In its place they have a golden jewel, rather
clumsy in form, through which passes a cord intended to be fastened
round the bride's neck. This jewel is called _tali_. It is the sign of
matrimonial union, and every married woman wears one; when her husband
dies, the relations assemble, and remove the _tali_ from the widow's
neck by breaking the cord.

But pardon me for carrying you without transition from a wedding to a
funeral--let us leave the graveyard and return to the church. Having
blessed the _tali_, applying to it the prayer indicated in the ritual
for the blessing of the ring, I return it to the young man who
presents it to the maiden; she receives it on her out-stretched hands,
and her companion, or if the latter is too old, any other woman
present, fastens it about her neck. Mass is celebrated; the bride and
bridegroom receive communion and the benediction, and then withdraw.
The bride remains hooded through the whole of the festive day; on the
next day after she shows her face, and the husband can for the first
time behold her features: a young man of my acquaintance learned
twenty-four hours after marriage, that his wife had but one eye.

I forgot to mention another custom, which is quite generally observed,
and seems to me charming. The bridegroom buys a _nuptial cloth_, which
is blessed by the priest at the same time with the _tali_, and in this
the bride arrays herself, when the marriage ceremonial is ended. She
wears this cloth during the days of festivity, but the husband gives
her no other garments, and the parents continue to furnish their
daughter's wardrobe until she brings her first child into the world.

But it is time I arrived at the ceremonies of the _grand marriage_
that I blessed on the eleventh of this month.

The young man belonged to Anacarei, and the maiden to Santancoulam, a
little town where we have a Christian settlement. As she had been
baptized only two years before, she still numbered many pagans among
her circle, a fact which made me willingly accede to the desire of her
parents that the marriage should be celebrated in the presence of her
family.

Even before dawn, two bands of musicians, making their instruments
resound in noble emulation of each other, announced to the whole town
that on that day there was to be a grand festival in the Catholic
Church. On their side, with one accord, the Christians devoted
themselves to the preparation of the church and altar; the only outlay
in decoration was upon flowers, but of those there were enough to load
a coach. At last all was ready, and wearing the alb and stole, I went
forward to receive the consent of the betrothed, who were accompanied
by their relations and friends. They joined their right hands, and I
pronounced over them the sacramental words, after which the _tali_ was
blessed and given first to the bridegroom and by turn to the bride,
but without being fastened about her neck, as that ceremony was to
take place afterward at home. I began mass. In the lectern, two
chanters were shaking the walls of the church with a clamor most
delightful to Indian ears, for singing is valued here in proportion to
the volume of voice brought to bear upon it. Indeed never before at
Santancoulam had anything so admirable been heard.

After mass the husband and wife withdrew in different directions, and
the whole day was spent in festive preparations. In the house of the
young girl a great tent was built of the branches and leaves of trees,
draped with cloth of various colors. In the middle of this tent, which
is called the _Pandel_, upon a mound a {637} foot and a half in
height, and about eight square feet in extent, arose an elegantly
decorated pavilion supported on four little columns. It was truly an
exhibition of painted cloth and parti-colored paper of every hue and
every shade, surpassing the rainbow in brilliancy. There, upon this
mound and under this pavillion, the bridegroom was to give the _tali_
to his bride.

In the mean time a palanquin had been constructed elsewhere, even more
elegant and magnificent than the pavilion of the _Pandel_. At ten
o'clock in the evening, by the light of thirty or forty blazing
torches, the bridegroom entered the palanquin, and, borne upon the
shoulders of four men, made the tour of the town, a band of music
opening the way and summoning the curious who hastened at the call.
After promenading the principal streets with slow steps for two or
three hours, they turned toward the bride's home. The young man
ascended the mound and seated himself, upon the ground, you
understand, for among Indians there are neither chairs nor lounges.
But do not be afraid that he soiled his fine clothes--a litter of
straw covered the whole surface of the mound. In this country they
know no better way of making an apartment presentable, and all Indian
_parquets_ are polished after this fashion. The bride came in her
turn, her father leading her by the hand. When he had seated her face
to face with the young man who had been his son-in-law for twenty-four
hours, he declared in a loud, clear voice that he had given his
daughter in marriage to so and so, living in such and such a place,
that he announced it to her relations and friends, begging them to
give their consent. The assistants standing about the mound extended
their hands in succession, and touched the _tali_ with the tips of the
fingers in token of approval. The catechist intoned the litany of the
Blessed Virgin, to which the Christians made the responses, then he
gave the _tali_ to the husband, who held it near his wife's neck, and
the bride's sister-in-law, standing behind her, took the cord and tied
it. The ceremonies and festivities were ended for that night, and
every one withdrew to take a little repose.

The next evening there was a grand wedding collation, after which the
festival, properly speaking, the grand festival, began. The newly
married pair seated themselves in the palanquin, facing each other,
but separated by a little curtain. The bride, freed from her veil now,
held the curtain with both hands, trying to conceal her face with it.
By the light of torches even more numerous than the night before, and
to the sound of music quite as vociferous, they went to the church,
where all the candles were lighted. The chanters and myself intoned
the litany of the Blessed Virgin and the _salve regina_; the catechist
recited a few prayers. I gave the benediction to the assembly with a
crucifix, having no statue of the Blessed Virgin, and the ceremony
closed with a _tamoul_ chant. The husband and wife re-entered the
palanquin, and then began in the streets a veritable triumphal march
called here _patana-pravesam_ (entrance into the town,) which ended
only when the day began.

What lends to this march a character of beauty and originality is the
_calliel_, a dance accompanied by songs and the clashing of little
staves, and performed before the palanquin for the whole length of the
march. Do not imagine anything resembling a French ball; here dancing,
so called, is a disgrace, and is only permitted to the Bayadères
engaged in the service of the pagodas. The _calliel_ is quite another
thing. Fancy a dozen well-formed, robust young people, with turbaned
heads, and loins girt with a long strip of cloth draped like a scarf,
some of them wearing rings of bells upon their arms and legs, and all
carrying in each hand a little staff about a foot long, with which
they strike the staves of the dancers, whom they meet face to face. On
leaving the church, our young dancers begged me to {638} witness their
gambols in the presence of the bride and bridegroom, who were looking
down upon the assembly from their high palanquin. The clashing cadence
of the staves, the monotonous but purely harmonious chant of the
dancers, their free, elastic bounds and graceful twirls, the passing
and repassing of this troop, who spring forward and draw back, falling
and rising as they drop on their knees and rear themselves up again,
this whirlwind where all is ordered, timed, and measured---all
presents a spectacle that enchants Hindoos and may well delight a
Frenchman.

Meanwhile the big drum, tambourine, tam-tam, clarionet, bagpipe, etc,
etc., announced with joyous din that the crowd must turn their steps
elsewhere, and show to others all this paraphernalia of rejoicing. The
palanquin was borne toward the streets. From time to time the march
was suspended, the music ceased, and the young dancers resumed and
continued for nearly an hour their agile feats of strength.

So the night passed, and the first rays of the sun announced that it
was time to end it all. The husband and wife descended from the
palanquin to hear mass, and then entered upon real life; the wedding
was over. In the evening a car drawn by two magnificent oxen,
transported the bride, accompanied by several relatives, to the
village of her husband, who escorted the family, mounted upon a pretty
white horse.

AMACAREI, Sept 29th, 1865.

------

From the Dublin Review


ROME THE CIVILIZER OF NATIONS.


1. _Le Parfum de Rome_. Par Louis Veuillot. 3me edition. Paris: Gaume
Frères. 1862.

2. _Rome et la Civilisation_. Par EUGENE MAHON DE MONAGHAN. Paris:
Charles Douniol. 1863.

The useful little work which stands at the head of this article, by M.
Mahon de Monaghan, (whose name would, perhaps, be more correctly
printed M. MacMahon de Monaghan,) may be regarded as a supplement to
the more important volume of the Abbé Balmez. "The study of church
history in its relations with civilization," _he_ told us, "is still
incomplete;" and the writer before us seems to have taken this as a
hint, and to have conceived the laudable plan of pursuing further some
of the Spanish divine's arguments, and strengthening them by new
illustrations gathered from history. "Le Parfum de Rome" is a work of
another description, but bearing on the same subject. It consists of
many discursive reflections on Rome, as the residence of the Vicar of
Christ, and is full of point, brilliancy, and humor.

When a Catholic, who has enjoyed the advantage of a good education,
and is accustomed to habits of reflection, arrives for the first time
in Rome, he is usually overwhelmed by the multitude of objects offered
to his attention, and requires time to select, arrange, and analyze
them. The light is too vivid, the colors are too varied, the perfume
is too strong. Two thousand years, richly laden with historic events,
crowd his memory; the united {639} glories of the past and the present
kindle his imagination; the sublime mysteries of religion,
marvellously localized, exercise his faith; long galleries thronged
with the rarest productions of art court his gaze, and a presence
peculiar to the spot, which he feeds, but cannot yet define, completes
his pleading bewilderment in heart and brain. By degrees the tumult of
thought subsides, and order begins to rise out of chaotic beauty. The
traveller is resolved to render his sensations precise, and he asks
himself emphatically, "Whence springs the resistless charm of Rome?
Wherein does the true glory of Rome consist? What _is_ this nameless
presence that mantles all things with divinity? Where does the
Shekinah reside?"

Then more and more clearly, the voice of Rome herself is heard in
reply: "This is the home of the vicar of Christ, the throne of the
fisherman, the seat of that long line of pontiffs who, like a chain of
gold, bind our erring globe to Emmanuel's footstool. This garden is
fertilized by the blood of Peter and Paul, and of thirty Popes: hence
all its amazing produce; hence its exquisite fragrance and perennial
bloom. These are the head-quarters of the commander-in-chief of the
church militant; and Christ himself is present here in the person of
his viceroy, promulgating a law above all human laws, inflexible,
uniform, merciful, and strict. _He_ diffuses this grateful perfume;
_he_ colors every object with rainbow tints; _he_ sheds this dazzling
light which causes Rome to shine like a gem with a myriad facets. The
Lord loveth the gates of Rome more than of old he loved the gates of
Zion; he lives in the solemn utterances of his high priest, and speaks
by him as of old he spoke by the Urim and Thummim that sparkled on
Aaron's breast. Here he so multiplies sacraments, that all you see
becomes sacramental; and here you find, in the father of the faithful,
the most perfect representation of your Incarnate God, and the most
certain pledge of his resurrection."

If the peculiar presence of Christ thus hallows Christian Rome, it
cannot be matter of surprise that she also should be an enigma to the
world, and have a twofold character; that she should be one thing to
the eye and another to the mind; one thing to Gibbon and Goethe,
[Footnote 132] and another thing altogether to Chateaubriand and
Schlegel; that she should have her seasons of gloom and jubilee, of
persecution and triumph; should require in each to be interpreted by
faith; and that every page of her history should share in this double
aspect. Thus Rome resembles Christ; and in this resemblance lies her
glory and her strength. Other glories she has which do not directly
come from him. She had them of old before he came; the inroad of
barbaric hordes, age after age, could not trample them out, and they
endure abundantly to this day. These the world understands; these she
extols with ceaseless praises, and sends her children from every clime
in troops to do homage at their ancient shrines. The worldling,
enamoured of these, exclaims:

  "O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
  The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
  Lone mother of dead empires."  [Footnote 133]

  [Footnote 132: Parfum de Rome, p. 7]

  [Footnote 133: Childe Harold, canto iv.]

But the orphan who turns to her as Byron did, remains an orphan. Rome
is no mother to him, and he finds no father in the patriarch who rules
there. To the devout Catholic she is the mother of arts and sciences
as truly as the Pope is the father of the Christian family. She is,
and has been for eighteen hundred years, the centre of true
civilization, because she is the central depository of the faith. From
her, as from a fountain, the streams of salvation have flowed through
all lands, and, having the promise both of this life and that which is
to come, they have indirectly produced a large amount of material
well-being, and also an infinity of {640} artistic and scientific
results. Rome civilizes as Christ civilized, by sowing the seeds of
civilization. She does not aim directly at material well-being; she
does not any more than he teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds
no system of induction; she invents neither printing-press,
steam-engines, nor telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute,
curbs his passions, improves his understanding, instils into him
principles of duty, and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his
ambition and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the
progress of humanity, that under her influence he acquires insensibly
an aptitude even for the successful pursuit of physical science, such
as no other teacher could impart. He looks abroad into the spacious
field of nature, and finds in every star and in every drop of dew an
unfathomable depth of creative design. His heart quickens the energies
of his brain, and he says, smiling, "My Father made them all; he made
them that I may, to the best of my feeble powers, investigate and
classify them, and that he may be glorified in science as in
religion." He rises to higher studies than those of physical science;
he looks within, and analyzes his complex nature. He sees that human
minds in the aggregate are capable of indefinite development as time
goes on, and he concludes that, as the works of nature can be
investigated to the glory of the Creator, so may the mind of man be
developed to the glory of its Redeemer--be trained in philosophy, and
exercised also in the application of science to the wants and usages
of social life. Thus, to his apprehension, the links are clear which
connect Rome--the centre of civilization--with matters which appear
at first sight absolutely distinct from religion, with sewing-machines
and electric cables, with Huyghens's undulatory theory of light, and
Guthrie's researches into the relative sizes of drops and of bubbles.

But here, perhaps, we shall be met by an objection. "Science," it will
be said, "surely not merely _appears_, but _is_ independent of
religion, as the experience of ancient and modern times will show.
Still more is independent of Papal Rome, which has always been on the
alert to check its progress, condemned Bishop Virgil for teaching the
existence of the antipodes, and Galileo for maintaining the
heliocentric system. Egypt under the Ptolemies, Etruria and Mexico,
Aristotle, Lord Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton, alike scatter your
assertion to the winds; and if any doubt on the subject could linger
in the mind of any one, the late encyclical would the sufficient to
disabuse him of his fond delusion."

To this we reply: We will not allow that even in ancient times
attainments in physical science were made irrespectively of religion.
Without religion, man lives in a savage state akin to brutes. Natural
religion, on which revealed religion is founded, exalts him in a
degree, and qualifies him for intellectual pursuits. Yet, even with
its assistance, so corrupt is his nature, that philosophy and science
can obtain no permanent command over his passions, and his highest
degrees of refinement are always succeeded by periods of degradation,
and no steady advance is made. As natural religion placed the heathen
in a condition somewhat favorable to the pursuit of science, so
revealed religion, or, in other words, Roman Catholicism, did the like
more completely, in consequence of its divine origin and perfect
adaptation to the needs of mankind. It brought society step by step
out of a state of semi-barbarism, and overcame the resistance offered
to its social improvements by the Roman people and Emperors, by Huns
and Vandals, by Islamism, Iconoclasts, and Feudalism. It covered
Europe with seats of learning, and kindled the student's lamp in the
monastic recesses of deep valleys and vast forests. It created a body
of theological science, and of philosophical in connection with it,
{641} which the more profound even of infidel thinkers admit to have
been among the most marvellous products of the human mind; and this
scientific system--over and above its higher purposes--was the very
best intellectual training possible under the circumstances of the
period. Then, as time went on, religion accepted gratefully and
employed in its own service the art of printing, and prepared the
human mind for those most energetic thoughts and often misdirected
efforts which have been made, from the fifteenth century downward, for
the discovery of physical truth. It is therefore manifest to all whose
thoughts reach below the surface of things, that the services which
Lord Bacon rendered to philosophy and Newton to Science, were
indirectly due to the Catholic Church.

Rome, the central civilizer of society, exerts an influence far beyond
her visible domain. The earth is hers, and the fulness thereof.
Whatsoever things are true and holy in faith and morals among her
truants, whatever portions of her divine creed they carry away with
them to build up their sects, whatever books or texts of the mutilated
scriptures they retain, whatever graces shine forth in them, and in
part redeem their delinquency, are all to be ascribed to her as the
primary channel of communication between earth and heaven, and all
belong to her as their chartered proprietress, although they have been
wrested from her hands. "There is nothing right, useful, pleasing
(jucundum) in human society, which the Roman pontiffs have not brought
into it, or have not refined and fostered (expoliverint et foverint)
when introduced."  [Footnote 134] Heresy is always blended with truth,
and the truth is always Rome's, while the heresy is theirs who have
corrupted it. Whatever is good and true in Protestantism is of Rome;
and as Protestants would have no Bible but for the councils which
settled its canon, and the despised monks who transcribed it age after
age, so Protestant churches would never have been founded if the great
old church had not overspread Europe. Nay, the _Novum Organon_ and
_Principia_ would in all probability never have seen the light.
Christianity, on the whole, keeps science alive; and but for the
popes, Christianity would soon vanish from the face of the earth. As
far as Bacon and Newton are indebted to Christianity for their
philosophy, just in so far are they indebted to Rome as its
fountain-head. Whatever stress is to be laid on the fact of their
being Christians, glorifies Rome indirectly as the source of
civilization. It is her very greatness and her perfect system of
doctrine which brings her into collision with every form of spiritual
rebellion; but those who fly off from her authority are still her
children, _in so far_ as they continue members at all of the family of
God. The prodigal son, amid all his degradation and wanderings, is
yearned over by his father, and belongs to his father's house in a
certain sense.

  [Footnote 134: Pope Pius IX. Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]

As to Rome being the enemy of physical science, it is not difficult to
see the causes which have led to so extreme a misconception. She has
ever protested, and that most energetically, against the prevalent
tendency to give physics a supremacy over theology, where the two seem
to clash; and she has also steadfastly resisted the pretension so
constantly made by physical science to thrust into a corner some
higher branches of human philosophy. Her conduct in the latter case
has been simply in accordance with what is now a growing conviction in
the philosophical world; while in the former case she has done nothing
more than uphold as infallibly certain the doctrinal deposit committed
to her charge. But with these most reasonable qualifications, she has
ever been active in stimulating the keenest physical researches. Well
may the present pope say that "it is _impudently_ bruited abroad that
the Catholic {642} religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to
civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which may
thence be expected."  [Footnote 135] To harp upon Virgil and Galileo,
proves how few and slender are the arguments which our accusers can
adduce in support of their charge. If we defer to facts, and regard
the entire history of Christendom, we can certainly name ten persons
distinguished for physical discoveries in our own communion, for every
one whom Protestantism can boast. In no Catholic country is such
science discouraged, but its professors are, on the contrary,
everywhere rewarded and honored. Nowhere among us has any recent
science, such as geology, been prohibited, or even combated, except by
individuals. Its conclusions, when really established, have been
admitted by all learned Catholics notwithstanding they appeared at
first sight to run counter to the words of inspiration. Cardinal
Wiseman's "Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion" abundantly
illustrate what is here stated; and his whole life was a refutation of
the calumny with which his creed is so often assailed. New arts, which
are each the visible expression of a corresponding science, have been
welcomed abroad as readily as in England; and Belgium could be
traversed by steam long before the Great Western line between London
and Bristol was completed. If it so happened that the greatest English
astronomer, naturalist, or mathematician, were a Catholic, his
co-religionists would be the most forward of all Englishmen to extol
his genius. His scientific pursuits would never make him an object of
suspicion with us, provided his loyalty to the church were complete;
nor would his zeal be damped by any ecclesiastical authority, so, long
as his conclusions involved nothing adverse to religion. The Catholic,
it is true, can never make the claims of science paramount to those of
faith, but the restraint thus imposed on him is of the most salutary
kind, and will be no real check on his liberty of thought; for science
and revelation, though it may for a while be difficult to harmonize
some of their statements, must ever be found to agree strictly on
closer examination.

  [Footnote 135: Pius IX.  Letter to M. Mahon de Monaghan.]

It would be easy to mark the successive stages in European
civilization by the pontificates of popes remarkable for their energy
of character and the brightness of their abilities. The average length
of the reigns of the first thirty-seven was rather less than ten
years; and during this time they had to struggle for something
infinitely more important than art and science. They were penetrated
with a deep sense of their sublime mission, and neither old age,
infirmities, nor persecution, paralyzed their labors. "They employed
their revenues in maintaining the poor, the sick, the infirm, the
widows, orphans, and prisoners, in burying the martyrs, in erecting
and embellishing oratories, in comforting and redeeming confessors and
captives, and in sending aid of every description to the suffering
churches of other provinces." [Footnote 136] Thus, in the wise order
of providence, papal civilization began in the moral world before it
extended to the intellectual. Yet in the middle of the fourth century,
the pope and his coadjutors in different quarters of the globe,
presented a striking spectacle, when considered merely in their
intellectual aspect. St. Damasus, the thirty-eighth pope, occupied the
see of St. Peter. While he zealously promoted ecclesiastical
discipline, he won for himself general admiration by his virtues and
his writings. His taste for letters carried him beyond the sphere of
theological labor; he composed verses, and wrote several heroic poems.
[Footnote 137] He was the light of Rome, while St. Augustine, the
brightest star that ever adorned the Catholic episcopate, shone at
Hippo. St. Ambrose, at the same time, was the glory of Milan; St.
Gregory taught at Nyssa; St. Gregory Nazianzen {643} wrote in
Constantinople; St. Martin evangelized the Gauls; St. Basil composed
his "Moralia" and his Treatise on the study of ancient Greek authors
at Caesarea; St. Hilary and St. Paulinus bore witness to the truth in
Poitiers and Trèves; St. Jerome unfolded the sacred stores of his
learning in Thrace, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pontus; St. Cyril wrote
beside his Saviour's tomb; and St. Patrick converted Ireland from the
darkness of Druidic paganism.

  [Footnote 136: J. Chantrel, "La Royauté Pontifieale," p. 74]

  [Footnote 137: St. Jerome, "De Illustr. Eccles. Script."]

Every faithful prelate at that period--nay, every true Christian;
however humble his condition--stood out more prominently from the mass
of society than we can now imagine. Christianity has produced among us
a certain general level of morality. But it was not so then. The
masses were still heathen, and Christians were often in a very small
minority. Their principles and conduct, therefore, were so distinct
from those around them, that each attracted attention, and exerted
more influence than he was aware of. Each Roman Catholic--for we
joyfully accept a designation which is erroneously supposed to limit
our claims--each Roman Catholic was then a light shining in a dark
place, and, in his measure, an apostle of civilization. He promoted
science, even though he had never heard its name, for he diminished
that amount of moral depravity, on the ruins of which alone science
can build her gorgeous fanes. He was member of a church, which,
wherever it was established, protested by its institutions against the
excessive indulgence of carnal affections. A celibate priesthood,
societies of monks and nuns, hermits, and vows of chastity observed by
persons living in the world, like St. Cecilia and St. Scholastica, and
expiring in the arms of wife or husband without ever having done
violence to the pure intentions which marked their bridal--these
things formed a spectacle so extraordinary to the heathen, who had
been accustomed to make sensual indulgence a feature in their
religious solemnities, that it could not but excite inquiry, and issue
in affixing a fresh stamp of divinity on the faith of Christ. What
would have become of society by this time if the elements of
decomposition which then existed had been allowed to work unchecked by
the laws of Christian marriage, the prohibition of divorce, and lastly
by monasticism--monasticism not forced on any one as a duty, but
freely chosen as a privilege--a higher and purer state, best suited
for communion with God and activity in his service!

In the fifth century, the efforts which had been made by Popes
Innocent, Boniface, Celestine, and Sixtus III. for the conversion of
the barbarians who overran the fairest portions of Europe, were
continued with extraordinary perseverance by the great St. Leo. He
formed the most conspicuous figure in his age. No element of greatness
was wanting to his character, and the complicated miseries of the
times only threw into stronger relief the energy of his mind and will.
His reign, from first to last, is a chapter in the history of
civilization. Attila, crossing the Jura mountains with his numerous
hordes, fell upon Italy. Valentinian III. fled before him, and Leo
alone had weight and courage equal to the task of interceding with the
resistless devastator. On the 11th of June, 452, he set forth to meet
him, and found him on the banks of the Mincio. Rome was saved, and
with it religion and the hopes of society. Three years after, Genseric
with his Vandals stood before its gates; and though Leo could not this
time altogether stay the destroyer, he saved the lives of the
citizens, and Rome itself from being burnt. If she had not been
possessed of a hidden and supernatural life, far transcending that
idea of a civilizing agent which it so abundantly includes, she would
already have been razed to the ground, as she was afterward by the
Ostrogoths under Totila, and from neither devastation would she ever
have been {644} able to revive. At this moment she would be numbered
with Nineveh and Sidon, the foxes would bark upon the Aventine as when
Belisarius rode through the deserted Forum, and shepherds would fold
their flocks upon the hills where St. Peter's and St. John Lateran now
dazzle the eye with splendor.  [Footnote 138]

  [Footnote 138: Monsignor Manning, "The Eternity of Rome."--_Lamp_,
  Nov. 1863.]

Happily great popes never fail. All are great in their power and
influence, and almost all have been good, while from time to time
Providence raises up some one also who makes an impression on his age,
and is acknowledged by friends and foes alike to be gifted with those
qualities which entitle him to the epithet "great." Pelagus I.
supplied the Romans with provisions during a long siege, and after the
example of St. Leo, obtained from Totila some mitigation of his
barbarous severities; John III. and Benedict I. ministered largely to
the Italians who were dying of want, and driven from their homes by
the remorseless Lombards; and writers the most adverse to the
papacy--Gibbon, Daunou,  [Footnote 139] Sismondi--testify to the
disinterested benevolence of these and other pontiffs during the
church's struggle with northern devastators. Just a century and a half
had elapsed since Leo the Great's elevation, when St. Gregory ascended
the papal throne amid the people's acclamation. He was at the same
time doctor, legislator, and statesman; and the plain facts of his
pontificate might be so related as to appear a panegyric rather than a
sober history. In the midst of personal weakness and suffering, the
strength of his soul and intellect were felt in every quarter of
Christendom and while he composed his "Pastoral" and his "Dialogues,"
or negotiated with the Lombards in behalf of his afflicted country,
news reached him frequently of the success of his missions amongst
distant and barbarous people.  [Footnote 140] To one of these we owe
the conversion of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers; and the results it
produced extort from Macaulay the admission that the spiritual
supremacy assumed by the pope effected more good than harm, and that
the Roman Church, by uniting all men in a bond of brotherhood, and
teaching all their responsibility before God, deserves to be spoken of
with respect by philosophers and philanthropists.  [Footnote 141]

  [Footnote 139: "Essai Historique," t. i.]

  [Footnote 140: See Chantrel, "Hist. Populaire des Papes," t. v.]

  [Footnote 141: "Hist. of England," chap. i.]

Sabinian, Boniface III. and IV., John IV. and VII., Theodore, Martin,
Eugene, and Benedict II., trod firmly in the steps of St. Gregory, and
encouraged the clergy everywhere in repairing the evils wrought by the
barbarians, and in re-establishing law and order.   [Footnote 142] The
bishops became the natural chiefs of society, and the administration
of justice was often placed in their hands by common consent. Their
counsel was taken by untutored kings, and they gradually impressed
them with a sense of the distinction between temporal and spiritual
power, and of the right of the latter to control the undue exercise of
the former. They raised by turns all the great questions that interest
mankind, and established the independence of the intellectual world.
[Footnote 143] Such is the impartial testimony of writers unhappily
prejudiced against the institution they applaud.

  [Footnote 142: Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," chap. ixv.]

  [Footnote 143: Guizot, "Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe." "Hist.
  de la Civilisation en France." t. ii.]

In their protracted conflict with Islamism, the Roman pontiffs were
the champions of social improvement. It needs only to survey the
opposite coasts of the Mediterranean, in order to gain some idea of
the paralyzing influence which the creed of Mohammed would have
exerted over human progress, if it had not been vigorously resisted.
Its prevailing dogma being fatalism, and its main precept sensuality,
it has, after a lapse of twelve centuries, failed to ameliorate the
condition of the tribes who profess it. If, in any respects, they
enjoy advantages unknown to their forefathers, these are due, not to
Mohammedanism, but to that {645} very anti-Saracenic movement which
the popes headed, and which, under different conditions, they carry
forward to this day. Permanent degradation was all that Islamism could
promise. The Arabs alone kindled for a while the lamp of learning, but
even their subtlety and genius did not suffice to keep its flame
alive. Everywhere, and with all the forces at their command, the popes
repelled its encroachments. More than once they girded on the sword,
and led their warriors to the charge against the Moslem host. During a
hundred and seventy years--from 1096 to 1270--they roused and united
the nations again and again in the common cause. Other statesmen were
unable to form extensive combinations, but _they_ were often
successful where diplomacy failed. In eight successive crusades, the
flower of Europe's chivalry was marshalled on the Syrian plains, and
if Catholic arms failed in retaining possession of the city of
Jerusalem and the sepulchre of Christ, they at all events saved the
cause of European civilization, and ultimately drove back the intruder
from the vineyards of Spain and the gates of Vienna, and sank their
proud galleys in the waves of Lepanto. When the zeal of crusaders died
away, the Roman pontiffs ever tried to rekindle it, constantly rebuked
the princes who made terms with the false prophet, and exhorted them
to expel the conquered Saracens from their soil. Such was the policy
of Clement IV., under whom, in 1268, the last crusade was set on foot.
[Footnote 144] Two centuries later, Calixtus III. was animated with
the same sentiments. He was appalled, as his predecessor had been, at
the progress the Turks made in Europe after the capture of
Constantinople, and made a strenuous appeal to the Catholic kingdoms
against the Mussulman invasions. At an advanced age he preserved in
his soul the fire of youth, sent preachers in every direction to rouse
the slumbering zeal of the faithful, and himself equipped an army of
60,000 men, which he sent under the command of Campestran, his legate,
to the help of the noble Hunyad in Hungary. Pius II. succeeded him in
1458. He was at once theologian, orator, diplomatist, canonist,
historian, geographer, and poet. He struggled hard to organize a
crusade against the Ottomans, formed a league to this end with Mathias
Corvin, king of Hungary, pressed the king of France, the duke of
Burgundy, and the republic of Venice into the cause, and placed
himself at the head of the expedition. He was on the point of
embarking at Ancona, and in sight of the Venetian galleys, waiting to
transport him to the foreign shore, when fever surprised him, and he
died. "No doubt," he said, "war is unsuitable to the weakness of old
men, and the character of pontiffs, but when religion is ready to
succumb, what can detain us? We shall be followed by our cardinals and
a large number of bishops. We shall march with our standard unfolded,
and with the relics of saints, with Jesus Christ himself in the holy
Eucharist." The spectacle would certainly have been grand, if Pius II.
had thus appeared before the walls of Constantinople; but Providence
had not willed it so.

  [Footnote 144: See his letter to the King of Arragon. Fleury, "Hist,
  Eccles." An. 1266.]

These are but a few of the great names which lent weight to the appeal
in behalf of the harassed pilgrims in Palestine, the outraged tomb of
the Redeemer, and the Christian lands overran by Saracens and Turkish
hordes. To whatever causes the worldly-wise historian may attribute
the overthrow of the Ottoman power in Europe, the Catholic will
ascribe it without hesitation to the untiring activity of the popes.
Divided as the petty kingdoms and principalities of the west were by
mutual jealousy and ceaseless warfare, they would never have been able
to oppose a compact front to the advances of Islamism, if they had not
been persuaded by popes and prelates, by Peter the hermit, St.
Bernard, and {646} Foulque, to lay aside their miserable disputes, and
unite against the common enemy. Thus, by the crusades, immediate
benefit accrued to European society, and the character of the church
as a ruler and leader was never borne in upon the minds of men with
greater force than when Adhémar, the apostolic legate, put himself at
the head of the Crusade under Urban II., "wore by turns the prelate's
mitre and the knight's casque," and proved the model, the consoler,
and the stay of the sacred expedition.  [Footnote 145] The presence of
bishops and priests among the soldiery impressed on the Crusades a
religious stamp favorable to the enthusiasm and piety of the
combatants, and corrective of the evils which never fail to follow the
camp.  [Footnote 146] Nations learned their Christian brotherhood,
which former ages had taught them to forget; minds were enlarged by
travel, and prejudices were dispelled; civilizing arts were acquired
even from the infidel, and brought back to western towns and villages
as the most precious spoil. As Rome had, at an earlier period,
resisted the superstition and rapacity of Leo the Isaurian,  [Footnote
147] and rescued Christian art from the hands of the image-breakers,
so now she opened the way to commerce with the east and rewarded the
zeal of Catholic populations with the costly bales and rich produce of
Arabia and Syria.

  [Footnote 145: Michaad et Poujouiat, "Hist. des Croisades."]

  [Footnote 146: See Heeren, "Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades."]

  [Footnote 147: "Parfum de Rome," t. i. p. 124.]

Having turned the feudal system to good account in its conflict with
Mohammedanism, the Church, with Rome for its centre, rejoiced to find
that system, at the close of the struggle, considerably weakened. It
had grown to maturity in a barbarous age, and was but a milder form of
that slavery which had so deeply disgraced the institutions of Pagan
Rome.   [Footnote 148] It perpetuated the distinctions of caste, and
the privilege enjoyed by one family of oppressing others. It was
selfishness exalted by pride--the right of the strong over the weak.
It exacted forced tribute, and held in its own violent hands the
moral, mental, and material well-being of its subjects. It required
blind and absolute submission, and often refused to dispense justice
even at this price. Immobility was its ruling principle, and there was
nothing on which it frowned more darkly than amelioration and
progress. In all these particulars it was at variance with the
religion of Christ, and for this reason Rome never ceased to combat
its manifold abuses.

  [Footnote 148: See "Rome under Paganism," etc., vol. 1. pp. 50-53.]

At the close of the Crusades the nobles began to learn their proper
place. Petty fiefs and small republics disappeared, and one strong and
regal executive swallowed up a multitude of inferior and vexatious
masteries. The barons became the support of the throne whose authority
they had so long weakened, and ceased to oppress the people as they
had done for ages. Cities multiplied, and rose to opulence; municipal
governments flourished, acquired and conferred privileges, and
afforded to the industrious abundant scope for wholesome emulation,
and laudable ambition. All the arts of life were brought into
exercise, and a new and middling class of society was called into
being. The merchants, the tradesmen, and the gentry obtained their
recognized footing in the community, and numberless corporations,
guilds, and militia testified to the growing importance of the burgess
as distinguished from the noble and the villain.   [Footnote 149]

  [Footnote 149: See Mably, "Observations sur l'Histoire de France,"
  iii. 7.]

Well-ordered governments on a large scale involved of necessity the
cultivation of the soil. Myriads of acres which, before the Crusades,
had been barren or baneful, now smiled with waving corn, or bore rich
harvests of luscious grapes. The want of bulky transports to convey
large cargoes of men and munitions to the East had caused great
alteration and improvement in the construction of ships. {647}
Navigation and commerce gained fresh vigor; maritime laws and customs
came to be recognized, and were reduced, about the middle of the
thirteenth century, into a manual called _Consolato del mar_,
[Footnote 150] Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Marseilles rose to wealth and
splendor; sugar and silks were manufactured; stuffs were woven and
dyed; metals were wrought; architecture was diversified and improved,
medicine learned many a precious rule and remedy from Arab leeches;
geography corrected long-standing blunders; and poetry found a new
world in which to expatiate. None of these results were unforeseen by
the prescience of Rome. She knew that it was her mission to renew the
face of the earth; nor, in pursuing her unwavering policy in reference
to Islamism, did she ever forget that it was given her from the first
to suck the breasts of the Gentiles, and to assimilate to her own
system all that is rich and rare in nature, wonderful in science,
beauteous in art, wise in literature, and noble in man. The Roman
Church had ever been the friend and patron of those slaves whom Cato
and Cicero, with all their philosophy, so heartily despised.
[Footnote 151] She did not indeed affirm that slavery was impossible
under the Christian law, but she discouraged it. "At length," says
Voltaire, whose testimony on such a point none will suspect, "Pope
Alexander III., in 1167, declared in the name of the Council that all
Christians should be (_devaient étre_) exempt from slavery. This law
alone ought to render his memory dear to all people, as his efforts to
maintain the liberty of Italy should make his name precious to the
Italians."  [Footnote 152] Lord Macaulay has spoken frankly of the
advantage to which the Catholic Church shows in some countries as
contrasted with our forms of Christianity, and says it is notorious
that the antipathy between the European and African races is less
strong at Rio Janeiro than at Washington.  [Footnote 153] On the
authority of Sir Thomas Smith, one of Elizabeth's most able
counsellors, he assures us that the Catholic priests up to that time
had used their most strenuous exertions to abolish serfdom. Confessors
never failed to adjure the dying noble who owned serfs to free his
brethren for whom Christ died. Thus the bondsman became loosened from
the glebe which gave him birth; many during the Crusades left their
plough in the furrow, and their cattle at the trough, and escaped from
service they had long detested; and many knights and lords who
returned from the Holy Land emancipated their serfs of their own
accord. Free hirelings took the place of hereditary bondsmen; and the
peasant's life assumed a pleasant and civilized aspect. In proportion
as Rome's genuine influence prevails in any country over clergy and
people, the traces of the fall diminish, and those of paradise are
restored.

  [Footnote 150: E. M. de Monaghan, p. 219. ]

  [Footnote 151: Cic. Orat de Harusp, Resp. xii. ]

  [Footnote 152: Sur les Moeurs, ch. 83. ]

  [Footnote 153: Hist. of England, chap. i.]

The Roman pontiff have often been accused of interfering in the
private affairs of princes. But the charge is unjust. It is part of
their mission to repress all moral disorders, and especially to punish
the licentiousness of sovereigns whose bad example promotes immorality
among their subjects. Their jurisdiction is fully admitted; their
right of granting or refusing a divorce no Catholic prince disputes
any more than their right of inflicting penances in case of adultery
or incest. To deny them, therefore, the opportunity of investigating
the very cases on which they must ultimately decide, would be
manifestly inconsistent and absurd. When Lothaire II. of Lorraine
drove away from his court the virtuous Teustberghe, and accused her of
disgraceful crimes, who can blame Nicholas I. for having espoused the
cause of this persecuted queen, and excommunicated in council her
unjust lord? Did the popes "interfere" in such matters otherwise than
in the interests of humanity; and if they had {648} consulted their
own ease and comfort, would they not have abstained from such
interference altogether? Let the world call it papal aggression,
usurpation, political scheming, or what other hard name it will, the
true Christian will see in it nothing but disinterested devotion to
the voice of conscience and the good of society. God himself seems to
have declared in favor of Pope Nicholas in the affair alluded to; for
when Louis le Germanique took up arms to avenge his brother, and
marched on Rome, the pontiff met his armies with fasting and litanies,
and with no other standard than the crucifix given by the Empress
Helena containing a fragment of the true cross. The victorious king
was overcome by these demonstrations, and, imploring the pope's
pardon, submitted to all his conditions.  [Footnote 154] We hesitate
not to affirm that the "interference" of the popes in temporal affairs
has more than once saved Europe from Islamism, even as at the present
time they are saving her from total infidelity. Whether successful or
unsuccessful, they struggled with equal constancy and valor against
that formidable power. About the year 876 Mussulman hordes infested
the country around Rome to such an extent that at last scarcely a
hamlet or drove of oxen remained to suffer by the widespread disaster.
Three hundred Saracen galleys menaced the mouth of the Tiber, and John
VIII., deserted and betrayed by neighboring dukes, implored by letter
the aid of Charles the Bald and the Emperor Charles of Germany. Yet he
failed, and that not so much through the strength of the Mohammedans
as through the base conduct of princes called Christian, who cast him
into prison, and then drove him to find refuge in France. Often have
the popes been obliged to follow the example of John VIII., and look
forth from their retirement in foreign lands on the tempest they have
braved and escaped. His 320 letters show how much temporal affairs
occupied his attention, because God willed that his spiritual
authority should show forth its civilizing tendency in temporal
intervention. His conflict with Islamism, which seemed unproductive at
the time, bore fruit in after ages.

  [Footnote 154: Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity. ]

The differences which arose and lasted so long between the popes and
the emperors of Germany are constantly misrepresented by writers
adverse to the Church. Their origin lay in the attachment of the Roman
pontiffs to principles which they can never abandon. The investiture
quarrel was a long struggle of spiritual authority against imperial
aggression, and the apparent compromise in which it issued left the
divine prerogatives of the Holy See intact. Simony was one great
plague of the middle ages, and but for the popes the princes of Europe
would have filled the Lord's temple with impious traffic. But for the
popes, too, many of them would have been unchecked in their proud
dreams of universal empire, which, if realized, would have been as
injurious to the liberties of mankind as to the free action of the
church. Frederick II., who was born in Italy, and lived to spend long
years in its delicious climate, without once visiting his German
domains, desired to establish in her the throne of the Caesars. This
was the secret of all his disputes with the pope, and this ambitious
project every successor of St. Peter felt bound to resist. But amid
all these struggles, from Gregory VII. to Calistus II., the life of
the church was a continual child-bearing, and while the popes battled
with crowned princes, they labored also for the souls of the poor. If
you would find the inexhaustible mine of that salt which keeps the
whole world from corruption, you must seek it in the hill where Paul
was buried, and Peter expired on his inverted cross. Proceeding thus
by regular stages in the work of improvement, the Roman Church had the
satisfaction of seeing every formula of enfranchisement signed by
prince or baron in the name of religion. It was {649} always with some
Christian idea, some hope of future recompense, some recognition of
the equality of all men in the sight of God, that the strong
voluntarily loosened the bonds of the weak. Absurd and barbarous
legislation was gradually reformed under the same influence; and
trials by single combat, oaths without evidence, and passing through
fire or cold water as a test of innocence, were supplanted by more
rational processes. M. Gnizot has pointed out the great superiority of
the laws of the Visigoths over those of other barbarous people around
them; and he ascribes this difference to their having been drawn up
under the direction of the Councils of Toledo. They laid great stress
on the examination of written documents in all trials, accepted mere
affirmation on oath only as a last resource, and distinguished between
the different degrees of guilt in homicide, with or without
premeditation, provoked or unprovoked, and the like. If M. Guizot's
observation is well founded in the case of an Arian code, how much
more weight would it have, if made in reference to laws framed under
Catholic influence. Civilization and theology went hand in hand. Every
question was considered in its theological bearing. The habits, the
feelings, and the language of men continually bespoke religious ideas.
Barbaric wisdom was guided by the Star of the East to Bethlehem, and
matured in the school of Christ. The public penances imposed by the
church became the form to which penal inflictions were moulded by the
law; the repentance of the culprit, and the fear of offending inspired
in bystanders, being the twofold object kept in view. The progress
made by the nations under such tutelage has been allowed by many
Protestant historians, and it would be easy to cite the testimony of
Robertson, Sismondi, Leibnitz, Coquerel, Ancillon,  [Footnote 155] and
De Muller,   [Footnote 156] to the truth of our statements. Duels in
the middle ages, and even down to the time of Louis XIV., raged like
an epidemic, produced deadly feuds between families, abolished all
just decision of disputes, and gave the advantage to the more agile
and skilful of the combatants. From 1589 to 1607 no less than 4000
French gentleman lost their lives in duels.  [Footnote 157] The genius
of Sully and Richelieu was unequal to the task of crushing this
two-fold crime of suicide and murder. But the church had never ceased
to denounce it, and, in the Council of Trent especially, launched all
her thunders against it.  [Footnote 158] At length temporal princes
were guided by her voice in this matter. Charles V. forbade it in his
vast dominions; in Portugal it was punished with confiscation and
banishment to Africa; and in Sweden it was visited with death.

  [Footnote 155: Tableau des Révolutions.]

  [Footnote 156: Hist. Universelle.]

  [Footnote 157: Bell on Feudalism.]

  [Footnote 158: Sess. xxv. c. 19.]

The pitiless character of human legislation was exhibited for ages in
the practice of refusing those who were condemned to death the
privilege of confession; and it was not till the reign of Philip the
Bold, in 1397, that this cruel restriction was removed. The church had
always protested against it, and her remonstrances at last prevailed.
Chivalry itself owed something to her inspiration. Mingled as it was
with rudeness and violence, it had also many noble elements, which
religion encouraged. It was a step toward higher civilization, because
it vindicated the dignity of womankind; true gallantry sprang from
honest purposes and virtuous conduct, and if Sir Galahad said--

  "My good blade carves the casques of men,
  My tough lance thrusteth sure,"

he added--

  "My strength is as the strength of ten,
  _Because my heart is pure_."

Sir James Stephen, in a paper on St. Gregory VII.,  [Footnote 159] has
avowed his conviction that the centralization of the ecclesiastical
power did more than counterbalance the isolating tendency of feudal
oligarchies. But for the {650} intervention of the papacy, he says,
the vassal of the west, and the serf of eastern Europe would, perhaps
to this day be in the same state of social debasement, and military
autocrats would occupy the place of paternal and constitutional
governments. Feudal despotism strove to debase men into wild beasts or
beasts of burden, while "the despotism of Hildebrand," whether
consistent or no, sought to guide the human race by moral impulses to
sanctity more than human. If the popes had abandoned the work assigned
them by Providence, they would have plunged the church and world into
hopeless bondage. St. Gregory VII. found the papacy dependent on the
empire, and he supported it by alliances with Italian princes. He
found the chair of the apostles filled, when vacant, by the clergy and
the people of Rome, and he provided for less stormy elections by
making the pope eligible by a college of his own nomination. He found
the Holy See in subjection to Henry, and he rescued it from his hands.
He found the secular clergy subservient to lay influence, and he
rendered them free and active auxiliaries of his own authority. He
found the highest dignitaries of the church the slaves of temporal
sovereigns, and he delivered them from this yoke, and bound them to
the tiara. He found ecclesiastical functions and benefices the spoil
and traffic of princes, and he brought them back to the control of the
sovereign pontiff; He is justly celebrated as the reformer of the
profane and licentious abuses of his time, and we owe him the praise
also of having left the impress of his giant character on the history
of the ages that followed. Such are the candid admissions of a
professor in the University of Cambridge. The highest eulogies of Rome
are often to be found in the writings of aliens.

  [Footnote 159: Edinburgh Review, 1845.]

Up to the time of the Reformation the Roman church was manifestly in
the forefront of civilization. After that terrible revolution she was
still really so, but not always manifestly. Her position was the same,
but that of society had changed. It no longer accepted her laws; it
cavilled at her authority, ort openly spurned it. People forgot their
debt of gratitude to the power which had always interfered in behalf
of the oppressed, and princes jibed at the restraints which the papacy
imposed on their absolute rule. The printing-press was wrested from
the church's hands, and made the chief engine for propagating
misbelief. A new and spurious civilization was set up, and was so
blended with real and amazing progress in many of the sciences and the
arts of life, that when the popes opposed what was corrupt in it and
of evil tendency, they often appeared adverse to what was genuine. Of
this their enemies took every advantage, and constantly represented
them as the mortal foes of the liberty, enlightenment, and progress of
mankind. Pontiff after pontiff protested against this wilful
misrepresentation, which has lasted three hundred years, and continues
in full force to this day. Seldom has it been put forward more
speciously than in reference to the recent Encyclical of Pius IX. We
shall endeavor to show its utter falsity in the remainder of this
article.

Thrown back in her efforts to evangelize Europe, the church turned
with more ardor than ever toward the other hemisphere. Already Alvarez
di Cordova had planted the cross in Congo. Idolatry vanished before it
almost entirely in the African territory recently discovered, and upon
its ruins rose the city of San Salvador. The ills inflicted on the
Americans by the first Spanish settlers were repaired by the
Benedictine Bernard di Buil, and other missionaries who trod in his
steps. The Dominicans set their faces sternly against reducing the
Indians to the rank of slaves, and Father Monterino, in the church of
St. Domingo, inveighed against it in the presence of the governor,
with all {651} the fervor of popular eloquence.  [Footnote 160] The
life of Bartholomew de Las Casas was one long struggle against the
cupidity and cruelty of Spanish masters and in favor of Indian
freedom. The labors and successes of St. Francis Xavier are too well
known to require recapitulation in this place; it is more to the
purpose to remark that the missionaries of Rome, from Mexico and the
Philippine islands, to Goa, Cochin-China, and Japan, everywhere
exposed to adverse climate, hardship, and martyrdom, carried with them
the two-fold elements of civilization--religion and the arts of life.
The Jesuit who started for China was provided with telescope and
compass. He appeared at the court of Pekin with the urbanity of one
fresh from the presence of Louis XIV., and surrounded with the
insignia of science. He unrolled his maps, turned his globes, chalked
out his spheres, and taught the astonished mandarins the course of the
stars and the name of him who guides them in their orbits.  [Footnote
161] Buffon,  [Footnote 162] Robertson, and Macaulay have alike
extolled the missionary zeal of the Jesuit fathers, and have ascribed
to them, not merely the regeneration of the inward man, but the
cultivation of barren lands, the building of cities, new high roads of
commerce, new products, new riches and comforts for the whole human
race.

  [Footnote 160: Robertson, Hist. of America.]

  [Footnote 161: Génie du Christianisme.]

  [Footnote 162: Hist. Naturelle de l'Homme.]

In teaching barbarous nations the arts of life and the elements of
scientific knowledge, the missionaries acted in perfect accordance
with the spirit of the papacy and the example of the religious orders.
Each of these had its appointed sphere, and each civilized mankind in
its own way. The templars, the knights of St. John, the Teutonic
knights, and half a dozen other now forgotten military orders,
defended civilization with the sword; the Chartreux, the Benedictines,
the Bernardines, in quiet and shady retreats, preserved from decay the
precious stores of heathen antiquity, compiled the history of their
several epochs, and gave themselves, under many disadvantages, to the
study of natural philosophy; the Redemptorists, the Trinitarians, and
the Brothers of Mercy devoted themselves to the redemption of captives
and the emancipation of slaves. Voltaire cannot pass them over without
a burst of admiration, when touching on their benevolent career during
six centuries.  [Footnote 163] Some orders made preaching and private
instruction their special work, and among these were the Dominicans,
the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustines. The pulpit is the
lever that raises the moral world; and it civilizes city, village, and
hamlet the more effectually because its work is constant and
systematic. It explains, Sunday after Sunday, and festival after
festival, the sublimest and deepest of all sciences, while it guides
society, with persuasive might, in the path of moral improvement. With
all that social science has devised for the comfort and welfare of
mankind, nothing that it has ever invented is so essentially
civilizing, so dignified and lovely, so unpretending and strong, as
the self-denying labors of brothers and sisters of charity,
sacrificing youth, beauty, prospects, tastes, and indulgence, on the
altar of religion, and passing their days among the lepers and the
plague-stricken, the ignorant, the degraded, the squalid and the
infirm.

  [Footnote 163: Sur les Moeurs, ch. cxx.]

And of these orders, none, be it observed, has railed against
knowledge. By no rule, in any one of them, has ignorance been made a
virtue and science a sin. All have admired the beauty of
knowledge--the fire on her brow--her forward countenance--her
boundless domain. All have wished well to her cause, and have
maintained only that she should know her place; that she is the
second, not the first; that she is not wisdom, but {652} wisdom's
handmaid; that she is of earth, and wisdom is of heaven; she is of the
world for the church, and wisdom is of the church for the world.
Severed from religion, they regarded her as some wild Pallas from the
brain of demons; but science guided by a higher hand, and moving side
by side with revelation, like the younger child, they believed to be
the most beautiful spectacle the mind could contemplate.

To repeat these things in the ears of well read Catholics, is to
iterate a thrice-told tale. But there are others who need often to be
reminded of facts of history which our adversaries are apt to ignore.
Besides the vast body of priests and religious orders, whose office
was to disseminate thought and piety through the world, the papacy
constantly sought new vehicles by which to promote science. The
greater part of the universities of Europe owe their existence to this
agency. Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Naples, Padua, Vienna, Upsal,
Lisbon, Salamanca, Toulouse, Montpellier, Orleans, Nantes, Poictiers,
and a multitude beside, were made centres of human knowledge under the
patronage of the popes, and Clement V., Gregory IX., Engenius IV.,
Nicholas V., and Pius II., were among the most illustrious of their
founders.

The writings of Leonardo da Vinci were not published till a century
after his death, and some of them at a still later period. They are
more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind,
than the fabric of its reasoning on any established basis. He laid
down the principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be
our chief guides in the investigation of nature. Venturi has given a
most interesting list of the truths in mechanism apprehended by the
genius of this light of the fifteenth century.  [Footnote 164] He was
possessed in the highest degree of the spirit of physical inquiry, and
in this department of learning was truly a seer.

  [Footnote 164: Estai sur lea Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de
  Léonard de Vinci. Paris. 1797. Hallam's Literary History, vol. i.
  pp. 222-5.]

Let the reader transport himself in idea to the beautiful borders of
the Henares, and there, in the opening of the sixteenth century, look
down on the rising University of Alcalá. Let him admire and wonder at
the varied energy of its founder--Ximenes, the prelate, the hermit,
the warrior, and the statesman. There, in his sixty-fourth year, he
laid the corner-stone of the principal college, and was often seen
with the rule in hand, taking the measurement of the buildings, and
encouraging the industry of the workmen. The diligence with which he
framed the system of instruction to be pursued, the activity of mind
he promoted among the students, the liberal foundations he made for
indigent scholars and the regulation of professors' salaries, did not
withdraw him from the affairs of state, or the publication of his
famous Bible, the Complutensian Polyglot. When Francis I., visited
Alcalá, twenty years after the university was opened, 7000 students
came forth to receive him, and by the middle of the seventeenth
century the revenue bequeathed by Ximenes had increased to 42,000
ducats, and the colleges had multiplied from ten to thirty-five.
[Footnote 165] Most of the chairs were appropriated to secular
studies, and Alcalá stands forward as a brilliant refutation of the
calumnies against Catholic prelates as the patrons of ignorance.

  [Footnote 165: Quintanilla: Archetype. Prescott's Ferdinand and
  Isabella, ii. 826.]

The same country and epoch which produced Ximenes gave birth also to
Columbus. It was neither accident nor religion, but nautical science
and the intuitive vision of another hemisphere, that piloted him
across the Atlantic to the West-India shores. Amerigo Vespucci
followed in his wake, emulous of like discoveries. He published a
journal of his earlier voyages at Vicenza in 1507, and gave his name
{653} to the continent of the western world. Thus, while two great
navigators, each of them Catholics, explored new lands on the surface
of our globe, Copernicus at the same time, and Galileo not many years
after, presaged the motion of the planets round the sun, and the
twofold rotation of the earth. To Galileo, indeed, far more is due. To
him we owe the larger part of experimental philosophy. He first
propounded the laws of gravity, the invention of the pendulum, the
hydrostatic scales, the sector, a thermometer, and the telescope. With
the last he made numberless observations which changed the face of
astronomy. Among these, that of the satellites of Jupiter was one of
the most remarkable. He came, it is true, into a certain collision
with the church, but it is remarkable, that all the provocation given
by Galileo never reduced authority to the unjustifiable step of
impeding the fullest scientific investigation of his theory. Nay,
those astronomers who taught on the Copernican _hypothesis_ were more
favored at Rome than their opponents. It was at Galileo's request that
Urban appointed Castelli to be his own mathematician, and the letter
in which the pontiff recommended Galileo to the notice of the Grand
Duke of Tuscany, after his condemnation, abounds with expressions of
sincere friendship. As to the dungeon and the torture, they are simply
fabulous. During the process Galileo was permitted to lodge at the
Tuscan embassy instead of in the prison of the holy office--a favor
not accorded even to princes. His sentence of imprisonment was no
sooner passed, than the Pope commuted it into detention in the Villa
Medici, and, after he had resided there some days, he was allowed to
install himself in the palace of his friend, Ascanio Piccolomini,
archbishop of Sienna. Subsequently he retired to his own house and the
bosom of his family; for, as Nicolini's correspondence with him
testifies, "his holiness treated Galileo with unexpected and, perhaps,
excessive gentleness, granting all the petitions presented in his
behalf."  [Footnote 166] These facts are surely sufficient to prove
that physical science received all due honor at this period in Rome.
In due time--long after Galileo's death--his theory was scientifically
established; and not very long afterward the Congregational decree was
suspended by Benedict XIV. Galileo's famous dialogue was published
entire at Padua in 1744 with the usual approbations; and in 1818 Pius
VII. repealed the decrees in question in full consistory. What could
the church do more? It was her duty to guard the Scriptures from
irreverence and unbelief, and to prohibit the advocacy of theories
absolutely unproved which seemed to oppose them. To her physical
science is dear, but revealed truth is infinitely dearer. Already she
had opposed astrology as a remnant of paganism, and had studied the
motions of the moon and planets to fix Easter and reform the Julian
calendar. Already Gregory XIII. had brought the calendar which bears
his name into use; and the works of Aristotle, translated into Arabic
and Latin, had become the model of theological methods of disputation
and treatise. St. Thomas Aquinas had written commentaries on them, and
on Plato; and thus, as well as by his essay on aqueducts and that on
hydraulic machines, had proved how inseparable is the alliance between
sound theology and true science. "The sceptre of science," says Joseph
de Maistre, "belongs to Europe only because she is Christian. She has
reached this high degree of civilization and knowledge because she
began with theology, because the universities were at first schools of
theology, and because all the sciences, grafted upon this divine
subject, have shown forth the divine sap by immense vegetation."
[Footnote 167]

  [Footnote 166: British Review. 1861. Martyrdom of Galileo.]

  [Footnote 167: Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,
  Xme entretien. ]

{654}

Voltaire has observed that "the sovereign pontiffs have always been
remarkable among princes attached to letters," and the remark is
equally true as regards science and art. Silvester II. was so learned
that the common people attributed his vast erudition to magic. He
collected all the monuments of antiquity he could find in Germany and
Italy, and delivered them into the hands of copyists in the
monasteries. St. Gregory VII. conceived the design of rebuilding St.
Peter's, and gathered around him all the first architects of his day.
Gregory IX. interfered in behalf of the University of Paris, and, as
Guillaume de Nangis says, "prevented science and learning, those
treasures of salvation, from quitting the kingdom of France." Nicolas
V. was a great restorer of letters, and Macaulay speaks of him as one
whom every friend of science should name with respect. Sixtus IV.
conferred the title of Count Palatine on the printer Jenson, to
encourage the noble art, then in its infancy. Pius III. enriched
Sienna with a magnificent library, and engaged Raphael and
Pinturicchio to adorn it with frescoes. Paul V. endowed Rome with the
most beautiful productions of sculpture and painting, with splendid
fountains and enduring monuments. Urban VIII. loved all the arts,
succeeded in Latin poetry, and filled his court with men of learning.
Under his pontificate "the Romans," as Voltaire says, "enjoyed
profound peace, and shared all the charms and glory which talent sheds
on society." Benedict XIV. cultivated letters, composed poems, and
patronized science. The infidel himself just mentioned paid him
homage, and professed profound veneration for him, when sending him a
copy of his "Mahomet."  [Footnote 168] Every pope in his turn has been
a Maecenas. Not one in the august line has lost sight of the interests
of society and the prerogatives of mind. The useful and the beautiful
were always present to their thoughts; and even in those few instances
where they failed in good personally, they encouraged in their
official capacity whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good
fame.

  [Footnote 168: Letter to Pope Benedict XIV.]

Many names dear to science and religion occur to us in illustration of
these remarks--names of men who, in the two last and in the present
century, have devoted their lives to secular learning without losing
their allegiance to the Catholic faith, or confounding it with other
sciences which lie within human control for their extension and
modification. Of these honorable names we will mention a few only by
way of example, feeling sure that our readers' memory will supply them
with many others. Cassini, among the astronomers, enjoyed so high a
reputation at Bologna that the Senate and the pope employed him in
several scientific and political missions. Colbert invited him to
Paris, where he became a member of the Academy of Sciences, and died
at a good old age in 1712, crowned with the glory of several important
discoveries, among which were those of the satellites of Saturn and
the rotation of Mars and Venus. His son James followed in his
footsteps, and bequeathed his name to fame. André Ampère, again, a
sincere Catholic, was one of the most illustrious disciples of
electro-magnetism. He developed the memorable discovery of Oersted,
ranged over the entire field of knowledge, and acquired a lasting
reputation by his "theory of electro-dynamic phenomena drawn from
experience." When between thirteen and fourteen years of age, he read
through the twenty folio volumes of D'Alembert and Diderot's
Encyclopaedia, digested its contents wonderfully for a boy and could
long afterwards repeat extracts from it. But his reading was not
confined to such books. A biography of Descartes, indeed, by Thomas,
inspired him with his earliest enthusiasm for mathematics and natural
philosophy; but his first communion also left an indelible stamp on
his memory and character. The love of religion then, once {655} and
for ever, took possession of his soul, and fired him through life,
like the electric currents into which he made such profound research.
When his days, which were fall of trouble, came to a close at
Marseilles in 1837, he told the chaplain of the college that he had
discharged all his Christian duties before setting out on his journey;
and when a friend began reading to him some sentences from "The
Imitation of Christ," he said, "I know the book by heart." These were
his last words.

By the lives and labors of such men the church's mission on earth is
effectually seconded. They inspire the thinking portion of society
with confidence in religion, and though, from their constant
engagement in secular pursuits, they frequently err in some minor
point, and cling to some crotchet which ecclesiastical authority
cannot sanction, yet in consideration of their loyal intentions and
exemplary practices, the clergy everywhere regard them as able and
honorable coadjutors. True civilization, (observe the epithet,) far
from being adverse, must ever be favorable to the salvation of souls.
Many writers still living, or who have recently passed away, have
united happily Catholicism with science. Santarem, in his long exile,
gave his mind to the history of geography and the discoveries of his
Portuguese fellow-countrymen on the western coast of Africa. Caesar
Cantù, in his historical works, uniformly defended the cause of the
popedom in Italy, and persisted in holding it forward as his country's
hope. M. Capefigue, among his numerous works on French history, has
included the life of St. Vincent of Paul; and Cardinal Mai has
rendered incalculable service to the study of Greek MSS. But for his
diligence and sagacity, the palimpsests of the Vatican would never
have yielded up their all-but obliterated treasures. Saint-Hilaire,
eminent alike as a zoologist and natural philosopher, who demonstrated
so clearly the organic structure in the different species of animals
was destined in his youth for holy orders; but although he preferred a
scientific career, he retained his affection for the clergy, and saved
several of them, at the risk of his own life, during the massacres of
September, in 1792. Blainville, another great naturalist, and Cuvier's
successor in the chair of comparative anatomy, was deeply religious.
He felt the importance of rescuing physical science from the hands of
infidelity, by which it is so often perverted into an argument against
revelation. Epicurus is said to have maintained that our knowledge of
Deity is exactly commensurate with our knowledge of the works of
nature, and to have allowed no other measure of our theology out [sic]
physics. Lucretius devoted the whole of his beautiful but atheistic
poem, "De Rerum Naturâ" to the task of proving that the soul is
mortal, that religion is a cheat, and that natural causes sufficiently
account for all the phenomena of the universe. In our day the
disciples of Epicurus and Lucretius are legion, but they are not
always so plain spoken as their masters. Happily they are everywhere
opposed by men who recall physics to their true place, and make them a
corollary of revealed truth--the science of the Creator, as
Catholicism may be termed the science of the Divine Redeemer and
Ruler. But useful as such laborers in the field of secular learning
are, the truth cannot be too often repeated, that the vivifying
principle of civilization lies in the cross and the ministry of
reconciliation, of which the Pope is the head. No man whose knees have
never bent on Calvary is truly civilized. If his passions chance to be
tamed, his reason is rampant, or his conscience is asleep. He has no
clear perception of things divine, and his views of things earthly and
human are erroneous and confused. Oh! that philosophers would learn
that the glory of their intellect consists in its dutiful
subordination to the church! Then would she shine forth more
conspicuously in the sight of all men as the {656} civilizer of
nations. Then, and then only, should we be able to encourage without
reserve or misgiving the speculations of science and the enterprises
of art, and should join with loud voices and full hearts in the ardent
aspirations of the poet:

  Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press;
  _Fly, happy with the mission of the Cross;_
  Knit land to land, and blowing havenward
  With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll,
  Enrich the markets of _the golden year_.

That which delays the golden year, and prevents the knitting of land
to land in the bonds of religious brotherhood, is the want of unity
among nations called Christian. The terrible disruptions effected
under Photins, Luther, and Henry VIII., have rendered the conversion
of the world for the present morally impossible. But if the East and
West were again united under their lawful lord and pope; if Protestant
sects were deprived of regal support, reäbsorbed into the Catholic
body, or so reduced in numerical importance as to be all but inactive
and voiceless; if the vaunted utility of association were duly
exemplified; if European populations were emulous of spiritual
conquests in distant countries; if under the guidance and control of a
common idea each of them launched its missionary ships on the waters
in quick succession; if each town and university sent its quota of
zeal and learning to the glorious work; if missionaries in large
numbers went forth cheered with the apostolic benediction, and on
whatever shore they might converge found other laborers in fields
already white for the harvest, speaking with many tongues of one Lord,
one faith, one baptism--then would the heathen no longer be stupefied
by the feeble front and incongruous claims of those who now call them
to repentance, nor would infidels scoff and jeer at a religion which
has been made the very symbol of disunion; unbelieving nations,
astonished at the strict coincidence of testimony borne by preachers
arriving from every quarter of the globe, would distrust their
prophets, desert their idols, and seek admission into the one
ubiquitous fold. Then, also, the moral and intellectual energies of
European prelates would be no longer engrossed by resisting aggression
and weeding out disaffection nearer home, but would have leisure to
organize missions on a large scale, and to fortify them with every
auxiliary modern art and science can supply. The honor and glory of
civilization would then be given to her to whom it belongs of right;
and the nations, at length disabused of popular fallacies, would
perceive that Protestantism and spurious liberty really hinder the
progress they are supposed to promote.

------
{657}{658}{659}

[ORIGINAL.]

THE CURSE OF SACRILEGE.

[In the suburbs of the ancient and curious city of Angers in France is
a beautiful chateau, situated in the midst of extensive and fertile
grounds. The chapel contains some very remarkable pieces of statuary,
now nearly eight hundred years old. The place was formerly a convent
of monks, and wrested from them during the great revolution. The
family into whose possession it came, has ever since been afflicted
with the sudden death and insanity of its members. The death of the
last male heir, a youth of great promise, which occurred but a few
years ago, is described in the following verses.]


  A youth of twenty summers
    Sat at his mother's knee;
  Ne'er saw you a youth more noble,
    Nor fairer dame than she.

  Half-reclining he swept the lute-strings,
    Murmuring an olden rhyme;
  While the clock in the castle tower
    Rang out a morning chime:

  "In the bright and happy spring-time
    Ring the bells merrily;
  When the dead leaves fall in autumn,
    Then toll the bell for me."

  The face of the lady-mother,
    Writhed as with sudden pain:
  "Oh! sing not, my son, so sadly,
    Choose thou a happier strain."

  Sang the youth, "When the summer sunshine
    Falls o'er the lake and lea,
  And the corn is springing upward,
    Then you'll remember me."

  The matron smiled on the singer:
    "My dear and my only one
  When I shall not remember,
    The light will forget the sun."

  Yet her eyes smiled not, but were standing,
    Brimful of glimmering tears,
  Tell-tales of secret anguish,
    Dead hopes and living fears.

  For he was the heir, and the only
    Child of the house of La Barre;
  A name that was known for its sorrows,
    By all, both near and far.

  Lay in a charming valley
    Its rich and fair domain;
  But a curse seemed to hang around it,
    Worse than the curse of Cain.

  For this was a holy convent
    Of monks in olden time;
  From God men had dared to wrest it,
    Nor recked the awful crime.

  The mild men of God were driven
    Houseless and homeless afar:
  And he who rifled their cloister,
    Became the Lord of La Barre.

  But a curse came down on his household,
    That time did not abate:
  And ne'er did the mourning hatchment
    Pass from the castle gate

  The Lord of La Barre fell suddenly
    Dead in his banquet-hall;
  And madness seized his first-born,
    Bearing the funeral pall.

  Calamity sudden and fearful.
    Haunted the sacred place.
  Striking the lords and their children,
    And blighting their hapless race.

  One is thrown from his saddle,
    Dashing his brains on the ground;
  One in his bridal chamber.
    Dead by his bride is found;

  One is caught by the mill-wheel.
    And cruelly torn in twain;
  One is lost in the forest,
    Ne'er to return again.

  Death-traps for wolves, the herdsmen
    Set in the woods with care;
  The wolves devour the master,
    Caught in the fatal snare.

  Killed by the forkèd lightnings;
    Drowned in the flowing Loire;
  Crushed by some falling timbers;
    Conquered and slain in war.

  Idiots and still-born children,
    Come as the first-born heirs.
  Those are seized with madness,
    Whom death a few years spares.

  Thus did they all inherit
    A curse with the rich domain,
  Who dared on the holy convent
    To lay their hands profane.

  The autumn winds are blowing
    Across the lake and lea,
  As the youth of twenty summers
    Sings at his mother's knee.

  He ceased, and from him casting
    His lute upon the floor,
  Listened, as sounds from the court-yard
    Came through the open door.

  Hearing the dogs' loud barking,
    As their keeper his bugle wound;
  "To-day I go a hunting,"
    Said he, "with hawk and hound."

  The rustling of dead leaves only
    Heard the Lady of La Barre,
  And thought of her lordly husband
    Drowned in the flowing Loire.

  The autumn winds were moaning
    Among the yellow trees,
  "Stay, Ernest," said she sadly,
    "My soul is ill at ease.

  "Shadows of dire mischances
    Fall on my widowed heart;
  I could not live if danger
    Thy life from mine should part."

  "Fear not," said he, while laughing
    He kissed her sad fair face;
  "I hear the hounds' loud baying
    All eager for the chase.

  "Over the hill by the river
    I'll bring the quarry down,
  And homeward pluck the roses
    To weave for thee a crown."

  "The rose-crown, my child, will wither,
    'Tis but a passing toy;
  But thou art the crown of thy mother--
    Her only life and joy.

  "Follow the hunt to-morrow--
    With me, love, stay to-day;
  For dark and sad forebodings
    My anxious heart affray."

  The autumn winds are blowing,
    The dead leaves downward fall,
  The lawn and flowers covering
    Like a funeral pall.

  But he heedeth not the warning,
    And hies with haste away.
  The lady seeks the chapel,
    With heavy heart, to pray.

  "May God and his blessed Mother
    Spare me my only one.
  Yet teach me and strengthen me ever
    To say, Thy will be done!"

  Well may the lady tremble,
    Hearing the wind again;
  The dead leaves are falling in showers
    Like to a summer rain.

  Hark! a sound from the court-yard
    Blanches the lady's cheek--
  The huntsmen call not surely
    In such a fearful shriek!

  Say, "Thy will be done," O lady!
    As thou e'en now hast said,
  For the last of thy race is lying
    Stark in the court-yard, dead.

------

{660}

Translated from the Spanish


PERICO THE SAD; OR,
THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.


CHAPTER VIII.

Autumn had shortened the days, and winter was knocking at the door
with fingers of ice. It was the hour when laborers return to their
homes, and the sun casts a last cold glance upon the earth he is
abandoning.

Perico came slowly, preceded by his ass, and followed by Melampo, who
rivalled his ancient friend and companion in gravity. The latter still
remembered with horror the entry of the French, though six years had
passed since; for the flight of her masters caused her the wildest
gallop she had taken in her whole life. She had not yet recovered from
the fatigue.

When they entered their street, two little children, brother and
sister, ran to meet Perico, but at the moment they reached him, the
deep and solemn sound of a bell called to prayer. Perico stood still
and uncovered his head. The ass and the dog, that from long habit knew
the sound, stopped also, and the little ones remained immovable. When
their father had concluded the prayers of the mystery of the
annunciation, the children drew near and said--

"Your hand, father."

"May God make you good!" answered Perico, blessing his children.

The boy, who was impatient to be mounted on the ass, asked his father
why people must be still when the bell rung for prayer.

"Don't you remember," said his sister Angela, "what Aunt Elvira tells
us, that when it strikes this hour dedicated to the Blessed Virgin,
our guardian angels stand still, and if we go on then, we shall be
alone--without them?"

"That is true, sister," answered the boy, giving, with all his little
might, a blow to the ass upon which his father had placed him, a blow
of which, fortunately, the patient creature took not the least notice.

Six years had passed since the occurrence of the sorrowful events we
have related. To make the remembrance of them still more sorrowful,
the unhappy Marcela, who witnessed from her hiding-place the insult to
her {661} father, the terrible vengeance taken by her brother, and the
flight of the latter, had gone mad.

No tidings of Ventura had ever been received, and all believed that he
was dead. Notwithstanding, in their tenderness for Elvira and their
friendship for Pedro, the others spoke to them in the words of a hope
which did not exist in their own hearts.

Time, the great dissolvent, in which joys and griefs alike are
lost--as in water disappear both the sugar and the salt--had made
those memories, if not less bitter, at least more endurable. Only from
Pedro's lips, instead of his lively songs and habitual jokes, was
often heard, "My poor son! my poor daughter!"

Elvira, alone, was excepted from this influence of time. She was
wasting in silence, like those light clouds in the sky, which, instead
of falling to the earth in noisy torrents, rise softly and gradually
until they are lost from sight. She never complained, nor did the name
of Ventura, of him upon whom she had looked as the companion the
church would give her, pass her lips.

"A worm is gnawing at her heart," said Anna to her son; "the rest do
not see it, but it is not hidden from me."

"But, mother," he answered, "where do you see it? She complains
perhaps?"

"No, my son, no: but, Perico, a mother hears the voice of the dumb
daughter," replied Anna with sadness.

Rita and Perico were happy, because Perico, with his loving heart, his
sweet temper, and his conciliatory character, made the happiness of
both. A year after their marriage, Rita had given birth to twins. On
that occasion, she was at death's door, and owed her life to the
tender care of her husband and his family. She remained for a long
time feeble and ailing, but at the moment in which we take up the
thread of our story, she was entirely restored, and the roses of youth
and health bloomed more brightly than ever upon her countenance.

When they were reunited that evening, Maria exclaimed: "Blessed
mother, what a fearful storm we had last night! I was so frightened
that my very bed shook with me! I recalled all my sins and confessed
them to God. I prayed so much that I think I must have awakened all
the saints: and I prayed loud, for I have always heard say that the
lightning loses its power from where the voice of praying reaches. To
the Moors! To the Moors! I said to the tempest, go to the Moors, that
they may be converted and tremble at the wrath of God! Not until
day-break, when I saw the rainbow, was I consoled: for it is the sign
God gives to man that he will not punish the world with another flood.
Why do men not fear when they see these warnings of God!"

"And why would you have them tremble, mother, for a thing which is
natural," said Rita.

"Natural!" retorted Maria. "Perhaps you will also tell me that
pestilence and war are natural! Do you know what the lightning is? For
I heard a farmer say that it is a fragment of the air set on fire by
the wrath of God. And where does not the air enter? And where is the
place the wrath of God does not reach? And the thunder--the thunder,
said a certain preacher, is the voice of God in his magnificence; and
that God is to be feared above all when it thunders."

"The rain has been welcome, Mamma Maria, for the ground is thirsty,"
said Perico.

"The ground is always thirsty," observed Rita, "as thirsty as a sot."

"Father," said Angela, "hear what I sung to-day when I saw the pewets
running to the pools," and the little girl began to sing:

  "Open your windows, God of Christians!
  Let the rain come down,
  See the Blessed Virgin comes riding
  From the inn of the little town;
  Riding a horse of snowy whiteness.
  Over the fields so brown,
  Lighting all the fields with the brightness
  Of the glory which shines around.
  Blessing the fields, the fields of the king:
  Ring from the big church, let all the bells ring!"

{662}

Angel, not wishing to let his sister, who was the brighter of the two,
gain the palm--instantly said: "And I, father, sung:

  'Rain, my God,
  I ask it from my heart.
  Have pity on me,
  For I am little, and I ask for bread.'"

"Enough, enough," cried Rita, "you are as noisy as two cicadas, and
more tiresome than frogs."

"May we play a game, mother?" said the boy.

"Play with the cat's tail," responded Rita.

"Mamma Maria," said the girl, "I will say the catechism to you, if you
will tell us a story. Now hear me: 'The enemies of the soul are three,
the devil, the world, and the flesh.'"

"I like that enemy," said the boy.

"Hush, little one; it don't mean the flesh in the stew."

"What then?" asked the boy.

"Learn the words now," answered his grandmother, "and when you know
more, apply what you have learned. For the present, I will tell you
that your flesh, that is to say, your appetite, tempts you to be so
gluttonous, and that gluttony is a mortal sin."

"They are seven," said the girl quickly, and recited them.

"I, Mamma Maria," said Angel, "know the Three Persons, the Father who
is God, the Son who is God, and the Holy Ghost, who is a dove."

"How stupid you are!" exclaimed his mother.

"Daughter," remarked Maria, "no one is born instructed. Child," she
continued, "the Dove is a symbol, the Holy Spirit is God, the same as
the Father and the Son."

Each child pulling at its grandmother as it spoke:

"I know the commandments of God," said one.

"And I, those of the church," said the other.

"I the sacraments."

"And I the gifts of the Holy Spirit."

"I--"

"Enough, and too much," exclaimed Rita; "you are going to say the
whole catechism; or perhaps this is an infant school! What a pleasant
diversion!"

"Is it possible," said Maria, grieved, for she had been in her glory
listening to the children, "is it possible, Rita, that you do not love
to hear the word of God, and that it does not delight you in the
mouths of your children? I remember how I cried for joy, the first
time you said the whole of Our Father."

"That is so," said Rita; "you are capable of crying at a fandango."

The poor mother did not answer; but, turning to the children, said: "I
am so pleased with you because you know the catechism so well, that I
am going to tell you the prettiest story I know."

The children seated themselves on a low bench in front of their
grandmother, who began her story thus:

"When the angel warned the holy patriarch Joseph to flee into Egypt,
the saint got his little ass and set the mother and child upon it.
Then they started on their journey through woods and briery fields.
Once, when they were in the thickest part of a forest, the lady was
afraid because the way was so dark and lonesome. By and by they came
to a cave. Out of it ran a band of robbers and surrounded the holy
family. When the mother and child were going to get down from the ass,
the captain of the band, whose name was Demas, looked at the child; as
he looked, his heart smote him, and he turned to his companions and
said: 'Whoever touches as much as a thread of this lady's garment will
have me to do with,' and then he said to the holy pair: 'The night is
coming on stormy; follow me, and I will shelter you.' They went with
the robber, and he gave them to eat and drink, and the holy pair
accepted what he offered them, for God himself receives the worship of
all the bad as well as {663} the good. And for this reason, children,
never cease to pray, even though you should be in mortal sin; for this
robber, when at last he was taken and condemned to die, found
repentance and pardon on the cross itself, which served him for
expiation, as it served our Lord for sacrifice. He was converted and
was the first of all to enter into glory, as Christ promised him when
he was dying for him." Meantime, the wind howled without in prolonged
gusts. The doors shook, moved by an invisible hand. The old
orange-tree murmured in the court, as if remonstrating with the wind
for disturbing its calm.

"Listen," said Perico, "the very nettles will be swept from the
ground."

"And how it rains!" added Pedro. "The clouds are torn to bits. The
river is going to overflow the fields."

"Did you see how the clouds ran this afternoon?" said Angela to her
brother. "They looked like greyhounds."

"Yes," answered the boy, "and where were they going?"

"To the sea for water."

"Is there so much water in the sea?"

"Yes indeed, and more than there is in Uncle Pedro's pond."

"The voice of the wind seems to me like the voice of the evil spirit,
that comes leading fear by the hand," said Maria.

"You are always frightened, mother," remarked Rita. "I don't know when
your spirit will rest. Look here, lazy-bones," she proceeded, giving a
push to the boy who had reclined against her, "lean upon what you have
eaten."

The child, being half asleep, lost his balance. Elvira gave a cry, and
Perico, springing forward, caught him in his arms. Anna dropped her
distaff, but took it up again without a word.

"If you ever lose your son," said Pedro, indignant, "you will not weep
for him as I do for mine. You have that advantage over me."

"She is so quick, so hasty," said Maria, always ready to excuse and
slow to blame, "that she keeps me in hot water."

"So, then, Mamma Maria," Perico hastened to say, "yon are afraid of
everything--and witches?"

"No; oh! no, my son! The church forbids the belief in witches and
enchanters. I fear those things which God permits to punish men, and,
above all, when they are supernatural."

"Are there any such things? Have you seen any?" asked Rita.

"If there are any? And do you doubt that there are extraordinary
things?"

"Not at all. One of them is the day you do not preach me a sermon. But
the supernatural I don't believe in. I am like Saint Thomas."

"And you glory in it! It is a wonder you do not say also that you are
like Saint Peter in that in which he failed!"

"But, madam, have you seen anything of the kind, or is it only because
you can swallow everything, like a shark?"

"It is the same, to all intents, as if I had seen it."

"Aunt, what was it?" asked Elvira.

"My child," said the good old woman, turning toward her niece, "in the
first place, that which happened to the Countess of Villaoran. Her
ladyship herself told it to me when we were superintending her estate
of Quintos. This lady had the pious custom of having a mass said for
condemned criminals at the very hour they were being executed. When
the infamous Villico was in those parts, committing so much iniquity,
she allowed herself to say that if he should be taken, she would not
send to have a mass said for him, as she had for others. And when he
was executed, she kept her word.

"Not long alter, one night when she was sleeping quietly, she was
awakened by a pitiful voice near the head of her bed, calling her by
name. She sat up in bed terrified, but saw {664} nothing, though the
lamp was burning on the table. Presently she heard the same voice,
even more pitiful than at first, calling her from the yard, and before
she had fairly recovered from her surprise, she heard it a third time,
and from a great distance, calling her name. She cried out so loudly
that those who were in the house ran to her room, and found her pale
and terrified. But no one else had heard the voice.

"On the following day, hardly were the candles lighted in the churches
when a mass was being offered for the poor felon, and the countess, on
her knees before the altar was praying with fervor and penitence, for
the clemency of God, which is not like that of men, excludes none. And
now Rita, what do you think?"

"I think she dreamed it."

"Goodness, goodness! what incredulity," said Uncle Pedro. "Rita will
be like that Tucero, who, the preachers say, separated from the
church."

"Ave Maria! Do not say that, Pedro," exclaimed Maria, "even in
exaggeration! Mercy! you may well say, what perverseness, for she
talks so just to be contrary."

A noise in the direction of the door which opened into the back-yard,
caused Maria's lips to close suddenly.

"What is that?" she said.

"Nothing, Mamma Maria," answered Perico, laughing; "what would it be?
The wind which goes about to-night moving everything."

"Mother," said Angela, "hold me in your lap, as father does Angel, for
I am afraid."

"This is too much," exclaimed Rita, who was in bad humor. "Go along
and sit on the lap of earth, and don't come back till you bring
grandchildren."

"I should like to know," said Pedro, "if those who laugh at that which
others fear have never felt dread."

"Perico! Perico!" cried Maria, in terror, "there is a noise in the
yard."

"Mamma Maria, you are excited and frightened. Don't you hear that it
is the water in the gutter?"

"I, for my part," said Pedro, in a low voice, as if to himself, "ever
since there was a stain of blood in my house--"

"Pedro! Pedro! are we always to go back to that? Why will you make
yourself wretched? Of what use is it to return to the past, for which
there is no remedy?" said Anna.

"The truth is, Anna, what I suffer at times overwhelms me, and I must
give it vent. Often at night, when I am alone in my house, it falls
upon me. Anna, believe me, many a night, when all is still and sleep
flies from me, I see him; yes, I see him--the grenadier my son slew. I
see him just as I saw him alive, in his grey capote and fur cap, rise
out of the well and come into the room where he was killed, to look
for the stains of his own blood. I sec him before my eyes, tall,
motionless, terrible."

At this moment the door opened, and a figure, tall, motionless,
terrible, with a grey capote and a grenadier's cap stood upon the
threshold.

All remained for an instant confounded and fixed in their places.

"God protect us!" exclaimed Maria. Angel clung to his father's breast,
Angela to the skirts of her grandmother.

"Ventura!" murmured Elvira, as her eyes closed and her head fell upon
her mother's bosom.

The woman for whom there had been no forgetfulness, had recognized
him.

Pedro rose impetuously and would have fallen, the poor old man not
having strength to sustain himself; but Ventura, who had thrown off
his cap and capote, sprung forward and caught him in his arms. The
scene which followed, a scene of confusion, of broken words, of
exclamations of surprise and delight, of tears and fervent thanks to
heaven, is more easily comprehended than described.

When Ventura had freed himself from the embrace of his father, who was
long in undoing his arms from {665} the neck of the son whom he could
hardly persuade himself he held in them, he fixed his eyes upon
Elvira. She was still supported by her mother, who held to her
nostrils a handkerchief wet with vinegar. But she was no longer the
Elvira he had left at his departure. Pale, attenuated, changed, she
appeared as if bidding farewell to life. Ventura's brilliant eyes
became softened and saddened with an expression of deep feeling, and,
with the frank sincerity of a countryman, he said to her:

"Have you been sick, Elvira? You do not look like yourself."

"Now she will be better," exclaimed Pedro, in whom joy had awakened
some of the old festive teasing humor. "Your absence, Ventura, and not
hearing from you, nothing less, has brought her to this. Why, in
heaven's name, did you not send us a letter, to tell us where you
were?"

"Why, our sergeant wrote at least six for me," replied Ventura, "and
besides, I have been in France, I have been a prisoner. All that is
long to tell--But how well you look, Rita," he said, regarding the
latter, who, from the moment he entered, had not taken her eyes from
the gallant youth, whom the moustache, the uniform, and the military
bearing became so well. "Bless me! but you have become a fine woman!
The good care Perico takes of you--and you Perico, always digging? Are
these your children? How handsome they are! God bless them! Hey! come
here, I am not a Frenchman nor a bluebeard."

Ventura sat down to caress the children. Maria, coming behind him at
this moment, caught his head in her hands, and covered his face with
tears and kisses--Ventura in the mean while saying, "Maria, how much
you have prayed for me! I suppose you have made a hundred novenas, and
more than a thousand promises."

"Yes, my son, and to-morrow I shall sell my best hen, to have said in
Saint Anna's chapel the thanksgiving mass I have promised."

"Aunt Anna is the one who has nothing to say," observed Ventura. "Are
you not glad to see me, madam?"

"Yes my son, yes; I was minding my Elvira. God knows," she continued,
observing the pallid countenance of her child, "how glad I am of your
return, and what thanks I give him for it, if it is for the best."

"And why not," exclaimed Pedro, "for the best? for all except my kids
and your fowls, which are going to give up the ghost within a month,
the time it will take to publish the bans."

"Don't be so hasty," answered Anna, smiling, "a wedding, neighbor, is
not a fritter to be turned, tossed, and fried in a moment."

"Well, 'every owl to his own olive,'" said Pedro after a while. "Good
people, there is a wicket in the street that is tired of being
solitary."

"To-night, Uncle Pedro," said Rita, laughing, "the horrors will go to
the bottom of the well with the Frenchman, never to return."

"Amen, amen. I hope so," responded the good old man.


CHAPTER IX.

The next evening, Ventura brought with him to their reunion a small
black water-dog, called Tambor. Never before had a strange dog been
permitted at one of those meetings, so that he had hardly entered,
wagging his tail, well washed, well combed, and with all the
confidence of an exquisite, when Melampo, who held these graces to be
of very little consequence, and an idler in lowest estimation, flew at
him with might and main, and with a single blow of his paw flattened
the creature; but without the remotest ambition to affect in this
action, either the attitude or the air of the lion of Waterloo.

"In the first place," said Perico, "will you tell me, Ventura, how you
managed to appear here yesterday, as if you had leaked through the
roof, without any one's opening the door to you?"

{666}

"Well, it is difficult to guess," answered Ventura. "When I arrived I
went to the house, and Aunty Curra, to whom my father gives a home for
taking care of him, opened the door, and to get here sooner, and take
you all by surprise, I jumped over the wall of the yard, as I used to
when I was a boy."

"I was sure last night," observed Maria, "that I heard the door of the
enclosure, and some one walking in the yard."

"Now,"' said Perico, "tell us what has happened to you. Have you been
wounded?'

"He has been wounded," cried Uncle Pedro. "Look at his breast, and you
win see a hole, which is the scar left by a ball that he received
there, and that did not lay him dead, thanks to this button which
deadened its force. See how it is flattened and hollowed out like the
pan of a fire-lock. Look at his arm; look at the wound--"

"And what matter, father," interrupted Ventura, "since they are cured
now?"

"When I ran," he continued, "I took my course down river, reached
Sanlácar, and embarked for Cadiz. There I enlisted in the regiment of
guards commanded by the Duke del Infantado. I struck up a friendship
with a young man of noble family, who was serving as a private, and we
loved each other like brothers. We soon embarked for Tarifa, for the
purpose of approaching the French in the rear, while the English
attacked them in front. The result was the battle of Barrosa, from
which the French fled to Jerez, and we took possession of their camp.

"In the midst of the fight, I said to my friend, 'Come, let us take
from that Frenchman the eagle he carries so proudly, it is continually
vexing my eyes, come;' and without recommending ourselves to God, we
threw ourselves upon the bearer, killed him, and took the ugly bird;
but as we turned we found ourselves surrounded by Frenchmen, friends
of the eagle. 'Comrades,' said we, 'it's of no use; as for the bird,
he is caged and shall not go out even if Pepe Botellas   [Footnote
169] or Napoleon himself, the big thief, should come for him.'

  [Footnote 169: Pepe Botellas, Bottle Joe; Joseph Napoleon was so
  called by the people, because, they said, he used to get drunk.]

"We set it up against a wild olive, and placed ourselves before it,
and now, we said, Come and get him--and they came, for those demons,
the worse the cause the more impetuous they are. They killed my poor
friend, and had nearly killed me, for they were many. What I felt at
the thought of losing the bird! but it was the will of heaven that it
should never sing the _mambrui_   [Footnote 170] in French, for our
men came and drove them back. They conducted me with my trophy before
the colonel, who said that I had behaved well, and should receive the
cross of San Fernando, for having captured the eagle. 'I did not
capture it, my colonel,' I answered, 'it was my friend, the young
noble, who is killed. And I fainted. When came to, I found myself in
the hospital and without the cross."

  [Footnote 170: Mambrui, a humorous military song, popular among the
  Spanish soldiers.]

"That was your own fault," said Rita. "Why did you tell the colonel it
was not you?"

Ventura looked at her as if he could not comprehend what she was
saying.

"You did your duty," said Pedro.

A tear ran down Elvira's cheek.

"I was hardly convalescent when we embarked for Huelra, and I found
myself in the battle of Albuera against the division of Marshal Soult.
I was soon after taken prisoner; made my escape, and joined the army
of Granada, commanded by the Duke del Paryne, in which I remained,
pursuing the enemy beyond the Pyrenees. Then I returned to Madrid,
where I have been waiting until now for my dismissal."

{667}

"Goodness! Ventura," said Maria, in astonishment, "you have been
further than the storks fly!"

"I--no," answered Ventura, "but I know one, and he indeed, he had been
with General La Romana, far in the north, where the ground is covered
with snow so deep that people are sometimes buried under it."

"Maria Santissima! said Maria, shuddering.

"But they are good people, they do not carry knives."

"God bless them!" exclaimed Maria.

"In that land there is no oil, and they eat black bread."

"A poor country for me," observed Anna, "for I must always eat the
best bread, if I eat nothing else."

"What kind of _gazpachos_  [Footnote 171] can they make with black
bread, and without oil?" asked Maria, quite horrified.

  [Footnote  171: Gazpacho. Dish made of bread, oil, onions, vinegar,
  salt and red-pepper mixed together in water.]

"They do not eat gazpacho," replied Ventura.

"Then what do they eat?"

"They eat potatoes and milk,", he answered.

"Much good may it do them, and benefit their stomachs."

"The worst is, Aunt Maria, that in all that land there are neither
monks nor nuns."

"What are you telling me, my son?"

"What you hear. There are very few churches, and those look like
hospitals that have been plundered, for they are without chapels,
without altars, without images, and without the blessed sacrament."

"Mercy, mercy!" exclaimed all, except Maria, who remained as if turned
to stone with surprise. But presently crossing her hands, she
exclaimed, with satisfied fervor.

"Ah my sunshine! Ah my white bread! My church! My blessed Mother! My
country, my faith, and my God in his sacrament! Happy a thousand
times, I, who have been born, and through divine mercy, shall die
here! Thank God, my son, that yon did not go to that country, a land
of heretics! How dreadful!"

"And is heresy catching, mother, like the itch?" asked Rita
ironically.

"I do not say that, God forbid," answered the good Maria; "but--"

"Everything is catching, except beauty," said Pedro, "and one is
better off in his own country. I will bet my hands that those who have
been there, will bring us nothing good."

"What do not the poor soldiers have to pass through!" sighed Elvira.

"That must be the reason why I have always been so fond of them,"
added Maria. "That, and because they defend the faith of Christ. And
therefore, I am also very devoted to San Fernando, that pious and
valiant leader. I have him framed in my parlor, and around him on the
wall, I have stuck little paper soldiers, thinking it would be
pleasing to the saint, who all his life saw himself surrounded by
soldiers. When Rita was about twelve years old, I went to Sevilla, and
she gave me a shilling to buy her a little comb. I passed by the shop
of an old man who had a lot of little paper soldiers exposed for sale.
What a guard for my saint, I thought; but my quarters were all spent.
I had nothing left but Rita's shilling. The price of the set was a
shilling. Go along, said I to myself, it is better that Rita should do
without the bauble than my saint without his guard; and I bought them.
I told Rita, and it was the truth, that my money did not hold out. The
next day when I was taking them out to stick them up around the
picture of the king, Rita came into the room. 'So then,' she said,
'you had money enough to buy these dirty soldiers, and not enough for
my little comb,' and she snatched them from my hands to throw them out
of the window. 'Child,' I screamed, 'you are throwing my heart into
the street with the soldiers!' And seeing that she paid me no
attention, I caught up the broom and beat her. The only time I ever
beat her in my life."

{668}

"It would have been better for you," said Pedro, "if you had left the
marks of your fingers upon her sometimes."

"Who can please you, Uncle Pedro?" said Rita. "My mother erred in not
chastising her child, and I err in not spoiling mine."

"Daughter!" replied Pedro, "neither Hei! till they run away, nor Whoa!
till they stop short."

"But since you like soldiers so much, mother," proceeded Rita, "why
did you take such trouble to prevent my cousin Miguel from becoming
one?"

"I love soldiers because they suffer and pass through so much, and for
the same reason, I wished to save my nephew."

"How I laughed then!" continued Rita, directing her conversation to
Ventura. "Her grace burned lights to all the saints while the lots
were being drawn. As she had not candlesticks, she stuck empty shells
to the walls with cement; put wicks in them; filled them with oil, and
began to pray. While she was praying, in came Miguel's mother, and
told her that he had been drafted. My mother, on hearing that, put out
the lights, as if to say to the saints, 'Stay in the dark now, I need
you no longer!'"

"How you talk, Rita," answered the good Maria. "I trust that God does
not so judge our hearts. I resigned myself, my daughter. I resigned
myself, because he had made known his pleasure, and when God will not,
the saints cannot."



CHAPTER X.

The joy of Elvira was as brief as it had been keen. What can escape
the eyes of one who loves? Is it not known that there are things,
which, like the wind of Guadarrama, though scarce a breath, yet kill.
Before either Rita or Ventura had acknowledged even to their own
consciousness, the mutual attraction which they exercised upon each
other, Elvira was offering to God, for the second time, the pangs of
her lost love. This time, however, without a remote hope. The prudent
and patient girl looked upon a rupture as the sure forerunner of some
catastrophe, and, like a martyr, endured without daring to repulse
them, the evidences of an affection as pale and feeble as she was
herself; an affection that was vanishing before the vivid flame of a
new love, which already sparkled, active, brilliant, and beautiful
like the object that inspired it. While the visits at the grating
became every night colder and less' prolonged, there was no occasion
that did not, by gesture, look, or word, bring into contact those two
beings, who, like moths, took pleasure in approaching the flame, drawn
by an instinctive impulse, which they obeyed, but did not pause to
define; of which no one warned them, because among the people, a
married woman unfaithful to her duties, or a lover neglectful of his,
is an anomaly; and one which, in the family whose history we are
relating, would have been looked upon as incredible to the point of
impossibility. But Rita acknowledged no rein, and the life of a
soldier had been a school of evil habits to Ventura. One day Perico,
on setting out for the field, found Elvira in the yard, and said to
her:

"Here is money, sister, to buy yourself colored dresses. You have
fulfilled your promise to wear the habit of our Lady of Sorrows till
Ventura came back, and now I wish to see your face, your
dress--everything about you gay."

Elvira answered, with difficulty repressing her tears:

"Keep your money, brother, every day I feel myself worse. It is better
for me to think of making my peace with God, than of buying wedding
clothes, or of changing the colors which are to wrap me in the
coffin."

{669}

"Do not say that, sister!" exclaimed Perico. "You break my heart! It
has become a habit with you to be melancholy. When you and Ventura are
as happy as Rita and I, when you have two little ones like these of
ours, to occupy you, your apprehensions will fly away. Come," he
added, catching the children, "come and play with your aunt."

Elvira's eyes followed her brother. Her heart was torn with grief;
grief all the more agonized and profound for being repressed. She
considered that a complaint from her would be like an indiscreet cry
of alarm at an inevitable misfortune.

"Aunt," said Angel, "nothing can keep Melampo when father goes."

"He does what he ought, like the good dog he is," answered Elvira.

"And why is he called Melampo?" the child continued, with that zeal
for asking questions which older people ridicule, instead of
respecting and encouraging.

"He is called so," answered Elvira, "because Melampo is the name of
one of the dogs that went to Bethlehem with the shepherds to see the
child Jesus. There were three of them, Melampo, Cubilon, and Tobina,
and the dogs that bear these names never go mad."

"Aunt," said Angela, running after a little bird, "I can't catch this
swallow."

"That is not a swallow. Swallows do not come till spring, and these
you must never catch nor molest."

"Why not, aunt?"

"Because they are friends to man, they confide in him and make their
nests under his eaves. They are the birds that pulled the thorns out
of the Saviour's crown when he hung upon the cross."

At this moment Angel fell and began to cry. Rita rushed impetuously
out of her room and snatched him up, exclaiming:

"What has he done to himself? what is the matter with mother's glory?"
Wiping his face, which was dirty, with her apron, she continued:

"What is the matter? Sweet little face, covered with mud. Bless his
pretty eyes and his mouth, and his poor little hands!"

And covering him with kisses, passionate caresses, she took him and
his sister into her mother's house. Returning presently she went into
the back-yard to wash.

It has already been said that this yard was next to that of uncle
Pedro, separated from it by a low wall.

Rita according to the popular custom began to sing.

Among the people of Andalucia, one can hardly be found whose memory is
not a treasury of couplets; and these are so varied that it would be
difficult to suggest an idea, for the expression of which a suitable
verse would not immediately be found.

A fine voice, well modulated and dear, answered Rita from the
adjoining yard; in this manner a musical colloquy was carried on,
concluded by the male voice in this couplet, which indicated the wings
that the preceding one had given to his desires:

  "With no loss of time,
  To succeed I intend;
  Without sigh to the air,
  Or complaint to the wind."

In the mean time Elvira sat sewing beside her mother. Her sweet and
placid countenance betrayed none of the pain and anguish of her heart.
Nevertheless, Anna looked at her with the penetrating eyes of a
mother, and thought, "Will the hopes fail which I placed in Ventura's
return? Does our Lord want her for himself?"

At this moment the children rushed in, wild with delight.

"Mamma Anna! Aunt Elvira!" they shouted. "Uncle Pedro says the ass had
a little colt last night. She is in the stable with it, and we did not
know it here. Come and see it! come and see it!"

And one pulling at the grandmother and the other at the aunt, they
went, to the yard and threw the door wide open.

{670}

What a two-edged dagger for the heart of Anna, the honorable woman,
the loving mother! Ventura was there with Rita!

Quick as lightning Ventura stepped upon the wheel of a cart which
stood close to the wall, and with one spring disappeared.

Rita, enraged, continued her washing, and with unparalleled effrontery
began to sing:

  "No mother-in-law plagued Eve;
  No sister-in-law worried Adam;
  Nor caused their souls to grieve,
  For in Eden they never had them."

The children had run on to the stable without stopping. Anna led her
daughter, almost fainting, into the house, and there upon the bosom of
her mother, from whom the cause of her grief was no longer a secret,
Elvira burst into sobs.

"And you knew it," said her mother; "silent martyr to prudence. Weep,
yes, weep, for tears are like the blood which flows from wounds, and
renders them less mortal. I knew what she was and warned him. I knew
that reprobation must follow the union of kindred blood, and I told
him so. He would not listen. It would have been better to let him go
to the war. But the heart errs as well as the understanding."

In the mean time the impudent woman went on singing:

  "Mothers-in-law, and sisters-in-law,
  See a cargo passing go;
  What a famous load 'twould be.
  For Satan's regions down below."


CHAPTER XI.

After a night of sleepless anguish, Anna rose, apparently more
tranquil; drawing some slight hope from the determination she had
taken to speak with Rita; show her the precipice toward which she was
running blindly, and persuade her to recede.

Anna had a dignity that would have impressed any one in whom the noble
quality of respect had not been suffocated by pride--the worst enemy
of man because the most daring; no other like it elevates itself in
the presence of virtue; no other is so obstinate and so lordly; no
other so hides perversity under forms of goodness; no other so
falsifies ideas and qualifies and condemns as servile that sentiment
of respect which entered into the world with the first benediction of
God. Pride sometimes wishes to elevate itself into dignity, but
without success, for dignity never seeks to set itself up at the cost
of another, but leaves and maintains everything in its own place; its
attitude being even more noble when it honors than when it is honored.
Dignity owes its place neither to riches nor knowledge, and least of
all is it indebted to pride. It is the simple reflection of an
elevated soul which feels its strength. It is natural, like the flush
of health; not put on like the color of those who paint. But there are
beings who place themselves above everything else, and rest with
portentous composure upon a fake and insecure base, parading an
intrepidity and an arrogance which they do not assume who rest on the
firm rock of infallible justice and eternal truth. Rita, treading a
crooked path with fearless step and serene countenance, was one of
these beings.

The good sense of the villager, who felt profoundly what we have
expressed, and understood perfectly the character of both women,
defined it better in their concise laconism when, in speaking of Anna,
they said, "Aunt Anna teaches without talking;" and of Rita, "She
fears neither God nor the devil."

Rita was sewing when Anna entered. The latter deliberately drew the
bolt of the door and sat down facing her daughter-in-law.

"You already know, Rita," she said calmly, "That I was never pleased
with your marriage."

"And have you come to receive my thanks?"

Without noticing the question Anna continued:

"I had penetrated your character."

"It was not necessary to be a seer to do that," replied Rita, "I am
perfectly open and frank. I say what I think."

{671}

"The evil is not in saying what you think, but in thinking what you
say."

"It is plain that it would be better for me to play the dead fox, or
still water, like some who appear flakes of snow, but are in reality
grains of salt."

This was a fling at Elvira which Anna fully understood, but of which
she took no notice, and proceeded.

"Notwithstanding, I was deceived. I had not entirely fathomed you."

"Go on," said Rita, "there is a squall to-day."

"I never thought that what has come to pass would happen."

"Now it escapes and rains pitchforks," said Rita.

"Since," proceeded Anna, "you do not fear to deceive my son--"

"Ho, is that the matter?" said Rita coolly.

"And kill my poor daughter--"

"That will do," interrupted Rita, "there is where the shoe pinches;
because Ventura does not want to marry a spectre, that to go out has
to ask permission of the gravedigger, I must answer for it. And for no
other reason than because he is gay and likes better to jest with one
who is cheerful like me than to drink herb-tea with her, can I help
it?"

Anna allowed Rita to conclude, her countenance showing no alteration
except a mortal paleness.

"Rita," she said, when the latter had finished, "a woman cannot be
false to her marriage vows with impunity."

"What are you saying!" exclaimed Rita, springing to her feet and
throwing away her work, her cheeks and eyes on fire. "What have you
said, madam? I fake to my marriage vows? To that which your eyes did
not see you have brought in your hand! I false! I! You have always
borne me ill-will, like a mother-in-law in fact, and a bad
mother-in-law, but I never knew before that the saint-eaters bore
_such_ testimony."

"I do not say that you are so," replied Anna, in the same grave and
moderate tone which she had observed from the beginning, "but that you
are in the way, that you are going to be false if God does not prevent
it by opening your eyes."

"Now, as formerly, and always a prophetess, Jonah in person, and" (she
added between her teeth) "may the whale swallow you also."

"Yes, Rita, yes," said Anna, "and I have come--"

"To threaten me?" asked Rita, with an air of bold defiance.

"No, Rita, no, my daughter; I have come to beg of you in the name of
God, for the love of my son, for the sake of your children, and for
your own sake, to consider what you are doing, to examine your heart
while there is yet time."

"Did Perico send you?"

"No, my dear son suspects nothing, God forbid that we should awaken a
sleeping lion."

"Well, then, why do you put yourself into so wide a garment? Go along!
The one who is being hanged does not feel it but the witness feels it!
Perico, madam, is not and never has been jealous; neither does he
suspect the fingers of his guests, or go in quest of trouble. He is no
dirty hypocrite, crying to heaven because people joke, and he does not
bully because somebody draws a few buckets of water for his wife when
she is washing. Do you think that I shall lose my soul for that?"

"Rita, Rita, do not trifle with men."

"Nor you with women. Good heavens! it would seem that I am
scandalizing the town."

"Consider, Rita," continued Anna with increased severity, "that with
men an affront is often the cause of bloodshed."

"You would bathe in rose-water," responded Rita "if matters seemed to
be running a little toward the fulfilment of those predictions of
yours about _kindred blood not harmonizing_, and others of the same
kind, by which you wished to prevent your son from marrying; and you
were disappointed; {672} and you will be now if you attempt, as I see
you are attempting, to make trouble between us. I know what I am
doing; Perico is a lover of quiet, and knows the wife he has. Leave us
in peace, and we will live so, if you do not heat your son's skull by
your meddling; you take care of the wedding finery of your daughter,
the flower of the family."

At this string of taunts and insults, the prudent long-suffering of
that respectable matron, wavered for an instant; but the angel of
patience that God sends to women from the moment they become mothers,
to help them bear their crosses, vanquished, and Anna went out,
looking at Rita with a sad smile, in which there was as much or more
compassion than contempt.

The worthy woman remained in a state of depression and anguish, on
account of the failure of the step she had taken, and determined to
open her heart to Pedro, in order to have him send his son away.
Finally there was a guard wanting at the estate on which Ventura had
served, and he was called to fill the place. This absence, though
interrupted by frequent visits to the village, gave some respite to
the afflicted Anna, who said to herself, "a day of life is life."



CHAPTER XII.

In the mean time the happy Christmas holidays arrived. They had
arranged for the children a beautiful birth-place, which occupied the
whole front of the parlor, covering it with aromatic pistachio,
rosemary, lavender, and other odorous plants and leaves. Perico
brought these things from the field with all the pleasure of a lover
bringing flowers to his bride.

On Christmas day, Perico heard mass early, and went to take a walk to
his wheat-field, having been told that there were goats in the
neighborhood.

He returned home about ten o'clock, and found the children alone.

"How glad we are, father, that you have come," they shouted, running
joyfully toward him. "They have all gone and left us."

"Where then are Mamma Anna, and Aunt Elvira?"

"They went to high mass."

"Who staid with you?"

"Mother."

"And where is she?"

"How do we know? We were in the parlor with her grace, dancing before
the birth-place. Ventura came in, and mother told us to go somewhere
else with the music, for it made her head ache, and when we were going
out Ventura told her, I heard it, father, that she did right to put
the door between, for the little angels of God were the devil's little
witnesses. Is it true, father, are we the devil's little witnesses?"

To whom has it not happened, at some time in his life, in great or in
less important circumstances, that a single word has been the key to
open and explain; the torch to illuminate the present and the past; to
bring out of oblivion and light up a train of circumstances and
incidents which had transpired unperceived, but which now unite, to
form an opinion, to fix a conviction or to root a belief? Such was the
effect upon Perico of the words, which the decree of expiation seemed
to have put into the mouth of innocence.

Late, but terrible, the truth presented itself to the eyes which good
faith had kept closed, and doubt took possession of the heart so
healthy and so shielded by honor that a suspicion had never entered
it.

"Father, father!" cried the children, seeing him tremble and turn
pale. Perico did not hear them.

"Mamma Anna," they exclaimed, as the latter entered, "hurry, father is
sick!"

{673}

As he heard his mother enter, Perico turned his perplexed eyes toward
her, and seemed to read again in her severe countenance the terrible
sentence she had once pronounced upon a future from which her loving
foresight would have preserved him: "A bad daughter will be a bad
wife." Overwhelmed, he rushed out of the house, muttering a pretext
for his flight which no one understood.

Anna put her head out of the window, and felt relieved as she saw that
he went toward the fields.

"Could any one have told him that goats have broken into the wheat?"

"It is very likely, mother; he suspected it yesterday," answered
Elvira. But dinner-time came, and Perico did not appear.

It was strange, on Christmas day; but to country people, who have no
fixed hours, it was not alarming.

In the evening Maria arrived at the usual time.

"Did Ventura not come to the village to-day?" asked Anna.

"Yes," answered Pedro, "but there is an entertainment, and his friends
carried him off. He has always been so fond of dancing that he would
at any time leave his dinner, for a fandango."

"And Rita," said Elvira, "was she not at your house. Aunt Maria?"

"She came there, my daughter, but wanted to go with a neighbor to the
entertainment. I told her she had better stay at home, but as she
never minds me--"

"And you told her right, Maria," added Pedro, "an honest woman's place
is in the house."

They were oppressed and silent when Perico abruptly entered.

The light was so deadened by the lamp-shade that they did not perceive
the complete transformation of his face. Dark lines, which appeared
the effect of long days of sickness, encircled his burning eyes, and
his lips were red and parched like those of a person in a fever. He
threw a rapid glance around, and abruptly asked, "Where is Rita?"

All remained silent; at length Maria said timidly,

"My son, she went for a little while to the feast with a neighbor--she
must be here soon--she took it into her head--and as it was Christmas
day--"

Without answering a word, Perico turned suddenly, and left the room.
His mother rose quickly and followed, but did not overtake him.

"I tell you, Maria," said Pedro, "that Perico ought to beat her well.
I would not say a word to stop him."

"Don't talk so, Pedro," answered Maria, "Perico is not the one to
strike a woman. My poor little girl! we shall see. What harm is there
in giving two or three hops? Old folks, Pedro, should not forget that
they have been young."

At this moment Anna entered, trembling.

"Pedro," she said, "go to the feast!"

"I?" answered Pedro; "you are cool! I am out of all patience with that
same feast. If Perico warms his wife's ribs, he will be well employed;
she shall not dry her tears upon my pocket-handkerchief."

"Pedro, go to the feast!" said Anna again, but this time with such an
accent of distress, that Pedro turned his head and sat staring at her.

Anna caught him by the arm, obliged him to rise, drew him aside, and
spoke a few rapid words to him in a low voice.

The old man as he listened gave a half-suppressed cry, clasped his
hands across his forehead, caught up his hat and hastily left the
house.



CHAPTER XIII.

Ventura and Rita were dancing at the feast, animated by that which
mounts to heads wanting in age or wanting in sense; by that which
blinds the eyes of reason, silences prudence, and puts respect to
flight; that is to say, wine; a love entirely material, a voluptuous
dance, executed without restraint, amid foolish drunken applauses.

{674}

In truth they were a comely pair. Rita moved her charming head,
adorned with flowers, and tossed her person to and fro with that
inimitable grace of her province, which is at will modest or free. Her
black eyes shone like polished jet, and her fingers agitated the
castanets in defiant provocation. She had in Ventura a partner well
suited to her. Never was the fandango danced with more grace and
sprightliness.

The excited singers improvised (according to custom) couplets in
praise of the brilliant pair:

  "Throw roses, red roses,
  The belle of the ball,
  For her beauty and grace
  She merits them all
  And to-night in the feast,
  By public acclaim.
  To her and Ventura
  Is given the palm."

During the last changes when the clappings and cheers were redoubled,
Perico arrived and stopped upon the threshold.

Occupied as all were with the dance, no one noticed his arrival, and
Ventura conducting Rita to a room where there were refreshments passed
close beside him as he stood in shadow, without being aware of his
presence. As they passed he heard words between them which confirmed
the whole extent of his misfortune; all the infamy of the wife he
loved so fondly, of the mother of his children; all the treachery of a
friend and brother.

The blow was so terrible that the unhappy man remained for a moment
stunned; but recovering himself, he followed them.

Rita stood before a small mirror arranging the flowers that adorned
her head.

"Withered," said Ventura, "why do you put on roses? Is it not known
that they always die of envy on the head of a handsome woman?"

"Look here, Ventura," said one of his friends, "you appear to like the
forbidden fruit better than any other."

"I," responded Ventura, "like good fruit though it be forbidden."

"That is an indignity," said a friend of Perico's.

One of those present took the speaker by the arm, and said to him, as
he drew him aside.

"Hush, man! don't you see that he is drunk? Who gave you a candle for
this funeral? What is it to you if Perico, who is the one interested,
consents?"

"Who dares to say that Perico Alvareda consents to an indignity?" said
the latter presenting himself in the middle of the room, as pale as if
risen from a bier.

At the sound of her husband's voice, Rita slid like a serpent among
the bystanders and disappeared.

"He comes in good time to look after his wife," said some hair-brained
youths, who formed a sort of retinue to the brilliant dancer and
valiant young soldier, bursting into a laugh.

"Sirs," said Perico, crossing his arms upon his breast with a look of
suppressed rage, "have I a monkey show in my face?"

"That or something else which provokes laughter," answered Ventura, at
which all laughed.

"It is lucky for you," retorted Perico, in a choked voice, "that I am
not armed."

"Shut your mouth!" exclaimed Ventura, with a rude laugh. "How bold the
_pet lamb_ is getting! Leave off bravado, pious youth; don't be
picking quarrels, but go home and wipe your children's noses."

At these words Perico precipitated himself upon Ventura. The latter
recoiled before the sudden shock, but immediately recovered himself,
and with the strength and agility which were natural to him, seized
Perico by the middle, threw him to the ground, and put his knee upon
his breast.

Fortunately Perico did not carry a knife, and Ventura did not draw
his; but instead the latter clenched both hands upon Perico's throat,
repeating furiously:

{675}

"You! You! that I can tear to pieces with three fingers; do you lay
your hands upon me? You! a killer of locusts, a coward, a chicken,
brought up under your mother's wing. You to me! to me!"

At this instant Pedro entered.

"Ventura!" he shouted, "Ventura! What are you doing? what are you
doing, madman?"

At the sight of his father, Ventura loosed his grasp upon Perico and
stood up.

"You are drunk," continued Pedro, beside himself with indignation and
grief. "You are drunk, and with evil wine.  [Footnote 172] Go home,"
he added pushing Ventura by the shoulder, "go home, and go on before
me."

  [Footnote 172: "Drunk with evil wine," said when the drunken person
  is ill-tempered.]

Ventura obeyed without answering, for with Pedro's words, it was not
alone the voice of his father that reached his ears, it was the voice
of reason, of conscience, of his own heart. His noble instincts were
awakened, and he blushed for the affair which had just taken place,
and for the cause which had occasioned it. Therefore he lowered his
head as in the presence of all he respected, and went out, followed by
his father.

In the mean while they had raised Perico, who was gradually recovering
from the vertigo caused by the pressure of Ventura's fingers.

He passed his hand across his forehead, cast upon those who surrounded
him the glance of a wounded and manacled lion, and left the room,
saying in a hollow voice,

"He has destroyed us both."

As Ventura had gone, accompanied by his father, those present allowed
Perico to leave without opposition.

"This is not the end," said one, shaking his head.

"That is clear," said another. "First deceived, and afterward beaten;
who is the saint that could bear it?"

Perico went home muttering in disjointed and broken
sentences--"Chicken!" "Coward!" "Something in my face which provokes
laughter!" "And he tells me so, he!" "Pet lamb!" "No one cast a doubt
upon my honor until you spat upon it and trampled it under your feet!
Oh! we shall see!" He entered his room and seized his gun.

"Father!" called the little voice of Angela from the next apartment,
"father, we are alone."

"You will be yet more alone," murmured Perico, without answering her.

The children's voices kept on calling "Father, father!"

"You have no father!" shouted Perico, and went out into the court. He
placed his gun against the trunk of the orange-tree, in order to take
out ammunition to load it, but, as if the ancient protector of the
family repulsed the weapon, it slid and fell to the ground. The leaves
of the tree murmured mournfully. Were they moved by some dismal
presentiment?

Perico was leaving the court when he found himself face to face with
his mother, who, made watchful by her inquietude, had heard her son
enter.

"Where are you going, Perico?" she asked.

"To the field. I have told you already that there were goats around."

"Did you go to the feast?"

"Yes."

"And Rita?"

"Was not there. Mamma Maria dotes."

Anna breathed more freely; still, the unusual roughness of her son's
tone and the asperity of his replies surprised the already alarmed
mother.

"Don't go now to the field, my child," she said in a supplicating
voice.

"Not go to the field, and why?"

"Because I feel in my heart that you ought not, and you know that my
heart is true."

"_Yes, I know it_!" he answered, with such acerbity and bitterness
that Anna began to fear that although he might not have found Rita at
the feast, he had, nevertheless, his suspicions.

"Well, then, since you know it, do not go," she said.

{676}

"Madam," answered Perico, "women sometimes exasperate men by trying to
govern them. They say that I have been brought up _under your wing_. I
intend now to fly alone," and he went toward the gate.

"Is this my son?" cried the poor mother. "Something is the matter with
him! Something is wrong!"

As Perico opened the gate, his faithful companion, the good Melampo,
came to his side.

"Go back!" said Perico, giving him a kick.

The poor animal, little used to ill treatment, fell back astonished,
but immediately, and with that absence of resentment which makes the
dog a model of abnegation in his affection, as well as of fidelity,
darted to the gate in order to follow his master. It was already shut.
Then he began to howl mournfully, as if to prove the truth of the
instinct of these animals when they announce a catastrophe by their
lamentations.



CHAPTER XIV.

On the following day, when sleep had dispelled from Ventura's brain
the remaining fumes that confused his reason, he rose as deeply
ashamed as he was sincerely penitent. He, therefore, listened to the
just and sensible charges which his father made against his
proceedings, past and present, without contradicting them.

"All you say is true, father," he answered, "and I can only tell you
that I did not know what I was doing, but I feel it enough now! The
wine, the cursed wine! I will ask Perico's pardon before all the
village. I owe it more to myself than even to him I have offended."

"You promise, then, to ask his pardon?"

"A hundred times, father."

"You will marry Elvira?"

"With all my heart."

"And treat her well?"

"By this cross," said Ventura making the sign with his fingers.

"You and she will go to Alcalá?"

"Yes, sir, if it were to Peñon."  [Footnote 173]

  [Footnote 173: Gibraltar, in other words, to the end of the world.]

Pedro looked at him a moment with deep emotion, and said:

"Well, then, God bless you, my son."

Both went to Anna's in search of Perico, but he had gone out, Anna
told them. At sight of them, but still more on noticing the joy and
satisfaction which shone in Pedro's face, Anna's vague but distressing
fears were tranquillized, and, more than all, Ventura's manner filled
her with hope, for she saw that he approached Elvira and talked to her
with interest and tenderness, while Pedro said, with a mysterious air
and winking toward Ventura, "That young fellow is in a hurry to be
married. You mustn't take so long to prepare the wedding things,
neighbor; young people are not so sluggish as we old ones."

They soon left, Ventura for the hacienda at which he was employed;
Pedro, who was going to his wheat-field, accompanied him, their road
being the same. The wheat was very fine, not full of weeds.

"The weeds are awake," said Ventura.

"Give them time," replied Pedro, "and they will vanquish the wheat,
because they are the legitimate offspring of the soil. The wheat is
its foster child. But, with the favor of God, wheat will not be
lacking in the house for us and for more that may come."

They separated and Ventura disappeared in the olive-grove. Pedro
remained looking after him.

"Not even a king," he said to himself, "has a son like mine. Nor is
there his equal in all Spain. If he is noble in person, he is more
noble in soul."

Ventura had advanced but few steps into the grove when he saw Perico
at a little distance, coming from behind a tree with his gun.

{677}

"I have something in my face, thanks to you," he shouted, "that
provokes laughter. I have also something in my hand that stops
laughter. I am a coward and a killer of locusts, but I know how to rid
myself of the reproach you have put upon me."

"Perico, what are you doing?" cried Ventura, running toward him to
arrest the action. But the shot had been sent on its dreadful errand,
and Ventura fell mortally wounded. Pedro heard the report and started.

"What is that?" he exclaimed, "but what would it be?" he added upon
reflection. "Ventura has perhaps shot a partridge. It sounded near. I
will go and see."

He hurriedly follows the path his son has taken, sees a form lying
upon the ground; approaches it--God of earth and heaven! It is a
wounded man! and that man is his son! The poor old man falls down
beside him.

"Father," Ventura says, "I have some strength left; calm yourself and
help me get to the hacienda; it is not far and let them send for a
confessor, for I wish to die like a Christian."

The God of pity gives strength to the poor old man. He raises his son,
who, leaning upon his shoulder walks a few steps, repressing the
groans which anguish wrings from his breast.

At the hacienda, they hear a pitiful voice calling for succor; all run
out and see, coming along the path, the unfortunate father supporting
upon his shoulder his dying son. They meet and surround them.

"A priest! a priest!" moans the exhausted voice of Ventura.

A suitable person, mounted on the fleetest horse, leaves for the
village.

"The surgeon, bring the surgeon!" calls the father.

"And the magistrate!" adds the superintendent.

In this manner passes an hour of agony and dread.

But now they hear the swift approach of horses' feet, and the
messenger comes accompanied by the priest. The aid which arrives first
is that of religion.

The priest enters, carrying in his bosom the sacred host. All
prostrate themselves. The wretched father finds relief in tears.

They leave the priest with the dying man, and through the house,
broken only by the sobs of Pedro, reigns a solemn silence.

The minister of God comes out of the room. A sweet calm has spread
itself over the face of the reconciled. The surgeon enters, probes the
wound, and turns silently with a sad movement of his head toward those
who are standing by. Pedro awaiting, with hands convulsively clasped,
the sentence of the man of science, falls to the floor, and they carry
him away.

"Sir magistrate," the surgeon says, "he is not capable of making a
declaration, he is dying."

These words rouse Ventura. With that energy which is natural to him,
he opens his eyes and says distinctly: "Ask, for I can still answer."

The scribe prepares his materials and the magistrate asks:

"What has been the cause of your death?"

"I myself," distinctly replied Ventura.

"Who shot you?"

"One whom I have forgiven."

"You then forgive your murderer?"

"Before God and man."

These were his last words.

The priest presses his hand and says, "Let us recite the creed." All
kneel, and the guardian angel embraces as a sister, even before
hearing the divine sentence, the parting soul of him who died
forgiving his murderer.

{678}

CHAPTER XV.

The women were together in Anna's parlor, and although not one of
them, except Rita, knew of the events of the night before, they sat in
oppressive silence, for even Maria was wanting in her accustomed
loquacity.

"I don't know why," she said at last, "nor what is the matter with me,
but my heart to-day feels as though it could not stay in its place."

"It is the same with me," said Elvira, "I cannot breathe freely. I
feel as if a stone lay on my heart. Perhaps it is the air. Is it going
to rain, Aunt Maria?"

"My poor child," thought Anna, "the remedy comes too late. Earth is
calling her body and heaven her soul."

"Well, I feel just as usual," said Rita, who was in reality the one
that could hardly sit still for uneasiness.

Angela had made her a rag baby, which she was rocking in a hollow tile
by way of cradle, and the painful silence which followed these few
words was only broken by the gentle voice of the little girl as she
sung, in the sweet and monotonous nursery melody to which some mothers
lend such simple enchantment, and such infinite tenderness, these
words:

  "I hold thee in my arms,
  And never cease to think.
  What would become of thee, my angel,
  If I should be taken from thee.
  The little angels of heaven--"

The childish song was interrupted by a heavy solemn stroke of the
church bell. Its vibration died away in the air slowly and gradually,
as if mounting to other regions.

"_His Majesty!_" said all, rising to their feet.

Anna prayed aloud for the one who was about to receive the last
sacraments.

"For whom can it be?" said Maria. "I do not know of any one that is
dangerously sick in the place."

Rita looked out of the window and asked of a woman that was passing,
who was the sick person?

"I do not know," she answered, "but it is some one out of the
village."

Another woman cried as she approached, "Mercy! it is a murder, for the
magistrate and the surgeon have followed the priest as fast as they
could!"

"God help him!" they all exclaimed, with that profound and terrible
emotion which is excited by those awful words, a murder!

"And who can it be?" asked Rita.

"No one knows," answered the woman.

Then the bell tolled for the passing soul; solemn stroke; stroke of
awe; voice of the church, which announces to men that a brother is
striving in weariness, anguish, and dismay, and is going to appear
before the dread tribunal--momentous voice, by which the church says
to the restless multitude, deep in frivolous interests which it deems
important, and in fleeting passions which it dreams will be eternal:
Stand still a moment in respect for death, in consideration of your
fellow-being who is about to disappear from the earth, as you will
disappear tomorrow.

They remained plunged in silence, but nevertheless deeply moved, as
happens sometimes with the sea, when its surface is calm, but its
bosom heaves with those deep interior waves which sailors call a
ground-swell.

And not they alone. The whole village was in consternation, for death
by the hand of violence always appalls, since the curse which God
pronounced upon Cain continues, and will continue, in undiminished
solemnity throughout all generations.

"How long the time is!" said Maria, at length. "It seems as if the day
stood still."

"And as if the sun were nailed in the sky," added Elvira. "Suspense is
so painful. Perhaps robbers have done it."

"It may have been unintentional," answered Maria.

"Mamma Anna, who has killed a man, and what made him do it?" asked the
little Angela.

"Who can tell," replied Anna, "what is the cause, or whose the daring
hand that has anticipated that of God in extinguishing a torch which
he lighted."

{679}

At that instant they heard a distant rumor. People moved by curiosity
are running through the street, and confused exclamations of
astonishment and pity reach their ears.

"What is it?" asked Rita, approaching the window.

"They are bringing the dead man this way," was the answer.

Elvira felt herself irresistibly impelled to look out.

"Come away, Elvira," said her mother, "you know that you cannot bear
the sight of a corpse."

Elvira did not hear her, for the crowd, that drawn by curiosity,
sympathy, or friendship, had surrounded the body and its attendants,
was coming near. Anna and Maria, also placed themselves at the
grating. The corpse approached, lying across a horse and covered with
a sheet. An old man follows it, supported by two persons. His head is
bowed upon his breast. They look at him--merciful God! it is Pedro!
and they utter a simultaneous cry.

Pedro hears it, lifts his head and sees Rita. Despair and indignation
give him strength. He frees himself violently from the arms that
sustain him, and precipitates himself toward the horse, exclaiming:
"Look at your work, heartless woman! Perico killed him." Saying this,
he lifts the sheet and exposes the body of Ventura, pale, bloody, and
with a deep wound in the breast.

------

From the Dublin University Magazine.

IRISH FOLK BOOKS OF THE LAST CENTURY.


In the eighteenth century Ireland did not possess the boon of
Commissioners to prepare useful and interesting school books. However,
as the mass of the peasantry wished to give their children the only
education they could command, namely, that afforded by the hedge
schools, and as young and old liked reading stories and popular
histories, or at least hearing them read, some Dublin, Cork, and
Limerick printers assumed the duties neglected by senators, and
published "Primers," "Reading-made-easie's," "Child's-new-play-thing,"
and the widely diffused "Universal Spelling Book" of the magisterial
Daniel Fenning, for mere educational purposes. These were "adorned
with cuts," but the transition from stage to stage was too abrupt, and
the concluding portions of the early books were as difficult as that
of the "Universal Spelling Book" itself, which the author, in order to
render it less practically useful, had encumbered with a dry and
difficult grammar placed in the centre of the volume.

Two Dublin publishers, Pat. Wogan, of Merchants' quay, and William
Jones, 75 Thomas street, were the educational and miscellaneous
Alduses of the day, and considered themselves as lights burning in a
dark place for the literary guidance of their countrymen and
countrywomen, of the shop-keeping, farmer, and peasant classes. In the
frontispiece of some editions of the spelling-book grew the tree of
knowledge, laden with fruit, each marked with some letter, and ardent
climbers plucking away. Beneath was placed this inscription:

  "The tree of knowledge here you see.
  The fruit of which is A, B, C.
  But if you neglect it like idle drones,
  You'll not be respected by William Jones."

{680}

That portion of the work containing "spells" and explanations was
thoroughly studied by the pupils. The long class was arranged in line
in the evening, every one contributed a brass pin, and the boy or girl
found best in the lesson, and most successful at the hard "spells"
given him or her by the others, and most adroit in defeating them at
the same exercise, got all the pins except two, the portion of the
second in rank, (_the queen_,) and one, the perquisite of the third,
(_the prince_.)

Every neighborhood was searched carefully for any stray copies of
Entick's or Sheridan's small square dictionaries, (pronounced
_Dixhenry's_ by the eager students,) for hard spells and difficult
explanations to aid them in their evening tournaments.

The grave Mr. Fenning was censuruble for admitting into some editions
the following jest (probably imported from Joe Miller) among his
edifying fables and narratives:

  "A gay young fellow once asked a parson for a guinea, but was
  stiffly refused. 'Then,' said he,  give me at least a crown.' 'I
  will not give thee a farthing,' answered the clergyman. 'Well,
  father,' said the rake, 'let me have your blessing at all events.'
  'Oh I yes: kneel down, my son, and receive it with humility.' 'Nay,'
  said the other, 'I will not accept it, for were it worth a farthing
  you would not have offered it.'"

We cannot, however, quit the school-books without mention of the
really valuable treatise on arithmetic, composed by Elias Vorster, a
Dutchman naturalized in Cork, and subsequently improved by John Gough,
of Meath street, one of the society of Friends. "Book-keeping by
Double Entry," written by Dowling and Jackson, was so judiciously
arranged that it is still looked on as a standard work.

The same followers _longo intervallo_ of Stephens and Elzevir
published, besides prayer and other devout books, a series of stories
and histories, and literary treatises such as they were, printed with
worn type, on bad grey paper, cheaply bound in sheep-skin, and sold by
the peddlers through the country at a _tester_ (6-1/2d.) each. Of
history, voyages, etc., the peddler's basket was provided with "Hugh
Reilly's History of Ireland," "Adventures of Sir Francis Drake," "The
Battle of Aughrim," and "Siege of Londonderry," (the two latter being
dramas,) "Life and Adventures of James Freney the Robber," "The Irish
Rogues and Rapparees," "The Trojan Wars," and "Troy's Destruction,"
"The Life of Baron Trenck," and "The Nine Worthies--Three Jews, Three
Heathens, and Three Christians."

The fictional department embraced, chiefly in an abridged state, "The
Arabian Nights," "The History of Don Quixote," "Gulliver's Travels,"
"Esop's Fables," "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," "Robin Hood's
Garland," "The Seven Champions of Christendom," "The History of
Valentine and Orson," "The Seven Wise Masters and Mistresses of Rome,"
"Royal Fairy Tales," etc., etc.

In the department of the Belles Lettres may be classed, "Lord
Chesterfield's Letters to his Son," "The Academy of Compliments," "The
Fashionable Letter Writer," "Hocus Pocus, or the Whole Art of
Legerdemain," "Joe Miller's Jest Book," etc.

The list would not be complete without mention of the books of
ballads. These were sold in sheets, each forming 8 pages, 18mo, and
adorned with cuts, never germain to the ballads they illustrated. Some
of these sheets contained only one production, the "Yarmouth Tragedy,"
or some early English ballad sadly disfigured. One related how a
"servant-man" was accused by an envious liveried brother, of being a
confirmed card-player. On being examined he obtained a complete
victory over the informer, convincing his master that what he, the
master, called cards, was to him a prayer-book, a catechism, a
calendar, and what not. The different numbers reminded him of the six
days of the creation, the seven churches of Asia, the ten
commandments, the twelve Apostles, etc. The {681} king recalled to him
the duty he owed that supreme magistrate, the ace of hearts, the love
due to God and our neighbor. "How, is it," said the master, "that you
have always passed over the knave in your reckoning?" "Ah! I wished to
speak no ill of that crooked disciple that went to backbite me to your
honor." The reader anticipates the victory of the ingenious rogue.

The purchasers of these sheets sewed them as well as they could in a
book form, but they were so thumbed and abused, that it is at this
date nearly impossible to procure one of those repertories of song
printed toward the close of the last or the beginning of the present
century.

Of all these works that we delight in most at present, (it was not so
when we were young,) is the unmatched "Academy of Compliments," which
was the favorite of boys and girls just beginning to think of
marriage, or its charming preliminary, courtship. Very feelingly did
the writer in his preface insist on the necessity of eloquence. "Even
quick and attractive wit," as he thoughtfully observed, "is often
foiled for want of words, and makes a man or woman seem a _statute_ or
one dumb." He candidly acknowledges that several treatises like his
have been published, "but he assures the _courteous reader_ that none
have arrived to the perfection of this, for good language and
diversion."

This is the receipt for accosting a lady, and entering into
conversation; with her:

  "I believe Nature brought you forth to be a scourge to lovers, for
  she hath been so prodigal of her favor toward you, that it renders
  you as admirable as you are amiable."

Another form:

  "Your presence is so dear to me, your conversation so _honest_, and
  your humour so pleasing, that I could desire to be with you
  perpetually."

The author directs a slight departure from this form, in case the
gentleman has never seen the lady before, and yet has fallen
passionately in love with her.

  "If you accuse me of temerity, you must lay your own beauty in
  fault, with which I am so taken, that my heart is ravished from me,
  and wholly subjected to you."

Decent people would scarcely thank us for troubling them with many of
the "witty questions and answers for the improvement of conversation."
A few must be quoted, however, with discreet selection.

  "Q. What said the tiler to the man when he fell through the rafters
  of his house?

  "A. Well done, faith; I like such an assistant as thou art, who can
  go through his work so quickly.

  "Q. What said the tailor's boy to the gentleman who, on his
  presenting his bill, said tartly, he was not running away?

  "A. If you are not, sir, I am sorry to say my master is.

  "Q. Why is a soldier said to be of such great antiquity?

  "A. Because he keeps up the old fashions when the first bed was upon
  the bare ground."


THE BATTLE OF AUGHRIM.

It may appear strange that "The Battle of Aughrim," written by an
adherent to the Hanoverian succession, should so long have continued a
popular volume among the Roman Catholic peasantry. This has, perhaps,
been due to the respectful style in which the author treated the
officers of Irish extraction. All his contempt and dislike were
levelled at St. Ruth, the French General, and his masters, English
James and French Louis. Though the style of the rhymed play is turgid
enough, there are in it occasional passages of considerable vigor and
beauty, and a brisk movement in the conduct of the piece; and
sentimental youth have an opportunity of shedding a tear over the ill
starred love of _Godfrey_ and _Jemima_. It was scarcely fair of the
author to represent St. Ruth as a stabber in cold blood, but hear the
moving periods he makes Sarsfield utter:

  "O heavens! can nature bear the shocking sound
  Of death or slavery on our native ground.
  Why was I nurtured of a noble race,
  And taught to stare destruction in the face?
  Why was I not laid out a useless _scrub_,
  And formed for some poor hungry peasant's cub.
  To hedge and ditch, and with unwearied toil
  To cultivate for grain a fertile soil,
  To watch my flocks, and range my pastures through,
  With all my locks wet with the morning dew,
  Rather than being great, give up my fame,
  And lose the ground I never can regain?"

{682}

Those Irishmen, who, like ourselves, have read and enjoyed this drama
in early boyhood, before the birth of the critical faculty, will find
it out of their power to divest themselves of early impressions when
endeavoring to form a just estimate of its merits. We vainly strive to
forget the image of a comely and intelligent country housewife,
spiritedly reciting the interview of the Irish and English officers
after the day was decided, and bravely holding out the tongs at the
point where Sarsfield presents his weapon. Talmash, Mackay, and Sir
Charles Godfrey confront the Irish chiefs, Dorrington, O'Neil, and
Sarsfield, and Talmash courteously addresses them.

  "Take quarters, gentlemen, and yield on sight.
  Or otherwise prepare to stand the fight.
  Yet pray, take pity on yourselves and yield.
  For blood enough has stained the sanguine field.
  'Tis Britain's glory, you yourselves can tell,
  To use the vanquished hospitably well.

  _Sarsfield--_ Urge not a thought, proud victor, if you dare.
  So far beneath the dignity of war.
  I am a peer, and Sarsfield is my name.
  And where this sword can reach I dare maintain.
  Life I contemn, and death I recommend;
  He breathes not vital air who'd make me bend
  My neck to bondage, so, proud foe, decline
  The length of this, (_extending his sword_,) because the spot is mine.

  _Talmash_.--If you are Sarsfield, as you bravely show,
  You're that brave hero whom I longed to know,
  And wished to thank you on the reeking plain
  For that great feat of blowing up our train.
  Then mark, my lord, for what I here contend;
  'Tis Britain's holy church I now defend.
  Great William's right, and Mary's crown, these three.

  _Sarsfield_.--Why, then fall on--Louis and James for me. (_They fight_.)

Sarsfield's declaration ends the animated discussion rather lamely;
but what poet has maintained a uniform grandeur or dignity? The writer
was a certain Robert Ashton. The play when printed was dedicated,
circa 1756, to Lord Carteret, and if peasant tradition can be trusted,
it was only acted once. The Jacobite and Hanoverian gentlemen in the
pit drew their swords on one another, probably at the scene just
quoted, and bloodshed ensued. This is not confirmed by the written
annals of the time.

"The Siege of Londonderry" was, and still is bound up with "The Battle
of Aughrim," but there is nothing whatever in it to recommend it to
the sympathies of the populace. There is nothing but mismanagement and
bad feeling on the part of the native officers from beginning to end;
and if fear or disloyalty shows itself in one of the besieged, his
very wife cudgels him for it.

There is something very naïve and old-fashioned in the observation
inserted at the end of the list of the _dramatis personae:_

"Cartel agreed upon--No exchange of prisoners, but hang and quarter on
both sides."


DON BELLIANIS OF GREECE; OR THE HONOR OF CHIVALRY.

The re-perusal of portions of this early favorite of ours has not been
attended with much pleasure or edification. There is a sad want of
style, accompanied by a complete disregard of syntax, orthography, and
punctuation. The objects to be attained are so many and so useless,
one adventure branches off into so many others, and there arc so many
knights and giants to be overcome, and emperors so carelessly leave
their empresses in the dark woods exposed to so many dangers, while
they go themselves to achieve some new and futile exploit that the
narrative has scarcely more continuity and consistence than a dream.

The author had ten times as many separate sets of adventures to
conduct simultaneously as ever had the estimable G. P. R. James. So he
was frequently obliged to suspend one series, and take up another, a
mode of composition which all novelists who read this article, are
advised to eschew. Leaving Don Bellianis investing the emperor of
Trebizond, who stoutly disputed the possession of the fair
Florisbella's hand with him, he proceeds to tell what happened at the
joustings of Antioch in consequence of the happy union of Don Brianel
and the peerless Aurora. Thither came {683} Peter, the knight of the
Keys, from Ireland. He was son to the king of Monster, and, being
anxious to seek foreign adventures, embarked at _Carlingford_, and
performed prodigies of valor in Britain and France, and then sailed
for Constantinople. Being within sight of that city, a storm forced
his ship away and drove it to Sardinia, where Peter won the heart of
the fair princess, Magdalena, by his success in the tournament, and
his beauty of features when he removed his helmet after the exercise.
The princess has a claim upon our indulgence, for as the text has it,
"he looked like Mars and Venus together." The knights of those happy
times being as distinguished for modesty as courage, the princess ran
no risk in desiring an interview with the peerless Peter, and they
vowed constancy to each other till death.

A neighboring king demanding the hand of the lady for his son, the
lovers decamp, and find themselves on a strange island in a day or
two. Peter having given the princess a red purse containing some
jewels, she happened to let it fall by her, and it was at once picked
up by a vulture, on the supposition of its being a piece of raw meat.
Flying with it to a tree overhanging the river, and finding his
mistake, he dropped it into the water, and there it lay on the sandy
bottom in sight of the lovers.

The knight, arming himself with a long bough, and getting into the
boat, would have fished up the purse, only for the circumstance of
being unprovided with oars. The tide having turned, he was carried out
to sea, and by the time he had got rid of his armor he was nearly out
of sight of the poor princess, now left shrieking behind, who was
conveyed away after a day and a night's suffering, in a ship bound for
Ireland, where she took refuge in a nunnery, and in time became its
superioress. This was near the palace of her lover's parents, and to
match this strange coincidence by another equally strange, their cook,
one day preparing a codfish for dinner, discovered within it the
identical purse of jewels carried away by their son, and lost in the
manner described in the distant Mediterranean. They gave him up then
for lost, but he was merely searching through the world for his
mistress, jousting at Antioch, killing a stray giant here or there,
and rescuing from the stake at Windsor an innocent countess accused of
a _faux pas_--all these merely to keep his hand in practice. Don
Clarineo with whom he had fraternized at Antioch is also engaged on
the same quest, and comes to Ireland in the course of his rambles. In
that early time Owen Roe O'Neill was chief king, MacGuire, father of
Peter, was king of Munster as before stated, Owen Con O'Neill and Owen
MacO'Brien ruled two of the other provinces, but the territory claimed
by each is not pointed out. The compiler was probably not well up in
the old chronicles; he would else have given O'Brien the territory of
Munster, and settled MacGuire somewhere near Loch Erin.

Be that as it may, the reigning king of Ulster refusing his fair
daughter to the prince of Connaught, was minded to bestow her on the
terrible giant Fluerston, whose inhospitable abode was in the
mountains of Carlingford. The father of the rejected prince determined
to resist this "family compact," sent out knights and squires to
impress every knight errant they met into his service. Being rather
more earnest than polite on meeting with Don Clarineo, he slew about a
score of them, and after he succeeded in learning their business with
him he was inclined to slay another score for their stupidity in not
being more explicit at the beginning, whereas he would have devoted
ten lives if he had them to the cause of prince _versus_ giant.

Having easily massacred the Carlingford ogre, he began to bestir
himself in his quest for the lost princess, and so quitted the
Connaught court which according to our author was held at that era in
Dublin, and his {684} loyalty was suitably rewarded in discovering his
own true love.

It was originally written in Spanish, and part translated into French
by Claude de Beuil, and published by Du Bray, Paris, 1625 in an 8vo.


THE NEW HISTORY OF THE TROJAN WARRIORS AND TROY'S DESTRUCTION.

The compiler of this _Burton_ did not share in Homer's excusable
prejudices in favor of his countrymen; he was a Trojan to the
backbone. This might be excused in compliment to the noble and
patriotic Hector, but he disturbs commonly received notions of family
relationship among the ancients, a thing not to be pardoned.

After proposing the true histories of Hercules, Theseus, the
destruction of Ilion, and other equally authentic facts, he proceeds
to relate--

  "How Brute, King of the Trojans, arrived in Britain, and conquered
  Albion and his giants, building a new Troy where London now stands,
  in memory of which the effigies of two giants in Guildhall were set
  up, with many other remarkable and very famous passages, to revive
  antiquity out of the dust, and give those that shall peruse this
  elaborate work, a true knowledge of what passed in ancient times, so
  that they may be able readily to discourse of things that had been
  obliterated from the memories of most people, and gain a certainty
  of the famous deeds of the renowned worthies or the world."

Our truthful historian then relates with many corrections of the
legendary accounts of the lying Greeks, the histories of Hercules,
Theseus, Orpheus, Jason, and the other Ante-Trojan heroes; and either
through mere whim, or better information, tells us that Proserpine at
the time she was snatched away to hell, was the bride of the enamored
Orpheus, and the wicked King Pluto putting armor on his equally wicked
followers--the giant Cerberus and others--and festal garments over
the armor, carried her away despite the resistance of the bridal
party. Orpheus obtained her, as mentioned by the fabulists, but
looking back, Cerberus, who was close behind arrested her progress,
and the unfortunate husband returned to upper air half-dead. Thereupon
Theseus and Pirithous tried the adventure, but the giant Cerberus slew
the last named, and would have slain Theseus, but Hercules closely
following, gave the giant such a knock of his club as left him lying
in a swoon for some hours. Advancing to the throne of the black
tyrant, he administered another crushing blow on his helm, and leaving
him for dead, conducted the trembling but delighted Proserpine to her
mother and husband in the pleasant vales of Sicily, and "if they
didn't live happy that we may!" As for the traitor Cerberus, he was
presented to Hippodamia, the disconsolate widow of the murdered
Pirithous, who found a melancholy satisfaction in putting him to death
after first subjecting him to well-deserved tortures.

In the rest of the history of Hercules our compiler does not think it
necessary to depart from the statements of the early writers. He gives
him indeed as second wife, _Joel_, daughter of King Pricus, neither of
whose names we recollect.

Our authority being keenly alive to the injustice done by Homer to the
Trojans, corrects his statements on sundry occasions. Well disposed as
we are to rectify prejudices, he has not convinced us that the knights
on both sides, mounted, armed in plate, and setting their strong
spears in rest, charged each other in full career in the manner of
Cranstoun and William of Deloraine. These are his words:

  "Hector and Achilles advanced in the front of either army, and ran
  at each other with great fury with their spears, giving such a shock
  as made the earth to tremble, with which Achilles was thrown from
  his horse; whereupon the noble Hector scorning to kill a dismounted
  man, passed on, making lanes through the enemy's troops, and paving
  his way with dead bodies, so that in a fearful manner they fled
  before him.

{685}

  "By this time Achilles being remounted by his Myrmidons, a second
  time encountered the victorious Hector, who notwithstanding his
  utmost efforts, again bore him to the earth, and went on making a
  dreadful havoc as before."

It is probable that this  account of the death of Hector will prove
the least digestible of his emendations to the admirers of the early
Greek poets. The version here given appears to depend on the sole
authority of our  compiler, and we do not feel here at liberty to
interpose in the literary quarrel sure to arise on the publication of
this article:

  "Hector, having taken prisoner Menesteus, Duke of Athens, who had on
  a curious silver armor, he was conveying him out of the battle when
  thinking himself secure, and being overheated with action, he threw
  his shield behind him, and left his bosom bare.

  "Achilles, spying this opportunity, ran with all his might his spear
  at the breast of the hero, which piercing his armor, entered his
  undaunted heart, and he fell down dead to the earth. And this not
  satisfying the ungenerous Greek, he fastened his dead body to the
  tail of his horse, and dragged him three times round the city of
  Troy in revenge for the many foils and disgraces he had received of
  him."

The rest of the narrative corresponds tolerably with the old accounts,
but we have not heart to accompany the author through the burning of
Troy, the adventures of Eneas, and those of Brutus in his descent on
Britain, and his victory over Albion, Gog, and Magog. Besides, the
death of the "Guardian Dog of Troy" has disturbed our equanimity, for
we acknowledge as great an esteem for Hector and as strong a dislike
to the ruthless Achilles, as was ever entertained by the compiler of
the "New History of the Trojan Wars."

The prejudices of the romancers of the middle and later ages in favor
of the Trojans were probably due to the history of the war supposed to
have been written by Dares, a Phrygian priest mentioned by Homer. It
is in Greek, and the work of some ingenious person of comparatively
recent times. It was translated by Postel into French, and published
in Paris 1553. The first edition in Greek came out at Milan in 1477.
Another spurious book on the same subject in Latin, was attributed to
Dictys, a follower of Idomeneus, King of Crete. The first edition of
it was printed at Mayence, but without date.


THE IRISH ROGUES AND RAPPAREES.

The literary caterers for our peasantry, young and old, hare been
blamed for submitting to their inspection the lives of celebrated
highwaymen, tories, and "rapparees." Without undertaking their defence
we cannot help pointing out a volume appropriated to gentry of the
same class in the _Family Library_ issued by John Murray, whom no one
could for a moment suspect of seeking to corrupt the morals of
families or individuals. We find in Burns' and Lambert's cheap popular
books, another given up to these minions without an apprehension of
demoralization ensuing among the poor or the young who may happen to
read it. So it is probable that J. Cosgrave contemplated no harm to
his generation by publishing his "Irish Rogues and Rapparees." It were
to be wished that the motto selected for his work had either some
attic salt or common-sense to recommend it:

  "Behold here's truth in every page expressed;
  O'Darby's all a sham in fiction dressed,
  Save what from hence his treacherous master stole,
  To serve a knavish turn, and act the fool."

The reader will please not confound the terms "tory" and "rapparee."
The tories, though that generic for Irish robbers is as old as
Elizabeth, are yet most familiarly known as legacies left us by the
Cromwellian wars, and chiefly consisted of those rascals who,
pretending to assist the parliamentary cause, plundered the mere Irish
farmers, and every one of both sides who had anything worth taking.
They were a detestable fraternity. The rapparees were the Irish
outlaws in the Jacobite and Williamite wars, including many a
scoundrel no doubt, but many also who, while they supported themselves
in outlawry, at the expense of those who in their eyes were
disaffected to the rightful king, yet kept their hands unstained by
{686} vulgar theft or needless bloodshed. Many who at first kept to
the hills and the bogs as mere outlaws, and exacted voluntary and
involuntary black mail for mere support, according as the assessed
folk were Jacobites or Williamites, gradually acquired a taste for the
excitement and license of their exceptional life, and became _bona
fide_ plunderers, preferring (all other things being equal) to wasting
the _Sassenach_ rather than the _Gael_, and that was all.

Such a gentleman-outlaw was Redmond Count O'Hanlon, who flourished
after the conclusion of the Cromwellian wars. Redmond was worthy of a
place beside Robin Hood and Rob Roy, and has been made the hero of two
stories, one by William Carleton and the other by W. Bernard M'Cabe.

We now proceed to quote a few of the exploits of those troublesome
individuals of high and low degree, who disturbed their country in the
end of seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century and
furnished amusement to the peasantry and their children, during the
golden days of the peddlers.

The great Captain Power of the South travelled northward to meet and
try the skill of Redmond, and they had a shrewd encounter with
broadswords for nearly half an hour, neither gaining a decided
advantage. They swore to befriend each other in all future needs, and,
in consequence, Redmond rescued his brother from the soldiers when
they were conducting him to execution.

Power coming into Leinster, lodged at the house of a small farmer,
whom he observed to be very dejected all the evening. On inquiry he
found that his landlord and the sheriff were expected to make a
seizure next day for rent and arrears amounting to £60. After some
further discourse, Power offered to lend him the sum on his note of
hand, and the offer was gratefully accepted. Next day the farmer,
after much parleying, acknowledged that he had £60 given him to keep,
and that he would produce it rather than have his little property
distrained, and trust to God's goodness to be enabled to put it
together again. The landlord, after sufficiently abusing him, gave him
a receipt in full, and, parting company with the sheriff's posse,
returned home. In a lonely part of the way, he was set on by Power and
robbed of the £60 and his watch and other valuables. In a day or two
the robber called on the farmer, said he was going away, and the
promissory note would be of no use to him. So he took it out and tore
it in pieces.

How the unreflecting hearts of the fireside group glow over such
quasi-generous deeds of robbers, and how little they think on the
selfish and abandoned and iniquitous portions of the lives of their
favorites! "Bah! they took from the rich that could afford it, and
gave to the poor that wanted it. Dickens a bit o' me 'ud betray
Redmond O'Hanlon or Captain Power if I got a stocken' o' goold by it."

Strong John MacPherson is admitted among the Irish worthies by Mr. J.
Cosgrave, though he was more probably a Highlandman. There was much of
the milk of human kindness about strong John. If a horseman would not
lend, (John merely requested a loan,) he never used the ugly words
"stand and deliver," he pulled him off his horse and gave him a
squeeze. If that failed, he carried him away from the highway, giving
the horse his liberty, and rifled him in some quiet nook. Being set on
one night by a crowd in an inn kitchen, he threw the hostess over his
shoulder, and no better shield could be. Making his escape, he laid
her on the ground, set his foot apparently on her body--it was only on
her gown, however--and extorted twenty pieces from her friends before
he released her.

Strong John was in no instance guilty of murder. He never even struck
but in self-defence, and always betook himself to defence by a woman
when practicable. He met the usual destiny of his tribe about 1678.

{687}

Will Peters, born among the romantic scenery of the Slieve Bloom
mountains, might have lived and died a respectable man, or at least
have acquired the fame of a highwayman, had it not been for two
trifling impediments. His father was a receiver of stolen cattle,
which, being commonly kept in a neighboring field, whose owner
remained out of sight, the crime could not be brought home to him. The
other mischance consisted in his staying at school only till he had
mastered "Reynard the Fox." It was the opinion of Mr. J. Cosgrave that
if he had got through "Don Bellianis," the "Seven Champions," and
"Troy's Destruction," he would have arrived at the honors of the
high-road. After a few mistakes in his cattle-stealing apprenticeship,
he became acquainted with the renowned "Charley of the Horse," and
thus made use of him. He was placed in durance for stealing a sorrel
horse with a bald face and one white foot, and committed to Carlow
jail, the horse being intrusted to the care of the jailer. Peters'
_pere_, on hearing of the ugly mistake, revealed the family sorrow to
the great Cahir, and he being fully informed of the marks, color,
etc., of the beast, sent a trusty squire of his to the assize town a
few days before the trial, mounted on a mare with the same marks as
those above noted. The jailer's man took the horse down to the
Barrow's edge every morning to drink, and the agent, making his
acquaintance, invited him to take a glass at a neighboring "shebeen"
the morning before the trial. While they were refreshing themselves,
the squire's double mounted on the mare approached where the horse was
tied outside, substituted his own beast, and rode off on the other.
The refreshed man, on coming out, observed nothing changed, and rode
the new-comer home to the stable.

The trial coming on, the prosecutor swore home to his property, but
Mr. William Peters said he was as innocent of the theft as the lord
lieutenant. "My lord," said he, "ax him, if you plase, what did I
steal from him." The answer came out that was expected, "a sorrel
horse, such and such marks." "It wasn't a sorrel mare you lost?" "No."
"My lord, will you plase to send for the baste, and if it's a horse,
let me be swung, as high as Gildheroy." The animal was sent for, the
whole court burst into a roar, and Will Peters demanded compensation,
but did not get it.

Being taken up again he was executed, as far as hanging for fifteen
minutes could effect it. However, being at once taken away by his
people, he was resuscitated. Once more he was seized and conveyed to
Kilmainham, whence he escaped rather than be transported.

Being at last secured in Kilkenny for running away with a roll of
tobacco from a poor huckster-woman, he was once more placed on the
drop and hung.

Such were the unedifying subjects presented to the consideration of
the young in Mr. J. Cosgrave's collection. He certainly had no evil in
his mind when composing it, but its moral effect was at best
questionable. It would be a book very ill suited for rustic fire-side
reading in our day. The same may be said of the "Wars of Troy," though
no indication of evil intention is apparent. We subjoin the names of
those books that still continue in print. Why they should still find
buyers seems strange, when such care is expended in supplying useful,
pleasant, and harmless reading for the lower classes. However, any
evil inherent in them is slight compared to that of _some_ of the
London halfpenny and penny journals. The following still form portions
of the peddler's stock: "The Academy of Compliments," "The Arabian
Nights," "The Battle of Aughrim," "Esop," "Gulliver," "O'Reilly's
Ireland," "Hocus Pocus," "Irish Rogues," "James Freney," "Robin Hood's
Garland," "Seven Champions," "Tales of the Fairies," "The Trojan
Wars," "Valentine and Orson," and the "Seven Wise Masters and
Mistresses of Rome," some of them absolutely harmless.

{688}

In the whole  collection, there was not one volume racy of the Irish
soil, or calculated to excite love of the country, or interest in its
ancient history, or literature, or legends. The eighteenth century was
certainly a dreary one in many respects. Formality, affectation, and
cynicism prevailed in the manners and literature of the upper classes,
and the lower classes were left to their own devices for mental
improvement. It says something for the sense of modesty inherent in
the Celtic character, that there were so few books of a gross or evil
character among their popular literature.

------

Translated from the French.



ASSES, DOGS, CATS, ETC

I.

I am not a member of the society for the prevention of cruelty to
animals, but I deserve to be; for no one has praised the worthy
efforts of these gentlemen more than I have; and no one sees with
greater satisfaction, how justice sometimes gets hold of those brutal
drivers who wreak their uncontrolled anger upon their poor steeds,
guilty only of not being able to help themselves. And if, even, in
place of their being condemned to pay a paltry fine, they were paid
back in kind for the undeserved blows which these afflicted animals
receive from their hands, I for one would make not the slightest
objection.

It would be contrary to the progress and civilization of the
nineteenth century, I agree, but it would not be contrary to justice,
civilized or uncivilized.

However, who knows how things may turn out? Considering the miseries
and sufferings of those uncomplaining creatures when they are
unfortunate enough to get under the lash of the unfeeling boors who
ought to be in their place, it would not surprise me over much, if it
should turn out that--

That--what?

Wait a moment, I'll tell you. One day, as I happened to be out walking
along a certain road, I noticed an ass tied to a post, around which,
within the full length of his rope, there was not a single blade of
grass to crop. The poor fellow was slabsided, and his skin scraped,
and half tanned by the frequent application of bark on the living
wood; evidently getting few caresses of a softer kind, but enjoying in
the most complete sense of the word, "the right to work." Naturally, I
stopped a moment to bid him good-day and ask after his ass-ship's
health, after which I plucked a fine thistle growing within
tantalizing reach of his rope, and gave it to him. He gobbled it down
with great gusto.

"How do you like that, my old chap?" said I to him, mechanically.

"First rate," said he, "hand us another."

I jumped back in astonishment.

"What! you can talk, can you, my Bucephalus, and in English too? That
is something new."

"Not so new as you think, my dear sir, for I will let you into a
little bit of a secret. Ass as I am, and as you see me to be, I was a
man in my time and a butcher by trade. I had an ass that I treated
most scurvily, just as they do me now; giving him his bellyful of
blows and kicks, but of very little {689} else. Poor Jack--that was
his name--kept Lent all the year round, it being in the interest of
my customers, as I often said to myself, to quiet the qualms of
conscience when I gave him but half what he could eat. Let him stuff
himself said I, and he will get fat and lazy, the meat will come late
to the cook, the cook will be late with the dinner, and the hungry
family will lose their temper, and I shall lose their custom, while
good doses of the oil of strap will help his digestion wonderfully,
and keep him lively. However, this last end was not attained, for the
poor ass kicked the traces--professional term, you understand--and
went to the bone-boilers before his time. When it came to my turn to
tie up--again professional--and go off the cart, my soul was
condemned to go into an ass's body to suffer for a certain time the
punishment of retaliation. Drubbing for drubbing, kicks of hobnailed
shoes for kicks of peg boots, I got what I gave, and good measure too,
I assure yon. Do you see that half starved, thin-flanked old horse
over there? Well, he is a companion in misery to me. In his time he
was a hack-driver, and many a time in his fits of anger and
drunkenness, he made an anvil of the backbone or the jaws of his
horses. Only in those times, now and then, you understand, but those
times happened often enough, say once an hour or so, every day. As to
hay and oats, he tried to teach them, but without success, to go
without those articles of luxury. When his turn came to pay up old
debts, his soul was condemned to go into that sorry old carcass, in
which he passes many a miserable quarter of an hour. He is a
ragpicker's property now. How do you like that specimen of 'the
noblest conquest that man has ever made'? As to me, Sawney, at your
service, I think the end of my punishment is not far off. It was given
me to understand that when a benevolent gentleman would offer me a
thistle for friendship's sake, it would end, and it is to you I owe
this act of kindness, my dear Mr. Miller."

"Good again, you are a wiser ass than I took you for. How do you know
my name, master Sawney?"

"This way, sir. The other day I chanced to be tied to a post, near a
hedge, on the other side of which, in a meadow, some folks were having
a little picnic on the grass. After a while a tall lady in spectacles
took out some papers and began to read for the company. She seemed to
be reading, from what I could make out, in some magazine or other. I
soon understood that the subject was asses, and then of course I
cocked up my ears to their full height. It was true, it was about us,
abused and misunderstood beasts that we are. The articles read by the
tall lady were so full of kindness, and contained such flattering
remarks upon our species, that it almost brought the tears to my eyes.
The name signed to those articles was Jeremiah Miller. Oh! said I to
myself, that is a man whom one could call a man. There is one at least
who understands us and loves us; I promise myself that if I ever have
the good fortune to meet him I will give him--in lieu of anything
better--my blessing. You see that when you spoke to me just now so
kindly, I said to myself, I wonder if this be not Mr. Jeremiah Miller,
and then I called you by that name, and I see that I have just hit
it."

"But"--my reader will say "of course you don't tell this story for a
true one! You would never have the face to ask us to believe that this
brayer actually spoke to you?"

And, pray, why not? But, after all it is possible I fell asleep on a
mossy bank, in a meadow, near where an ass was tied, and that I
dreamed what I have told you. But dreams with the eyes shut are not
always so very unlike the dreams we sometimes have when our eyes are
open. As for myself, whenever I see a poor beast of burden brutally
maltreated by another beast, who strikes and kicks as if he {690}
meant murder, I allow my fancy to be tickled with a vision of this
latter brute obliged to creep into the skin of a horse or ass, and
take his turn at being unjustly whipped, without having any attention
paid to his bray or his neigh of expostulation or defence. You see
that I am in every respect worthy of figuring among the members of the
society for the prevention, etc., etc., but--



II.

But--I hold to the great principles of '76, and first of all to that
of equality. If we must have a law for the protection of domestic
animals against the men who torment _them_, I would like to see a law
devised to protect men against the animals who are a pest to poor
humanity, for the shoe sometimes gets on the other foot.

For example; look at that pack of dogs of all sizes, of all tastes, (I
mean human,) and in every stage of canine civilization, which their
masters permit to run at large in the streets of our city, even in the
worst of the dog days, without counting the free and independent dogs
who know no master but themselves. You have a friend who is a diligent
reader of the chapter of accidents in the daily papers. He tells you
about this or that dog who was seen running mad, that he had bitten
two or three persons, one of whom has since died of hydrophobia, and
adds with a peculiar relish that "the dangerous animal is still at
large!" These gentlemen--I mean the owners of the dogs--are
provokingly careless and indifferent about the muck which their dogs
are running in the midst of a population biteable to any extent. You
are kindly informed that if you happen to get bitten by some
suspicious-looking cur--and what cur is not of a suspicious character
in these days--it will be necessary to squeeze the wound, wash it,
then cauterize it with a red hot iron, or cut it out, and then, etc.,
etc. These are most excellent recipes, I have no doubt, but I think I
know of a better, which would be to prevent the bites altogether.

But, you say, there is the proclamation of his Honor, the Mayor, and
there is the police, etc., etc. Dogs at large are to be muzzled or
held by a chain. Oh! yes; very fine, indeed, when they are. The
proclamation is very good, but since the dog owners pay so little heed
to it, it is not surprising that the dogs themselves pay no more
respect to it than they do to the proclamations of patent medicines
pasted on the lamp-posts or fences. As to the country places outside
of the city, whither we of the heated streets and close shops fly to
get a breath of fresh air, and a moment of repose--there you will see
fat men and thin ladies who never dream, either asleep or awake, of
muzzling their favorite bull-dogs, lap-dogs, pointers, setters, tan
terriers or greyhounds. Muzzle _their_ dogs! that would make the poor
dogs, and their owners too, very uncomfortable. A pretty piece of
impudence indeed for a village constable to presume to carry out the
law against the dog, errant in delicto, which is the property of a Mr.
or a Mrs. or a Miss who is a "somebody," as if they were nobodies. Mr.
Constable knows better than that, and so does Mr. Puffer, the
magistrate.

Besides, there is a learned doctor of the society for the prevention,
etc., who deplores with astonishment mingled with grief, etc., etc.,
that any one should be so inhumane as to gag "man's companion and
friend" for the sake of the prevention of a few despicable cases of
hydrophobia. He has never been bitten by a mad dog, and don't expect
to be. He does not see why anybody else need expect to be.

Then there are our nurses and the children, whose daily promenade is
embittered by the sight and often the attacks of some Snarleyow. "It
was as good as a play," says Snarleyow's master; "Snarley nearly
frightened them to death, I thought I should die of laughter to see
them {691} scamper. It was great fun for Snarley." Very well,
gentlemen, there is also something which is great fun for me too, and
that is to kick Snarley whenever he presumes to be too "playful" with
me or my particular friends the children.

Protect your "friends of man" if you will, gentlemen, but don't let
them interfere with my friends, or---



III.

Permit me here to make a digression, which is not altogether one;

Man is defined, a reasonable animal.

Now the question arises whether woman is included in this definition.
Don't get angry, ladies--the horrid men, you know, are so curious!


IV.

From the friend of man let us pass to the subject of the friend of
woman. And here I find myself face to face with a celebrated document
which produced such a deep, or rather such a lively impression upon
the public, a few weeks since. Who is there in the whole five parts of
the world that has not heard of the noted "cat trial"? That learned
decision and sentence given by Squire Pouter, justice of the peace in
Dullville, is yet ringing in my ears, by which were avenged, as far as
a fine from five cents to a dollar could avenge, a litter of fifteen
cats illegally drowned. Illegally!--that at least was the opinion of
the wise magistrate, who rendered his judgment at great length, and
after his well known comprehensive style, citing his authors,
complimenting the one, and refuting the others, bringing under
contribution the code of Justinian, the English common law, the state
statutes, and the discussions of the Legislature at Albany. In short,
our modern Solon decided as follows: The cat, in its nature, is both a
domestic and wild animal. As a wild animal, it is true, it is lawful
game for the hunter; but, as a domestic animal, it has a right to
live, and is under the august protection of the law. Now, since the
wild part of its nature revolts against captivity, it has a right to
come and go according to its instinctive desire for daily exercise,
and housekeepers are not bound in conscience to make a raid upon them
in their tender feline infancy under pretence that some day or other
they will make a raid upon their pantry. Raids of prevention in the
times of peace are unheard of in the history of the republic.
Therefore they are condemned (the raiders, in the present case, not
the cats) to pay such and such fines, for the benefit of the fifteen
victims, or their heirs or assigns. Yes, indeed, this splendid
judgment made a good deal of noise, and well it might. I, who am
speaking to you reside in my own house, and have no evil intentions
toward any one, but--there are three cats who come each evening from
as many points of the compass for the purpose of making strategic
attacks upon my eatables. Infinite are the precautions that I am
forced to take to save my daily bread from the enemy. I must keep up
an incessant fight, and a running fire, not to speak of the difficulty
I experience in vain attempts to sleep with one eye open and my ear,
which is not on the pillow, on the alert. I will not speak of their
defiant caterwauling and spiteful spitting when they find my
barricades impassable; it is too painful a subject for me to dwell
upon.

Who are the victims of oppression, most eminent and sage magistrate?
Is civilized man positively to be given over in the name of the
society for the prevention, etc., as a victim to the instincts and
caprices of cats? Not at all, not at all, O illustrious Pouter! I will
see you and the cats--well--some distance, if not further, first.
Bring on your grimalkins, for my soul burns to avenge the rights of
man!

{692}

It is not all. Here, for example, next door, lives Miss Lambkin; age
unknown. She, by some unexplained perversion of taste, is keeping
something in her house which is either an old sheep or a middle-aged
goat. This cud-chewer, who lapses into ennui despite the charms of its
mistress, bleats incessantly three times a minute, several thousands
of times in the twenty-four hours. Is such an eternal see-saw of sound
bearable? Is not my life a burden to me? Is not my liberty to think,
to play my violin, to take my usual nap after dinner abridged by the
liberty of Miss Lambkin's detestable foster child? And if I happen to
be sick, or suffering from the tooth-ache or the headache, or
melancholy, or perchance am sentimental, this beast, I suppose, must
not be thwarted in its monotonous sing-song. _Mister_ Pouter, is there
liberty for wolves? for most assuredly I shall soon play the part of
one!

I have not finished yet. Since the first of May a family has come to
live in the house on the other side of mine. With father, mother and
furniture comes a tall, wasp-waisted damsel who now passes hours, yes,
hours banging upon an aged piano. It is her method of bleating, and it
is full as amusing as the other, if not a little less. Will the
president of the society for the prevention, etc., inform us if there
is any protection for aged pianos? A society for the _protection_ of
men and pianos would find in me one of its most eloquent orators,
diffuse writers, and active members. I would have all wandering Jews
of unmuzzled dogs executed on the spot, knocked on the head or
drowned, at choice. These at least have not the fifty cents in their
pockets to pay for a living release.

As to the cats, I intend to memorialize the supreme court to declare
the decision of our immortal justice of the peace non-constitutional.
I wish it to be "legal" to kill, drown, or otherwise destroy any cat
or cats found on strange premises, understood, of course that they are
to be buried at the killer's expense, and the government not to be
made liable to pay handsomely for public obsequies with military
procession.

Bleating goats, or sheep, or parrots, _et tutti quanti_, to be invited
to keep still, and not to speak until spoken to.

Lastly, as to the piano-bangers, I acknowledge the case is a little
delicate, and any remedy whatsoever has its difficulties. I am not
malicious, and am inclined to the side of resignation and toleration.
For after all, you know, they are ladies, and when you say that, it is
enough. Without association you cannot accomplish anything nowadays;
and where in the world could be found a sufficient number of men to
form a society for their protection against _them_. After that, I do
not see that it is necessary I should say anything further.


--------


From the Dublin University Magazine

CAROL FROM CANCIONERO.

"Vista ciegs, luz occura"--_Cancionero General_. Valencia, 1511.


  Lightsome darkness, seeing blindness.
  Life in death, and grief in gladness,
  Cruelty in guise of kindness,
  Doubtful laughter, joyful sadness,
  Honeyed gall, embittered sweetness,
      Peace whose warfare never endeth,
  Love, the type of incompleteness,
      Proffers joy, but sorrow sendeth.

------

{693}


Translated from the French


THE PEARL NECKLACE.


There lived at Cordova, many years ago, an old Jew who had three
passions: he loved science, he loved gold, he loved his only child,
who bore the sweet name of Rachel. He loved science, not for its own
sake, not because it was the means of the acquisition of truth, but
for himself, that is to say, through pride.

He loved gold, a little perhaps because it was gold, very much because
it gave him the means of providing luxuries for his darling child,
greatly also because without it he could not have made the costly
experiments necessary in the pursuit of science.

He loved his daughter alone, with the pure and disinterested, but
passionate tenderness of paternal love. In a word he was a savant, a
father, a Jew.

His name was Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, and he practised medicine. He wrought
such wonderful cures that very soon his fame spread throughout Spain,
and from all parts of the kingdom the people came in crowds to consult
him. He received his patients in the afternoon. In the morning he
slept, it was said; but how his nights were passed none knew, and many
were the speculations concerning it. This only was known, that they
were passed in a secret chamber, of which he alone possessed the key,
and it had been observed that this mysterious apartment was sometimes
illuminated with many-colored flames, blue, or red, or green, while a
dense smoke issued from the chimney.

The police of the kingdom at length resolved to penetrate the mystery,
which seemed to them very suspicions. _Everything_ is suspicious to
the police of _all_ countries.

One evening, Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah saw two dark, grave men watching his
house. He listened and heard these words of sinister import:

"To-morrow, at dawn, we will know whether this wretch is a
money-coiner or a magician."

The conscience of the poor old Jew did not reproach him, for his life
was pure and innocent; but he had had great experience of the world,
and held as on axiom that innocence is worth absolutely nothing in a
court of justice. He went still further, he considered it an
aggravating circumstance. He often quoted the old Arabian proverb: "If
I were accused of having stolen and pocketed the grand mosque at
Mecca, I would immediately run off as fast as I could." He said that
justice was a game of cards--and he was no player.

What misanthropic ideas! How different would his conclusions have been
had he lived nowadays! However, as he had not the happiness of living
in that Eden of justice, France of 1866, he put the philosophy of the
proverb into practice, and left Cordova that very night, taking with
him all his treasures. The next morning at dawn the two dark, grave
men, found an uninhabited, dismantled dwelling; which made them still
more dark and grave.



II.

Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, disguised as a merchant and mounted on a strong
mule, passed rapidly through Spain. On either side of his saddle, and
securely fastened to it was a long wicker {694} basket, in the shape
of a cradle. Ben-Ha-Zelah looked from time to time at these baskets
with satisfaction, mingled with sadness, and then urged on his mule,
casting many a backward glance, to be quite sure he was not pursued.
In one of the baskets were his treasures and his books; in the other
slept peacefully the young daughter of the fugitive. Having reached a
small seaport town, the old Jew took passage in a vessel which was
about to sail for Egypt.

Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah had often heard of the caliph Achmet Reschid, who
was celebrated throughout the East for his love of science, and the
high consideration in which he held scientific men. As for impostors,
charlatans and empirics, he held them in sovereign contempt and took
real pleasure in impaling them.

This good prince reigned in Cairo. Thither Ben-Ha-Zelah bent his
steps; for he believed himself, and with reason, to be a true savant.

The profound and extensive acquirements of the old Jew, together with
his astonishing skill in everything appertaining to the healing art,
soon made him as famous in Cairo as he had been in Cordova, and he was
at once made court physician.

The caliph Achmet Reschid was never weary of admiring the almost
universal knowledge of the old man, and often invited him to the
palace to converse with him for hours upon the secrets and marvels of
nature. Suddenly a terrible plague broke out in the city, and
threatened to decimate the population. Ben-Ha-Zelah compounded a
wonderful lotion, which cured six times in seven. He contended that in
nothing could evil be conquered in a greater proportion than this;
that a seventh was a minimum of disorder, of sorrow, of vice, in the
imperfect organization of this world, and that when the proportion of
evil in the human body, in the soul, in society, in nature, had been
reduced to a seventh, all the progress possible in this world had been
made.

However that may be, he was summoned one night in great haste to the
palace; the wife and son of the caliph were stricken down by the
pestilence. Ben-Ha-Zelah applied the miraculous lotion and the son was
restored to health--but the wife died.

The caliph Achmet Reschid was overcome with gratitude for so signal a
service and throwing himself into the arms of the old physician,
exclaimed: "Venerable old man I to thee I owe the life of my son and
my happiness! As a proof of my gratitude, I appoint thee Grand
Vizier!"

The old Jew prostrated himself on the ground before his generous
benefactor.

"Yes," continued the caliph, who had a truly noble heart; "yes, I need
a friend in whom I can confide, as I have, one after another, beheaded
all those whom I had in a moment of impulse honored with that title."

"Thanks, mighty caliph!" humbly replied Ben-Ha-Zelah. "How shall I
find fitting words to thank my gracious prince for such unmerited
condescension! Surely never did kindness like this rejoice the earth!"

"Thou sayest well and truly, child of Jacob," answered the puissant
caliph.

Time, far from diminishing the love of the caliph for Ben-Ha-Zelah,
only increased it. The jealousy of the courtiers had always succeeded
in poisoning the mind of the caliph against any one on whom he had
conferred the dignity of Grand Vizier; but the prudence of the old Jew
baffled all their schemes, and Achmet Reschid had learned how to guard
against calumniators. At the first word breathed against the new
favorite that benevolent prince and faithful friend ordered the rash
slanderer to be beheaded, and very soon the courtiers vied with each
other in their praises of the Grand Vizier. The good caliph, seeing
the harmony of feeling among his people with regard to the new
favorite, congratulated himself on his firmness.

{695}

"I knew very well," said he, "that the whole court would at last do
him justice. I talk of him with every one and no man says aught
against him."



III.

As for Ben-Ha-Zelah, he seemed to be perfectly indifferent to the
immense power which his favor with the caliph gave him in the state.
In vain did the courtiers try to entangle him in the intrigues of the
court. In vain did the noblemen of the kingdom, in hopes of gaining
his protection, lay costly gifts at his feet. He gently refused them
all. Devoid of ambition, and prudent to excess, the old Jew withdrew
as much as possible from public affairs. He even begged the caliph to
excuse his attendance at the palace, except at certain hours of the
day, that he might devote himself more uninterruptedly to scientific
pursuits. The love of the caliph grow day by day, and the courtiers as
well as the common people, seeing the humility and disinterestedness
of the Grand Vizier, acknowledged him to be indeed a sage.

At court, as everywhere else, he was clad in a coarse brown robe, and
was in no way distinguishable from the crowd, had not the intellectual
expression of his face, and the strange brilliancy of his eyes,
revealed at a glance a superior mind. He might often be seen in the
streets of Cairo, carrying in his own hands the metals, stones or
medicinal plants, which he bought in the bazaars, or gathered in his
solitary rambles. Wherever he went he heard his own praise; but never
did he in any way betray that it was agreeable to him.

"No one is so poor and humble," said the common people to each other,
"as the Grand Vizier of our high and mighty caliph."

The truth was, however, that with the exception of Achmet Reschid, no
one in Cairo possessed such vast riches as the "poor" Vizier; but
after the manner of the Jews he carefully concealed them, and lived in
a very modest mansion situated outside the walls of the city. This
humble dwelling was completely hidden by the palm and cedar trees
which surrounded it, and for still greater security was enclosed by a
high wall.

In this quiet and mysterious retreat, where he admitted no guests, he
had centered all that made his life; there dwelt his child, the young
Rachel, just budding into womanhood.

When, after passing weary hours in the unmeaning ceremonial of the
court, he reached his garden gate, and stealthily opened it, his
usually impassive face was suddenly illumined as with a sunbeam. It
was as if he had passed from death unto life.

His daughter, clad like a queen of the east, ran to meet him, and
embraced him so tenderly that it seemed as if a portion of her young
life was breathed into the worn and exhausted frame of the aged
father. Ben-Ha-Zelah forgot his sorrows and his cares, and seemed to
revive as with the breath of spring. "I gave thee life, my daughter;
thou dost restore it to me!" murmured the old man.

Rachel was just entering her sixteenth year. Her hair was of the
beautiful golden color which people love. Her eyes, her voice, her
smile, her bearing, carried with them an irresistible charm. She
looked, it was a ray of light; she spoke, it was a strain of music;
she smiled, it was the opening of a gate of Paradise. Her heart was
pure and innocent as was that of the Rachel of old, whom Jacob loved.
Can we wonder that the heart of her father was bound up in her? Who
indeed, could help loving a being so pure and bright?



IV.

Ben-Ha-Zelah was old, but his was a vigorous old age--and the young
daughter and aged father, as they walked under the grand old trees of
the garden, made a beautiful picture. The long white head, piercing
eyes, {696} eagle nose, and broad brow of the old man, formed a
striking contrast to his humble dress, and when no longer under
constraint, it revealed a mysterious and profound satisfaction in his
own personality and intelligence. There was so much _pride_ that there
was no place for _vanity_ in his soul.

What cared he for the admiration or contempt of others, the vain
clamors of the multitude, whom he considered infinitely his inferiors?
When he said to himself, "I am Ben-Ha-Zelah," the rest of the world no
longer existed for him.

His pride was like that of Lucifer: it was not relative but absolute;
he contemplated himself with a terrible satisfaction. Thence his
disdain for all the miserable trifles which gratify the self-love of
inferior men. The pride of _seeming_ comes when the pride of _being_
is not absolute.

Whence then came the gigantic pride of the old Jew?

Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah was the most learned man of his time.

He had carried his investigations far beyond those of the most
scientific men of the age; he was well versed in physics, mechanics,
dynamics, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, surgery, and botany;
but the science he most loved, was that which, at first known under
the name of alchemy, was destined to become the greatest science of
modern times--chemistry.

He passed night after night shut up in his laboratory, as he had
formerly done at Cordova, seeking to penetrate one after the other all
the mysteries of nature. There, bending over his glowing furnaces,
surrounded with retorts and crucibles of strange shapes, filled with
metals in a state of fusion, by all sorts of instruments and alembics,
old Ben-Ha-Zelah interrogated matter and demanded the mystery of its
essence; he pursued it from form to form, he tore it with red-hot
pincers; he melted it in the glowing fires of his furnaces; he made it
solid only to reduce it again to a liquid state, decomposing it a
hundred times in a hundred different ways. He tortured it, as does the
lawyer the prisoner at the bar, that he may wring from him his most
hidden secrets.

Matter, thus pursued by the indefatigable alchemist, had revealed more
than one of its mysterious laws, which he had made useful in the
practice of his profession, so that he was considered in Cairo little
less than a demi-god. However, in his labors he sought not the good of
his fellow-men, but the barren satisfaction of the passion which was
consuming him, _the pride of knowledge_; he sought to penetrate the
secrets of the most high God. The promise of the tempter to our first
parents; _Eritis sicut dei, scientes_, "You shall be as gods, knowing
good and evil," had penetrated his soul; and he desired to plant in
his garden that fatal tree to which the first-born of our race
stretched out their guilty hands. Like his ancestor Jacob, he wrestled
with Jehovah.

One can readily understand that the old man, absorbed in this gigantic
struggle, was dead to all vanity, so far as men were concerned. He had
reached such dizzy heights that he had almost lost sight of them. To
him they were like the brute beasts which crossed his path; he
believed them to be of an inferior nature to him, who had been gifted
with such vast genius--such indefatigable industry. His high thoughts
were not for such miserable pigmies.

Sometimes seating himself in dreamy mood in his garden, at the foot of
a grand old cedar, his favorite seat, and taking in his hand a pebble,
a blade of grass or a flower he was plunged in profound meditation.

What makes this "a body" thought he. This "body" is brown, heavy,
hard, square, or has many other properties which come under my notice.
But it is evident that neither the color, weight, cohesion, nor form
constitute its _essence_. They are its manner of beings--not its
being. If I modify it, destroy it even, it will still {697} be the
same body, and I shall, after all, have only attacked its manner of
being; the essence which heretofore has always escaped me--_the soul
of the body_, if I may say so--will have suffered no change. It is as
if I were suddenly to become hunchback, lame, idiotic--I would still
be the same man. I must discover the substance _quod sub stat_; in the
first place, what causes this to be; in the second place, what
constitutes it a body; and finally, what makes it this particular body
which I hold in my hand and not another.

The problem was formidable; it was the mystery of the omnipotence of
the God who created the world, and nevertheless this unknown
Prometheus shrank not from the task, and flattered himself he could
wring from created matter the secrets of its Creator.

In his experiments' Ben-Ha-Zelah had started with the axiom that all
bodies were formed from certain elements which were invariable, but
combined in different ways. Moreover, his researches had proved to him
that many elements, formerly believed to be primary, were composed of
different elements into which they might again be readily resolved. So
that seeing their number decrease as his investigations became more
abstruse and his analyses more delicate, he had arrived at the
conclusion that there existed an original and absolute substance of
which all bodies, even those apparently the most different, were only
variations.

He affirmed the identity of the base under the infinite variety of the
forms. This primary substance which he considered as coëternal with
God, was, he thought, that on which Jehovah breathed in the beginning,
and in his Satanic pride he believed two things--first that the
Almighty had combined the atoms of matter in so wondrously complex a
manner only to conceal from man the secret of its creation--and
secondly, that the Rabbi-Ben-Ha-Zelah would be able to baffle the
precautions of the Almighty, and by analysis after analysis, at length
succeed in finding the simple primary substance from which all things
were originally formed.

Such were the thoughts which continually filled his mind--such the
gigantic plan he had conceived. Again and again he said to himself
that by taking from a body one after the other its contingent
qualities, as one takes the bark from a nut, he would succeed at
length in penetrating its most hidden depths, to that _matter essence_
from which was made, as he believed, all that existed in the universe.

He had inscribed on the door of his laboratory _Materia, mater_. And
as soon as he should be able to imprison in his alembics this primary
matter he could at will, disposing it after certain forms, make in
turn bronze, stone, wood, or gold. Nay more, he hoped to surprise with
the same blow the mystery of life--and then, thought he in his impious
pride, I shall be a creator, like unto Him before whom every knee
bends in adoration. I shall be God! _Eritis sicut dei_.

The old man, lost in the vain search for the absolute basis of matter,
little suspected that the final word of all science is; "The essence
of matter is immaterial."

However, he devoted himself most zealously to the great work he had
undertaken, and passed night after night in the recesses of his
laboratory which would have reminded one of the entrance to the
infernal regions but for the sweet presence of the young and lovely
Rachel, who glided in and out, bringing order out of confusion, and in
the evening beguiled the long hours by singing to her father snatches
of the old Hebrew songs of which such touching and beautiful fragments
have come down to us.



{698}

V.

One night, Ben-Ha-Zelah, regardless of fatigue, was still bending over
his glowing furnaces. For more than a week he had allowed himself no
sleep, nor had he permitted his eyes to wander from the vast crucible
which had been heated to white beat for six consecutive months. He had
discovered phenomena hitherto unknown. His bony hands clutched
convulsively the handle of the bellows, and his eager, care-worn face
was illuminated with a two-fold radiance, that from the purple light
of the furnace and from the interior flame which consumed his soul. He
was motionless from intensity of emotion. At last then he was about to
attain the aim and desire of his whole life!

The primary substance, the absolute essence of matter, he was about to
seize it--to be its lord. The old man still watched; a whitish vapor
rose slowly from the crucible; matter decomposed in this crucible
seemed to be a prey to a fearful travail--to struggle in an internal
conflict.

The old man raised his tall form to its full height and at that moment
appeared like a second Lucifer. He shouted in triumph, "I have
created!"

Then rushing to the casement he gazed upward to the starry heavens,
not in prayer, but in defiance.

"I have created!" he repeated, "I have created! I have conquered! I am
the equal of God!"

A noise, slight in reality, but to the excited senses of Ben-Ha-Zelah,
louder than the crash of thunder, was heard behind him. He turned with
agitated countenance. The crucible, unwatched during his delirium of
pride, had fallen, and was shivered to atoms. All was lost; the
creation of him who aspired to an equality with the Most High was but
a heap of ashes.

Ben-Ha-Zelah was stunned by this unlooked-for calamity. He fell back
fainting, as if, while he rashly sought to penetrate the mystery of
life, pale death, entering his dwelling had touched him with her
sombre wing.



VI.

When consciousness returned, the fire of the furnace, which had been
fed with so much care for six weary months, was extinguished. Through
the open casement he saw myriads of stars blazing in the firmament.
The majestic silence of the night hovered over the unchanged
immensity.

The old man was seized with an indefinable terror. He understood that
he was punished for his pride, and he had a presentiment that the
sudden failure of the labor and research of so many years was but the
beginning of his punishment. It seemed to him that in the midst of the
thick darkness the living God had looked into the depths of his guilty
soul and had stretched out his all-powerful hand to smite him.
Suddenly, as by a revelation, there came to him a knowledge of the
point where God was about to strike him.

"My child! my child!" cried he, in a voice broken by terror and
remorse.

He ran to the chamber of his daughter.

The old man opened the door gently, taking, in spite of his terror, a
thousand paternal precautions not to awaken the sleeper. The trembling
light of a small alabaster lamp cast its faint rays about the
apartment. Gently he drew back the curtains of the bed and gazed
fondly upon his child.

Rachel slept profoundly, her breathing was as peaceful as innocence.
Ben-Ha-Zelah looked upon the sweet, calm face with a transport of
delight. The tranquillity of this peaceful sleep of childhood was
communicated to him, and for a moment stilled the agitation of his
soul.

He leaned fondly over the sleeping form; listened joyfully to the calm
breathing of his darling child, to the regular beating of her heart;
then stooping, imprinted a kiss of fatherly love on the beautiful
brow.

Rachel remained immovable, and her sleep was unbroken. "It is strange
she has not awakened," said the old man to himself looking at her
again. "Sleep is so like death."

{699}

As he allowed this thought to take form a vague terror took possession
of him.

"Bah! she sleeps! I hear her breathing," said he aloud.

The secret indefinable fear which he could not banish, and for which
he could not account, still remained; he could no longer contain
himself.

"Rachel!"' cried he in a loud voice. The young girl slept on.

"Rachel! my child!" he cried again, at the same time shaking her
gently by the arm.

Still the calm sleep was unbroken; and the peaceful breathing which at
first had delighted the fond father now seemed like a fatal spell.

"Rachel! Rachel!"

He took her in his arms; he placed her on a couch; he tried to make
her walk; and in vain essayed with his trembling fingers to open the
sealed eyelids.

The young girl slept on; her respiration as calm, and the rhythm of
her heart still preserved its frightful monotone. All the efforts of
the despairing father were vain. Day dawned, night came, the next day,
and weeks and months, and Rachel awoke not.



VII.

The distracted father, remembering that he was a physician, sought in
medical science a remedy for this strange malady. He tried every known
medicine, he essayed new ones; but nothing could break the fearful
sleep. He no longer went to the palace of the caliph, but his days and
nights were passed in his laboratory as they had formerly been at
Cordova; his researches, however, were no longer to feed his pride.
Sorrow concentrated his mighty genius on one thought--to discover a
remedy for his idolized child. Bitterly did be expiate the old
anxieties of his pride by the torturing perplexities of this new
sorrow.

More than six months passed thus. A last and desperate remedy to which
he had recourse, had, like all the others failed; Ben-Ha-Zelah on a
night like that on which this weight of sorrow had come upon him, was
in his laboratory bending as ever over his retorts. He had made every
research, every experiment that genius, quickened by affection, could
suggest, and had failed in all. Rachel still slept. Then the
broken-hearted old man, convinced of his own impotence, let fall his
arms at his sides and burst into tears.

At that moment he heard a voice which seemed to come at once from the
depths of immensity, and from the inmost recesses of his own heart.

"All thy efforts are vain," said the voice. "Thou wilt cure thy child,
only by passing about her neck, a pearl necklace, not the pearls which
bountiful nature gives, and God makes, but pearls which thou thyself
hast fashioned. Thou thoughtest thyself the equal of God, the equal of
Him who created the world; and he punishes thee, by condemning thee to
create only a few pearls, and he is willing to lend thee all the
riches and treasures of his beautiful world. Go and seek! And when
thou hast made enough of these pearls to fill the box beside thee,
make a necklace of them. Put it on the neck of thy child, and she will
awake."

It was not an illusion. The old man had seen no one, but the box was
there beside him. It was a little box, of a wood unknown to him, which
exhaled a delicious odor. On the lid inscribed in letters of gold, was
a Hebrew word, meaning "Treasure of God."

Ben-Ha-Zelah, re-kindled the fires of his furnaces and again applied
himself to explore the arcana of alchemy. He took from his coffers all
the pearls he possessed, and after having analyzed them, tried in vain
to form them again; but the secret of omnipotence which he attempted
to grasp, fled from him. He decomposed precious stones and succeeded
only in making a gross calcareous substance. Again and again he
flattered himself, he had penetrated the mystery of the Creator; but
all his hopes ended in nothingness. {700} Nature, which he had once
attempted to conquer to satisfy his pride as a savant, he now wooed in
vain to still the passionate yearnings of his fatherly heart.

One day he said to himself: "My knowledge is very little; and with the
very little I know, I shall never succeed in solving this problem, and
nevertheless it is possible!"

The voice which spoke to me is a voice which does not deceive.

Then an inspiration came to him which lighted with a pale ray of hope,
the sorrowful face long unused to happiness. The idea occurred to him,
that if he should go and study the shells of the Persian gulf where
pearls are formed, he might succeed in winning from nature the mystery
which he had so much interest in learning.

He set out the next morning on his long and wearisome journey, leaving
his child to the faithful care of the old Jewish slave who had been so
many years in his service, and in whom he reposed the most perfect
confidence. She had been the nurse of Rachel, and loved her almost
with a mother's love. He spent two months in studying the pearl oyster
of the Persian gulf; but there, as in his laboratory, all his efforts
were vain.

Providence, thought he, (he no longer said "nature,") Providence has
secrets which will never be known to mortals!

Convinced of the utter folly of his painful researches--anxious,
moreover, to see his poor child again. He sadly turned his face
homeward.



VIII.

As he slowly and sadly pursued his way toward Egypt, he saw on the
second day of his journey across the desert, a group in the distance,
apparently just in his route; continuing to advance, he saw a dead
camel covered with blood, beside him the dead body of a knight,
pierced with sabre-strokes; on the road-side a woman, apparently
dying, holding in her arms a young infant.

Ben-Ha-Zelah, moved with compassion, approached and accosted the
woman. She told him that in crossing the desert with her husband and
child, they had been attacked by brigands, who had killed her husband,
left her mortally wounded, and had rifled them of all their treasures;
even their water-bottles--more precious than all in the desert.

"I am dying," said she, "but my bitterest sorrow is in leaving my poor
little babe, who must perish thus alone in the desert."

The poor mother for one moment thought of asking the kind old man to
take her child, but she saw that one of his water-bottles had been
broken by some accident, and that he had hardly enough water to cross
the desert.

Ben-Ha-Zelah had had the same thought, but he calculated the quantity
of water remaining to him, and and to himself that it was impossible.

The woman was dying.

There, in the presence of the mother's despair, with the wail of the
infant so soon to be an orphan, in his ears, he thought of his own
child.

"Woman," said he, "I will take your babe, and will care for him as for
my own. I will save his life, even at the cost of my own."

The mother died, invoking blessings on his head.

Ben-Ha-Zelah resumed his journey across the desert, placing before him
on the saddle, the infant, who at first wept, then laughed in
infantile glee, then amused himself by teasing the patient nurse,
pulling his beard, or tangling the reins of the camel. The old man who
had become as gentle as a mother, sought every means which affection
could suggest to amuse the helpless little creature, so strangely
given to his charge--sometimes with the gold tassels of his bridle,
sometimes with his bright fire-arms, sometimes by rattling in his ears
the gold sequins in his purse. Again he would sing to him a lullaby,
long-forgotten. {701} The child was pleased with each new amusement
devised by the old savant, but it was only for a few moments, and was
again looking about for something he had not yet seen.

How much we all resemble children!

Poor old Ben-Ha-Zelah knew not what to do to satisfy this restless
craving for amusement. Suddenly he thought of the beautiful little
box, which the child had not seen, and drew it out from the folds of
his robe.

The child eagerly grasped this new plaything and turned it about in
every possible way.

To the amazement of the old Jew, there was a slight sound, as of some
small object rolling about in the box.

The child shouted with delight. The old man was breathless and
trembling. He grasped the box convulsively from the hands of the
infant, who held it out to him, smiling. He opened it. His blood froze
in his veins, with an emotion not of terror but of joy and hope.

He beheld in the box a pearl, pure and more beautiful than any he had
ever seen.

Speechless with emotion he could only raise his eyes to heaven in a
wordless prayer of gratitude.

Then he heard a voice which seemed to fill the immensity of the
desert, and nevertheless, was as low and sweet as the loving murmur of
a fond mother.

"O Ben-Ha-Zelah! every tear which thou shalt dry, is a pearl which
thou dost create."

Ben-Ha-Zelah looked about him. All around him was the desert. Before
him, in his arms, the little babe, suddenly grown calm, and smiling in
his face.

A few more days and his journey through the desert was ended. But many
were the privations he endured that the helpless little infant, now so
dear to him, might not want.

Ben-Ha-Zelah was rich, and now he was good. His goodness made use of
his riches to dry the tears of misfortune--there are as many, alas! in
this world of suffering, as there are dewdrops on a summers morning--
and very soon his box was quite full.

When he again saw his child, the mysterious sleep was unbroken. She
came not to welcome him, but he put the pearl necklace about her
beautiful throat, and she awoke, smiling.

"Oh! what a lovely necklace, papa," she cried.

"It is the first I have ever given thee, my darling," said the happy
father, "but I hope it may not be the last. My pearl-casket is now
empty, but I trust in God that I may fill it many times before I die."

------

{702}


[ORIGINAL.]


THE GIPSIES.  [Footnote 174]

  [Footnote 174: "A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the
  Gipsy Language." By Walter Simson. Edited, with preface,
  introduction, and notes, and a disquisition on the past, present,
  and future of Glpsydom. By James Simson. 12mo, pp. 575. New York: M.
  Doolady. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston. 1866.]


About the beginning of the 15th century there appeared in Germany a
strange mysterious people, such as had never been seen in Europe
before;

  A vagrant crew, far straggled through the glade,
  With trifles busied, or in slumbers laid.

No man knew who they were or whence they came. Their swarthy
complexions, long black hair, sharp eyes, high cheek-bones, narrow
mouths and fine white teeth, were marks of an eastern origin. They
spoke a language which had never been heard in Europe before, and
followed a strange way of life, which savored more of the rude nomadic
habits of primitive Asia, than the comparatively civilized customs of
the country into which they had come. They travelled about in bands or
tribes, each under the command of a leader, slept at night in tents or
abandoned out-houses, and occupied themselves by day in a simple sort
of smith work, basket-weaving, tinkering, fortune-telling, juggling,
and stealing. Vagabonds as they were, filthy in their habits, and
addicted to the eating of carrion and other disgusting things, they
were fond of wearing gay dresses, whenever they could beg, buy, or
steal them, and many of the women, with their lithe and agile figures,
were not without a certain dark sort of beauty which found many
admirers.

Whether they knew anything about their own origin or not, is doubtful;
but if they did, they kept it so carefully' secret, that the knowledge
has been completely lost. At all events they made their first
appearance in France in 1427, with a great lie in their months, and a
forged confirmation of it in their pockets. They called themselves
Christian pilgrims from Lower Egypt, who had been expelled by the
Saracens. They had unfortunately committed a few sins on the way, and
having confessed to Pope Martin V., his holiness had enjoined upon
them as a penance to traverse the world for seven years without
sleeping in beds. In support of this story they exhibited documents
purporting to be issued by the holy see, but they had probably
manufactured these testimonials themselves. However, the world was not
very wise in those days, and the mysterious strangers were accepted
for what they professed to be; and for some years the wandering
penitents pursued a brilliant career of theft and imposture, while
their leaders galloped over the continent with the high-sounding
titles of dukes, counts, and lords of Little Egypt. When they first
came to Paris they had among them a duke, a count, and ten lords. The
authorities would not let them enter the city, but assigned them
quarters at La Chapelle near St. Denis, where they were consulted on
occult matters by great numbers of the citizens. But our Egyptian
pilgrims were soon found to be such incorrigible rascals that the
bishop of Paris caused them to be removed, and excommunicated those
who had consulted them. Similar treatment was shown them in other
parts of Europe. For a time their forged credentials had enabled them
to obtain passports and letters of {703} security from various
European potentates; but the wanderers everywhere made themselves
nuisances, and were banished under threats of the severest
punishments. Fortunately for them, however, these edicts were not
published simultaneously all over Europe, so that they were not
exactly driven into the ocean, but only exiled from one part of the
continent to another. In Germany they were called _Zigeuner_, or
wanderers; in Holland, _Haydens_, or heathens, in Spain, _Gitanos_; in
Italy, _Zingari_; in France, Bohemians, because they entered that
country from Bohemia. The name of gipsy, by which they were known in
England and Scotland, is evidently a corruption of their self-chosen
appellation Egyptians.

More than four hundred years have passed since these swarthy penitents
made their seven years' pilgrimage of cheating and pilfering through
Europe, and they are still a people as distinct from all other races
in their essential characteristics as they were on the day they first
humbugged our ancestors. The general improvement of society all over
the world has compelled them to abandon many of their vagabond ways.
They have no longer that complete organization in tribes and companies
which they used to preserve; they no longer claim the privilege of
governing themselves in all things by their own laws, and their earls
and captains no longer exercise the authority of life and death over
their subjects. A large gipsy encampment is a rare sight nowadays, and
even the gipsy features, owing to frequent intermarriages between the
tribes and the European race, are in a fair way of being obliterated.
But there are still many thousands of gipsies roaming about Europe in
small companies; they still preserve their ancient customs in secret;
and under all the restraints of civilization, even the most orderly of
them cherish their old vagabond propensities. The Gipsy physiognomy is
quite as marked as the Jewish, and the gipsy race is far more
distinctly separated from the rest of the world than are the children
of Abraham. Their speech, which is not, as some people suppose, a mere
farago of slang or thieves' latin, but a genuine language, has been
handed down from mother to child, and is still a living tongue--a fact
which is not a little remarkable, because the language has no
literature, and can only be perpetrated by tradition. The gipsies have
no written characters. And yet it would be hard to find a gipsy who
cannot speak the language, though few of them are willing to
acknowledge it.

The problem of the origin of this strange people has exercised learned
brains ever since the civilized world became civilized enough to
perceive that there was a mystery about their presence in the midst of
Christendom. It seems to be pretty well agreed that they came into
Europe from Hindostan; but why they came, and why they called
themselves Egyptians are matters of dispute. Grellman in Germany, and
Hoyland and Borrow in England have hitherto been the most esteemed
authorities on the subject of gipsies; but we have now a new work, by
Walter and James Simson, which promises to shove the older books
aside. It is a rather outlandish production, but on that very account
perhaps more appropriate to its subject, Mr. Walter having spent some
seventeen years poking about gipsy encampments, peeping into their
huts, studying their cookery, scraping up odds and ends of their
language, learning how they picked pockets, told fortunes, robbed
hen-roosts, stole horses, married their wives and divorced them,
fought with each other, protected their friends, and pursued their
enemies with unrelenting vengeance; having gathered up a great store
of interesting anecdotes and historical notes, and got to know, in
fine, more about the gipsies of Scotland than any other man, probably,
who ever lived--having done all this, Mr. Walter Simson died one day
and left an ill-digested manuscript {704} book on his pet subject,
which Mr. James Simson took up, annotated, enlarged, and published.
Mr. Walter's book, if it was not a model of literary neatness, was
unpretentious, entertaining, and full of valuable information. Mr.
James, however, must needs add to it, first an advertisement, then a
preface, then an introduction, and lastly a long-drawn disquisition,
all of which are tiresome to the last degree, and not worth a tenth of
the space they fill. Besides, Mr. James Simson has a bad temper, and
it is not pleasant to read his arguments, even when he argues against
an imaginary adversary. He has a theory of his own about the origin of
the gipsies, to which we do not purpose to commit ourselves; but it is
curious enough to be stated, so that our readers may judge of it for
themselves.

An intelligent gipsy once told Mr. Simson that his race sprang from a
body of men-a cross between the Arabs and Egyptians--who left Egypt in
the train of the Jews. Now we read in Exodus xii. 38, that "a mixed
multitude went up also with them," [_i.e._, with the Jews out of
Egypt;] and from the fact stated in Numbers xi. 4, that "the mixed
multitude that was among them fell a lusting" for flesh, it would
appear that these refugees had not amalgamated with the Jews, but only
journeyed in company with them. Since this multitude were not children
of the promise, and had no call from God to go out from among the
Egyptians and journey to a land of peace and plenty, their condition
in Egypt must have been a hard one, or they would not have entered
upon a long and painful wandering to escape from it. No doubt, says
Mr. Simson, they were slaves, like the Jews; probably descendants of
the Hyksos, or "Shepherd Kings," who possessed the land before its
conquest by the Pharaohs; perhaps descendents of these Hyksos by
Egyptian women. God had promised Canaan, however, only to the
Israelites; the "mixed multitudes" could have no share in the
inheritance; so they probably separated from the Jews in the
wilderness, and wandered eastward into Hindostan. Coming into that
country from a long servitude, they would naturally have been timid of
mixing with the native inhabitants, disposed to cling together for
mutual protection, loose in their notions of right and wrong and the
laws of property. Every man's hand would have been against them, and
they would have been no man's friend. The lawless and migratory habits
engendered by their isolation would soon have become fixed and
hereditary; and so, to hasten to a conclusion, the mixed multitude of
Egyptians would have grown to be, in the course of a few hundreds of
generations, more or less, a race of horse-thieves and
fortune-tellers.

This theory accounts for the fact that the gipsies call themselves
Egyptians, while their language and many other peculiarities are
strongly redolent of Hindostan. It is true that no Egyptian words have
been detected in their speech, while its resemblance to Hindostance
dialects is very strong; but then just think what an unconscionably
long time it is since they came away from Egypt, and how easy it would
have been for them, in the absence of an alphabet and a literature, to
forget the language of captivity and acquire that of freedom.

Why they came out of Hindostan into Europe, or why they waited to come
until the fifteenth century, is purely matter of conjecture. But that
Hindostan was their last abiding place before their appearance in
Germany, about 1417, there is, for various reasons which we need not
here enumerate, no reasonable doubt.

Of their history and character in continental Europe, Mr. Simson tells
us but little, and that little is not new. We pass at once therefore
to the portion of his book which is devoted to the Scottish gipsies;
and when we have read that, we shall have a pretty clear idea of the
peculiarities of the race all over the world.

{705}

It is not certain when they first appeared in Great Britain; but they
were in Scotland at least as early as 1506 in which year they so far
imposed upon King James IV., that his majesty addressed a letter of
commendation to the King of Denmark, in favor of "Anthonius Gawino,
Earl of Little Egypt, and the other afflicted and lamentable tribe of
his retinue," who, having been "pilgriming" by command of the pope,
over the Christian world, were now anxious to cross the ocean into
Denmark. "But," concluded the Scottish monarch, with beautiful
simplicity, "we believe that the fates, manners, and race of the
wandering Egyptians are better known to thee than to us, because Egypt
is nearer thy kingdom." We see from this that the vagabonds still kept
up the fiction of a penitential pilgrimage, though it must have seemed
a long seven years' wandering which, beginning about 1417, was not
finished in 1506. In 1540 a still more remarkable document appears on
record, being nothing less than a sort of league or treaty between
James V. and his "loved John Faw, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt,"
whereby the officers of the realm were commanded to assist the said
John Faw "in execution of justice upon his company and folk, conform
to the laws of Egypt, and in punishing of all them that rebel against
him." But this state of things did not last long. James, as we all
know, liked to go a masquerading now and then, in the character of
"the Gaberlunzie Man,"  [Footnote 175] or "the Guid Man of
Ballangiegh," and on one occasion, while in this dignified disguise,
he fell in with a gang of gipsies carousing in a cave, near Wemyss, in
Fifeshire. His majesty heartily joined in the revels; but before long
a scuffle ensued, in the course of which one of the men "came crack
over the royal head with a bottle." Nor was this indignity enough, for
suspecting that the "guid man" was a spy, the trampers treated him
with the utmost harshness, and when they resumed their march compelled
him to go along with them, loaded with their budgets and wallets, and
leading an ass. The king passed several days in this disgusting
captivity, but at length found an opportunity to send a boy with a
written message to some of his nobles at Falkland. He was then
rescued. Two of the gipsies he caused to be hanged at once; a third,
who had treated him with some kindness, he let go free; and he caused
an edict to be published banishing the whole race from the kingdom
under penalty of death. James died the next year, however, and the
edict was never enforced; nor were subsequent laws, of equal severity,
able either to got the gipsies out of the country or to check their
wandering and thievish propensities. A great many of the race attached
themselves, nominally as clansmen, to chieftains and noblemen, who
were willing and able to afford them protection. But a great many were
nevertheless hanged merely for being "by habit and repute Egyptians."
So they got to look upon themselves as a persecuted race. They learned
to deny their origin, to keep their language a secret, and to resent
with all the savage fierceness of their fiery natures, the slightest
attempt on the part of the "gorgios," (as they called the Europeans
among whom they had cast their lot) to pry into the hidden mysteries
of gipsy life.

  [Footnote 175: i.e. "Ragged begger."]

In this country we know little about gipsies except what we have
learned from novels, and from those curious books by Mr. Borrow, on
the gipsies of Spain, in which tact and fiction are so strangely
blended that it is difficult to tell them apart. The gipsy, to the
average American mind, is a dark-featured woman in a red skirt, and
with a shawl drawn over her head; who tells fortunes and steals little
babies; who lives in a tent and cooks her meals in the open air, with
the aid of an iron pot suspended from two crossed sticks. And the
picture is not very far from the truth after all; for all the actions
it paints, the gipsies have many a time performed. {706}
Child-stealing, however, they are not so much given to as we commonly
suppose; for they have too many children of their own to indulge in
such a costly luxury; nor do many of them profess palmistry, although
the few who do lay claim to a knowledge of the mysterious art drive a
thriving business in it. We purpose to collect from Mr. Simson's book
on account of the Scottish gipsies as he found them; but we ought to
warn our readers that the author wrote many years ago, and that the
progress of society in Scotland has made great changes in the
condition of the tribe. If wandering gipsies, however, are not so
numerous as they were, and if they do not practice their peculiar arts
and customs so openly as they formerly did, they are very far from
being extinct; and, according to Mr. James Simson, have merely carried
unsuspected, into the bosom of orderly and respectable society, the
vagabond propensities, itching palms, savagery, wickedness, appetite
for loathsome carcasses--nay, even that dark unwritten language,
spoken by none but a gipsy of the true blood--which characterized them
in the days of Meg Merrilies or the Gaberlunzie man.

The Scottish gipsies almost always traversed the country in bands of
twenty, thirty, or more, though so many were seldom seen together on
the road. While travelling they broke up into parties of twos and
threes, having according to all appearance no connection with each
other, and at night they used to meet in some spot previously agreed
upon. It was not their general custom to sleep in tents. They
preferred for their lodgings deserted kilns, or barns or out-houses.
The usual way was for one of the women to precede them, if possible
with a child in her arms, and coax from some tender-hearted farmer
permission to shelter herself for the night in one of the farm
buildings. When the family awoke in the morning they were pretty sure
to find the one miserable vagrant surrounded by a gang of sturdy
trampers, and some twenty or thirty asses tethered on the green. For
twenty-four hours after their arrival they expected to receive food
gratis from the family on whose land they halted. After that, no
matter how long they remained, they provided for themselves. The
farmers generally found it for their interest to treat the gipsies
kindly, for these curious people never robbed their entertainers. A
farmer's wife whom Mr. Simson knew, on granting the customary
privilege of lodging to one of the tribe, added by way of caution:
"But ye must not steal anything from me then." "We'll no play any
tricks on you, mistress," was the reply; "but others will pay for
that." The men of the band seldom or never set foot within the door of
the farmhouse, but kept aloof from observation. They employed
themselves in repairing broken china, and utensils of copper, brass,
and pewter; and making horn spoons, wool-cards, smoothing-irons, and
sole-clouts for ploughs, which the women then disposed of. A good deal
of their time was passed in athletic exercises. They were famous
leapers and cudgel players, and despite their instinct of retirement
they could rarely resist a temptation "to throw the hammer," cast the
putting-stone, or beat the farm laborers at quoits, golf, and other
games. They were musicians, too, and their skill with the violin and
the bagpipes often assured them a night's lodging or a hearty welcome
at fairs, weddings, and other country merry-makings. Working in horn
was their favorite and most ancient occupation, and such was the care
they bestowed upon it that one tribe could always distinguish the
handiwork of another. Their devotion to the art of tinkering obtained
for them the name of Tinklers, by which they are generally known in
Scotland. They were also great horse-dealers, or, what in their case
meant very nearly the same thing, horse-thieves. They were not
scrupulous as to how they obtained {707} the animals, but they were
rare hands at selling them to advantage, though when a customer
trusted to their honor many of them would serve him with strict
honesty.

The women concerned themselves in domestic cares and in helping the
men to sell the articles they had made. It was the women who managed
all their intercourse with the farmers and other country people, and
who did most of the begging. In this art they displayed an aptitude
which partook of the character of genius. They never closed a bargain
without demanding a present of victuals and drink, which they called
"boontith"; and as they were ready enough to take by foul means what
they could not get by fair, the closest-fisted housewife in Scotland
seldom resisted their importunities very long. The fortune-telling, of
course, fell to the women.

But petty larceny, after all, was their principal means of support.
They were expert pickpockets and daring riflers of hen-roosts. The
bolder spirits rose to the dignity of highwaymen, coiners, and cattle
thieves. The children were trained from infancy to thievish pursuits,
and almost every gipsy encampment was a school of practice like that
kept by Fagin the Jew, to which poor little Oliver Twist was
introduced by the Artful Dodger. When legitimate business was dull,
they picked each other's pockets in a friendly way, just for the sake
of keeping their hands in. Sometimes a pair of breeches was hung aloft
by a string, and the children were required to abstract money from the
pockets without moving the garments. If the young rascal succeeded, he
was praised and rewarded; if he failed, he was beaten. Having passed
through this stage of his probation, the neophyte was admitted to a
higher degree. A purse was laid down in an exposed part of the
encampment, in plain view of all the gang, and while the older members
were busied in their daily pursuits, the children exercised all their
ingenuity and patience to carry off the purse without being perceived.
The instructor in this training-school was generally a woman. By the
time he was ten years old, the gipsy boy was thought fit to be let
loose upon the community, and became a member of an organized band of
thieves. The captains, whose dignity was usually hereditary, dressed
well, carried themselves gallantly, and could not be taken for what
they really were, especially as they never showed themselves in the
company of their men. The inferior thieves travelled to fairs, singly,
or at most two together, and as fast as they collected their booty
repaired with it to the headquarters of their chief. This latter
personage always had some ostensible business--such as that of a
horse dealer--and it was easy for the gang to communicate with him
under cover of a bargain, without arousing suspicion! For ripping
pockets open they had a short steel blade attached to a piece of
leather, like a sail-maker's palm, and concealed under their sleeves;
or the women wore upon their forefingers large rings containing sharp
steel instruments which were made to dart forth by the pressure of a
spring, when the hand was closed. Of the dexterity of these
light-fingered gentry Mr. Simson tells the following story:

  "A principal male gipsy, of a very respectable appearance, whose
  name it is unnecessary to mention, happened, on a market day, to be
  drinking in a public house, with several farmers with whom he was
  well acquainted. The party observed from the window a countryman
  purchase something at a stand in the market, and, after paying for
  it, thrust his purse into his watch-pocket, in the band of his
  breeches. One of the company remarked that it would be a very
  difficult matter to rob the cautious man of his purse, without being
  detected. The gipsy immediately offered to bet two bottles of wine
  that he would rob the man of his purse, in the open and public
  market, without being perceived by him. The bet was taken, and the
  gipsy proceeded about the difficult and delicate business. Going up
  to the unsuspecting man, he requested as a particular favor, if he
  would ease the stock about his neck, which buckled behind--an
  article of dress at that time in {708} fashion. The countryman most
  readily agreed to oblige the stranger gentleman--as he supposed him
  to be. The gipsy, now stooping down, to allow his stock to be
  adjusted, placed his head against the countryman's, stomach, and,
  pressing it forward a little, he reached down one hand, under the
  pretense of adjusting his shoe, while the other was employed in
  extracting the farmer's purse. The purse was immediately brought
  into the company, and the cautious, unsuspecting countryman did not
  know of his loss, till he was sent for, and had his property
  returned to him."

At one time the gipsies had all Scotland divided into districts, each
of which was assigned to a particular tribe, and wo to the Tinkler who
attempted to plunder within the limits of any other territory than his
own! The chieftains issued tokens to the members of their respective
hordes when they scattered themselves over the face of the country,
and these tokens protected the bearers within their proper districts.
A safe-guard from the Baillie family, who held a royal rank among the
gipsies, was good all over Scotland.

Besides their common Scottish Christian and surnames, they had names
in their own language, as well as various pseudonyms which they
assumed from time to time in different parts of the country. When they
were travelling they used to take new names every morning, and retain
them till money was received in one way or another by every member of
the company, or at least until noon-tide; for they considered it
unlucky to set out out on a journey under their own names.

They appear never to have at a loss for "the best of eating and
drinking," and might sometimes be seen seated at their dinner on the
sward, and passing about their wine, for all the world like gentlemen.
Sir Walter Scott's father was once forced to accept the hospitality of
a party of gipsies carousing on a moor, and found them supplied with
"all the varieties of game, poultry, pigs, and so forth." That rich
and savory decoction known to the modern cuisine as _potage à la Meg
Merrilies de Derncleugh_, is a soup of gipsy invention, composed of
many kinds of game and poultry boiled together. Their style of cookery
seems rather barbarous, but we must admit that it is admirably adapted
to the wants of a rude and barbarous people, among whom ovens, spits,
pots, and stew-pans are unknown and often unattainable luxuries. To
cook a fowl, they wind a strong rope of straw tightly around the body
of the bird, just as it has been killed, with its feathers on and its
entrails untouched. It is then covered with hot peat ashes, and a slow
fire is kept up around it till it is sufficiently done. When taken
out, the half-burnt straw and feathers peel off like a shell, and
those who have tasted the food thus prepared, say it is very
palatable. One advantage the method certainly has: it affords a safe
way of cooking a stolen fowl unperceived. Meat is roasted in a similar
manner. The flesh is covered with a wrapping of rags, and then encased
in well-wrought clay. Being now covered with hot ashes or turned
before a fire, it stews in its own juices, which, being saved from
escape by the clay, combine with the rags, Mr. Simson says, to form a
thick sauce or gravy. A gipsy has a keen zest for this juicy dish; but
we doubt whether most people would devour it with a very good
appetite. Their favorite viand of all, however, can certainly not be
relished outside of the tribe. This is a kind of mutton called
_braxy_, being nothing less than the flesh of a sheep which has died
of a certain disease. It has a _sharp_ flavor which tickles their
palates amazingly. So fond of it are they, that Mr. Simson attributes
the great number of gipsies in Tweed-dale partly to the abundance of
sheep in that district, and the consequent plenty of braxy. "The flesh
of a beast which God kills," say the gipsies, "must be better than
that of one which man kills." Nevertheless they are not loath, on
occasion, to take the killing into their own hands, by stuffing wool
down a sheep's throat, so that {709} it may die as if by disease; and
then they beg the carcass from the owner.

As far as can be ascertained, the gipsies have no religious sentiments
whatever, so that an old proverb runs: "The gipsy church was built of
lard and the dogs ate it." They have a word in their language for
devil, but none for God. Of late years it has been common for them to
have their children baptized, and sometimes they attend the service
which seems to be most in repute in the place where they happen to be;
but this is only because they do not want to be known as gipsies. They
marry very young, seldom remaining single beyond the age of twenty.
Their courtship used to be performed somewhat after the Tartar
fashion, the most approved way of getting a wife being to steal one;
not that the girl was unwilling, but they seemed to have a natural
propensity to carry their dishonest practices into all the relations
of life. One Matthew Baillie, a celebrated chieftain of the tribe in
the latter part of the 18th century used to say that the toughest
battle he ever fought (and he fought many) was when he stole his bride
from her mother. The ceremonies of marriage are very curious, and
also, we must add, very disgusting. The marital relation seems to have
been on the whole pretty well respected, though there is an old
reprobate named George Drummond, mentioned in Mr. Simson's book, who
used to travel about the country with a number of wives in his
company, and chastise them with a cudgel, so that the blood followed
every blow. Sometimes, after he had knocked them senseless to the
ground, he would call out to them, "What the deevil are ye fighting
at--can ye no' 'gree? I'm sure there's no sae mony o' ye!" Divorces,
however were very common, and were attended with great parade and many
curious ceremonies. The act of separation took place over the body of
a horse sacrificed for the occasion. The rites were performed if
possible at noon, "when the sun was at his height." A priest for the
nonce was chosen by lot, and the horse, which must be without blemish
and in no manner of way lame, was then led forth.

  "The priest, with a long pole or staff in his hand,  [Footnote 176]
  walks round and round the animal several times; repeating the names
  of all the persons in whose possession it has been, and extolling
  and expatiating on the rare qualities of so useful an animal. It is
  now let loose, and driven from their presence to do whatever it
  pleases. The horse, perfect and free, is put into the room of the
  woman who is to be divorced; and by its different movements is the
  degree of her guilt ascertained. Some of the gipsies now set off in
  pursuit of it, and endeavor to catch it. If it is wild and
  intractable, kicks, leaps dykes and ditches, scampers about and will
  not allow itself to be easily taken hold of, the crimes and guilt of
  the woman are looked upon as numerous and heinous. If the horse is
  tame and docile, when it is pursued, and suffers itself to be taken
  without much trouble, and without exhibiting many capers, the guilt
  of the woman is not considered so deep and aggravated; and it is
  then sacrificed in her stead. But if it is extremely wild and
  vicious, and cannot be taken without infinite trouble, her crimes
  are considered exceedingly wicked and atrocious; and my informant
  said instances occurred in which both horse and woman were
  sacrificed at the same time; the death of the horse, alone, being
  then considered insufficient to atone for her excessive guilt. The
  individuals who catch the course bring it before the priest. They
  repeat to him all the faults and tricks it had committed; laying the
  whole of the crimes of which the woman is supposed to have been
  guilty to its charge; and upbraiding and scolding the dumb creature,
  in an angry manner, for its conduct. They bring, as it were, an
  accusation against it, and plead for its condemnation. When this
  part of the trial is finished, the priest takes a large knife and
  thrusts it into the heart of the horse; and its blood is allowed to
  flow upon the ground till life is extinct. The dead animal is now
  stretched out upon the ground. The husband then takes his stand on
  one side of it, and the wife on the other; and, holding each other
  by the hand, repeat certain appropriate sentences in the gipsy
  language. They then quit hold of each other, and walk three times
  round the body of the horse, contrariwise, passing and crossing each
  other, at certain points, as they proceed in opposite directions. At
  certain parts of the animal, {710} (the _corners_ of the horse, was
  the gipsy's expression,) such as the hind and fore feet, the
  shoulders and haunches, the head and tail, the parties halt, and
  face each other; and again repeat sentences, in their own speech, at
  each time they halt. The two last stops they make, in their circuit
  round the sacrifice, are at the head and tail. At the head, they
  again face each other, and speak; and lastly, at the tail, they
  again confront each other, utter some more gipsy expressions, shake
  hands, and finally part, the one going north, the other south, never
  again to be united in this life.  [Footnote 177] Immediately after
  the separation takes place, the woman receives a token, which is
  made of cast-iron, about an inch and a half square, with a mark upon
  it resembling the Roman character, T. After the marriage has been
  dissolved, and the woman dismissed from the sacrifice, the heart of
  the horse is taken out and roasted with fire, then sprinkled with
  vinegar, or brandy, and eaten by the husband and his friends then
  present; the female not being allowed to join in this part of the
  ceremony. The body of the horse, skin and every thing about it,
  except the heart, is buried on the spot; and years after the
  ceremony has taken place, the husband and his friends visit the
  grave of the animal to see whether it has been disturbed. At these
  visits, they walk round about the grave, with much grief and
  mourning.

  [Footnote 176: It appears all the gipsies, male as well as female,
  who perform ceremonies for their tribe, carry long staffs. In the
  Institutes of Menu, page 23, it is written: "The staff of a priest
  must be of such a length as to reach his hair; that of a soldier to
  reach his forehead; and that of a merchant to reach the nose."]

  [Footnote 177: That I might distinctly understand the gipsy, when he
  described the manner of crossing and wheeling round the corners of
  the horse, a common sitting-chair was placed on its side between us,
  which represented the animal lying on the ground.]

  "The husband may take another wife whenever he pleases, but the
  female is never permitted to marry again.  [Footnote 178] The token,
  or rather bill of divorce, which she receives, must never be from
  about her person. If she loses it, or attempts to pass herself off
  as a woman never before married, she becomes liable to the
  punishment of death. In the event of her breaking this law, a
  council of the chiefs is held upon her conduct, and her fate is
  decided by a majority of the members; and if she is to suffer death,
  her sentence must be confirmed by the king, or principal leader. The
  culprit is then tied to a stake, with an iron chain, and there
  cudgelled to death. The executioners do not extinguish life at one
  beating, but leave the unhappy woman for a little while, and return
  to her, and at last complete their work by despatching her on the
  spot.

  [Footnote 178: Bright, on the Spanish gipsies, says: "Widows never
  marry again, and are distinguished by mourning-veils, and black
  shoes made like those of a man; no slight mortification, in a
  country where the females are so remarkable for the beauty of their
  feet." It is most likely that _divorced female gipsies_ are
  confounded here with _widows_.--Ed.]

  "I have been informed of an instance of a gipsy falling out with his
  wife, and, in the heat of his passion, shooting his own horse dead
  on the spot with his pistol, and forthwith performing the ceremony
  of divorce over the animal, without allowing himself a moments's
  time for reflection on the subject. Some of the country-people
  observed the transaction, and were horrified at so extraordinary a
  proceeding. It was considered by them as merely a mad frolic of an
  enraged Tinkler. It took place many years ago, in a wild,
  sequestered spot between Galloway and Ayrshire."

The burial ceremonies of the tribes are not very fully described; but
we are told that the funeral is, or used to be, preceded by a wake,
during which furious feasting and carousing went on for several days.
In England, at one time, the gipsies burned their dead, and they still
keep as close as they can to that ancient practice, by burning the
clothes and some of the other effects of the deceased. It is the
custom of some of them to bury the corpse with a paper cap on its
head, and paper around its feet. All the rest of the body is bare
except that upon the breast, opposite the heart, is placed a cockade
of red and blue ribbons.



The country people stood in dreadful awe of the savage hordes, and in
many places the magistrates themselves were afraid to punish them.
Their honors did not disdain now and then to share a convivial bowl
with the wandering Tinklers, and the man who sat to-day with his legs
under the provost's mahogany, may have slept last night in a deserted
lime-kiln, and dined yesterday off a "sharp"-flavored joint of
"braxy." As we have said already, the farmers knew it was safer to be
the friend of the gipsy than his enemy, for he was equally generous to
those he liked, and vindictive toward those he hated. Mr. Simson tells
many an anecdote of favors shown by the tribe to their neighbors and
favorites. A widow who had often given shelter to a chief named
Charlie Graham, was in great distress for want of money to pay her
rent. Charlie lent her the amount required, then stole it back again
from the agent to whom it had been pad, and gave {711} the widow a
full discharge for the sum she had borrowed of him. This same Graham
was hanged at last, and when asked before his execution if he had ever
performed any good action to recommend him to the Mercy of God,
replied that he remembered none but the incident we have just
narrated. A dissolute old rogue of a gipsy, named Jamie Robertson, had
been often befriended by a decent man named Robert or Robin Gray. One
day a countryman passed him on the road, and as he trudged along was
singing "Auld Robin Gray," which unfortunately Jamie had never heard
before. The only Robin Gray he knew of was his kind-hearted friend,
and he made no doubt the song was intended as an insult. When the
unconscious stranger came to the words "Auld Robin Gray was a kind man
to me," the gipsy started to his feet with a volley of oaths, felled
the poor man to the ground, and nearly killed him with repeated blows.
"Auld Robin Gray was a kind man to him, indeed," exclaimed Jamie in
his wrath; "but it was not for him to make a song on Robin for that!"
The gipsy chieftains often gave safeguards to their particular
friends, which never failed to protect them from robbery or violence
at the hands of any of the gang. These passports were generally
knives, tobacco-boxes, or rings bearing some peculiar mark. To those
who had ever injured them or their people, and to vagrants of another
race who were found poaching on their allotted district, they were
savagely vindictive. A man named Thomson, who had offended them by
encroaching on one of their supposed privileges--that of gathering
rags through the country, was roasted to death on his own fire.

"But the most terrible instances of gipsy ferocity were witnessed in
their frequent battles among themselves--battles by the way, in which
the women bore their full share of wounds and glory. It was in an
engagement of this sort in the shire of Angus, where the Tinklers
fought with Highland dirks, that the celebrated gipsy Lizzie Brown met
with the mishap which spoiled her once comely face, and obtained for
her the sobriquet of "Snippy." When her nose was struck off by the
sweep of a dirk, she clapped her hand to the wound, as if little had
befallen her, and cried out in the heat of the scuffle to those
nearest her: "But in the middle of the meantime, where is my nose?" In
the spring of the year 1772 or 1773 an awful battle was fought between
two tribes at the bridge of Hawick:

  "On the one side, in this battle, was the celebrated Alexander
  Kennedy, a handsome and athletic man, and head of his tribe. Next to
  him, in consideration, was little Wull Ruthven, Kennedy's
  father-in-law. This man was known all over the country by the
  extraordinary title of the Earl of Hell,  [Footnote 179] and,
  although he was above five feet ten inches in height, he got the
  appellation of Little Wull to distinguish him from Muckle William
  Ruthven, who was a man of uncommon stature and personal strength.
  [Footnote 180] The earl's son was also in the fray. These were the
  chief men in Kennedy's band. Jean Ruthven, Kennedy's wife, was also
  present, with a great number of inferior members of the clan, males
  as well as females, of all ages, down to mere children. The opposite
  band consisted of old Rob Tait, the chieftain of his horde, Jacob
  Tait, young Rob Tait, and three of old Rob Tait's sons-in-law. These
  individuals, with Jean Gordon, old Tait's wife, and a numerous train
  of youths of both sexes and various ages, composed the adherents of
  old Robert Tait. These adverse tribes were all closely connected
  with one another by the ties of blood. The Kennedys and Ruthvens
  were from the ancient burgh of Lochmaben.

  [Footnote 179: This seems a favorite title among the Tinklers. One
  of the name of Young, bears it at the present time. But the gipsies
  are not singular in these terrible titles. In the late Burmese war,
  we find his Burmese majesty creating one of his generals "King of
  Hell, Prince of Darkness."--See _Constable's Miscellany_.]

  [Footnote 180: A friend, in writing me, says: "I still think I see
  him (Muckie Wall) bruising the charred peat over the flame of his
  furnace, with hands equal to two pair of hands of the modern day,
  while his withered and hairy shackle-bones were more like the
  postern joints of a sorrel cart-horse than anything else."]

{712}

  "The whole of the gipsies in the field, females as well as males,
  were armed with bludgeons, excepting some of the Taits, who carried
  cutlasses and pieces of iron hoops notched and serrated on either
  side, like a saw, and fixed to the end of sticks. The boldest of the
  tribe were in front of their respective bands, with their children
  and the other members of their clan in the rear, forming a long
  train behind them. In this order both parties boldly advanced, with
  their weapons uplifted above their heads. Both sides fought with
  extraordinary fury and obstinacy. Sometimes the one band gave way,
  and sometimes the other; but both, again and again, returned to the
  combat with fresh ardor. Not a word was spoken during the struggle;
  nothing was heard but the rattling of the cudgels and the strokes of
  the cutlasses. After a long and doubtful contest, Jean Ruthven, big
  with child at the time, at last received, among many other blows, a
  dreadful wound with a cutlass. She was cut to the bone above and
  below the breast, particularly on one side. It was said the slashes
  were so large and deep that one of her breasts was nearly severed
  from her body, and that the motions of her lungs, while she
  breathed, were observed through the aperture between her ribs. But,
  notwithstanding her dreadful condition, she would neither quit the
  field nor yield, but continued to assist her husband as long as she
  was able. Her father, the Earl of Hell, was also shockingly wounded;
  the flesh being literally cut from the bone of one of his legs, and,
  in the words of my informant, 'hanging down over his ankles, like
  beefsteaks.' The earl left the field to get his wounds dressed, but,
  observing his daughter, Kennedy's wife, so dangerously wounded, he
  lost heart, and, with others of his party, fled, leaving Kennedy
  alone to defend himself against the whole of the clan of Tait.

  "Having now all the Taits, young and old, male and female, to
  contend with, Kennedy, like an experienced warrior, took advantage
  of the local situation of the place. Posting himself on the narrow
  bridge of Hawick, he defended himself in the defile, with his
  bludgeon, against the whole of his infuriated enemies. His handsome
  person, his undaunted bravery, his extraordinary dexterity in
  handling his weapon, and his desperate situation, (for it was
  evident to all that the Taits thirsted for his blood and were
  determined to dispatch him on the spot,) excited a general and
  lively interest in his favor among the inhabitants of the town who
  were present and had witnessed the conflict with amazement and
  horror. In one dash to the front, and with one powerful sweep of his
  cudgel, he disarmed two of the Taits, and, cutting a third to the
  skull, felled him to the ground. He sometimes daringly advanced upon
  his assailants and drove the whole band before him pell-mell. When
  he broke one cudgel on his enemies, by his powerful arm, the town's
  people were ready to hand him another. Still the vindictive Taits
  rallied and renewed the charge with unabated vigor, and every one
  present expected that Kennedy would fall a sacrifice to their
  desperate fury. A party of messengers and constables at last arrived
  to his relief, when the Taits were all apprehended and imprisoned,
  but as none of the gipsies were actually slain in the fray, they
  were soon set at liberty.  [Footnote 181]

  [Footnote 181: This gipsy battle is alluded to by Sir Walter Scott,
  in a postscript to a letter to Captain Adam Ferguson, 16th April,
  1819.

  "By the by, old Kennedy, the tinker, swam for his life at Jedburgh,
  and was only, by the sophisticated and timed evidence of a seceding
  doctor, who differed from all his brethren, saved from a
  well-deserved gibbet. He goes to botanize for fourteen years. Pray
  tell this to the Duke, (of Buccleuch,) for he was an old soldier of
  the duke and the duke's old soldier. Six of his brethren were, I am
  told, in the court, and kith and kin without end. I am sorry so many
  of the clan are left. The cause of the quarrel with the murdered man
  was an old feud between two gipsy clans, the Kennedys and Irvings,
  which, about forty years since gave rise to a desperate quarrel and
  battle at Hawick-green, in which the grandfather of both Kennedy and
  the man whom he murdered were engaged."--_Lockhart's Life of Sir
  Walter Scott._ Alexander Kennedy was tried for murdering Irving at
  Yarrows-ford.

  This gipsy fray at Hawick is known among the English gipsies as "the
  Battle of the Bridge."--Ed. ]

  "In this battle, it was said that every gipsy, except Alexander
  Kennedy, the brave chief, was severely wounded, and that the ground
  on which they fought was wet with blood. Jean Gordon, however, stole
  unobserved from her band, and, taking a circuitous road, came behind
  Kennedy and struck him on the head with her cudgel. What astonished
  the inhabitants of Hawick the most of all, was the fierce and
  stubborn disposition of the gipsy females. It was remarked that,
  when they were knocked down senseless to the ground they rose again,
  with redoubled vigor and energy, to the combat. This unconquerable
  obstinacy and courage of their females is held in high estimation by
  the tribe. I once heard a gipsy sing a song which celebrated one of
  their battles, and in it the brave and determined manner in which
  the girls bore the blows of the cudgel over their heads was
  particularly applauded.

  "The battle at Hawick was not decisive to either party. The hostile
  bands a short time afterward came in contact in Ettrick Forest, at a
  place on the water of Teema called Deephope. They did not, however,
  engage here, but the females on both sides, at some distance from
  one another, with a stream between them, scolded and cursed, and,
  clapping their hands, urged the males again to fight. The men,
  however, more cautious, only observed a sullen and gloomy silence at
  this meeting. Probably both parties, from experience, were unwilling
  to renew the fight, being aware of the consequences which would
  follow should they again close in battle. The two clans then
  separated, each taking different roads, but both keeping possession
  of the disputed district. In the course of a few days, they again
  met in Eskdale moor, when a second desperate conflict ensued. The
  Taits were here completely routed and driven {713} from the
  district, in which they had attempted to travel by force.

  "The country people were horrified at the sight of the wounded
  Tinklers after these sanguinary engagements. Several of them, lame
  and exhausted in consequence of the severity of their numerous
  wounds, were, by the assistance of their tribe, carried through the
  country on the backs of asses, so much were they cut up in their
  persons. Some of them, it was said, were slain outright, and never
  more heard of. Jean Ruthven, however, who was so dreadfully slashed,
  recovered from her wounds, to the surprise of all who had seen her
  mangled body, which was sewed in different parts by her clan."

The Ruthvens mentioned in this extract belonged to a distinguished
family among the gipsies. Their male head, in those days, was a man
over six feet in height, who lived to the age of one hundred and
fifteen. In his youth he wore a white wig, a ruffled shirt, a blue
Scottish bonnet, scarlet breeches and waistcoat, a fine long blue
coat, white stockings, and silver shoe-buckles. The male gipsies at
that time were often very handsomely dressed, and so too were the
women. A favorite color with them was green. Mary Yorkston, or
Yowston, the wife of the same Matthew Baillie, whose rough manner of
courting we mentioned just now, went under the appellation of "my
lady," and "the duchess," and bore the title of queen among her tribe.
Her appearance on the road, when she was pretty well advanced in life,
is thus described: She was full six feet in height, of a stout figure,
with harsh, strongly-marked features, and altogether very imposing in
her manner. She wore a large black beaver hat tied down over her ears
with a handkerchief; a short dark blue cloak, of Spanish cut;
petticoats of dark blue camlet, barely reaching to her calves; dark
blue worsted stockings, flowered and ornamented at the ankles with
scarlet thread; and silver shoe-buckles. Sometimes instead of this
garb she wore a green gown trimmed with red ribbons. All her garments
were of excellent, substantial quality, and there was never a rag or
rent to be seen about her person. Her outer petticoat was folded up
round her haunches for a lap, with a large pocket dangling at each
side; and below her cloak she carried, between her shoulders, a small
pack containing her valuables. She bore a largo clasp-knife, with a
long, broad blade, like a dagger, and in her hand was a pole or
pike-staff that reached a foot above her head. The male branches of
the royal gipsy family of the Baillies, a hundred years ago, used to
traverse Scotland on the best horses to be found in the country,
booted and spurred, and clad in the finest scarlet and green, with
ruffles at their wrists and breasts. They wore cocked hats on their
heads, pistols at their belts, and broad-swords by their sides; and at
their horses' heels followed greyhounds and other dogs of the chase.
They assumed the manners and characters of gentlemen with wonderful
art and propriety. The women attended fairs in the attire of ladies,
sitting their ponies with all the grace and dignity of  high-bred
women. Two chieftains of inferior degree to the Baillies were
Alexander McDonald and James Jamieson, brothers-in-law, remarkable for
their fine personal appearance and almost incredible bodily strength.
They were often attired in the most elegant and fashionable manner,
and McDonald frequently changed his dress three or four times in one
market-day. Now he would appear in the best of tartan, as a Highland
gentleman in full costume. Again he might be seen on horseback, with
boots, spurs, and ruffles, like a body of no little importance. And
not infrequently he wandered through the fair in his own proper garb,
as a travelling Tinkler. He had a piebald horse which he had trained
to help him in his depredations. At a certain signal it would crouch
to the ground like, a hare, and so conceal itself and its rider in a
ditch or a hollow, or behind a hedge. There was a gallant gipsy in the
seventeenth century named John Faa, {714} who, if tradition is to be
trusted, won the heart of a fair countess of Cassilis, so that she
absconded with him. Many years later there was an extensive mercantile
house at Dunbar, the heads of which, named Fall, were descendants of
this same gay deceiver. One of the Misses Fall married Sir John
Anstruther, of Elie, baronet, but her prejudiced Scottish neighbors
could not forget that she carried Tinkler blood in her veins, and poor
"Jenny Faa," as they persisted in calling her, was exposed to many an
insult. Sir John was once a candidate for election to Parliament, and
whenever Lady Jenny entered the burghs during the canvass, the streets
resounded with the old song of "Johnny Faa, the gipsy laddie," which
recounts how--

  "The gipsies came to my Lord Cassilis' yett,
    And oh! but they sang bonnie;
  They sang sae sweet, and sae complete.
    That down came our fair ladie."

It was not all a romance of love, and fine dresses, and free ranging
up and down the realm, this life of the gipsies. Magistrates were
found pretty often, not only to punish their repeated crimes of
robbery and murder, but even to put in force the old savage law
against "such as were by habit and repute Egyptians"--namely, that
"their ears be nailed to the tron or other tree, and cut off." It is
an odd fact that in this act were denounced not only gipsies, but
"_such as make themselves fools_," strolling bards, and "vagabond
scholars of the universities of St. Andrew's, Glasgow, and Aberdeen,
not licensed by the rector and dean of faculty to ask alms." There was
an old John Young, an uncle of the Charlie Graham before mentioned,
who had seven sons, and when asked where they were, he used to say
"They are all hanged." It was a pretty family record, but a just one.
Peter, one of the seven, was captain of a band of thieves whose
exploits were long remembered in the north of Scotland. He was several
times taken and sentenced to the gallows, but managed to escape. Once
being recaptured at a distance from the jail out of which he had
broken, the authorities were about to hang him on the spot, when some
one in the crowd cried out, "Peter, deny you are the man;" whereupon
he insisted that his name was John Anderson. Strange as it may appear,
he managed to get off by this device, as there was no one present who
could or would identify him.

Alexander Brown, a dashing fellow, but a dreadful rascal, and one of
the principal members of Charlie Graham's band, after repeated
escapes, was hanged at last at Edinburgh, together with his
brother-in-law, Wilson. Martha Brown, the mother of one of the
prisoners, and mother-in-law of the other, was apprehended in the act
of stealing a pair of sheets, while attending their execution. When
Charlie Graham was hanged, it was reported that the surgeons meant to
disinter his body and dissect it. To prevent this his wife or
sweetheart filled the coffin with hot lime, and then sat on the grave,
in a state of beastly intoxication, until the corpse was destroyed.

The last part of the volume before us, namely, the editor's
disquisition, we approach in fear and trembling. Old Mr. Walter Simson
seems to have been a good sort of a gentleman, for whom we cannot help
feeling a kindness, even though he did not write quite as well as
Addison; but this Mr. James Simson, editor, is a terrible fellow. He
assures us that all creation is full of unsuspected gipsies, who have
crept into every circle of society, insidiously intruded themselves
into the most respectable trades and professions; and contaminated the
best blood in Christendom. No matter where we live now, or where our
ancestors came from; it is quite possible--we are not sure that Mr.
James does not consider it almost as good as certain--that we may all
of us have some of that dark blood in our veins. Our
great-grandfathers may have been {715} hanged for horse-stealing, and
our grand-mothers, horrible thought! May have eaten "braxy."

England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, France, Spain, Germany, and
Italy, all have contributed their quotas to the gipsy population of
the world, and even America itself is infested with descendants of the
vagabond tinklers of the last century. It is only about a fortnight
since the newspapers told us of the arrival of a band of wandering
"Egyptians" at Liverpool, on their way to the United States, fugitives
from the advancing civilization of Scotland, to the new settlements
and free woods and plains of the great west. Now and then, though not
very often, gipsy encampments of the old orthodox kind are seen in
this country, and there have been tented gipsies near Baltimore, says
Mr. Simson, for the last seventy years. He adds that a colony of them
has existed in New England for a hundred years, and "has always been
looked upon with a singular feeling of distrust and mystery by the
inhabitants, who are the descendants of the early emigrants, and who
did not suspect their origin till lately. . . . They follow pretty
much the employments and mode of life of the same class in Europe; the
most striking feature being that the bulk of them leave the homestead
for a length of time, scatter in different directions, and reunite
periodically at their quarters, which are left in charge of some of
the feeble members of the band." Pennsylvania and Maryland contain a
great many Hungarian and German gipsies, who leave their farms to the
care of hired hands during the summer, and proceed South with their
tents.

  "In the State of Pennsylvania, there is a settlement of them, on the
  J---- river, a little way above H----, where they have sawmills.
  About the Alleghany mountains, there are many of the tribe,
  following somewhat the original ways of the race. In the United
  States generally there are many gipsy peddlers, British as well as
  continental. There are a good many gipsies in New York, English,
  Irish, and continental, some of whom keep tin, crockery, and basket
  stores; but these are all mixed gipsies, and many of them of fair
  complexion. The tin-ware which they make is generally of a plain,
  coarse kind; so much so, that a gipsy tin store is easily known.
  They frequently exhibit their tin-ware and baskets on the streets,
  and carry them about the city. Almost all, if not all, of those
  itinerant cutlers and tinklers, to be met with in New-York, and
  other American cities are gipsies, principally German, Hungarian,
  and French. There are a good many gipsy musicians in America.
  'What!' said I to an English gipsy, 'those organ-grinders!' 'Nothing
  so low as that Gipsies don't _grind_ their music, sir; they _make_
  it.' But I found in his house, when occupied by other gipsies, a
  _hurdy-gurdy_ and tambourine; so that gipsies sometimes _grind_
  music, as well as _make_ it. I know of a Hungarian gipsy who is a
  leader of a negro musical band, in the city of New-York; his brother
  drives one of the avenue cars. There are a number of gipsy musicians
  in Baltimore, who play at parties, and on other occasions. Some of
  the fortune-telling gipsy women about New-York will make as much as
  forty dollars a week in that line of business. They generally live a
  little way out of the city, into which they ride in the morning to
  their places of business. I know of one, who resides in New-Jersey,
  opposite New-York, and who has a place in the city, to which ladies,
  that is, females of the highest classes, address their cards, for
  her to call upon them."

We forbear quoting more about the American gipsies: the information
becomes fearfully suggestive, and it is all the more terrifying
because these people never acknowledge their descent, and however
sharply we may suspect them, we have no way  of bringing the offence
home to them. The friend who shakes our hand today may be the grandson
of a vagabond who camped on our grandfather's farm, stole our
grandmother's eggs and poultry, and picked our great-uncle's pocket.
The ancestor of that beautiful girl we danced with at the last ball
may have had his ears nailed to the tree and then cut off, and the
gentleman who asks us to dinner to-morrow, may purpose entertaining us
with "sharps"-flavored mutton and a savory stew of beef juice and old
rags.

------

{716}


NEW PUBLICATIONS.


THIRTY YEARS OF ARMY LIFE ON THE BORDER.
Comprising descriptions of the Indian Nomads of the Plains;
explorations of new territory; a trip across the Rocky Mountains in
the winter; descriptions of the habits of different animals found in
the West, and the methods of hunting them; with incidents in the life
of different frontier men, etc., etc. By Colonel R. B. Marcy, U.S.A.,
author of "The Prairie Traveller." With numerous illustrations.
New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1866.

Colonel Marcy, as appears from the title of his book, has passed the
greater portion of his life among the trappers and Indians of the
frontier. His descriptions are consequently authentic, and his lively,
picturesque style makes them also extremely interesting and agreeable.
When we add to this the pleasant accompaniment of fine typographical
execution and numerous spirited illustrations, we have said enough to
recommend the book to the lovers of information combined with
entertainment, and will leave the following specimen to speak for the
whole work.

THE COLORADO CAÑON.

I refer to that portion of the Colorado, extending from near the
confluence of Grand and Green rivers, which is known as the "Big Cañon
of the Colorado." This cañon is without doubt one of the most
stupendous freaks of nature that can be found upon the face of the
earth. It appears that by some great paroxysmal, convulsive throe in
the mysterious economy of the wise laws of nature, an elevated chain
of mountains has been reft asunder, as if to admit a passage for the
river along the level of the grade at the base. The walls of this
majestic defile, so far as they have been seen, are nearly
perpendicular; and although we have no exact data upon which to base a
positive calculation of their altitude, yet our information is amply
sufficient to warrant the assertion that it far exceeds anything of
the kind elsewhere known.

The first published account of this remarkable defile was contained in
the works of Castenada, giving a description of the expedition of Don
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in search of the "seven cities of
Cibola"--in 1540-1.

He went from the city of Mexico to Sonora, and from thence penetrated
to Cibola; and while there despatched an auxiliary expedition, under
the command of Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, to explore a river which
emptied into the Gulf of California, called "_Rio del Tison,_" and
which, of course, was the _Rio Colorado_.

On reaching the vicinity of the river, he found a race of natives, of
very great stature, who lived in subterranean tenements covered with
straw or grass. He says, when these Indians travelled in very cold
weather, they carried in their hands a firebrand, with which they kept
themselves warm.

Captain Sitgreaves, who in 1862 met the Mohave Indians on the Colorado
river, says "they are over six feet tall;" and Mr. R. H. Kern, a very
intelligent and reliable gentleman, who was attached to the same
expedition, and visited the lower part of the great cañon of the
Colorado, says: "The same manners and customs (as those described by
Castenada) are peculiar to all the different tribes inhabiting the
valley of the Colorado, even to the use of the brand for warming the
body. These Indians, as a mass, are the largest and best-formed men I
ever saw, their average height being an inch over six feet."

The Spanish explorer says he travelled for several days along the
crest of the lofty bluff bordering the cañon, which he estimated to be
three leagues high, and he found no place where he could pass down to
the water from the summits. He once made the attempt at a place where
but few obstacles seemed to interfere with the descent, and started
three of his most active men. They were gone the greater part of the
day, and on their return informed him that they had only succeeded in
reaching a rock about one third the distance down. This rock, he says,
appeared from the top of the cañon about six feet high, but they
informed him that it was as high as the spire of the cathedral at
Seville in Spain.

The river itself looked from the summit of the cañon, to be something
like a fathom in width, but the Indians assured him it was half a
league wide.

Antoine Lereux, one of the most reliable and best informed guides in
New Mexico, told me in 1858, that he had once been at a point of this
cañon where he estimated the walls to be _three miles high_.

{717}

Mr. Kern says, in speaking of the Colorado: "No other river in North
America passes through a cañon equal in depth to the one alluded to.
The description (Castenada's) is made out with rare truth and force.
We had a view of it from the San Francisco mountain, N. M., and
judging from our own elevation, and the character of the intervening
country, I have no doubt the walls are at least fire thousand feet in
height."

The mountaineers in Utah told me that a party of trappers many years
since built a large row-boat, and made the attempt to descend the
river through the defile of the cañon, but were never heard from
afterward. They probably dashed their boat in pieces, and were lost by
being precipitated over sunken rocks or elevated falls.

In 185- Lieutenant Ives of the United States Engineers, was ordered to
penetrate the cañon with a steamer of light draught. He ascended the
river from the gulf as high as a little above the mouth of the gorge,
but there encountered rapids and other obstacles of so serious a
character that he was forced to turn back and abandon the enterprise,
and no other efforts have since been made under government auspices to
explore it.

A thorough examination of this cañon might, in my opinion, be made by
taking small row-boats and ascending the river from the debouche of
the gorge at a low stage of water. In this way there would be no
danger of being carried over dangerous rapids or falls, and the boats
could be carried round difficult passages. Such an exploration could
not, in my judgment, prove otherwise than intensely interesting, as
the scenery here must surpass in grandeur any other in the universe.

Wherever we find rivers flowing through similar formations elsewhere,
as at the "_dalles_" of the Columbia and Wisconsin rivers, and in the
great cañons of Red and Canadian rivers, although the escarpments at
those places have nothing like the altitude of those upon the
Colorado, yet the long continued erosive action of the water upon the
rock, has produced the most novel and interesting combinations of
beautiful pictures. Imagine, then, what must be the effect of a large
stream like the Colorado, traversing for two hundred miles a defile
with the perpendicular walls towering five thousand feet above the bed
of the river. It is impossible that it should not contribute largely
toward the formation of scenery surpassing in sublimity and
picturesque character any other in the world. Our landscape painters
would here find rare subjects for their study, and I venture to hope
that the day is not far distant when some of the most enterprising of
them may be induced to penetrate this new field of art in our only
remaining unexplored territory. I am confident they would be
abundantly rewarded for their trouble and exposure, and would find
subjects for the exercise of genius, the sublimity of which the most
vivid imaginations of the old masters never dreamed of.

A consideration, however, of vastly greater financial and national
importance than those alluded to above, which might and probably would
result from a thorough exploration of this part of the river, is the
development of its mineral wealth.

In 1849 I met in Santa Fé that enterprising pioneer, Mr. F. X. Aubrey,
who had just returned from California, and en route had crossed the
Colorado near the outlet of the _Big Cañon_, where he met some
Indians, with whom, as he informed me, he exchanged leaden for golden
rifle-balls, and these Indians did not appear to have the slightest
appreciation of the relative value of the two metals.

That gold and silver abound in that region is fully established, as
those metals have been found in many localities both east and west of
the Colorado. Is it not therefore probable that the walls of this
gigantic crevice will exhibit many rich deposits? Companies are formed
almost daily, and large amounts of money and labor expended in sinking
shafts of one, two, and three hundred feet with the confident
expectation of finding mineral deposits; but here nature has opened
and exposed to view a continuous shaft two hundred miles in length,
and five thousand feet in depth. In the one case we have a small shaft
blasted out at great expense by manual labor, showing a surface of
about thirty-six hundred feet, while here nature gratuitously exhibits
ten thousand millions of feet, extending into the very bowels of the
earth.

Is it, then, at all without the scope of rational conjecture to
predict that such an immense development of the interior strata of the
earth--such a huge gulch, if I may be allowed the expression,
extending so great a distance through the heart of a country as rich
as this in the precious metals, may yet prove to be the _El Dorado_
which the early Spanish explorers so long and so fruitlessly sought
for; and who knows but that the government might here find a source of
revenue sufficient to liquidate our national debt?

Regarding the exploration of this river as highly important in a
national aspect, I in 1858 submitted a paper upon the subject to the
War Department, setting forth my views somewhat in detail, and
offering my services to perform the work; but there was then no
appropriation which could be applied to that object, and the Secretary
of War for this reason declined ordering it.

CHRISTINE; A TROUBADOUR'S SONG,
and other Poems. By George H. Miles. New York: Lawrence Kehoe. 1866.

Mr. Miles's poem, "Christine," has {718} been already before our
readers, in the pages of the Catholic World, and we are sure that its
appearance in book form will be welcomed by all who have perused its
beautiful verses.

It is the work of an artist, and as such, one likes to have it, as it
were, completely under view, and not scattered in fragments amidst
other productions which intrude upon our vision, and interrupt its
continuity.

Mr. Miles has given us a poem of no ordinary merit. Powerfully
dramatic, it not only paints the scenes of the story in strong, vivid
colors, but brings the actors into a living reality as they pass
before us. Few writers of our day possess much dramatic power, and
this accounts for their short-lived fame. He who would write for fame
must give us pictures of real life, and not pure reflective sentiment.

Poetry and its more subtle-tongued sister, music, are as much nobler
and worthier of immortality than are painting or sculpture, as the
reality is superior to the image. Poetry and music are the true
clothed in the beautiful, whilst painting and sculpture can only give
us beautiful yet lifeless images of the true. The Psalms of David
remain, but the Temple of Solomon and all its glory is departed.
Poetry, the purest form of language, is also the best expression of
divine, living and eternal truth, in so far as humanity can express
it. Being the expression of absolute truth, poetry and music are the
truly immortal arts which will live in heaven. No one ever yet
imagined that the blessed, in presence of the Unveiled Truth, will
express their beatitude in painted or sculptured images; but the
revealed vision of the inspired poet, who drew his inspiration at the
Source of truth, upon whose bosom he leaned, telling us of the saints,
"harping upon their harps of gold," and "singing the song of the
Lamb," finds a responsive assent in all our minds. Caught up into the
embrace of the infinitely true, and the infinitely beautiful, they
must necessarily give expression to that upon which the soul lives,
and with which it is wholly enlightened.

There, too, they must possess a _quasi_ creative power of expression
of the true, (in so far as they are thus endowed by virtue of their
union with God, who is pure act, through the Word made Flesh,) just as
we possess it here in germ by the dramatic form, which actualizes to
us the otherwise abstract truth expressed. Hence the superiority of
the dramatic, in which of course we include the descriptive, over the
sentimental. Mr. Miles possesses this genius in no mean degree, as he
has already shown in his "Mahomet." The poem before us abounds in
dramatic passages of rare beauty. Let our readers turn to the third
song, and read the flight of Christine. They will find it to be a
description unsurpassed in the English language. The death of
"faithful Kaliph," and the knight's tender plaint over his "gallant
grey," forgetful of even his rescued spouse, introduced to us in the
flush of victory over the demon foe, just when our stronger passions
are wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, is one of those
sudden and thrilling transitions from the sublime to the pathetic
which may crown Mr. Miles as a master of the poet's pen.

"Raphael Sanzio" dying, the first of the additional poems, possesses
much of the merit we have signalized, but its versification and
wording are too harsh for the subject. It is not the death of him whom
we have known as Raphael. It reads as though told by one who was
forced to admire, yet did not love, the great artist. There is a
charming little poem, entitled, "Said the Rose," which is worth all
the minor poems put together, if poetry can be valued against poetry.
We may say, at least, that it alone is worth many times the price of
the whole volume; and our readers, who may have already enjoyed the
perusal of "Christine" in our pages, will not fail to thank us for
this hint to purchase the complete volume.

Mr. Kehoe, the publisher, is giving us some creditable books, as the
"Life and Sermons of Father Baker," the "May Carols of Aubrey de
Vere," and "The Works of Archbishop Hughes," bear testimony. The
present one is got up in a superior manner, both in type, paper, and
binding, and is a worthy dress for author's work.


HISTORY OF ENGLAND, FROM THE FALL OF
WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.
By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
Vols. V. and VI. 8vo, pp. 474, 495. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Mr. Froude's thorough-going Protestantism is by this time too familiar
to our {719} readers for them to expect a very lively satisfaction in
reading the story of the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary which he has
given in these volumes. We have neither the space nor the inclination
to follow him in his review of those melancholy times. We prefer to
accord a hearty recognition to the undoubted merits of his work; his
graphic and picturesque style; his artistic eye for effect; his
excellent judgment in the examination of old-time witnesses; and the
rare self-control which in the midst of his abundance of hitherto
unused material has saved him from encumbering his pages and
overloading his narrative with facts and illustrations of only minor
interest. He gives us sometimes little bits of truth where we had
least reason to look for them. Cordially as he detests Mary the queen,
he is tenderer than most historians of his ultra sort to Mary the
woman. "From the passions which in general tempt sovereigns into
crime," he says, "she was entirely free; to the time of her accession
she had lived a blameless, and in many respects a noble life; and few
men or women have lived less capable of doing knowingly a wrong thing.
Philip's conduct, which could not extinguish her passion for him, and
the collapse of the inflated imaginations which had surrounded her
supposed pregnancy, it can hardly be doubted, affected her sanity.
Those forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with her knees
drawn to her face; those restless days and nights when, like a ghost,
she would wander about the palace galleries, rousing herself only to
write tear-blotted letters to her husband; those bursts of fury over
the libels dropped in her way; or the marchings in procession behind
the Host in the London streets[!]--these are all symptoms of
hysterical derangement, and leave little room, as we think of her, for
other feeling than pity." The persecution, for which her reign is
remembered was partly the result, Mr. Froude thinks, of "the too
natural tendency of an oppressed party to abuse suddenly recovered
power." Moreover, "the rebellions and massacres, the political
scandals, the universal suffering throughout the country during
Edward's minority, had created a general bitterness in all classes
against the Reformers; the Catholics could appeal with justice to the
apparent consequences of heretical opinions; and when the Reforming
preachers themselves denounced so loudly the irreligion which had
attended their success, there was little wonder that the world took
them at their word, and was ready to permit the use of strong
suppressive measures to keep down the unruly tendencies of
uncontrolled fanatics."

Mr. Froude's history will be completed in two more volumes.


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. Vol. III. P. O'Shea, New-York.

The period comprised by the third volume of this admirable history
extends from the pontificate of Sylvester II. A.D. 1000 to that of
Julius II. a.d. 1513. To our mind the terrible struggle which the
church sustained during those four eventful centuries is more
wonderful than her deadly strife in the days of Roman persecution and
martyrdom. The church is a divine-human institution; and inasmuch as
it is human, it must suffer from human infirmity, but the Spirit of
God abideth for ever in it, preserving the truth amidst heresies, the
purity of the Christian law amidst moral degradation, and at last
crowning. His spouse with new glories for her patiently borne
sufferings.

On every page of the church's history, and on none more clearly than
that which records her life from the eleventh to the sixteenth
century, is that promise written, "And the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it." We again add our cordial commendation of the work
of M. Darras, and hope its publication will prove to the enterprising
publisher as successful as it is opportune.



THE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPAEDIA AND REGISTER OF CURRENT EVENTS OF THE
YEAR 1866. Vol. V.  New-York: D. Appleton. 1867.

This is a valuable compendium of information respecting the current
events of the year. It is particularly complete as regards American
politics and the literature of the English language. On other topics
it is more general and superficial, especially so in its history of
the progress of science. For instance, there is no record whatever of
the history of geology during the year. The great defect of the
Cyclopaedia, as a whole, is an unnecessary minuteness in regard to
{720} persons and things of our own time and country which have no
real and permanent interest, and a corresponding lack of minuteness in
regard to matters of other times and countries which are really
important. It would be a good idea for the publishers to invite all
the scholars in the country to send in a list of titles of articles
whose absence they have noticed in consulting the work for
information, and from these to prepare a supplementary volume. In
regard to all questions relating to the Catholic Church, the
Cyclopaedia is remarkable throughout for its fairness and
impartiality--a merit which is to be ascribed in great measure to its
learned and genial editor, Mr. Ripley.


AUNT HONOR'S KEEPSAKE.
A Chapter from Life. By Mrs. J. Sadlier.

TEN STORIES FROM THE FRENCH OF BALLEYDIER.
Translated by Mrs. J. Sadlier.

THE EXILE OF TADMOR, AND OTHER TALES.
Translated by Mrs. J. Sadlier.

TALES AND STORIES.
Translated from the French of Viscount Walsh. By Mrs. J. Sadlier.

VALERIA, OR THE FIRST CHRISTIANS, AND OTHER STORIES.
Translated from the French of Balleydier and Madame Bowdon. By Mrs. J.
Sadlier.

THE BLIGHTED FLOWER, AND OTHER TALES.
Translated from the French of Balleydier. By Mrs. J. Sadlier.

STORIES ON THE BEATITUDES.
By Agnes M. Stewart, authoress of "Stories on the Virtues," etc.
New-York: D.J. Sadlier & Co. 1866.

----

A FATHER'S TALES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
First Series. By the author of "Confessors of Connaught."

RALPH BERRIEN, AND OTHER TALES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Second Series. By the author of "Grace Morton," "Philip Hartly," etc.

CHARLES AND FREDERICK, OR A MOTHER'S
PRAYER, AND ROSE BLANCH, OR TWELFTH
NIGHT IN BRITTANY.

THE BEAUFORTS. A STORY OF THE ALLEGHENIES.
By Cora Berkley.

SILVER GRANGE. A CATHOLIC TALE, AND
PHILLIPINE, A TALE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Compiled by the author of "Grace Morton."

HELENA BUTLER.
A story of the Rosary and the Shrine of the "Star of the Sea."
Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.

These volumes are a valuable addition to our list of books for
Catholic children.


"Aunt Honor's Keepsake," by Mrs. J. Sadlier, presents a vivid picture
of the wrongs and outrages suffered by Catholic children and parents
from the agents of the so-called "Juvenile Reformatories." We also
have a translation of several instructive tales from the French by the
same talented writer. Agnes Stewart gives us a number of well-written
stories on the beatitudes. We heartily commend this effort to provide
suitable reading for Catholic children. It is a pressing want. Their
active minds eagerly demand something to read. If we do not provide
safe and proper reading for them, they will find that which is not so.

We have also an addition of six new volumes to the "Young Catholic
Library," published by P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia. The subjects
are well chosen and most of the stories beautifully written. We
notice, however, at times, a straining after high-sounding
expressions--an absence of that simplicity so necessary in such tales
for children. There is also a tendency in writers for children to
sprinkle in so much of the romantic and unreal as to make their story
a kind of "novelette." Such reading creates in the mind of the young a
feverish desire for romance, which can only be satisfied in after
years by the novel.

There is enough in the realities of life to startle and fix the
attention of any child if properly presented. We trust a larger number
of books suitable for children may be provided by those writers who
have the time and talent requisite for the work. We know of no way in
which they can more usefully employ their pen.

The style in which these volumes are issued makes them suitable for
gift-books and is creditable to the publishers. We would also like to
see some in plain, durable bindings, better suited for the hard usage
they receive in a Sunday-school or parish library.


BOOKS RECEIVED

From D. & J. Sadlier &Co., New York. "The Bit O'Writin'," and Other
Tales. "Mayor of Wind-Gap and Canvassing," by the O'Hara Family. 12mo,
pp. 406 and 414 (The above are two new volumes of Banim's works.)
Parts 21, 22, 23, and 24 of d'Artaud's Lives of the Popes.

From P. Donohue. Boston.
Annual Report of the Association for the Protection of Destitute Roman
Catholic Children in Boston, from January 1, 1865, to January 1, 1866.
Pamphlet.

From P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia.
Alphonso; or, the Triumph of Religion. A Catholic Tale. 12mo, pp. 878.

From Robert H. Johnston & Co.,
New-York. The Valley of Wyoming: The Romance of its Poetry. Also
specimens of Indian Eloquence. Compiled by a native of the valley.
12mo, pp. 153.

------

{721}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL, III., NO. 18.--SEPTEMBER, 1866.


[ORIGINAL.]


THE DOCTRINE OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH CONCERNING
THE NECESSITY OF EPISCOPAL ORDINATION.
[Footnote 182]

  [Footnote 182: "A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Church of
  England, or the Validity of the Orders of the Scotch and Foreign
  Non-Episcopal Churches." By W. Goode, M.A., F.S.A., Rector of All
  Hallows the Great and Less. London. 1852.

  "Does the Episcopal Church teach the Exclusive Validity of Episcopal
  Orders?" By William Goode, M. A. New York. 185-

  "Vox Ecclesiae; or, The Doctrine of the Protestant Episcopal Church
  on Episcopacy," etc. Philadelphia. 1866.]

Within the past few years, certain circles of the Protestant Episcopal
Church have been thrown into no small commotion by a controversy which
has arisen between the two great parties, into which she is divided,
over the question, Whether or not it is her doctrine that episcopal
ordination is necessary to constitute a valid ministry? The contest
seems to have been opened by the Rev. William Goode, rector of All
Hallows, London, who in the year 1852 published a treatise maintaining
the negative of the proposition; "Is it the doctrine of the Church of
England that episcopal ordination is a _sine qua non_ to constitute a
valid ministry?" In support of his position, he adduced those articles
and other formularies of his church, which relate to this subject; the
testimony of those divines who drew up these standards, as
interpreting the same, together with the sense in which they were
received by their successors in the clerical office for the ensuing
hundred years; and the conduct of the church toward the Continental
Protestant societies and in the ordering of her own hierarchy for the
same period of time. So successful was this author in his argument,
and so triumphant was his vindication of this peculiar principle of
the Low Church party, that his work was at once hailed by them, in
England and in America, as the "End of Controversy" upon this point;
was adopted by their publication societies as an "unanswerable defence
of the validity of non-episcopal orders," and was claimed by one of
their leading journals to be effectual in "banishing and driving away
the last doubt, which hung upon some minds, from the boldness and
continuity of assertion that the Episcopal Church disallowed the
validity of other than episcopal orders."

{722}

How completely "banished and driven away" from some minds that last
doubt was, events of a startling character soon made manifest.

  "Certain clergymen of the diocese of New York adopted a course
  destined to change the settled practice of the church, if not to
  change its whole character. They turned their backs upon all
  existing laws and all previous usage in connection with such
  matters, and openly admitted to their pulpits ministers who had not
  had episcopal ordination. . . . . Of course, an innovation so
  startling and so daring occasioned much excitement. The Bishop of
  the diocese issued a pastoral letter, in which, in the kindest
  language and most reasonable spirit, he pointed out to those
  gentlemen the unlawfulness of their course. And _there_, if they had
  been lovers of order and of peace, the whole matter might have
  rested. But, however gentle the reproof or remonstrance, it was
  still an exercise of authority, and that was hard to bear. Therefore
  the reverend gentlemen rushed into print at once, and strove to give
  to the whole matter the air of simple controversy, on equal terms,
  between the Bishop and themselves. They represented him as the
  advocate of a narrow partisan policy, and not as their
  ecclesiastical superior to whom they had solemnly promised
  obedience, and whose duty compelled him to give them a reproof.
  Their 'letters,' 'reviews,' and 'replies to the pastoral' have been
  sent everywhere throughout the country, and have served to show that
  some Episcopalians pay but little respect 'to those who are over
  them in the Lord;' that they are not much disposed to 'submit to
  their judgment,' and 'to follow with a glad mind and will their
  godly admonitions.'" (Vox Ecclesiae, vi.)

Such was the state of affairs, when a reply to "Goode on Orders"
issued from the Philadelphia press, professing to demolish its
conclusions and to clear the doctrine of the Episcopal Church, on the
point in question, from all ambiguity. This was the work of an elegant
and judicious but anonymous writer, who, though disclaiming all
tendencies to Puseyism, is, nevertheless, manifestly a High Churchman
of strong and well-founded principles, and who has received on account
of this reply, the highest commendations from many of the bishops and
clergy of his church. His book is entitled "Vox Ecclesiae." The
proposition he seeks to demonstrate is, "That the answer of the
Episcopal Church to the question, 'What is the true and scriptural
mode of church government, and what constitutes a true and proper
organization?' would be, 'That episcopal government and ordination by
bishops are the only modes of government or ordination recognized by
that church as scriptural or proper.'" In support of this, he also,
like his antagonist, relies upon the doctrinal and devotional
standards of the church; her laws and principles as set forth in her
canons and other official acts; those works which by her special
endorsement have been raised to a semi official authority; and,
lastly, the opinions of her eminent divines. The conclusion, which
this exhaustive argument claims to have established, is that the
church of England never recognized the validity of Presbyterian
orders, _as such_, but, on the contrary, has ever held the doctrine of
episcopacy by divine right and apostolical succession; a conclusion
diametrically opposite to that of the first writer, whose book has, by
this one, in the language of the American Churchman, been "So
effectually answered that we believe it will ask no more questions for
all time to come." This work in its time has received the highest
encomiums from the Right Rev. Bishops Hopkins, Kemper, Atkinson, Coxe,
Williams, Clark, and Randall, the Rev. Drs. Coit, Adams, Morton,
Mason, Wilson, Meade, and other leaders of that party of the Episcopal
Church, whose views it professes to embody, is already catalogued by
them "among the best standard works of the church," and has been
gratuitously circulated in its general seminary at New York, as a
thorough antidote to the dangerous heresy of Mr. Goode.

From these two works, it might fairly be presumed, that we may, at
last, gain a tolerably correct idea of the doctrine of the episcopal
Church concerning the necessity of episcopal ordination. "Goode on
Orders" is the "unanswerable" organ of one great party of that church.
"Vox Ecclesiae" is the equally unanswerable organ of the other. And in
these two great parties, and in the {723} undefinable middle ground
between them, may be ranked at least ninety-nine one handredths of the
laity and nearly all the clergy of that large and influential
religious body.

To us Catholics it certainly, at first sight, seems a little singular,
that in a church which bases upon an unbroken episcopal succession its
whole claim to external unity with the primitive Catholic Church,
there should be any doubt whether or not that church herself believes
and teaches that such an unbroken succession is essential to the
existence of a visible church; that in a denomination, which, for
ages, has claimed superiority to other Protestant sects on almost the
sole ground of her episcopally ordained ministry, there should be any
controversy as to her doctrine on the necessity of such a ministry.
But it is only one of those anomalies which meet us everywhere outside
the Ark of Peter; which are the inevitable results of deviation,
however slight, from the true source of apostolic unity. The ocean is
as deep beneath the Ship of Christ as it is miles away. He that goes
down under her very shadow is as effectually drowned as he that
perishes beneath a sky whose horizon is unbroken by a single sail. It
is as well among those who are most near us as among those who are
most removed that we must look for the old marks of error, and this
boldness of assertion and internal doubt is one of them. Before we
close, it may be given us to show that this doubt is indeed well
grounded and that this inconsistency is more consistent with the
actual _status_ of the Episcopal Church than many, even of her
enemies, would dream.

Upon that fundamental principle which underlies the whole fabric of an
organized Christian society, namely, the necessity of some
authoritative ordination, there seems to be no question in the
Episcopal Church. That man cannot originate a church; that Christ did
originate one; that, conveying his power of mission and orders to his
apostles, he left it to them to convey to their successors; that by
them and by their successors it ever has been so conveyed; and that,
at this day, no man has any right or power to fulfil the office of a
minister of Christ unless he has received authority through this
source; are tenets common to all Christians who recognize a visible
church and believe in and maintain a regular ministry. However they
may differ as to the channel through which this power has descended:
whether, like the Presbyterians, denying the existence of a third
order in the ministry, they claim that priests and bishops are the
same, and thus that presbyters are the appointed agents of Christ in
perpetuating the line of Christian teachers, or whether, like
denominations far more radical, they confer on individual preachers,
of whatever grade, the right to raise others at their pleasure to the
same dignities and power--this principle is still maintained. It is,
therefore, but natural, that while Mr. Goode and his Low Church
followers scout the title "Apostolical Succession" as "monstrous" and
"heretical," their whole ailment should presuppose the existence of
the very state of facts, to which, in its most general construction,
that title is applied, and should admit the necessity of such a
"succession," through some channel, as the basis of all external,
collective Christian life. That the High Church party also abide in
this doctrine every page of "Vox Ecclesiae" makes manifest, and from
what one thus necessarily implies and the other expressly declares, we
feel safe in concluding that "succession in the mission and authority
of the apostles" is held and taught by the Episcopal Church as
necessary to the existence of a valid ministry.

We may even go a step farther. If "tactual succession" signifies
merely that some visible or audible commission must pass from the
minister ordaining to the man ordained, without supposing any
particular act or word to be necessary to such "tactual succession,"
we may regard this also as {724} being a point upon which
Episcopalians raise no issue. The High Churchman may know no other
"tactual" ordination than "the laying on of hands." Mr. Goode and his
party might perhaps scruple to adopt such an interpretation, for,
though scriptural and primitive, it is not of the essence of the
ministerial commission. But that "succession," perpetuated by means of
some actual commission, visibly or audibly moving from the ordainer to
the ordained, is necessary, neither of these adversaries will deny.

Here, however, all acknowledged unity of doctrine ceases. "What is the
appointed channel of this ministerial authority?" "Is it confined to
one rank of the ministry, or possessed by two?" "Is _episcopal_
succession necessary to the validity of holy orders?" are questions on
which their disagreement appears, to them, irreconcilable. The organs
of both parties here speak with no uncertain sound. Each denounces the
teachings of the other with unsparing acerbity. Mr. Goode
characterizes the doctrines of his opponents as "at variance with the
spirit of Christian charity" and "the facts of God's providence," as
"having no foundation in Holy Scripture, and leading to consequences
so dreadful that it is simply monstrous in any one to teach them." The
"voice of the church" with equal plainness of speech replies, "He who
looks upon Episcopacy as a thing of expediency, who talks of parity
between bishop and presbyter, and who denounces 'Apostolical
succession' as a _monstrous_ theory, has no place among them. HE IS
NOT A LOW CHURCHMAN? he is not an Episcopalian in any proper sense at
all." (p. 487.)

The formal statement of the Low Church doctrine, as explained by Mr.
Goode, may thus be made: That the highest order of ministers,
appointed by Christ or enjoying any direct scriptural authority, is
that of presbyters or elders, in which order inheres, _ex ordine_, the
powers of government and ordination; that the apostles, selecting from
among the presbytery certain men called bishops, appointed them to
exercise these powers; that, consequently, government by bishops and
episcopal ordination rest upon apostolic precedent, and are sanctioned
by the constant observance of fifteen hundred years; that this
appointment, however, in no wise conferred upon such bishop any power
of order which he had not before, or deprived the remaining presbyters
of those equal powers which they possessed already: and, therefore,
that ordination by presbyters alone, although not regular or in
accordance with established precedent, is truly valid, and confers
upon the person so ordained all the rights and authority of a minister
of Christ. This doctrine is essential Presbyterianism. On the
questions of historical fact--whether the apostles did appoint bishops
and confine to them the office of ordaining others, and whether such
practice was adhered to unvaryingly from their day till that of
Calvin; as, also, on the relative weight and importance of such a
precedent, if it does historically exist--they certainly disagree. But
on the main question their decision is identical: that ordination is a
power of the presbyter by divine institution and of the presbyter
only, and that the episcopate, wherever it exists, possesses these
powers solely by virtue of the presbyterate which it includes.

The doctrine of the High Church party, on the other hand, is thus laid
down in "Vox Ecclesiae:" That Christ instituted, either by his own act
or that of his apostles, three several orders of ministers in his
church, and to the first of these, called bishops, and to them alone,
intrusted the power and authority of ordaining pastors for his flock;
that this episcopate is, therefore, of divine commandment, and cannot
be neglected or abolished without sin, neither can any ordination be
valid or confer authority to preach the word or minister the
sacraments unless performed by bishops; that, consequently,
presbyterian orders, being bestowed {725} by men who have no power or
commission to ordain, are, _ipso facto_, void: EXCEPT in cases of real
necessity, where, if episcopal ordination cannot be obtained,
presbyters may validly ordain. This doctrine is, in the main, that
which we have always supposed the great majority of Episcopalians
help. As we have never seen the "exception" so fully stated in any
authoritative work as it is in this, we give it in the author's own
language, as it occurs in several portions of his book. Thus on page
62--

"'_Necessitas non habet legem_' was a Roman proverb, the propriety and
force of which must be acknowledged by all. In reference to our
present subject, one of the most eminent of the defenders of our
church uses almost the very words, viz. '_Nisi coegerit dura
necessitas cui nulla lex est posita_.' (Hadrian Saravia's reply to
Beza.) The principle then is fully admitted. Necessity excuseth every
defect or irregularity which it _really_ occasions." On page 313, an
extract from the same Saravia is given, as follows: "Although I am of
opinion that ordinations of ministers of the church properly belong to
bishops, yet NECESSITY causes that, when they are wanting and CANNOT
BE HAD, _orthodox presbyters can, in case of necessity_, ordain a
presbyter;" and the author says of it, "We take this as Mr. Goode
gives it." It is the strongest sentence in the whole passage, and yet
it contains no more than what nine tenths of all Episcopal writers
gladly allow, viz., (to use the words of Archbishop Parker,) "Extreme
necessity in itself implieth dispensation with all laws." Again, on
page 70, after noticing certain objections to this plea of necessity,
put forward by individual writers in the church, he continues; "There
is great force in these objections: nevertheless we think it far
better to grant all that the foreign churches claimed in the way of
necessity, inasmuch as the English Church certainly did so at the
time." A still more definite statement of the same "exception" occurs
on pages 82 and 83: "As regards the question before us, the High
Churchman and the Low Churchman unite in considering episcopacy a
divine institution, and a properly derived authority a _sine qua non_
to lawful ministering in the church. They also agree in believing that
real necessity in this, as in every other matter, abrogates law and
makes valid whatever is performed under it." We have no wish to
multiply quotations, but on this important point we desire to fall
into no error and to be guilty of no misrepresentation. We have
preferred to give the "voice of the church" in its own words, rather
than in ours, and have no hesitation in repeating the definition we
have already given, as setting forth the High Church doctrine,
strictly according to its acknowledged organ: "Episcopacy is a divine
institution, and necessary, where it can be had. Where it cannot be
had, presbyters may validly ordain."

The doctrine of the Episcopal Church, as a church, if, as a church,
she has any doctrine on the subject, must lie within these
definitions. Mr. Goode must be wholly right, and the "Vox Ecclesiae"
wholly wrong, or _vice versa_, or else both must have the truth,
mingled in each case with more or less of falsehood and confusion. If
we can reconcile the two, or if the teaching of either has that in it
which disproves itself, we may at last define the real position of
their church upon the question which involves her life.

And here we must premise, that the words "order," "Office," etc.,
which seem to be the gist of much of this controversy, are names, not
things. They mean, in the mouth, or on the pen, of any Individual,
just what that individual means by them, no less, no more. They have
never been defined authoritatively by Scripture or by any other
tribunal to which these parties own allegiance. When Mr. Goode uses
them, they may imply one thing. In the pages of "Vox Ecclesiae," they
may signify another. The whole contest, therefore, so far as {726} it
relates to the number of "orders," or whether that of the bishop is a
different "order," or only a different "office," from that of the
presbyter, is, in our view, one of names and titles only. The real
question stands thus: "Has a bishop, by divine institution, a power
which the presbyter has not, or is the same power resident in both,
and ordinarily made latent in the one, and operative in the other, by
virtue of ecclesiastical law and usage?" The answer to this question
will show how far the High and Low Church party really differ from
each other, and what is the variance, if any, between the "Vox
Ecclesiae" and Mr. Goode.

It seems to us that the "EXCEPTION," which, equally with the rule, is
admitted by the High Church doctrine to be fundamental law, answers
this question once for all. For if, in any supposable emergency,
presbyters may validly ordain, and if persons so by them ordained have
power to preach the word and minister the sacraments, then either (1.)
Necessity confers a power to ordain upon those who have it not, or
else (2.) The power to ordain is resident alike in presbyters and
bishops, and the restrictions on its exercise by presbyters are, by
that necessity, removed. If the second of these positions truly
represent the High Church theory, then, between them and Mr. Goode's
adherents, there is no essential difference, and their war, with all
its bitterness and pertinacity, is one of human words and human facts,
and not of Christian doctrine. If, to avoid this fate, the first
alternative be the one adopted, the following difficulties must be met
and answered.

1. It overthrows the entire doctrine of "succession." This fundamental
law of organic, collective, Christian life presupposes the existence
of an unbroken chain of ministers, transmitting their authority,
through generation after generation, from Christ's day to our own. It
presupposes that every man, who has himself possessed and transmitted
this authority, has received it in his turn from some other man who
possessed it and transmitted it to him, and so on back to Christ
himself. Christ thus becomes the sole source, and man the sole
channel, of ecclesiastical authority, and the right or power of any
individual to exercise the functions of the ministerial office depends
on his reception of authority therefor from this only source and
through this only channel.

But if necessity can also confer authority, or rather, to put the case
in words more expressive of its real character, if, whenever the
appointed channel cannot be had and necessity of ministers exists, God
will himself from heaven confer the authority in need, the value of
this "succession" amounts to nothing. Orders, wherever necessary, will
be had as well without it as with it, and they who have it can never
with any certainty deny the validity of orders which have it not.
Christ still may be the sole source, but man is not the only, nay, nor
the most perfect and available, channel of this authority. There is
another, surer, nearer, more direct, conveying, only to proper
persons, the gifts of God, and free from all the doubts and dangers
which result from a residence of heavenly "treasure in earthen
vessels," and the necessity which demands it is the sole condition of
its use. The High Church party, if they adopt this position, must,
therefore, become more radical than any Christian church upon the
globe. They out-Herod even their great Herod, Mr. Goode, and are more
dangerous to the cause of "apostolic order" and ecclesiastical
authority than any Low Churchmen or Separatist that ever lived.

2. It elevates human necessity above divine law. The law, by which
holy orders exist, and by which their transmission from man to man is
regulated, is unquestionably divine. "Vox Ecclesiae" goes so far as to
claim that their transmission, from bishop to bishop only, is of
divine precept, but, waiving that, it is acknowledged by all parties,
with whom we have to do at {727} present, that whatever be the human
channel, it is of Christ's appointment, and rests upon divine
authority. It is thus a _divine_ law which "necessity abrogates," a
positive institution and command of God which is to be disregarded and
disobeyed, and that because "necessity" demands it.

But this necessity is a merely human one. Orders confers on the
ordained only the power to preach and to administer the sacraments,
and it is only that those things may be done, that God's law is
despised and set aside. Yet, though the eternal salvation of the human
soul may ordinarily depend upon the preaching of the word and on the
sacraments, still nothing is _absolutely_ necessary to eternal life
that may not take place between the soul and God, independently of
bishop, priest, or church. It is thus no necessity of _God's_
creation, no necessity inevitably involving the eternal destinies of
man, that substitutes itself for the admitted law of God, but a mere
earthly need, a need based upon human views and customs and opinions,
which never received endorsement from on high, and finds no sanction
for its existence in Holy Writ. There is no irregularity which such a
position would not justify, no departure from God's ordinances which
it could consistently condemn. It would come with fearful self-rebuke
from that portion of the Episcopal Church, who for three hundred years
have practically ignored their brother Protestants, because they
judged of their own necessities and set aside the institutions of God
in order that those necessities might be supplied.

3. It legitimates every form of error and schism. For, if "necessity
_confers_ orders," the sole question in every case is, whether the
necessity existed. If there was such necessity in Germany and
Switzerland in the sixteenth century, then Lutheran and Calvinistic
orders were as valid as Episcopal, and if that necessity continues,
they are valid still. If there was such necessity in Scotland, after
the abolition of the prelacy, and that necessity continues, the orders
of the kirk are valid at this day. If there was such necessity when
John Wesley ordained Dr. Coke, and that necessity continues, Methodist
orders are as valid as his Grace of Canterbury's are. There is no
stopping-place for these deductions. If "necessity confers orders,"
not even the channel of _presbyters_ is necessary. No human instrument
at all stands between God and the recipient of his extraordinary
favor. In every case where the necessity exists, there God confers the
power of orders, and there is no sect so wild and heretical, no
ministry so dangerous and erratic, that may not claim validity upon
this ground, and that must not, on these principles, when necessity is
proven, be adjudged legitimate.

But of this necessity who shall be the judge? Shall God, who, of
course, knows all the circumstances of mankind and estimates them at
their proper value? But then, to us his judgment is useless without
expression, and his expression is _revelation_. Are those who allow
the force of this plea of necessity prepared to admit all who claim
it, for the sake of Christian charity, or will they demand a
revelation from God to satisfy them that the "necessity" was _real_?
Yet, if God be the only Judge, they must admit all or reject all until
he speaks from heaven, and in the latter case, the "EXCEPTION" might
as well have been left unmade. Or shall the church judge? And if so,
what church? The church, from which Luther, and Calvin, and Cranmer,
and Parker separated? She had her bishops ready to ordain all proper
men, and if her judgment had been taken, there would have been no
occasion for men to plead necessity. The church, from which came forth
the Puritans and Methodists? She also had her bishops, and in her view
no necessity could ever have existed. So with every church. None that
are founded in Episcopacy could ever {728} admit a necessity without
supplying it in the appointed way. And none that reject Episcopacy
would care to inquire whether or not there was any such necessity. The
church could, therefore, be no judge. She is, in every issue of this
sort, a party, not an umpire; but, were she competent to judge,
wherein is her decree less valid, when from Rome she excommunicates
the Church of England, than when from London or New York she denies
ministerial authority to Presbyterians and Universalists? Or is it the
individual? There can be no doubt in this answer. It must be. No man
can judge of a necessity except he who is placed in it. A little
colony of Christians, cast away on some Pacific island, must decide
for themselves, whether they will ordain a pastor for their flock or
utterly dispense with Christian teaching. A man, whose creed differs
from that of the church in which he lives, and yet who feels an inward
call to preach the Gospel, as he understands it, must be the sole
judge of the necessity of call, upon the one hand, which commands him
to preach, and of conscience, on the other, which forbids him to
subscribe the creed which is the unrelenting condition of his
ordination by authority. Extend it to societies and communities of
men, and the rule is the same. These societies become themselves the
judges, whether or not, in their case, necessity exists, and no other
can judge for them. The law is universal. If necessity be a
justification, it must be necessity as judged of by the parties in
necessity, and not as judged of by God, unknown to men, or by a church
which either will supply the need or treat the whole matter as of
little moment. There thus becomes no limit to necessities. They are
moral as well as physical. They grow out of duties and
responsibilities, as well as out of distances and years. Obedience to
the voice of conscience is an indispensable condition of salvation,
and no necessity is greater or more potent than the necessity of that
obedience. When the Rev. Gardiner Spring was moved, as he believed it,
by the Holy Ghost, to do the work of a minister in the church of God,
there was not a regularly ordained bishop in the world who would have
ordained him, while holding the doctrines he professed. In his case,
without a violation of his conscience and the loss of his soul,
bishops "COULD NOT BE HAD," and presbyters must have validly ordained.
When Charles Spurgeon, rejoicing in the new-found light of the Gospel,
burned to tell other men the good that God had done to him, the moral
necessity was the same, a necessity which compelled him to disobey
what he believed to be a command of God, or to receive orders from
non-Episcopal hands. Is there any need of multiplying instances? Where
is the imaginable limit to which validity must be acknowledged and
beyond which it must cease? The High Churchman who starts with the
admission, that in case of "necessity," God confers the power of
order, can never stop till he has bowed the knee before every Baal
which claims the name of Christian and opened the gifts of God to
every man who demands priestly recognition at his hands.

There are other objections to this theory, equally insuperable with
those already suggested. It can hardly be necessary, however, to
mention them. No candid mind, after seeing the real bearing of this
position on the whole question of a visible church, can hesitate a
moment to reject it. There remains only the other alternative, namely,
that necessity renders operation in presbyters a power possessed by,
but latent in, them, by removing the restrictions which, in ordinary
circumstances, apostolic precedent and ecclesiastical usage have
imposed; and as this is essentially the position advocated by Mr.
Goode, and as the difference between these parties is thus reduced, in
every case, to a question of historic or contemporaneous fact, which
no one but the individuals who plead it can adequately settle, we
conclude that {729} the sole contest as to doctrine is one of words
and definitions, and that on all material points of theory and faith
they perfectly agree. We thus feel justified in the conclusion that
the Episcopal Church of the present age has a doctrine concerning the
necessity of episcopal ordination, and that her doctrine is no less,
no more, than this: "The power of order is resident in bishops and
presbyters both, _ex ordine_, and is operative, under ordinary
circumstances, in bishops only, though in cases of necessity,
presbyters may exercise that power and validly ordain."

This doctrine is logical, coherent, and conservative. No divine
institution is thereby set aside for a mere human necessity. No
destructive principle antagonistic to the doctrine of "succession" is
thereby introduced; no gate is thereby opened for a multitudinous
throng of orthodox and heretics, ordained and unordained, to bring
disorder and confusion into the Church of God. However fatal to the
high pretensions of the Episcopal Church in generations past, and to
any claim of exclusive apostolicity at present, this doctrine is,
nevertheless, most consistent with her actual _status_ in the
religious world. Thoroughly Protestant in doctrine and in worship, all
her affinities and tendencies are toward the Presbyterian and other
non-Episcopal denominations of the age. No church on earth, whose
episcopal succession can be traced to any apostolic source, has ever
recognized hers as beyond question, or admitted her claim to be a
portion of the Catholic Church of Christ. Her very episcopate itself
is, practically, as the recent events in New York have shown, a rank
of honor and of office not of power. Her alleged superiority, for her
bishops' sakes, can never bring her one step nearer to the Catholic
Church, while she retains her heresies or remains in schism; and, on
the other hand, her alienation from her protesting sisters must
increase with every generation while this allegation is maintained.
Far better, far more accordant with her actual position, is her
doctrine as thus evolved by Mr. Goode and "Vox Ecclesiae," and while
its enunciation cannot change her in our estimation, it will doubtless
draw nearer to her, in the bonds of love and brotherhood, all those by
whom she is surrounded and to whose fraternity she naturally belongs.
It is only a matter of regret that the barrier now destroyed was not
broken down long ago, and that the good influences, which the
Episcopal Church is so well calculated to exert, have not been working
on the masses of our non-Catholic brethren in America during all the
past eighty years.

Nothing now remains but to retrieve that past. Let it be understood
that the Episcopal Church does not deny the validity of presbyterian
orders, but that at most she holds them irregular, and only that when
not given in necessity; that men of other denominations have clergymen
and sacraments equally beneficial with her own. Let her throw open her
doors to all religious bodies who thus preserve the "succession," and
unite with them in prevailing on those to receive it who have it not,
and make common cause with all such in stemming the tide of infidelity
and "liberalism" which is deluging our land. Then may her self-adopted
mission, however faulty in its origin, however riskful in its
progress, fulfil at least one portion of the work of Christ's Church
in the world, and, if she cannot feed men with the bread of truth, she
may preserve them from the more fearful poisons.

In conclusion, we desire to correct an error into which the author of
"Vox Ecclesiae" has fallen, concerning the view of this same question
taken by Catholics. On page 57, he says:

  "The exaggerated or Romish theory is, that the possession of the
  Apostolical Constitution and a properly transmitted succession is
  enough to constitute a true and perfect church. Thus succession is
  held to be everything," etc.

{730}

In one sense of these words, namely, that to _be_ the actual
organization founded by Christ and constituted, as he left it, in the
hands of the apostles, is to be a true and perfect church; they are
the faith of Catholics. But this is not the sense in which the author
uses them. The idea he thus expresses is, that we regard an external
succession in the line of apostolic orders as sufficient to make a man
a priest or bishop, as the case may be, and that such a succession
constitutes a church. This is a very prevalent, but very thoughtless,
error. It is true that we believe apostolic orders, in the apostolic
line, to be so absolutely necessary that no man, under any
circumstances, can perform any I without them. But we do _not_
believe, that the possession of such orders by any organization makes
it a true church. Cranmer was lawfully ordained as priest and bishop
of the Catholic Church, and, whether as a schismatic under Henry, or a
heretic under Edward, his orders went with him and rendered every act
in pursuance of them valid. The bishops he consecrated were bishops,
the priests he ordained were priests, and if Archbishop Parker were in
fact consecrated by Barlow and Hodgkins, and either of them were
consecrated by Cranmer, and if the English succession be otherwise
unbroken, then every priest of that succession is a true priest, and
every bishop a true bishop. Their acts are valid acts, whatever their
doctrine or their schism.

But this does not make the Church of England "a true and perfect
church." If the fact of her full apostolical succession were
established to-day, beyond the shadow of a doubt, and we would it
could be, her position would differ nothing, in our view, from that of
the Arian and Donatist churches of the fourth century, or of the Greek
Church for the past nine hundred years, churches whose orders were all
valid, whose doctrines were more or less at variance with Catholic
truth, whose sacraments conferred grace, but who were cut off from the
body of Christ's Church by their state of schism.

The Catholic test of Catholicity is short and simple, "Ubi Petrus, ibi
Ecclesiae," said Ambrose of Milan, (Comm. in Ps. xl.,) and wherever
Peter is, Peter, who, "like an immovable rock, holds together the
structure and mass of the whole Christian fabric," (Ambrosii serm.
xlvii.,) and "who, down to the present time and forever, in his
successors lives and judges," (Care Eph. A.D. 431, serm. Phil.,)
wherever Peter is, there, and there only, do we see the church.
Catholics, collectively and individually, say with St. Jerome,
"Whoever is united with the See of Peter is mine," and, throughout the
world, whatever church, society or man is joined by the bonds of
visible communion with the Roman See, is in and of the body of the
Catholic Church, they and none others. No union with that See is
possible to those who do not profess, at least implicitly, the entire
Catholic doctrine, and submit to the legitimate discipline of the
church. No validity of orders without true doctrine, no truth of
doctrine and validity of orders without union with the Apostolic See,
can remedy the evil. To all outside that unity, however similar to us
in one point or another, we must repeat the words which St. Optatus of
Mela wrote to the African Donatists about A.D. 384:

"You know that the Episcopal See was first established for Peter at
the city of Rome, in which See Peter, the head of all the apostles,
sat, and with which one See unity must be maintained by all; that the
apostles might not each defend before you his own see, but that he
should be both a schismatic and a sinner who should set up any other
against that one See." (Adr. Donat. ii.) Would that, of all who know
the truth of that which Optatus has written, and whom a thousand
hindrances are keeping from that rock of unity, we might say, as St.
Cyprian wrote of Antonianus, in the first ages, to the Holy Pope
Cornelius, (ad auton,) "He is in communion with you, that is, with the
Catholic Church."

------

{731}


From All the Year Round.

STATISTICS OF VIRTUE.


Small presents, it has been shrewdly said, prevent the flame of
friendship from dying out. A Stilton cheese, a bouquet of forced
flowers, a maiden copy of a "just-published" book, a _pâte de foie
gras_, a basket of fruit that _will_ keep a day or two, a salmon in
spring, or a fresh-killed hare in autumn--any thing that answers, as
a feed of corn or a bait of hay, to one's own private
hobby-horse--very rarely indeed gives offence.

Be the influence such offerings exert ever so small, it is attractive
rather than repulsive in its tendency. They are silken fibres which
draw people together, almost without their knowing it; and although
the strength of any single one may be slight, by multiplication they
acquire appreciable power. Even if they come from evidently interested
motives, they are a tribute which flatters the receiver's self-esteem,
for they are an unmistakable proof that he is worth being courted.
They are a mutual tie which bind friendly connections into a firmer
bundle of sticks than they were before. The giver even likes the
person given to all the better for having bestowed gifts upon him.
There may exist no thought or intention to lay him under an
obligation; but there always must, and properly may, arise the hope of
increasing his good-will and attachment. It is clear that, when it is
desirable that kindly relations should exist between persons, any
honorable means of promoting such relations are not only expedient but
laudable. One stone of an arch may fit its fellow-stones perfectly,
but a little cement does their union no harm.

As there is a reciprocal social attraction between individuals of
respectability and worth, so also there ought to be a gravitation of
every individual toward certain excellences of character and conduct.
And here likewise small inducements, trifling bribes, minor
temptations, help to increase the force of the tendency. Virtue is,
and ought to be its own reward; still, an additional bonus of
extraneous recompense cannot but help the moral progress of mankind.
It sounds like a truism to say that a _motive_ is useful as a mover to
the performance of any act or course of action. The fact is implied by
the meaning of the word itself. If good deeds can be rendered more
frequent by increasing the motives to their practice, the world in
general will be all the better and the happier for that increase.

The problem in ethics to be solved, is, simply, _how_ men and women
may be most easily led to behave like very good boys and girls. We
urge children to do their best by rewards of merit. Why should not the
minds of adults be stimulated by similar persuasive forces? Nor can
worldly motives, if pulling in the same direction as moral and
religious motives, be productive of anything but good. And we want
motives to excite the good to become still more persistently and
exemplarily good, all the more that terror of punishment is
unfortunately insufficient to make the bad abstain from deeds of
wickedness.

{732}

With this view a philanthropic Frenchman, M. de Montyon, founded in
1819 annual prizes for acts of benevolence and devotedness, which,
beside addressing our higher feelings, appeal to two strong passions,
interest and vanity. And why should integrity pass unrewarded? Why
should bright conduct be hid under a bushel? In a darksome night, how
far the little candle throws his beams! So _ought_ to shine a good
deed in a naughty world. Most undoubtedly, to do good by stealth is
highly praiseworthy; but there is no reason why the blush which arises
on finding it fame should necessarily be a painful blush. Far better
that it should be a glow of pleasure.

More than forty years have now elapsed since these prizes for virtue
were instituted, during which period more than seven hundred persons
have received the reward of their exemplary conduct. The French
Academy which distributes the prizes, has decided (doing violence to
the modesty of the recipients ) to publish their good deeds to the
world. After the announcement of their awards, a livret or list in the
form of a pamphlet is issued, recounting each specific case with the
same simplicity with which it was performed. These lists are spread
throughout all France and further, in the belief that the more widely
meritorious actions are known, the greater chance there is of their
being imitated.

The awards made by the French Academy up to the present day to
virtuous actions give an average of about eighteen per annum. These
eighteen annual "crowns" have been competed for by more than seventy
memorials coming from every point of France, mostly without the
knowledge of the persons interested. In short, since the foundation of
the prizes, the Academy has had to read several thousand memorials.

To Monsieur V. P. Demay (Secretary and Chef des Bureaux of the Mairie
of the 18th Arrondissement of Paris) the idea occurred of collecting
the whole of these livrets into a volume, so as to furnish an
analytical summary of the distribution of the prizes throughout the
empire, and of appending to it flowers of philanthropic eloquence
culled from the speeches made at the Academic meetings. The result is
a book entitled "Les Fastes de la Vertu Pauvre en France," "Annals of
the Virtuous Poor in France."

No one, before M. Demay, thought of undertaking the Statistics of
Virtue. The subject has not found a place on any scientific programme,
French or international; whether through forgetfulness or not, the
fact remains indisputable. And be it remarked that the seven hundred
and thirty-two laureats to whom rewards have been decreed, represent
only a fraction of the number of highly deserving persons. In all
their reports ever since 1820, the French Academy has declared that it
had only the embarrassment of choosing between the candidates while
awarding the prizes, so equally meritorious were their acts.
Therefore, to the seven hundred and thirty-two nominees ought to be
added the two thousand four hundred and forty competitors whose cases
were considered during that period, making altogether a total of three
thousand one hundred and seventy-two instances of conduct worthy of
imitation which had been brought to light by the agency of the prizes.

The book, not more amusing than other statistics, is nevertheless
highly suggestive. Serious thought is the consequence of opening its
pages. It is a touching book, and goes to the heart. After reading it,
many will feel prompted to go and do likewise by some effort of
generosity or self-denial. In any case, it cannot be other than a
moralizing work to bring to light so many instances of devotion, and
to set them forth as public examples.

In some of his speculations our author, perhaps, may be considered as
just a little too sanguine. Certainly, if there are tribunals for the
infliction of punishment, there is no reason why tribunals should not
exist for the conferring of recompenses. How far they are likely to
become general, is a question for consideration. Also, it is {733}
true that newspapers give the fullest details of horrid crimes, while
they are brief in their usual mention of meritorious actions. But
before M. Demay, somebody said, "Men's evil manners live in brass,
their virtues we write in water;" and it is to be feared he is
somewhat too bright-visioned a seer, when he hopes that, through
Napoleon the Third's and Baron Haussmaun's educational measures,
coupled with the influence of the Montyon prizes, "at no very distant
day, the words penitentiary, prison, etc., will exist only in the
state of souvenirs--painful as regards the past, but consolatory for
the future."

To give the details of such a multitude of virtuous acts is simply
impossible. M. Demay can only rapidly group those which present the
most striking features, and which have appeared still more
extraordinary--for that is the proper word--than the others,
conferring on their honored actors surnames recognized throughout
whole districts. It is the Table of Honor of Virtuous Poverty, crowned
by the verdict of popular opinion. Among these latter are (the
parentheses contain the name of their department): the Mussets,
husband and wife, salt manufacturers, at Château Salins, (Meurthe,)
surnamed the Second Providence of the Poor; Suzanne Géral, wife of the
keeper of the lockup house, at Florae, (Loèzre) surnamed the Prison
Angel; David Lacroix, fisherman, at Dieppe, (Seine-Inférieure,)
surnamed the _Sauveur_, instead of the _Sauveteur_ the rescuer, after
having pulled one hundred and seventeen people out of fire and water
--he has the cross of the Legion of Honor; Marie Philippe; Widow
Gambon, vine-dresser, at Nanterre, (Seine.) surnamed la Mére de bon
Secours, or Goody Helpful; Madame Langier, at Orgon,
(Bouche-du-Rhône,) surnamed la Quéteuse, the Collector of Alms.

In the spring of 1839 almost the whole canton of Ax (Ariège) was
visited by the yellow fever, which raged for ten months, and carried
off a sixth of the population. It, was especially malignant at Prades.
Terror was at its height; those whom the scourge had spared were
prevented by their fears from assisting their sick neighbors, menaced
with almost certain death. Nevertheless, a young girl, Madeleine Fort,
who had been brought up in the practice of good works, exerted herself
to the utmost in all directions. During the course of those ten
disastrous months she visited, consoled, and nursed more than five
hundred unfortunates; and if she could not save them from the grave,
she followed them, alone, to their final resting-place. Two Sisters of
Charity were sent to help her; one was soon carried off, and the
second fell ill. The caré died, and was replaced by another. The
latter, finding himself smitten, sent for Madeleine. One of the flock
had to tend the pastor. Those disastrous days have long since
disappeared; but if the traveller, halting at Prades, asks for
Madeleine Fort's dwelling, he will be answered, "Ah! you mean our
Sister of Charity?"

Suzanne Bichon is only a servant. Her master and mistress were
completely ruined by the negro insurrection in St. Domingo; but the
worthy woman would not desert them--she worked for them all, and took
care of the children. On being offered a better place, that is, a more
lucrative engagement, she refused it with the words, "You will easily
find another person, but can my master and mistress get another
servant?" The Academy gave their recompense for fifteen years of this
devoted service. Her mistress wanted to go and take a place herself;
she would not hear of it, making them believe that she had means at
her command, and expectations. But all her means lay in her capacity
for work, while her expectations were--Providence. It is not to be
wondered at that she was known as Good Suzette.

{734}

Such attachments as these on the part of servants are a delightful
contrast to what we commonly see in the course of our household
experience. They can hardly be looked for under the combined regime of
register-offices, a month's wages or a month's warning, no followers,
Sundays out, and crinoline.

We look for virtue amongst the clergy. The devotion, self-denial, and
resignation often witnessed amongst them are matters of notoriety.
Nevertheless, it is right that one of its members should find a place
on a list like the present. In 1834, the Abbé Bertran was appointed
cure of Peyriac, (Aude.) He was obliged, so to speak, to conquer the
country of which he was soon to be the benefactor. For two years he
had to struggle with the obstinate resistance which his parishioners
opposed to him. His evangelical gentleness succeeded in vanquishing
every obstacle; henceforth he was master of the ground, and could
march onward with a firm step. At once he consecrated his patrimony to
the restoration of the church and the presbyter. He bought a field,
turned architect, and soon there arose a vast building which united
the two extremes of life--old age and infancy. He then opened
simultaneously a girls' school, an infant school, and a foundling
hospital. He sought out the orphans belonging to the canton, and
supplied a home to old people of either sex. To effect these objects
the good pastor expended seventy thousand francs, (nearly three
thousand pounds,) the whole of his property: he left himself without a
sou. But he had sown his seed in good ground, and it promised to
produce a hundred-fold. Rich in his poverty, his place is marked
beside Vincent de Paul and Charles Borromeo.

Goodness may even indulge in its caprices and still remain good.
Marguerite Monnier, surnamed _la Mayon_, (a popular term of affection
in Lorraine,) seems to have selected a curious specialty for the
indulgence of her charitable propensities. It is requisite to be
infirm or idiotic to be entitled to receive her benevolent attentions.
When quite a child, she selects as her friend a poor blind beggar,
whom she visits every day in her wretched hovel. She makes her bed,
lights her fire, and cooks her food. While going to school, she
remarks a poor old woman scarcely able to drag herself along, but,
nevertheless, crawling to the neighboring wood to pick up a few dry
sticks. She follows her thither, helps her to gather them, and brings
back the load on her own shoulders. Grown to womanhood, and married,
Marguerite successively gives hospitality to an idiot, a crazy person,
a cretin, several paralytic patients, orphans, strangers without
resources, and even drunkards, (one would wish to see in their falling
an infirmity merely.) Every creature unable to take care of itself
finds in her a ready protector. Such are her lodgers, her clients, her
customers! Ever cheerful, she amuses them by discourse suited to their
comprehension. All around her is in continued jubilation, and
Marguerite herself seems to be more entertained than any body else. It
may be said, perhaps, that a person must be born with a natural
disposition for this kind of devotedness. Granted; but his claim to
public gratitude is not a whit the less for that.

Catherine Vernet, of Saint-Germain, (Puy-de-dôme,) is a simple
lace-maker, who, after devoting herself to her family, has for thirty
years devoted herself to those who have no one to take care of them.
Her savings having amounted to a sufficient sum for the purchase of a
small house, she converted it into a sort of hospital with eight beds
always occupied. Situated amongst the mountains of Anvergne, this
hospital is a certain refuge for _perdus_, travellers who have lost
their way. It is an imitation of the Saint Bernard; and if it has not
attained its celebrity, it emanates from the same source, charity.

{735}

In looking through the lists and comparing the several departments of
France, it would be hard to say that one department is better than
another; because their population, and other important influential
circumstances, vary immensely between themselves. But what strikes one
immediately, is the great preponderance of good women--rewarded as
such--over good men. Thus, to dip into the list at hazard, we
have--Meuse, one man, five women; Seine, thirty-one men, ninety-eight
women; Loire, two men, six women; Côte-d'Or, three men, eleven women;
and so on. The nature of the acts rewarded--also taken by chance--are
these: reconciliations of families in _vendetta_, (Corsica;)
maintenance of deserted children; rescues from fire and water;
faithfulness to master and mistress for sixteen years; adoption of
seven orphans for fifteen years; maintenance of master and mistress
fallen into poverty; devotion to the aged; nursing the sick poor;
killing a mad dog who inflicted fourteen bites. When "inexhaustible
charity" and "succor to the indigent" are mentioned, one would like to
know whether they consisted in mere alms-giving. Probably not; because
by "charity" Montyon understood, not the momentary impulse which
causes us to help a suffering fellow-creature, and then dies away, but
the constant, durable affection which regards him as another self, and
whose device is "Privation, Sacrifice."

In the period, then, between 1819 and 1864 seven hundred and
seventy-six persons received Montyon rewards, two hundred and eleven
of whom were men, and five hundred and sixty-five women. In M. Demay's
opinion, the disproportion ought to surprise nobody; for if man is
gifted with virile courage, which is capable of being suddenly
inflamed, and is liable to be similarly extinguished, woman only is
endowed with the boundless, incessant, silent devotion which is found
in the mother, the wife, the daughter, the sister. This dear
companion, given by God to man, is conscious of the noble mission
allotted her to fulfil on earth. We behold the results in her acts,
and in what daily occurs in families. Abnegation, with her, is a
natural instinct. "She may prove weak, no doubt; she may even go
astray: but, be assured, she always retains the divine spark of
charity, which only awaits an opportunity to burst forth into a
brilliant flame. Let us abstain, therefore, from casting a stone at
temporary error; let us pardon, and forget. Our charity will lead her
back to duty more efficaciously than all the moral stigmas we could
possibly inflict."

The years more fruitful in acts of devotion appear to have been 1851,
1852, and 1857, in which twenty-seven and twenty-eight prizes were
awarded. Their cause is, that previously the Academy received
memorials from the authorities only. But after making an appeal to
witnesses of every class and grade, virtue, if the expression maybe
allowed, overflowed in all directions. Lives of heroism and charity,
hidden in the secrets of the heart, were suddenly brought to the light
of day, to the great surprise of their heroes and heroines. During the
same period there were distributed, in money, three hundred and
sixty-four thousand francs, (sixteen thousand pounds;) in medals, four
hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred and fifty francs, (sixteen
thousand seven hundred and forty-two pounds;) total, seven hundred and
eighty-two thousand five hundred and fifty francs, (thirty-two
thousand seven hundred and forty-two pounds.) The Montyon prizes are
worth having, and not an insult to the persons to whom they are
offered. The sums of money given range as high as one, two, three, and
even four thousand francs; the medals vary in value from five and six
hundred to a thousand francs: but even a five hundred franc or
twenty-pound medal is a respectable token of approbation and esteem.
In some few cases, both money and a medal are bestowed.

{736}

It may be said that the persons to whom these prizes are given would
have done the same deeds without any reward. True; and therein lies
their merit. And ought _money_ to be given to recompense virtuous
acts? Yes, most decidedly; because it will confer on its recipients
their greatest possible recompense--the power of doing still more
good. Money gifts are not to be depreciated so long as there are
orphans to sustain, sick poor to nurse, and infirm old age to keep
from starvation.

Finally, is charity the growth of one period of life rather than of
another? On inspecting the lists, we find children, six, twelve,
thirteen years of age, and close to them octogenarians, one
nonagenarian, one centenarian! If noble courage does not want for
fulness of years, it would appear not to take its leave on their
arrival.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

THE CHRISTIAN CROWN.

BY JOHN SAVAGE.

I.

  Ten centuries and one had trod
    Jerusalem, since when,
  In mortal form, the Son of God
    Died for the sons of men.


II.

  And they who in the Martyr found
    Their Saviour, wailed and wept,
  That gorgeous horrors should abound
    Where Christ the Blessèd slept.


III.

  From clam'rous towns, and forests' hush.
    As cascades from the gloom
  Of caves, crusaders eastward rush
    To win the holy tomb.


IV.

  Their corselets, steel and silver bright,
    'Neath swaying plumes displayed,
  Now dance, like streams, in lines of light.
    Now loiter on in shade.


{737}


V.

  Their crosses glow in every form
    Inspiring vale and mart,
  As through earth's arteries they swarm,
    Like blood back to the heart.


VI.

  Tis mid-day of midsummer's heat;
    Faith crowns the live and dead:
  Jerusalem is at their feet.
    Brave Godfrey at their head.


VII.

  Within the walls, the ramparts ring
    As proudly they proclaim
  Great Godfrey de Bouillon as king!
    A king in more than name.


VIII.

  The ruby-budding crown to bind
   About his head, they stood:
  Another crown is in his mind;
    For rubies, blobs of blood.


IX.

  "No. no!" and back the bauble flings,
    "No gold this brow adorns
  Where willed He, Christ, the King of kings,
    To wear a crown of thorns."


X.

  Let not the glorious truth depart
    Brave Godfrey handed down:
  A king whose crown is in his heart,
    Needs wear no other crown.


------

{738}


From The Lamp

UNCONVICTED;
OR, OLD THORNELEY'S HEIRS.



CHAPTER VII.

THE READING OF THE WILL.


Nearing the brink of a discovery, yet dreading to approach the edge,
lest a false step should precipitate you into a chaos of darkness;
holding the end of an intricate web in your hand, yet not daring to
follow the lead, lest you should lose yourself in its mazes--so I
felt on the morning succeeding my visit with Detective Jones to
Blue-Anchor Lane; so, likewise, had that astute officer and faithful
friend expressed himself when we had parted the night before.

"You see, sir," he said, "the whole of what we have gathered this
evening may only mean that Mr. Wilmot has got mixed up with this De
Vos or Sullivan in some-gambling transaction, who, hearing that he's
left sole heir to poor Thorneley's fortune, means to hold whatever
knowledge he possesses as a threat over him to extort money. Then, as
to what passed at 'Noah's Ark,' why, it may mean a good deal, and it
may just mean nothing, as not referring to the parties we know of. I
don't wish to raise your hopes, sir; and until I've consulted with
Inspector Keene and seen what he's ferreted out, I wouldn't like to
say that we'd gained as much as I thought we should from our move
tonight."

On my table I found a broad black-bordered letter. It was a formal
invitation on the part of Lister Wilmot, as sole executor, to attend
old Thorneley's funeral on the following Tuesday.

The intervening days were dark, and blank with the blankness of
despair. Vigilant, energetic, and penetrating as was that secret,
silent search of the detectives, no real clue was found to the mystery
of the murdered man's death; no light thrown upon the black page in
the history of that fatal Tuesday evening, save what our own miserable
suspicions or fallacious hopes suggested. De Vos had entirely
disappeared from the scene, leaving no truce of his whereabouts.
Wilmot's public movements, though closely watched by the lynx-eyed
functionaries of the law, were perfectly satisfactory: and the
housekeeper remained closeted in her own room, intent, apparently,
upon making up her mourning garments for her late master, and fairly
baffling Inspector Keene in his insidious attempts to elicit a word
further, or at variance to what she stated at the inquest, by her
cool, collected, and straightforward replies to his 'cute
cross-questioning. And yet, in concluding the short interviews between
Mr. Inspector and Merrivale, at which I was generally present, after a
silent scrape at his chin, and a hungry crop at his nails, he would
still repeat with a certain little air of quiet confidence, "Good-day,
gentlemen. I think I am on the scent."

Meanwhile the verdict at the inquest had gone forth and done its work;
and Hugh Atherton was fully committed for trial next sessions at the
Old Bailey. These were to take place early in November, and the
thought of how terribly short a time was left till then filled us with
a fearful, heart-sickening dread lest all, upon which hung the issues
of life or death, could not be accomplished in so little space. True
that a respite {739} might be asked, and the trial postponed until the
following sessions; but upon what plea could the request be preferred?
Some evidence not yet forthcoming. What evidence could we hope for?
upon what future revelation could we rely? At present there was
nothing, absolutely nothing, but our vague conjectures, our blind
belief in the acuteness of the police officers whom we were employing.

And Ada Leslie, what of her? Every day, and twice a day, I went to
Hyde-Park Gardens, sometimes with Merrivale, sometimes alone,
repeating every detail, every minute particular, every circumstance,
and going though everything with her said or done by each one
concerned. It seemed to be her only comfort and support, after that
better and higher consolation promised to the weary and heavy-laden,
and which both she and Hugh knew well how to seek.

"Tell me all," she would say--"the good and bad. I can bear it better
if I know nothing is kept back. To deceive me would be no real
kindness; and who has a better right to know everything than I, who am
part of himself? We shall be man and wife soon, in the sight of God
and the world, and then nothing can separate us in other men's minds:
but till then I am truly and faithfully one with him; and what touches
him touches me, only infinitely more because it is for him. Don't you
know what the idyl says about the fame and shame being mine equally if
his? But better and holier words still have been spoken, and I say
them often to myself now when I think of the time which is coming:
'They two shall be one flesh.'"

Strangely enough, though fully conscious of Atherton's danger, of the
awful position in which he stood, she never seemed to take count for
one instant that the simple plea of innocence on his part, and the
belief of it on ours, would not weigh one feather's weight in the
heavy balance of evidence against him.

Since my encounter with Mrs. Leslie, that lady and I had been cold and
distant, conversing the least possible within our power, and avoiding
one another by mutual consent. But one thing I noted, that come when I
would, early or late, with news or without, alone or accompanied by
Merrivale, whose visits seemed a great comfort to Ada, Lister Wilmot
was certain to have forestalled me, and given in his version, either
personally or by letter, of whatever had happened. And I found the
effect of this was, that Mrs. Leslie was speaking of Hugh as guilty,
though "poor Lister still persists in trying to think him innocent;"
and was publishing about wherever she could that I had _volunteered_
to give evidence against him. Ada took a different view of Wilmot's
conduct.

"I think, guardian, that Lister is almost mad," she said one day. "He
talks quite wildly sometimes to me. We never thought he had a very
clear head; and now he seems to be so incoherent and contradictory in
all he says, and this confuses mamma, and makes her get wrong notions
about it all. But he is so kind and good to me now. Once I thought he
didn't like me; but he is quite changed now."

On the Saturday she was allowed to see Hugh, now lodged in Newgate
Prison. She went with Wilmot and her mother; but she saw him alone,
with only the warder present. Contrary to my expectations, she was
calmer and happier, if one can use such a word, knowing all the
anguish of the heart, than before. They had mutually strengthened and
comforted each other. She repeated to me a great deal of what passed
when I saw her in the evening; but she never said one word of what had
passed about myself; she never brought me any message; and when I
asked her if Hugh had expressed a wish to see me, she only replied,
"No, he thinks it is best not--at least at present." The same reply
came through {740} Merrivale, who seemed puzzled by it; the same
through Lister Wilmot, who was offensively regretful for me. I could
not bear it, and I gave utterance to the pent-up feeling which raged
within me. I told him that none of his meddling was needed between
myself and Hugh Atherton, and I hinted that the _rôle_ he had taken
upon himself to play now would before many days were over be changed
in a very unpleasant manner. A covert sneer curled his thin lips, and
there was an evil light in his eyes, as he replied that he was not
afraid of any plot that might be hatched against him, and he could
make excuses for my excited feelings "As to myself," he concluded, "_I
am prepared for everything_."

Tuesday, the day appointed for the burial of Gilbert Thorneley, at
last arrived; and those invited to attend assembled for the time in
Wimpole street to pay their tribute of homage to the man who had swept
his master's office in his youth, and died worth more than a million
of money in the Funds. They flocked thither at the bid of his nephew
and reported heir; his comrades on 'change, his compeers in wealth,
his fellow-citizens; those men who had passed through the same
evolutions of barter and exchange, of tare and tret, of selling out
and buying in, of all that busy tumult of money-making in which the
dead man lying in his silver-plated coffin upstairs, and covered by
the handsome velvet pall, had borne his share even to the fullest. For
Wilmot had given orders for the funeral to be conducted on a scale
befitting the magnificence of the fortune which his uncle left behind
him; and the management of the affair had been placed in the hands of
an undertaker whose reputation for conducting people to their grave
with every mournful splendor of state and style was irreproachable.
But amid those funeral plumes, those heavy trappings, those sombre
mantles, those long hat-bands new and scarfs of richest silk, there
was no eye wet with sorrow, no brow shadowed by regret, no heart that
was heavier for the loss of the one going to his grave. It was a
funeral without a mourner. On Lister Wilmot's face was the
half-concealed triumph and elation, under an affected grief too
evidently put on for the dullest man to believe in; and the only one
who would have mourned, nay who did mourn, for the murdered man, lay
in his cell within the walls of Newgate, stigmatized with the brand of
wilful murder of him. So the gloomy pageant set out with its
hearse-and-four, its dozen mourning-coaches, its string of private
carriages belonging to the rich men invited there that day. So we went
to Kensal Green and laid Gilbert Thorneley in the new vault prepared
for him, lonely and alone--"dust to dust, ashes to ashes"--until the
resurrection.

When the last solemn words had been read over the open grave and the
earth thrown with hollow sound upon the coffin, we turned to depart. A
greater portion of the large assembly dispersed in their carriages on
their various ways, and a few were asked to return to Wimpole street
and be present at the reading of the will. Whether bidden or not, I
had a reason for being there likewise, and had made up my mind what to
do; but to my surprise Mr. Walker came up as we were leaving the
cemetery, and invited me in Wilmot's name to go back with them.

In the dining room where the inquest had been held we gathered once
again--some dozen of Thorneley's oldest acquaintances, the two
doctors, the rector of the parish with his three curates, myself, the
housekeeper, and the other servants of the dead man's household. The
guests grouped themselves in different knots round the room, talking
and gossiping together on the money market, the state of the country,
of trade, of politics, of I know not what, but mostly of the past and
future concerning the house in which we were assembled, of {741} the
murdered and the supposed murderer, whilst we waited for Lister Wilmot
and his two lawyers. The servants placed themselves in a row near the
door, the housekeeper somewhat apart behind the rest, as if shrinking
from notice. Very striking she looked in her deep mourning, gown,
fitting with perfect exactitude, her light hair streaked here and
there with silver threads braided beneath a close tulle-cap, very pale
very self-possessed, but with that dangerous look in the cold blue
eyes and peculiar motion of the eyelids which Merrivale had described
as "a scintillating light and a shivering."

In less than a quarter of an hour the three came in--Thorneley's
executor and two lawyers; Smith, the senior partner--one of those
pompous old men who are met up and down the world, embodying, only in
a wrong sense, the conception of a late spiritual writer of "a man of
one idea," that idea being self--carrying in his hand a large
parchment folded in familiar form and indorsed in the orthodox
caligraphy of a law-office. The hum of conversation ceased as they
entered and advanced to the top of the room, where a small table was
placed, upon which the lawyer deposited the document. I glanced round
the room. All eyes were turned upon the three, who were now seating
themselves at the table in question, with the eager curiosity of men
going to hear news. The expression of triumph upon Lister Wilmot's
face had deepened yet more visibly; but underneath I fancied I
perceived a lurking anxiety, and especially when his eye fell with a
quick, sharp glance upon myself, and then as quickly looked away. The
two lawyers appeared very full of their own importance, and were very
obsequious to their new client. Lastly I looked at the housekeeper.
Two hectic spots now burned upon her singularly pale cheeks, and her
lips were tightly compressed; her hands, delicate and white for a
woman in her position, wandered restlessly over each other. Perhaps it
was but very natural agitation, for those who had served so long and
faithfully were no doubt expecting to be remembered in the will of
their late master.

"Are you ready, Mr. Wilmot?" asked Smith, wiping his gold spectacles
and adjusting them on his nose.

Wilmot bowed assent; and the lawyer unfolding the parchment, read in
loud, high, nasal tones, "The last will and testament of the late
Gilbert Thorneley, squire, of 100 Wimpole street, in the parish of St.
Mary-le-bone, London, and of the Grange, Warnside, Lincolnshire."

A dead silence reigned throughout the room; as the saying is, you
might have heard a pin drop. One thing only was audible to my ear,
sitting a few feet distant, and that was the heavy pant of the
housekeeper's breathing. Smith read on.

The said Gilbert Thorneley bequeathed to his nephew, Hugh Atherton,
the sum of £5000, free of legacy-duty; to his housekeeper an annuity
of £100 per annum for life; to his butler and coachman annuities of
£50 per annum for life, all free of legacy-duty, and £20 to the other
servants for mourning, with a twelvemonth's wages; to his nephew,
Lister Wilmot, the whole of his landed property, all moneys vested in
the Funds, all personal property, furniture, carriages, horses, and
plate, as sole residuary legatee.

This was the gist and pith of Gilbert Thorneley's will, which further
bore date of the 19th of August in the present year, and was witnessed
by William Walker, of the firm of Smith and Walker, and Abel
Griffiths, Smith and Walker's clerk. By it Lister Wilmot came into an
annual income of something like £100,000; by it Hugh Atherton was cut
off with a mere nominal sum from the joint inheritance which his uncle
had from his boyhood upward in the most unequivocal manner and words
taught him to expect. A murmur of surprise ran through the company
assembled. {742} The equal position of the two nephews with regard to
their uncle had been too publicly known for the present declaration
not to excite the most unbounded astonishment. So certain did it seem
that the cousins would be co-heirs of Thorneley 'a enormous wealth,
that whispers had gone about pretty freely of that being the motive
which induced Hugh Atherton to commit the crime imputed to him--the
desire of entering into possession of the old man's money. I gathered
the thought in each person's mind by the broken words which fell from
them. "Then _why_ did he do it?" I heard one of the curates whisper to
the other, and I knew that they thought and spoke of Hugh, believing
him to be guilty.

I waited for a few minutes after Mr. Smith had finished his pompous
delivery of this document, purporting to be the last will and
testament of the late Gilbert Thorneley, and then I rose from the
remote comer where I had placed myself and confronted the two lawyers.

"Gentlemen," I said, "I take leave to dispute that will which has just
been read."

A thunderbolt falling in the midst of us could not have had a more
astounding effect than those few words.

"Dispute the will!" shouted old Smith, purple in the face.

"Dispute the will!" echoed Walker.

"Dispute the will!" reverberated all round.

"God bless my soul, sir!" continued Smith, rising from his chair and
literally shaking with excitement, "what do you mean by that? Dispute
this will!" striking the open parchment with his closed hand; "upon
what grounds, Mr. Kavanagh--upon what grounds and by what authority
do you dare to dispute it, made by _us_, witnessed by _us_, and which
_we_ know to be the genuine and latest testament of our late client?
What do you mean by it?"

"I dispute that will on the ground of there existing another and a
later will of Mr. Thorneley; and I dispute it on the part of those in
whose favor it is made. Gentlemen, I have a statement to make, to the
truth of which I am prepared to affix my oath."

Involuntarily I glanced at Lister Wilmot. He was deadly pale; but he
returned my gaze very steadily, and I noticed the same evil light in
his eye as I had once before seen. Smith drew himself up and settled
his thick bull-throat in his white choker, whilst his junior partner
ran his hand through his hair, and seemed to prepare himself for
whatever was coming with a sort of "Do your worst--I don't care for
you" air.

"I hold in my hand," I continued, "a memorandum from my journal, and
dated October 23, 185--, last Tuesday, gentlemen; and I beg your
particular attention to the extract I am going to read to
you--'Received a note from Mr. Gilbert Thorneley, of 100 Wimpole
street, requesting me to call on him this evening. Went at seven
o'clock; made and executed _a will_ for the same, under solemn promise
not to reveal the transaction until after his funeral had taken place.
In case of my death, to leave a memorandum of the same addressed to
Mr. Hugh Atherton. Saw the will signed by Mr. Thorneley and witnessed
by his footman and coachman. Made memorandum of same for H. A., as
desired. Put it with private papers, addressed to H. A.' That will,
gentlemen, being of later date, will, if forthcoming, upset the will
just read, and which is dated two months back."

There was a profound silence for some moments, broken only by the two
servants. Barker the footman and Thomas the coachman, who both
murmured in low but distinct tones, "Right enough, sir; we did put our
names to that there dockiment."

{743}

"I don't quite understand your 'statement,' Mr. Kavanagh," said Smith
at last, with an air which plainly said, "And I consider myself
insulted by your making it."

"It is quite plain and straightforward, Mr. Smith, though, of course,
you are taken by surprise. Allow me to hand you this copy of the
memorandum I have read to you, and to which I have signed my name."

"But _where_ is that will, sir? Statements and memoranda go for
nothing, if you can't produce your proofs; and the will itself is the
only proof."

"Where it is," I replied, "is best known to Mr. Wilmot, or yourselves,
or to both. I never saw it after leaving Mr. Thorneley's study on the
evening of the 23d."

The two lawyers turned simultaneously to Wilmot.

"Did you know anything of this transaction, sir?" asked Walker.

"Only so far as came out at the inquest yesterday. Where is the will?
I ask. Let Mr. Kavanagh produce it."

There was a world of defiance in his glittering eyes as he rose and
faced me.

"Yes," he cried again, with a hard, ringing voice, "let Mr. John
Kavanagh produce it."

"Gently, Mr. Wilmot," said Walker in an insinuating voice. "Allow us
to deal with this matter; it is really only proper that we should."

"Only proper that we should," echoed old Smith in his peculiar nasal
twang.

But Lister Wilmot waved them both imperiously aside; and advancing a
step forward, he said with an evident effort to control himself:

"I don't see, Kavanagh, what you can gain by bringing forward this
absurd statement. Of course we all imagined that the mysterious
business upon which you saw my deceased uncle the last evening of his
life was in some way connected with making his will; and Mr. Smith,
Mr. Walker, and myself searched through his papers with the utmost
care, and with this idea in our minds; but no will, no codicil, no
letter, nor memorandum of later date than the one just read could
anywhere be found. Knowing what an eccentric character he was, we came
to the conclusion that, if any will posterior to this were made, he
had destroyed it immediately afterward.--Is this not so?" he turned to
the two lawyers.

"It is so," answered Walker, for self and partner. "We made the
minutest investigation, and were all three together when the seals
were removed which had been placed on everything by the police in
charge of the house. Nothing could have been tampered with."

I was fairly baffled, and stood considering what was the next best
thing to do, when an old gray-headed man stepped forward and said
that, if he might suggest, it would be satisfactory to hear in what
particulars the deed I had drawn up differed from the one just made
known.

"Yes," said Wilmot, with something like a sneer; "let us hear what
were the contents of this will which you say you drew up."

"Wilmot," I answered, "the one whom that will, to my mind, most
affected, for reasons which will presently be obvious to all who
listen to me now, was the only one who loved the old man in life whose
remains we have just followed to the grave--the only one who, I know,
mourns his death with all the sincerity of his true and noble heart.
In his presence I would never publicly have dragged forward a history
which is full of sin, of sorrow, of remorse. But he lies in a felon's
cell, charged, through a dark mysterious combination of events, and I
firmly believe a deeply-laid scheme to work his ruin, with a felon's
crime. In his interest therefore, first of all, I must speak. There is
also that of another concerned, who comes before most of those present
as a complete stranger; whether to _all_ I know not.--Gentlemen, I,
like you, believed until this day week that Gilbert Thorneley died
childless and a bachelor. {744} Five-and twenty years ago he married a
young and beautiful girl, an orphan, but possessed of an immense
fortune. He married her for her money. It was a joyless marriage,
without love, without happiness. One son was born to them, and shortly
after _the young wife died_. The boy grew up an idiot, hated, loathed
by his father, who sent him far away from his sight, and who for more
than fifteen years before he died never saw his child's face. Remorse
at last seems to have surged up in his heart, and he took a resolution
to make what reparation he could for his past neglect. This is all
which the deceased, Mr. Thorneley, confided to me in plain words; at
the rest I can only darkly guess; but that much more might have been
told which never passed his lips, that some terrible secret of the
past remains still unrevealed, I am bound to say I feel convinced from
the manner in which that little was revealed to me. Gentlemen, the
will which I executed last Tuesday evening, and saw witnessed by the
two servants now present, after bequeathing £10,000 a year to his
nephew, Hugh Atherton, left the whole and entire of Gilbert
Thorneley's property, landed, personal, and in the funds, to his idiot
son, Francis Gilbert Thorneley, now living; and constituted Hugh
Atherton as sole guardian of his cousin. With the exception of the
same small legacies to the domestics of his household, no other
bequest whatever was made; no other name mentioned. This will was
executed as a tardy reparation for some wrong done to his dead wife."

There was the sound of a dull, heavy fall, and a cry from one of the
women in the room. Mrs. Haag, the housekeeper, had fainted away.



CHAPTER VIII.

INSPECTOR KEENE SEES DAYLIGHT AT LAST.

"And pray, may I ask who was left executor in this wonderful will,
since that item seems to have been omitted from an otherwise
well-concocted story?" said Mr. Walker, as soon as the housekeeper had
been carried out of the room, and order restored.

"Mr. Atherton and myself were named executors."

"For which little business," he continued with unutterable irony, "you
were doubtless to receive some _small_ compensation?"

"You are mistaken," I replied quietly; "my name is not otherwise
mentioned than as being appointed to act with Hugh Atherton. No legacy
was left to me, and I did not even receive the usual fee for drawing
up the will. I mention this to remove any false impression which my
previous statement may have given."

"Most disinterested conduct on your part, I am sure, Mr. Kavanagh,"
was the reply in the same sarcastic tones. "It was, however, probably
understood that the securing £10,000 a year to your friend would not
pass unrewarded by him."

I was losing my temper under the man's repeated insults, and an angry
reply had risen to my lips, when Wilmot interposed. He had entirely
regained his usual self-possession, and more than his usual
confidence. Evidently, he had resolved to change his tactics, and
treat me civilly.

"We don't wish to dispute your word, Kavanagh, but you must own there
is some excuse for our unbelief. Here are all three of us--Smith,
Walker, and myself--ready to take oath that no other will save the
document just read was or is to be found amongst my late uncle's
papers; not so much as a hint of such a thing existing. And here are
you, without a shadow of proof in your hand, stating that a will,
posterior to this one lying here, was made by you on the evening
previous to my uncle's death. The natural inference drawn is, that
that will must now exist; we know it does not exist, or we must have
found it, unless my uncle _destroyed it_ immediately {745} after it
was made, namely, before he went to bed this day week. Do I put the
case clearly and fairly, gentlemen?" he continued, turning to the
assembled company.

The same old gentleman who had spoken before now again advanced. "I
have known Gilbert Thorneley," he said, "more than thirty years; but
that he was ever married, or had a child living, is as great news to
me as to any here present who had known him but as a recent
acquaintance. Still, if what Mr. Kavanagh says be true--and no offence
to him--that son of whom he speaks must be living now, and must be
found. You, Mr. Wilmot, have asked, as proof of this strange statement
being true, where is the will? I now ask likewise, as proof of its
genuineness, where is the _heir_? Where is the son of my old friend?
Where is Francis Gilbert Thorneley?"

I was fearfully staggered by the question. Never before had it
occurred to me that there would be a difficulty in finding the poor
idiot when the time came for him to enter upon his inheritance. No
doubt, no passing misgiving, had crossed my mind but that, along with
the will I had drawn up, papers would be left and found, giving
all-sufficient information of his whereabouts. For the first time the
thought flashed across me that perhaps, after all, I had not acted
wisely in maintaining the silence which had been exacted from me by
solemn promise. And that solemn promise! What had been old Thorneley's
motive in exacting it? Why should he wish such inevitable risks to be
run, as he, a shrewd man of the world, would know must be run, of that
final will being suppressed by the parties interested in the other one
lodged at his lawyers'? Of what, of whom, had he been afraid? Was the
secret and mystery of the will in any way connected with the secret
and mystery of the murder? As these questions crowded themselves upon
me during the brief moment which succeeded the last speaker's queries,
I looked round unconsciously on the eager, curious faces turned upon
us, the actors in this scene; and suddenly my eye lighted upon a
little man dressed in a dapper black suit, with a profusion of curly
brown hair, and long beard, standing behind a group near the door. His
eyes were fixed on mine--sharp, intelligent, piercing, black
eyes--with an expression in them which plainly bespoke a desire of
attracting my attention; eyes that were familiar to me, whilst the
rest of the man's face and appearance was that of a stranger. Then one
hand was lifted to his lips, and I saw him give a voracious bite at
his nails. In a moment light broke upon darkness, and I knew him in
spite of flowing wig and beard, in spite of funeral black and
well-fitting clothes, to be Inspector Keene. I suppose he saw a gleam
of intelligence pass over my countenance, for he began a series of
evolutions on his closely-cropped fingers, and I, luckily, could spell
the words: "Close this; see Merrivale." I seized the idea, and turning
to Wilmot and his lawyers, I said, "This matter is too serious to be
dealt with otherwise than in legal form and place. Mr. Merrivale or
myself will communicate with Messrs. Smith and Walker. There is
nothing further to be said at present;" and I left the room,
exchanging another glance with the inspector, who I knew would quickly
follow me.

Nor was I mistaken. I drove to Merrivale's, and whilst in full tide of
relating what had transpired in Wimpole street, the little man
arrived, still in mourning trim, but minus his wig and beard; and I am
bound to confess that, despite the seriousness of the moment, I was
almost overpowered by the ludicrous change which the doffing of those
appendages had wrought in him--he looked so like a broom that had had
its bristles cut short off.

"You are a clever fellow, Keene," said Merrivale; "how upon earth did
you contrive to pass muster amongst those city swells?"

{746}

The inspector bowed to the compliment, but seemed no way abashed. "I
showed the inside of your purse, Mr. Merrivale, There was no
difficulty in sight of _that_. Please go on, Mr. Kavanagh, and I'll
wait."

I concluded in as few words as possible, anxiously desiring to hear
what Keene had to say; and immediately that I had finished, Merrivale
turned toward him:

"What do you think of it all, in heaven's name?"

Mr. Inspector scraped his chin, and waited some moments before
replying, his bright keen eyes glancing alternately from one to
another of us. "If I were to tell you, sirs, all I _think_, you'd be
tired of hearing me, for I've been thinking as hard as my brains could
go for the last week past. If you'd have made a friend, Mr. Kavanagh,
of Mr. Merrivale or your humble servant in the matter you just now
revealed, it might have helped me not a trifle--not a trifle. However,
I believe you did it for the best; and after all I think we'll be even
with them yet. But it is as confoundedly black a business as it ever
fell to my lot to deal with; and I've had businesses, gentlemen, as
black as--well, as old Harry himself. You see there's three points to
follow up; and if we can tackle _one_ securely, why, I consider we
shall tackle all, for I believe they hang together. First," checking
it off on his thumb, "there's the murder; and the point there is to
find _who_ really bought that grain of strychnine which the chemist
has booked. It rests between master and man to reveal; and I incline
to the latter, and have my eye on him. Never tell me," said the
detective, warming with his subject, "that neither of them don't know;
I tell you one of them _does_ know, and my name's not Keene if I don't
have it out of them yet. That's one point, an't it, Mr. Merrivale?"
Merrivale assented. "Then the second," checking number two off on his
stumpy fore-finger, "includes four parties, and their connection with
each other; the man De Vos or Sullivan, the man O'Brian, Mr. Lister
Wilmot, and the housekeeper."

"The housekeeper, Mrs. Haag!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir; Mrs. _Haag_, if that's her name."

"You think it is not?"

"I _know_ it isn't."

"You know it?"

"I do. When Jones showed me his notes, and repeated to me what you and
he had heard in Blue-Anchor Lane last Thursday night, I _smelt_ a rat,
Mr. Kavanagh, and I followed my nose, sir. When I said I was on the
scent, I meant it. From that hour I wrote down in my note-book, 'Mrs.
Haag, _alias_ Bradley--Bradley, _alias_ O'Brian; her husband, escaped
convict from New South Wales.' For Jones identified that man by a
description in the hands of all of us in the force. To have taken him
there and then would simply have been madness, and insured your both
being murdered in that villainous hole. But to follow out the
connection between the housekeeper and him, him and Sullivan, Sullivan
and Mr. Wilmot, is another point, an't it, Mr. Merrivale?"

Again Merrivale assented, his usually impassible face now stirred with
the deepest, most anxious interest.

"Is 'Sullivan' De Vos's right name?" he asked.

"I believe it is, sir. He's thoroughly Irish; but O'Brian isn't,
though he's taken an Irish name. Sullivan's been known to the police
also in his time, and I fancy there's a little matter in the wind
which might introduce him again to us. They've both had their warning,
though, from some quarter, and are in safe hiding somewhere or other
as yet."

"Have you more to tell us about O'Brian?"

"Nothing more, sir, at present. There's some dark secret and mystery
hanging over him--a terrible story, I am afraid; but I can't speak for
certain just now.--Mr. Kavanagh," suddenly glancing up at me, "did you
never see a likeness to any one in Mr. Wilmot?"

{747}

"No, not that I know of. We have often said he was like none of his
relatives living, that was his uncle and cousin. Have you?"

"It's fancy, sir, no doubt. His mother died when he was very young,
didn't she? and his father?"

"Mrs. Wilmot died soon after his birth. His father I never heard of.
He was a _mauvais sujet_, I believe."

"Ah! The inspector drew a long breath and relapsed into one of his
silent moods, during which the process of scraping and gnawing was
resumed with avidity.

"And your third point?" said I, to arouse him.

"My third point, gentlemen," waking up lively, and dabbing at his
middle finger, "which, considering Mr. Atherton's position at the
present moment, seems to be the least important or pressing, is,
nevertheless, the one I am for pursuing immediately,--to find this
heir of whom mention has been made, Mr. Thorneley's idiot son."

"Surely there is no hurry about that!" we both exclaimed.

"It would appear not, gentlemen, perhaps to you, but there does to me.
Supposing," said the detective, leaning forward, and speaking very
much more earnestly than he had hitherto done--"supposing that the
will you made, Mr. Kavanagh, was stolen, then secreted or destroyed on
the night of Mr. Thorneley's death, that being what I might call the
_dead_ evidence of the truth of what you stated publicly to-day, and
supposing the parties who suppressed that will knew of the whereabouts
of the heir, they would, I conclude, be equally anxious to suppress
the _living_ evidence also--_to get him out of the way_. Do you follow
me, gentlemen?"

"Yes, yes," we both exclaimed, for we felt he had a purpose in
speaking; "you are right."

"Then, sirs, we must prosecute a search for this poor idiot fellow. I
see my way at present very dimly and darkly; but something tells me
that on our road to find Mr. Francis Gilbert Thorneley we shall find
also other links in the broken chain we are trying to piece together."

"How do you propose setting to work, Keene?" asked Merrivale.

"Mr. Atherton, being situated as he is, cannot act; it is therefore
for Mr. Kavanagh to take it upon himself, being named executor. I have
ascertained that Mr. Thorneley never went near his place in
Lincolnshire. Why? Because his son lived there. Do you follow me, Mr.
Kavanagh?"

"I do. You think I must visit the Grange immediately?"

"Yes, sir."

Light then at last seemed to be gleaming on our darkness; not only a
glimmer, but a full bright ray. There was consistency and connection
in all that the inspector had put before us, though only as yet, to a
great degree, in supposition. Merrivale, agreeing with me that he
would send us on no wild-goose chase, it was settled I should go down
by the five-o'clock express train.

In less than an hour I was standing at King's Cross Terminus, and five
minutes past five I was whirling away from London at the rate of
thirty miles an hour. At Peterborough we stopped for half-an-hour to
change carriages, and I went into the waiting-room to get some
refreshment. It was very full, for numbers of passengers were
travelling by that train to be present at some local races, and for
some minutes I could not approach the counter. At last I contrived to
edge in next to a rather tall man, very much enveloped in wraps,
wearing a travelling-cap and blue spectacles. I asked for a cup of
coffee and a sandwich. Every one knows the degree of heat to which
railway coffee is brought; and waiting awhile for the sake of my
throat before drinking it, I suddenly bethought myself of setting my
watch by the clock in the room. I put up my glass to look for it; it
{748} was at the opposite end, and I turned my back upon my tall
neighbor whilst altering the watch. When I turned round he was gone. I
finished my coffee and paid for it. Bah! how mawkish a taste it had
left in my mouth; what stuff they sell in England for real Mocha! So I
thought as I stepped out on the platform and walked up and down,
awaiting the train and reading in a sort of dreamy, unconscious manner
the  advertisements and placards covering the walls. Taylor Brothers,
Parkins and Gotto, Heal and Son, Mudie's Library, and all the rest, so
well known Ha! what is this? "MURDER: £100 Reward," for information
leading to the detection of the murderer of Mr. Gilbert Thorneley; and
beneath, another, "Reward of £50 offered for the apprehension of
Robert Bradley," _alias_ O'Brian, escaped convict, with a full
description of his personal appearance appended. "Inspector Keene's
work," thought I to myself. One solitary female figure stood before
me, reading the placard; a neat trim figure, clad in deep mourning
garments, motionless, mute, and absorbed as it were in the interest of
what she was perusing. What was it that made me start and shiver as my
eye fell upon that statue-like form? what was it that, amidst an
overpowering and unaccountable drowsiness creeping over me, seemed to
sting me into life and vigilance? The answer was plain before me:
staring at me with wildly-gleaming eyes, with a face startled out of
its habitual calmness and self-possession, with fear and rage and a
hundred passions at work in her countenance, was old Thorneley's
housekeeper. "Mrs. Haag!" I exclaimed; and almost as I spoke, a change
sudden and rapid as thought took place in her, and she regained the
cold passionless expression I had noticed that same afternoon.

"The same, Mr. Kavanagh;" and, inclining her head, she was passing on.

"Stay!" I said, catching her by the arm. "What are you doing here?
Where are you going?"

"By what right do you ask me, sir?" was the reply in very calm and
perfectly respectful tones.

"By what right!" I cried with headlong impetuosity. "By the best right
that any man could have--the right of asking, or saying, or doing
anything that may help me to detect the guilty and clear the innocent.
Woman, there is some deadly mystery hanging around yon, some guilty
secret in which you have played your part, and which, by the heavens
above us, I will unearth and bring to light! I will, I will!"

What was the matter with me? My brain was dizzy; the lights, the
station, the faces around me, the woman I was addressing, seemed to be
going round and round, and I became conscious that my speech was
getting incoherent.

"You have been drinking, Mr. Kavanagh," I heard a hard voice saying to
me, with a slight foreign accent. Then a bell rang, and I was hurried
forward by the crowd who were flocking on the platform; hurried on
toward a train that had come into the station whilst I had been
engaged with the housekeeper. I remember entering a carriage and
sinking down on a cushioned seat; then I lost all consciousness, until
I heard a voice shouting in my ear, "Your ticket, sir, please."

I started up.

"Where am I?"

"Lincoln; ticket--quick, sir."

I handed out my ticket.

"This is for Stixwould, four stations back on the line. Two extra
shillings to pay."

"Good heavens! I must have been asleep. How am I to get back?"

"Don't know, sir; no train tonight."

The money is paid, the door banged to, and we are shot into Lincoln
station at nine o'clock. There was no help for it now but to make my
way to the nearest hotel, and see what {749} means were to be had of
returning to Stixwould--the nearest station to the Grange, and that
was ten miles from it--or else pass the night here and take the
earliest train in the morning. I bade a porter take my bag, and show
me to some hotel; and I followed him, shivering in every limb, my head
aching as I had never felt it ache before--sick, giddy, and scarcely
able to draw one foot after another. Then I knew what had happened to
me; it flashed across me all in a moment. That man, disguised and in
spectacles, standing next to me at the refreshment-counter at
Peterborough, was De Vos, and he had dragged my coffee. I felt not a
doubt of it.

In ten minutes we stopped at the Queen's Hotel, and after engaging a
room, I despatched a porter for the nearest doctor. To him I confided
the object of my journey, what I believed had occurred to me, and the
necessity there was for my taking such prompt remedies as should
enable me to recover my full strength, energies, and wits for the
morrow. Following his advice, after swallowing his medicine, I
relinquished all notion of proceeding that night on my journey, and
went to bed. The next morning I awoke quite fresh and well; but what
precious hours had been lost! hours sufficient to ruin all hope of my
journey bearing any fruits, of finding even a shadowy clue to the
tangled web that seemed closing in around us. And Hugh Atherton lay in
prison and Ada, my poor sorrowful darling, was breaking her heart
beneath the load of misery which had come upon her. By eight o'clock I
had started for Stixwould, and in half an hour alighted at that small
station. I was the only passenger for that place, and I had to wait
whilst the train moved off for the solitary porter to take my ticket.
Just as the bell had rung, a man passed out from some door and went up
to one of the carriages. "Could you oblige me with a fusee, sir?" I
heard him say.

Some one leaned forward and handed out what was asked for; it was the
tall man in spectacles who had stood next to me at Peterborough
station. The train moved off just as I rushed forward, rushed almost
into the arms of the other man who had asked for the fusee. Wonders
would never cease! It was Inspector Keene.

"Thank God, it is you!"

"Yes, sir--myself. In a moment--I must telegraph up to town;" and he
ran into the office.

"Now, sir," he said when he came out, "what has happened to bring you
here this morning from Lincoln?"

I told him, and expressed my astonishment at seeing him.

"We heard last night that Mrs. _Haag_ had left London and taken her
ticket for this place. I took the night mail to look after the lady
and warn you, sir. Now we had best post off directly for the Grange.
I've already ordered a fly and a pair of horses. We'll bribe the man,
and be there in something less than an hour and a half.

"That man you spoke to in the train was De Vos," I said when we had
started.

"I know it, sir. He was sent to watch you, I suspect; and treat you to
that little dose in your coffee."

"And the housekeeper?"

"Oh! she, I imagine, is safe ahead there at the Grange. At any rate,
she has not returned up the line; every station has been watched, and
they would have telegraphed to me."

O the dreariness of that drive! Rain poured down from the leaden,
lowering sky and concentrated into a thick midst over the dismal
wolds. Patter, patter, slush, slush, as we drove along the wet miry
roads, the horses urged on to the utmost of their wretched,
broken-down speed; and the damp chill air penetrating the old rotten
vehicle and entering the very marrow of one's bones. So we arrived at
last before a low stone lodge that guarded some ponderous iron gates.
A gaunt ill-favored man came out at the sound of the wheels, and
stared at us in no friendly manner.

{750}

"Whar are ye from?" ho called out.

"From Mr. Wilmot," answered the inspector.

"Dunna b'lieve ye. Orders is for ne'run to go up to the house."

Keene opened the door of the fly and sprang out.

"Look here, my man," he said, producing his staff; "I'm a
police-officer from London, and I've come down here about the murder
of your master. Open the gate in the name of the law!"

The man stared, pulled the keys out of his pocket, unlocked the gates
and threw them open. The inspector jumped up beside the driver and
bade him go on.

A short avenue, lined on either side with magnificent trees, brought
us to the gate of extensive but ill-kept pleasure-grounds, and so to
the stone portico of the Grange. A peal of the bell brought an old
woman to the door, who peered out suspiciously, and demanded what we
wanted.

"I am a detective-officer from London, and have a warrant for
searching this house;" and Keene putting the old hag aside, we passed
into the hall.

"Ye mun show me yer warrant or I'll have ye put out agin in
double-quick time," she said, scowling at the inspector. For reply the
staff of office was again out of his pocket in a twinkling, and
flourished before her eyes.

"You take yourself off and show us over the house instantly, or it
will be the worse for you."

The woman cowered, and muttering to herself, led the way across the
spacious hall, and threw open a door on the left. The house apparently
was a low rambling building of ancient date, with panelled walls and
high casement-windows. We traversed several rooms, bare in furniture
and that struck one with a sense of utter cheerlessness and want of
comfort. This, then, was the desolate isolated house which Gilbert
Thorneley had owned and yet shunned so carefully during life; this was
the place where his idiot boy had probably dragged on the greater
number of his miserable years. But I need not dwell upon our search
through the house.

High and low Inspector Keene ranged; looking into cupboards and dark
closets, sounding the panelled walls and poking at imaginary
trapdoors. With the exception of the old crone, who accompanied us,
and a great tabby cat lying before the kitchen-fire, no trace of
living soul was visible.

"Where's young Mr. Thorneley?" said the inspector to her when our
visitation was made.

"Never heard on him."

"Who lives here?"

"Only myself."

"Where's the lady who came here yesterday evening?"

A curious gleam shot from the old woman's eyes.

"Dunno; no lady here."

"I shall take you into custody, if you won't tell."

"Then you mun do it--I'se nothing to say."

Keene turned to me.

"Our visit has been useless, sir. I used the threat, but I can't take
the woman on no charge; there is nothing left but to--"

Hark! what sound was that which rang out upon our ears, which made our
hair stand on end, and our hearts stand still! Shriek upon shriek of
the most horrible, wild, unearthly laughter pealing from somewhere
overhead. The old woman made a dash forward to the staircase, and
called some name that was drowned in the echoes of that terrible
mirth. But in a second we had bounded past her and up the flight of
stairs, and there, at the far end of the corridor, gesticulating and
jabbering at us as we approached him with all the fearful, revolting
madness of idiocy, was the man in whose features was stamped the
perfect likeness of old Gilbert Thorneley.

{751}

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRIAL.

Inspector Keene's third point had been followed up and worked out:
Francis Gilbert Thorneley, the lost heir was found; and the living
evidence in favor of the will I had made was in our actual possession.
That it should be so seemed a merciful interposition of Providence;
for we had little doubt but that it had been intended I should, under
the influence of the stupefying drug administered by Do Vos, be
delayed on my journey, and so give time for him or the housekeeper, or
both, to visit the Grange and effect whatever purpose they had in
view. What had defeated them, or caused their failure, remained as yet
a mystery. Equally mysterious was the way in which both the
conspirators had managed to elude the vigilance of the police; and
bitter seemed the Inspector's disappointment when, on arriving in
London, he found no intelligence awaiting him of either man or woman.
We brought up the poor idiot with us; and I took him to my own
chambers, engaging a proper attendant to take charge of him,
recommended by the physician whom I called in to examine him. He
seemed to be perfectly harmless, and tractable as a child, but totally
bereft of sense or reason, amusing himself with toys, picture-books,
and other infantile diversions, by the hour. We tried to get some
coherent account of himself from him, but to no purpose; he knew his
name and the name of the old man and woman who had been his sole
guardians and companions, apparently for years. But beyond that, no
information could be elicited; and to all questions he would reply
with some sort of childish babble or jabber. This was the heir to old
Thorneley's immense wealth.

There now remained the two other points marked by the Inspector to
follow up. Oh! how time was fast rushing on!--time that was so
precious for life or death--and so little done as yet toward clearing
away all that mountain of condemning evidence which would infallibly,
in the eyes of any English jury, bring sentence of death upon the
suspected murderer. The question forever rang in my ears, "_Who_
bought that grain of strychnine on the 23d of October?" Upon the
discovery and identification of that person both Merrivale and myself,
as also the counsel whom he had engaged for the defence, felt
everything would hang. But up to the present moment, except in our own
minds, not the shadow of a clue could be found. The 16th November, the
day appointed for the trial of Hugh Atherton, approached with terrible
nearness; and our confidence in all but God's mercy and justice was
ebbing fast away. After finding and bringing the lost heir to London,
I wrote to Atherton by Merrivale, detailing all that old Thorneley had
confided to me, the contents of the will, and my journey into
Lincolnshire. I wrote, entreating him to see me; to let no cloud come
between us, who had been such close friends from boyhood, at such a
moment; to turn a deaf ear to all influence that might suggest that I
was acting otherwise than I had always done toward him. I wrote all
the bitter sorrow of my heart at having been forced involuntarily to
give evidence that might be turned against him; all the self-reproach
I felt for not having yielded to his wish of returning home with me
that terrible evening.

He answered me in cold distant words, that _under the circumstances_
it was best we should not meet; that Merrivale would act for him in
all as he judged best; that he did not wish to be disturbed again
before his trial. I showed the letter to Merrivale, and he told me he
could not make it out, for that Hugh was quite unreserved with him on
all points save this, and {752} to every suggestion he had made to him
of seeing me, he had invariably given the same reply, and declined to
enter upon the subject. Then I had recourse to Ada Leslie; but she
only obtained the same result.

"I told him, guardian," she said, "how true you were to him, how
earnest and indefatigable in doing all you could for him, how sure I
was that you loved him better than any thing on earth. But all the
answer I got was, 'No, Ada; not better than anything. Don't let us say
anything more on the subject.' What can he mean? for I am sure he
meant something particular."

Was it hard to look in her face, meet her clear trusting eyes, and
answer back, "_You_ were right, Ada; he is laboring under some
delusion?" Were they false words I spoke, my own heart giving them the
lie? Thank God, no. I was true to her, true to him.

The time between my journey into Lincolnshire and the day of the trial
seems, on looking back, to be one dead blank, inasmuch as, do what we
would, we were no nearer the solution of the mystery after those three
weeks of research and watchfulness than we were on the morning
succeeding the murder. There were the prolonged conferences of lawyers
with counsel, of counsel with prisoner, of both with the detectives;
and day by day I saw Merrivale's face growing more careworn, stern,
and anxious; I saw both Inspector Keene's and Jones's baffled looks;
and--worse, far worse than all--I saw Ada Leslie wasting away before
me, withering beneath the blighting sorrow that had fallen upon her
young life. Oh! the terrible anguish written upon that wan, worn face
that would be lifted up to mine each time I saw her, the unspeakably
painful eagerness of her tones as she would ask, "is there any news?"
and the touching calmness of her despairing look succeeding the answer
which blasted the hopes that kept cruelly rising in her breast only to
be crushed!

So the morning of the 16th of November dawned upon us. For the defence
Merrivale had engaged two of the most acute lawyers and most eloquent
pleaders then practising at the English bar, Sergeant Donaldson and
Mr. Forster, Q.C. They were both personal friends of Hugh Atherton,
both equally convinced of his innocence. On the part of the Crown the
Solicitor-General, Sergeant Butler, and a Mr. Frost were retained--all
eminent men. The judges sitting were the Lord Chief-Justice and Baron
Watson. Although we arrived very early, the Court was crowded to
suffocation; and it was only by help of the police-officers and
authorities that we could find entrance, although engaged in the
principal case coming on. Special reporters of the press, for London
and the country, were eagerly clamoring for seats in the reporters'
bench; and even foreign journals had sent over their "own
correspondents," such a general stir and sensation had the murder of
Gilbert Thorneley made far and near.

Two or three trivial cases of embezzlement and stealing came first
before the Common Sergeant, whilst preparations for the one great
trial were made, the witnesses collected, and the counsel on either
side holding their final conferences. At a quarter to eleven the
Chief-Justice, followed by his brother judge, entered amidst profound
silence and took his seat. They were both men who had grown old and
gray in the administration of justice, who had for years sat in
judgment upon the guilty and the not guilty--men whose ears were
familiar with the details of almost every misery and crime known to
human nature--men who had had their own griefs and trials; and on the
venerable face of the superior judge many a deep furrow had been left
to tell its tale, whether engraven by private sorrow, or sympathy for
the mass of woe and suffering which passed so constantly before his
eyes. I had the honor of being personally acquainted {753} with his
lordship. How well I remembered an evening, not so long ago, spent at
his house with Hugh Atherton; when he, that eminent judge, that
distinguished lawyer, had come up to me and talked of Hugh, of his
talents, his eloquence, his growing reputation! I remembered the sad,
wistful expression of his eye as it dwelt upon my friend, and the tone
of his voice, as he said with a deep sigh, "If my boy had lived, I
could have wished him to have been such a one as _he_." He remembered
it also, if I might judge from the sorrowful gravity of his
countenance. I was standing beside Merrivale beneath the prisoner's
dock, facing the judge's chair; and in a few moments there was a
rustle and stir throughout the court, and I saw the Chief-Justice pass
his hand before his eyes for a brief second. Then was heard the loud
harsh voice of the clerk of the court addressing some one before him:

  "Philip Hugh Atherton, you stand there charged with the wilful
  murder of your uncle, Mr. Gilbert Thorneley. How say you, prisoner
  at the bar--are you guilty or not guilty?"

A voice, low, deep-toned, and thrilling in its distinctness, replied:
"Not guilty, my lord; not guilty, so help me, O my God!" and turning
round, once again my eyes met those of Hugh Atherton.

A great change had been wrought in him during the last three weeks, he
had grown so thin and worn; and amongst the waving masses of his dark
hair I could trace many and many a silver thread. Twenty years could
not have aged him more than these twenty days passed in that felon's
cell, beneath the imputation of that savage crime. Who could look at
him and think him guilty; who could gaze upon his open, manly face, so
noble in its expression of mingled firmness and gentleness, in its
guileless innocence and conscious rectitude of purpose, and say, "That
man has committed murder"? My heart went out to him, as I looked on
his familiar face once more, with all the love and honor with which I
had ever cherished his friendship.

A special jury were then sworn in. All passed unchallenged; and the
Solicitor-General rose to open the case for the prosecution, and began
by requesting that all the witnesses might be ordered to leave the
court. It is needless to say that I had been subpoenaed by the crown
to repeat the wretched evidence already given at the inquest; needless
also to say that, not being personally present during the whole trial,
I have drawn from the same sources as before for an account of it.

We had been given to understand that no other witnesses than those
examined before the coroner would be called against the prisoner; why
should they want more? They had enough evidence to bring down
condemnation twice over. On the part of the defence I have before said
up to that morning nothing fresh had been discovered that could in any
way be used as a direct refutation of what had already been adduced,
and would be brought forward again on this day.

After the examination of the medical men I was called into the
witness-box, and examined by the Solicitor-General. To my former
evidence I now added an account of what had passed between myself and
the murdered man on the evening of the 23d, the contents of the will,
my journey to the Grange, and the discovery of Thorneley's idiot son.
I likewise gave an account of my visit with Jones to Blue-Anchor lane.
I noticed that this was ill-received by the Crown counsel; but the
judges overruled the Solicitor-General's attempt to squash my
statements, and insisted upon my having a full hearing. At the end
Sergeant Donaldson rose to cross-question me.

"Did Mr. Thorneley mention in whose favor his previous will had been
made?"

"He did not. Simply that he intended the will drawn up then to cancel
all others."

{754}

"Can you remember the words in which he alluded to his wife and son?"

"Perfectly; I wrote them in the memorandum addressed to Mr. Atherton,
and which Mr. Merrivale has communicated to you."

The Chief-Justice: "Read the extract, brother Donaldson."

Sergeant Donaldson read as follows: "'Five-and-twenty years ago I
married one much younger than myself, an orphan living with an aunt,
her only relative, and who died shortly after our marriage. My ruling
passion was speculation; and I married her, not for love, but for her
fortune, which was large; I coveted it for the indulgence of my
passion. She was not happy with me, and I took no pains to make her
happier. Few knew of our marriage. I kept her at the Grange till she
died. Only _I_ and _one other person_ were with her at her death. She
gave birth to one child, a boy. Ho grew up an idiot, and I hated him.
But I wish to make reparation to my dead wife in the person of her
son--not out of love to her memory, but to _defeat the plans of
others, and in expiation of me wrong done to her_. I have never loved
any one in my life but my twin-sister, Hugh Atherton's mother: and him
for her sake and his own.' And then, my lord, follow the instructions
for the will given to Mr. Kavanagh." To the witness: "Did Mr.
Thorneley give you any clue to the '_other person_' who was with him
at his wife's death?"

"None at all."

"When you met the prisoner in Vere street, did he say he was going to
visit his uncle then?"

"No; on the contrary, he seemed anxious to come home with me. I should
imagine it was an after-thought."

"Mr. Wilmot has stated that you _volunteered_ to give evidence against
the prisoner: is it so?"

"No; it is most false. I was surprised by detective Jones into an
admission; and when I found that it would be used against Mr.
Atherton, I did all in my power to get off attending the inquest."

Reëxamined by the Solicitor-General: "It was against your consent that
the prisoner was engaged to your ward Miss Leslie, was it not?"

"Against my consent! Assuredly not. She bad my consent from the
beginning."

"You may go, Mr. Kavanagh."

The witness who succeeded me was the housekeeper. It was observed that
she did not maintain the same calmness as at the inquest; but her
evidence was perfectly consistent, given perhaps with more eagerness,
but differing and varying in no essential point from her previous
depositions.

Questioned as to whether she had been aware of Mr. Thorneley's
marriage, replied she had not, having always been in charge of his
house in town, first in the city and afterward in Wimpole street. He
had often been from home for many weeks together, but she never knew
where he went.

Cross-examined.--Could swear she had poured no ale out in the tumbler
before taking it into the study--Barker had been with her all the
time--nor yet in the room.

Sergeant Donaldson: "Now, Mrs. Haag, attend to me. How long have you
been a widow?"

"Fifteen years."

"What was your husband?"

"A commercial traveller. He was not successful, and I went into
service soon after I married."

"Had you any children?"

"One son. He died."

"When?"

"Years ago."

"How many years ago?"

"Twenty years ago."

"Is Haag your married name?"

"Yes."

"Did you bear the name of Bradley?"

"I never bore such a name. I am a Belgian; so was my husband."

{755}

A paper was here passed in to Sergeant Donaldson, and handed by him to
the judges.

The Chief-Justice: "This is a certificate of marriage celebrated at
Plymouth between Maria Haag, spinster, and Robert Bradley, bachelor,
dated June, 1829, and witnessed in proper legal form."

Witness: "I know nothing of it. My name is Haag by marriage. I am very
faint; let me go away."

A chair and glass of water were brought to the witness. In a few
moments she had recovered and the cross-examination was renewed.

"How came it that you were met in the middle of Vere street, when, by
your own showing, you must then have turned out of the street before
Mr. Kavanagh could have overtaken you?"

"Mr. Kavanagh did not meet me. I have so said before. I went straight
home after passing him and Mr. Atherton at the chemist's shop. He is
mistaken."

"What took you to Peterborough on the 30th of last month?"

"I went to visit a friend at Spalding."

"How was it, then, that you returned to London by the twelve o'clock
train the following day--I mean arrived in London at that hour?"

Witness hesitated for some time, and at last looked up defiantly.

"What right have you to ask me such a question?"

Baron Watson: "You are bound to answer, Mrs. Haag."

Witness confusedly: "I did not find my friend at home."

Sergeant Donaldson: "Do you mean to say you took that journey with the
chance of finding your friend away?"

"I did."

To the Chief-Justice: "My lord, I am informed by Inspector Keene, of
the detective service, that Mrs. Haag never visited Spalding at all;
that she took a ticket for Stixwould, at which station she got out,
and from which station she returned the following day."

Baron Watson: "I don't see what you are trying to prove, brother
Donaldson."

"I am trying to prove, my lord, that Mrs. Haag is not a witness upon
whose veracity we can rely."

The Chief-Justice: "You must be well aware, Mrs. Haag, that the
mystery of this second will, and discovery of your late master's son,
bear direct influence upon the charge of which the prisoner is
accused. I think it highly necessary that you should be able to give a
clear account of that journey of yours on the 30th of last month. For
your own sake, do you understand?"

Witness violently: "Of what do you suspect me? I have related the
truth."

Sergeant Donaldson: "Excuse me, my lord, I shall call two witnesses
presently who will throw some light upon this person's movements. I
have no further questions to put to her now."

Barker the footman and the other servants were next examined, and
deposed as before, with no additions nor variations.

Mr. Forster in cross-examination drew from the cook a yet more
confident declaration that she had heard footsteps on the front-stairs
leading from the third to the second floor on the night of the murder.
Also that the housekeeper had "gone on awful at her for saying so; but
she had stuck to her word and told Mrs. 'Aag as she wasn't a-going to
be badgered nor bullied out of her convictions for any 'ousekeeper;
and that afterwards Mrs. 'Aag had come to her quite soft and civil,
your lordships, and said, 'Here's a suverin, cook, not to mention what
you heerd; for if you says a word about them steps, why,' says she,
'you'll just go and put it into them lawyers' 'eads as some of us did
it,' says she. But a oath's a oath, my lordships; and a being close
and confined is what I could never abide or abear; and that's every
bit the truth, and here's her suverin back again, which I never
touched nor broke into."

{756}

Baron Watson: "On your oath, then, you declare you heard a footstep on
the front-stairs during the night of the 23d but you don't know at
what hour?"

"As certain sure, my lord, as that you are a sittin' on your cheer."

After eliciting a few more confirmatory details, the witness was
dismissed and Mr. Wilmot called. Nothing further was got out of him
than what he had stated before the coroner. Either he was most
thoroughly on his guard, or he really was, as he professed to be,
ignorant of his cousin Thorneley's existence up to the day of the
funeral; ignorant of the contents of his uncle's will, until it was
opened at Smith and Walker's; totally unacquainted with the man
Sullivan or De Vos; innocent of having written the note seized upon
the boy in Blue-Anchor Lane by detective Jones, all knowledge of or
complicity with which he absolutely and solemnly denied.

Questioned as to his motive for saying that Miss Leslie had been
refused the consent of her guardian, Mr. Kavanagh, to her marriage,
replied he had been distinctly told so by Mrs. Leslie, who had
mentioned also that Mr. Kavanagh was attached to Miss Leslie himself,
and had tried to make her break off the engagement.

Inspector Jackson and Thomas Davis, the chemist, next gave evidence.
The latter was cross-questioned by Sergeant Donaldson. Could not swear
he did not leave the shop on the evening of the 23d between the time
when he had sold the camphor and nine o'clock, his supper-hour; had
tried hard to recollect since attending at the inquest, and had spoken
to his wife and his assistant. The former thought he had; that she had
heard him go into the back-parlor whilst she was down in the kitchen;
the latter had said he had not left the shop until nine o'clock. Could
swear he had sold no strychnine himself that day. The entry was,
however, in his own handwriting. He had talked over the matter
repeatedly with James Ball, his assistant, but had gathered no light
on the subject. The latter had been in a very odd state of mind since
then. The murder seemed to have taken great effect upon him. He had
become very nervous, forgetful, and absent; and he (Davis) had been
obliged to admonish him several times of late, that if he went on so
badly he must seek another situation.

James Ball replaced his master in the witness-box. He looked very
haggard and excited, and answered the questions put to him, in an
incoherent, unsatisfactory manner, very different from his conduct at
the inquest. Admonished by the Chief-justice that he was upon his oath
and giving evidence in a matter of life and death, had cried out
passionately that he wished he had been dead before that wretched
evening.--Ordered to explain what he meant, became confused, and said
he had felt ill ever since the inquest.

Cross-questioned by Mr. Forester: "Does your master keep an
errand-boy?"

"Yes."

"Was he in the shop on the evening of the 23d?"

"I don't remember."

"Oh! you don't remember! Do you remember receiving a letter on the
afternoon of the 24th containing a Bank-of-England £10 note?"

"I did not receive any letter."

"But you received what is called an 'enclosure' of a £10 note, did you
not?"

No answer.

"Did you hear my question, sir? Did you or did you not receive it?--on
your oath, remember!"

No answer.

The Chief-Justice: "You must answer that gentleman, James Ball."

Still no answer.

The Chief-Justice: "Once more I repeat my learned brother's question.
Did you or did you not receive that £10 note on the 24th of October
last? If you do not answer, I shall commit you for contempt of court."

{757}

Witness, defiantly: "Well, if I did, what's that to any one here? I
suppose I can receive money from my own mother."

Mr. Forster: "You know very well that it did not come from your
mother, but that it was _hush-money_ sent you by the person to whom
you sold the grain of strychnine on the evening of the 23d." The
Chief-Justice: "Is this so? Speak the truth, or it will be the worse
for you."

Witness (in a very low voice): "It is."

Mr. Forster: "Who was the person?"

"I don't know--indeed I don't; but
it wasn't _he_," (pointing to the prisoner.)

"Was it a man or a woman?"

"A woman."

"Was it the housekeeper?"

"I don't know."

The Chief-Justice: "Let Mrs. Haag be summoned into court."

The housekeeper was brought in and confronted with the witness. She
was unveiled, and she looked Ball steadily in the face, the dangerous
dark light in her eyes.

The Chief-Justice: "Is that the person?"

"No; I can't identify her." (The witness spoke with more firmness and
assurance than he had done.)

Mr. Forster, to Mrs. Haag: "Is this your handwriting?" (A letter is
passed to her.)

"No; it is not"

"On your oath?"

"On my oath."

"You can leave the court, Mrs. Haag."

"Now, witness, relate what took place about that strychnine."

"A lady came into the shop that evening, just before that gentleman
came in for the camphor, and asked for a grain of strychnine. I
refused to sell it. She said, 'It's for my husband; he's a doctor, and
wants to try the effect on a dog.' I said, 'Who is he?' She said,
'He's Mr. Grainger, round the corner, at the top of  Vere Street.' I
knew Mr. Grainger lived there--a doctor. I thought it was all right,
and gave her one grain of strychnine. I said, 'I shall run round
presently and see if it's all right' She said, 'Very well; come now if
you like.' I made sure now more than ever that it was all right. She
paid me and left the shop. I told my master of selling it, along with
a lot of other medicines. In the morning I heard that Mr. Thorneley
had been poisoned by strychnine, and in the afternoon I received by
post a ten-pound note and that letter."--(Letter read by Mr. Forster:
"Say nothing, and identify no one. You shall receive this amount every
month.")--"I guessed then it was from the person who had bought the
strychnine, and that they had murdered old Thorneley. I am very poor,
and my family needed the money. That is all."

Mr. Forster: "I have nothing further to ask."

The Chief-Justice: "Remove the witness, and let him be detained in
custody for the present."

The Solicitor-General: "This, my lord, closes the evidence for the
prosecution."

Sergeant Donaldson then rose to address the jury for the defence.



TO BE CONTINUED.

------

{758}


[ORIGINAL.]



PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.


VI.


THE TRINITY OF PERSONS INCLUDED IN THE ONE DIVINE ESSENCE.

The full explication of the First Article of the Creed requires us to
anticipate two others, which are its complement and supply the two
terms expressing distinctly the relations of the Second and Third
Persons to the First Person or the Father, in the Trinity. "Credo in
Unum Deum Patrem," gives us the doctrine of the Divine Unity, and the
first term of the Trinity, viz., the person of the Father. "Et in Unum
Dominum Jesum Christum Filium Dei Unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante
omnia saecula; Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine; Deum Verum de Deo Vero;
Genitum non Factum, consubstantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta
sunt:" gives us the second term or the person of the Son. "Et in
Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et Vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque
procedit, quicum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificacur:"
gives us the third term or the person of the Holy Spirit. Both these
are necessary to the explanation of the term "Patrem." The proper
order is, therefore, to begin with the eternal, necessary relations of
the Three Persons to each other in the unity of the Divine Essence,
and then to proceed with the operations of each of the Three Persons
in the creation and consummation of the Universe.

Our purpose is not to make a directly theological explanation of all
that is contained in this mystery, but only of so much of it as
relates to its credibility, and its position in regard to the sphere
of intelligible truth. With this mystery begins that which is properly
the objective matter of revelation, or the series of truths belonging
to a super-intelligible order, that is, above the reach of our natural
intelligence, proposed to our belief on the veracity of God. It is
usually considered the most abstruse, mysterious, and incomprehensible
of all the Christian dogmas, even by believers; though we may perhaps
find that the dogma of the Incarnation is really farther removed than
it from the grasp of our understanding. Be that as it may, the fact
that it relates to the very first principle and the primary truth of
all religion, and appears to confuse our apprehension of it, namely,
the Unity of God--causes us to reflect more distinctly upon its
incomprehensibility. Many persons, both nominal Christians and avowed
unbelievers, declare openly, that in their view it is an absurdity so
manifestly contrary to reason that it is absolutely unthinkable, and,
of course, utterly incredible. How then is the relation between this
mystery and the self-evident or demonstrable truths of reason adjusted
in the act of faith elicited by the believer? What answer can be made
to the rational objections of the unbeliever? If the doctrine be
really unthinkable, it is just as really incredible, and there can be
no act of faith terminated upon it as a revealed object. Of course,
then, no inquiry could be made as to its relation with our knowledge,
for that which is absurd and incapable of being intellectually
conceived and apprehended cannot have any relation to knowledge. It is
impossible for the human mind to believe at one and the same time that
a proposition is {759} directly contrary to reason, and also revealed
by God. No amount of extrinsic evidence will ever convince it. Human
reason cannot say beforehand what the truths of revelation are or
ought to be; but it can say in certain respects what they cannot be.
They cannot be contradictory to known truths and first principles of
reason and knowledge. Therefore, when they are presented in such a way
to the mind, or are by it apprehended in such a way, as to involve a
contradiction to these first truths and principles, they cannot be
received until they are differently presented or apprehended, so that
this apparent contradiction is removed. This is so constantly and
clearly asserted by the ablest Catholic writers, men above all
suspicion for soundness in the faith, that we will not waste time in
proving it to be sound Catholic doctrine.  [Footnote 183] Of course
all rationalists, and most Protestants, hold it as an axiom already.
If there are some Protestants who hold the contrary, they are beyond
the reach of argument.

  [Footnote 183: See among others, Archbishop Manning on the Temporal
  Mission of the Holy Ghost.]

The Catholic believer in the Trinity apprehends the dogma in such a
way that it presents no contradiction to his intellect between itself
and the first principles of reason or the primary doctrine of the
unity of the divine nature. God, who is the Creator and the Light of
reason, as well as the author of revelation, is bound by his own
attributes of truth and justice, when he proposes a doctrine as
obligatory on faith, to propose it in such a way that the mind is able
to apprehend and accept it in a reasonable manner. This is done by the
instruction given by the Catholic Church, with which the supernatural
illumination of the Holy Spirit concurs. The Catholic believer is
therefore free from those crude misapprehensions and misconceptions
which create the difficulty in the unbelieving mind. He apprehends in
some degree, although it may be implicitly and confusedly, the real
sense and meaning of the mystery, as it is apprehensible by analogy
with truths of the natural order. What it is he apprehends, and what
are the analogies by which it can be made intelligible, will be
explained more fully hereafter. It is enough here to note the fact.
This apprehension makes the mystery to him thinkable, or capable of
being thought. That is, it causes the proposition of the mystery in
certain definite terms to convey a meaning to his mind, and not to be
a mere collocation of words without any sense to him. It makes him
apprehend what he is required to assent to, and puts before him an
object of thought upon which an intellectual act can be elicited. It
presents no contradiction to reason, and therefore there is no
obstacle to his giving the full assent of faith on the authority of
God.

It is otherwise with one who has been brought up in Judaism,
Unitarianism, or mere Rationalism; or whose merely traditional and
imperfect apprehension of Christian dogmas has been so mixed up with
heretical perversions that his mature reason has rejected it as
absurd. There is an impediment in the way of his receiving the mystery
of the Trinity as proposed by the Catholic Church, and believing it
possible that God can have revealed it. He may conceive of the
doctrine of the Trinity as affirming that an object can be one and
three in the same identical sense, which destroys all mathematical
truth. Or he may conceive of it, as dividing the divine substance into
three parts, forming a unity of composition and not a unity of
simplicity. Or he may conceive of it as multiplying the divine
essence, or making three co-ordinate deities, who concur and
co-operate with each other by mutual agreement. These conceptions are
equally absurd with the first, although it requires more thought to
discern their absurdity. It is necessary then to remove the apparent
absurdity of the doctrine, before any evidence of its being a {760}
revealed truth is admissible. The first misconception is so extremely
crude, that it is easily removed by the simple explanation that unity
and trinity are predicated of God in distinct and not identical
senses. The second, which is hardly less crude is disposed of by
pointing out the explicit statements in which the simplicity and
indivisibility of the divine substance in all of the Three Persons is
invariably affirmed. The third is the only real difficulty, the only
one which can remain long in an educated and instructed mind. The
objection urged on theological or philosophical grounds by really
learned men against the dogma of the Trinity, is, that it implies
Tritheism. The simplest and most ordinary method of removing this
objection, is by presenting the explicit and positive affirmation of
the church that there is but one eternal principle of self-existent,
necessary being, one first cause, one infinite substance possessing
all perfections. This is sufficient to show that the church denies and
condemns Tritheism, and affirms the strict unity of God. But, the
Unitarian replies, you hold a doctrine incompatible with this
affirmation, viz., that there are three Divine Persons, really
distinct and equal. This is met by putting forward the terms in which
the church affirms that it is the one, eternal, and infinite essence
of God which is in each of the Three Persons. The Unitarian is then
obliged to demonstrate that this distinction of persons in the Godhead
is unthinkable, and that unity of nature cannot be thought in
connection with triplicity of person. This he cannot do. The relation
of personality to nature is too abstruse, especially when we are
reasoning about the infinite, which transcends all the analogies of
our finite self-consciousness, to admit of a demonstration proving
absolutely that unity of nature supposes unity of person, and _vice
versa_, as its necessary correlative. The church affirms the unity of
substance in the Godhead in the clearest manner, sweeping away all
ground for gross misconceptions of a divided or multiplied deity; but
affirms also trinity in the mode of subsistence, or the distinction of
Three Persons, in each one of whom the same divine substance subsists
completely. This affirmation is above the comprehension of reason, but
not contrary to reason. Even Unitarians, in some instances, find no
difficulty in accepting the statement of the doctrine of the trinity
made by our great theologians, when it is distinctly presented to
them; and in the beautiful Liturgical Book used in some Unitarian
congregations, the orthodox doxology, "Glory be to the Father, and to
the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," has been restored.

The absurd misconception of what the church means by the word Trinity
being once removed, the evidence that her doctrine is revealed, or
that God affirms to us the eternal, necessary distinction of three
subsistences in his infinite being, becomes intelligible and credible.
Reason cannot affirm the intrinsic incompatibility of the proposition,
God reveals himself as subsisting in three persons, with the
proposition, there is one God; and therefore cannot reject conclusive
evidence that he does so reveal himself through the Catholic Church.
For aught reason can say, he may have so revealed himself. If
satisfactory evidence is presented that he has done so, reason is
obliged, in consistency with its principles, to examine and judge of
the evidence, and assent to the conclusion that the Trinity is a
revealed truth. This is enough for all practical purposes, and as much
as the majority of persons are capable of. But is this the _ultimatum_
of reason? Is it not possible to go further in showing the conformity
of the revealed truth with rational truths? Several eminent
theologians have endeavored to take this further step, and to
construct a metaphysical argument for the doctrine of the Trinity.
Some of the great contemplatives of the church, who are really the
most profound and sublime of her {761} theologians and philosophers,
have also through divine illumination appeared to gain an insight into
the depths of this mystery. For instance, St. Ignatius and St. Francis
de Sales both affirm that the truth and the mutual harmony of all the
divine mysteries were made evident to their intelligence in
contemplation. In modern times, Bossuet, Lacordaire, and Dr. Brownson
have reasoned profoundly on the rational evidence of the Trinity, and
a Roman priest, the Abbate Mastrofini, has published a work entitled
"Metaphysica Sublimior," in which he proposes as his thesis, Given
divine revelation, to prove the truth of all its dogmas by reason. The
learned and excellent German priest Günther attempted the same thing,
but went too far, and fell into certain errors which were censured by
the Roman tribunals, and which he himself retracted. It is necessary
to tread cautiously and reverently, like Moses, for we are on holy
ground, and near the burning bush. We will endeavor to do so, and,
taking for our guide the decisions of the Church and the judgment of
her greatest and wisest men, to do our best to state briefly what has
been attempted in the way of eliciting an eminent act of reason on
this great mystery, without trenching on the domain of faith.

First, then, it is certain that reason cannot discover the Trinity of
itself. It must be first proposed to it by revelation, before it can
apprehend its terms or gain anything to reason upon. Secondly, when
proposed, its intrinsic necessity or reason cannot be directly or
immediately apprehended. If it can be apprehended at all, it must be
mediately, or through analogies existing in the created universe. Are
there such analogies, that is, are there any reflections or
representations of this divine truth in the physical or intellectual
world from which reason can construct a theorem parallel in its own
order with this divine theorem? Creation is a copy of the divine idea.
It represents God as a mirror. Does it represent him, that is, so far
as the human intellect is capable of reading it, not merely as he is
one in essence, but also as he is three in persons? Assuming the
Trinity as an hypothesis, which is all we can do in arguing with an
unbeliever, can we point out analogies or representations in creation
of which the Trinity is the ultimate reason and the infinite original?
If we can, do these analogies simply accord and harmonize with the
hypothesis that God must subsist in three persons, or do they indicate
that this is the most adequate or the only conceivable hypothesis, or
that it is the necessary, self-evident truth, without which the
existence of these analogies would be unthinkable and impossible? Do
these analogies, as we are able to discover them, represent an
adequate image of the complete Catholic dogma of the Trinity, or only
an inadequate image of a portion of it?

It is evident, in the first place, that some analogical representation
of the Trinity must be made in order to give the mind any apprehension
whatever of a real object of thought on which it can elicit an act of
faith. The terms in which the doctrine is stated, as for instance.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit, eternal generation, procession or spiration,
person, etc., are analogical terms, representing ideas which are
otherwise unspeakable, by images or symbols. It is impossible for the
mind to perceive that a proposed idea is simply not absurd, without
apprehending confusedly what the idea is, and possessing some positive
apprehension of its conformity to the logical, that is, the real
order. Every distinct act of belief in the Trinity, therefore, however
rudimental and imperfectly evolved into reflective cognition, contains
in it an apprehension of the analogy between it and creation. If we
proceed, therefore, to explicate this confused, inchoate conception,
we necessarily proceed by way of explicating the analogy spoken of,
because we must proceed by explaining the terms in which the doctrine
is stated, {762} which are analogical; and by pointing out what the
analogy is which the terms designate. What is meant by calling God
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why is the relation of the Son to the
Father called filiation? Why is the relation of the Holy Spirit to
both called procession? The Niceno-Constantinopolitan and Athanasian
Creeds, all the other definitions of the church respecting the
Trinity, and all Catholic theology deduced from these definitions and
from Scripture and tradition by rational methods, are an explication
of the significance of these analogical terms. The only question which
can be raised then, is, in regard to the extent of the capacity of
human reason to discern the analogy between inward necessary relations
of the Godhead, and the outward manifestation of these relations in
the creation. The hypothesis of the Trinity assumes that this analogy
exists, and is to some extent apprehensible. We will now proceed to
indicate the process by which Catholic theologians show this analogy,
beginning with those terms of analogy which lie in the material order,
and ascending to those which lie in the order of spirit and
intelligence.

First, then, it is argued, that the law of generation in the physical
world, by which like produces like, represents some divine and eternal
principle. Ascending from the lower manifestation of this law to man,
we find this physical relation of generation the basis of a higher
filiation in which the soul participates. Man generates the image of
himself, in his son, who is not merely his bodily offspring, but
similar and equal to himself in his rational nature. As St. Paul says,
the principal of this paternity must be in God, and must therefore be
in him essential and eternal. But this principle of eternal, essential
paternity, within the necessary being of God, is the very principle of
distinct personal relations.

Again, the multiplicity of creation indicates that there is some
principle in the Divine Nature, corresponding in an eminent sense and
mode to this multiplicity. The relations of number are eternal truths,
and have some infinite transcendental type in God. If there were no
principle in the Divine Nature except pure, abstract unity, there
would be no original idea, from which God could proceed to create a
universe; which is necessarily multiplex and constituted in an
infinitude of distinct relations, yet all radically one, as proceeding
from one principle and tending to one end. Here is an analogy
indicating that unity and multiplicity imply and presuppose one the
other.

These two arguments combine when we consider the law of generation and
the principle of multiplicity as constituting human society and
building up the human race. Society, love, mutual communion,
reciprocal relations, kind offices, diversity in equality, constitute
the happiness and well being of man; they are an image and a
participation of the divine beatitude. All the good of the creature,
all the perfections of derived, contingent existences, have an eminent
transcendental type in God. Love, friendship, society, represent
something in the divine nature. If there were no personal relations in
God, but a mere solitude of being existing in a unity and singularity
exclusive of all plurality and society, it would seem that, supposing
creation possible, the rational creature would copy his archetype, be
single of his kind, and find his happiness in absolute solitude. It is
otherwise, however, with the human race. The human individual is not
single and solitary. Human nature is one in respect of origin and
kind, derived from one principle which is communicated by generation
and exists in plurality of persons. Society is necessary to the
perpetuation, perfection, and happiness of the human race. This
society is constituted primarily in a three-fold relation between the
father, the mother, and {763} the child, which makes the family; and
the family repeated and multiplied makes the tribe, the nation, and
the race. Taking now the hypothesis of three persons in one nature as
constituting the Godhead, it is plain that we have a clearer idea of
that in God which is represented and imitated in human society, and
which is the archetype of the life, the happiness, the love, existing
in the communion of distinct persons in one common nature, than we can
have in the hypothesis of an absolute singularity of person in the
deity. That good which man enjoys by fellowship with his equal and his
like, is a participation in the supreme good that is in God. In that
supreme good, this participated good must exist in an eminent manner.
God must have in himself infinite, all-sufficing society, fellowship,
love. He must have it in his necessary and eternal being, for he
cannot be dependent on that which is contingent and created. Supposing
therefore that it is consistent with the unity of his nature to exist
in three distinct and equal persons, not only is the analogy of his
creation to himself more manifest, but the conception we can form of
the perfection of his being is more complete and intelligible.

There is another analogy in the intellectual operation of the human
mind. The intellective faculty generates what may be called the
interior word, or image of the mind, the archetype of that which is
outwardly expressed in a philosophical theory, a poem, a picture, a
statue, or a work of architecture. Through this word, the great
creative mind lives and attains to the completion and happiness of
intellectual existence. It loves it as proceeding from and identical
with itself. Through it, it acts upon other minds, controls and
influences their thought and life; and thus the spirit proceeding from
the creative mind, through its generated word, is the completion of
its inward and outward operation. Thus, argue the theologians, the
Father contemplating the infinitude of his divine essence generates by
an infinite thought, the Word, or Son. Being infinite and uncreated,
his necessary act is infinite and uncreated, in all respects equal to
himself, and therefore the Word is equal to the Father; possesses the
plenitude of the divine essence, intelligence and personality. The
divine act of generation is not a purely intellectual cognition, but a
contemplation in which love is joined with knowledge. The Father
beholds the Son, and the Son looks back upon the Father, with infinite
love, which is the spiration of the divine life. This spiration or
spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is the consummating,
completing term of their unity, and contains the divine being which is
in the Father and the Son in all its plenitude; constituting a third
person, equal to the first and second. The operation of a limited,
finite, created soul presents only a faint, imperfect analogy of the
Trinity, because it is itself limited, as being the operation of a
soul participating in being only to a limited extent. Individual
existences possess each one a limited portion of being. But in God, it
is not so. There is no division in his nature, because the eternal,
self-existing cause and principle of its unity is a simultaneous cause
of its absolute plenitude by which it exhausts all possible being.
This plenitude of being is in the eternal generation of the second
person, and the eternal spiration of the third person in the Godhead,
on account of the necessary perfection of the most pure act in which
the being of God consists; wherefore personality is predicable, as one
of the perfections of being, of each of the three terms of relation in
God. The word of human reason and its spirit, are not equal to itself,
or personal, because of the limited and imperfect nature of human
reason, and its operations. The Word or Son of the Eternal Father, and
the Holy Spirit, are equal to him and personal, because the Father is
God, and his act is infinite.

{764}

This prepares the way for a different method of presenting the
argument from analogy, based on the conception of God as _actus
purissimus_, or most pure act. This is clearly and succinctly stated
by Dr. Brownson as follows:

  "The one, or naked and empty unity, even in the Unitarian mind is
  not the equivalent of God. When he says one, he still asks, one
  what? The answer is, one God, which implies even with him something
  more than unity. It implies unity and its real and necessary
  contents as living or actual being. Unity is an abstract conception
  formed by the mind operating on the intuition of the concrete, and
  as abstract, has no existence out of the mind conceiving. Like all
  abstractions, it is in itself dead, unreal, null. God is not an
  abstraction, not a mere generalization, a creature, or a theorem of
  the human mind, but one living and true God, existing from and in
  himself, _ad se et se_. He is real being, being in its plenitude,
  eternal, independent, self-living, and complete in himself. To live
  is to act. To be eternally and infinitely living is to be eternally
  and infinitely acting, is to be all act; and hence philosophers and
  theologians term God, in scholastic language, most pure act, _actus
  purissimus_. But act, all act demands, as its essential conditions,
  principle, medium, and end. Unity, then, to be actual being, to be
  eternally and purely act in itself, must have in itself the three
  relations of principle, medium, and end, precisely the three
  relations termed in Christian theology Father, Son, and Holy
  Ghost--the Father as principle, the Son as medium, and the Holy
  Ghost as end or consummation of the divine life. These three
  interior relations are essential to the conception of unity as one
  living and true God. Hence the radical conception of God as triune
  is essential to the conception of God as one God, or real,
  self-living, self-sufficing unity. There is nothing in this view of
  the Trinity that asserts that one is three, or that three are one;
  nor is there anything that breaks the divine unity, for the
  triplicity asserted is not three Gods, or three divine beings, but a
  threefold interior relation in the interior essence of the one God, by
  virtue of which he is one actual, living God. The relations are in
  the essence of the one God, and are so to speak the living contents
  of his unity, without which he would be an empty, unreal
  abstraction; one--nothing."   [Footnote 184]

  [Footnote 184: Brownson's Review, July, 1863, pp. 266, 267.]

There is still another way of stating the argument, founded on the
necessary relation between subject and object. In the rational order,
subject is that which apprehends and object that which is apprehended.
Intelligence is subject and the intelligible is object. The mere power
or capacity of intelligence, if it is conceived of in an abstract
manner as existing alone without relation to its object, must be
conceived of as not in actual exercise. Intelligence in act implies
something intelligible which terminates the act of intelligence. Even
supposing that the object of the intelligence is identical with the
subject, that is, that the rational mind contemplates itself as a
really existing substance, nevertheless there is a distinction between
the mind considered as the subject which contemplates, and the mind
considered as the object which is contemplated. The reason
contemplated must be projected before itself and regarded as an object
distinct from the contemplating reason in the act of contemplation.
The eye which sees objects external to itself, does not actually see
or bring its visual power into act until an object is presented before
it; and the individual does not become conscious that he can see or is
possessed of a visual faculty, except in the act of seeing an object.
The eye cannot see itself immediately by the mere fact that it is a
visual organ, but only sees itself as reflected in a mirror and made
objective to itself. God is the absolute intelligence and the absolute
intelligible, as has been proved in a previous chapter. He
contemplates and comprehends himself, and in this consists his active
being and life. Thus in the divine being there is the distinction of
subject and object. God considered as infinite intelligence is
subject, and considered as the infinite intelligible is his own
adequate object. The hypothesis of the Trinity presents to us God as
subject for intelligence in the person of the Father, as object, or
the intelligible, in the person of the Son. The Son is the image of
the Father, as the reflection of a man's form in the mirror is the
image of himself. The eternal generation of the Son is the {765}
eternal act of the Father contemplating his own being, and is
terminated upon the person of the Son as its object. As this act is
within the divine being, the image of the Father is not a merely
phenomenal, apparent, unsubstantial reflection of his being, but real,
living, and substantial. The Son is consubstantial with the Father.
The being of God is in the act of intelligence or contemplation,
whether we consider God as the subject or the object in this infinite
act, that is, as intelligent and contemplating, or as intelligible and
contemplated. The consummating principle of love, complacency, or
beatitude, which completes this act, vivifies it, and unites the
person of the Father with the person of the Son in one indivisible
being, is the Holy Spirit, equal to the Father and the Son, and
identical in being, because a necessary term of the most pure act in
which the divine life and being consists. All that is within the
circle of the necessary, essential being of God, as most pure,
intelligent, living act, is uncaused, self-existent, infinite,
eternal. By the hypothesis, we must conceive of God as subsisting in
the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in order to conceive
of him as _ens in actu_, or in the state of actual, living, concrete
being, and not as a mere abstraction or possibility existing in
thought only; as infinite intelligence, and the adequate object of his
own intelligence, self sufficing and infinitely blessed in himself.
Therefore the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is
God. It is only by this triplicity of personal relations that the
unity of God as a living, concrete unity, or the unity of one,
absolute, perfect, infinite being, containing in himself the actual
plenitude of all that is conceivable or possible, can subsist or be
vividly apprehended. Therefore there cannot be, by the hypothesis, a
separate and distinct Godhead in each of the three persons, since
triplicity of person enters into the very essential idea of Godhead.
The hypothesis of the Trinity, therefore, absolutely compels the mind
to believe in the unity of God, and shuts out all possibility that
there should be more Gods than one, because it shuts out all
possibility of imagining any mode or form of necessary being which is
not included in the three personal relations of the one God. Unity and
plurality, singularity and society, capacity of knowing, loving, and
enjoying the true, the beautiful, and the good, and the adequate
object of this capacity, or the true, beautiful, and good _in se_, the
subject and the object of intelligent and spiritual life and activity,
intelligence and the intelligible, love and the loved, blessedness and
beatitude, subsist in him in actual being, which is infinite and
exhausts in its most pure act all that is in the uncreated, necessary,
self-existent principle of being and first cause. The adequate reason
and type of all contingent and created existences is demonstrated also
to be in the three personal relations of the one divine essence, in
such a way, that the hypothesis of the Trinity, as a theorem,
satisfactorily takes up, accounts for, and explains all discoverable
truths as well in regard to the universe as in regard to God.

This last statement indicates the answer which we think is the most
correct one to the question proposed in the beginning of this chapter,
as to the full logical force of the rational argument for the Trinity.
That is, we regard it as a hypothesis which in the first place is
completely insusceptible of rational refutation. In the second place,
contains certain truths which are established by very strong probable
arguments and analogies. In the third place, suggests a conception of
God which harmonizes with all the truth we know, or can see to be
probable, and at the same time is more perfect and sublime than any
which can be made, excluding the hypothesis. We do not claim for it
the character of a strict demonstration. To certain minds it seems to
approach {766} very near a demonstration, probably because their
intellectual power of vision is unusually acute. To others it appears
nearly or quite unintelligible. Probably but few persons comparatively
can grasp it in such a way as to attain a true intellectual insight
into the relation between the doctrine of the Trinity and philosophy.
Yet all those who have thought much on the doctrine, and who find
their great difficulty in believing it to consist in a want of
apparent connection with other truths, ought to be able to appreciate
the philosophical argument by which the connection is shown. They must
have an aptitude for apprehending arguments of this nature, otherwise
they would not think on the subject so intently. All they can justly
expect is that the impediment in their minds against believing that
the doctrine is credible, or not incredible, supposing it revealed,
should be removed. This is done by the arguments of Catholic
theologians. If the doctrine be revealed, it is credible; that is, an
intelligent person can in perfect consistency with the dictates of
reason assent to the proposition that God has revealed it, and that it
is therefore credible on his veracity. The ground of the positive and
unwavering assent of the mind is in the veracity of God, and remains
there, no matter how far the reasoning process may be carried; for
without the revelation of God, the conception of the Trinity,
supposing it once obtained, would for ever remain a mere hypothesis,
though the most probable of all which could be conceived.

As already explained, it is only by a supernatural grace that the mind
is elevated to a state in which it clearly and habitually contemplates
the object of faith as revealed by God. By divine faith, the intellect
believes without doubting the mystery of the three persons in one
divine nature, and incorporates this belief into its life, as a
vivifying truth and not a dead, inert, abstract speculation or
theorem. When it is thus believed, and taken as a certain truth, the
intellect, if it is capable of apprehending the argument from analogy,
may be able to see that the Trinity is really that truth which is the
archetype that has been copied in creation, and is indicated in the
analogies already pointed out. It may see that one cannot think
logically unless he is first instructed in the doctrine of the Trinity
and proceeds from it as a given truth or datum of reasoning. Thus, he
may by the light of faith attain an elevated kind of science, or
eminent act of reason, which really rests on indubitable principles.
Yet it will not be properly science or knowledge of the revealed
mysteries, since one of these indubitable principles on which all the
consequences depend, is revelation itself, which really constitutes
the mind in a certitude of that which on merely rational principles
remains always inevident. Probably this is what is meant by those who
maintain that the Trinity can be rationally demonstrated. Given, that
the Trinity is a revealed truth, it explains and harmonizes in the
sphere of reason what is otherwise inexplicable. It is the same with
other revealed truths, and to prove that it is so is the principal
object of this essay. Presented in this light, the Catholic dogma of
the Trinity vindicates its claim to be a necessary part of religious
belief; an essential dogma of Christianity, revealed and made
obligatory for an intelligible reason, and essential to the formation
of a complete and adequate theology and philosophy. It is no longer
regarded as a naked, speculative, isolated proposition; to which a
merely intellectual assent is required by a precept of authority, and
which has no living relation to other truths or to the practical,
spiritual life of the soul. It is shown to be a universal and
fundamental truth, the basis of all truth and of the entire real and
logical order of the universe.

{767}

This can be shown much more easily, and to the majority of minds more
intelligibly, in relation to the other truths of Christianity, than to
those truths which are more recondite and metaphysical. It is
necessary to an adequate explication of the creation, of the destiny
of rational existences, of the supernatural order, of the character
and mission of Christ, of the regeneration of man through him, and of
his final end or supreme and eternal beatitude and glorification in
the future life, as will be shown hereafter. Deprived of this dogma,
Christianity is baseless, unmeaning, and worthless; and is infallibly
disintegrated and reduced to nihilism, by the necessary laws of
thought. This is true also of theism, or natural theology. And this
suggests a powerful subsidiary argument in a different line of
reasoning, proving that the doctrine of the Trinity is necessary to
the perfection and perpetuity of the doctrine of the unity of God.

The same universal tradition which has handed down the pure, theistic
conception, and has instructed mankind in the true, adequate knowledge
of God, has handed down the Trinity, and traces of it are even found
in heathen theosophy and the more profound heathen philosophy.
Wherever the doctrine of the Trinity has been preserved, there the
clear conception of the one God and his attributes has been preserved.
And where this doctrine has been corrupted or lost, the conception of
God as one living being of infinite perfection, the first and final
cause of all things, has passed away into polytheism or pantheism or
scepticism. Wherever God is apprehended as the supreme creator and
sovereign, the supreme object of worship, obedience, and love, in
intimate personal relations to man, he is apprehended in the personal
relations which subsist in himself, that is, in the Trinity. His
interior personal relations are the foundation of all external
personal relations to his creatures. This is even true of Unitarians,
so long as they retain the Christian ethical and spiritual temper
which connects them with the Christian world of thought and life, and
do not slide into some form of infidelity. They retain some imperfect
conception of the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in
proportion as they become more positive in religion, they revive and
renew this conception. The effort to make a system of living,
practical theistic religion is feeble and futile, and what little
consistency and force it has is derived from the conception of the
fatherhood of God borrowed from Christian theology; but imperfect
without the two additional terms which constitute the complete
conception of the Trinity. All this is a powerful argument for a
Theist or a Unitarian in favor of the divine origin and authority of
the Catholic dogma. The instruction which completes the inward
affirmation of God in the idea of reason, and is the complement of the
creative act constituting the soul rational, must be from the Creator.
He alone can complete his own work. It is contrary to all rational
conceptions of the wisdom of God to suppose that he has permitted that
the same instruction which teaches mankind to know, to worship, to
love, and to aspire after himself, should hand down in inseparable
connection with the eternal truth of the unity of his essence, the
doctrine of the threefold personal relations within this unity, if
this were an error diametrically its opposite, and not a truth equally
necessary and eternal.

------

{768}


From The Month.

CAIRO AND THE FRANCISCAN MISSIONS ON THE NILE.


On the 25th November, 186--, a small but crowded steamer was seen
ploughing its way through the waves at the entrance to the port of
Alexandria. Its living freight was of a motley description: there were
the usual proportion of Indian passengers--Indian officers returning
with their wives after sick-leave; engineer officers going out to lay
down the electric telegraph--one of whom, young in years but old in
knowledge, whose distinguished merit had already raised him to the
first place in his profession, was never again destined to see his
native shores. Then there were others seeking health, and about to
exchange the damp, foggy climate of England for the warm, dry,
invigorating air of Nubia and the Upper Nile. They had had a horrible
passage, in a small and badly-appointed steamer, of which all the
port-holes had to be closed on account of the gale, leaving the
wretched inhabitants of the cabins in a state of suffocation difficult
to describe. So that it was with intense joy that the jetty was at
last reached; and in the midst of a noise and confusion impossible to
describe, the passengers were landed on the dirty quay, and were
dragged rather than led into the carriages which were to convey them
to the hotel. It was the feast of St. Catharine, the patron saint of
Alexandria, to whom the great cathedral is dedicated; and in
consequence the town was more than usually gay. Towards evening a
beautiful procession was formed, and Benediction sung in the
cathedral, which is served by the Lazarist fathers. It was the best
day to arrive at Alexandria, and the prayers of the virgin saint and
martyr were earnestly invoked by some of the party for a blessing on
their voyage and a safe and happy return.

To one who has been for a long time in the East, Alexandria appears a
motley collection of half European, half Arabian houses, and the
refuse of the populations of each; but on first landing, everything
appears new, beautiful, and strange. The long files of camels, the
veiled women, the variety of the dresses are all striking; but the one
thing which even the most hackneyed Nile traveller cannot fail to
admire is the vegetation. Enormous groves of date-palms and bananas,
with an underwood of poncettias, their scarlet leaves looking like red
flamingos amid the dark-green leaves, and ipomeas of every shade--
lilac, yellow, and above all turquoise-blue--climbing over every
ruined wall, and exquisite in color as in form, delight an eye
accustomed to see such things carefully tended in hothouses only, or
paid for at the rate of five shillings a spray in Covent Garden. The
sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul have two very large
establishments here--one a hospital, to which is attached a large
dispensary, attended daily by hundreds of Arabs; the other a school
and orphanage of upwards of 1000 children. There are thirty-seven
sisters, and their work is bearing its fruit, not only among the
Christian but the native population. To our English travellers the
very sight of their white "cornettes" was an assurance of love and
kindness and welcome in this strange land; and it was with a glad and
thankful heart that they found themselves once more kneeling in their
chapel, and felt that no bond is like that of charity, uniting as in
one great family every nation upon earth.

{769}

After a couple of days' rest, our English party started by the
railroad for Cairo. This journey was not as commonplace as it sounds;
for at each station the train was besieged by Arabs, clamoring for
passages, between 300 and 400 at a time; so that it required all the
efforts of the guards and their dragoman to prevent their carriage
being taken from them by main force. The beauty of Cairo is the theme
of every writer on Egypt and the Nile; but it would be impossible to
exaggerate its extreme picturesqueness, the exquisite carving of its
mosques and gateways; the oriental character of its narrow streets and
bazaars and courts; the beauty of the costumes, and of the fretted
lattice casements overhanging the streets; the gorgeous interior
fittings of the mosques, one of which is entirely lined with oriental
alabaster; the magnificent fountains in the outer courts of each; the
graceful minarets--all seen in the clearness and beauty of this
perfectly cloudless sky, leave a picture in one's mind which no
subsequent travel can efface. Outside the town is a perfect "city of
the dead;" all the pashas and their families are interred there, and
people "live among the tombs," as described in the Gospels; while on
Fridays the Mohammedans have services there for their dead, "that they
may be loosed from their sins;" one of those curious fragments of
Christianity which are continually cropping out of this strange
Mohammedan worship.

One of the most interesting expeditions made by our travellers was to
Heliopolis. They passed through a sandy plain full of cotton,
date-palms, and bananas, and by a succession of miserable native huts,
(which consist of mud walls, with a roof of Indian corn, and a hole
left in the wall for light,) until they came to an obelisk, and from
thence to a garden, in the centre of which is a sycamore tree,
carefully preserved, under which the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph are
said to have rested with the infant Saviour on their flight into
Egypt. It is close to a well of pure water, and surrounded with the
most beautiful roses and Egyptian jasmine. The Mohammedans have the
greatest veneration for the "Sitt Miriam," as they call the Blessed
Virgin. They proof her immaculate conception from the Koran, and keep
a fast of fifteen days before the Assumption; therefore no surprise
was felt at seeing the care with which this grand old tree is tended
and watered by them.

Another expedition made by the travellers was to Old Cairo, where,
near the famous Nilometer, is the Coptic convent and chapel built over
the house of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, where they are said to
have lived for two years with our Blessed Lord. There are some very
beautiful ancient marble columns and fine olive-wood carvings, inlaid
with ivory, in this church, and a staircase leads down to the Virgin's
House, which is now partly under water from the rise of the Nile. It
is curious how persistently all early tradition points to this spot as
the site of our Saviour's Egyptian sojourn, and it was with a feeling
of simple faith in its authenticity that one of the party knelt and
strove to realize this portion of the sacred infancy.

There are three Catholic churches in Cairo, the cathedral being a fine
large building. The sisters of "the Good Shepherd" have also a large
convent near the cathedral, and an admirable day-school and orphanage.
Many dark-eyed young girls whom our travellers saw kneeling at
benediction there had been rescued by the kind Mother from worse than
Egyptian slavery. The condition of the "fellahs," or lower orders, in
Egypt, is appalling from its misery and degradation; and the good
sisters have very uphill work to humanize as well as christianize
these poor children. {770} Nothing can be more wretched than the
position of the women, especially throughout Egypt. If at all
good-looking, they are brought up for the harems; if not, they are
kept as "hewers of wood and drawers of water;" and the idea of their
having _souls_ seems as little believed by the Mohammedan as by the
Chinese, whose incredulity on the subject the Abbé Hue mentions so
amusingly in his missionary narrative.

Before leaving Cairo the English ladies were invited to spend an
evening in the royal harem, and accordingly at eight o'clock found
themselves in a beautiful garden, with fountains, lit by a multitude
of variegated lamps, and conducted by black eunuchs through
trellis-covered walks to a large marble-paved hall, where about forty
Circassian slaves met them and escorted them to a saloon fitted up
with divans, at the end of which reclined the pasha's wives. One of
them was singularly beautiful, and exquisitely dressed, in pink velvet
and ermine, with priceless jewels. Another very fine figure was that
of the mother, a venerable old princess, looking exactly like a
Rembrandt just come out of its frame. Great respect was paid to her,
and when she came in, every one rose. The guests being seated, or
rather squatted, on the divan, each was supplied with long pipes,
coffee in exquisite jewelled cups, and sweetmeats, the one succeeding
the other, without intermission, the whole night. The Circassian
slaves, with folded hands and downcast eyes, stood before their
mistresses, to supply their wants. Some of them were very pretty, and
dressed with great richness and taste. Then began a concert of Turkish
instruments, which sounded unpleasing to English ears, followed by a
dance, which was graceful and pretty; but this again followed by a
play, in which half the female slaves were dressed up as men, and the
coarseness of which it is impossible to describe. The wife of the
foreign minister kindly acted as interpreter for the English ladies,
and through her means some kind of conversation was kept up. But the
ignorance of the ladies in the harem is unbelievable. They can neither
read nor write; their whole day is employed in dressing, bathing,
eating, drinking, and smoking. The soirée lasted till two in the
morning, when the royalty withdrew, and the English ladies returned
home, feeling the whole time as if they had been seeing a play acted
from a scene in the Arabian Nights, so difficult was it to realize
that such a way of existence was possible in the present century.

The Sunday before they left, curiosity led them after mass to witness
the gorgeous ceremonial of the Coptic Church. The men sat on the
ground with bare feet, the women in galleries above the dome, behind
screens. The patriarch--who calls himself the successor of St. Mark,
and is the leader of a sect whose opinions are almost identical with
those condemned by the council of Chalcedon as the Eutychian
heresy--was gorgeously attired in a chasuble of green and gold, with a
silver crosier in one hand, (St. George and the dragon being carved on
the top,) and in the other a beautiful gold crucifix, richly jewelled,
wrapped in a gold-colored handkerchief, which every one stooped to
kiss, after the reading of the gospel and the creed, the people joined
with great fervor in the litanies; and then began the consecration of
the sacred species, which lasted a very long time. The holy eucharist
was given in a spoon to each communicant, the bread being dipped in
the wine, and the patriarch laying his hand on the forehead of each
person while he gave the blessing. At the same time, blessed bread
stamped with a cross, and with the name of Christ, was handed round to
the rest of the congregation, like the _pain bénit_ in village
churches in France. The Copts boast that there has never been the
slightest alteration in their religious rites since the fourth
century, and they are undoubtedly the only descendents of the ancient
Egyptians.

{771}

The following morning a portion of our travellers started by train for
Suez, across a waving, billowy-looking tract of interminable sand.
Except the "half-way house," (a miserable shed,) there is no human
habitation all the way, and nothing to be seen but long files of
camels slowly wending their way across the desert. After enjoying for
a few minutes the first sight of the Red Sea, the consul obligingly
lent them horses to ride to the Lesseps Canal, which was then
completed to within six miles of Suez. Upward of 5000 Arabs had been
pressed into the service by the pasha, and the poor creatures were
toiling under the burning sun, with no pay and wretched food, and,
when night came, sleeping under the banks. The mortality among them
was frightful; but it was in this way that the pasha paid for his
shares! Our travellers tasted the water, the first that had ever been
brought to Suez, except by camels, or, of late, by the _water-train_.
It is difficult to realize the fact of a town of this size being
entirely without fresh water until now, which accounts for the absence
of the least kind of vegetation. The next morning a steamer took our
party early to the wells of Moses, about nine miles up the gulf, where
they landed, being carried through the surf by the Chinese rowers.
Each of the wells is enclosed in a little fence, and belongs to a Suez
merchant. It is a wonderful spot, so green and so lovely in the midst
of such utter desolation. There are dates and banians, roses and
pomegranates, salads and other vegetables, all growing in the greatest
luxuriance. Long strings of camels filed across the sand on their way
to Mount Sinai, and the coloring of the mountains was exquisite. The
shore was covered with coral and shells. After spending an hour or two
there, and reading the Bible account of the spot, our travellers
returned to the ship, and went across the gulf to see the exact place
where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea when pursued by Pharaoh. The
view was beautiful, and the Hill of Barda stood out brightly with its
jagged points dear and purple against the glowing sky. The Catholics
have a small church at Suez, but are building a larger one, as their
mission is greatly on the increase.

Our travellers returned that evening to Cairo and for the first time
slept on board their boats, or daha-biéh. The first sensation was of
discomfort at the smallness of the cabins; but soon they got used to
their floating homes, and the beauty of the weather enabled them to
live all day long on the awning-covered poop; so that they soon ceased
to feel cramped and uncomfortable. The following day, the wind being
contrary, Latifa Pasha, the head of the Admiralty, gave them a steamer
to tow them up to Gizeh, from whence they were to visit the Pyramids.
The excessive depth of each stone makes the ascent an arduous one for
women; but the view amply repays one for the exertion. On one side is
the interminable desert; on the other, the fertile "Land of Goshen."
Owing to the recent inundations, the party had continually to dismount
from their donkeys and be carried across the water on men's backs. The
next few days passed quickly, our travellers landing every morning to
walk and sketch, while the men were "tracking" along the shore, and
making acquaintance with all the people and places of interest as they
passed. At El-Atfeh was a remarkable dervish of the tribe they had
seen "dancing" in Cairo, who showed them his house, in the court of
which was the tomb of his predecessor, hung with ostrich-eggs, canoes
and other votive offerings, but hideously painted in bright green. At
Bibbeh there was a very fine Coptic church, with a picture of St.
George and the Dragon, who is the favorite saint throughout the East,
and venerated alike by Christian and Moslem. Again, on their way to
Minieh, they passed by a fine Coptic convent on the top of a {772}
cliff, and two of the monks swam to the boats to ask for alms and
offerings, which are never refused them. On the 20th December they
reached Sawada, which is a village somewhat inland, but containing a
large Coptic convent and church, served by six priests, and with a
congregation of upwards of 1000 Christians. It was also an important
burial-place, and there were multitudes of little domes looking like
children's sand-basins reversed, but each surmounted with a cross. One
of the ladies was sketching this picturesque village from a palm-grove
at the entrance of the principal gateway, when a venerable priest
approached her and made that sign which in the East is the freemasonry
of brotherhood--the sign of the Cross. The lady instantly responded,
and the old priest, joyfully clapping his hands, led her into the
church, showing her all its carious carvings and decorations, and
several very ancient MSS. There are some fine mountains at the back,
in which the gentlemen of the party discovered some wolves. The next
day brought them to Beni-Hassan. The caves, which are about three
miles from the shore, were originally used as tombs by the ancient
Egyptians, and are covered with paintings and hieroglyphics; but their
chief interest arises from their having been the great hiding-place of
the Christians during the persecutions, and also used as cells by St.
Anthony, St. Macarius, and other anchorites. A little farther on, near
Manfaloot, is the cave of St. John the Hermit, venerated to this hour
as such by the natives. On Christmas-day our travellers arrived at
Sioot, and found there a Catholic church served by the Franciscan
mission, which is under the special protection of the Emperor of
Austria, who has sent some very good pictures for the altars there.
The mass was reverently and well sang, and about 150 Catholics were
present. After mass, the Italian padre gave them coffee. He had been
educated at the "Propaganda," but had been twenty-four years in Egypt;
so that he had almost forgotten every language except Arabic. He said
that they had now obtained a union with the Copts, and a Coptic mass
followed the Latin one. The mission had been established at Sioot four
years before, by the intervention of Said Pasha, but had encountered
great opposition at first from the Moslems. Two bodies of Christian
saints with all the signs of martyrdom had been lately discovered in
the caves above the town; but the Mohammedans would not allow the
Christians to have them. The good old Franciscan had studied medicine,
and thus first made his way among the people. Now he seems to be
universally respected and beloved.

Our party rode through the dirty bazaars of this so-called capital of
Upper Egypt, and ascended to the caves. But the "City of the Dead", a
little beyond the town, is mournfully beautiful and silent. It is
composed of streets of tombs, of white stone or marble, the only sign
of life being the jar of water left in front of each, to water the
aloes planted in picturesque vases at the gate of each tomb. A whole
poem might be written on the thoughts suggested by those silent
streets. It was this "City of the Dead" which is said to have
occasioned the valuable lesson given by St. Macarius to the young man
who had asked him "how he could best learn indifference to the world's
opinion?" He directed him to go to this place, and first upbraid and
then flatter the dead. The young man did as he was bid. When he came
back, the saint asked him "what answer they had made?" The young man
replied, "None at all." Then said St. Macarius: "Go and learn from
them neither to be moved by injuries or flatteries. If you thus die to
the world and to yourself, you will begin to live to Christ."

{773}

Here for the first time our travellers realized the horrors of an
Egyptian conscription. A number of villagers coming in to the Sunday's
market were at once seized, chained together, and thrown on the ground
like so much "dead stock" to be packed off on board a government
vessel, when the fall complement had been secured. The screams and
howls of their wives and daughters, throwing dirt on their heads and
tearing their hair, in token of despair, when their frantic efforts to
release them from the recruiting-sergeants were found ineffectual,
were most piteous to hear. The poor fellows rarely survive to return
to their homes; and their pay and food are so miserably small and
scanty, that to be made a soldier is looked upon as worse than death.
They maim themselves in every way to escape it--cutting off their
forefingers, putting out their eyes, and the like. Scarcely a man on
board the boats is not mutilated in this manner. In the evening, being
Christmas-day, all the boats were illuminated with Chinese lanterns
and avenues of palms; while the sailors made crosses and stars of
palm-leaves, to hang over the cabin-doors. A beautiful moon-light
night added to the effect of these decorations, as the party rowed
round the different _dahabièhs_, and the "Adeste fidelis" sounded
softly across the water. The following morning, after early mass, a
favorable wind carried them on to Ekhnim, where there is also a
Catholic Franciscan missionary and church. The priest was a
Neapolitan, and had begun his labors at Suez. His only companion was a
native Copt, who had been educated at the Propaganda. They had about
five hundred Catholics in their congregation, and a school of about
fifty children. The church was of the fifteenth century, and under the
protection of a Christian sheik, to whom our travellers were
introduced, and who courteously invited them into his house. The
courtyard of the Catholic church was crowded with native Christians
who had escaped from the conscription, and were safe under the roof of
the priest. The sheik conducted his guests to his house, the only good
one in Ekhnim, and furnished more or less in European style, as he had
been at Cairo, and attached to the household of the late viceroy. They
sat on the divan, with pipes and coffee, talking Italian with the
priest, when the sheik, as a great honor, allowed them to see his
wife, and afterward his daughter, a bride of thirteen, married to the
son of the Copt bishop. She was dressed in red, as a bride, with a red
veil and a profusion of gold ornaments and coins strung round her neck
and arms. The sheik and the whole population escorted our travellers
back to their boats with every demonstration of respect, and then the
principal chiefs with the priests were invited to come on board and
have coffee, which they accepted. The Franciscan father had been for
seven years at Castellamare, and felt the change terribly, but said
that the climate was good, and that the comfort of feeling he was
working for God strengthened his hands when he was inclined to
despond. He complained of the lamentable ignorance of the Coptic
priests, who knew nothing of the history of their interesting old
churches and convents, and only tell you "they were built before their
fathers were born!" The two large Coptic convents formerly existing in
the mountains above the town are deserted; but their church at Ekhnim
is the oldest now remaining in Egypt, and full of curious carving and
very ancient pillars.

On New Year's day our travellers arrived at Denderah, and spent it in
the wonderful temple of Athor. The heat was very great, and it
required some courage to attempt to sketch. At five the following
morning the boats arrived at Keneh, and some of the party went on
shore to mass, that being also a Franciscan station. The church is
small, but very nicely kept; the place is, however, unhealthy, and the
good Franciscan father was very low at the mortality among his
comrades. He has lately started a school and has about twenty
children; but his life is a very desolate one, having {774} no
European to speak to, or any one to sympathize in his work. After mass
he took our travellers to see the making of the _goolehs_, or
water-bottles, which are so famous throughout Egypt, and are made
solely in this place, of the peculiar clay of the district, mixed with
the ashes of the halfeh grass. They are beautiful in form, and keep
the water deliciously cool. After a breakfast of coffee and excellent
dates at the sheik's house, the party reëmbarked, and arrived that
evening at Negaddi. Here again they found a Catholic mission. The
superior, Padre Samuele, had been laboring there for twenty-three
years. He was of the Lyons mission, and was the only one who had
survived the climate. Four of his brethren had died within the last
twelvemonth, and he had just dug a grave for the last. They had a
large and devout congregation, and a school of one hundred and fifty
children, and had been building a new church of very fine and good
proportions. But now the good father has to labor and live alone. He
said, however, that he had written to Europe for fresh workers, whom
he was anxiously expecting. Negaddi is remarkable for its turreted
pigeon-houses, painted white and red, which form an amusing contrast
to the miserable mudholes in which the inhabitants live. The following
evening found our travellers at Thebes. The town itself is a surprise
and disappointment. There are literally no shops, no bazaar, no houses
but the two or three belonging to the consuls, and built in the midst
of the temples. But the said temples are unrivalled for interest and
beauty. Karnac, either by daylight or moonlight, is a thing apart from
all others in the world for vastness of conception and magnificence of
design. "There were giants in those days." The same may be said of the
Tombs of the Kings, of the Vocal Memnon, of the Memnouium, of Medemet
Haboo, and the rest. The marvel is, what has become of the people who
created such things; who had brought civilization, arts, and
manufactures to such perfection that nothing modern can surpass them.
Is it not a lesson to our pride and our materialism, when we think of
them and of ourselves, and then see the degraded state of the modern
Egyptian, the utter extinction of the commonest art or even handicraft
among them, so that it is scarcely possible, even in Cairo, to get an
ordinary deal table made with a drawer in it? There is no Catholic
mission at Thebes, but a Coptic bishop, who received our travellers
very kindly, showed them his church, and gave them coffee on a terrace
overlooking the Nile. This evening was "twelfth-night," and the boats
were again illuminated and decorated with palms, the whole having a
beautiful effect reflected in the water.

After spending a week at Thebes, Our travellers sailed on to Assouan,
visiting the temples of Esneh, Edfoo, and Komom-Boo on their way, and
coming into the region of crocodiles and pelicans, and of the Theban
or dom palm--less graceful than the date palm, but still beautiful,
and bearing a large, nut-like fruit in fine hanging clusters. Between
Edfoo and Thebes are shown some caves, in one of which St. Paul, the
first hermit, passed so many years of penitence and prayer. He was
discovered by St. Antony in his old age, when tempted to vain-glory,
God having revealed to him that there was a recluse more perfect than
himself, whom he was to go into the desert and seek. A beautiful
picture in the gallery at Madrid by Velasquez represents the meeting
of the two venerable saints, the dinner brought to them by the raven,
and the final interment of St. Paul by St. Antony in the cloak of St.
Athanasius, the lions assisting to dig the grave!

Assouan is, as it were, the gate of the Cataracts, and is on the
borders of Nubia, the great desert of Syene being to the left of the
village. The Nubian caravans were tented on the shore, and tempting
the Europeans with daggers, knives, {775} ostrich-eggs, poisoned
arrows, rhinoceros hide shields, lances and monkeys. The climate was
delicious. There is no country in the world to be compared with Egypt
at this time of the year, because, in spite of the heat, there is a
lightness and exhilaration in the air which makes every one well and
hungry. To an artist the coloring is equally perfect. No one who has
not been there can imagine what the sunrises and sunsets are,
especially the after-glow at sunset. No artificial red, orange, or
purple can approach it. Then the gracefulness of the palms on the
banks, the rosy color of the mountains, the picturesque sakeels or
water-wheels, and the still prettier shadoof, with its mournful sound,
which seems as the wail of the patient slave who works it day and
night, and thereby produces the exquisite tender green vegetation on
the banks of the river, due to this artificial irrigation alone--all
are a continual feast to the eye of the painter. And if all this is
felt below Assouan, what can be said of Philae--beautiful Philae--that
"dream of loveliness," as a modern writer justly calls it?

Our travellers, while waiting for the interminable arrangements with
the Reis of the Cataracts, took the road along the shore; and after
passing through a succession of curious and picturesque villages,
arrived at one called Mahatta, where they hired a little boat to take
them across to the beautiful island. Rocks of the most fantastic
shapes are piled up on both sides of the shore; but when once you have
emerged from these into the deep water, "Pharaoh's Bed" and the other
temples stand out against the sky in all their wonderful beauty.
Philae was the burial-place of Osiris, and "By him who sleeps in
Philae" was the common oath of the old Egyptians. The temples are too
well known by drawings to need description; but what is less often
mentioned by travellers is that the larger one, originally dedicated
to the sun, was used for a long time by the Christians as a church.
Consecration crosses are deeply engraved on every one of these grand
old pillars; and at one end is an altar, with a cross in the centre,
in white marble, and a piscina at the side, with a niche for the
sacred elements; and above this recess is a beautiful cross deeply cut
in the stone, together with the emblem of the vine. The cross is also
let into the principal gateways. There was an Italian inscription
commemorating the arrival of the first Roman mission sent by Gregory
XVI., and a tablet in French recording the arrival of the French army
there under Napoleon in 1799, signed by General Davoust.

The gentlemen of the party decided to pitch their tents in the island
till the question of the passing of the Cataracts was decided; and
while this operation was going on, one of the ladies sat down to
sketch. She was quietly painting, luxuriating in the beauty and
silence around her, and watching the sun setting gloriously behind the
temple, when all of a sudden a deep bell boomed across the water and
was repeated half-a-dozen times. It was the "Angelus." Even the least
Catholic of the party was struck and impressed by this unexpected
sound, so unusual in a country where bells are unknown, and the only
call for prayer is from the minaret top. Instinctively they knelt, and
then arose the question "Where could the bell come from?" There was no
sign of habitation or human beings either on the island itself or on
the opposite shores, and the dragoman himself was equally at fault. At
last, on questioning the boatmen, they found that behind some hills a
short distance off was a convent--sort of "convalescent home" for the
sick monks of the Barri mission. The English lady decided at once to
go and see it, and on arriving at the long low stone building, found
that the Franciscan father, who was almost its solitary occupant, had
just returned from the White Nile, being one of a mission to the
blacks in the Barri country, a month's journey south of Khartoun.
{776} He had been at death's door from fever; and on leaving Khartoun
for Philae, an eighteen days' ride on camels, had been attacked by
dysentery, and left for dead in the burning desert by the caravan;
only a faithful black convert remained by his side, and he felt that
his last hour was come; when the arrival of poor Captain Speke, on his
way home from one of his last explorations, changed the state of
things. With true Christian charity our countryman at once ordered a
halt, and devoted himself to the nursing and doctoring of the dying
monk; so that in a few days he was so far recovered as to be able to
resume his journey, and arrived safely at Philae. He said he owed his
life, under God, entirely to the kindness of this Englishman; and his
only anxiety seemed to be to show his gratitude by doing everything he
could for those of his nation. He invited our travellers to take up
their abode in the convent, and gave them a most interesting account
of the missionary work of his order. They have chartered a small
vessel, which they have called the "Stella Matutina," and which plies
up and down the river, and enables them to visit their stations on
each bank. But they have every kind of hardship to encounter from the
treachery or stupidity or positive hostility of the different tribes,
from the intense heat, and above all, from the deadly malaria which
had carried off seventy of their brothers in three years. But there
are ever fresh soldiers of this noble army ready and eager to fill up
the ranks.

The ladies rode home by the way of the desert, and reached their boats
in safety. The next morning, at five o'clock, the same road was
resumed by two of the party who were anxious to to reach the convent
in time for the early mass. They met nothing on their seven-miles'
ride but a hyaena, who was devouring a camel which they had left dying
the night before. The little convent chapel was very nice; and among
the vestments sent by the _oeuvre apostolique_ and worked by the
ladies of the Leopoldstadt mission, one of the party recognized a
court-dress which had been presented for the purpose by a Hungarian
friend of hers at Rome. It was strange to find it again in the depths
of Nubia. The mass was served by two little woolly-haired negro boys
from the good old father's school, whose attachment to him was like
that of a dog to its master. He was in some trouble as to finding
clothes for them. The Nubians dispense with every thing of the kind
except a fringed leathern girdle round the loins, decorated with
shells. The children have not even that. However, in the _dahabièh_ a
piece of rhododendron-patterned chintz was found, carefully sent from
England for the covering of the divans; and with that, certain
articles of dress were manufactured, gorgeous in coloring, and
therefore perfect in native eyes, however ludicrous and incongruous
they might appear to Europeans. The following day was fixed for one of
the boats to go up the cataracts, and the party started early for what
is called the "first gate," to see the operation. No one who has not
lived for some months with this "peuple criard," as Lamartine calls
them, can imagine the din and screaming of the Arabs as each dangerous
rapid is passed; the Reis all the time shouting and storming and
leaping from one stone to the other like one possessed. But the ascent
is child's play compared to the descent. So many accidents have
happened in the latter, and so many boats have been swamped, that the
captains now insist on the passengers landing on an island near, while
their boats rush down the rapids. It is a beautiful sight, the way
those apparently unwieldy vessels are steered, and clear the rocks as
it were with a bound, amidst the frantic yells and cheers of the whole
population. A number of men, for a trifling baksheesh, swam down the
current on logs; one with his little child before him; but an
Englishman, attempting {777} to do it a year or two ago, was caught in
the whirlpool and instantly drowned. After watching this exciting
operation, the party dined together at Philae in their tent, and then
rowed round and round the island by moonlight, which exceeded in
loveliness all they had hitherto seen; the vividness of the
reflections were beyond belief; and reading or writing was easy in the
brilliant light.

Our traveller availed herself of the kind Father Michael Angelo's
proposal, and slept at the convent. He gave them some curious arms,
and hippopotamus-teeth from the White Nile, and some ostrich-eggs
arranged as drinking-vessels, with shells and leather strips: his sole
furniture in his native tent. The English, in return, gave him a
quantity of medicines, which he eagerly accepted for his mission, to
which he was hoping to return. After early mass the next day, he
escorted them to see the Island of Biggeh with its picturesque temple,
and then to the quarries of Syene, where an uncut obelisk of great
size still remains embedded in the sand. Some idea was entertained in
England of using it for Prince Albert's monument; but the difficulty
of carriage and the distance from the river would make its transfer
almost impossible. Far simpler would be the proposal of taking the
Luxor obelisk, already given to the English by Mehemet Ali, the sister
one to that successfully transported to Paris by the French. It is a
thousand pities to leave it where it is, and to miss the occasion of
adding so unique and valuable a monument to our art-treasures.

This, the last day of our traveller's stay at Assouan, was spent in
making a few last purchases, visiting the old castle overlooking the
river, and exploring the island of Elephantine, which offers beautiful
sketching. But the inhabitants are even more importunate as beggars
than their confraternity at Thebes; and it required all the eloquence
of the good priest to prevent their appropriating the contents of the
traveller's paint-box. She purchased from them many strings of bright
beads, which constitute their sole idea of female dress. A curious
funeral took place in the evening, an empty boat being carried for the
dead man, who was buried with his arms and his spear; while a funeral
dirge was sung over him by his tribe. It was curious, as being
identical with the hieroglyphics of similar scenes in the tombs of the
kings. Many of the customs of these people are purely pagan; for
instance, when an Arab makes his coffee, he pours out the first three
cups on the ground as a libation to the sheik, who first invented the
beverage. The slave-trade, though nominally abolished by the viceroy,
is carried on vigorously at Assouan. The governor goes through the
form of confiscating the cargo and arresting the owners of the ship;
but, after a few days, a handsome baksheesh on the part of the
slave-owner and captain settles the matter; and their live cargo is
transported to Cairo, there to be disposed of in the harems or
elsewhere.

To the Catholic traveller in this country nothing can be more
melancholy than the utterly degraded condition of the people, who are
really very little removed from the brute creation. Years of
ill-usage, hardship, and wrong have ground down the Fellah to the
abject condition of a slave; and the utter extinction of Christianity
among them seems to preclude all hope of their rising again. Yet Egypt
was once the home of saints. From Alexandria, the seat of all that was
most learned and refined, the see of St. Athanasius, and St.
Alexander, and St. Cyril, and St. John the Almoner, and a whole string
of holy patriarchs, bishops, and martyrs, up to the very desert of
Syene, peopled with anchorites, the whole land teemed with saints. And
now, the little handful of Franciscan fathers, scattered here and
there, sowing once more the good seed at the cost of their lives, is
all that remains to bear witness to the truth.

------

{778}


[ORIGINAL.]

THY WILL BE DONE


I.

  My soul a little kingdom is,
    Where God's most holy will
  Shall reign in undivided sway,
    Potent and grand and still.

  I'll kneel before the crystal throne,
    And kiss the golden rod;
  O peace unspeakable, to bow
    Before the will of God!

  What though my weary feet should fail.
    My tongue refuse to praise,
  God knows my soul will steadfastly
    Still follow in his ways.


II.

  The time has come, my soul, the time has come
  To prove the depth of thy oft-vaunted love;
  A sullen gloom hangs round us like a fog,
  And lowering clouds are drooping from above.

  Would it were light, or dark, not this grey gloom;
  Would that the terror of some sudden crash
  Might break this stifling, dumb monotony!
  O for some deafening peal or blinding flash!

  Weary and old and sick, like ancient Job,
  I crouch in haggard woe and scan the past,
  Or drag the leaden moments at my heels,
  Mocking wise fools who say that life runs fast.

{779}

  Nothing to conquer now--no call for strength;
  Naught to contend with--only to wait and bear,
  And see my withering powers and blighted gifts--
  No room to act--nothing to do or dare:
  Speak now, my soul, if thou hast aught to say
  If thou seest light or any hope of day.


III.

  Fret not this holy stillness with thy cries--
    Patience, perturbed clay!
  Lest thou should'st drown the voice of the All-wise
    With clamorous dismay.

  Thinkest thou that clouds and mists are less God's work,
    Than sun or moon or stars?
  His will is good, whether it bind the free
    Or sunder prison bars.

  His hand has measured out each feather's weight
    Of this most grievous load;
  He bore the cross we bear, his heart, like ours,
    Once in life's furnace glowed.

  We shall in heaven sing a psalm of joy
    For every earth-wrung moan;
  One little hour more, the work well done.
    And we are all God's own.


--------

CONTRASTS


  There is no sound of anguish in the air,
  Bees hum, birds sing, the breeze is balmy-sweet
  And from the blooming hawthorn overhead
  A rosy shower droppeth at my feet.

  No matter! God be praised--some untried heart,
  Sweet with the dewy freshness of life's dawn,
  Is gathering a glad presage of success
  From this bright, pitiless, resplendent morn.


------

{780}



[From the Irish Industrial Magazine.]

THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS OF OUR ANCESTORS.



BY M. HAVERTY, ESQ.



ARTS OF CONSTRUCTION.

In considering the building arts, as practised by the inhabitants of
this country in past ages, we must necessarily divide the subject
according to epochs. The ethnologist would of course begin with his
favorite scientific classification of the Stone, the Bronze and the
Iron periods; but this division is, to say the least of it, a very
arbitrary, very indefinite, and very doubtful one. It leaves much too
wide a scope for imagination, and offers no satisfactory explanation
of social development; and the following obvious and natural order of
periods, in the present instance, will answer our purpose, namely:

1. The Pre-Christian period, extending from some indefinite epoch of
the pre-historic ages, down to the establishment of Christianity in
Ireland, in the fifth century; 2. The early Christian period,
extending from the last-mentioned epoch to the commencement of the
Danish wars, in the beginning of the ninth century; 3. The period of
obscurity and barbarism into which this country was plunged by those
fierce and long-protracted wars, and from which it began to emerge in
the reign of Brian, and after the battle of Clontarf, in 1014; 4. The
period which followed that just mentioned, and which extends beyond
the Anglo-Norman invasion until the native Irish ceased to act as a
distinct people; and, [sic--no 5.] 6. The period which was inaugurated
by the aforesaid Anglo-Norman epoch, and descended to modern times,
embracing the ages, first of noble Gothic abbeys, and feudal keeps of
Norman barons, and walled towns; and then of the fortified bawns and
strong solitary towers of new proprietors, in the Tudor, Stuart, and
Williamite times.

In the first of these periods there was no stone and mortar masonry
known in Ireland, nor was there any knowledge of the arch. Of
cyclopean masonry--masonry in which huge stones were frequently
employed, but never any cement--some stupendous and wonderful examples
belonging to this first period still remain; but there was no cemented
work. This we may take as absolutely certain, notwithstanding the
notions of some modern antiquaries about the supposed pre-Christian
origin of the round towers. This pagan theory of the round towers is a
pure creation of what we may call the conjectural school of Irish
antiquaries. The ancient Irish never dreamt of it. It was suggested at
a time when scarcely anything was known of the original native source
of Irish history; and it has seldom been advocated except by those who
are either still unacquainted with these sources of our history, or
else who are carried away by false ideas of early Irish civilization,
and visionary theories of ancient Irish fire-worship and Orientalism;
for all which there is not the slightest foundation in the actual
history of the country. It is right that this should be distinctly
understood: without entering into lengthened arguments on the subject,
which would be out of place here, it ought to be quite sufficient for
any rational person to know, that the character of all the remains of
undoubted pagan buildings in Ireland is utterly inconsistent with the
{781} supposition that the same people who built them also built the
round towers; and that such knowledge as we actually possess of the
manners and customs of the pagan Irish shows the absurdity of the
notion that the round towers were built by them. The passages of
ancient Irish writings which may be adduced to show that the round
towers were built by Christians are extremely numerous, while there is
not one single iota of evidence in the written monuments of Irish
history, either printed or MS., for their pagan origin--nothing, in
fact, but wild, unsupported conjecture and imagination. And such being
the case, and all the writings and researches of such distinguished
Irish historical scholars as Petrie, O'Donovan, and O'Curry, who have
passed away, and of Wilde and Todd, and Graves and Reeves, and
Ferguson, etc., tending to overturn the visionary theories of Irish
antiquities, of which the round tower phantasy has been the most
noted, it is time to abandon this last remnant of a false and exploded
system.

What, then, are the remains which we have of the buildings or
structures of the ancient Irish belonging to the first, or pagan,
period? They are various, and exceedingly numerous. In the first
place, there are the _raths_, or earthen forts, with which the whole
face of the country is still absolutely dotted. These raths were the
dwelling-places of the Irish, not only indeed, in pagan times, but
much more recently. They were originally rather steep earthworks,
surrounded by a ditch, and topped by a strong paling or stockade;
sometimes there was a double or treble line of intrenchment, and
within the inner fence the family or families of the occupants dwelt
in timber or hurdle houses, of which, from the perishable nature of
the materials, no traces of course remain. The cattle, too, were
driven for safety within the inclosure, when it was known that an
enemy was abroad; and it is probable that the position of a great many
of the raths on a sloping surface was selected for purposes of
drainage, seeing that the cattle were so frequently to be inclosed. It
is also worthy of note, that these earthen forts were always
polygonal, generally octagonal, and we have never seen one of them
actually round; although it would have been much easier to describe
the plain circle than the regular polygonal figure adopted.

When the inclosures were constructed of stone; they were called
_cahirs_ or _cashels_. It has been stated by antiquaries that the
stone forts were built by the early Irish colonists, called Firbolgs,
and the earthen forts by the subsequent colony of Tuath de Danaans;
but it is probable that each colony built their strongholds of the
materials which they found most convenient. In the rich plains of
Meath, where there are very few surface stones that could have been
employed for the purpose, we find none but earthen forts; and in the
Isles of Arran, where there is little indeed besides solid rock, the
Firbolgs necessarily constructed their famous duns of stone. These
vast Firbolg duns of Arran must have been impregnable in those days,
if defended by sufficient garrison; and their size and number in a
place so small and barren show that almost the whole remnant of the
race must have been compelled by hard necessity to seek shelter there
against their pressing foes. It would also appear that the abundant
supply of stone induced the occupants of those Arran forts to
substitute stone houses in their interior for the habitations of
timber and wattles used elsewhere; as we here find numerous remains of
the small beehive houses, called _cloghanes_, formed by the
overlapping of flat stones, laid horizontally, until they meet at top,
thus roofing in the house without an arch. Both cloghanes and forts
are built, of course, without cement; and no one could for a moment
imagine that the Round Tower, of which a portion still {782} remains
in the largest island, could possibly have been the work of the same
masons.

The style of building is the same in the Duns of Aran; in Staig Fort,
in Kerry; in the Greenan of Aileach, in Donegal; and in general in any
of the primitive _cahirs_ or _cashels_, wherever they exist in
Ireland; nor is there any material difference between these and the
similar structures to be found in Wales--such as the Castell-Caeron
over Dolbenmaen, in Caernarvonshire.

The same Irish word, Saor, (pronounced Seer,) originally signified
both a carpenter and a mason; and in an Irish poem, at least eight
hundred and fifty years old, we have a list of the ancient builders,
who erected the principal strongholds of pagan times in Ireland: such
as--"Casruba, the high-priced cashel-builder, who employed quick axes
to smoothen stones;" and "Rigriu and Garvon, son of Ugarv, the
cashel-builders of Aileach," and "Troiglethan, who sculptured images,
and was the rath-builder of the Hill of Tara;" while every one
familiar with the native Irish traditions has heard the name of
Grubban-Saor, to whose skill half the ancient castles of Ireland were,
without any reference to chronology, supposed to owe their strength.

An Irish antiquary of the seventeenth century, who enjoyed the
friendship of Sir James Ware, writes as if he believed that the
ancient pagan Irish understood the use of cement, although, as he
confesses, no vestige of stone and mortar work by them remained in his
day. But his mode of arguing, as it will be perceived, is very
inconclusive. After enumerating several of the ancient raths and
cashels of Ireland, he writes: "We have evidence of their having been
built like the edifices of other kingdoms of the times in which they
were built; and why should they not? for there came no colony into
Erin but from the eastern world, as from Spain, etc.; and it would be
strange if such a deficiency of intellect should mark the parties who
came into Ireland, as that they should not have the sense to form
their residences and dwellings after the manner of the countries from
which they went forth, or through which they travelled." [See
Introduction to Dudley Mac Firbis's great "Book of Genealogies,"
translated in "O'Curry's Lectures," pp. 222, etc.] It is quite certain
that the early colonizers of Ireland, to whom Mac Firbis thus alludes,
were a portion of that great Celtic wave of population which passed
from East to West over Europe, leaving the same earthern mounds and
cyclopean stone structures behind as monuments wherever they went; but
it is equally certain, that if these ancient colonies visited Assyria,
and Egypt, and Greece in their peregrinations, as Mac Firbis believed
they did, they did not carry with them Assyrian, or Egyptian, or
Grecian masonry or architecture into Ireland. The raths and cashels
which they constructed were exceedingly simple in their character, and
in very few indeed of the former is there the slightest grace of
stonework to be discovered. Caves were very often formed under the
raths; and Mac Firbis states that under the rath of Bally O Dowda, in
Tireragh, he himself had seen "nine smooth stone cellars," and that
its walls were still of the height of "a good cow-keep." Nor were the
contents of the ancient Irish dwellings less simple than the buildings
themselves; for we find by the Brehon Laws that "the Seven valuables
of the house of a chieftain were--a caldron, vat, goblet, mug, reins,
horse-bridle, and pin;" the first-mentioned articles indicating
clearly the usages of hospitality, which always formed the
predominating institution of the Irish. The same book of Brehon Laws
refers to "a house with four doors, and a stream through the centre,
to be provided for the sick"--such, apparently, being the ideas at
that time of what a hospital should be.

{783}

It is hard to say when the popular notion originated which attributes
the ancient raths and mounds to the Danes. It is quite dear that Mac
Firbis knew very well they were not Danish, though the idea must have
prevailed when he wrote, (A.D. 1650;) for his contemporary, Lord
Castlehaven, speaks of withdrawing his troops, during the civil war of
1645, within one of the "Danish forts," which were so numerous in the
country; and such was the fashion of attributing all our antiquities
to a people who had impressed the memory of the nation with such
terrible and indelible traditions of themselves, that even Archdeacon
Lynch, the author of "Cambrensis Eversus," supposes the Danes to have
been the builders of the round towers. Dr. Molyneux, who wrote toward
the close of the same century, treats us to a whole book about "the
Danish Forts and Mounds;" but we know perfectly well that the Danes of
Ireland resided only in the seaport towns and their vicinities, and
had no dwellings, and consequently no raths or mounds in the interior
of the country.

Besides the earthen and stone forts, which, it must be remembered,
were inhabited in the early Christian as well as in the pagan times,
and down to a period which it is impossible now to define, we have
several remains of the early Irish habitations, called _cranogues_.
These were small stockaded and generally artificial islands, in the
smaller lakes, and were only accessible by means of boats, ancient
specimens of which, hewn out of a single tree, have been found in the
vicinity of the cranogues in recent times. Some of these cranogues are
known to have been occupied in comparatively modern times; and the
strong timber stakes by which they were generally surrounded are, in a
few instances, still found singularly fresh, and with indications of
having been connected by a strong framework.

Of the state of the building arts in Ireland during the early
Christian period we are enabled to form a tolerably accurate idea,
both by the large number of remains still existing, and by the notices
on the subject which we find in historical documents. Many of the very
earliest Christian edifices devoted to religion in Ireland were built
of stone; but it is clear, nevertheless, that the national fashion was
to construct them of timber; and this fashion the Irish had in common
with the Britons, or, we should rather say, with the Celtic nations
generally. Strabo says the houses of the Gauls were constructed of
poles and wattle work; and we learn from Bede, that among the Britons
building with stone was regarded as a characteristic Roman practice.
We know that both in Ireland and Britain there was a national
prejudice in favor of the custom of employing timber to construct
their churches. The first three churches erected in Ireland--those,
namely, constructed by St. Palladius in his unsuccessful mission
immediately before St Patrick--were of oak. Long after this time, in
the sixth century, St. Columba lived in a wooden cell in the island of
Hy, as his biographer, St. Adamnan, relates; and the use of timber for
their religious edifices was much in favor with the Columbian monks
wherever they settled. So late as the year 1142, when St. Malachy was
building the church of the famous Cistercian Abbey of Mellifont, in
Louth, he received some opposition from one of the local magnates,
because he had undertaken to erect it in an expensive and solid manner
of stone; the argument of this person being, that "they were Scots,
not Frenchmen," and that a wooden oratory in the old Irish fashion
would have sufficed.

It is a curious circumstance connected with this Abbey of Mellifont,
that it is the only Irish edifice of a date older than the
Anglo-Norman period in the ruins of which Dr. Petrie discovered any
bricks to have been used; and we know that it was erected by monks
whom St. Malachy had sent to study in the monastery of St. Bernard, in
France; whence the allusion to {784} Frenchmen made by the Irishman
who had objected to the style of the building. Still it is plain that
the ecclesiastical edifices of stone were very numerous in the country
at that very time; for a few years after St. Gelasius, the Archbishop
of Armagh, caused a limekiln of vast dimensions to be constructed, in
order, as the annalists say, to make lime for the repairs of the
churches of Armagh which had been allowed to fall into decay.

The primitive wooden churches were, at least in some instances,
constructed of planed boards, and were thatched with reeds, the walls
being also frequently protected by a covering of reeds, for which, in
later times, a sheeting of lead was sometimes substituted. This use of
lead sheeting became very general in England; but we may presume that
it was employed in comparatively few cases in Ireland. Sometimes,
instead of boards or hewn timber, wattles were employed, and these
were plastered with mud, the wattles being formed of strong twigs
interlaced. We shall presently see that the use of wattles for
building purposes was in vogue in Ireland up to comparatively modern
times. It is stated in the life of St. Patrick, that when that apostle
visited Tyrawley, in the county of Sligo, finding that timber was not
abundant, he erected a church of mud--so ancient is the custom of
employing that material for building in Ireland--a material, however,
which never could be rendered as suitable for the purpose in our moist
climate, as it is found to be in some of the southern portions of
Europe.

From the very introduction of Christianity, we repeat, stone and
mortar were frequently employed for the building of churches in
Ireland. A building of this description was always called in Irish
_Damhliag_, a word literally signifying "stone church." This term is
still preserved in the name of Duleek in the county of Meath, where
the old stone church so called, and which is supposed, on good
authority, to have been the very first such edifice erected in
Ireland, is still in good preservation; it was built by St. Kienan, a
disciple of St. Patrick, who died in 490; and its age is thus
established beyond any doubt. The stone building, or _Damhliag_, as
Dr. Petrie has remarked, is always latinized by the old Irish writers
_templum, ecclesia_, or _basilica_; while the wooden building is
simply called oratorium.

The ancient Irish churches are almost invariably small, seldom
exceeding 80 feet in length, and not usually being more than 60 feet.
The great church or cathedral of Armagh was originally 140 feet long;
but this was almost a solitary exception. The smaller churches are
simple oblong quadrangles, while in the larger ones there is a second
and smaller quadrangle at the east end, which was the chancel or
sanctuary, and which is separated from the nave by a large
semicircular arch. The entrance door was always originally in the west
end, and square-headed, the top lintel being generally formed of a
single very large flat stone; but in every instance the square-headed
western doorway was in process of time built up, and another doorway,
in the pointed style, opened in the south wall, near its western
extremity. The windows are extremely small, and very few, generally
not more than three, two of which are in the sanctuary, and all being
in the south wall; they are frequently triangular-headed, formed by
two flat stones leaning against each other; and it is probable that in
many cases they were never glazed. The sides of the doorways and
windows are inclined, in the manner of the cyclopean buildings--a
style of architecture with which they have more than one point in
common; for enormous stones are frequently used, the single stone
being made to form both faces of the wall. Polygonal stones are
employed, without any attempt to build in courses; and even flat
stones are often placed at angles, when, with the aid of very little
skill, they might have {785} been placed horizontally; while another
singular feature often to be observed in the oldest Irish stone
churches is, that the side walls and ends are built up independently,
and not bound together at the corners by any interlapping stones. All
these peculiarities are to be found, in a very marked degree, in the
extremely curious specimens of seventh and eighth century buildings in
the South Islands of Arran; and, with the exception of some Christian
_cloghanes_, and some stone-roofed oratories like those near Dingle,
all these early Christian edifices have been built with lime cement.

From the rudeness of the masonry in the buildings of the early
Christian period, a very curious argument has been adduced in favor of
the Pagan origin of the Round Towers. Some persons, in fact, do not
hesitate to argue that, as the Round Towers frequently exhibit a
better style of masonry than the ruined churches in their
neighborhood, they must have been erected by some _earlier_ race of
builders, thus adopting the very opposite to the correct and natural
conclusion which the premises would suggest. Such persons must have a
very misty idea of Irish history; they do not appear to be aware that
there is no country in Europe, except Greece and Rome, of which the
ancient history can boast of such a clear and consecutive series of
written and traditional annals as that of Ireland. This is the
acknowledged opinion of the most learned investigators. There is,
then, no room whatever for any such conjectural race or epoch as that
which the theory in question would suppose in Irish history; there is
no room for such wild hypotheses as may be framed, for instance, to
account for the remains of extinct civilized races in the interior of
North America. Any one who has the singularly distinct chain of
ancient Irish chronicles present to his mind must be aware of this
fact, and must know perfectly well that there was no mysterious
unknown race in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity who
could have built the round towers--even if it were probable that such
a race would have built these, and left no other fragment of stone and
mortar work in the land! As to the disparity sometimes to be observed
in the masonry of the towers and the ancient churches beside them, it
can be explained without any such absurd hypothesis. It is clear from
the mouldings of the windows, and other architectural details, and
even from the statements of our annalists, that some of the Round
Towers are not older than the eleventh or twelfth century, and
consequently their masonry might well be superior to that of churches
built some four or five hundred years before them. But, even when the
builders were contemporary, they were not such dull craftsmen as not
to have understood perfectly well that a more careful style of
workmanship was required in an edifice which they should carry to a
height of 120 or 130 feet than in one of which the walls would not
exceed 10 or 14 feet in elevation. In fact, a little consideration
must show any enlightened man that the theory to which we have
referred is utterly untenable.

Mr. Parker, a high authority on questions of architectural antiquity,
has, in his valuable series of papers on the subject in the
"Gentleman's Magazine," thrown considerable light on Irish mediaeval
architecture. One point, of which he has been decidedly the first
observer, is, that all the details of an ancient building in Ireland
seldom or never belong to the period at which the building was,
according to record, erected. This is an extremely carious fact; and
there can be no doubt of Mr. Parker's accuracy on the point; but it
appears to us that he invariably finds his remark verified in castles
and abbeys of the Anglo-Norman period in Ireland. To what, then, is
the peculiarity to be attributed? Could the architects have been
Irish, and could they have adopted their principles from the study of
older edifices {786} in England? On this point we are not aware that
he comes to any conclusion; but, in describing the interesting details
of Cormac's Chapel, on the Rock of Cashel--one of the most valuable
remains of mediaeval architecture in the empire, and which was built
some fifty years before the Anglo-Norman invasion--he says, "It is
neither earlier nor later in style than buildings of the same date in
England; and with the exception of a few particulars, agrees in detail
with them." From this we may conclude, that before the arrival of the
Anglo-Normans the Irish architects were fully up to the contemporary
state of their art, though subsequently the Anglo-Irish fell into the
anachronisms which Mr. Parker so frequently points out.

When Henry II. resolved on spending the Christmas of 1171 in Dublin,
there was no building in that old capital of the Ostmen sufficiently
spacious to accommodate his court; and a pavilion was accordingly
constructed for the purpose of plastered wattles, in the Irish
fashion, on a site at the south side of the present Dame street This
mode of constructing houses must have been very convenient in times
when the face of a country was liable every other year to be
devastated by war, and when it would have been folly to erect a
habitation intended to be permanent. The destruction of all the
dwellings in a territory at that time, was not quite so ruinous a
catastrophe as it might seem to us, especially as it was a very usual
thing to have the granaries under ground.

The employment of wattles for one purpose or other, in the
construction of buildings, appears to have been very long retained in
Ireland; and they seem to have been constantly used by the masons as
centering in the building of arches, as may be seen from an
examination of any of the ruined abbeys or castles throughout the
country, where the impression of the interwoven twigs will always be
found in the mortar of the vaulted roofs and arches. Mr. Parker
appears to have been particularly struck by this circumstance, which,
however, is familiar to every Irish antiquary; but he tells us that he
has found the same thing in a few instances in England.

A French gentleman, who travelled through Ireland in 1644, has left us
a curious account of the mode of constructing their habitations
employed at that time by the rural population. He writes: "The towns
are built in the English fashion, but the houses in the country are in
this manner: two stakes are fixed in the ground, across which is a
transverse pole, to support two rows of rafters on the two sides,
which are covered with leaves and straw. The cabins are of another
fashion. There are four walls the height of a man, supporting rafters,
over which they thatch with straw and leaves; they are without
chimneys, and make the fire in the middle of the hut, which greatly
incommodes those who are not fond of smoke."

The writer goes on to describe the fortified domiciles of the gentry.
He says: "The castles or houses of the nobility consist of four walls
extremely high, thatched with straw; but, to tell the truth, they are
nothing but square towers without windows, or, at least, having such
small apertures as to give no more light than there is in a prison;
they have little furniture, and cover their room with rushes, of which
they make their beds in summer, and of straw in winter; they put the
rushes a foot deep on their floors, and on their windows, and many of
them ornament the ceilings with branches." (The Tour of M. De la
Boullaye le Gouz.)

This description is applicable to those numerous, solitary, and gloomy
buildings called castles, the ruins of which are so conspicuous in
every part of the country, and a considerable number of which were
erected by the Undertakers, in the reign of James I.; while it must be
confessed that the mode of constructing the hovels of the peasantry,
as described in the preceding extract, has not undergone much
improvement, up to the present day, in many parts of Ireland.

------

{787}


Translated from the Spanish.

PERICO THE SAD; OR, THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.



CHAPTER XIII.

A tempestuous night covered the sky with flying clouds, which were
rushing further on to discharge their torrents. Sometimes they
separated in their flight, and the moon appeared between them, mild
and tranquil, like a herald of concord and peace in the midst of the
strife.

In the short intervals, during which this placid light illumined earth
and heaven, a pale and emaciated man might have been seen making his
way along a solitary road. The uncertainty of his manner, his
apprehensive eyes, and the agitation of his face, would have shown
clearly that he was a fugitive.

A fugitive indeed! for he fled from inhabited places; fled from his
fellow-men; fled from human justice; fled from himself and from his
own conscience. This man was an assassin, and no one who had seen him
fleeing, as the clouds above were fleeing before the invisible force
which pursued them, would have recognized the honorable man, the
obedient son, the loving husband and devoted father of a few days
since, in this miserable being, now fallen under the irremissible
sentence of the law of expiation.

Yes, this man was Perico, not seeking a peace now and for ever lost,
but fleeing from the present and in dread of the future.

He had passed days of despair and nights of horror in the most
solitary places, sustaining himself on acorns and roots; shrinking
from the light of day, which accused, and from the eyes of men, that
condemned him. But no darkness could hide the images that were always
before him, no silence awe their clamors. His unhappy sister; his
disconsolate mother; the bereaved old man, his father's friend,
haunted his vision; the reprobation of his honorable race oppressed
his soul; and more appalling than all these, the solemn, mournful, and
warning note of the passing bell, which he had heard calling to Heaven
for mercy upon his victim, sounded continually in his ears. In vain
pride insinuated, through its most seductive organ, worldly honor,
that he had, and that not to vindicate himself would have been a
reproach; that the injuries were greater than the reprisal.

A voice which the cries of passion had silenced, but which became more
distinct and more severe in proportion as they, like all that is
human, sank and failed--the eternal voice of conscience, said to him,
"O that thou hadst never done it!"

There came, borne upon the wind, an extraordinary sound, now hoarser,
now failing and fainter, as the gusts were more or less powerful. What
could it be? Everything terrifies the guilty soul. Was it the roar of
the wind, the pipe of an organ, or a voice of lamentation? The nearer
Perico approached it, the more inexplicable it seemed. The road the
unhappy man was following led toward the point from whence the sound
proceeded. He reaches it, and his terror is at his height when, unable
to distinguish anything--for a black cloud has covered the moon--he
hears directly above his bead the portentous wail, so sad, so vague,
so awful!

{788}

At this moment the clouds are broken, and over all the moonlight
falls, clear and silvery, like a mantle of transparent snow. Every
object comes out of the mystery of shadows. He sees _reija_ asleep in
its valley like a white bird in its nest. He lifts his eyes to
discover the cause of the sound. O horror! Upon five posts he sees
five human heads! From these proceed the doleful lamentation, a
warning from the dead to the living. [Footnote 185]

  [Footnote 185: Various witnesses have testified to this frightful
  phenomenon, which is naturally explained, the sound being caused by
  the wind passing through the throat, month, and ears of heads placed
  as located above.]

Perico starts back aghast, and perceives, for the first time, that he
is not alone. A man is standing near one of the posts. He is tall and
vigorous, and his bearing is manly and erect. He is dressed richly
after the manner of contrabandists. His bronzed face is hard, bold,
and calm. He holds his hat in his hand, inclining uncovered before
these posts of ignominy a head which never was uncovered in human
respect; for it is that of an outlaw, of a man who has broken all ties
with society, and respects nothing in the world. But this man,
although impious, believes in God, and although criminal, is a
Christian, and is praying.

When from an energetic and indomitable nature, emancipated from all
restrain, there issue a few drops of adoration, as water oozes from a
rock, what do you call it unbelievers? Is it superstitious fear? To
this man fear is a word without a meaning. Is it hypocrisy? Only the
heads of five dead men witness it. Is it moral weakness? He has
strength of soul unknown in society, where all lean upon something; he
stands alone. Is it a remembrance of infancy, a tribute to the mother
who taught him to pray?

There exists no such memory for the abandoned orphan, who grew up
among the savage bulls he guarded.

What is it then that bends his neck and detains him to pray in the
presence of the dead?

After some moments the man concluded his prayer, replaced his hat, and
turning to Perico said,

"Where are you going, sir?"

Perico neither wished nor was able to answer. A vertigo had seized
him.

"Where are you going, I say?" again asked the unknown.

Perico remained silent.

"Are you dumb?" proceeded the questioner, "or is it because you do not
choose to answer? If it is the last," he added, pointing to his gun,
"here is a mouth which obtains replies when mine fails."

Perico's situation rendered him too desperate for reflection, and the
brand of cowardice which had been stamped upon his forehead, still
burned like a recent mark of the ignominious iron. He therefore
answered instantly, seizing his firelock.

"And here is another that replies in the tone in which it is
questioned."

The intentions of the unknown were not hostile, nor had he any idea of
carrying out his threat, though he did not lack the courage to do it.
Another so daring as he did not tread the soil of Andalucia. But the
arrogance of the poor worn youth pleased instead of offending him.

"Comrade," he said, "I always like to take off my hat before drawing
my sword, but it suits me to know with whom I speak and whom I meet on
the road. You must have courage to be walking here; for they say that
Diego and his band are in this neighborhood, and you know, for all
Spain knows, who Diego is; where he puts his eye he puts his ball. The
leaves tremble upon the trees at sight of him, and the dead in their
graves at the sound of his name."

All this was said without that Andalucian boastfulness, so grotesquely
exaggerated in these days, but with the naturalness of conviction, and
the serenity of one who states a simple truth.

"What do I care for Diego and his band?" exclaimed Perico, not with
bravado, but with the most profound dejection.

{789}

As with failing voice he pronounced these words, he tottered and
leaned his head upon his gun.

"What has taken you? What is the matter?" asked the stranger, noticing
his weakness.

Perico did not reply, for so great was his exhaustion and such the
effect of his recent emotions that he fell down senseless.

The unknown knelt down beside him and lifted his head. The moon shone
full upon that face, beautiful notwithstanding its mortal paleness,
and the traces of passion, anguish, and grief which marred it.

"He is dead," said the stranger to himself, placing his rough hand
upon Perico's heart. The heart which, a few days before, was as pure
as the sky of May. "No," he continued, "he is not dead, but will die
here, like a dog, if he is not taken care of."

And he looked at him again, for he felt awakening in his heart that
noble attraction which draws the strong toward the weak, the powerful
toward the helpless; for let skeptics say what they will, there is a
spark of divinity in the breast of every human creature. He rose to
his feet and whistled.

He is answered by the sound of a brisk gallop, and a beautiful young
horse, with arched neck and rolling mane, comes up and stops before
his master, turning his fine head and brilliant eyes as if to offer
him the stirrup.

The unknown raises the inanimate Perico in his robust arms, throws him
across the horse, springs up beside him, presses his knees gently to
the animal's flanks, and the noble creature darts away, gayly and
lightly, as if unconscious of the double weight.



CHAPTER XIV.

In a solitary hostel, standing like a beggar beside the highway, the
innkeeper and his wife were seated before their fire, in the dull
tranquillity of persons as accustomed to the alternations of noisy
life by day and complete isolation by night as the inhabitants of
marshy places are to their intermittent fevers.

"May evil light on that hard-skulled sailor who took it into his head
that there must be a new world, and never stopped till he ran against
it," said the woman. "Had not the king already cities enough in this?
What good has it done? Taken our sons off there, and sent us the
epidemic. Do say, Andres, and don't sit sleeping there like a mole, if
it has been of any other use."

"Yes, wife, yes," answered the innkeeper, half' opening his eyes, "the
silver comes from there."

"Plague take the silver!" exclaimed the woman.

"And the tobacco," added the husband, slowly and lazily, again closing
his eyes,

"A curse upon the tobacco!" said the wife angrily. "Do you think, you
unfeeling father, that the silver or the tobacco are worth the lives
they cost and the tears? Son of my soul! God knows what will become of
him in that land where they kill men like chinches, and where
everything is venomous, even the air!"

They heard at this moment a peculiar whistle. The innkeeper, springing
to his feet, caught up the light and ran toward the door, exclaiming,
"The captain!"

As he presented himself on the threshold, the rays of the lamp fell
upon a man on horseback, with another man that looked like a corpse
lying across the horse in front of him.

"Help me take this fellow down," said the rider, in the rough tone of
a man of few words.

The innkeeper handed the lamp to his wife, who had approached, and
made haste to obey.

"Mercy to us! A dead man!" said she. "For the love of the Blessed
Mother, sir, do not leave him in our house!"

{790}

"He is not dead," said the horseman, "he is sick; nurse him up--that
is what women ore good for. Here is money to pay for the cure."

Saying this, he threw down a piece of gold, and disappeared, the
resounding and measured gallop of his horse dying away gradually in
the distance.

"If this is not a cool proceeding!" grumbled Martha. "What will you
bet that he, with his own hands, has not put the man in this state?
and he takes himself off and leaves him on ours! 'You cure him!' as if
it were nothing to cure a man who is dead or dying! As if this inn
were an hospital! The bully thinks he has only to command, as if he
were the king!"

"Hush!" exclaimed the innkeeper, alarmed, "_will_ you be still,
long-tongue! Talk that way of Diego! Women are the very devil! What is
the use of grumbling, since you know there is nothing for it but to do
as these people tell us! Besides, this is a work of charity, so let's
be about it."

They prepared, as well as they could, a bed in a garret.

"He has no sign of blow or wound," said Andres, as he was undressing
the patient; "so you see, wife, it is a sickness like any other."

"Look, look, Andres!" exclaimed Martha; "he has the scapular of our
Lady of Carmel around his neck."

And as if the sight or influence of the blessed object had awakened in
her all the gentle sentiments of Christian humility, or as if the
sacred precept, "Thy neighbor as thyself," uttered by the brotherhood
in united devotion, had resounded clearly, she began to exclaim: "You
were right, Andres, it is a work of charity to assist him, poor
fellow! How young he is, and how forsaken! His poor mother! Come,
come, Andres, what are you doing, standing there like a post? Go!
hurry! bring me some wine to rub his temples; and kill a hen, for I am
going to make him some broth."

"So it is," soliloquized Andres, as he went out--"at first, wouldn't
have him in the house; now she will turn the house out of the windows
for him. That's the way with women. It is hard to understand them."

On the following night, a man of evil face and repugnant aspect came
to the inn. This man had been in the penitentiary, and was nicknamed
the convict.

"God be with you, sir," said the innkeeper, with more fear than
cordiality, "what might be your pleasure?"

"A whim of the captain's, curse him! for haven't I come to ask after
the sick, like the porter of a convent?"

"He is not doing very well," answered the innkeeper; "he is in a
raging fever, is out of his mind, and talks of a murder he has
done--of dead men's heads."

"Ho! so then he is a man that can handle arms," said the convict.
"Let's have a look at him."

They mounted to the garret, and the innkeeper continued:

"All day long I have been in a cold sweat with fear. There have been
people in the house, and even soldiers--if they had heard him!"

The convict, who had been examining the delicate and wasted form of
Perico, interrupted with a movement of disdain.

"Well, if he makes too much noise for you, quarter him upon the king."
[Footnote 186]

  [Footnote 186: Put him into the street.]

"No, indeed!" cried Martha, "poor unfortunate! I have a son in America
who may be at this very hour in the same condition, abandoned by every
one, and calling, as this one calls, for his mother. No, no, sir, we
shall not desert him. Neither Our Lady, whose scapular he wears, nor
I."

"Buy him sweetmeats," said the convict, and went down.

"What news?' he asked of the innkeeper.

"They say that a reward is to be offered for Diego's head."

{791}

"What?" asked the convict again, with quick and unusual interest. The
innkeeper repeated what he had said. The convict considered a moment,
and then continued,

"Where do they think we are?"

"Near Despenaperros."

"Are they after us?"

"Yes, there is a cavalry company at Sevilla, one of infantry at
Cordoba, and another of the mountain soldiery at Utrera."

"There will be some shoes worn out before they see our faces, and if
they do get to see them it will cost them dear."

"Yes, yes," Andres replied; "we know that whoever puts himself in
Diego's way may as well look for his grave; but then--there may be so
many of them . . ."

"Perhaps you would like to get a crack of my fist on your bugle?" said
the bandit.

"Not at all," said Andres, retreating a step or two.

"Put more ballast in your tongue then--and hurry up with the bread
--quick now!"

Andres hastened to obey. The bandit was going away when he heard
Martha's voice calling after him.

"It slipped my mind--you take this money," she said, handing him the
piece of gold. "Give it to the captain, and tell him that what I do
for this lad I do for charity, and not for interest."

"I shall be sure to give him such a reason. He accepts 'No' neither
when he says give, nor when he says take; but to settle it between
you, I will keep the money;" and setting spurs to his horse, he
disappeared.

"You have done a wise thing!" said the innkeeper impatiently. "Will
the money, you foolish good-for-nothing, be better in the hands of
that big thief than in ours? Women!--ill hap to them! Only the devil
understands them."

"I understand myself and God understands me," said the good woman,
returning to the garret.



CHAPTER XI.

The care of the innkeeper's wife and the youth and robust constitution
of Perico vanquished the fever. At the end of a fortnight he was able
to rise.

Perico evinced all his gratitude to Martha in a manner more heartfelt
than fluent.

"You must not thank me" said the good woman, "for truly, the face I
put on when I saw you brought was not one of welcome; but I have taken
a liking to you because I see that you are a good son and a good
Christian."

Perico hung his head in deep grief and humiliation. His physical
weakness had deadened in him the blind and furious impulse which had
exalted him, as such impulse does sometimes exalt gentle and timid
natures to a point past the limit which strong-minded and even violent
men respect.

All that effervescence which caused such a surging of his passions, as
gas causes the juice of the grape to ferment, had ceased, as the foam
subsides upon the wine, leaving reflection, which, without diminishing
the greatness of his wrongs, condemned his method of redressing them.

All the horror which the future inspired returned to Perico with
returning strength, and it was not lessened when Andres, taking the
occasion one day when his wife was about her work, said to him:

"My friend, now that you are recovered you must seek your living
somewhere else, for--the more friendship, the more frankness,
sir--when you were out of your head you talked of a murder you had
committed. If it is true, and they find you here, we shall suffer for
it, and that will not be right; the just ought not to pay for sinners;
well-regulated charity, let Martha, who pretends to know better, say
what she will, begins at home. Nobody but that pumpkin-headed wife of
mine is capable of sustaining that Christian charity begins with one's
neighbor. As to me, I tell you the truth, I want nothing to do with
justice, for she has a heavy hand."

{792}

Perico did not reply, but went with tearful eyes to take leave of
Martha. The good soul felt his departure, for she had become fond of
him. The memory of her son had attached Martha to the unfortunate
young man, and the memory of his own mother had drawn Perico toward
the woman who acted toward him a mother's part.

He took his gun, and was going out when he met the convict.

"Which way?" said the robber. "Do you clear out in this fashion,
without so much as May God reward you! to the compassionate soul who
picked you up? This isn't the right thing, comrade. Besides, where can
you go hereabouts? Are you in a hurry to be put in the lock-up?"

Perico remained silent; he neither thought nor reasoned--had no will
of his own. "Courage! and come along," proceeded the convict. "Here we
are taking more trouble to help you than you will take to let yourself
be helped." Perico followed him mechanically.

"Look, Martha," said Andres, seeing Perico at a distance in company
with the robber, "look at your pet--and what a jewel he is, to be
sure! There he goes with the convict."

"And what of it?" responded Martha. "I tell you, Andres, that he is a
good son and a good Christian."

"An impostor and a vagabond, that has eaten up my hens--and you see
where he is going, and yet say that he is good! The devil only
understands women!"

Perico and the convict, making their way through thickets and
difficult places, came at last to an elevation, upon which stood the
captain leaning on his gun, and guarding the slumbers of eight men,
who were lying around him on the slope. Near him grazed his beautiful
horse, which lifted its head from time to time to regard its master.

"Here is this young man," said the convict as they drew near.

Without changing his position, the captain slowly turned his eyes and
examined the new arrival from head to foot. His scrutiny finished, he
asked,

"Are you a fugitive from justice?"

Perico inclined his head, but did not answer.

"There is no cause for fear," proceeded his questioner, and presently,
in brief phrases, added,

"Men have fatal hours, and of these some are as red as blood and some
as black as darkness itself. One is enough to destroy a man, and turn
his heart to a stone which has neither pulse nor feeling, only weight.
He remains lost, for the past is past, and there is nothing to do but
bear it with pluck. Life is a fight, in which one must look before
him, like a brave man, and not behind, like a poltroon."

"I cannot do it," exclaimed Perico vehemently. "If you knew--"

The captain, with an imperative gesture, extended his arm to silence
him, and continued.

"Here, each one carries his own secrets within himself, a sealed
packet, without awakening in the others either curiosity or interest.
If you have nowhere to go, stay with us; here we defend all we have
left, our life. Mine I do not guard because I value it, but to keep it
from the headsman."

"But you rob?" said Perico.

"We must do something," responded the bandit, returning, like a
tortoise, into his hard and impenetrable shell.

Perico neither accepted nor refused the proposition, he remained
without volition, an inert body; chance disposed of his wretched
existence, as the winds dispose of the dry and heavy sands of the
desert.



{793}



CHAPTER XVI.

But while Perico, after the occurrences which we have related, was
dragging out a miserable existence among a band of criminals, what
became of the other individuals of this family? To what extremes had
they been carried by resentment, grief, despair, and revenge?

Pedro, from the fatal day on which he lost his son, had shut himself
in his own house with his sorrow. The parish priest and some of his
friends went from time to time to keep him company--not to console
him, that was impossible, but to talk with him about his trouble, like
those who relieve vessels of the bitter water of the sea, not to right
them but to keep them from sinking. They had tried to persuade him to
renew his intercourse with the family of Perico, but without success.

"No, no," he would answer on such occasions. "I have forgiven him
before God and men; but have to do with his people as though it had
not been, I cannot."

"Pedro, Pedro, that is not forgiveness," said the priest. "It is the
letter but not the spirit of the law."

"Father," replied the poor man, "God does not ask what is impossible."

"No, but what he requires is possible."

"Sir, you want me to be a saint, and I am not one; it is enough for me
to be a good Christian, and forgive. Have I molested them? Have I
sought justice? What more can I do?"

"Pedro, returning good for evil, wise men walk in peace."

"Mercy, mercy, father! why shave so close as to lay bare the brains?
God help and favor them; but each in his own house, and God with us
all."

Maria had hidden herself with her daughter in the retirement of her
cottage, covering the despair and shame of the latter with the sacred
mantle of maternal love, her only refuge from the unanimous
disapproval and condemnation which she justly merited. The unfortunate
victims, Anna and Elvira, remained alone, but sustained in their
immense affliction by their religion and their conscience. Many months
passed in this way. At length two Capuchins came to the village to
hold a mission. These missions were instituted for the conversion of
the wicked, the awakening of the luke-warm, the encouragement of the
good, and the consolation of the sorrowful.

The missionaries preached at night, and the church was filled with
people who came to hear the word of God, which teaches men to be pious
and humble.

The good Maria succeeded in persuading her daughter to go to the
missions, and Rita, hard, bitter, and selfish, in her shame and
desperation, found in them repentance, with tears for the past,
penance and humiliation for the present, and for the future the divine
hand, which lifts the fallen one, who, bathed in tears, and prostrate
in ashes, implores its help. One night the subject of the sermon was
the forgiveness of injuries. Magnificent theme! Holy and sublime
beyond all others! The earnest preacher knew how to improve it, and
the believing people how to understand it.

At the conclusion the good missionary knelt before the crucifix, and
with fervent zeal and ardent charity promised the Lord of mercy, in
the name of that multitude kneeling at his feet, that on the
succeeding night there should not be in the temple a single hard and
unreconciled heart. A burst of exclamations and tears confirmed the
promise of the devoted apostle.

The day which followed was one of peace and love, according to the
spirit of the evangel. The most deeply-rooted enmities were ended; the
most irreconcilable foes embraced each other in the streets; the
angels in heaven had cause for rejoicing.

Pedro went to see Anna. Terrible to the unhappy man was the entering
into that house. He approached Anna and embraced her in silence. The
afflicted mother shook, and tried in vain to overcome her emotion. But
when Pedro turned toward Elvira, as she stood wringing her thin hands,
worn to a shadow and bathed in tears--when {794} he pressed to his
paternal heart her whom he had looked upon and loved as a daughter,
all his grief broke forth in the cry: "Daughter! daughter! you and I
loved him!"

Rita, also, went to Anna's to beg for that which Pedro went to carry.
When she found herself in the presence of the mother-in-law she had
outraged, she fell upon her knees. "I," she exclaimed, beating her
breast, "have been the cause of all! I have not come to ask a
forgiveness I do not deserve, but to beg of you to reprimand without
cursing me." When she turned to Elvira, it was not enough to remain on
her knees, she bent her face to the floor, moaning amidst her sobs.
"Since you are an angel, forgive!"

Maria supported her prostrate child, and implored Anna with her looks
and tears. Anna and Elvira, without a word of reproach, raised and
embraced her who had done so much to injure them; striving all they
could from that day to reanimate her, for she was the most wretched of
the three, because the guilty one.

All the people looked with charity upon the woman who had sincerely
and publicly repented, for although the society called cultivated
finds in religious demonstrations another cause for vituperation,
adding to the condemnation of faults which it never forgets the
reproach of hypocrisy upon those who turn to God, the people, more
generous and more just, honor the open evidence of penitence and
humiliation. Therefore, when they saw Rita abase herself and weep,
their indignation was exchanged for compassion, and the _epithet_
"infamous!" for the pitiful words "poor child!"

This was because the common people, though they know not what
philanthropy means, know well, because religion teaches them, what is
Christian charity.



CHAPTER XVII.

To Perico, the life into which he found himself drawn by necessity,
and by the vigorous influence Diego exercised over him, was one of
misery; Diego also had been drawn into a life of crime by a terrible
misfortune; but having entered, he adopted it as a warrior does his
iron armor, without heeding either its hardness or its oppressive
weight. Perico followed his wicked companions while he detested them.
He was like the silver fish of some peaceful inland lake which, caught
by some fatal current, is carried away into the bitter and restless
waters of the sea, where it agonizes without the power to escape. At
times, when a crime was committed under his eyes, he wished in his
desperation to end his torments at once, by giving himself up to
justice; but shame, and want of energy to overcome it, held him back.
The others hated him, and surnamed him "The Sad," but he was sustained
by Diego's powerful protection. Diego felt attracted toward the man
whose life he had saved, and who was, he felt, good and honest. For
the rough and austere Diego was of a strong and noble nature that had
not yet descended to the lowest grade of evil, which is hatred of the
good.

In one of their raids, when the band had approached Tas Yentas, near
Alocaz, a spy arrived in breathless haste from Utrera, telling them
that a company of mountain soldiery had just left the latter place in
the direction of Tas Yentas, informed of their whereabouts by some
travellers they had lately pillaged.

They made haste to take refuge in an olive grove, but had hardly
entered it when they were surprised by a troop of cavalry. A deadly
contest then commenced, sustained by these men, who were fighting for
their lives with terrible bravery.

{795}

"Perico," said Diego, "now or never is the occasion to prove that you
do not eat your bread without earning it. This is a fair fight. At
them, if you are a man!"

On hearing these words, Perico, confused, and like a drunken man,
threw himself in the way of the balls, firing upon the poor
soldiers--men who were sacrificing everything for the good of society,
which, in its egotism, does not even thank them; for it happens to
them as to the confessors and doctors, who are laughed at in health,
and anxiously called upon when there is any danger. One of the bandits
was killed, two of the soldiers wounded, and a ball of Perico's, fired
at a great distance, killed the commander of the troop. The
consternation which followed this catastrophe gave the robbers an
opportunity to escape. They fled beyond Utrera, passed through the
haciendas of La Chaparra and Jesus-Maria, and arrived exhausted at
nightfall in Valobrega. This valley, not far from Alcalá is surrounded
by ridges and olive slopes. In the most retired part of it, on the
margin of a brook, are still standing the ruins of a Moorish castle
called Marchenilla. Men and horses threw themselves upon the turf at
the base of these solitary ruins. They quenched their thirst in the
brook, and when night set, in lighted a fire, and all except Diego and
Perico lay down to sleep.

"An evil day, Corso," said Diego, caressing his horse, which lowered
and then lifted his beautiful head as if to assent to his master's
words, and say to him, "What matter since I have saved you?"

"I treat thee shamefully, my son," continued the chief, who loved his
horse the more fondly because he loved no other creature. The horse,
as if he had understood, neighed gaily, and, rising on his hind feet,
balanced himself, and then dropped down upon all four beside his
master, presenting his head to be caressed.

"What will become of thee if l am taken?" said the robber, leaning his
head against the neck of the animal, which now stood motionless.

"Truly," said Diego, seating himself by the fire in front of Perico,
"it is to you we owe our escape to-day with so little loss."

"To me?" asked Perico surprised.

"Yes," answered the captain; "the troop was commanded by a brave
officer, who knew the country, and did not mean child's play. The son
of the Countess of Villaoran. He would have given us work if you had
not killed him."

"God have mercy on me!" exclaimed Perico, springing to his feet and
raising his clasped hands to heaven. "What are you saying? The son of
the countess was there, and I killed him?"

"What shocks you?" replied Diego.

"Perhaps you thought we were firing sugar-plums? Heavens!" he added
impatiently, "you exasperate me! One would take you for a travelling
player, with all your attitudes and extravagances. By all that's
sacred, the convict is right. You missed your vocation; instead of
choosing a life of freedom you should have turned friar. Come! keep
watch," he added, wrapping himself in his mantle, and lying down with
a stone under his head and his carbine between his knees.

His words were lost upon Perico. The unhappy man tore his hair and
cursed himself in his despair. He had killed the son of the mistress
and benefactress of his uncles, his own companion of childhood.



CHAPTER XVIII.

How vividly, during that gloomy night did the tranquil scenes of his
lost domestic happiness present themselves to Perico! And for what had
he exchanged them? His present frightful existence. All around him was
motionless. He saw in the sad monotony of the night the changeless
monotony of his misery; in the fire {796} burning before him, his
consuming conscience; and in the cold and impenetrable obscurity
beyond, his dark and cheerless future.

"Power of God!" he cried, "can I see and remember, and feel all this,
and yet live?"

The red and wavering flame threw from time to time a glare of light
across the strange wild forms of the ruins, presently leaving them in
deep shadow, appearing to take refuge within, as a dying memory
flashes up and then buries itself in the oblivion of the past. He
heard his own breathing exaggerated by the silence, he saw horrible
shapes in the obscurity. Fingers threatened him--eyes glared at
him--reproachful voices accused him. And no, he was not mistaken, by
the clearer light of the flames, now blown by the wind, he saw, beyond
a remnant of wall, a pair of hard black eyes fixed upon him. Startled,
and doubtful between the imaginary and the real, Perico did not know
whether he ought to put himself under the protection of heaven, by
making the sign of the cross, or to call for earthly help by giving
the signal of alarm.

Before he could act, there came from behind the stone ruin a ruin of
humanity; from behind the degradation of time, a wreck of human
degradation--an old, filthy, and disgusting gipsy woman. The tint of
the brown woollen skirts which covered her fleshless limbs blended
with that of the ruin; she wore about her neck a kerchief, and over
her faded locks a black cloth mantilla.

Perico was struck motionless as a stone, or as if the repulsive face
had been that of the Medusa.

"Don't be uneasy," said the vision, approaching, "there is nothing to
be afraid of. I have not come with bad motive, and you need not be on
the watch. I knew that you were here, and have caused it to be rumored
that you were making your way in the direction of the Sierra de Ronda,
and that people had seen you near Espera and Villa-Martin."

"But why have you come here?" exclaimed Perico, instinctively alarmed
at the aspect of the woman.

"To put you in the way of securing, at a stroke, a fortune that will
last you your lifetime," she replied.

"That which you are likely to offer does not inspire much confidence,"
said Perico.

"Why should I wish to harm you?" said the gipsy; "and as to my looks,
a poor cloak may cover a hail companion. I bring a treasure to your
very hands; you have only to extend them."

"A treasure," said Perico, in whom the word, instead of exciting
covetousness, only suggested the idea that the woman was mad, "a
treasure, and where is it?"

The old wretch, who saw in the question only what she expected to
find, avidity and thirst for gold, approached Perico as if she feared
the breath of night might intercept her words, and the anathemas of
heaven dissolve them in the air, and whispered in his ear, "In the
church."

Perico, utterly shocked, gave a step backward, but recovering himself,
rushed upon the woman like a tiger, and pushing her with all his
might, exclaimed, "Go!"

"I will not go," she said, unintimidated; "I came to speak with the
captain and the convict, and I will speak with them."

In his anguish lest she should do it, and to force her to go, Perico
drew a dagger and flashed its shining blade in the firelight. The
gipsy shrieked and the robbers woke.

"What is this?" shouted Diego; "what has happened? Perico, are you
going to kill a woman?"

"No, no, I do not want to kill her, only to drive her away."

"And because," said the old woman, "I have come so far, through danger
and fatigue, to put you in a way to leave this slavish life you are
leading, like the Blond of Espera, who committed one robbery so great
that he had enough to go beyond the seas and pass the rest of his days
in comfort."

{797}

The robbers grouped themselves around her; the convict presenting her
with a fragment of the wall as a seat.

"Do not listen! do not listen!" cried Perico, beside himself; "she
purposes a sacrilege!"

"Sir," said the convict to Diego, "oblige that agonizing priest to
hold his tongue, he is like the dog in the manger. Let this good woman
speak, and we shall know what she has to say--a regiment of horse
couldn't silence that dismal screech-owl."

Diego hesitated, but finally turned toward the hag, and Perico,
knowing then that hope was lost, for the bandit always followed his
first impulses, rushed away, running hither and thither among the
olives like a madman.

The gipsy had calculated everything, and her measures were well taken.
The great advantages so exaggerated, the difficulties so easily
overcome, the well-arranged precautions, upon which she amplified so
largely, produced their effect. The temptation which offers flowers
with one hand and with the other hides the thorns, convinced some and
seduced others.

All the plans were settled, and the hours and signals agreed upon, and
before the cocks, day's faithful sentinels, announced his coming, the
band was on its way to the solitary hacienda of "El Cuervo," and the
old witch crawling like a cunning and venomous snake to her den in the
wood of Alcalá, where in the depths of the earth she had conceived the
crime to which amidst darkness and ruins she had persuaded
evil-doers--the crime which was to be perpetrated in the temple of
God.



CHAPTER XIX.

Heavily passed the hours of the succeeding day to the idle guests of
El Cuervo. All Perico's representations and prayers had failed to
dissuade Diego from his impious design. Diego would never turn back;
and this stupid tenacity in pursuing a course which he knew to be
wrong, had cost him respect and honor, and was still to cost him
liberty and life. It had, moreover, at the instigation of the convict,
forced Perico, who had at last resolved to leave the band, to
accompany it on this atrocious expedition--that vile man suggesting to
Diego that there was no other means of preventing the _saint_ from
denouncing them.

All mounted and at midnight reached the ruined castle of Alcalá. Diego
whistled three times. Directly after, the gipsy, holding a dark
lantern, emerged from one of the vaults which open at the base of the
castle. They dismounted and followed her.

Perico would have escaped by flight from the evil pass in which he
found himself, but his companions surrounded him and dragged him with
them whither the woman led. She, after saluting the robbers in a
fawning voice, opened with a picklock the door of a rude court filled
with rubbish and timbers. From the court a postern leads into the
vestry, and through this the sacrilegious band entered the church, not
without dread and trembling even at the sound of their own footsteps.

What a sublime and tremendous spectacle--a deserted temple in the dead
of night! Under its influence even the purest and most pious souls
sink in profound awe and devotion; and no amount of incredulity is
sufficient to sustain the heart of him who presumes to violate it.

How immense appeared those shadowy naves! How far above them the
corbels, which, upheld by giants of stone, seemed almost lost in the
mysterious gloom of a sky without stars! There in a deep and lonesome
niche, stretched prostrate and mute, slept a cold effigy upon a
sepulchre. Its outlines were hardly discernible, but the very
obscurity seemed to lend them motion.

{798}

The high altar, still perfumed with the flowers and incense of the
morning, gleamed through the darkness. The altar, centre of faith,
throne of charity, refuge of hope, shelter of the defenceless,
exhaustless source of consolations, attracting all eyes, all steps,
all hearts. Before the tabernacle burned the lamp, solitary guardian
of the _sacrarium_--burned only to light it, for light is the
knowledge of God.

Holy and mysterious lamp--continual holocaust--aflame, tranquil like
hope--silent, like reverence--ardent, like charity--and enduring like
eternal mercy. The gleams and reflections of this light caught and
relieved the prominent points of the carvings and mouldings of the
gilded altarpiece, giving them the look of eyes keeping religious
watch. There was nothing to distract the mind, the perfect fixedness,
the unbroken stillness, effected as it were a suspension of life,
which was not sleep--which was not death, but the peacefulness of the
one and the deep solemnity of the other.

Such was the interior of the church of Alcalá when the spoilers
entered, lighted by the gipsy's lantern and dragging with them, by
main force, the unfortunate Perico.

"Let him go, and lock that door," said Diego.

"He will shout and betray us," said the others.

"Let him go, I say," retorted the captain. "What can he do?"

"He can shriek," answered Leon, who, assisted by the gipsy, was
stripping the high altar of the silver furniture which adorned it.

"Guard him, then," said the captain. Two of the men approached Perico.

"Off with your hats, for you are in God's house,"' he cried.

"Gag him," commanded the captain, Resistance was useless. They
instantly stopped his mouth with a handkerchief.

But notwithstanding the handkerchief, which suffocated him, when
Perico saw that Leon and the gipsy were breaking open the sacrarium he
made one desperate effort, and falling on his knees shouted,
"Sacrilege! Sacrilege!!!" Terrible was the voice that resounded in the
chapels, that echoed like thunder along the vaults, that awakened the
grand and sonorous instrument which on other occasions accompanies the
imposing _De profundis_ and the glorious _Te Deum_, and died away in
its metal tubes like a doleful wail. It caused a moment of cold terror
to those miserable wretches. Even Diego trembled!

"Have mercy, Lord, have mercy!" moaned the unhappy Perico.

"Make haste," said Diego, "the night is becoming clearer, and we may
be seen going out from here."

In fact, the clouds were breaking away, and a ray of the moon falling
at this moment through a lofty skylight kissed the feet of an image of
our Blessed Lady.

"Curse the moon!" exclaimed the gipsy; and frightened at seeing each
other by the clear and sudden illumination, they hastened the work of
spoliation. At last they left the church, and the gipsy, when she had
seen them ride away loaded with riches, turned and again hid herself
in the earth.

Before the sun brightened the _Giralda_ the robbers reached the
outskirts of _Seville_ with their booty, They left their horses in an
olive grove in charge of the convict, and each entered the city by a
different gate, reuniting in an out-of-the-way place which the gipsy
had indicated, where a silver-smith, who was in the secret, received,
weighed, and paid for the valuables. But when they returned to the
place where they had left the convict with the horses, they found it
deserted.

"That dog has sold us," said one.

"For what?" said Diego, "when his part, which is likely to be worth
more than his treason, is here."

"Perhaps he has seen people, and has gone to hide in El Cuervo," said
another.

They set out in the direction of the hacienda, avoiding roads and
beaten paths, and keeping within the shelter of the trees; but neither
there did they find the convict.

{799}

"My poor Corso!" said Diego, and a bitter tear shone for a moment in
his eyes; but instantly recovering himself he said, "We are sold: but,
courage! and let us save ourselves. Down the river; to the frontier;
to Ayamonte; to Portugal. Some day I shall find him, and on that day
he will wish he had never been born!"

They were leaving, when the gipsy presented herself to claim her share
of the money. All assailed her with questions respecting the
disappearance of the convict; but she knew nothing, and manifested
much uneasiness.

"You are not safe here, and ought to get away as soon as may be," she
said. "The elder son of the Countess of Villaoran has sworn to avenge
his brother. He has got a troop from the captain-general, and is out
after you. I am afraid he has surprised the convict. As for me I am
going, the ground burns under my feet."

"Oh! that it would burn you up!" exclaimed one.

"Oh! that it would swallow you!" exclaimed another.

The old hag silently disappeared among the olives, like a viper which
crawls away, leaving its venom in the bite it has inflicted.

"A robbery in the house of God!" said the first.

"The _sacrarium_ violated!" said the other.

"Come, hold your tongues!" shouted Diego. "Make the best of what can't
be undone. Let's be off."

But now they heard the tramp of horses, and Perico, who had been
stationed to watch, came hastily in and informed them that the convict
was coming. His arrival was greeted with shouts of joy. He said that
he had seen a troop of horsemen, and had hidden himself; that in order
to return he had been obliged to make large circuits. "But, now," he
added, "we have no time to lose, they are on our track. Here, captain,
is Corso, I have taken good care of him for you; I know how fond of
him you are."

Diego joyfully caressed the noble creature vowing within himself never
again to be separated from him.

They hastened their departure, when, suddenly, before them, behind
them, above their heads, resounded a formidable demand, "Surrender to
the king!"

They were surrounded by a party of cavalry. Two pistols were pointed
at Diego's breast, and a man held the bridle of his horse. Diego cast
his eyes around him with no feigned composure! Knowing the ability of
the horse, which he had trained to this end, he drew his dagger with
the quickness of light, and cut the hands which held the reins,
pressed his knees strongly against the animal's sides, and, caressing
his neck, cried, "Hey! Corso, save your master!"

The noble and intelligent creature made one effort, but fell back upon
his haunches powerless. He was hamstrung!

Diego comprehended the blow, and knew the hand that had dealt it.
Frantic with rage, he sprang to the ground, but the traitor had
disappeared among the troop which crowded the pass. They took Diego,
who made no useless resistance. As they left the defile, the bandit
turned his head, and cast a last look upon the horse, that, always
immovable, followed him with his large liquid eyes.

The soldiers disarmed the bandits, and tied their arms behind their
backs. "Which is the one?" asked the Count of Villaoran when he saw
them together--"which is the one that killed my brother?"

The robbers were silent at a look from Diego, who, though a prisoner
and bound, still awed them.

"Which was it?" asked the count again, in a voice choked with rage.

"It was I," said Perico.

The count turned toward the drooping youth, who had not before
attracted his notice; but when he fixed his eyes upon him a cry of
horror escaped his lips.

{800}

"You! Perico Alvareda! Iniquity without name! Perversity without
example! Poor Anna! wretched mother that bore you! Unfortunate little
ones! Unhappy Rita! Know, infamous man," continued the count with
vehemence, "that your wife has worked with incessant zeal and activity
to procure your pardon. She was always at the feet of the judges.
Ventura forgave you before he died. Pedro has forgiven you. My poor
brother was the zealous and tireless agent of your friends. He
obtained your pardon of the king. All were anxiously seeking you, and
he more than all the rest, and I--would to God I had never found you!"

Diego, who saw the immense grief which the coldness and pallor of
death painted upon the changing countenance of Perico, and noticed
that he was tottering, said to the count:

"Sir, do you see that you are killing him?"

"I will not anticipate the executioner," answered the count, mounting
his horse.

"Courage!" murmured Diego in the ear of the sinking Perico. "Look at
us. We are all going to die, and we are all serene."

They entered Seville amidst the maledictions of the populace,
horrified by their recent crimes. But the indignation with which the
crowd saw the vile traitor who had sold his companions, walking among
them free, was beyond measure.

This traitor was the convict, who by betraying the others had bought
his own pardon, and obtained the reward promised to the person who
should secure the arrest of the notorious robber Diego, who had so
long laughed at the efforts of his pursuers.



CHAPTER XX.

The prison of Seville was at that time badly situated, in a narrow
street in the most central part of the city. It was an ill-looking
structure, scaly and mean; wanting in its style the dignity of legal
authority and the outward respect which humanity owes to misfortune,
even when it is criminal. A few steps from this centre of hardened
wickedness and beastly degradation the street ends in the grand
_plaza_ of _San Francisco_--an irregular oblong area, bounded by those
edifices which make it the most imposing plaza of the famed deanery of
_Andalucia_, On the right are the chapter-houses whose exquisite
architecture renders them in the eyes of both Sevillans and strangers
the finest ornaments of the city. On the left, forming a projecting
angle, stands the regular and severe edifice of the _Audiencia_, the
tribunal to which justice gives all power. Surmounting it, like a
signal of mercy, is its clock--ten minutes too slow; venerable
illegality, which gives ten minutes more of life to the criminal
before striking the cruel hour named for his execution. Thus all the
laws and customs of ancient Spain have the seal of charity. Ten
minutes, to him who is passing tranquilly along the road of life, are
nothing; but to him who is about to die, they are priceless. Upon the
threshold of death, ten minutes may decide his sentence for eternity.
Ten minutes may bring an unhoped-for but possible pardon. But even
though these considerations, spiritual and temporal, did not exist;
though this impressive souvenir of our forefathers were nothing more
than the grant of ten minutes of existence to him who is about to die,
it would still prove that, even to their most severe decrees, our
ancestors knew how to affix the seal of charity. As such it is
recognized by the people, who understand and appreciate it, for it is
one of the customs which they hold in highest reverence. O Spain! what
examples hast thou not given to the world of all that is good and
wise! thou that to-day art asking them of strangers!

{801}

On one side of the town-hall, forming a receding angle, is seen the
great convent of San Francisco with its imposing church. The other
fronts form arches that, like stone festoons, adorn the sides of the
plaza. At the end opposite the point first mentioned is an immense
marble fountain, of which the flow of waters is as changeless and
lasting as the material of the basin which receives it.

One day the plaza of San Francisco and the streets leading to it were
covered with an unusual multitude. What drew them together? Why were
they there? To see a man die--but no, not die; to see a man kill his
brother! To die is solemn, not terrible, when the angel gently closes
the sufferer's weary eyes and gives his soul wings to rise to other
regions. But to see a man killed, by a human hand, in travail of
spirit, in agony of soul, in tortures of pain, is appalling. And yet
men go, and hasten, and crowd each other, to witness the consummation
of legal doom. But it is neither pleasure nor curiosity that attracts
the awe-struck multitude. It is that fatal desire of emotion which
takes possession of the contradictory human heart. This might have
been read in those faces, at once pale, anxious, and horrified. An
indistinct murmur ran through the dense multitude, in the midst of
which rose that pillar of shame and anguish; that usurper of the
mission of death; that foothold of the forsaken, which no one but the
priest treads voluntarily--the fearful scaffold, built at night, by
the melancholy light of lanterns, because the men who raise it are
ashamed to be seen by the light of God's sun and the eyes of their
fellowmen. The crowd shuddered at intervals at the mournful strokes of
the bell of San Francisco, pealing for a being who no longer existed
except to God, for the world had blotted him from the list of the
living. Its notes, now rising to God in supplication for a soul, now
descending to mortals in expressive admonition, forming part of the
overwhelming solemnity which was inhaled with the air and oppressed
the breast, seemed to say, Die, guilty ones die in expiatory sacrifice
for this sinful humanity. Only the pure and limpid fountain continued
its sweet and monotonous song, unconscious as childhood and innocence
of the terrors of the earth. O innocence, emanation of Paradise, still
respired in our corrupted atmosphere by children and those privileged
beings who have, like faith, a bandage upon their eyes, that they may
believe without seeing, and another upon their hearts, that they may
see and not comprehend; who have, like charity, their heart in their
hand, and, like hope, their eyes fixed on heaven, thou art always
surrounded by reverence, love, and admiration, which, as the daughter
of heaven, thou meritest.

There are two classes of charity: one relieves material sufferings in
a material way, and with money--this is beautiful and liberal, but
easy, and a social obligation. The other is that which relieves moral
anguish, morally. This is sublime and divine.

Of the latter class, one that has not been sufficiently praised by
society, which finds so many occasions for censure and so few for
eulogy, is the Brotherhood of Charity. And who compose this admirable
congregation? Those, perhaps, who waste so much paper and phraseology
in favor of humanity, philanthropy, and fraternity? No, not one of
them condescends to enter this corporation, which is formed
principally of the aristocracy of those places where it has been
established. The truth is, that between theory and practice, as
between saying and doing, there is a great space.

In Seville, a short time after the events related in the last chapter,
several gentlemen of distinction were seen passing through the
streets, each holding out a small basket, as he repeated in a grave
voice, "For the unfortunates who are to be put to death."

{802}

Diego and his band were assembled in the chapel of the prison,
constantly attended by some of the brotherhood, who, leaving their
homes, their pleasures, and their occupations, came to take part in
this prolonged agony, consoling the last moments of these sinful men;
anticipating their wishes with more attention than those of kings are
anticipated, and pouring balsam into the wound inflicted by the sword
of justice.

Two of the most zealous and devoted of the brotherhood, the Count of
Cantillana and the Marquis of Greffina, had been to the tribunal,
which is established and remains in session in the jail while the
condemned are being prepared and led to the scaffold, and during the
execution, to ask of it the bodies of those who were to suffer. The
following is the formula adopted by this noble and affecting Catholic
institution:

  "We come, in the name of Joseph and of Nicodemus, to ask leave to
  take the body down from the place of punishment." The judge grants
  the prayer, and they withdraw.

Each prisoner was accompanied by his confessor--a blessed staff to
sustain the steps that are turned toward the scaffold.

When Perico had finished his sacramental confession, he said to the
venerable religious who assisted him: "My name is not known; they call
me 'Perico the Sad;' but, since between earth and heaven nothing is
hidden, my family will, sooner or later, know my fate. Have the
charity, father, to fulfil my last desire, and be yourself the one to
carry the news to my mother. Tell her that I died repentant and
contrite, and not so criminal as I appear. An evil life is a ravine
into which one is drawn by the first crime. That crime which has
weighed and is weighing so heavily upon me, I committed because I
preferred a vain thing which men call honor, and which has sometimes
to be bought with blood, to the precepts of the gospel, which make a
virtue of forbearance and command us to forgive. O father! how
different appear the things of life on the threshold of the tomb! Tell
my poor sister, whose bridegroom I killed, that I commend her to
another and immortal One, who will never deceive her. Tell Pedro that
I know he has forgiven me, as did his son, and that I carry this
consolation to the grave, and my gratitude to God. Tell Rita that I
lived and died loving her, and that, if I had lived, I never would
have reminded her of the past, since she has repented of it. Ask my
mother-in-law, who is so good, to recommend me to God . . . . and my
poor children . . . my orphans . . . . Oh! if it were possible that
they might never know . . . . the fate of their father . . . . who . . . .
blesses them . . ."

Here his bursting heart found vent in sobs.

The priest who heard him, convinced of the innocence of his heart,
seeing how he had been surprised into crime by all that exasperates
and blinds the reason of a husband, a brother, and a brave man, and
forced into an evil life by circumstances, necessity, and his natural
want of firmness, felt as one who without means or power to save it
sees a fair vessel dashing to pieces at his feet.

Rita's constant and energetic movements to discover the whereabouts of
Perico, whose pardon, with the assistance of charitable souls, she had
obtained from the king, brought her, with her mother, that day to
Seville. Attempting to pass the plaza of San Francisco they
encountered the great crowd which had gathered there, and, asking the
cause of the tumult, were shown the scaffold. They would have retired,
but could not for the press behind them.

One of the condemned is approaching; all burst into exclamations of
pity--"Poor boy! This is the one they call 'Perico the Sad;' they say
that his wife, a good-for-nothing, was the ruin of him."

Rita's heart beats violently--the criminal passes--she sees--she
recognizes him. A shriek, another such was never uttered, rends the
air--heard in all the market-place.

{803}



Perico stops: "Father," he says, "it is she! it is Rita!"

"My son," replies the priest, "think only of God, in whose presence
you are going to appear, contrite, reconciled, and happy, carrying
with you your expiation."

"Father, if I could only see her before I die?"

"My son, think of the bitter punishment and of the glorious
illumination you are going to receive from man, who is the instrument
of God in your destiny." Perico wishes to turn "Forward!" orders the
sergeant.

He mounts the scaffold and kneels to the spiritual father, who with a
calm face, but a heart sorely oppressed, blesses him. He kisses the
crucifix, that other scaffold, upon which the Man-God expiated the
sins of others, still turning his eyes toward the place from which the
voice sounded that pierced his heart; seats himself upon the bench;
the executioner, who stands behind him, places the garrote around his
neck; the priest intones the creed; the executioner turns the screw,
and a simultaneous cry, "Ave Maria purissima!" sounds in the plaza.
With this invocation to the Mother of God, humanity takes leave of the
condemned at the moment that he is separated from it by the hand of
the law.

The executioner covers the face of the victim with a black cloth, and
the black shadow of the wings of death falls upon the hushed
multitude.

Some compassionate persons carried Rita away senseless. Her situation
was terrible beyond expression. The convulsions which shook her left
her but few moments of consciousness, and in these moments she gave
way to her despair in a way so frightful that they were obliged to
hold her as if she had been mad. For some days it was impossible to
move her. At length her relatives brought a cart to take her away.
They laid her in it, upon a mattress, but not one of them would
accompany her for shame. Maria went alone with her child, sustaining
her head upon her lap. Rita's long black hair fell around her like a
veil, covering her from the glances of the indiscreet and curious.
"There goes," they said, as they saw her pass, "the wife of the
criminal, who by her indiscretion sent him to the scaffold." But the
oxen did not hasten their deliberate steps. It seemed as if they also
had a mission to fulfil, in prolonging the punishment of reprobation
to her who hid provoked it with so much audacity. Maria went like a
resigned martyr. Her gentle heart had been made as it were elastic, in
order to contain without bursting an immensity of suffering. From time
to time Rita shuddered and broke into lamentations, pressing
convulsively her mother's knees. The latter said nothing, for even she
found no words of consolation for such grief.

They reached the village as night was coming on. The cart stopped
before their house, and Rita was lifted out.

She sees a window wide open in her mother-in-law's house; through this
window an unusual light is shining. She breaks away from the arms that
sustain her and rushes to the grating. In the middle of the room which
she inhabited in happy times, stands a bier. Four wax candles throw
their solemn light upon the calm form of Elvira. She is as white as
her shroud; her hands are crossed, and through her right arm passes a
palm branch--emblem consecrated to virginity. Thus in simple grace,
and in the attitude of prayer, lies the pious village maiden.

In the front part of that melancholy room were still seen the withered
plants which on a happier day had formed the mimic Bethlehem. At the
extremity of the room sits Anna, as pale and motionless as the corpse
itself. On one side of her is Pedro, and on the other the priest who
accompanied Perico to the scaffold.

{804}

Years after the events we have related, the Marquis of ---- went to
spend some days at one of the haciendas of Dos-Hermanas. One evening,
when he was returning from the estate of a relative, he noticed as he
passed near an olive-tree that the overseer and the guard who
accompanied him uncovered their heads. He glanced upward, and saw
nailed to the tree a red cross. "Has there been a murder in this quiet
place?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," answered the guard, "here was killed the handsomest and
bravest youth that ever trod Dos-Hermanas."

"And the murderer," added the overseer, "was the best and most
honorable young man of the place."

"But how was that?" questioned the marquis.

"Through wine and women, sir, the cause of all misfortunes," replied
the guard.

And as they went along they told the story we have repeated, with all
its circumstances and details.

"Do any of the family still live in the place?" asked the marquis,
extremely interested in the recital.

"Uncle Pedro died that year; Perico's wife would have let herself die
of grief, but the priest that assisted her husband persuaded her to
try to live to fulfil the will of God and her husband, by taking care
of her children; but to stay here where every one knew and loved her
husband, she must have had a brazen face indeed; she went with her
mother to the _sierra_, where they had relatives. One who came from
there awhile since, and had seen her, says that she does not look like
the same person. The tears have worn furrows in her cheeks; she is as
thin as the scythe of death, and her health is destroyed. Poor aunt
Anna died only the day before yesterday. She looked like a shadow, and
walked bent as if she were seeking her grave as a bed of rest."

They had now reached the village, and as they were passing a large
gloomy building, the overseer said, "This is her house."

The marquis paused a moment, and then entered. An old woman, a
relation of the deceased, lived alone in the sad and empty house, over
which, at that instant, the moon cast a white shroud.

"How these vines are dying!" said the marquis.

"They were not so," answered the woman, "when that poor dear child
took care of them. They used to be covered with flowers that
flourished like daughters under the hand of a mother. But she closed
her eyes, never again to open them in this world, the day she heard of
her brother's fate."

"Oh!" exclaimed the gentleman, "what a pity! this magnificent
orange-tree is dead."

"Yes; it is older than the world, sir, and was used to a great deal of
petting and care. After poor Anna lost her children, neither she nor
any one else minded it, and it withered."

"And this dog?" asked the marquis, seeing a dog, old and blind, lying
in one comer.

"The poor Melampo, from the time he lost his master he grew melancholy
and blind. Anna, before she died, begged me to take care of him; it
was almost the only thing the dear soul spoke of; but there will be no
need; when they took away her corpse he began to howl, and since then
he will not eat." The marquis drew nearer. Melampo was dead.

------

{805}

From The Month.

BURIED ALIVE.


"It may be asserted without hesitation, that no event is so terribly
well calculated to inspire the supremeness of bodily and mental
distress as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the
lungs; the stifling fumes of the damp earth; the clinging to the
death-garments; the rigid embrace of the narrow house; the blackness
of the absolute night; the silence like a sea that overwhelms; the
unseen but palpable presence of the conqueror worm--these things, with
thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who
would fly to save us, if but informed of our fate, and with
consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed; that our
hopeless portion is that of the really dead--these considerations, I
say, carry into the heart which still palpitates a degree of appalling
and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must
recoil."  [Footnote 187]

  [Footnote 187: E.A. Poe's "Premature Burial."]

I have chosen this sentence from a writer whose forte is the terrible
and mysterious for my introduction, because it sums up, in a few
expressive words, the thoughts which arise in our minds on hearing or
reading the words "Buried Alive." To avert so fearful a doom from a
fellow-creature would surely be worth any trouble; and yet it is to be
feared that the very horror which the thought inspires causes most of
us to turn aside from it, and to accept the comfortable doctrine that
such things are not done now, whatever may have formerly been the
case. Were this true, I should not feel justified in bringing before
the readers of the "Month" a ghastly subject, which could be
acceptable only to a morbid curiosity; but it is unfortunately but too
certain that persons are now and then buried alive, and that,
therefore, this fate may be possibly our own. The subject is one which
naturally excites more attention abroad; for in England the custom of
keeping deceased relatives above ground for many days after their
death, has long prevailed, and incurs the opposite danger of injuring
the health of the survivors who thus indulge their grief. We believe
no important work has ever been published in this country on the
subject; for Dr. Hawe's pamphlet is not up to the present standard of
medical information, and contains instances of very doubtful
authenticity. The tales of premature interment which can be collected
in conversation, or occasionally noticed in the public journals, are
not very numerous; few of them are circumstantial enough to have any
scientific interest; and some prove the supposed fact by the hair or
nails having grown, and the body having moved when in its coffin--
things which are well known to happen now and then after death has
undoubtedly taken place, and being therefore no proofs at all. After
examination, I have, then, come to the conclusion that no estimate of
the frequency of premature interment can be obtained. Indeed, the only
statistics which we possess are from Germany, and they are not very
reassuring. In some of the largest towns of that country, mortuary
chambers (in which the dead are placed for some days before burial)
have long been established; and we learn from a report of one in
Berlin, that in the space of only thirty-months ten people, who had
been supposed dead, were there found to be alive, and thus saved from
true death {806} in its most horrible form. But in France and Italy,
especially during the summer months, the dead are buried so very early
that fears are frequently entertained. In France, indeed, the law
prescribes a delay of twenty-four hours after death before interment,
and also requires a certificate of death from an inspector, who in
large towns is usually a physician with no other employment (_le
médecin des morts_;) but so many instances of carelessness and of
incapacity on the part of the country inspectors have been noticed,
that the Chamber of Peers, during Louis Philippe's reign, and lately
the Senate of the Empire, have received many petitions praying for an
inquiry, and for further precautions. To these the answer has
generally been, that the existing law provides sufficient safeguards;
and in this the Senate only followed the prevailing opinion of men of
science in France.

For, some years ago, Dr. Manni, a professor in the University of Rome,
offered a prize of 15,000 francs, to be given by the French Academy of
Sciences to the author of the best essay on the signs of death and the
means to be taken to prevent premature interment. The prize was
obtained in 1849 by M. Bouchut, an eminent physician in Paris, who,
after a very detailed examination of the question, came to these two
conclusions: first, that when the action of the heart could be no
longer heard by means of the stethoscope, death was certain; and
secondly, that not a single case of interment before death has ever
been clearly and satisfactorily made out: and the learned body, who
awarded the prize to him, entirely assented to these opinions. Since
that time, however, cases have been quoted, by some French doctors of
note, in which the action of the heart could not be detected, and yet
life was in the end restored. Their observations have been summed up
in a pamphlet by M. Jozat. This gave a fresh impulse to the subject;
and on the 27th of February last, M. de Courvol presented a petition
to the Senate of the same tenor as those mentioned above. This would
have received the same answer as they did, and the matter would have
been again shelved, if several of the senators present had not quoted
instances which had fallen under their own observation, and in which
death was escaped only by some happy accident. The most remarkable of
these was narrated by Cardinal Donnet, as having happened to
_himself_; and his story was copied into most English newspapers at
the time. It is, however, so much to the purpose of this paper, that I
make no apology for quoting it in his own words:

  "In 1826, a young priest was suddenly struck down, unconscious, in
  the pulpit of a crowded cathedral where he was preaching. The
  funeral knell was soon after tolled, and a physician declared him to
  be certainly dead, and obtained leave for his burial next day. The
  bishop of the cathedral where this event had occurred, had recited
  the 'De Profundis' by the side of the bier; the coffin was being
  already prepared. Night was approaching; and the young priest, who
  heard all these preparations, suffered agonies. He was only
  twenty-eight years old, and in perfect health. At last he
  distinguished the voice of a friend of his childhood; this caused
  him to make a superhuman effort, and produced the wonderful result
  of enabling him to speak. The next day he was able to preach again."

This remarkable account, coming almost from the grave, produced a very
great impression; and, as is not unusual in deliberative assemblies,
the Senate yielded to striking individual cases what it had before
refused to argument, forwarding the petition to the Minister of the
Interior, and so implying that it considered the existing law
insufficient. The plan which finds most favor in France is the
establishment of "mortuary houses," like those in Germany. Although
some of the highest authorities in {807} France are opposed to them,
there can be no doubt, if the statistics quoted above are to be
believed, that they would be the means of saving many lives,
especially in cases where (as in hotels and lodging-houses) the
funeral is now hurried as much as possible. The only precautions which
need be taken in England are of a simple kind, and will be more
evident after the description I shall now proceed to give of the two
diseased states which most nearly simulate death.

In the first of these, called _catalepsy_, the patient lies immovable
and apparently unconscious; the limbs are rigid and cold; the eyes are
fixed, sometimes remaining open; and the jaw sometimes drops. But the
resemblance to death goes no farther; the face has not a corpse-like
expression; although the limbs are cold, the head continues to be
warm, or is even warmer than when in the usual state; the pupils are
never completely dilated, and are, sometimes at least, contracted by
exposure to light. The pulse and breathing, although slow and
irregular, can always be noticed; and the muscles are so far stiffened
as to keep the limbs, during the whole course of the attack, in the
position (however constrained and inconvenient) in which they chance
to be at the time of seizure, or may be placed in by bystanders during
the fit. This state of the muscular system is a decisive proof that
the case is one of catalepsy.

Were this rare and curious disease the only cause of error, the
physician called upon to discern in a given case between life and
death would have a comparatively easy task; but there is a still rarer
condition, which gives rise to most of the lamentable mistakes that
are made; the state of _trance_ or _prolonged syncope_, is a far more
perfect counterfeit of death. The patient is motionless, and
apparently unconscious, although he is usually aware of all that is
passing around him; the pulsation of the heart and arteries, and the
breathing gradually diminish in force and frequency, until they become
at last quite imperceptible; the whole surface of the body grows cold;
and all this may last even for many days. How is one in such a
condition known not to be dead? In the first place, it is noticed that
this disease is rare in a previously healthy person; it has been
generally preceded by some cause producing great weakness, (especially
long-continued fevers, great loss of blood, severe mental affliction,
or bodily pain.) It almost invariably, too, occurs suddenly, without
any preparation, and of course without the signs which immediately
precede death.

Sometimes mere inspection will convince the physician that the person
is still alive. Thus, the face, although fixed, may not have the look
of death; the mouth may be firmly closed, the eye not glazed, and the
pupil not entirely dilated. Supposing, however, that every one of
these signs of life is absent, and that the pulse and breathing are
imperceptible by the ordinary means of observation, careful
examination of the chest with a stethoscope will detect the
heart-sounds, if life be not quite extinct, in almost every case. I
dare not, in view of the cases cited by M. Jozat, say that absence of
the heart-sounds in this state _never_ occurs; but all medical men
will agree with me that it must be exceedingly rare. It also seems to
me probable that, in the cases on which M. Jozat relies, the movements
of the heart were so few and far between that the chest happened to be
ausculted only during the intervals; at any rate, it would of course
be advisable to make frequent and prolonged examinations before
deciding that no sound could be heard. The late Dr. Hope suggested
that the second sound of the heart might be detected, although the
first was quite inaudible; but this is merely theoretical. Again,
although the surface of the body be quite cold, it is probable that a
thermometer introduced far into the mouth would show that some
internal warmth {808} remained in every case of trance. At a variable
time after death the muscles lose their "irritability," (that is,
their power of contracting under galvanic stimulation;) and this
change is speedily followed by another--the stiffness which is noticed
all over the body. It is to be remembered that loss of muscular
irritability, and rigidity of the whole body, may both be noticed and
yet the person be alive; still, if these two symptoms are not present
at first, and only appear soon after supposed death, they will afford
strong presumption that the person is dead; which will be strengthened
if the skin be slightly burned, and yet no bleb forms in consequence.

Every one, however, of the signs enumerated is open to exceptions;
although, of course, the concurrence of many, or of all, tending in
the same direction, will make death or life almost certain; but the
_only_ absolutely conclusive evidence of death is putrefaction, which
is sometimes much delayed by the previous emaciation of the deceased,
or by cold dry weather, but which sooner or later removes all doubt.
The first indications of decay are in the eyeball, which becomes
flaccid, and in the discoloration of the skin of the trunk; its later
ones are well known to every one. One M. Mangin (who contributed a
notice of this subject to the "Correspondant" for March 25th last, to
which I am indebted for several facts I have mentioned) supposes that
the buzzing, humming noise which is heard over all the body of a
living person would furnish a certain means of distinguishing real
from apparent death. He does not seem to be aware that M. Collongues,
the principal authority for what is called "dynamoscopy," has found
that this noise is absent in some cases of catalepsy and trance, for
which it is proposed as a test. Certain authorities, both in England
and France, have thought that microscopal examination of the blood
would be decisive; but unfortunately irregularity in shape and
indentation of the red disks (on which they would rely) occur
sometimes during life, and are only among the earliest signs of
putrefaction after death.

These, as far as I know« are the only means which science has hitherto
suggested for distinguishing a living body from a corpse; and we have
seen that none of them, save putrefaction, are invariably certain. In
a doubtful case, therefore, time should always be allowed for this
change to take place, so that the body may be interred in perfect
security. If this is done under the direction of a medical attendant
of ordinary information, relatives and friends may be convinced that
no mistake is possible; and their plain duty is to urge this salutary
delay in the very few cases where it can possibly be required.

It is particularly important to urge this delay, when necessary, in
the case of persons who have apparently died of some contagious
disease, and who might otherwise have been buried alive. It is indeed,
much to be feared that persons in the collapse stage of cholera have
been sometimes buried as dead; especially (Cardinal Donnet remarks)
when they are attacked in hotels or lodgings, where a death from such
a cause would be particularly prejudicial.

M. Mangin mentions one such case of a medical student in Paris, who
apparently died of cholera in 1832, and for whose funeral all
preparations were made, when a friend applied moxas to the spine. He
recovered consciousness at once, and survived many years; and there is
something grimly amusing in reading that he told the narrator: "Je me
suis chauffé avec le bois de mon cercueil!" Those, again, who have
read Mr. Maguire's "Life of Father Mathew," will not soon forget his
graphic description of a similar case, in which Father Mathew rescued
a young man from the hospital dead-house during the same epidemic at
Cork, just as he was being wrapped in a tarred sheet and placed in his
coffin.

{809}

Poe, in the tale from which I have quoted above, gives an instance of
burial during typhus fever, probably in one of the long periods of
unconsciousness and immobility occasionally occurring in that disease.
The unfortunate man remained in the grave for two days, when his body
was disinterred by the "body-snatchers," for the purpose of enabling
his medical attendants to make a _post-mortem_ examination. A casual
application of the galvanic current revived him, and he was soon after
restored to his friends, alive and in good health. This is said by Poe
to have happened to a Mr. Edward Stapleton, a London solicitor, in
1831. I have been unable to obtain any verification of this marvel,
but give it for what it may be worth.

It is very remarkable that the state of prolonged syncope, or trance,
can sometimes be produced by a mere effort of the will. One of the
best-described cases is given by St. Augustine.  [Footnote 188] It is
that of a priest named Restitutus, who used frequently, in order to
satisfy the curiosity of friends, to make himself totally immovable,
and apparently unconscious, so that he did not feel any pricking,
pinching, or even burning; nor did he appear to breathe at all. He
used afterward to say that "he could hear during the attack what was
said very loud by bystanders, as if from afar." He brought on the
attack "ad imitatas quasi lamentantis cujuslibet voces;" a sentence
which is unfortunately of rather uncertain meaning. Another case is
recorded by Dr. Cheyne, a fashionable Bath physician of the last
century. A patient of his, one Colonel Townsend, in order to convince
Dr. Cheyne's incredulity, one day voluntarily induced this state of
death-like trance "by composing himself as if to sleep." He then
appeared perfectly dead; and neither Dr. Cheyne nor another physician.
Dr. Bayard, nor the apothecary in attendance, could detect any
pulsation at the heart or wrist, or any breathing whatever. They were
just about to give him up for dead, when, at the end of half an hour,
he gradually recovered.

  [Footnote 188: "De Civ. Dei," xiv. cap. 24. ]

But these performances are quite thrown into the shade by those of
certain fakeers in India. Mr. Braid, in his very interesting
"Observations on Trance, or Human Hybernation," collected several of
these almost incredible tales from British officers, who spoke as
having been themselves eye-witnesses of them in India. In the most
wonderful of them Sir Claude Wade (formerly Resident at the court of
Runjeet Singh) says that he saw a fakeer buried in an underground
vault for six weeks: the body had been twice dug up by Runjeet Singh
during this period, and found in the same position as when first
buried. In another case, Lieutenant Boileau (in his "Narrative of a
Journey in Rajwarra in 1835") relates that he saw a man buried for ten
days in a grave lined with masonry and covered with large slabs of
stone; and the fakeer declared his readiness to be left in the tomb
for a twelvemonth. In all these cases it is said that the body, when
first disinterred, was like a corpse, and no pulse could be detected
at the heart or the wrist; but warmth to the head and friction of the
body soon revived the bold experimenter. Supposing that the watch
(which was carefully kept up during each of these curious interments)
was not eluded by some of the jugglery in which Indians excel, we have
here proofs that the state of trance cannot only be voluntarily
induced, but prolonged over a very long time.

The rationale of such phenomena is not very difficult to comprehend.
St. Augustine was undoubtedly right when he explained the case that
fell under his own observation by the supposition that some persons
have a remarkable and unusual power of the will over the action of the
heart. Dr. Carpenter suggests that the state of syncope could be kept
up much longer {810} in a vault in a tropical climate, where the body
would not lose too much of its natural heat, than in more temperate
countries; and Mr. Braid compares this condition to the slowness of
respiration and circulation during winter in hybernating animals. But
whatever may be the explanation, I cannot at least be accused of
digression in ending this gloomy paper with an account of men who are
voluntarily buried alive.

------

Translated from Le Correspondant.

A CELTIC LEGEND.--HERVÉ.


TO THE MEMORY OF M. AUGUSTIN THIERRY.


BY H. DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ.


I was one day walking in the country with a book in my hand. It was in
a district of that land where La Fontaine has said, "fate sends men
when it wishes to make them mad." Fate had not, however, sent me there
in order to make me mad. I found, on the contrary, in the charming
scenes which on all sides presented themselves to my view, and in the
original population which surrounded me, a thousand reasons for not
sharing the sentiment of the morose narrator of fables. A peasant
accosted me in the familiar but at the same time respectful style
habitual to those of that country, and, pointing to my book with his
finger:

"Is it the Lives of the Saints," he said to me, "'that you are reading
there?"

A little surprised at this address, which, however, by no means
explained my reading, I remained silent, thinking of this opinion of
the Breton peasants, according to whom the "Lives of the Saints" is
the usual reading of all those who know how to read; and, as my
interlocutor repeated his question,

"Well, yes," I replied, to humor his thought, "there is sometimes
mention made of the saints in this book."

"And what one's life are you reading now?" he continued obstinately.

I mentioned at random the name of some saint, and thought I had
quieted his curiosity, but I had not satisfied his faith.

"What was he good for?" he asked.

For an instant I stopped short; what reply to offer to a man who
judged the saints by their practical utility? I turned upon him: "And
your own patron," I replied, "what maladies does he care?"

"Oh! a great number," he said; "those of men as well as those of
animals. Although during his life he was only a poor blind singer, he
has a beautiful place in paradise, I assure you. The day he entered
heaven the sky was all illuminated." And, accompanying it with
commentaries, he chanted for me the legend of the patron of his
parish.

I knew it already by Latin and French publications; but I was well
pleased to collect it fresh from the living spring of popular
tradition. By the aid of this later source and of the written record,
I have reconstructed the account about to be read. It presents, if I
do not deceive myself, a somewhat interesting page in the history of
Christian civilization in Armorica, in the sixth century; so judged
the great historian, my teacher and my friend, to whom I dedicate it.
Moral truth shines through all the legend as a light shines through a
veil.  [Footnote 189]

  [Footnote 189: The most ancient compilation of this legend, written
  six hundred years after the death of Saint Hervé, which is placed on
  the 22d June in the year 568, exists in the Imperial Library, in the
  portfolio of the "Blanc-Manteaux." No 38, p. 851: the two more
  modern are, one of P. Albert le Grand, who has taken for his model
  Jacques de Voragine; the other by Dom Lobineau, who has fallen into
  the contrary extreme.]

{811}

I.

It was the custom of the Frank kings to have a large number of poets
and musicians at their court; they often had them come from foreign
countries, taking pleasure, mingled with a barbarous pride, in
listening to verses sung in their honor, of which they understood not
a word. Among them were seen Italians, Greeks, and even Britons, who,
uniting their discordant voices with the singers of the German race,
emulated each other in flattering the not critical ears of the
Merovingian princes. Welcomed to their palace, after having been
driven from his own country by the Lombards, the Italian Fortunatus
has preserved for us recollections of these singular concerts at
which, lyre in hand, he performed his part while "the Barbarian," he
says, "added the harp, the Greek the instrument of Homer, and the
Briton the Celtic rote." The rote had the same fate as the lyre; it
sought in Gaul an asylum from the invaders of the British Isle, of
whom it might be said with equal truth as by the Italian poet of the
conquerors of his country, that they did not know the difference
between the gabble of the goose and the song of the swan. The
Merovingian kings piqued themselves on having more taste.

Among the Britons who took refuge with them, and who continued to play
in Gaul nearly the same part that they played in the dwellings of
their native chiefs, there was a young man, named Hyvarnion. This
name, which signifies just judgment, had been given him in his own
country on the following occasion: He was in a school where he was
only known as the _petit savant_, and had for his teacher one of the
sages of the British nation, both monk and poet, named Kadok, now
known in Armorica as Saint Cado. At the end of the fifth century this
successor of the last Latin rhetors of Albion, instructed the young
islanders in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, poetry, and music,
mingling, as it appears, with the methods of instruction transmitted
by classic antiquity, the traditions of the ancient Druids. The master
disputed one day with his little scholar after the manner of the
Druids, the subject of debate being: What are the eighteen most
beautiful moral virtues? Kadok indicated eighteen, but he purposely
omitted the principal, wishing to leave to his pupil the pleasure of
finding them out for himself.

"For my part," said the scholar, "I believe that he possesses the
eighteen virtues _par excellence_, who is strong in trials and in
tribulations; gentle in the midst of suffering; energetic in
execution; modest in glory and in prosperity; humble in conduct;
persistent in good resolutions; firm in toil and in difficulties;
eager for instruction; generous in words, in deeds, and in thoughts;
reconciler of quarrels; gracious in his manners and affable in his
house; on good terms with his neighbors; pure in body and in thought;
just in words and deeds; regular in his manners; but above all,
charitable to the poor and afflicted."

"Thine the prize!" cried Kadok, "thou hast spoken better than I."

"Not so," replied the _petit savant_, "not so; I wished to carry it
over thee, and thou hast given a proof of humility; thou art the
wiser, and thine the palm."  [Footnote 190]

  [Footnote 190: "Myvyrian archaeology of Wales," iii. p. 45.]

This just judgment brought good fortune to the young scholar. It
procured for him the fine name by which he was afterward designated,
and under which he is presented to us in the Armorican legends.

{812}

Once passed over to the continent, Hyvarnion became henceforth only a
vague remembrance in the minds of the islanders. His countrymen knew
very little of his history, and it may be believed that he would have
been wholly forgotten had not a Cambrian poet consecrated to him three
verses recalling the memorable sayings of the great men of his nation.

"Hast thou heard," said he, "what sang the _petit savant_ seated at
table with the bards?"

"The man with a pure heart has a joyous countenance."

The table which is here mentioned is that of the Frank king
Childebert. Hyvarnion sat there for four years, probably from the year
513 to the year 517. In the midst of the debaucheries and the scandals
of that court he appeared calm and serene in conscience and in
countenance, and like the children in the furnace, he sang. His songs
and his verses rendered him agreeable to the king, says a hagiographer
who charitably claims that the bard "merited the esteem of the king
even more by his virtues than by his talents." Whatever might be the
esteem of the murderer of the sons of Chlodimer for the virtues of the
poet of his court, Childebert showed himself as generous to him as
were the island chiefs to their household minstrels. But not precious
stuffs, nor gold, nor mead, the three gifts most dear to a poet, could
retain in the court of Paris a young man in whose eyes purity of soul
and of body, regularity of manners, and justice were among the most
beautiful of virtues.

Under pretext of returning to his own country, where a brilliant and
decisive victory of Arthur over the Saxons had restored security, he
asked permission of the king to leave him. He departed loaded with
presents, even carrying, we are assured, a letter to Kon-Mor, or great
chief, who governed Armorica in the name of Childebert, in which the
king ordered that a ship should be placed at the service of the
British bard.

Hyvarnion had been three days at the court of the Frank officer, and
the ship, which was to conduct him to the British isle was ready to
sail, when three dreams, followed by a meeting which he had probably
made after his arrival in Armorica, prevented his embarkation. A young
girl of the country, as remarkable for her beauty as for her talent
for poetry and music, appeared to him in his sleep. Seated on the
border of a fountain she sang in a voice so sweet that it pierced his
heart. Somewhat troubled on awaking, he drove away the dangerous and
too charming recollection; but the following night, the same young
girl, more beautiful still, if possible, and singing even more sweetly
than before, appeared to him a second time. "Then," says an author,
"he seriously feared that it was some wile or snare of the spirit of
fornication," and the night coming, he prayed the Lord to deliver him
from this dream, if it came not from him. "If on the contrary, it is
thou who dost send it to me," said he, "let me know clearly what it is
thou wouldst that I should do."

And he sought his bed. But behold! scarcely had he slept than he had a
third dream. He saw a young man surrounded with light, who entered his
room and thus spoke to him: "Fear not to take for your wife her whom
you have seen seated on the border of the fountain, and whom you will
see again. Like you, she is pure and chaste, and God will bless your
love."

The Frank officer to whom the bard related his dream, wished, without
doubt, to be agreeable to one recommended by the king, and took upon
himself to realize the prophecy. He proposed a hunting party to the
young man, where, he said, he would meet a certain marvellous hare,
called the _silver hare_, but with the secret purpose of contriving a
meeting with the {813} young girl of his dream. His hope was not
deceived. As they entered the forest where lodged the pretended silver
hare, they heard a voice singing in the distance. The young man
trembled and reined up his horse. "I hear," said he, "I hear the voice
singing which I heard last night."

Without replying to him the royal officer turned himself toward the
part of the forest whence the voice proceeded, and following a
footpath which wound along the side of a stream, they reached a
spring, near to which a young girl was occupied in gathering simples.

"The young girl sat by the fountain," says a poet. "White was her
dress, and rosy her face.

"So white her dress, so rosy her face, that she seemed an eglantine
flower blooming in the snow.

"And she did naught but sing: 'Although I am, alas! but a poor iris on
the banks of the water, they call me its Little Queen.

"The Lord Count said to the young girl as he approached her, 'I salute
you, _Little Queen of the Fountain_. How gaily thou dost sing, and how
fair thou art!

"'How fair thou art, and how gaily thou dost sing. What flowers are
those you gather there?'

"'I am not fair, I sing not gaily, and these are not flowers that I
gather;

"'These are not flowers that I gather, but different kinds of salutary
plants;

"'One is good for those who are sad; for the blind, the other is good;
and the third, if I can find it, is that which will cure death.'

"'Little Queen, I pray thee, give me the first of these plants.'

"'Save your grace, my Lord, I shall give it only to him whom I shall
marry.'

"'Thou hast given it! Give it then,' cried the royal officer, 'Thou
hast given it to this young man, who has just come to ask thee in
marriage.'"

And the _Little Queen of the Fountain_ gave to the bard, in pledge of
her faith, the plant which produces gaiety.  [Footnote 191]

  [Footnote 191: The Breton text of the legend of Saint Hervé, in
  verse appears in the fifth edition of the _Barsas[??] Breis, Chante
  populaires de la Bretagne_.]

If we may credit the legend, it was even in the same mind that
Rivanone, as she was called, went to the fountain; for she also had a
dream the preceding night, a dream altogether like the bard's. She
herself confessed it, and if she had not avowed it, we could divine
it, "Those who love, have they not dreams?" _An qui amant, ipsi sibi
somnia fingunt?_ Seeing in this a certain proof of the will of heaven,
the Frank count brought the brother of Rivanone, an Armorican chief,
in whose manor the young girl had lived since the death of her father
and mother, and having related to him all that had passed, he demanded
of him his sister in marriage for the favorite of the king.

Thus was settled this well-assorted union, and the wedding was
celebrated at the court of the Frank count.

Tradition has described it in a manner almost epic. The small as well
as the great, the poor as well as the rich, were guests at the feast;
churchmen and warriors, magistrates and common people, arrived there
from all sides. Neither wine, nor hydromel, drawn from casks, was
wanting to the guests. Two hundred hogs were immolated, and two
hundred fat bulls, two hundred heifers, and one hundred roebucks, two
hundred buffalos, one hundred black, one hundred white, and their
skins divided among the guests. A hundred robes of white wool were
given to the priests, one hundred collars of gold to the valiant
warriors, and blue mantles without number to the ladies. The poor had
also their part; there was for them a hundred new suits; they could
not receive less at the marriage of a poet who placed duty to them at
the head of the most beautiful virtues. But in order worthily to do
him honor for himself--in order properly to celebrate the union of the
Armorican muse {814} with the genius of the island bards--a hundred
musicians did not seem too many--a hundred musicians who from their
high seats played for fifteen days in the court of the count. In order
to complete this by an act destined to crown the glory of the young
couple, we are assured the king of the bards of the sixth century, the
last of the Druids, the famous Meri, finally celebrated the marriage.

Be this as it may, in regard to an honor which another popular
tradition appears to claim with more reason for the heroes of another
legend of the same century, the wedding at last at an end, the bride,
accompanied by a numerous suite, was conducted with her husband to the
manor of her brother, and if the Armorican customs of our days already
existed at that epoch, the minstrels at the wedding played on their
way a tender and melancholy air, named the Air of the Evening before
the Festival, which always brought tears to the eyelids of the bride.

"God console the inconsolable heart, the heart of the girl on her
wedding night."

It is said that Rivanone shed several tears in the midst of her joy.
Had she not for ever bid adieu to the sweet and simple girlish beliefs
which had surrounded her? to her dear fountain, on the banks of which
her companions the fairies danced at night in white robes, with
flowers in their hair, in honor of the new moon? to those graceful
dances which she herself, perhaps, had led, and to her songs in the
wood? to her salutary plants less brilliant but more useful and more
durable than flowers? to the herb which causes the union of hearts and
produces joy, which, wet in the waters of the fountain by a virgin
hand, she had shaken upon the brow of the man whom she was to take for
her husband? to the golden herb which spreads light, and in opening
the eyes of the body and the mind, opens to the knowledge of things of
the future? finally, had she not renounced the search for the plant
called the _herb of death_, which would be better named the _herb of
life_, because those die not who once have found it?

But no! "God console the inconsolable heart, the heart of the girl on
her wedding night!" The spring of the fountain will cease not to flow;
the charming apparitions will desert not its borders; there shall be
ever seen there gliding through the night a luminous shadow of which
the moon will be but an imperfect image--the shadow of that immaculate
Virgin whom the Druids seem to have prophesied when they raised an
altar to her under the name of the _Virgin Mother_, and the white
fairies of Armorica less white, less pure than she, bending before
their patroness, will sing _Ave Maria!_

No plant shall wither there, not the lemon-plant which produces joy,
for it is at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ, that it will
spring henceforth; it is to Him it owes its virtue, and shall be
called the _herb of the cross;_ nor _sélago_ which gives light, for it
is from the aureole of the saints that it borrows its rays, and to
discover it, it is necessary to be a saint; nor, more than all, the
herb of life, for he has shown it, he has given it as a legacy to his
disciples, to whom he has said; "I am the life; whosoever believeth in
me shall not die."

And no more than the living spring which nourishes the herbs by its
side shall be exhausted that which sustains the fruits of the Spirit;
the soul shall not be stifled, it shall be purified; and for a moment
bent under regrets, as a rose under the rain, the Druid muse shall be
transformed and awake a Christian.

Rivanone so awoke; God had consoled the inconsolable heart, the heart
of the girl on her wedding-night.



{815}

II.

God consoles in his own way; he blesses in the same. Three years after
their marriage, Rivanone and Hyvarnion rocked the cradle of a crying
infant whom they endeavored to put asleep with their songs. Now this
infant was blind; and in remembrance of their sorrow they had named
him _Huervé_ or _Hervé_, that is to say, _bitter_ or _bitterness_.

But, if his mother did not try upon his eyes the better appreciated
virtue of the herb which should cure the blind; if she asked of her
Christian faith surer remedies to give light to her son, she found, at
least, at the foot of the cross, the herb which sweetens bitterness;
and her husband himself without doubt recollected that he had said in
his childhood that one of the most beautiful of virtues is strength in
trials and tribulations.

Two years afterward this strength was even more necessary by the side
of the cradle of the blind; a single hand rocked that cradle, a single
voice sang there--the other voice sang in heaven. The father had
already found the true plant which gives life.

With death, misery entered the house of the bard, misery all the more
cruel that it had known only prosperity. It is always in this way that
it comes to those who live by poesy. Happily Providence is a more
charitable neighbor than the ant in the fable. He did not fail the
widow of the poet who had been the friend of the poor and afflicted.
It was not from the palace of the Frank count, henceforth indifferent
to the fortunes of a family his master had forgotten, nor from the
manor of Rivanone's brother, which she charmed no more with her songs,
that assistance came. It came from that cradle, watered with tears,
where slept a poor orphan. It is always from a cradle that God sends
forth salvation.

"One day the orphan said to his sick mother, clasping her in his
little arms: 'My own dear mother, if you love me, you will let me go
to church;

"'For here am I full seven years old, and to church I have not yet
been.'

"'Alas! my dear child, I cannot take you there, when I am ill on my
bed.'

"'When I am ill of an illness which lasts so long that I shall be
forced to go and beg for alms.'

"'You shall not go, my mother, to beg for alms; I will go for you, if
you will permit me.

"'I will go with some one who will lead me, and in going I will sing.

"'I will sing your beautiful canticles, and all hearts will listen!'

"And he departed finally to seek bread for his mother who could not
walk.

"Now, whatever it was, it must have been a hard heart that was not
moved on the way to church;

"Seeing the little blind child of seven years without other guide than
his little white dog.

"Hearing him sing, shivering, beaten by the wind and the rain, without
covering on his little feet, and his teeth chattering with cold."

It was the festival of All Saints, as the legend tells us; the
festival of the Dead follows it, and is prolonged during the second
night of this month which the Bretons call the _Month of the Dead_.
Having feasted the blessed, every one goes to the cemetery to pray at
the tomb of his parents, to fill with holy water the hollow of their
gravestone, or, according to the locality, to make libations of milk.
It is said that on this night the souls from Purgatory fly through the
air as crowded as the grass on the meadow; that they whirl with the
leaves which the wind rolls over the fields, and that their voices
mingle with the sighs of nature in mourning. Then, toward midnight,
these confused voices become more and more distinct, and at each
cottage door is heard this melancholy canticle.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
greeting to you, people of this house, we come to you to ask your
prayers.

{816}

"Good people, be not surprised that we have come to your door; it is
Jesus who has sent us to wake you if you sleep.

"If there is yet pity in the world, in the name of God, aid us.

"Brothers, relatives, friends, in the name of God, hear us; in the
name of God pray, pray; for the children pray not. Those whom we have
nourished have long since forgotten us; those whom we have loved have
left us destitute of pity."

Bands of mendicant singers, poor souls in trouble, they also,
wanderers like those of the dead, go by woods and graves, to the sound
of funereal bells, lending their voices to the unhappy of the other
world.

The blind orphan, who, from the bed of his sick mother, went to kneel
on the couch of his dead father, commenced in their company his
apprenticeship as a singer, and if it is believed, as is claimed, that
the _chant des ames_, such as it has come to us, was composed by a
blind singer, under the inspiration of his father, whom he would have
delivered from pain, the blind singer should be Hervé, and the
inspirer Hyvarnion.

The impression which the sainted child produced on the men of his time
is better founded; it has left traces in the popular imagination which
have been translated into touching narratives:

"The evening of All Souls, long before the night, the child returned
to his mother, after his circuit.

"And he was very tired, so tired that he could not hold himself on his
feet--all the route was slippery with ice.

"So tired that he fell on his mouth, and his mouth vomited blood,
blood with broken teeth."

Now these broken teeth did not give birth to furious warriors, like
those of the dragon in the fable; they were changed into diamonds
which shone from far in the darkness.

Such is the language of the tradition. Can we better paint the songs
drawn forth by the sorrow of the son of Hyvarnion, these songs of a
Christian muse which cleared away the shadows no less crowded than
those of the night of All Souls?

But these shadows were not dissipated instantly; the resistance made
to Christianity by the remains of Armorican paganism is not less
clearly indicated in traditional recollections than by the action and
influence of the little Christian singer.

As he passed the cross-roads of a village where the inhabitants have
to this day preserved the sobriquet of _paganiz_, that is to say,
heathens, he fell in the midst of a circle of young peasants, who,
interrupting their dance, ran after him, hooting at him, throwing dirt
upon him, and crying: "Where are you going, blind one, blind one!
Where are you going, blind brawler?"

"I'm going out of this canton, because I must," replied Hervé, "but
cursed be the race that comes from you." And, indeed, the little
mockers, struck by the anathema, returned to the dance, and they must
dance, it is said, to the end of the world, without ever resting or
ever growing, becoming like those dwarfed imps whom the Armoricans
adored, and whose power the Breton peasants still fear.

Nature herself, that great Celtic divinity, took the side of the imps
against Hervé, while the mother of the saint, in beholding him
preaching the gospel, could say with the church: "How beautiful are
the feet of those who come from the mountains!" "The granite earth on
which he walked, refused to carry him, tearing his naked feet, and no
one," says the complaint, "no one wiped the blood from his wounds,
only his white dog with his tongue, who washed the feet of the saint,
and warmed them with his breath."

Then, as he had cursed the mocking spirits, the saint cursed also the
stony ground which would arrest his steps, and it was rendered harder
than iron; when, going, according to his promise, into a district
where the rocks were such, the legend assures us, that "iron {817} nor
steel could ever pierce them," that is to say, the inhabitants were
obstinate and incorrigible barbarians, he returned to the saint who
inspired and enlightened him.

"My mother, for seven or eight years I have gone over this country,
and have gained nothing from these hard and cruel hearts.

"I would be in some solitary place where I should hear only songs;
where every day, my mother, I should hear only the praises of  God."

"Thou wouldst be a cleric, my son, to be later a priest! God be
praised! How sweet it would be to me to hear you say mass!"

"It is not, my mother, to be a priest; the priest's state is a great
responsibility, and it frightens my weak spirit; besides the charge of
my own soul I should have the charge of other souls; but I would like
far better to live my life in the depths of the forest with the monks,
and to be instructed how to serve God by those who serve him."

Rivanone agreed to the wishes of her son; the forest which he chose
for his retirement was inhabited by one of her uncles. Hervé sought
him, while his mother asked an asylum for herself of some pious women
who lived in community in another solitary place, having no
intercourse with the world except with the sick and infirm to whom
they were a providence.



III.

An ancient Breton ballad represents a magician going over the fields
of Armorica at the dawn of day, accompanied by a black dog. I do not
know what Christian voice addresses him: "Where are you going this
morning with your black dog?" "I go to find the red egg, the red egg
of the sea-serpent, on the edge of the river in the crevice of the
rock."

Vain search! This egg, a sacred symbol to the ancient priests of Gaul
and other heathen worship, had been crushed with the serpent of the
Druids; the day was about to appear and put to flight the magician,
darkness, and the black dog. When, on the contrary, Hervé put himself,
guided by his white dog, on the way to his uncle's hermitage, the last
shades of night had disappeared, the day had risen, and he was to find
in the Christian school more precious talismans than the egg of the
Druid serpent.

"Saint Hervé went to the school the sun encircled his brow with a
circle of light, the doves sang along his road, and his white dog
yelped for joy.

"Arrived at the door of the hermitage, the dog barked louder and
louder, so that the hermit, hearing it, came forth to receive his
niece's child.

"May God bless the orphan who comes in good faith to my school, who
has sought me to be my clerk; my child, may blessings be on thy
head.'" [Footnote 192]

  [Footnote 192: Same Breton legend of Saint Hervé.]

This great unde of Hervé was named Gurfoed; like many other hermits he
brought up the children of Armorica. Among the grammarians whom he
made them learn by heart, the ecclesiastical writers indicate
Martianus Capella, the author of the "Noces de Mercure et de la
Philologie," of whom they make a monk, and among the subjects of his
instruction they specially mention poetry and music. Music took a
sufficiently high place in the schools and in the tastes of that age,
as is proved by a synod assembled at Vannes in the middle of the sixth
century, which believed it necessary to call the attention of the
Armorican bishops to that point, and drew up an article on the
necessity of adopting, in the whole province, a uniform chant.
Besides, in introducing it into the Christian ceremonies, and giving
it place even in the choir of the temple, the church has shown the
esteem which she has for this art. Hervé perfected himself in it more
and more; he even became so clever in it, observe the hagiographies,
"that he took the prize from all his fellow-students."

{818}

After seven years of study passed at a distance from his mother, he
wished to see her and receive new force and new light from her
counsels. According to some, Gurfoed conducted him to her; according
to the popular legend, she came herself to seek her son.

And she said on approaching him:

"I behold a procession of monks advancing, and I hear the voice of my
son; though a thousand were singing, I should know the voice of Hervé;
I behold my son dressed in gray, with a cord of hair for his belt. God
be with you, my son, the clerk!"

"God be with you, my beloved mother! God is good; the mother is
faithful to her son. Coming from so far to see me, although you could
not walk!"

"And now that I have come, and I see you, my son, what have you to ask
of me?"

"I have nothing to ask of you, my mother, but the permission to remain
here to pray to God day and night, that we may meet each other in
paradise."

"We shall meet in paradise or its surroundings, with the help of God,
my son. When I go there you shall have warning; you  shall hear the
song of the angels."

"In fact," continues the French legend, "the evening of her decease
and the next day, all those that were near saw a brilliant ladder by
the side of her oratory, one end reaching to the skies, by which
angels ascended and descended singing the most melodious motets and
canticles."

The pious woman-poet, who had given to the church such a saint as
Hervé, well deserved that God's angels should sing, making a festival
for her last hour.

Hervé, guided by Gurfoed, arrived at the bedside of his dying mother,
in time, if not to see her, (he could never see her except in heaven,)
at least to receive her blessing, and to mingle his canticles with
those of the pious companions of Rivanone, truly angelic choirs.


IV.

After the death of his mother, Hervé returned to the hermitage of his
uncle; but Gurfoed, wishing to live a still more retired life,
abandoned his dwelling, and buried himself in the forest. Aided by
some pious men, who, in order to work and pray under his direction,
had built their cabins by the side of his, the saint continued to hold
the school of his predecessor. This school prospered; and every
evening could be seen a crowd of children coming from it, who
assembled there in the morning from all the manors, as well as from
all the surrounding cottages; a crowd as noisy, says a poet, as a
swarm of bees issuing from the hollow of an oak. The master, being
blind, could not teach them their letters; but he taught them
canticles, maxims in verse, religious and moral aphorisms, without
omitting those precepts of pure civility, so necessary to coarse
natures; and while exercising their memory he cultivated their
understanding and their heart: he polished their rude manners; he
endeavored, finally, to make men of them while bending their restless
natures under the curb of his discipline. Lessons of wisdom were not
clothed in other form in those heroic times; poetry and music,
inseparable from each other, had always been considered by the
ancients as necessary to cultivation, not only on account of the
harmony which they produced, but for utility, instruction, and
civilization of the people. Hervé in taking them for the basis of his
instruction, followed, without doubt, the counsels of Aristotle. It is
said that Orpheus thus civilized people by his songs. Those of Hesiod
have come to us, and present us with valuable examples of that
didactic poetry, the first with all nations. But though we have left
us some poems of Saint Hervé, they are very few in number; the most
were composed rather in his {819} spirit and according to his rules
than by himself. They give him the honor of those aphorisms to which
his name is given, which, at least, have the strong imprint of the
instructive poetry of the monks; they turn upon three of the virtues
which the religions principally endeavored to inculcate in their
Ignorant pupils, idle and independent, as are all barbarians, namely,
the love of instruction, the love of work, and the love of discipline,
elements which are the strength of all civilized society.

"It is better to instruct a little child than to amass riches for
him."

Saint Cado, the teacher of Hervé's father, said the same thing in
other terms, "There is no wealth without study;" and he added, "There
is no wisdom without science, no independence without science, no
liberty, no beauty, no nobleness, no victory without science," and,
giving to science its true foundation, he thus terminated his eloquent
enumeration:

"No science without God."

The second axiom credited to Saint Hervé is this: "He who is idle in
his youth heaps poverty on the head of his old age."

The Breton mariners have retained the third maxim of which Saint Hervé
passers as the author: "The words of Hervé are words of wisdom," they
say; "Who yields not to the rudder will yield to the rock." I have
also seen attributed to him a moral song, widely spread in Brittany,
in which, perhaps, there are several couplets of his, but in any case
modernized in language and style.

"Come to me, my little children, come to me that you may hear a new
song, which I have composed expressly for you. Take the greatest pains
in order that you may retain it entire."

"When you wake in your bed, offer your heart to the good God, make the
sign of the cross, and say, with faith, hope, and love:

"'My God, I give you my heart, my body, and my soul. Grant that I may
be an honest man, or that I may die before the time.'

"When you see a raven flying, remember that the devil is as black as
wicked; when you see a little white dove, remember that your angel is
as gentle as white.

"Remember that God sees you like the sun in the midst of the sky;
remember that God can make you bloom as the sun makes bloom the wild
roses of the mountains.

"At night, before going to bed, recite your prayers; do not fail, so
that a white angel will come from heaven to guard you until morning.

"Behold, dear children, the true means of living as good Christians.
Put my song into practice and yon will lead a holy life."

Such lessons, where were so effectively found some of the practices
which make a man strong, that is to say, Christians; where there was
so much freshness and grace; where the sun, and the flowers, the birds
and the angels, all the most smiling images were purposely united,
captivated and charmed the young barbarians. I am no longer surprised
if the legend assures us that Hervé tamed the savage beasts; if it
recounts that one day he forced a thief of a fox to bring back,
"without hurting her," his hen which he had carried off, and another
time a robber of a wolf who had eaten up his ass--others say his
dog--to serve and follow him like a spaniel. This new style of spaniel
was seen in a crowd of bas-reliefs held in leash by the saints, and as
elsewhere mothers threatened their children with the wolf, the Breton
Mothers frightened their brats with _Hervé's spaniel._ Orpheus is thus
represented followed by tamed tigers; and another bard, a half pagan,
whom we have seen before accompanied by his black dog, is painted,
running through the woods with a wolf which he calls _his dear
companion. Tu Lupe, care comes_. The poets of the primitive times were
supposed to be in a perpetual union with nature, {820} and to have
reconquered the power, lost since leaving the Garden of Eden, of
making all animals obedient to them. Hervé was considered to be
endowed with the same power; but poetry and music were not the only
form which the Christian gave to his charms. His true magic was
prayer. See how he chanted when he was exposed to the snares or the
ferocity of animals or of men:

"O God! deign to preserve me from snares, from oppression, from evil,
from the fox, the wolf, and the devil."

Not more than men and wild beasts, could nature resist the force of
his prayer. Somewhat troubled in his retreat, and above all in his
humility, by the too noisy veneration of the Armorican chiefs, who
sent their sons to him, he plunged into the forest, as had Gurfoed,
seeking the hermitage, and the counsels of his former teacher; but the
grass and fern had effaced the path which led there, and all Hervé's
researches had been in vain, when he came to an opening in the forest
where a moss-covered rock was raised up on four stones; the ruins of a
cabin where the badgers had made their nests, were seen near at hand;
briers, thickets of holly and thorns encumbered the ground. Before
these ruins the saint, struck with a secret presentiment, prostrated
himself, his arms in the form of a cross, and cried three times: "In
the name of God, rock, split; in the name of God, earth, open, if you
hide from me my light." His prayer was scarcely terminated when the
earth trembled, the rocks split, and through the opening came a soft
odor, which revealed to him the sepulchre of him whom he was seeking.

Such is the popular narrative; but, if it is intended to show his
power over nature, it shows still more his humility. It is exhaled
from this legend, as perfumes from the tomb of him whom he sought as
his light.

I remember a song in which a kind of Druidess gives the assurance that
she knows a song which can make even the earth tremble: after a
frightful display of magical science, she finishes by saying, that
with the help of her _light_, as she calls her master she is able to
turn the earth in the contrary way. Here it is the pagan pride which
vaunts itself; but a voice from heaven is heard, "If this world is
yours, the other belongs to God!" and the sorceress was confounded.
Hervé, on the contrary, who is humble, and who prays; Hervé, who
speaks, not in his own name, but in the name of God, is heard and
exalted. It is verifying the words of the Gospel: "And the humble
shall be exalted."

As he advanced in age, the saint continued to realize this promise. We
have up to this moment seen him glorified under the tatters of a
vagabond singer, as well as under the poor robe of an instructor of
little barbarians; we are now to see him as an agriculturist, even
architect, but always all the strongest when he would wish to appear
weakest in the eyes of men, always the greatest when he would wish to
be the lowest.

The counsels which Hervé had gone to ask of his old teacher, he
received from his bishop, a wise and holy man, who came from Britain
to the country of Léon. The bishop judged him worthy to be a priest,
and wished to confer upon him the ecclesiastical character; but the
hermit, who from childhood had considered himself unworthy of this
great responsibility, persisted in his humble sentiments, and he would
consent to be promoted only to the lowest orders, to those called
minor orders. It is easy to believe that his bishop induced him to
definitely fix his dwelling somewhere with his disciples, and to give
to the Armoricans the example of a sedentary life, of manual labor,
the cultivation of the earth, and building, all things which are at
the foundation of all society, and which the barbarians little liked;
for he went to work to seek a place where he could establish a small
colony.

{821}

V.

About half a century before, another bard also blind, and his hair
whitened by age, journeyed in Armorica from canton to canton, seated
on a small horse from the mountains, which a child led by the bridle.
He sought, like Hervé, a field to cultivate and in which he could
build. Knowing what herbs were produced by good ground, and what herbs
by bad ground, he asked from time to time of his guide:

"Seest thou the green clover?"

And always the child replied:

"I see only the fox-glove blossoms." For at that epoch, Armorica was a
wild country.

"Well, then, we will go farther," replied the old man.

And the little horse went on his way. At last the child cried out:

"Father, I see the clover blooming."

And he stopped. The old man dismounted, and seating himself on a
stone, in the sun, he sang the songs of labor in the fields, and of
their culture in different seasons. This agricultural bard was
invested with a venerated character by the ancient Bretons. They
regarded him as a pillar of social existence; but his heart, open to
the cultivation of nature, was closed to the love of humanity. With
one of his brethren he said willingly: "I do not plough the earth
without shedding blood on it." He thirsted for the blood of Christian
monks and priests, and he offered it with joy as sacrifice to the
earth. To the wisest lessons in agriculture he added the most
ferocious predictions, "The followers of Christ shall be tracked; they
shall be hunted like wild beasts, they shall die in bands and by
battalions on the mountain. The wheel of the mill grinds fine; the
blood of the monks will serve as water."

Scarcely sixty years had rolled away, and these same monks whom the
bard cursed as usurpers of the Celtic harp and as stealers of the
children of the Bretons, advanced peaceably over the ruins of a
religion of which he was the last minister, ready to shed blood also,
but their own; ready to perform prodigies, but of intelligence and of
love. Their chief was not on horseback, he walked with bare feet, (he
went always unshod, says his historian,) and having journeyed for a
long time, he spoke thus to his disciples:

"Know, my brothers, it wearies me to be always running and wandering
in this way; pray to God that he will reveal to us some place in which
we can live to serve him for the rest of our days."

They all commenced to pray, and behold a voice was heard saying: "Go
even toward the east, and where I shall three times tell thee to rest,
there thou wilt dwell." They commenced then on the road to the east,
and when they had gone very far, having found a field filled with high
green wheat, they sat down in its shade. Now, as he was thus reposing,
a voice was heard which said three times: "Make your dwelling here."
Filled with gratitude, they knelt to thank God, and being thirsty with
the heat and the travel, the saint by his prayers obtained a fresh
fountain.

But the possession of the land was not easy to obtain from the
avaricious proprietor, whom the French legend charitably calls "an
honest man." Hervé demanded of him, however, only a little corner in
which to erect a small monastery.

"Bless my soul, bless my soul!" cried the owner, "but my wheat is
still all green, and so if you cut it now it will be lost."

"No, no," said Saint Hervé, "it shall not be so, for as much wheat as
I cut now so much will I render to you ripe and in the sack at harvest
time."

{822}

To this he agreed, and commenced to cut down the wheat, which he tied
in bundles and sheafs and laid apart; and God so favored them, that at
the time of the harvest, these sheafs which had been cut all green,
not only became ripe, but had blossomed and so multiplied that where
there had been one there were now two. The owner of the field seeing
this, gave thanks to God, who had sent these holy men to him, and gave
the whole field to the saint.  [Footnote 193]

  [Footnote 193: Albert le Grand.]

Thus the toil and intelligence of the monks made the earth render
double the ordinary crops, and, conquered by such miracles, the
barbarians, who, moreover, did not lose anything, gave willingly all
that was asked of them.

The good religious from whom I have borrowed the translation of the
preceding narrative even assures us that the proprietor went so far as
to promise Hervé to build him a beautiful church at his own expense.
This new miracle, however, was only half carried out; for we see
Hervé, once the land had been conceded to him, going to work with his
disciples to procure the wood necessary for the construction of his
church and convent. He made a collection for this end, not only in the
country of Léon, but even in the mountains of Aiez, and in Cornwall,
visiting the manors of the chiefs and the richest monasteries.

Everywhere, it is said, he was well received, thanks to the benefits
that he spread along his passage, and all the nobles to whom he
applied caused as many oaks to be cut down for him in their forests,
as he desired. It is, however, probable, notwithstanding the
assertions of the legendaries, that he found many but little disposed
to aid in the building of a Christian church, and that all those whom
he visited did not show themselves very eager to cut down the trees,
so venerated in Armorica; for in the following century, a council held
at Nantes near the year 658, attests that no one dared break a branch
or offshoot of one. The legend itself allows us to see imperfectly
some stumbling-blocks which the holy architect found in his way; they
must have torn his feet as cruelly as those which we have seen him
punish by hardening them, in the days when he was a public singer. At
first there was a rude chief who passed near him with a great train of
men, dogs, and horses, without saluting him, even without looking at
him; again there was another who did not believe in his miracles, and
said so out loud at supper before a large company, and in the face of
the saint. At that same banquet, at the commencement of the repast,
while Hervé was singing with the harp to bless the table, a new kind
of adversary, the frogs, commenced also to sing, to defy him, to sing
_their vespers_, as a Breton poet explains it, provoking the laughter
of the guests. At another banquet, a cup-bearer who was a demon in
disguise, one of those who excited to intemperance, to gluttony, to
idleness and noise, to discord and quarrels, wishing to kill him,
served him, together with the other guests, a beverage the effect of
which was to make them cut each other's throats.

This evil spirit followed the holy architect even to the midst of a
monastery, with the intention of deceiving him more surely. Taking the
form of a monk, he offered his services to help him in building his
church.

"What is thy name?" Hervé asked of him.

"I am a master carpenter, sir."

"Thy name, I tell thee," returned the saint.

"Sir, I am a mason, locksmith, able to work at any trade."

"Thy name? For the third time, I command thee in the name of the
living God, to tell thy name."

"Hu-Kan! Hu-Kan! Hu-Kan!" cried the demon; and he threw himself, head
foremost, from a rock into the sea.

Thus did the Druid superstitions vanish before Hervé, having for a
moment resisted him, and sought to deceive him under different
disguises.

{823}

This Hu-Kan, that is to say, Hu the genius, is no other than the god
_Hu-Kadarn_ of the Cambrian traditions. The devil who incites to
idleness and debauchery is the Celtic divinity corresponding to the
Liber or Bacchus of the Romans. There is in these frogs who chanted
_their vespers_ a recollection of Armorican paganism. "The saint
silenced them as suddenly as if he had cut their throat" says a
hagiographer, adding, "he left voice but to one, who ever since has
continued to croak."

Now, by a sort of prodigy of tradition, a popular song, entitled the
"Vespers of the Frogs," has come to us; it is the work of the pagan
poets of Armorica, represented in common recitatives under the
grotesque figure of these beastly croakers. It offers a summary of the
Druid doctrines of the fourth century; and it seemed so necessary to
the first Christian missionaries to destroy it, that they made a Latin
and Christian counterpart, as if they would raise the cross in the
face of the heathen pillars. One of these missionaries, Saint Gildas,
was so opposed to the pagan music of his time that he qualified its
croaking with the sweet and gentle music of the children of Christ;
and his disciple Taliésin, the great poet baptized in the sixth
century, hushed at a banquet, as Saint Hervé had done, the infamous
descendants of the priests of the god Bel, who wished to put him to
defiance.

The sound of Christian music was to be heard from all the vaults of
the church, for the construction of which Saint Hervé had made so many
journeys. Twelve columns of polished wood were erected to hold the low
and arched framework; three large stones formed the altar; the spring
with which he had refreshed his disciples furnished the water
necessary to the sacrifice; the wheat sown by them, the bread for
consecration; and the wines of some richer monastery, more exposed to
the sun, the eucharistic wine; for it was an ancient and touching
custom that those who had vineyards gave wine to those who had not,
and in exchange, the owners of bees furnished wax to those who lacked
it. Hervé, according to his biographers, himself superintended the
workmen, or rather incited the laborers by his words, and sustained
them by his songs. Like another poet of antiquity, he built, with his
songs, not a city for men, but a house for God.



VI.

The fathers of an Armorican council of the fifth century terminated
their canons by these noble words: "May God, my brethren, preserve for
you your crown." A last flower seemed wanting to that of Hervé. He was
now to obtain it. The poor shoeless child, the poet of the wretched,
the school-teacher of little children, the wandering agriculturist,
the mendicant architect, was to become the equal--what do I say?--the
corrector of bishops and kings.

At that time there reigned a Kon Mor in Brittany, who had rendered
himself abominable to the men of that country by his tyranny and
cruelties. Unable to endure him, they flocked in great numbers from
all parts of Armorica to their bishop, the blessed Samson; and as he
saw them at his door, silent and with lowered heads, he asked them:

"What has happened to the country?"

Then answered the more respectable among them:

"The men of this land are in great desolation, sir."

"And why so?" asked Samson.

"We had a good chief of our own race, and born on our own land, who
governed us by legitimate authority; and now there has come over us a
foreign Kon Mor, a violent man, an enemy to justice, possessed of
great power; he holds us under the most odious oppression; he has
killed our national chief, and dishonored his widow, our queen. He
would hare killed their Sun, had not the poor child taken to flight
and sought refuge in France."

{824}

The bishop, moved with pity, promised the deputies that he would aid
them, and seeking a means to re-establish their rightful chief, he
resolved to begin by striking the usurper with the terrible arm of
excommunication.

He therefore sent letters to all the Armorican bishops to unite with
him in devising some means of frightening the tyrant. The place of
reunion was a high mountain much venerated by the bards and the
people, named the Run-bre, and situated in the heart of the country
governed by the Kon Mor. Although only prelates should have been
present, Hervé was sent there, and even the venerable assembly were
not willing to enter into deliberation until he came, notwithstanding
the opposition of one member of the meeting, less humble and less
patient than the others. This _courtier bishop_, as the legend styles
him, finding that Hervé made them wait a long time, "Is it proper that
men like us," he exclaimed, "should remain here indefinitely on
account of a wretched blind monk?" At this moment, the saint arrived.
His bare feet, his miserable hermit's robe made of goat-skin, in the
midst of the men and horses richly apparelled, belonging to the
prelate of the court, drew perhaps a smile of proud disdain to the
lips of many. Hearing the impious words of which he was the object,
the saint was not irritated, but said gently to the bishop: "My
brother, why reproach me with my blindness? Could not God have made
you blind as well as me? Do you not know well that he makes us as he
pleases, and that we should thank him that he has given us such a
being as he has?" The other bishops, continues the legend, strongly
rebuked this one, and he was not long in feeling the heavy hand of
God; for he immediately fell to the ground, his face covered with
blood, and lost his sight; but the good saint, wishing to render good
for evil to this proud mocker, prayed to God for the unfortunate; and
then, rubbing his eyes with salt and water, restored him his sight; he
gave him understanding also; according to the remark of another
hagiographer, understanding, that light of the soul, obscured by
pride, more precious still and not less difficult to recover than the
light of the body. After this they proceeded to the ceremony of
excommunicating the great chief of the Armoricans.

Standing on a rock, at the summit of the mountain, a lighted taper in
his hand, and surrounded by the nine bishops of Armorica, each one
holding a blessed taper, the saint pronounced, in the name of all,
according to the formula of the times, these terrible words against
the foreign tyrant: "We in virtue of the authority which we hold from
the Lord, in the name of God the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost, do declare the great chief of the Armoricans excommunicated
from the threshold of the holy church of God, and separated from the
society of Christians; that, if he comes not quickly to repentance, we
crush him beneath the weight of an eternal malediction, and condemn
him by an irrevocable anathema. May he be exposed to the anger of the
sovereign Judge, may he be torn from the heritage of God and his
elect, that in this world he may be cut off from the communion of
Christians, and that in the other he may have no part in the kingdom
of God and his saints; but that, bound to the devil and his imps, he
may live devoted to the flames of vengeance, and that he may be the
prey, even in this world, to the tortures of hell. Cursed be he in his
own house, cursed in his fields, cursed in his stomach, cursed be all
things that he possesses, from his dog that howls at his appearance
even to his cock who insults him by his crowing. May he share the lot
of Dathan and Abiron whom hell swallowed alive; the lot of Ananias and
of Sapphira, {825} who lied to the Apostles of the Lord, and were
struck with instant death; the lot of Pilate and Judas, who were
traitors to God; may he have no other sepulchre than have the asses,
and may these tapers which we extinguish be the image of the darkness
to which his soul is condemned. Amen."  [Footnote 194]

  [Footnote 194: This formula of excommunication of the sixth century
  has been discovered and recently translated by M. Alfred Ramé, in an
  article, the "Melanges d'Histoire et d'Archaeologie Bretonne," a
  commendable publication.]

The bishops repeated three times, Amen; and the president of the
synod, having extinguished under his foot the candle which he held in
his hand, all the prelates did the same. But this dying candle, the
image of the extinguished light of the great chief, was not so easily
relighted as that of the haughty prelate. Once the tyrant's head was
under the bare foot of the mendicant monk, tyranny was dishonored and
humanity avenged.

Hervé does not appear to have long survived this great act of national
and religious justice, in which he performed the greatest part; he
saw, however, the result, and could hail the dawn of a noble reign
which would assure, without the effusion of blood, say the historians,
the death of the usurper.

Another dawn was rising for the saint.

It is related that being shut up in the church which he had built,
fasting and praying for three days, separated from his disciples and
his pupils, the heavens opened above his head, and with the heavens
his eyes were opened to contemplate the celestial court. Ravished to
ecstasy, he chanted a Breton canticle, which was later put into
writing, and has received its modern form from the last apostle of the
Armoricans, Michel Le Nobletz.

"I see heaven opened, heaven my country; I would that I might fly
there as a little white dove!

"The gates of Paradise are opened to receive me; the saints advance to
meet me.

"I see, truly I see God the Father, and his blessed Son, and the Holy
Ghost.

"How beautiful she is, the Holy Virgin, with the twelve stars which
form her crown.

"Each with his harp in his hand, I see the angels and the archangels,
singing the praises of God.

"And the virgins of all ages, and the saints of all conditions, and
the holy women, and the widows crowned by God!

"I see radiant in glory and beauty, my father and my mother; I see my
brothers and my countrymen.

"Choirs of little angels flying on their light wings, so rosy and so
fair, fly around their heads, as a harmonious swarm of bees,
honey-laden in a field of flowers.

"O happiness without parallel! the more I contemplate you, the more I
long for you!"

The heavens did not close again until the canticle was finished, as if
they had taken pleasure in the song of the predestined son of
Hyvarnion and Rivanone, who heard him with smiles and called him to
them.



VII.

Before the Revolution there was preserved in the treasury of the
Cathedral of Nantes a silver shrine, enriched with precious stones, a
present from an ancient Breton chief. In great judicial cases it was
carried in procession to the judges to receive the solemn vows which
they afterward made upon the book of the Evangelists. A king of France
and a duke of Brittany, after long wars, united under this shrine
their reconciled hands and swore to live in peace.

At the same time there was seen, in the depths of lower Brittany, in
the sacristy of a little country church, an oaken cradle, with nothing
about it remarkable unless its age. The inhabitants of the parish,
however, venerated it as much as the silver shrine. The mendicant
singers, above all, have {826} for it an especial affection. They love
to touch it with their great musical instruments, their traveller's
goods, their rosaries, their staffs, all that they have which is most
precious. Kneeling before this cradle, they kiss it with respect, and
arriving sad, they depart joyous.

Now, the silver shrine contained, wrapped in purple and silk, the
relics of Saint Hervé. The oaken cradle was the same in which he slept
to the songs of the bard and his poet-wife, whom God had given him for
father and mother.

To-day the ducal reliquary is no longer in existence. The metal,
thrice consecrated by sanctity, justice, and royalty, was stolen and
melted down in that sadly memorable epoch when these three things,
trampled under foot, were valued less than a bit of silver. But the
wooden cradle of the humble patron of the singers of Brittany, that
poor worm-eaten cradle, so like his fate on earth, exists still, and
more than one mendicant having respectfully pressed his lips upon it,
as in other times, goes away singing with a clearer voice and a
comforted heart.

--------

From Once a Week.



LOST FOR GOLD.


  She stood by the hedge where the orchard slopes
    Down to the river below;
  The trees all white with their autumn hopes
    Looked heaps of drifted snow;

  They gleamed like ghosts through the twilight pale.
    The shadowy river ran black;
  "It's weary waiting," she said, with a wail,
    "For them that never come back.

  "The mountain waits there, barren and brown,
    Till the yellow furze comes in spring
  To crown his brows with a golden crown,
    And girdle him like a king.

  The river waits till the summer lays
    The white lily on his track;
  But it's weary waiting nights and days
    For him that never comes back.

  "Ah! the white lead kills in the heat of the fight.
    When passions are hot and wild;
  But the red gold kills by the fair fire-light
    The love of father and child.

  "'Tie twenty years since I heard him say,
    When the wild March morn was airy,
  Through the drizzly dawn--'I m going away,
    To make you a fortune, Mary.'

{827}

  "Twenty springs, with their long grey days.
    When the tide runs up the sand,
  And the west wind catches the birds, and lays
    Them shrieking far inland.

  "From the sea-wash'd reefs, and the stormy mull,
    And the damp weed-tangled caves:--
  Will he ever come back, O wild sea-gull.
    Across the green salt waves?

  "Twenty summers with blue flax bells,
    And the young green corn on the lea,
  That yellows by night in the moon, and swells
    By day like a rippling sea.

  "Twenty autumns with reddening leaves,
    In their glorious harvest light
  Steeping a thousand golden sheaves,
    And doubling them all at night.

  "Twenty winters, how long and drear!
    With a patter of rain in the street.
  And a sound in the last leaves, red and sere;
    But never the sound of his feet.

  The ploughmen talk by furrow and ridge,
    I hear them day by day;
  The horsemen ride down by the narrow bridge,
    But never one comes this way.

  And the voice that I long for is wanting ther,
    And the face I would die to see,
  Since he went away in the wild March air,
    Ah! to make a fortune for me.

  "O father dear I but you never thought
    Of the fortune you squandered and lost;
  Of the duty that never was sold and bought.
    And the love beyond all cost.

  "For the vile red dust you gave in thrall
    The heart that was God's above;
  How could you think that money was all,
    When the world was won for love?

  "You sought me wealth in the stranger's land,
    Whose veins are veins of gold;
  And the fortune God gave was in mine hand,
    When yours was in its hold.

  "If I might but look on your face," she says,
    "And then let me have or lack;
  But it's weary waiting nights and days
    For him that never comes back."

------

{828}


From The Dublin University Magazine.

THE SOLUTION OF THE NILE PROBLEM.  [Footnote 195]

  [Footnote 195: "The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, and
  Exploration of the Nile Sources." By Samuel White Baker, M.A.,
  F.R.G.S. London: Macmillan. & Co. 1865.]


For some time the complaint of those who have been everywhere, and
seen everything men of travel and of fashion ought to see, has been
that the world is "used-up" for the tourist. Where can he now go for a
fresh sensation? Asia and America remain no more untrodden fields than
Europe; and as for the isles of the farthest sea, rich and idle
"fugitives and vagabonds" have braved as many dangers among savage
tribes as the early missionaries, from impulse no nobler than
restlessness. Whither next shall they direct their strides? Iceland
stood in favor for a year or two; but the cooks are bad there, and the
inhabitants speak Latin. Japan has novelties, but bland Daimios are
not trustworthy. The sightseeker has no relish for being among a
people who, on very slight provocation, may perform upon him a process
akin to their own "happy despatch." In the exhaustion of interest in
mere horizontal locomotion, the Cain-like race we form part of try the
effect of ascension to the highest and hugest cloud-capped peaks;
but Matterhorn accidents have rather brought these
mountains-of-the-(full)-moon performances into disfavour. Pending the
discovery of some new wonder or feat, to occupy many vacant minds and
stir a few energetic ones, and during the crisis of a Continental war,
the migratory section amongst us must bear their misery as best they
can. It may console them to hope that the flying-machine will yet be
perfected, and air-sailing supersede Alpine climbing. Probably it
would be quite as exciting, and it would not tire the limbs. If there
be one geographical problem still left unsolved, it must be to find
the site of that cave of Adullam which has sorely puzzled numbers of
erudite Parliamentarians, one of whom was heard to make answer to a
query regarding its locality that he "never was a geographer." For the
purpose of stimulating the curiosity of the gentleman, and of guiding
him in his search among the lore of school-boy days, we may take from
a book well known a real, and not figurative, description of the Cave
in which shelter was lately found by some forty wayfarers uncertain as
to their route in a difficult country. "Leaving our horses," says an
Adullamite, who long preceded them, "in charge of wild------, and
taking one for a guide, we started for the cave, having a fearful
gorge below, gigantic cliffs above, and the path winding along a shelf
of the rock, narrow enough to make the nervous among us shudder. At
length, from a great rock hanging on the edge of this shelf, we sprang
by a long leap into a low window which opened into the perpendicular
face of the cliff. We were then within the hold of, ------ and creeping
half-doubled through a narrow crevice for a few rods, we stood beneath
the dark vault of the first grand chamber of this mysterious and
oppressive cavern. Our whole collection of lights did little more than
make the damp darkness visible. After groping about as long as we had
time to spare, we returned to the light of day, fully convinced that
with ------ and his lion-hearted followers inside, all the strength
of ------ under ------ could not have forced an entrance." Next to a
search for the celebrated cave, we can {829} imagine no geographical
extravagance equal to one for those Nile Sources that have been the
dream of ancients and moderns. The undertaking possessed an the
attraction of freshness. Your North-west passage is a mere track
through a waste, without the possibility of novelty. What its dangers
and privations, its few monotonous sights and events, were to
half-a-dozen navigators they would be to half-a-dozen more. But in
passing upward to the huge plateau in Central Africa where the Nile
Basin lies, itself again overtopped by the lofty range of the Blue
Mountains, down which giant cascades ceaselessly roll in unwitnessed
splendor, the traveller encounters perils enough, but relieved with a
human interest. The tribes he meets are many and unique in their
habits, strangely unlike each other, within short distances, and
having about them an extraordinary mixture of an incipient
civilization with some of the most depraved of the customs of savage
life. In the journey, too, there is endless variety. The expedition up
the river, with its hunting episodes, its difficulties with mutinous
servants and _seamen_, its devices to appease native cupidity and
circumvent native cunning, and its encounters with those vilest of the
pursuers of commerce, the slave-traders, forms one part of the
interest; and next come inland rides through tangled forest shades,
rude villages of cone-shaped huts, suspicious hordes of naked
barbarians, to whom every new face is that of a plunderer of slaves or
cattle, and "situations" in which it is impossible for the honest
traveller to escape sharp contests with a party of Turkish marauders,
for whose sins against the commandment he would otherwise be held
responsible by the relentless javelin-men of the desert. All this
offers adventure of a genuine description to him who has the love of
it in his disposition; and such a man is Mr. Samuel White Baker. His
impulses are irrepressible: nature made him a traveller. He is the
modern counterpart of those primitive personages, the Columbuses of
the times just succeeding the flood, whose purposeless wanderings into
far space from the spot where the Mesopotamian cradle of mankind was
rocked, peopled lands lying even beyond great seas; men whose feats
were such that the philosophers of five thousand years after can
hardly believe they performed them. If Mr. Baker had been a dweller in
Charran, he would have begged the patriarch Abraham to give him
camels, water-bags, and bushels of corn, and would have set off for
the eastern margin of the globe, and the shores of the loud-sounding
sea. Arrived there, he would have burned a tree hollow, and launched
boldly forth upon the deep, to go whithersoever fortune listed.

All his life a traveller in the true sense, Mr. Baker last conceived
the idea of securing for "England" the glory of discovering the
sources of the Nile. This bit of patriotic sentiment undoubtedly added
to the zest of the undertaking, to which, as has been said, he was
impelled by instinct. He is a man of resolute will, and to think and
to do are with him simultaneous acts. His preparations were instantly
in progress, and from that moment his motto, come what might,
was--Forward. Part of this perseverance no doubt was due to the
encouragement of Mrs. Baker's presence. That lady is the model
explorer's wife, and we could wish for such a race of women if there
were any problems geographical left to be solved. She set out with Mr.
Baker from Cairo, determined to go through all dangers with him, and
well knowing their nature; and she successfully accomplished the task,
and has returned to share his renown. To a full share of it she is
really entitled; for Mrs. Baker was much more than a companion to her
husband on his wanderings. She assisted him materially, not only
tending him when sick, not only conciliating the natives by her
kindness, but contributing to remove difficulties by wise {830}
counsel, bearing all hardships uncomplainingly, and--rare
virtue!--submitting to her lord's authority when he was warranted in
deciding what was best to be done, or left undone. Mrs. Baker could
also somewhat play the Amazon when occasion required. If she did not
actually take the shield and falchion, and go to the front of the
fight, she spread out the arms, loaded and prepared the weapons, and
rendered brave and effective aid on an occasion when the Discoverer of
the Great Basin of the Nile was likely to have become, if he did not
succeed in intimidating his foes by the parade of his armory, a sweet
morsel for the palate of the Latookas. Mr. Baker speaks with manly
tenderness of his wife, and the picture drawn of her in his incidental
references, will gain for her hosts of friends among his readers.

The narrative is quiet until he reaches Gondokoro. There, in March,
1863, he met Speke and Grant, who were descending the Nile, having
completed the East African expedition. When there the report reached
him on a certain morning that there were two white men approaching who
had come from the sea. These were the travellers from the Victoria
N'Yanza, the _other_, and smaller, source of the Nile. They had
undoubtedly solved the mystery. Still they had left something for
Baker to do, and candidly declared to him that they had not completed
the actual exploration of the Nile sources. In N. lat. 2° 17' they had
crossed the river which they had tracked from the Victoria Lake; but
it had there (at Karuma Falls) taken an extraordinary bend westward,
and when they met it again it was flowing from the W.S.W. There was
clearly another source, and Kamrasi, King of Unyoro, had informed them
that from the Victoria N'Yanza the Nile flowed westward for several
days' journey, and fell into another lake called the Luta N'Zige, from
which it almost immediately emerged again, and continued its course as
a navigable river to the north. Speke and Grant would have tracked out
this second source had not the tribes in the districts been at the
time at fend, and on such occasions they will not abide the face of a
stranger. Mr. Baker, guided by their hints, set out to complete what
they had begun.

Gondokoro is a great slave-market--Mr. Baker says "a perfect hell,"
"a colony of cut-throats." The Egyptian authorities wink at what goes
on, in consideration of liberal largesses. There were about six
hundred traders there when Mr. Baker visited it, drinking,
quarrelling, and beating their slaves. These ruffians made razzias on
the cattle of the natives, who are a cleanly and rather industrious
race of the picturesque type of savage. Their bodies are tattooed all
over, and an immense cock's feather, rising out of the single tuft of
hair left upon their shaven crowns, gives them rather an imposing
appearance. Their weapons of defence are poisoned arrows, with which
the traders at times make deadly acquaintance. Of course Mr. Baker had
unforeseen difficulties on setting out. What traveller ever started on
an expedition without meeting with his most irritating obstacles at
the threshold? Mr. Baker, however, was an old hand, and it took a good
deal to daunt him. His escort were as troublesome a set of vagabonds
as could have been collected together probably in Africa itself. He
had a mutiny to quell ere many days; and it is at this point we come
to see what sort of man is our explorer. He is a muscular Christian of
the stoutest type. Heavy fell his hand on skulls of sinning
niggers--it was the readiest implement, and down went the offender
under the blow so signally that his fellows saw and trembled. Mr.
Baker was a great "packer." His asses and camels carried a vast amount
of stuff, but so arranged and fitted that no breakdown occurred in the
most trying situations for man and beast.

{831}

The Latookas were the first race of savages Mr. Baker encountered.
They are about six feet high, and muscular and well-proportioned. They
have a pleasing cast of countenance, and are in manner very civil.
They are extremely clever blacksmiths, and shape their lances and
bucklers most skilfully. One of the most interesting passages of the
whole book is the author's account of this tribe:

  "Far from being the morose set of savages that I had hitherto seen,
  they are excessively merry, and always ready for either a laugh or a
  fight. The town of Tarrangotté contained about three thousand
  houses, and was not only surrounded by iron-wood palisades, but
  every house was individually fortified by a little stockaded
  courtyard. The cattle were kept in large kraals in various parts of
  the town, and were most carefully attended to, fires being lit every
  night to protect them from flies, and high platforms in three tiers
  were erected in many places, upon which sentinels watched both day
  and night, to give the alarm in case of danger. The cattle are the
  wealth of the country, and so rich are the Latookas in oxen, that
  ten or twelve thousand head are housed in every large town. . . .
  The houses of the Latookas are bell-shaped. The doorway is only two
  feet and two inches high, and thus an entrance must be effected on
  all-fours. The interior is remarkably clean, but dark, as the
  architects have no idea of windows."

Mr. Baker notices the fact that the circular form of hut is the only
style of architecture adopted among all the tribes of Central Africa,
and also among the Arabs of Upper Egypt; and that although there are
variations in the form of the roof, no tribe has ever yet dreamt of
constructing a window. The Latookas are obliged constantly to watch
for their enemy, a neighboring race of mule-riders, whose cavalry
attacks they can hardly withstand, although of war-like habits, and
accordingly--

  "The town of Tarrangotté is arranged with several entrances in the
  shape of low archways through the palisades: these are closed at
  night by large branches of the hooked thorn of the bitter bush, (a
  species of mimosa.) The main street is broad, but all others are
  studiously arranged to admit only of one cow, single file, between
  high stockades. Thus, in the event of an attack, these narrow
  passages can be easily defended, and it would be impossible to drive
  off their vast herds of cattle unless by the main street. The large
  cattle kraals are accordingly arranged in various quarters in
  connection with the great road, and the entrance of each kraal is a
  small archway in the strong iron-wood fence, sufficiently wide to
  admit one ox at a time. Suspended from the arch is a bell, formed of
  the shell of the Dolape palm-nut, against which every animal must
  strike either its horns or back on entrance. Every tinkle of the
  bell announces the passage of an ox into the kraal, and they are
  thus counted every evening when brought home from pasture."

The toilet of the natives is of the simplest, except in one
particular. The Latooka savage is content that his whole body should
be naked, but expends the most elaborate care on his headdress. Every
tribe in this district has a distinct fashion of arranging it, but the
Latookas reduce it to a science. Mr. Baker describes the process and
the result:

  "European ladies would be startled at the fact, that to perfect the
  _coiffure_ of a man requires a period of from eight to ten years!
  However tedious the operation the result is extraordinary. The
  Latookas wear most exquisite helmets, all of which are formed of
  their own hair, and are, of course, fixtures. At first sight it
  appears incredible; but a minute examination shows the wonderful
  perseverance of years in producing what must be highly inconvenient.
  The thick crisp wool is woven with fine twine, formed from the bark
  of a tree, until it presents a thick network of felt. As the hair
  grows through this matted substance it is subjected to the same
  process, until, in the course of years, a compact substance is
  formed, like a strong felt, about an inch and a half thick, that has
  been trained into the shape of a helmet. A strong rim of about two
  inches deep is formed by drawing it together with thread, and the
  front part of the helmet is protected by a piece of polished copper,
  while a piece of the same metal, shaped like the half of a bishop's
  mitre, and about a foot in length, forms the crest. The framework of
  the helmet being at length completed, it must be perfected by an
  arrangement of beads, should the owner of the head be sufficiently
  rich to indulge in the coveted distinction. The beads most in
  fashion are the red and the blue porcelain, about the size of small
  peas. These are sewn on the surface of the felt, and so beautifully
  arranged in sections of blue and red, that the entire helmet appears
  to be formed of beads, and the handsome crest of polished copper,
  surmounted by ostrich plumes, gives a most dignified and martial
  appearance to this elaborate head-dress."

{832}

With Commoro, chief of the Latookas, Mr. Baker had a religious
conversation. The savage was clever, even subtile. He does not appear,
however to have shaken the faith of the traveller. Probably had Mr.
Baker been a Bishop (Colenso) trained in the theology of the schools,
he might have been driven crazy by this mid-African counterpart of the
famous Zulu. The natives exhume the bones of their dead, and celebrate
a sort of dance round them; and Mr. Baker asked his Latookan friend--

  "Have you no belief in a future existence after death? Is not some
  idea expressed in the act of exhuming the bones after the flesh is
  decayed?"

  _Commoro (loq.)_--"Existence after death! How can that be? Can a
  dead man get out of his grave unless we dig him out?"

  "Do you think a man is like a beast that dies and is ended?"

  _Commoro._--"Certainly. An ox is stronger than a man, but he dies,
  and his bones last longer; they are bigger. A man's bones break
  quickly; he is weak."

  "Is not a man superior in sense to an ox? Has he not a mind to
  direct his actions?"

  _Commoro._--"Some men are not so clever as an ox. Men must sow corn
  to obtain food, but the ox and wild animals can procure it without
  sowing."

  "Do you not know that there is a spirit within you more than flesh?
  Do you not dream and wander in thought to distant places in your
  sleep? Nevertheless, your body rests in one spot. How do you account
  for this?"

  _Commoro_ (laughing.)--"Well, how do you account for it?"

. . .

  "If you have no belief in a future state, why should a man be good?
  Why should he not be bad, if he can prosper by wickedness?"

  _Commoro_.--"Most people are bad; if they are strong, they take from
  the weak. The good people are all weak; they are good because they are
  not strong enough to be bad."

Extremes meet; there are sages of modern days whose much learning has
brought them up to the intellectual pitch of the savage's materialism.
They might, ingenious as they are, even take a lesson in sophistry
from the Latookan. When driven into a corner by the use of St. Paul's
metaphor, the astute Commoro answered:

  "Exactly so; that I understand. But the original grain does not rise
  again; it rots, like the dead man, and is ended. The fruit produced
  is not the same grain that was buried, but the _production_ of that
  grain. So it is with man. I die, and decay, and am ended; but my
  children grow up, like the fruit of the grain. Some men have no
  children, and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."

Nevertheless, the Latookans continue to dig out the bones of their
kindred, and to perform a rite around them which is manifestly a
tradition from the time when a belief in the immortality of the soul
existed among them.

It was impossible for Mr. Baker to reach the Lake toward which he
pressed without appeasing Kamrasi, King of the Unyoros. But to do this
was not easy when his stock of presents was getting low, and his men
were so few and weak as to inspire no barbarian prince with the
slightest fear. Yet, though debilitated with fever, his quinine
exhausted, and Mrs. Baker stricken down in the disease, he pressed on
with an unquenchable zeal--one would almost write worthy of a better
cause. Finally, he was abundantly rewarded. Hurrying on in advance of
his escort he reached at last, ere the sun had risen on what proved
afterward a brilliant day, the summit of the hills that hem the great
valley occupied by the vast Nile Source. There it lay "a sea of
quicksilver" far beneath, stretching boundlessly off to the vast Blue
Mountains which, on the opposite side towered upward from its bosom,
and over whose breasts cascades could be discerned by the telescope
tumbling down in numerous torrents. Standing 1500 feet above the level
of the Lake, Mr. Baker shouted for joy that "England had won the
Sources of the Nile!" and called the gigantic reservoir the Albert
N'Yanza. The Victoria and Albert Lakes, then, are the {833} Nile
Sources. Clambering down the steep--his wife, just recovered from
fever, and intensely weak, leaning upon him--Mr. Baker reached the
shore at length of the great expanse of water, and rushing into it,
drank eagerly, with an enthusiasm almost reaching the ancient Egyptian
point of Nile-worship.

Mr. Baker describes the Albert Lake as the grand reservoir, and the
Victoria as the Eastern source.

  "The Nile, cleared of its mystery, resolves itself into comparative
  simplicity. The actual basin of the Nile is included between about
  the 22° and 39° east longitude, and from 3° south to 18° north
  latitude. The drainage of that vast area is monopolized by the
  Egyptian river. . . The Albert N'Yanza is the great basin of the
  Nile: the distinction between it and the Victoria N'Yanza is, that
  the Victoria is a reservoir receiving the eastern affluents, and it
  becomes the starting-point or the most elevated _source_ at the
  point where the river issues from it at the Ripon Falls; the Albert
  is a reservoir not only receiving the western and southern affluents
  direct from the Blue Mountains, but it also receives the supply from
  the Victoria and from the entire equatorial Nile basin. The Nile, as
  it issues from the Albert N'Yanza is the entire Nile; prior to its
  birth from the Albert Lake it is _not_ the entire Nile."

  ". . . Ptolemy had described the Nile sources as emanating from two
  great lakes that received the snows of the mountains in Ethiopia.
  There are many ancient maps existing upon which these lakes are
  marked as positive. There can be little doubt that trade had been
  carried on between the Arabs from the Red Sea and the coast opposite
  Zanzitan in ancient times, and that the people engaged in such
  enterprises had penetrated so far as to have gained a knowledge of
  the existence of the two reservoirs."

The interest of Mr. Baker's volumes of course culminates with his
account of the Great Lake. He embarked in a canoe of the country, and
with his party in another, navigated it for a long distance,
encountering storms and weathering them with a skill and courage which
show him as cool and experienced a traveller on _sea_ as on land. On
his return overland he was again in perils oft. But the same undying
spirit which supported him through a dozen fevers carried him through
every danger triumphantly. The English nation has reason to be proud
of such men, and of such women as Mrs. Baker still more. Devotion like
hers honors the sex. There is an end, however, of Nile voyaging with
the old object. If the Victoria and Albert Lakes are revisited it will
be in pursuit of other ends than mere geographical inquiry or
curiosity. Mr. Baker seems to think that missionaries may be the first
to follow in the track he has made, and it is a fact that next to
professional explorers (if even second to them) those influenced by
religious zeal have made the most daring expeditions into unknown
regions. Livingstone has done even more in another part of Africa than
Baker did on the great level, which, as he thinks, from its altitude,
escaped being submerged at any previous part of the world's history,
and may contain at this moment the descendants of a pre-Adamite race.
On the ethnology of the central Africans he can throw no light, and
his mere speculations are worthless, but he is doubtless right in
considering that commerce must precede religious propagandism among
those races, if anything is really to be done for their benefit. For
commerce there are large opportunities, if only the abominable
slave-trade, which makes fiends of the natives, were effectually
suppressed. Mr. Baker writes warmly on this point, and none knows
better the character and extent of the evil. A more interesting book
of travel was never written than his Albert N'Yanza: in every page
there is fresh and vivid interest. The author, who is admirable in
many things, is a model narrator, and there is no romance at all equal
in attraction to the simple and unvarnished, but full and picturesque,
account of his protracted and exciting travels.


--------

{834}


Translated from the French.

THREE WOMEN OF OUR TIME.

EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN--CHARLOTTE BRONTË--RAHEL LEVIN.

BY GABRIEL CERNY.


It is now quite a number of years since it became the fashion to study
women, and writers of note have called to life more than one who would
have preferred being left to oblivion under her cold tombstone. Is it
not enough to have lived once even if we have lived wisely? "No one
would accept an existence that was to last forever," said a
philosopher who had suffered from the injustice of mankind.

It seems, for example, as if the heroines of the seventeenth century
must smile in pity to see the pettiest actions of their lives as well
as the deepest inspirations of their hearts given up for food to the
indiscreet curiosity and vivid imagination of the eminent philosopher
who had so lovingly resuscitated them. And the intellectual women who
came after them, are not they not often wounded by the judgments
passed upon them by the most inquisitive and fertile of critics?

In two works entirely devoted to woman, a _fantaisiste_ who was once
an historian, has tried to explain the best means to insure happiness
to the fairer half of the human race, with a minuteness very tender in
intention but often quite repugnant to our taste. He states in detail
the hygienic care indispensable to creatures weak in body, feeble in
mind, and so helpless when left to themselves that in truth there are
but two conditions in the world suitable for them--to be courtesans if
they are beautiful, and maid-servants if they are destitute of
physical charms; nay, such is the arrogance of this literary _Céladon_
that he would assign to the wife an inferior position and leave the
husband to superintend not only business affairs but household
matters. In short, when we read these books we seem to be attending a
session of the Naturalization Society, teaching the public to rear and
domesticate some valuable animal much to be distrusted.

Not even the toilettes of the eighteenth century have failed to arouse
the interest of two authors of our day, who, displeased perhaps with
the slight success of their book, have now abandoned the range of
realities for the dreary delusions of a lawless realism. In a work as
long as it is tiresome, they have described with feminine lucidity the
various costumes of the ladies of the court of Louis XV., of the
Revolution, and the Empire.

A book has now appeared which, according to its title, promises to
show us the "Intellect of Women of our own Time," but in reality
confines itself to giving three interesting biographies. The author
was already known to the public through a romance which reveals true
talent "Daniel Blady," the story of a musician, is written in the
German style, and shows an elevation of sentiment, a straightforward
honesty of principle, and above all a simplicity of devotion rarely to
be met with in the world. M. Camille Selden admires modest women,
incapable of personal ambition or vanity, who consecrate all the
tender and enlivening faculties of soul and reason to the service of a
husband, father, or brother, and such a woman he portrays in "Daniel
Blady."

{835}

In order to represent fairly the women of our day M. Selden has
selected three different characters; three names worn modestly,
usefully, and honorably; three contrasts of position, race, doctrine,
and education: a French Catholic, an English Protestant, a German
Jewess: Eugénie de Guérin, Charlotte Brontë, and Rachel Varnhagen von
Ense. They were all affectionate, devoted, and self-forgetful; two of
them married, and the French-woman alone had the happy privilege of
restoring to God a heart and soul that had belonged to no one.

I.

Eugénie de Guérin du Cayla was born and bred _en province_, although
of a truly noble family, of Venetian origin it is said. Her mode of
life was that of a woman of the middle class (_bourgeoise_) enjoying
that comparative ease which we see in the country; a large house
scantily furnished, a garden less cultivated than the fields, and
servants of little or no training, who seem to form a part of the
family.

Mlle. de Guérin lost her mother early, and having two brothers and a
sister younger than herself, became burthened with the care of a
household and family. Her letters and journal show her to us as she
was at twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, not one of those
persons of morose and frigid virtue who are good for nothing but to
mend linen and take care of birds, but a woman of intelligent and
unembarrassed activity. She made fires, visited the poultry-yard,
prepared breakfast for the reapers, and when her work was done, betook
herself in all haste to a little retreat which she dignified with the
name of _study_, where she ran through some book or wrote a few
pages--always charming, always strong--of a sort of journal of the
actions of her life. Eugénie's especial favorite was her brother
Maurice, who was five years younger than herself, and it would be
impossible to speak of her without recalling the passionate maternal
tenderness with which from her earliest youth she regarded this
brother whom she had loved to rock and nurse in infancy.

"I remember that you sometimes made me jealous," she wrote to him one
day, "it was because I was a little older than you, and I did not know
that tenderness and caresses, _the hearts milk_, are lavished on the
little ones."

Devotion was the principle motive-power of Eugénie's actions; ardent
prayer and charity profoundly moved her; wind, snow, rain-storms,
nothing checked her when she knew that in some corner of the village
there were miseries to be relieved, tears to be wiped away. She felt
sympathy with all living creatures, even if they were inanimate like
trees and flowers; she sighed when the wind bowed them down; "she
pitied them, comparing them to unhappy human beings bending beneath
misfortune," and imitating the example of the great saint, Francis of
Assisi, she would gladly have conversed with lambs and turtle-doves.

Mlle. de Guérin pitied the educated peasants who knew how to read and
yet could not pray. "Prayer to God," she said, "is the only fit manner
to celebrate any thing in this world." And again, "Nothing is easier
than to speak to the neglected ones of this world; they are not like
us, full of tumultuous or perverse thoughts that prevent them from
hearing."

She loved religion with its festivals and splendors; and breathed in
God with the incense and flowers on the altar, nor could she ever have
understood an invisible, abstract God, a God simply the guardian of
morality as Protestants believe him to be.

Most women become useful only through some being whom they love and to
whom they refer the actions of their lives; it is their noblest and
most natural instinct to efface and lose themselves in another's
glory. Having no husband or children, Mlle. de Guérin attached herself
to her brother Maurice, a delicate nature, a sad {836} and suffering
soul, destined to self-destruction, a lofty but unquiet spirit that
was never to find on earth the satisfaction and realization of his
hopes. "You are the one of all the family," he wrote to her, "whose
disposition is most in sympathy with my own, so far as I can judge by
the verses that you send me, in all of which there is a gentle
reverie, a tinge of melancholy, in short, which forms, I believe, the
basis of my character." Mlle. de Guérin's letters to her brother were
not only tender and consoling, but strong and healthy in their tone.
Indeed, he needed them, for terrible were his sufferings from the
ill-will and indifference of others. He wrote and tried to establish
himself as a critic; but some publishers rejected him and others
evaded his proposals with vague promises, until with despair he saw
every issue closed to him, and knew not what answer to make to his
father, who grew impatient at the constant failure of his
expectations.

Though ignorant of the world, Mlle, de Guérin did not the less suspect
the dangers that Christian faith may encounter. One day, a voice that
seemed to come from heaven told her that Maurice no longer prayed; and
then we find her trembling and uneasy. "I have received your letter,"
she says, "and I see you in it, but I do not recognize you; for you
only open your mind to me, and it is your heart, your soul, your
inmost being that I long to see. Return to prayer, your soul is full
of love and craves expansion; believe, hope, love, and all the rest
shall be added. If I could only see you a Christian! Oh! I would give
my life and everything else for that." . . . Like all persons who try
to dispense with the divine restraints of the precepts of the gospel,
poor Maurice struggled in a dreary world; his sensitive and poetic
soul saw God everywhere except in his own heart; he longed sometimes
to be a flower, or a bird, or verdure; his brain and imagination ran
away with him, and his soul poured itself forth without restraint, and
lost its way through wandering from the veritable Source of life.

This passion for nature led him to write a work which shows genuine
power even if it be unproductive; a prose poem in which Christianity
is forgotten for the sake of fable and antiquity. But thanks to his
sister's prayers, Maurice was one of those who return to God. He
passed away without agitation or suffering, smiling on all, and
begging his sister Eugénie to read him some spiritual book. At the
bottom of his heart he had never ceased to love God, and he returned
to him as a little child returns to its mother.

Eugénie did not give herself up to vain despair after Maurice's death.
Thinking perpetually of him whom she had loved so deeply, she busied
herself with the writings which he had left behind him, and prayed for
his soul, recommending him also to the prayers of her friends. She
still addressed herself to him, and oppressed with sadness unto death,
communed with his absent soul, imploring him to come to her. "Maurice,
my friend, what is heaven, that home of friends? Will you never give
me any sign of life? Shall I never hear you, as the dead are sometimes
said to make themselves heard? Oh! if it be possible, if there exist
any communication between this world and the other, return to me!"

But one day she grew weary of this unanswered correspondence, and a
moral exhaustion took possession of her. "_Let us cast our hearts into
eternity_," she cried. These were her last words, and she died, glad
to see her life accomplished, confiding in the mercy of God, in his
goodness who reunites the soul which he has severed here below, but
never has forgotten in their bereavement.



{837}

II.

Charlotte Brontë, (Currer Bell,) whom M. Camille Selden offers to us
as a type of energy and virtue, was the daughter of a country
clergyman. Sad was the childhood and sad the youth of the poor English
girl. Her mother was an invalid, her father a man of gloomy and almost
fierce disposition, their means were so limited as to border upon
poverty, and as if to complete the dreary picture, the scenery about
the parsonage was "austere and lugubrious to contemplate, like the sea
beneath an impending tempest."

In England the clerical profession is totally unlike the holy mission
of a Catholic clergyman. The ecclesiastical life there is a career,
not a vocation. "Mr. Brontë never left home unarmed," a singular
method of preaching peace to the world and reconciliation among
brethren. He was a good father, no doubt--almost all Englishmen are
so. But he kept his family at a distance, and spoke to them seldom,
and then in a curt and supercilious manner. His morose spirit did not
relish the society of children, and if he became the preceptor of his
little family, it was rather in order to fulfil a duty and conform
himself to custom, than from a feeling of tenderness or even
solicitude for their future welfare. Thus the minister's children
lived amid influences which were cold and serious, but upright, and in
a certain sense strengthening. There are so many children in every
English family that parents of the middle class are obliged to treat
them less as subordinates than as auxiliaries. The children are less
familiar with their parents but more respectful than among us; life is
not so easy and gentle, education more masculine.

Independence is the goal toward which all young English people tend,
and both girls and boys are early taught that labor alone can lead
them to it. In France we long impatiently for the time to shut up our
children in the high-walled barracks which we dignify with the name of
boarding-schools; for it is extremely necessary, we say, to be rid of
idle, noisy boys. Girls are generally educated at home, but either
through weakness or indifference, they are treated with far too much
indulgence. "Poor little things!" we say pathetically; "who can tell
what fate awaits them in married life?" for in this country we so far
forget Christian duty as to make marriage a necessity, an obligation,
a matter of business, instead of seeking therein, as the English do, a
basis of true happiness.

Children, educated as they are in England, early acquire habits of
observation and reflection; sitting around the tea-table in the
evening, they listen to the conversation of their grandparents, and
are often questioned upon the most serious subjects. This is
Protestantism, you say. Not at all: it is the remains of the Christian
spirit anterior to the Reformation. This spirit is exhibited in habits
as in laws. If family life among us were truly catholic, we should
possess all this and in greater perfection.

There is another practice in England which is often beneficial, and
which we do not dare to adopt openly in France. I mean the habit of
writing out one's impressions. This seems to be as natural in England
as thought; and mothers, young girls, and men consider it a duty to
keep an account of the good ideas that occur to them or of the
interesting facts they may observe.

In France, on the contrary, true literary culture is closed to women,
and there is a general outcry whenever any woman takes the liberty of
publishing a work under her own name. It is thought quite natural that
a young girl, with a dress outrageously _decolletée_ and her head
covered with flowers, should appear upon a stage and sing a _bravura_;
but let her venture to write, and the world accuses her of want of
reserve.

A Frenchman has such a horror of anything methodical and serious that
he prefers to educate his daughters without thought or reflection, at
hap-hazard and with no provision for {838} the future. Frenchwomen
understand everything without study, it is said; this may be true, and
the merit is not so great as to make it worth while to deny the
assertion. What a superficial method! what an incredible way to
acquire knowledge and judgment!

Englishwomen on the contrary, devote themselves to a regular course of
instruction; they read a great deal, making extracts and critical
notes, and thus avoid idleness and _ennui_, those two terrible
diseases that affect womankind. Unfortunately abuses glide into their
reading, and novels or even newspapers hold a place there which they
ought not to occupy. This is a fruit of Protestantism, of free
inquiry, and if our faith were firm and practical, we should know how
to avoid the abuse and accept the useful side of this custom.

But there is again a situation which Englishwomen meet with a better
grace than Frenchwomen--we mean the _misfortune_ of remaining
unmarried at twenty-eight or thirty years of age--of becoming _old
maids_. With us, as soon as a daughter comes into the world we begin
to think of amassing her dower; for it is the value of this dower
which is to secure a good or bad marriage for her. We persuade her
that it is almost a disgrace to remain unmarried, but by a tacit
agreement we conceal from her the fact that marriage, as the Church
instituted it, is the union of two souls equal in the sight of God,
and that in giving her hand to a man, she becomes half of himself and
flesh of his flesh. No, it is not a question of heart or of duty; she
marries a man whom she has known scarcely two months, and her family
triumphantly congratulate themselves on being freed from the
unpleasant possibility of harboring _an old maid_. To avoid this, some
marriages are a mere _sale_, a present shame, a future misery, and a
final sin.

As in England daughters have no dower, and sons are valued much more
highly, young women are early prepared not to marry, and are neither
sadder nor more unfortunate on that account. Care of the little ones
in the family; that pleasant occupation belonging by right to maiden
aunts, (_tantes berceuses,_) study, attentive observation of men and
things, and the consciousness of intellectual worth, sustain the
Englishwomen until the moment, often distant, and never to arrive for
many a one, when a good, sincere, and intelligent man shall unite her
lot to his; but as she has self-respect and does not consider loss of
youth as loss of caste, she does not accept the suitor unless she
knows him well and is certain that he does not wish to take her or buy
her _pour faire une fin_.

Charlotte, like Eugénie and like Rahel, of whom we shall speak in her
turn, was rather insignificant in appearance; her features were
irregular, her forehead prominent, and her eyes small but deep and
piercing in expression. She was educated with two of her sisters in a
boarding-school, where the regimen was hard and unhealthy, the uniform
coarse, and the food insufficient and ill cooked. Mr. Brontë turned a
deaf ear to his eldest daughter's complaints for a long time, and did
not decide to take his children home until one of them had already
sunk under the injudicious treatment. Charlotte was then placed with
Miss W----, with whom she lived eight years as pupil and second
teacher. And here M. Camille Selden gives us some excellent remarks
upon the difference existing between the French lay _pension_ with its
supplementary course, and the English boarding-school.

"In the former, as in a well-disciplined army, every movement, every
manoeuvre must be executed in union, even the recess is subject to
rules. In the midst of her battalion of teachers and sub-mistresses,
the French directress, _en grande tenue_, resembles a brilliant
colonel marching proudly at the head of his squadron in a review."

{839}

"The object of education in England is at once simpler and gentler. It
is thought there to be the duty of a woman, as of a man, to develop
the judgment by study; that reflection and observation are equally
necessary to teach both sexes how to live wisely and think justly.
Therefore we never hear of courses of study where under the pretext of
maternal education, gentlemen in black coats give out _bribes_ for
history, geography--nay, even philosophy, to little girls who come
there apparently to study under maternal supervision, but in reality
to learn to receive company and dress tastefully; in one word, to
rehearse the worldly comedy which a little later they will be
condemned to enact."

The author should have completed his picture by giving an exact
account of our houses of religious education; but I think he knows
little about them, and cares little to get information concerning
them, which accounts for certain wants in his book.

Poor Charlotte Brontë was never young, partly because of her childish
sufferings, but chiefly because of her serious and inquiring nature,
which applied its powers to investigating and analyzing the sources of
everything. She did not indulge in the childish ideas of a school
girl, and being free from the dangerous enthusiasm that imagination
engenders, she understood the full extent of human misery without
exaggerating it, and if she was deprived of illusions at least she was
spared disappointment. And yet she suffered; her vigorous soul, her
fertile intellect imprisoned in this common-place situation, were
stifled as in a cage; and to complete her misery came religious
terrors, frightful visions of "failing grace and impossible
salvation," until her awe-struck heart recoiled in affright.

Like all souls ardently loving goodness and thirsting from the true
love, she sighed after the bliss of heaven: "I would be willing," she
exclaimed, "I would be willing to exchange my eighteen years for gray
hairs--or even to stand on the verge of the grave, if by that means I
could be assured of the divine mercy;" but alas! in the practices of
that dry and personal religion in which each one answers to himself
for himself, and whence confidence is banished as a weakness, where
should she look for help?

Meanwhile the circle of poverty was drawing closer and closer about
Charlotte and her sisters, and a thousand thoughts sprang up in the
brain of the courageous girl: "I wish to make money, no matter how--if
only the means be honest! nothing would discourage me," said she; "but
I should not care to be a cook--I should prefer being housemaid." In
the evening, when every one else was in bed, she used to meet her
sisters in the little parlor, and they would read to each other their
literary efforts in a low voice. They decided with one accord that
Charlotte must write to Southey and send him a book of her poems. The
poet saw no great merit in these effusions and tried to discourage
Charlotte, giving her at the same time excellent moral advice upon the
nothingness of celebrity and the dangers of ambition.

She decided then to make a journey to Belgium in order to study
French, but she was almost immediately recalled home. The old aunt who
had kept house during her absence was dead, her father was becoming
blind, and her brother was subject to attacks of delirium in which he
threatened his father's life. It was amid these terrible calamities
that Miss Brontë wrote "Jane Eyre," the most powerful of her novels.

The next plan was that she and her sisters should all write together
and get a volume printed at their own expense under the names of
Ellis, Acton, and Currer Bell. It may well be imagined that this
unfortunate book, sent out like a foundling into the literary world,
met with no success, for if the beginnings of any career are
precarious, the obstacles presented by literature are insurmountable
to any one {840} not possessed of immense energy. We know Charlotte
well enough to feel sure that she was not a woman to waste away in the
dejection of sterile discouragement; she began to write again, and
composed "The Professor." Alas! the poor little book travelled about
from publisher to publisher without finding rest anywhere; and such
was the naïveté of its author, that in her eagerness to send her
rejected book to each new bookseller, she forgot to remove the old
postage stamps from the package--not an encouraging recommendation to
any editor to accept the _leavings_ of his _confrères!_

It was at Manchester, during six weeks that she passed there with her
father, who was forced to undergo an operation for cataract, that Miss
Brontë finished "Jane Eyre." Messrs. Smith and Elder of London
accepted the manuscript without hesitation, and from that time the
obscure young girl was a celebrity whom every one longed to know and
to receive.

Charlotte's literary success brought a ray of joy into Mr. Brontë's
melancholy household, but it was of short duration. Twice within two
months the inhabitants of Haworth saw the window-blinds of the
parsonage closed, and heard the bell toll a death-knell. Charlotte's
brother, prostrated by excesses, and consumed internally, died in the
course of fifteen minutes; but they were minutes of awful anguish; in
the grasp of the death-agony the dying man started to his feet, crying
out that he would die standing, and that his will should give way only
with his breath. Her elder sister, Emily, left home for the last time
when she followed his bier to the grave; and another sister, the
youngest and Charlotte's well-beloved, Anna Brontë, sustained herself
awhile by dint of care and tenderness, but her lungs were affected and
she soon began to languish; she too declined and died.

Poor Charlotte now found herself alone with her father who had lost
five of his six children. She devoted herself to writing, as much to
distract her grief as to deceive the long hours of the day; and
henceforth her personality presented two distinct faces. She was a
conscientious Englishwoman, a clergyman's daughter attached to her
duties, and an authoress, ardent and active in defence of her
convictions, and not without a certain obstinacy. "Her success
continued, and she was obliged to submit to the exhibition to which
English enthusiasm and bad taste subject their favorites. Miss Brontë
had to go to dinner-parties, and to reunions of unlooked-for luxury
and splendor; but the distinction that flattered her most was being
placed by Thackeray in the seat of honor to hear the first lecture of
this celebrated author at Willis's Rooms."

But solitude which had been the foundation and habit of her life,
rendered her unfit for the world. Miss Brontë had suffered too much to
preserve that serenity of temper and freedom of spirit necessary to
enable one to talk easily and agreeably, and often would she sit
silent amid a cross-fire of conversation all around her "I was forced
to explain," she said, "that I was silent because I could talk no
more."

Charlotte Brontë had arrived at the age of thirty-eight years without
having had her heart touched with any emotion stronger than dutiful
affection for her family. But--and here prose intrudes itself a
little--her father had a vicar, and what could an English vicar do but
be married? He loved Charlotte, and moreover, she had become a good
match; but on one hand the fear of a refusal, and on the other the
dread of the embarrassment for a clergyman of sharing the existence of
a literary woman, prevented him from declaring his affections. At
last, however, he took courage, and I ask myself if this courage was
not rendered more attainable by Charlotte herself. At all events she
accepted his offer without hesitation; but her father, who was too
selfish to allow his daughter to occupy herself with any one but
himself, opposed the marriage, and the enamored vicar left Haworth.

{841}

The privation that Mr. Brontë experienced after his vicar's
departure--a privation that Miss Brontë's temperament must have made
him feel more sensibly--was such that he recalled the suitor, and the
marriage took place. It was a dreary ceremony: no relations, no
friends, so that the bride positively had no one to lead her to the
altar; for her father had refused to be present at the marriage for
fear of feeling agitated, faithful to the end to the dry and
egotistical line of conduct he had marked out for himself.

The wife devoted herself bravely to seconding her husband in the
duties of his ministry. She visited the poor, had a Sunday-school,
improvised prayers and knew the Bible by heart. She was happy--but her
happiness was of short duration, for physical and moral sufferings had
exhausted her, and she died just as life had become harmonized
according to her wishes.

A celebrated author, a strong and courageous woman, aspiring after a
Christian life, she gave all that a heart can give which is not
possessed of the true light; and M. Selden is right in saying at the
close: "Charlotte is better than her heroines." There are few authors
of whom one could say as much.



III.

From England _with its maintien compassé_, and cold religious tenets,
M. Camille Selden takes us to Germany, the land of sentiment and
intellectual research, and introduces us to a Jewess in Berlin, that
we may see what a German _salon_ was at the end of the eighteenth
century.

Rahel Levin was only twenty years old when she lost her father, a
wealthy Israelite, gloomy and violent in his bearing at home, but
amiable and attractive in society.

The young Rahel, endowed with great intelligence and unerring tact,
united to a truly kind heart, was valued and sought by every one as
soon as she appeared in society. She was exceedingly amiable, full of
an obliging good temper that made her anticipate wishes, divine
annoyances in order to relieve them, and forget herself in seeking to
make others happy. Rare too was her loyalty; not only was her soul
incapable of falsehood, but of any want of sincerity. Her husband who
had the good taste not to be jealous of his wife's superiority and
success, said of her "that she did not think to lose by showing
herself as God had made her, or gain by hiding anything." "Natural
candor, absolute purity of soul, and sincerity of heart are the only
things worthy of respect--the rest is only external regularity and
conventionality," she often said to those who lavished upon her
expressions of respect and admiration.

Unhappily for Mlle. Levin, circumstances concurred in alienating her
from her family. Her mother and brothers, notwithstanding their ample
fortune, showed a rapacity worthy of their race, and most unlike
Rahel's broad and generous ideas; and her position would have been
pitiable, but for the illustrious friends who frequented her mother's
house. Among them the young girl forgot the petty meanness of her home
life; and inexhaustible in ideas, perceptive faculty, and wit, she
handled the gravest subjects with delicate skill, and almost as if she
were playing with them. Full of unfailing good temper, she could
discuss the most varied, the most opposite subjects, without dogmatism
or eccentricity.

But this want of union with her family, which had deprived her of the
domestic happiness so indispensable to every affectionate woman had
rendered her paradoxical and even a little sceptical. See, for
example, what she wrote to her youngest sister, who had consulted her
about a proposal of marriage: "The want of durability in everything,
and the inevitable separation between an object and its {842} motive,
afford, you see, the final explanation of all that is human. You do
not wish to belong to humanity; very well, destroy yourself. I feel
quite differently: only transitory things, only what is human can
tranquillize and console me." How at variance is this bitterness with
the ardent hopefulness of the spiritual Eugénie de Guérin! and how
excellent a proof, if we needed any new one, that true happiness is
unattainable without that deep religious feeling which raises us above
all passing things! Charlotte Brontë had at least that Protestant
severity which stifles all tender quailing of the heart and soul, like
a miser trembling lest he should lose a farthing of the merits of his
sacrifice; but poor Rahel possessed only the intellectual resources of
the mind, and they can do little for us.

Goethe, whose countrywoman she was so proud of being; Goethe, little
inclined to exaggerate the value of a woman's mind, took pleasure in
calling her a generous girl. "She has powerful emotions and a careless
way of expressing them," he said: "the better you know her, the more
you feel yourself attracted and gently enthralled."

But it was a long time before she enthralled any one. At last one of
her friends, Varnhagen von Ense, a young man twenty-six years old,
offered her his hand. Let him describe to us the charm of his first
interview with Rahel.

  "From the first, I must say that she made me experience a very rare
  happiness, that of contemplating for the first time a complete
  being--complete in intelligence and heart, a perfect union of nature
  and cultivation. Everywhere I saw harmony, equilibrium, views as
  naïve as they were original, striking in their grandeur as in their
  novelty, and always in accordance with her slightest actions. And
  all was pervaded with a sentiment of the purest humanity, guided by
  an energetic sense of duty, and heightened by a noble
  self-forgetfulness in the presence, of the joys and griefs of
  others."

Rahel was then thirty-six years old, and this great disparity of age,
added to her want of beauty and fortune, must have inspired her with
doubts of the duration of a feeling, which perhaps her heart,
accustomed to independence, did not at first reciprocate. But in
Germany marriages are not made as they are in France; people do not
marry without knowing each other, or with a precipitation which might
lead one to suppose that on both sides there was something to conceal,
or that the intention was to make a good bargain of duty. According to
the fashion of their country the two friends were betrothed, and were
then forced to separate.

"I am not afraid; I will wait for you; I know you will never forsake
me," wrote the indulgent Rahel eight years later, when a Frenchwoman
would have lost patience a thousand times over.

In France, where dower, beauty, name, or position, rank before
affection, such a separation would certainly have proved fatal. Had he
no cause to fear that some one else might supplant him with Rahel? Was
she untroubled by dread of the cruel dangers that threaten and disturb
the affections? Might not her heart, naturally sceptical, and shaken
by contact with the world, distrust the effect of opinion upon so
young a man? "But true love has nothing to fear from worldly talk or
material considerations; a whiff of a passing breeze cannot destroy
strongly rooted affections, whose living germ lies sheltered in the
depths of the heart." Such love can wait, for it does not know how to
change. Such love was Rahel's; was it Varnhagen's? We shall see.

{843}

Rahel was not an author, and had no thought of publication; it was
only after her death that her husband sought some slight consolation
in publishing her letters. These letters which make three volumes,
were written in the course of forty years, and therefore they reveal
the different phases of development in the young girl, the independent
woman, and the matron. Through the generous feelings which she
expresses, with a soul sympathizing with all sorts of interests, there
pierces a certain delicate irony which seems to find pleasure in
following out to the end any singular or original idea: We feel
painfully that this woman has lost much, suffered deeply. In the life
of Rahel the Jewess, as in that of Charlotte the Protestant, we
discern the absence of our Saviour's cross; we see nowhere the gentle
vision of the Virgin Mother.

In one of her letters, Mlle. Levin describes the impression which a
visit to a Catholic convent had made upon her mind. She had entered
into the services in the chapel like an artist: "I would gladly go
there again, if it were only to hear the music, and breathe in the
odor of the incense," said she. But the mortifications of the
religious seemed to her more eccentric than touching; she pitied them
for having to fulfil the functions of gardener and cook, to prepare
medicines and feel the pulse of their patients. "Without exception
their hands looked coarse," she said, "and their masculine tread
sounded like the tramp of a patrol." And yet later in life Rahel was
to perform, voluntarily, the same work as these nuns, and moreover she
had a true sentiment of piety, which sometimes rose to an expression
of faith.

"In moments of suffering," she wrote, "how happy faith makes me feel!
I love to rest upon it as on a downy pillow."

We read these words so full of simple piety, with a full heart,
thinking sadly how little assistance this woman would have needed to
become an ardent convert to the true religion. It is really surprising
that she should not have sought out Christianity.

"Never try to suppress a generous impulse, or to crowd out a genuine
feeling," she wrote to a friend: "despair or discouragement are the
only fruits of dry reasoning; examine yourself carefully, and dread
above all things the decisions of wisdom unenlightened by the heart."

Rahel and Varnhagen had agreed to meet again one day; but absence is
often fatal to the strongest ties, and more than once this one was on
the point of snapping.

"A woman who has passed thirty," says our author, "may well fear lest
youth, proved by the parish register, should win the day against youth
of mind and soul."

It would have been very hard to find a rival to a woman so gifted as
Rahel; but the first moment of enthusiasm over, Varnhagen began to
think that his betrothed had been very prompt in her acceptance of the
promises by which he had bound himself when a young and inexperienced
man; and perhaps his memory recalled certain confidences of
ill-matched pairs, who had assured him that generosity is a snare.

"For nothing in the world, of course, would he have renounced this
affection of which he was proud; but he thought that she would accept
his fidelity without his name, and he presumed to offer his devotion
in lieu of the projected union."

Rahel could not accept a compromise as humiliating to her heart as
dangerous to her reputation. She refused it, but--and this was less
dignified--she refused sadly and plainly to free Varnhagen from his
engagement. This was what she wrote:

"Bitterness at least equals suffering, when you, the single, solitary
soul who knows me thoroughly, would turn away from me, or what is the
same thing, when you would be false to yourself, and forsake me: hard
words, my friend, but none the less true. I must be severe to the only
being who has given me a right to expect anything from him. In you
alone had I hoped, and I think I should insult you in saying that I
had ceased to hope."

{844}

To this bitter trial was added another one, which was very severe,
though merely connected with material matters, especially for a person
who was no longer young. Half abandoned, and half _exploitée_ by her
family, Rahel had become poor. Valiant and strong, she had long
succeeded in hiding from her friends the privations which she imposed
upon herself, in order to maintain her household properly. She had
just lost her mother, and one of her brothers, who died blessing her
for her devotion, and these afflictions must be added to the money
troubles, which increased every day. Alas! there was no consolation in
this distress, for Rahel could not say like the august daughter of a
great king, "I thank God for two things; first, for having made me a
Christian, and next, for having made me unhappy."

Economy was not her chief virtue, and kindness, that luxury which she
could not live without, led her to deprive herself of the necessaries
of life, in order that her servants might want for nothing. "It is
mere selfishness," she said, laughing; "I prefer spoiling them to
spoiling myself."

The misfortunes of war completed the ruin of her purse and her health.
She assisted her countrymen by collecting contributions, and when
money failed, she paid with personal exertions, fulfilling the
admirable precept, "When you have given everything, give yourself."
The vehemence of her feelings exhausted her strength, and her frail
health gave way beneath the excess of privation and fatigue. She fell
ill, and was forced to keep her bed for three months.

Her resources were exhausted, and poverty approached with great
strides. She decided to ask one of her brothers, who was rich, to send
her a little money; but he not only refused, but took a cruel pleasure
in taunting the poor girl, with what he called her crazy liberality.

For six months the war intercepted all communications, so that she
could receive no tidings of him whom she still called her betrothed.
But this anxiety was the last. On waking one morning Rahel saw a
letter which had just been brought in, and by a sudden inspiration,
worthy of one who had never despaired, she guessed what this note
contained: "a living hope, which never dies out in valiant souls,
cried out that at last she had grasped happiness;" and the hope proved
true: ten days later she married August Varnhagen, who having
recovered from his hesitation, fulfilled his vows with a good will.

"You will never repent marrying me," she wrote to him, with naïveté, a
little while before her marriage; "Love me, or love me not, as God
wills; whatever happens I shall be yours for ever, you can rely on me:
I am constant, as you have been constant. Rahel shall never fail you."

Her husband was afterward made Prussian minister, and Rahel as
ambassadress was once more surrounded as in the pleasantest days of
her youth.

She was sixty-two years old when the disease attacked her of which she
died. Varnhagen never left her, or ceased trying to make her forget
her sufferings by reading the books to her which she loved best; and
Heinrich Heine, learning that she was ordered to apply fresh
rose-leaves to her inflamed eyes, sent her his first poems, lying at
the bottom of a basket of exquisite roses.

Madame von Varnhagen had always loved the Bible, and, especially,
Jewess though she was, the New Testament. She was never tired of
listening to the history of the sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus
Christ. One day finding herself more feeble, she said, taking her
husband's hand and pressing it on her heart: "I feel better, my
friend. I have been thinking a long time of Jesus, and it seems as if
I had never felt as at this moment how truly He is my brother, and the
brother of all men. It has comforted me." . . . These were her last
words.

{845}

Do these women explain _the women of our times_? It is at least
disputable; but we must recognize in them three interesting
characters. We will not try to compare them; the differences between
them are self-evident; and certainly though Eugénie de Guérin, the
Frenchwoman and the Catholic, played in a worldly sense the most
obscure part, no person of elevated views can contest the fact that
hers was the most beautiful life of the three.



--------


From The Lamp.

HENRI PERREYVE.


The Church of France sustained a great loss when, in the flower of his
age, Henri Perreyve was cut off. Had his life been prolonged he would
doubtless have attained a high position in the diocese of Paris, and
done a very great work. A memorial of him--for it can hardly be called
a "Life"--has been recently given to the world by his friend and
confidant, Pére Gratry of the French Oratory; and thus the record of
this young priest is now made immortal by the eloquent pen of one of
the greatest spiritual writers in France. Henri Perreyve was born in
April, 1831, and died June, 1865. His was, therefore, but a brief
life--brief, but brilliant, like a short, bright summer-day.

The comparison is not an inapt one. The life of this young man was,
compared to that of the minority of his fellow-creatures, a bright and
happy one. No great exterior sorrows met him during his earthly
career; and for the interior, there could not be much real suffering
for one who from his early childhood had given himself to God, and who
followed the standard of his Divine Master with a courage that could
not be dismayed, with an ardor which was never cooled. He was a son of
Christian parents, who early discerned his genius, and gave no
opposition to the workings of God's grace in him. He was educated at
the Lycée St. Louis; but he did not distinguish himself there. He was,
however, at the head of the catechism-class in St. Sulpice; for the
child's heart was given to God, and he could not devote himself
ardently to secular studies until he had learnt to consecrate even
them to the service of God. At twelve years old he made his first
communion. This act, which is the turning-point in the life of so
many, proved such to him. In after-years he thus described it:

  "May 29, 1859.

  "You know that I always date from my first communion the first call
  from God to the ecclesiastical state. This thought gives me
  happiness. I can recall now, as if it were yesterday, the blessed
  moment when, having received our Lord at the holy table, I returned
  to my place, and there kneeling on that red-velvet bench, which I
  can see now, I promised our Lord, with a movement of sincere
  affection to belong to him always, and to him only. I feel still the
  kind of certainty I had from that moment of being accepted. I feel
  the warmth of those first tears for the love of Jesus, which fell
  from my childish eyes; and the ineffable shrinking of a soul, which
  for the first time had spoken to God, had seen him and heard him.
  Intimate and profound joy of the sacerdotal espousals!"

As years passed on, he kept his faith with his Lord. Naturally seeking
his friends from among those like-minded with himself, he became soon
surrounded by and closely bound to some of the most remarkable and
{846} devoted men of the day. The Père Gratry was the guide of his
youth; and among those who followed his direction were a group of
young ardent men, burning to devote themselves to the cause of God and
his Church. Meeting a little later on with the Père Pététot, they
became the foundation-stones of the newly-revived French Oratory of
St. Philip Neri. Henri Perreyve was obliged, however, before long, by
the feebleness of his health, to withdraw from the congregation; but
he was ever linked to it by the ties of the closest affection. Père
Charles Perraud, one of the Oratorians, was throughout life his bosom
friend. They learnt together and prayed together, and were called
together to serve God in the priesthood. Charles Perraud was the first
to attain this dignity; and on the occasion of his saying his first
mass, Henri thus wrote to him.

  "Hyères, Dec. 16, 1857.

  "May the Lord be with thee! These are the sacramental words of the
  deacon, the only ones I have the right of addressing to you, my dear
  friend and brother, before the holy altar. I address them to you
  with all the fulness of my heart, and with all the deep meaning that
  befits these holy words. Yes, may the Lord be with you, dear
  brother!

  "With you this morning at the altar of your first mass, to accept
  your bridal promise, and reply to your perpetual vow by that
  reciprocal love which passes all other love. With you during the
  whole of this great day, to maintain the perfume of celestial
  incense in your soul, and the odor of the sacrifice which has begun,
  but which--thanks be to God!--has no ending. With you to-morrow, to
  make you feel that joy in God has somewhat of eternity in it, and
  that it differs from the joys of earth because we can taste it
  constantly without ever exhausting it. With you when, soon after
  your holy ecstasy of joy, you will feel that you must be a priest
  for men; and you will go down from Mount Tabor to go to those who
  suffer, to those who are ignorant, to those who are hungering and
  thirsting for the true light and the true life. With you in your
  sorrows to console you; with you in your joys to sanctify them; with
  you in your desires to make them fruitful.

  "'_Memor sit omnis sacrificii tui,
    et holocaustum tuum pingue fiat_.'

  "With you, my Charles, if you are alone in life, if our friendship
  be taken from you, if you have to walk on leaning only on the arm of
  a Divine Friend.

  "With you, young priest, with you growing old in the conflicts of
  the priesthood, and in the service of God and men. With you on the
  day of your death, which shall bring to your lips, by the hands of
  another, that same Jesus who has so often been carried to others by
  your trembling hands.

  "O my friend! I gather up all that my heart can contain of happy
  desires, wishes, and hopes for you. I gather them all up in one
  single wish: May the Lord be with thee always!

  "It will be the life of a holy priest on earth; one day it will be
  heaven.

  "The Lord be with thee!

  "My Charles, bless me! I embrace yon tenderly, and feel myself with
  you pressed against the Heart of the Divine Master, beloved for
  ever.

  "Henri Perreyve."

Henri Perreyve was advancing rapidly toward manhood when the
Providence of God threw him in the path of one who was to exercise a
powerful influence over his future. While Henri was a boy at school.
Father Lacordaire held the pulpit of Notre Dame; and it might truly be
said, "All Paris was moved." What those wonderful conferences did
toward undoing the fatal spiritual havoc wrought at the Revolution,
and in subsequent years, cannot be recorded in any mortal history. It
was given to men to see somewhat of the result of the labor; but the
seeds of eternal life are scattered broadcast by a preacher's hand,
and fall hither and thither unknown to any but God.

Henri Perreyve, as a boy of thirteen, found his delight in listening
to the conferences. Six years passed by, and found him still the
attentive disciple at the feet of the great master of minds at that
period; but he was too diffident and retiring to seek a personal
acquaintance. One day, however, a friend insisted on introducing him.
Father Lacordaire was busy, and the interview lasted but a moment; but
Henri Perreyve resembled the ideal we may not unreasonably form of the
young man on whom our Lord looked and loved. Nature had been prodigal
of her gifts, and genius and innocence lent additional charm to his
exterior beauty. Lacordaire's keen eye had discerned the treasures
that could be developed in that ardent soul.

{847}

A few days after this hasty introduction, Henri was astonished by the
entrance of the great Dominican into his room.

"I received you very ill the other day," he said; "I come to ask your
pardon, and talk with you."

From that day began the closest friendship and intimacy between them.
They were literally like father and son; and at the death of
Lacordaire he bequeathed to his dear friend all that a poor monk had
to leave--his letters and papers. Henri Perreyve is said to have been
the being on earth best loved by Lacordaire. "You shall be," wrote the
latter to him, "forever in my heart as a son and as a friend." Henri,
by the pure devotion of his early youth to God, had deserved some
great gift, and it was given to him in the friendship of Lacordaire.
That the rest of his life was spent in an earnest endeavor to imitate
his friend, we can scarcely wonder at Had he lived, no doubt he would
have been a second Lacordaire; but the "sword wore out the sheath,"
the frail body could not sustain the burning soul within. Lacordaire
died in the prime of life, Perreyve in the flower of his youth.

A few more years from the time we are speaking of and he was made
priest. Work poured in on him. "The work of ten priests was offered to
him day by day." He refused a good deal; but what he reserved would
have been enough for three, and he had most feeble health.

He was preacher at the Sorbonne, director of the Conferences of St.
Barbe, "sermons everywhere, special works on all sides, endless
correspondence, confessions, directions, reunions of young people,
incessant visits."

Frequent illness attacked him, and obliged him to withdraw for a time
from his labors; but he returned to them with new zest. Of his
literary works the one most generally admired is the "Journée des
Malades." Here his genius was aided by that personal experience of
illness which enables a person so readily to enter into the feelings
of another. But many can know and feel the weariness and temptations
which beset a sick person, and be very incapable of putting it into
words, while M. Perreyve's "Journée des Malades" will comfort many a
heart.

His "Rosa Ferrucci," an exquisitely written little biography, is
already to some extent known to our readers. He likewise published
"Méditations sur le Chemin de la Croix; Entretiens sur l'Eglise
Catholique;" and he edited with the greatest care, and wrote an
introduction for, the celebrated Letters from Father Lacordaire to
young people. He also wrote a "Station at the Sorbonne," and "Poland,"
besides various little _brochures_.

The chief work of the Abbé Perreyve was the guidance and influence
over young men and boys.

The Conferences at St. Barbe were listened to by a most attentive
auditory of this class, and his power over his hearers was large and
increasing.

"He possessed in a rare degree," says Père Gratry, "that sacred art of
speaking to men, of speaking to each one, and yet speaking to all.
Hence the universal success of his discourses."

One of the great orators of the day, after hearing him preach at the
Sorbonne, exclaimed, "He who has not heard that, does not know how far
human eloquence can go."

The Count de Montalembert was one day among the audience. He wrote
afterward: "I have been touched and delighted in a way I have not been
for twenty years; since the time when he of whom you are the worthy
successor enchanted my youth at Nôtre Dame."

But as the Père Gratry justly observes, his success in colleges such
as the Lycée St. Louis and St. Barbe is still more remarkable than
that at the Sorbonne. One secret of it might be found in an
acknowledgment that he made to his friend. He had for these {848}
young people such a love, such a respect, such an idea of the
_possible future_ of each soul, such an esteem of the hidden treasures
in each heart, that he seemed to hold the key of their souls, and to
come before them as the friend of each.

On one occasion he had to speak on the most delicate and difficult
topic it was possible a priest could have to deal with before such an
assembly. He told a story: he spoke of a death which he had witnessed,
and of the crime which had caused that death; a crime which is not
punished by human laws, but which works ruin and death on all sides.

"And this man," said he, with that voice of his which thrilled to the
hearts of his hearers--"and this man is in society honorable and
refined; perhaps even not without religion. Gentlemen, is this the
honor that shall be yours, and is this the religion which you will
have?"

Never can those who heard him that day forget it; they were moved to
the very depths of their souls, and tears flowed from the eyes of
those who are not easily made to weep. When he had concluded, many of
his auditors gathered around him said: "Thanks, sir; you have opened
our eyes for ever."

The popularity of M. Perreyve survived even the severe trial of having
to address the boys of the preparatory school and the students of St.
Barbe at an hour on Sunday which would otherwise have been at their
own disposal. The sermon was to be given every fortnight, and the
audience the first time were in anything but an amiable mood. The next
day a petition was sent up by them that the sermons might be given
every week.

Thus his life passed away; and the end hurried on all too rapidly for
those who loved him and hung upon his words. His lungs were again
affected, and he passed the last winter of his life m the south of
France. There he thought he had improved, and wrote flattering
accounts of himself; so that when he returned to Paris on Palm Sunday,
April the 9th, his family and friends were in consternation at his
altered looks. Doctors could not reassure them, and the complaint made
rapid progress. It was a terrible confirmation of his relatives' fears
when they found he was unconscious of his danger, and, like all those
in the same fatal disease, busy in making plans for the future. He
planned how he should resume his sermons at the Sorbonne, even while
he was too weak to bear the fasting necessary for his Easter
Communion; and it was with great difficulty, and leaning on the arm of
his friend the Abbé Bernard, that he communicated on May 1st in the
little chapel of our Lady of Sion, close to his home. He then went
into the country, where he rallied for a short time, and then grew
rapidly worse. The news of his change spread amongst those who loved
him because they knew him, and those who loved him because they knew
his worth in the Church.

A "league" of prayers was organized for his recovery, and Henri began
to realize his state. He looked the prospect calmly in the face. Fame,
opportunities for doing good, the love and esteem of friends, were
instantly and willingly resigned.

"I think of death, and accept it without regret or fear. I am grateful
for all these prayers for me; but I do not desire life. I cannot pray
with that intention."

Then he thought of his sins, and his unworthiness, and of the Divine
Face he was about to behold; and he shrank back. He was reminded of
the mercy of God. "Truly," he said, "I who have so often preached to
others the mercy of God ought to trust in it myself."

His greatest grief was the rarity of his communions. He consoled
himself by saying: "Missionaries are often obliged to pass a long time
without communion, and then one feels God _also_ by privation."

{849}

A love of solitude began to grow on him, for he was preparing himself
to be alone with God. When begged to try a new treatment, he
consented, saying, "I ask myself, as I often do, what would Père
Lacordaire have done in my place? It seems to me he would have thought
it an indication of Providence."

He returned to Paris; and every effort of medical science was made to
arrest the malady, but all in vain. An alarming fainting fit on the
14th of June made his friends fear death was nearer to him than they
had imagined, and the Abbé Bernard thought it right to warn him.

"You surprise me," he said quietly. "I thought myself very ill, but
not so near death; but it is so much the better; you must give me the
holy viaticum and extreme unction."

The abbé went to fetch the blessed sacrament and holy oils from St.
Sulpice, the parish church of their childhood, of their first
communion, where they had prayed and wept together, where they had
asked many things from God, where they had together been consecrated
priests. There their whole Christian life had run by; and now one had
come to fetch for the other divine succor for his last hours.

The invalid insisted on rising, and was dressed in his cassock to
receive the holy sacraments. Père Gratry and other friends were
present. "I can see him now," says the former, "as full of grace and
energy as ever, smiling as usual, and saying, 'I am in perfect peace,
dear father--in perfect peace.' I shall remember that sight all my
life, thank God; that noble bearing, that face pale as marble, those
large speaking eyes, his tender glance, and his last words, 'in
perfect peace.'" He made his profession of faith, begged pardon of all
whom he had offended or scandalized, thanked all for the kindness they
had shown him; and implored them "not to say, as was too often done,
'he is in heaven;' but to pray much for him after his death." Then he
said the "Te Deum" in thanksgiving for all the mercies of his life;
and at last he said to his friend, "You cannot think what interior joy
I feel since you told me I was going to die."

The next day the Archbishop of Paris came to see him. He would be
dressed in his cassock to receive the visit, and would kneel for the
bishop's blessing. He then had a long private conversation with him.

To this dying chamber came some of the most celebrated names in Paris:
Père Pététot, the Count do Montalembert, the Prince de Broglie,
Augustin Cochin, Mgr. Buguet, the Vicar-general, the curé of St.
Sulpice, General Zamoiski, and a hundred others. One of them said, "We
are a long way off from knowing now what he is. We shall know it one
day." "Dear friend," said he to Father Adolphe Perreud of the Oratory,
"we shall not cease to work _together_ for the cause of God and his
church. Before you leave me, give me your blessing." "On condition you
give me yours," said the Oratorian; and blessing each other, the
friends parted for ever on earth. His bodily sufferings were severe.
His bones were nearly through his skin, and his cough shook him to
pieces. He grew weaker and weaker, and at last the end came. "Give me
the crucifix, sister," said he to the nursing sister who attended on
him; "not mine, but yours, that has so often rested on dying lips. If
I die to-morrow, mother, it will be my first communion anniversary."
"Dear child," she answered, weeping, "we were both happy that day."
"Well," he answered, "we must be still happier to-morrow."

The agony came on; he kissed the crucifix again and again, murmuring,
"Lord, have pity on me; Jesus, take me soon; Jesus, soon." Suddenly a
great terror seized him; his eyes were dilated with fear, gazing at
something invisible to all around; and he cried out, "I am afraid, I
am afraid."

{850}

The Abbé Bernard said, "You most not fear God; abandon yourself to his
mercy, and say, In thee, Lord, have I hoped; let me not be confounded
for ever."

He looked at him and said, "It is not God whom I fear; oh! no. I fear
that they will prevent my dying." Then he grew calm.

The abbé brought him the cross of Père Lacordaire, and said, "My God,
I love thee with all my heart in time and in eternity."

"Oh! yes, with all my heart," he said, kissing the image of his Lord.
It was his last act and his last words.

"Depart, O Christian soul!" prayed his friends Charles and Adolphe
Perreud.

"I absolve thee from all thy sins," said the Abbé Bernard; and in a
few minutes the last struggle was over, and his soul was set free.

Among his papers was found the following:

"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I die in the faith of
the Catholic Church, to whose service since I was twelve years old I
have had the happiness of consecrating my life.

"I tenderly bless my relations and friends; I implore all those who
remember me to pray for a long time for my soul, that God, turning
away from the sight of my sins, may deign to receive me into the place
of eternal rest and happiness. I bless once again all those who are
dear to me--my relations, my benefactors, my masters, my fathers and
brothers in the priesthood, my spiritual sons, the number of dear
young people who have loved me, all the souls to whom I have been
united on earth by the tie of the same faith and the same love in
Jesus Christ."

The inscription on his tomb was chosen by himself:

"Lord, when I have seen thy glory, I shall be satisfied with it."

These words were as a key to his life. An insatiable, ardent desire
for God had possessed him, animated his actions; and at last the very
ardor of his longings wore out the feeble body that enclosed so grand
and beautiful a soul.


--------

From The Dublin University Magazine.

SONNET.

  Upon a rose-tree bending o'er a river
    A bird from spring to summer gaily sang;
  For love of its sweet friend, the rose, for ever
    Its beating heart with happy music rang,
  In sunshine warm and moonlight by the shore,
  Whose waves afar its voice melodious bore,
  Blent with its own. But when, alas! the sere
  Grey autumn came, withering those blooms so dear,
  Still full of love but full of sadness too,
  Changed the sweet song as changed the rose's hue
    Mourning each day some rich leaf disappear
  Until the last had dropped into the stream,
    Anguished by wintry breezes blowing keen.
  Then, on the bough forlorn, mute as a dream.
    Awhile the poor bird clung, and soon was seen no more.


----------

{851}


From Once a Week.

CARDINAL TOSTI.



BY BESSIE RAYNOR PARKER.


It was in the afternoon of Friday, the 23d of March, that Rome heard
of the death of the "learned and venerable Tosti." This aged cardinal,
long the director of the great establishment of San Michele, (which is
a hospital and school combined,) had attained to nearly ninety years.
Now he was dead, and laid out in state in his own room at San Michele,
whither we went about five o'clock, and, threading the vast corridors,
which run round a court blossoming with oranges and lemons, ascending
a long flight of stone stairs, got into upper regions filled with a
perceptible hum, soldier sentinels stationed by the opened doors, who
motioned us on from room to room till we came to the last of all.
These rooms were perfectly empty of all furniture, save a few
book-cases under glass; but the yellow satin walls of one, and the
delicately-tinted panels of another, showed that they had but lately
formed the private apartments of him who was gone. Three or four
temporary altars were erected in the empty space, adorned by tall
unlighted candles. A thrill crept over us as we neared that last open
door, a silent sentinel at either side; as we crossed the antechamber,
and came in a direct line with the aperture, we saw a figure,
splendidly attired, reposing on a great sloping couch of cloth of
gold. The face of this figure indicated extreme age; the brow was
surmounted by the bright scarlet berretta, which caught the light from
the setting sun. The shrunken frame was clothed in the soft purple of
its ecclesiastical rank. The hands were crossed and held a crucifix;
the feet were turned up in new and pointed shoes. There he lay,
Cardinal Tosti, who for five-and-twenty years was the handsomest of
all the Sacred Conclave, and towered above his brethren when they
walked in procession, drawing the admiration of beholders.

There was no sound, as we knelt by the dead man's couch; through the
window could be seen the swift Tiber, swollen by the recent rains, and
on the other side of the river rose the green slopes of the
half-deserted Aventine, with its few solitary churches, Santa Sabina,
Santa Alessio, and its gracious crown of trees. Here had Tosti dwelt
for many a year, in rooms which looked to the golden west. Here he
occupied himself with his books, and with the school for industrial
and artistic pursuits which was due to his efforts at San Michele. I
have never seen anything so marvellously picturesque and impressive as
that dead man, lying on his couch of cloth of gold, the closing scene
of a long life, which stretched back far beyond the wars of the first
Napoleon, even to the period when Papal Rome received the royal
refugees of the French Revolution.

Presently, a group of white-robed priests entered, and began reciting
the office for the dead. This was the signal for the gathering of a
little crowd of Romans. Brown-cowled monks, peasant women with their
children in arms, boys and girls with large wondering dark eyes.
Together they crowded to the door of the dead man's chamber, and knelt
upon the floor, so that above and {852} beyond their bowed heads could
be seen that pale splendor upon its shining couch. We left with
reluctant footsteps, feeling a fascination in the picture which it is
hard to describe.

Late in the evening, an hour after the _Ave_, the corpse was to be
conveyed by torch-light to Santa Cecilia, the cardinal's titular
church; and at Santa Cecilia we found ourselves in the starry night.
The torches were just entering the church as we drove up; and for some
minutes the doors were inexorably shut, and we feared we had lost all
chance of an entrance. But we were presently admitted, and saw indeed
a striking scene! The small church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere,
famous as being built upon the site of the young martyr's dwelling,
was draped in black and gold from ceiling to pavement, and where the
altar-piece is generally to be seen was a great flat gold cross on a
black ground. The sanctuary was greatly enlarged for the morrow's
service, and hung with black; and in the nave, not very far from the
great portal, rose a large empty couch, exactly resembling that which
we had seen in the cardinal's private chamber. At its foot was a low
bier, whereon now lay the same white image of a man in its purple
robes, and a group of attendants crowded reverentially around it,
flashing torches in their hands, which formed a centre of light in the
dark church, reminding one of the famous Correggio; only, instead of
the new-born Babe, the illumination of humanity for all time to come,
was the aged dead, no longer capable of communicating the living light
of intelligence or of faith, but lying in a pale reflection under the
torches, and gathering into itself all the meaning of the whole scene.

We perceived that something remarkable was about to take place, and
retired discreetly behind a pillar, that our accidental presence might
attract no notice. The truth was, that the cardinal was about to be
laid out for the great funeral service of the morrow; and by chance we
had gained admission at this purely private hour. The body was taken
on the little bier into the sacristy, and there we supposed that some
change was made in the raiment; when it was brought back the hands
were gloved, and instead of the scarlet berretta was a plain
skull-cap. Then, with difficulty and much consultation, but with
perfect reverence of intention, the straight image was lifted on to
the great couch; the assistant men being grouped on ladders, and an
eager voluble monsignore directing the whole. The ladders, the
torch-light, the mechanical difficulty of the operation, again
reminded me of one of those great depositions in which the actual
scene of the Cross is so vividly brought out by art. At length the
dead cardinal lay placidly upon his cloth of gold, and they fetched
his ring to put upon his hand, and his white mitre wherewith to clothe
his gray hairs. We left them performing the last careful offices,
making the strangest, the most gorgeous torch-light group in the
middle of that dark church that poet or artist could conceive.

The next morning the Pope and the College of Cardinals came to
officiate at the funeral mass. The square court in front of Santa
Cecilia was filled with an eager crowd of Romans and _Forestieri_,
with the splendid costumes of the Papal Guard, with prancing horses
and old-fashioned chariots, gorgeous with gilding and color. They were
much such a company of equipages as may be seen in our Kensington
Museum, but so fresh and well-appointed in spite of the extreme
antiquity of their design, that one felt as if carried back to the
days of Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Into Santa Cecilia itself
we could not penetrate, by reason of the crowd and the stern vigilance
of the soldiers, who, attired in the red-and-yellow costume designed
by Michael Angelo, kept a considerable space in the nave empty for the
moment when the Pope should walk from the altar to the bier. But {853}
through the open door we saw the lights upon the black-draped altar
and in front of that gorgeous couch, with its motionless occupant, his
white mitre being now the conspicuous point in the picture. And when
the Pope left the dim church and came out into the sunshine, the
brilliant rays fell upon his venerable white hair and scarlet cap,
while the weapons flashed and the crowd shouted, as he ascended his
wonderful chariot with the black horses, and drove away.


--------

MISCELLANY.


_Microscopic Plants the Cause of Ague_.--Owing to the prevalence of
ague in the malarial district of Ohio and Mississippi, Dr. Salisbury
undertook a series of experiments in 1862, with a view to determine
the microscopic characters of the expectorations of his patients. He
commenced his experiments by examining the mucous secretions of those
patients who had been most submitted to the malaria, and in these he
detected a large amount of low forms of life, such as algae, fungi,
diatomaceae, and desmidiae. At first he imagined that the presence of
these organisms might be accidental, but repeated experiments
convinced him that some of them were invariably associated with ague.
The bodies which are constantly present in such cases he describes as
being "minute oblong cells, either single or aggregated, consisting of
a distinct nucleus, surrounded with a smooth cell-wall, with a highly
clear, apparently empty space between the outer cell-wall and the
nucleus." From these characters Dr. Salisbury concludes that the
bodies are not fungi, but belong properly to the algae, in all
probability being species of the genus _Palmella_. Whilst the
diatomaceae and other organisms were found to be generally present the
bodies just described were not found above the level at which the ague
was observed. In order to ascertain exactly their source, he suspended
plates of glass over the water in a certain marsh which was regarded
as unhealthy. In the water which condensed upon the under surface of
these plates, he found numerous palmella-like structures, and on
examining the mould of the bog, he found it full of similar organisms.
From repeated researches Dr. Salisbury concludes: (1.) Cryptogamic
spores are carried aloft above the surface at night, in the damp
exhalations which appear after sunset (2.) These bodies rise from
thirty to sixty feet, never above the summit of the damp
night-exhalations, and ague is similarly limited. (3.) The day-air of
ague districts is free from these bodies.


_Use of Lime in Extracting Sugar_.--Peligot long ago demonstrated
that owing to the insoluble nature of the compound formed of lime with
sugar, the former substance would be a most valuable agent in the
manufacture of the latter. Peligot's suggestion is now being carried
out on a large scale in MM. Schrötter and Wellman's sugar-factory at
Berlin. The molasses is mixed with the requisite quantity of hydrate
of lime and alcohol in a large vat, and intimately stirred for more
than half an hour. The lime compound of sugar which separates is then
strained off, pressed, and washed with spirit. All the alcohol used in
the process is afterward recovered by distillation. The mud-like
precipitate thus produced is mixed with water and decomposed with a
current of carbonic acid, which is effected in somewhat less than half
an hour. The carbonate of lime is removed by filtration, and the clear
liquid, containing the sugar, evaporated, decolorized with animal
charcoal, and crystallized in the usual manner. The sugar furnished by
this method has a very clear appearance, and is perfectly crystalline.
It contains, according to polarization analysis, sixty-six per cent of
sugar, twelve per cent of water, the remainder being uncrystallizable
organic matter and salts. The yield, of course, varies with the
richness and degree of concentration of the raw material; on an
average, thirty pounds of sugar were obtained from one hundred pounds
of molasses.

{854}

_Russian Coal Resources_.--Recent explorations and surveys appear to
show that the Russian coal resources are much vaster even than those
of the United States of America. In the Oural district coal has been
found in various places, both in the east and west sides of the
mountain-chain; its value being greatly enhanced by the fact that an
abundance of iron is found in the vicinity. There is an immense basin
in the district of which Moscow is the centre, which covers an area of
one hundred and twenty thousand square miles, which is therefore
nearly as large as the entire bituminous coal area of the United
States. The coal region of the Don is more than half as large as all
of our coal measures. Besides these sources, coal has lately been
discovered in the Caucasus, Crimea, Simbirsk, the Kherson, and in
Poland.

--------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.



Medical Recollections Of The Army Of The Potomac.
By Jonathan Letterman, M.D., late Surgeon U.S.A., and Medical Director
of the Army of the Potomac. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo, pp. 194.

The preface to this volume announces the intention of its author: "It
is written in the hope that the labors of the medical officers of the
army may be known to an intelligent people, with whom to know is to
appreciate; and as an affectionate tribute to many, long my zealous
and efficient colleagues, who, in days of trial and danger which have
passed, let us hope never to return, evinced their devotion to their
country and the cause of humanity without hope of promotion or
expectation of reward." It is a sketch of the Medical Department of
the army of the Potomac under Dr. Letterman's administration, from
July, 1862, to January, 1864, and affords a concurrent view of the
military movements of that army during the period specified.

Without infringing upon military details properly so called, an
excellent general idea is given of the battles fought, and the
strategic value of the great changes of position which were executed
with such remarkable promptitude and precision.

Dr. Letterman confines himself strictly to the period of his own
administration, and the account of the alterations and improvements
introduced under his direction, and chiefly through his means, in the
working of the medical department.

The system which he adopted became the system substantially of all the
armies of the United States, and with occasional modifications to suit
particular occasions has proved to be the best and most efficient as
well as manageable that could have been devised. To Dr. Letterman
belongs the great praise of having studiously and laboriously
perfected the principles and details of these changes, and succeeded
in securing their recognition and enforcement.

The total inadequacy of the old system was painfully obvious to all
competent and thoughtful observers at the breaking out of the war. It
was especially so to those who were placed in responsible executive
positions at the front, while the authority in the rear remained bound
to its old ideas, and incapable of understanding the great issues
involved, and the expenditure of independent intelligence and
_matérial_ necessary to accomplish any adequate result. The immediate
consequence was an unnecessary waste of life, of national strength and
resources, and an amount of misery inflicted and suffering endured
which can never be computed and had best now be dismissed for ever.
These causes led early in the war to the appointment of a young,
vigorous, bold, and undeniably able man as Surgeon-General. He made a
complete reformation in the department, and shared the fate of
reformers. He was sacrificed as a victim to the genius of
indifference, neglect, parsimony, and cruelty, which had hitherto held
undisputed or but feebly disputed sway over the fallen on battlefields
and the sick of armies. {855} This is not the time or place to discuss
ex-Surgeon-General Hammond; but it is due to him at all hands, that he
has probably been the means of mitigating the horrors of war as
respects the sick and wounded, and promoting the sacred cause of
humanity in these particulars to a greater degree than any man who
ever lived. The magnitude of the reforms accomplished, the magnificent
scale on which preparation was made, and the courage to order the
necessary expenditures in the face of the time-honored but mean and
timid traditions of the Surgeon-General's office, and the habits of
thought and action engendered thereby in the bureaus of administration
and supply, cannot be appreciated until some learned and philosophical
physician shall write the medical history of the war from its humane
and social points of view.

We are disposed to give Dr. Letterman all the merit which his book
would seem to claim, and a much higher degree of praise than his
well-known modesty would expect, but we cannot pass over in silence
the gigantic and unrequited labors of his predecessor, Colonel Chas.
S. Tripler, Surgeon U.S.A., the first Medical Director of the army of
the Potomac, which paved the way for the improved methods Dr.
Letterman had the honor of introducing. We are aware that many of the
most important were in contemplation, and if we mistake not, the
ambulance system originated with Dr. Tripler. The terrible experiences
of the Seven Days and the Chickahominy opened the eyes of the military
authorities to the tremendous necessities of the case, and made the
work of medical reform comparatively easy. There is no teacher like
suffering, for Generals as well as _mortals_.

The military mind is to a great degree governed by the traditions of
the middle ages, when surgery was an ignoble because ignorant and
consequently cruel craft. The rights and privileges of rank have been
slowly and reluctantly conceded, and every effort has been made to
deprive the surgeon of the dignity which belongs to the combatant and
a participation in common toils and dangers. These prejudices have
given way rapidly during the late war, where the courage, skill, and
self-sacrificing charity of medical officers have been most
conspicuous. Many surgeons have proved their manhood in most trying
scenes, and have certainly stood fire as well as the line and staff.
The record of killed and wounded places them on a level with any staff
corps in these respects.

Military prejudice in the regular army, and the ignorance, stupidity,
and arrogance of many volunteer officers, were an obstacle to the
medical department in the beginning. They gradually gave way under the
steady pressure of intelligence, courage, and determination, till in
the end ambulances became as much respected as battery wagons, and
every able and good officer the friend, supporter, and defender of the
medical department.

Dr. Letterman has done an excellent service to his profession at large
by his book, which is another vindication of the claims of legitimate
medicine upon the respect, confidence, and gratitude of the public.

The work is well written and handsomely issued. It is a great subject,
and capable of being developed to a much, higher degree in extent and
scope, which we hope Dr. Letterman will have time and opportunity to
do.



THE NEW-ENGLANDER, July, 1866.

This periodical emanates from the venerable and classic shades of Yale
University, and is edited by some of the younger professors, two of
whom are inheritors of the distinguished names of Dwight and Kingsley.
It is marked by the refined literary taste, polished style, and
amenity of spirit which are characteristic of the New Haven circle of
scientific and clerical gentlemen. There is very much in the general
tone of its principles and tendencies which gives us pleasure and
awakens our hope for the future. We may indicate particularly, as
illustrations of our meaning, the principle of the divine institution
and authority of government; the sympathy manifested with an ideal and
spiritual system of philosophy, and the decided opposition to the new
English school of anti-biblical rationalism.

There are several notices of recent Catholic publications which are
written in a courteous style, contrasting very favorably with that
employed by most Protestant periodicals. Dr. Brownson's "American
Republic" receives a respectful and moderately appreciative notice.
The "Memoir and Sermons of F. Baker" is also honored with one which is
very {856} kind and sympathetic, expressing the "intense and mournful
interest" of the writer in the book, and still more in its author, for
which no doubt he will be duly grateful, although we know of no reason
why his friends should go into mourning for him during his lifetime.
The writer, after remarking that the arguments contained in the book
are chiefly addressed to Episcopalians, and therefore need not trouble
any other Protestants, throws out a couple of rejoinders to what he
supposes the author might say to these last, if he were disposed. One
of these remarks is an assertion that the Paulists and their brethren
of the Catholic clergy do not preach Christ. Does the writer really
know nothing of the Catholic system of practical religion except what
he has read in D'Aubigné and the "Schönberg-Cotta" romance? If not, we
recommend him to acquire more correct information from our best
writers. If he has it already, we cannot understand how he could make
such a statement. His winding-up apostrophe to the Paulists, "O
foolish Paulists, who hath bewitched you? you observe days and months
and times and years," is more witty than wise. The Paulists observe,
in common with other Catholics, sixty days in the year as obligatory,
and of these fifty-two are observed with much greater rigor than we
insist upon by the Congregationalists of New Haven. When the writer
gives us a good explanation of his doctrine of the Christian Sabbath
in harmony with St. Paul's teaching to the Galatians, we will
cheerfully undertake the vindication of the other eight holidays, and
will endeavor to convince him that it is just as reasonable to have
handsome altars, statues, pictures, and flowers, in churches, as it is
to have fine churches, marble pulpits, frescoed ceilings, well-dressed
clergymen, and handsome houses with pretty flower-gardens for these
clergymen.

In our view, there is better work for the learned scholars of New
Haven to do than to indulge in light skirmishing with Catholics and
Episcopalians. They have all the treasures of science and learning at
command, with leisure and ability to use them. There are great
questions respecting the agreement between science and revelation, the
authenticity and credibility of the sacred books, the fundamental
doctrines of philosophy and religion, pressing on the attention of
every man who thinks and cares about God and his fellow-men. The
people around us are drifting rapidly into infidelity and sin. There
is no remedy for this but a reëstablishment of first principles; and
we would like to see our learned friends apply themselves to this
work. It may justly be expected from such an old and world-renowned
university as Yale College, that it should produce the most solid
works, not merely in classic lore and physical science, but in the
higher branches of metaphysics and theology. Dr. Dwight was a great
theologian, and is so styled by Döllinger. Drs. Taylor and Fitch were,
both, able and acute metaphysicians. Since their day, we are afraid
that our friends have fallen asleep in these departments. They set out
to reform Calvinism, to reconcile orthodox Protestantism with reason,
and to find a method of bringing the practical truths of Christianity
to bear on men universally. In spite of their able and zealous efforts
in this direction, religious belief and practice have been steadily on
the wane around them. As for morality, the article on "Divorce," which
we shall make the topic of a separate article hereafter, makes
disclosures which are indeed startling. We would like to have them
resume their work, therefore, once more, from the beginning, and go
back to the most ultimate principles. In what state was man originally
created? What is the relation of the race to Adam? What is original
sin? Whence the need of a Divine Redeemer and a revelation? What are
the means established by Jesus Christ for the regeneration and
salvation of mankind? What is the remedy for the present deplorable
condition of both Christendom and heathendom? Of course, the
discussion of these fundamental questions will involve a thorough
sifting of the Catholic doctrines. We are anxious to have it made, and
when the discussion is carried on upon fundamental grounds, a result
may be hoped for which cannot be gained by skirmishing around the
outposts.

The clergy and people of New Haven, and of Connecticut generally, have
always been remarkable for their friendly behavior toward Catholics.
There has never been any disposition to persecute them, and, at
present, the relations between the Catholic and non-Catholic sections
of the population are just what they should be in a land of religious
freedom. A judge in New Haven has recently pronounced, in open court,
his decision that the Catholic religion is just {857} as much the
religion of the state as the Protestant; and the last Legislature has
passed the most just and favorable law regulating the tenure of church
property that exists in the United States. The conductors of the
"New-Englander" will surely join us in the wish that all the people of
the state may ere long become one in the belief and practice of the
pure and complete Christian faith as Christ revealed it.


A PLEA FOR THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH.
Stray Notes on Speaking and Spelling, by Henry Alvord, D.D., Dean of
Canterbury. Tenth thousand. Alexander Strahan.--THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. A
Criticism on the Dean of Canterbury's Essays on the Queen's English.
By G. Washington Moon, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Fourth edition. Alexander Strahan.

Among the critics of the English press there seems to be but one
opinion concerning the merits of the two combatants in this literary
joust; that the Dean is deservedly castigated, and that Mr. Moon is an
unapproachable paragon of literary effulgence. However, this is not to
be wondered at. These same critics, and the English press to which
they contribute, sadly need a champion, if we may believe his
reverence of Canterbury. Gross inaccuracies in syntax, unpardonable
faults in style, and frequently occurring examples of slip-shod
sentences would appear, from the "Plea for the Queen's English," to
be, on the whole, characteristic of the modern English press.

We, transatlantic barbarians that we are, of course know nothing of
the English language, and have not the presumption, we hope, to think
that we can either speak or write one faultless sentence of the
language which we inherit as a means of intercommunion with our
fellows. It is our duty to feel "umble," and we do feel "umble." But,
while perusing these two books, we have had an 'umble and an 'arty
laugh in the depths of our 'umiliation. It may have been very sinful
in us, we know, but we could not help it. As the youthful culprit
replied, when caught laughing in church, we say, 'umbly of course, "We
didn't laugh, it laughed itself!" At the risk of not being believed by
those who have not yet read these, two books, we give the astounding
information that even an Englishman, an educated Englishman, a
dignitary of the English church, a poet, whose verses we republished
in America, (and, confound us, left out the u's,) not only speaks and
writes bad English, but also on his own showing, by the light of Mr.
Moon's volume, presumes to teach others to do the same. Yes, these
published lessons of the Very Rev. Dean, in speaking and spelling, are
so outrageously ungrammatical, and so faulty in style, that we should
not be surprised if the prediction of his antagonist would come true,
that henceforth people will speak of bad English as Dean's English.
Yet with all its faults it is a useful book; and we think that neither
Mr. Moon nor the newspaper critics have done the author justice. We do
not like "Dean's English," and it is humiliating, even to an American,
to discover that he has carelessly spoken or written it; but we like
the Dean's book better than we do Mr. Moon's. We like the schoolboy's
walk better than the schoolmarm's. Mr. Moon's style is faultlessly
prim and precise, and defies literary criticism; but we have felt,
more than once, a wish to take up some of his exact sentences and give
them a good shaking, so as to get a little of the stiffness out of
them. The Dean has written as most people speak; Mr. Moon writes as
nobody ever did or ever will speak. We should write correctly, it is
true, but there is a comparison (however paradoxical it may appear)
even in correctness. Mr. Moon aims to write "most correctly," and we
think that his style is far less pleasing than it would have been if
he had simply written correctly. There is such a thing as
"punctiliousness in all its stolidity, without any application of the
sound or effect of one's sentences." As is his style, so is his
criticism. Nothing escapes his eye; the want of a comma, a sentence a
trifle too elliptical, a careless tautology, (Mr. Moon would have us
say--a carelessly written tautological expression,) are blemishes at
which he turns away his face in rhetorical disgust. Nevertheless, we
say again, we like the Dean's book. It deserves to be studied by all
our young writers, who need to be warned against the use of many
popular phrases, and have their attention directed to common faults in
construction. It is a lively, chatty book, and keeps us in a good
humor from the first to the last page.

{858}

The sharp criticism of Mr. Mood is well worth reading. It furnishes us
with an index to the blunders of the Very Rev. Dean. So closely has he
examined these faults and calculated their guilt, that he actually
sums up for us, in one instance, the number of possible readings of
one unfortunate sentence. It contains only ten lines, and may be read
ten thousand two hundred and forty different ways, as Mr. Moon shows
us. Severely as he was attacked, and despite certain personal
innuendos, not by any means creditable to his adversary, the
good-natured Dean (we are sure of his good nature, from his book)
comes off victor, in our opinion, by inviting his enemy to dinner.
When a little time shall have healed the bruises of the literary
castigation he has received, he will doubtless re-write his book, and
give us under another form the profitable hints and helps which at
present need a more exact classification.


COSAS DE ESPAÑA.
Illustrative of Spain and the Spaniards as they are. By Mrs. Wm. Pitt
Byrne, author of "Flemish Interiors," etc. 2 vols. 12mo. Alexander
Strahan, London and New York. 1866.

The publications of Mr. Strahan are well known for the taste and
elegance displayed in their exterior dress. The book before us merits
a full meed of praise in this respect; but it is one of the most
wretched pieces of English composition that has come under our notice.
It has a preface of forty pages, which prefaces nothing, being in fact
nothing more than a few statistics of railways, the army, the mineral
and other products of Spain, jumbled together, with no attempt at
order or classification. The first chapter, styled "introductory," is
jumble number two, on national character, entertainments,
manufactures, railways again, infanticide, education, authors and
authoresses, sobriety and smoking.

In the second chapter we are surprised to find the authoress has not
yet left Dover. We thought we were in Spain long ago. It is not until
the middle of the third chapter that we are permitted to get to the
frontier, and by this time we confess we are tired of our gentle
guide, and decline going any further. When we are conversing with an
Englishman or an Englishwoman, we prefer the English language to that
affected jargon which consists in italicizing and translating into a
foreign language every emphatic word. It is scarcely an exaggeration
to say that there are three or four such italicized foreign words,
French, Spanish, Latin, or Greek, on each and every page of these two
volumes. Our readers may wish to see a specimen. "The first obstacle
that met us on this same bridge was a crowd of _ouvriers_ in blouses,"
p. 26. "The cathedral rather disappointed us, _quoad_ its outward
aspect, and offers nothing _very_ remarkable within," p. 27. "There
are, it is true, some districts which present a very curious and
interesting picture _en_ bird's eye," p. 28. "One day it was a
_fiesta_, on which we made sure of admission, because the _entrée_ is
_libre_ on Sundays, and in all _else_, a _fiesta_ is synonymous with a
Sunday; and finally, at the last attempt we made, on the _right_ day,
hour, etc.," p. 41, vol. ii. "Boleros and Fandangos are national
dances, but they are among the _délassements_ of the _plebs_," p. 145,
vol. ii. Scattered here and there through these intolerable pages we
find numerous examples of wit unequalled in dreariness. Speaking of
Spanish authoresses the writer facetiously remarks, "One or two have
so far exceeded the ordinary limits of female capacity in Spain, as
even to dip the tip of their hose into the cerulean ink-bottle." Of
the domestic pottery she says: "There is what we may call a jar-ring
incongruity between the roughness of the material and the striking
elegance of the form." Aquatic gambolling at Biarritz, we are told,
"is not the only gambling to be seen there." A visit to the tomb of an
archbishop elicits the following: "It is an object of great
attraction, and renders the spot chosen by the archbishop an excellent
site for a tomb, as it cannot fail to keep the memory of him whose
bones it covers before all who frequent the church, and there can be
now little left _besides_ his bones. This is as it should be. '_De
mortuis nil nisi bonum_.'"

Had the book been expurgated of the hundreds of foreign words, and of
all these dead-and-alive puns, which deface its pages, and the subject
matter been arranged with the slightest view to order, it would have
been quite readable, for the authoress is good-natured and
communicative, and has an eye for the beautiful and the picturesque,
as well as {859} intelligence to appreciate the moral and the useful;
but, as it is, we think the quotations we have made from it are quite
sufficient to prove the justice of our opinion concerning it.



LETTERS OF EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN.
Edited by G. S. Trebutien. 12mo, pp. 453. London: Alexander Strahan;
New York: Lawrence Kehoe. 1866.

Our readers have already been presented in our pages with several
articles and notices of Eugénie de Guérin's character and writings,
and they are doubtless sufficiently familiar with both to waive any
further reflections upon either in this place. The volume of letters
before us is, like her journal, a delicious literary repast, from
which we rise with mind and heart equally gladdened and refreshed. Our
space will not permit us to give but one or two short extracts. "23d
December, 1863. I write to you, dear Louise, to the sound of the
_Nadalet_, to the merry peal of bells, announcing the sweetest
festival of the year. It is, indeed, very beautiful this midnight
celebration, this memorial of the manger, the angels, the shepherds,
of Mary and the infant Jesus, of so many mysteries of love
accomplished in this marvellous night. I shall go to the midnight
mass, not in hope of a pie, coffee, and such a pleasant dish as your
nocturnal cavalier; nothing of the kind is to be found at Cahuzac,
where I only enjoy celestial pleasures, such as one experiences in
praying to the good God, hearing beautiful sermons, gentle lessons,
and, in a quiet corner of the church, giving oneself up to rapturous
emotion. Happy moments, when one no longer belongs to earth, when one
lets heart, soul, mind, wing their way to heaven!"

The following to M. de la Morvonnais he must have received and read
with intense emotion:

  Cayla, 28th July, 1835.

  Did you imagine, Monsieur, that I should not write to you any more?
  Oh! how mistaken you would have been! It was your journey to Paris,
  and, after that, other obstacles, which prevented my speaking to you
  earlier of Marie. But we will speak of her to-day; yes, let us speak
  of her, always of her; let her be always betwixt us. It is for her
  sake I write to you: first of all, because I love her and find it
  sweet to recall her memory; and then, because it seems to me that
  she is glad you should sometimes hear terms of expression that
  _vividly recall_ her. I come, then, to remind you of that sacred
  resemblance so sweet to myself when it strikes you. How I bless God
  for having bestowed it upon me, and thus enabled me to do you some
  good! This shall be my mission with regard to you, and with what
  delight shall I fulfil it!

  Do not say that there is any merit or act of profound charity in
  this acceptation. My heart goes out quite naturally toward those who
  weep, and I am happy as an angel when I can console. You tell me
  that your life will no longer have any bright side, that I can
  elicit nothing from you but sadness. I know this; but can that
  estrange me--I, who loved the Marie you weep? Ah! yes; let us weep
  over her; lean on me the while, if you will. To me it is not painful
  to receive tears: not that my heart is strong, as you believe, only
  it is Christian, and finds at the foot of the cross enough to enable
  it to support its own sorrows and those of others. Marie did the
  same . . . . let us seek to imitate the saints. You will teach this
  to your daughter beside the cross on that grave whither you often
  lead her. Poor little one! how I should like to see her, to
  accompany her in that pilgrimage to that tomb beside the sea, and
  under the pines, to pray, to weep there, to take her on my knees and
  speak to her of heaven and of her mother. This would be a joy to me:
  you know that there are melancholy ones.

We give only these little tastes of the charming volume, which will
find its way, after the "journal," into many a circle, to afford in
its perusal the most unqualified delight to all its readers.



THE VALLEY OF WYOMING; the Romance of its History and its Poetry; also
Specimens of Indian Eloquence.
Compiled by a Native of the Valley. 12mo, pp. 153. New York: R. H.
Johnston & Co. 1866.

"This little volume," says the author in his prefatory note, "has not
the slightest claim to be either a history or a study of romance." We
are sorry that it has not, for we cannot see that (apart from the
republication of Campbell's "Gertrude of Wyoming") it has the
slightest claim to be anything else. We thank the author, however, for
giving us the following amongst the specimens of Indian eloquence. It
is part of the reply of the celebrated chief Red Jacket to a
Protestant missionary,

{860}

"_Brother_, continue to listen. You say you are sent to instruct us
how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and that if we
do not take hold of the religion which you teach, we shall be unhappy
hereafter. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your
religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as
you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us: and not only to us,
but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book,
with the means of rightly understanding it? . . . .  _Brother_, you
say that there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit.
If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much
about it? _Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?_"

We should like to know what answer the missionary made, or could make,
to that argument.



SHAKESPEARE'S DELINEATION OF INSANITY AND SUICIDE.
By A. O. Kellogg, M.D., Assistant Physician State Lunatic Asylum,
Utica, N. Y. 12mo, pp. 204. New-York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866.

Dr. Kellogg's essays upon some of the characters in Shakespeare are
the evidence of an expert in support and illustration of the intuitive
apprehension and scientific fidelity of genius to truth. The
difference between the creations of genius and those of industry is,
to a certain degree, the difference between the limning of the sea and
the laborious skill of the engraver. The mind gives its unquestioning
and conscious assent to the psychological _delineations_ of
Shakespeare, but it is doubtful if Shakespeare ever made it a special
subject of study. He was undoubtedly a thorough reader of the ancient
classics, and a close and critical observer of the persons and events
of his own time, and that we believe to have been the substance of his
education, properly so called.

The essay on Hamlet is the best, and we quite agree with Dr. Kellogg's
conclusion on this much disputed subject, that the dramatist meant to
describe a mind unsettled by distress, and gradually culminating in
complete madness. If we were allowed to draw a personal conclusion
from reading this book, we should say that Dr. Kellogg is admirably
adapted for that department of his noble profession which he has
chosen.

The volume is well printed and beautifully bound.



HOMES WITHOUT HANDS.
Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, classed according
to their Principles of Construction. By Rev. J. G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S.,
etc. With new designs by W. F. Keyle and E. Smith. 8vo, pp. 651. New
York: Harper and Brothers. 1866.

This is a delightful book, full of scientific knowledge communicated
in the most pleasing and attractive style. It is admirably calculated
to awaken a love for natural science and original collection and
exploration. We consider this class of studies of the highest value,
especially on account of their reflex action on the mind and
character, and their powerful influence in the direction of morality
and religion. We would suggest this book as an admirable one for
prizes in our Catholic boarding-schools, and we wish natural science
were more prized and cultivated in them than it at present seems to
be.

It is printed and bound in a very handsome manner.



A PRACTICAL GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
By T.E. Howard, A.M. Metropolitan Series. New York: D. & J. Sadlier &
Co. 1866.

This is an excellent little manual for our schools, and we doubt not
that it will come into extensive use.

It bears throughout the unmistakable signs of having come from the
hand of an experienced teacher, from whose pen books of this character
must come to possess any practical worth. The style in which it is
published is, to our thinking, and according to our experience, unfit
for a school-book. The copy sent us would be in tatters in the hand of
a school boy before he had studied one tenth of it.





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